00:00:00
hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is morvid this is morbid y Co but almost
00:00:22
without almost so close to being without so close she sent her test this morning
00:00:26
and it had the faintest line and I said well we're related anyway and got to get
00:00:30
back to work and I'm ready to come in I've done a good job we isolated the hell out of me right away I still don't
00:00:38
know where I got Co by the way uh I don't go anywhere so there's that and wait like you could like we were saying
00:00:44
like with the stomach bug you could even get it off like a Starbucks cup or something I know that's why I'm like
00:00:48
what the [ __ ] but the good news is no one else got it yeah that's like no one else got it I think we're good at this
00:00:55
point but I think no one else got it we isolated the hell out of me right away smart thank goodness for JN shout out to
00:01:01
John shout out to JN shout out to JN and to my mother-in-law for being the greatest people ever yeah we love CU
00:01:09
godamn I know I felt so bad for you um I was in the pool at my all-inclusive resort when you texted me and I was I
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sent you a little picture like oh that sucks and I was like yeah I'm dying yeah I felt really bad you were like yeah I
00:01:22
just broke my 103 degree fever I was like oh I'm drinking a Pina Cola not relatable watching lizard run by oh my
00:01:30
god there are so many cute little lizards in Aruba my little honeymoon Aruba is beautiful oh my God it was so
00:01:36
much fun take me back take me back it was fun but that was like the longest vacation no that was like one of the
00:01:44
longest vacations I've ever gone on and the first we've gone on in a long time um and it was amazing and like a lot of
00:01:50
fun but by the end of it I think like we got there on Friday and I feel like by like Wednesday Thursday we were like
00:01:56
okay I want to go home now yeah like all right we're such home bodies we are too
00:02:00
yeah so it's like I can have a little bit of of it and then I'm like all right I want to be home in my pajamas on my
00:02:06
couch with my kids yeah me too with my kids because we watching them on the cameras you're watching the cats on the
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cameras cat kids I miss Remy and fre GL and LU and I really missed your kids I know they missed you yeah it was a wild
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week it was but I'm back you're almost Co free and we are here we are so we're going to start off 2024 strong yeah
00:02:29
ending 2023 really strong yeah for real dude wait you had Co right around this time last year not last year was that
00:02:38
two years ago yeah it was like two years ago oh God what is time I think it was like 2021 yeah oh okay um yeah we got it
00:02:45
like yeah you're right you're right you're right and it was around the same time yeah around this time last year you
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had that crazy stomach bug and you couldn't do Thanksgiving oh yeah I got the stomach bug on Thanksgiving but we
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got to do Thanksgiving this year which was nice we did I waited until and that's that's what's even funnier is I
00:03:00
waited only about a week after Thanksgiving to get Co so I really barely barely made it happen but you
00:03:09
know apparently Thanksgiving is tough for me but I guess so I don't know what it is chill out well I feel like you do
00:03:16
a lot like you put a lot on your plate and it's at the end of the year where like your kids already probably brought
00:03:20
home something nasty that's very true so you're run down and I just get it all let me attack you you know that's it but
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I got to say JN is like the greatest human whenever cuz he just kept the house running yeah kept the kids running
00:03:34
yeah like just they they had their their teeth were brushed their hair were brushed that's the thing like they were
00:03:40
washed they were washed you posted that video but I see it all the time of like Millennial dads just like being like way
00:03:46
more Hands-On than dads of past Generations being parents instead of a babysitter oh my God I was just going to
00:03:54
say like like just raising their kids instead of babysitting cuz he always hates when somebody would be be like oh
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is Dad babysitting and he's like I'm not babysitting my [ __ ] kids their dad like I'm raising them alongside this
00:04:06
other human Drew said that the other day he was like I hate when like dads will say that and I was like that makes me
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want to have like five million babies with you that is a good thing but yeah he's kept this whole [ __ ] afloat so
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shout out to John and you're so close I'm so close I can feel it I feel I feel great yeah you look great you don't even
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look bad yeah I feel great so I'm really just waiting for that little little line
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to disappear I do like your hospital socks thank you I do have just saw I do have grippy socks like straight up
00:04:36
Hospital socks they're straight up off with like the little feet on the bottom they're comyet what the [ __ ] I fall a
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lot I slide I can't have bare feet like walking around like that's [ __ ] up uh disagree yeah just in my own head that's
00:04:55
[ __ ] up I just hate when my toes feel like too Bunch together nope my toes can't can't touch the no like no thank
00:05:01
you I'm a I'm a free free foot socks but I have hardwood floors everywhere and I
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will fall true uh in a sock and it has happened before so you broke your tailbone on just like my kids need to
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have grippy socks I need to have grippy socks so grippy socks out here grippy socks forever um but moving away from
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grippy socks yeah uh to someone this is going to be like real depressing I just want to put that out
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there like ahead of time we're going to talk about Velma Barfield okay she's a poisoner o uh she's a extreme poisoner
00:05:36
oh but my goodness she has the most depressing life oh ever like it's it's just you're like welcome back to welcome
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back it's but my she was she's cold as ice but her her like her life just makes you be like
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whoo like good was happening here at all like there's just no good nothing one good I mean it looks like she you know
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her she loved her kids and and her kids seemed to love her and honestly I feel I
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feel very much for her kids she has a son and a daughter um they seem to love her and I don't think they got the same
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person that that did these things so it's like I I really feel for them because I'm sure they're still trying to
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reconcile that yeah that's like a lot to digest that's a lot and again she has a
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really [ __ ] up like childhood and she has a [ __ ] up just life that you're just like damn like how were you handed
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so many bad cards damn but some of the bad cards she took on herself so all right let's get into this let's talk
00:06:48
about Velma so when Velma barfield's trial came in the late 70s which trust me will get to the 70s um it was like
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late 7s early ' 80s it was the time in the United States when Americans were really just beginning to even deal or
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grapple with the concept of a serial killer at all like even a male serial killer any serial killer never mind the
00:07:10
idea that a woman could commit anything like that right and although women had been sentenced to death for murder
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before in the US none had confessed to methodically killing multiple people in such a cold blooded callous way and for
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such a seemingly trivial reason as Velma okay so let's talk about who Velma is let's Margie Velma Bard Margie was born
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October 29th 1932 in Cumberland County North Carolina I think she's a Libra she was oh she was a Libra like Mikey I
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think right October 29th look at that I'll double check but I'm almost sure no no [ __ ] me he said that's a no hold on
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wait don't tell me what's after Libra I know just don't tell me for a second I Sagittarius right where am I Mike he's
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just going nope October 29th oh she's a Scorpio oh all right okay there it is yeah uh she was the second of nine
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children okay and her parents were Lily and Murphy Bard unfortunately she had the displeasure of entering the world
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during the worst part of the Great Depression so her early life was tough in many ways her father was a farmer so
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the collapse of cotton prices hit him hard financially very hard and it became next to impossible for him to earn
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enough money to support his very much growing family and also support his aging parents which he had been doing
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for some time so in 1935 he gave farming up and went to work for a Logging company for a bit and then he found work
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at a textile mill in Fayville now in velv Velma Memoir she wrote A Memoir uh she wrote I was afraid
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of my daddy even while still a small child he had a violent temper and none of us wanted to be around when he blew
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up oh wow according to Velma nearly anything could set that tempo off no matter how little and there was no way
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of knowing what or when it would happen like what was going to happen and when it was going to happen no Rhyme or
00:09:08
Reason he and she said quote he usually took out his anger on us kids as well as
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the furniture that's so [ __ ] which like can you imagine being such a tiny little person to take your anger out on
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a small child no or tiny person or even like on furniture in front of your kids like to create such a violent home like
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that like what are you doing just grow up besides being an [ __ ] Murphy who was not good at managing the family's
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finances even before the Depression hit hard really so that made things worse uh
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he had a strong work ethic and wasn't afraid of a full day's work but he also really wanted to impress people he was a
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keep up with the Joneses kind of guy and he would spend money on trivial things for himself instead of things the family
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needed so he was already setting them up for selfish as well even before the depression happened a relative once said
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he bought what he wanted instead of what he needed m his pocketbook was always too small for his operation if you know
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what I mean so Lily the mother would try to do whatever she could about Murphy's
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explosive anger and violence she would try to like intervene try to smooth things over to try and stop him from
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reacting to everything with anger and she would hide incidents or any accidents that happened that would lead
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him to abusing the kids so if they had an accident like knock something over she would be like that was me you know
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what I mean like she just take it on now unfortunately she was rarely successful
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and Velma came to resent her mother for the way she tolerated and catered to her
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father what she thought was catering to her father and for what she saw as failing to protect her children from his
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wrath yeah which obviously the times were very different that's tough and honestly it's like I can't imagine being
00:10:50
in Velma and The Children's Place and I can't imagine being in Lily's place no it's impossible um one day when Velma
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was 12 she asked her mother mama why do you put up with him why do you stay with
00:11:01
him like this when she was 12 wow and the answer of course was that Lily had nowhere else to go right and she
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definitely didn't have the resources necessary to raise nine children by herself and that was the story in a lot
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of these households that we come to especially in this time period it was just a matter of I can't do this by
00:11:20
myself do it alone um but to Velma who was 12 she thought that excuse was insufficient she said I'd sure find
00:11:26
someplace else to go and I will too when I get old it's unfortunately that's not true
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yeah and it's one of those things where it's like you just don't have the life experience to know the position that
00:11:36
your mom is in that age of course not you're 12 you just look at it this is a terrible situation why would you deal
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with it and you can understand she's 12 she has no [ __ ] clue how hard it is to do anything else yeah you know to get
00:11:52
out of that situation and how dangerous it is right now um as a child Velma sought to escape in school and she was a
00:11:59
very good student oh that's good but she didn't do well being grouped in with many other children she didn't do well
00:12:04
with Team things huh which I feel that as well I saw a little glimmer in your eye there I was like same um even though
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she was a good student the teachers would often kind of like chastise her or punish her for her boisterousness and
00:12:16
unruly Behavior oo uh and noted her tendency to have Angry outbursts when things didn't go her way even as a young
00:12:24
girl yeah so she's learning setting the groundwork Murphy is teaching her when you don't get your way you beat the [ __ ]
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out of the furniture or someone else around you that's what you do use Outburst so it's like you teach your
00:12:36
kids how do react and it's like this is a perfect you know and it's like also who knows if it's like a genetic
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component there that she's just got anger in her blood that she's going to have to figure out how to control or not
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and Scorpios are fiery there you go so to make matters worse many of velma's classmates came from families that were
00:12:54
much better off than her own and this was made apparent to everyone because she would come to school in secondhand
00:13:00
clothing or handmade clothing and she always brought a very small very kind of sparse lunch with her that's so sad and
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in order to try to you know minimize this bullying that she was facing Velma started stealing coins from her father's
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pants pockets and using it to buy candy and other things for classmates kind of like trying to buy herself into like
00:13:23
people liking her right um and it seemed to work a little bit but it's not a great way to you know find friends I
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guess she's not learning a lot of really great lessons here now when she reached
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her teenage years Velma started dating Thomas Burke who was a boy she met at church and he was a boy her father
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greatly disapproved of uh oh for the most part they seem to you know like just hang out do some mundane activities
00:13:49
like drive around go to the movies like normal teenage stuff but Velma often had
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a difficult time enjoying herself she later said as much as I like being with Tom Thomas and going places with him I
00:14:00
was bothered by thoughts that I should be home instead H I think Velma had like the weight of the world on her shoulders
00:14:08
too young of an age probably depressed she was thinking about too many problems because she was probably thinking about
00:14:14
you know like her brothers and sisters and you know her father's an angry scary guy and her mom and she and she probably
00:14:22
probably feel some kind of responsibility at a way too young an age to be in the home to try to enter seed
00:14:29
things that's that's just really tragic now she's Felt This Strange pole which I
00:14:35
understand in these situations to live up to her father's expectations no matter how unreasonable they were she
00:14:41
just didn't want to disappoint him because he was scary and her relationship with Thomas started to
00:14:46
become a kind of a welcome escape from the violence at home and you know she had the violence at home and then the
00:14:53
kind of challenging environment at school that she was still trying to navigate and one evening about a year
00:14:58
into their relationship Thomas and Velma were driving home from a movie when he turned to her and said Velma Let's Get
00:15:04
Married random now immediately she panicked because she knew her father would lose his mind and would definitely
00:15:11
not allow it and would probably react with violence if it was even BL brought up to him but the question caused her
00:15:17
immediate anxiety and she was like you know what I enjoy being with Thomas this is a nice Escape so she's like you know
00:15:25
what I might not know if I love him or not and and I don't love him the way that he
00:15:31
loves me but it's a I kind of want to do this so a few days later while they were
00:15:36
driving Velma brought up the subject and because she didn't immediately answer him and she reminded Thomas that her
00:15:42
father would definitely not approve and this time however there were additional complications her father had found a new
00:15:49
job and would be moving the entire family to Wade which was about an hour away oh okay and so Thomas said then
00:15:55
let's get married right away so Thomas said before your daddy leaves let's just aope now although she wasn't exactly
00:16:01
sure again whether she really loved him or just the thought of you know losing him was upsetting her she didn't want to
00:16:09
lose him and she figured you know being uprooted from her current life no matter
00:16:13
how distressing it is would kind of stress her out more cuz she's kind of used to this awful routine so it's kind
00:16:19
of like choosing the less of two less of two stresses exactly but she ended up agreeing to his plan and the two began
00:16:24
making plans to run off and get married on December 1st 194 49 velma's friend alvie Pender came by the house to pick
00:16:31
her up for what she told her parents was going to be just a night out then the two of them picked up Thomas and the
00:16:37
three of them drove to nearby Dylan South Carolina where Velma and Thomas were married and alvie was their witness
00:16:43
okay once they were married they returned to their respective homes and didn't say a word okay they planned to
00:16:50
Spring the news on Lily and Murphy just before they moved so they figured that that would mitigate like some of the
00:16:57
negative reactions but I don't know about that or probably just like they would have less time to take it out on
00:17:02
you yeah now that plan only lasted a little more than a day because Thomas convinced Velma that they needed to tell
00:17:08
their parents but Thomas was like we can't do this yeah now Velma decided to start with her mother smart hoping she
00:17:14
could convince Lily to tell Murphy uh but her mother was like uh no and she was essentially like you did this you
00:17:21
tell him like I can't say I blame her I'd be like girly you're a married woman now yeah she was like and she literally
00:17:26
was like you got married this is your stuff to tell so the next day Velma told her father about the marriage and he
00:17:33
reacted slightly as expected he yelled he threw things he demanded they get the marriage annulled but then all of a
00:17:41
sudden he sat down put his head in his hands and started sobbing what the [ __ ]
00:17:48
this was obviously very unexpected she had never seen her father very unnerving and he was usually violent and angry so
00:17:56
this was just not she was like what what the [ __ ] so immediately she felt overwhelming guilt and she was like I
00:18:03
shouldn't have married Thomas what the [ __ ] did I do and she actually never learned why he reacted that way but she
00:18:10
said from that moment on there was a drastic change in her and her father's relationship I wonder if it was a moment
00:18:17
of self-realization for him of like it was so bad that she saw this as her ticket out and like what does she see in
00:18:24
this guy that's exactly what I think I think he did violently disapproved of guy which as we will find out Thomas
00:18:30
ends up being not a great husband uh and he violently disapproved of this guy and
00:18:37
so he's looking at this guy like there's no [ __ ] way in hell you're going to marry this guy and she goes and does it
00:18:42
right and he probably is sitting there like you said being like she had no other option to get away from me but to
00:18:49
marry this guy mhm who like I know is not a good guy it seems like it really was a Moment of clarity it's like I
00:18:56
wonder if he was just like what the [ __ ] have I done like I think I really do think that was a moment which it's like
00:19:02
I'm glad it came but my god dude it came too late too little too late like it's like and and it also looks like and you
00:19:08
know like spoiler alert later it looks like Lily and Murphy end up really loving being grandparents like they fall
00:19:15
really hard into the grandparent roles so I do wonder if this was the moment that Murphy just said [ __ ] what have I
00:19:23
done and then his grandkids like really brought that like fatherly thing out of in him right which you hear about that
00:19:31
sometimes where like somebody's a [ __ ] [ __ ] parent and then they become a grandparent and you're like and the
00:19:37
the kid is like why weren't you like this for me but you're like which is great that you're like this for my kids
00:19:43
like I'd rather my kids having this but like I would have loved this yeah and like where like obviously the side of
00:19:49
you was there somewhere in there so why didn't you give it to me you know like but it's it's strange it's a strange
00:19:55
phenomenon family trauma yeah exactly but uh Velma wrote oddly enough after that night when I told Daddy about my
00:20:02
getting married he wasn't mean to me ever again wow I just got chills I don't know why is that a wild one now days
00:20:10
later Velma left her parents house to live with Thomas and his parents a few miles away and finally free of all the
00:20:16
you know abuse the violence that had basically dominated her life for 17 years Velma you think would feel
00:20:23
relieved you know but she couldn't shake the feeling that she had [ __ ] up and she had hurt her family deeply and she
00:20:31
that was what kept sticking to her was I feel like I did something wrong I hurt my family oh now in retrospect Velma
00:20:38
remembers the first few years of her marriage to Thomas as quote the happiest years of her life okay so there was good
00:20:44
times shortly after the wedding they both dropped out of school Thomas got a job at the cotton mill in nearby Red
00:20:50
Springs and they spent most of 1950 and early 1951 living with his parents things were generally good
00:20:59
that's great unfortunately though the job at the Mill was tough Thomas [ __ ] hated it so he ended up quitting in
00:21:05
early 1951 they then moved in with velma's oldest brother Olive and Thomas found
00:21:11
work as a Salesman with Double Cola bottling company now Thomas's job with the Cola Company paid enough that they
00:21:17
were able to actually get a house of their own a small house of their own a few months later and soon after Velma
00:21:23
became pregnant and gave birth to her son Ronald who they called Ronnie cute on December 15th 1951 and she later
00:21:31
wrote about this I was thrilled beyond words I cried I was so happy now bless his heart he was ugly but I thought he
00:21:37
was the prettiest baby I had ever seen what the [ __ ] Velma she just called you
00:21:42
kid ugly I thought parents weren't even capable of realizing damn I thought there was other
00:21:47
people that realized that damn but bless his heart he was fugly he was ugly but I
00:21:53
thought he was the prettiest baby and it's like maybe he was then well it's like well did you maybe he was just
00:21:57
straight up the prettiest baby like you thought he was damn Velma but two years later Velma gave birth again on
00:22:04
September 3rd 1953 to a daughter they named Kim cute now in one in the book we are going to link on here um the bledo
00:22:12
book we he refers her as Pam because she is referred to as Pam sometime is that a
00:22:19
nickname for Kim I don't know if it's for Kim oh it's like why am of letter but um I'm thinking
00:22:26
tell me if I'm wrong in the Gatsby doesn't she call her daughter Pammy at one point I think it was like a like a
00:22:34
nickname of endearment I don't know if I'm making that up though because I know her daughter wasn't named Pam but I feel
00:22:40
like she does call her Pammy or maybe it's in another book that I read I can't remember I'm going to look it up I think
00:22:46
back then it might have been like a like oh you little cutie like you little p really I think I don't know if I'm just
00:22:52
like having a moment of delution the bledo book is just like about this case so I don't know why he would refer to to
00:22:58
her unless like she wrote about her in that way like well she refers to her as Kim huh that's the thing it doesn't it's
00:23:06
like maybe later in life she started going by P yeah I don't know I don't know I don't really know but I want to
00:23:13
look it up cuz now I'm feel I'm like am I delusional or is that a thing that I've heard before I'm sure it's a thing
00:23:19
I have faith in you thank you I'll interrupt you in a this is me having faith in you oh wait hold on Google just
00:23:24
filled in the rest for me no I don't know you're like no just kidding I've never heard that but I
00:23:30
I don't doubt you yeah I don't know yeah I don't I thought I heard that at one point in life I don't know email me if
00:23:38
I'm right you know let's see email me if I'm right if I'm wrong don't say anything if I'm wrong
00:23:46
just uh but but yeah she had a daughter named Kim who is referred to as Pam and and some other sources but at the time
00:23:54
the birth of a second child really only brought more joy into what was feeling like a all right life at that point I'm
00:24:01
like where did it all go wrong I know well Velma later said I loved my children and somewhere in those first
00:24:06
two or three years I learned to love my husband now even though even their relationship with velma's parents Lily
00:24:13
and Murphy Like I said had been better and like I was saying before both Lily and Murphy loved being grandparents yeah
00:24:21
they loved Ronnie and Kim and it sounds like the relationship with Tom's Thomas's parents was good they together
00:24:28
yeah so Velma didn't just love being a mother she was by all accounts very good at it wow uh Ronnie her son later said I
00:24:36
wouldn't say I was a mama's boy but I was close to it I really loved my mama to death I a real adoring type love oh
00:24:45
which breaks my heart for these kids cuz I'm like they saw someone different than
00:24:52
the rest of the world saw and I don't want to ever like take that from them you know what I mean like it's like and
00:24:57
you can't this story is rough story and she did some [ __ ] up [ __ ] but I feel
00:25:03
for them that they got that different side of her because what a what a mind [ __ ] that is that's always so
00:25:10
interesting to me too like we've talked about murderers before where like their family at home had no idea what was
00:25:16
going on like their wife never knew their husband never knew and it's like it's so interesting to me how you can
00:25:22
hide your that part of yourself from other mentalize these pieces of you and Give Love or what you what you think I
00:25:32
don't even know I don't know how to classify it cuz it's like I believe she loved her kids like from all accounts
00:25:37
they loved her and she seems to have loved them so it's like how do you compartmentalize like evil and love
00:25:44
inside of you that's I don't know but people thing people do it all the time it's well it's even like Israel Keys
00:25:50
like he was one of the most terrifying people we've ever spoken about but like loved his dog so much so you arez cuz a
00:25:57
lot of times you hear like oh sociopath not capable of Love whatsoever but I don't know how true that is yeah cuz he
00:26:04
had strange well well not every killer is a sociopath that is true that's the thing so I think that's the that's one
00:26:10
of the issues is it gets it gets to be a blanket thing for everybody and it's like so there's so many variables in all
00:26:19
of these cases that's why even entering into this like podcast in the beginning I was unaware how many variables
00:26:28
lie within each different case like you think like I went in thinking like you're a
00:26:34
psychopath people you're a psychopath that's it and it's like like that is indeed the case in many cases but it's
00:26:41
like there's so many other things that work it's fascinating and horrifying like it really is it is an interesting
00:26:47
study though just like the psychology of it all yeah and I don't know if we'll ever fully grasp it I think there's more
00:26:54
to it than just science there's a lot to it this has a lot to it like this is a perfect example because when you see how
00:27:01
cold and callous she is about what she does yeah it's really hard to reconcile this the mother in there but I mean I'm
00:27:09
glad the kids got you know a loving mother I suppose out of it yeah uh but they didn't have an easy life that's for
00:27:16
sure these kids did not have an easy childhood um they a lot was going on to get bad with Thomas at some point and
00:27:23
things started you know it was tough they unraveled a bit but again like he like Ronnie said he loved his mother um
00:27:31
and actually on occasions where he she had to be separated for from her children for any kind of period of time
00:27:37
uh she said that she would feel physically ill when she would um only be able to feel better once again when she
00:27:43
was with them wow and this became a bigger problem when Ronnie entered the first grade and Velma took a job at a
00:27:50
textile mill cuz she was working the overnight shift so there would always be someone home for the children so like
00:27:56
Thomas would work the day shift she be home she would work at night and he would come home but then that means she
00:28:01
probably missed out on a lot of seeing the kids cuz they were at school during the day exactly now a few years later in
00:28:07
1962 Velma began having significant health problems and was eventually diagnosed with fibroid tubor tumors on
00:28:13
her uterus oh wow uh this caused intense pain anybody who's had to deal with that
00:28:19
and heavy bleeding uh velma's doctors said they strongly recommended a hysterectomy to take care of this and
00:28:25
they said it was really the only way to eliminate the problem completely her brother John later said after she had
00:28:31
that hysterctomy seemed like she was never the same again that's interesting and later Velma would acknowledge that
00:28:37
this period was a major turning point in her life I feel like I've heard that with other women too that undergo
00:28:43
hysterectomy the hormonal changes are significant vast yeah and after the surgery the doctors warned her of this
00:28:51
the the hormonal changes that could very much be disruptive but she she said lately like there's no way to prepare
00:28:57
for it the shift in your moods and emotions and the weeks and months had followed and she wrote later I didn't
00:29:02
know how to handle my nerves from my Early Childhood when anything upset me it made me nervous and Afraid all of
00:29:09
that got worse after my hysterctomy that's really sad and I think that's part of the issue here is like she grew
00:29:14
up in such a tumultuous and traumatic childhood that she's already got a lot to contend with and then you throw
00:29:22
hormonal like imbalance wildness in there just un like you can't control and can't even conceive of I can't even
00:29:31
imagine what that will do right and back then they didn't have the medicine that
00:29:34
could regulate other thing that's the problem here is there wasn't a lot to do and she found that her emotions were
00:29:40
much stronger after the surgery and she had a lot of intrusive negative thoughts
00:29:45
and they were being harder and harder to combat and she said I had hidden my feelings and kept so much inside me that
00:29:52
I built up over the years as I got older I still didn't know how to do anything about the anger and theil guilt uh in
00:29:58
the 1960s like we were just saying talk therapy as we know it today was in its infancy to say the least and mental and
00:30:06
emotional health care was still a very taboo subject um it was and this was particularly true for the average
00:30:13
American housewife who yeah in the mid 1960s it was a different kind of situation they were undergoing a kind of
00:30:20
identity crisis at this point because there was a huge shift in the meanings and identities of women and mothers in
00:30:26
Western culture so without any professional help or even just like a social network that she could turn to
00:30:33
for any of these problems she attempted to do what she had always done which is just keep things to herself push all the
00:30:40
negative feelings down and just hope they go away right and that's not going to happen recipe for disaster yeah and
00:30:48
before long her fluctuating moods and instability uh started taking a toll on her marriage uh which by 1965 had
00:30:56
already kind of hit a rough patch yeah Thomas's father had passed away and he received uh some minor injuries in a car
00:31:03
crash oh wow and as a result of the car crash he had been in pain so he had started drinking more than usual as a
00:31:10
means of Escape oh no this was soon exacerbated by him joining a Civic organization in which the members were
00:31:17
also heavy drinkers belma said as Thomas started to drink more his whole personality changed and that was
00:31:23
probably really triggering for her from her childhood exactly and now she's trying to protect the kids too from this
00:31:28
whole thing she's become her mother who she resented so much exactly it's a real
00:31:33
real cycle of sadness in this episode it really is yeah now already stressed out
00:31:38
by her own issues going on and you know the emotional stuff the lingering effects of surgery which she's still
00:31:45
trying to get over that's a massive surgery oh yeah uh Velma struggled to understand or even tolerate her husband
00:31:52
at this point well she had already had to learn to love him exactly so having this happen was like no that can unravel
00:31:59
something so their relationship was reduced to little more than her losing her patience and starting arguments with
00:32:05
him and him drinking heavily and starting arguments back oh fun uh she said we had so much good in the first
00:32:11
years of our marriage that I couldn't accept the difference and that's the other thing it's such a slap in the face
00:32:17
cuz it's like the beginning was so good right and now it's just [ __ ] and it's like and it seems like it happened like
00:32:22
boom it's like where did we Veer off here now Velma blamed one thing will find out about Velma she's been through
00:32:30
a lot she she's been dealt a lot of shitty cards but Velma is one of those people that has trouble taking any kind
00:32:36
of responsibility for her own stuff right too uh she she only blamed Thomas and his drinking for and anything that
00:32:45
was going on in that household or that marriage um but she was also going she had an explosive temper yeah like you
00:32:52
know I mean it's not like they were you know getting along D and then like he started drinking and everything went
00:32:57
South mhm it's like you know and obviously the hysterctomy happened and that's not her fault that's her dealing
00:33:03
with those hormonal in you know fluctuations but when she's already going into it with an explosive temper
00:33:10
uh in no patience it's like this is all a recipe for disaster big time um in the
00:33:16
mid 1960s they had fallen on Hard Times financially and Velma started writing a number of bad
00:33:23
checks that once discovered to be fraudulent she was told had to pay the money back I always wonder why people
00:33:29
think that's a good idea always going to get caught always like don't [ __ ] with
00:33:35
the bank it's a legitimate paper trail yeah it's physical paper like you're not going to get away with that in the end
00:33:42
it's just going to cost you more that you don't have exactly and it because it's just the desperation yeah usually
00:33:48
and it's get me out of it it's the it's the it's the mindset that a lot of these
00:33:54
people have which is fix it right now fix it now deal with it later like I'm not going to you know what I mean I'm
00:34:00
not going to try to come up with an actual plan I'm going to just get it out of my way right now like the worst
00:34:05
possible way to deal with it I don't [ __ ] with the bank don't do it man they're they're rough uh to make matters
00:34:11
worse Thomas had a falling out at the Cola Company and impulsively quit his job oh with nothing lined up yeah which
00:34:18
is bad bad and it was several months before he found another job so there was a big lack of time so she was desperate
00:34:27
this was desperation time finally and probably more importantly Velma began having severe back pain in 1964 and it
00:34:36
led to a doctor prescribing her pain relieving tablets which Velma quickly grew addicted to and God only knows what
00:34:43
it was in those back then and I can tell you right now this pill addiction that she has becomes the basis of a lot of
00:34:50
her bad decision making really um by 1968 Velma and Thomas's relationship was just
00:34:57
deteriorating um she was becoming increasingly reliant on pain medication for basic functioning and he was
00:35:04
retreating deeper into alcoholism so this was just really sad and at the same time the children are now
00:35:12
teenagers so they become more independent and kind of defiant at that time and just defiant in a way that
00:35:18
normal teenagers can do especially teenagers in a home that's that's unstable that they're dealing with a lot
00:35:25
um so the whole family dnamic was very strained by then velma's personality had changed in a lot of ways and like her
00:35:32
father she was becoming much quicker to anger um I didn't read anything that said she was much quicker to anger with
00:35:40
the children okay it was Thomas yeah uh she said anything that my husband would do to agitate me she said the slightest
00:35:48
inconvenience or the slightest anything she perceived as a slight or annoying she would lose her mind um um and I
00:35:58
guess the children would try to deescalate the situations a lot and try to separate them wow Ronnie her son said
00:36:05
she wanted to stay and fight and yell she was very combative so that's even him saying like this this was a
00:36:11
different person yeah this was somebody who wanted to just fight now throughout the later part of the 1960s belma had
00:36:17
done her best to try to fix things she tried to get her Thomas in um into a rehab program she actually checked him
00:36:26
into won for drinking what about you girl and I was well that's the thing she paid virtually no attention to her own
00:36:32
right physical and mental health right she was kind of just which you don't know what that with the thought process
00:36:39
there was if she was in denial thinking she didn't have the issue or she was just like I'm going to suck it up and
00:36:45
deal with it but he needs to let's get him fixed okay I don't know which one that was I'm not I'm not Velma no uh but
00:36:52
she really ignored her own sh well and it seems like she already resented him so much and had so much against him that
00:36:58
it's one of those things where it's like he's the problem not exactly she she has
00:37:01
a she has a nasty habit of blaming everybody else and it seems like this is one of those things where VMA just said
00:37:07
well he's the [ __ ] problem right like once he's better I'll be fine yeah everything will be fine he's the problem
00:37:12
and she I'm sure and this is just me guessing but like she would probably get irritated with him and that would lead
00:37:18
her to using more in her own addiction exactly cuz it was the stress and the frustration all that so maybe she
00:37:23
figured if I get him taken care of then I be so annoyed time yeah now by 1968 the Stress and Anxiety she'd been
00:37:31
pushing down for decades did finally come up it came Ted oh no she collapsed in her kitchen where the last thing she
00:37:39
remembered was getting up to make breakfast for the kids wow uh Thomas was too drunk to help her in this situation
00:37:46
oh no and so it was Ronnie her son who had to call his grandfather Murphy oh wow and Murphy drove Velma to the
00:37:53
hospital this is what I mean with like Lily and Murphy really turned around turned around and became like the
00:37:59
lifeline here but then they saw like look what look what happened look what's happened because of everything that's
00:38:06
you know like they're they're in the same situation that we've been in and and it's worse yeah it's just it's it's
00:38:12
such a cycle generational trauma is wild it is it's horrifying now she ended up being admitted for what she would later
00:38:20
be told was a nervous breakdown wow uh Velma remained in the hospital for observation and treatment for about a
00:38:26
week and then she was discharged with a prescription for tranquilizers oh no and a strong
00:38:31
recommendation that she seek mental health treatment and get professional help with her marital issues as well uh
00:38:37
F getting out of the hospital she didn't take any of that advice um she basically
00:38:43
the marriage just continued to disintegrate she just kept on keeping on and she turned to the tranquilizers now
00:38:50
relying on them to make life more bearable she said I found I could cope better if I took it and then not just
00:38:56
one I knew that two would be better than one I could feel that oh now as 1968 came to a close there wasn't much of a
00:39:03
relationship between belma and Thomas left um he was really losing a battle with alcoholism uh it had consumed him
00:39:10
so much that he was he ended up losing his job he was unemployed for much of that year and that just added more
00:39:18
stress financially and although he would try and occasionally get get better uh he would
00:39:24
go short periods without drinking like it really never lasted long and he would fall right back into it it takes your
00:39:30
whole life I can't imagine I really can't um and the more Thomas drank the stranger his behavior came became
00:39:38
according to Jerry bledo the book I'm I was talking about before uh he said at times he would sit in the car in the
00:39:44
carport drunk revving the engine at full speed sometimes until the car ran out of
00:39:49
gas strange and when Velma or one of the kids would try to intervene he would become physically or verbally abusive
00:39:56
until passing out inside the house so it's just awful yeah it's just like an awful now by the winter of 1969 Thomas
00:40:05
had managed to find work at the Mill the mill was his first job that he had the one he [ __ ] hated and he had to go
00:40:11
back to it yeah in this shape yeah and at first Velma was like you know what maybe after so long and after being
00:40:19
unemployed for so long maybe this is what's going to do it it's going to snap him into like a routine he's going to
00:40:25
have to go to work he's going to have to get together but she said having to go back to the mill was a real blow to his
00:40:31
pride and he seemed to drink even more now as that got worse so did the fights that they seem to have every single
00:40:37
night one evening in March Thomas came home drunk and the inevitable fight happened and Velma was telling her
00:40:44
husband that she couldn't put up with her drinking in this fighting anymore and Thomas passed out on the couch and
00:40:49
Velma packed a suitcase for herself and for Kim her daughter and they went to stay with her parents while Ronnie who
00:40:56
is now almost an adult at this point stayed behind because he told his mother someone needs to take care of dad oh my
00:41:04
God so their whole family just got fractured and it's like these kids too much responsibility so much
00:41:09
responsibility and it's like Ronnie just especially cuz I don't we don't find out
00:41:15
a lot about Kim yeah but I'm sure she was the same way but we see that Ronnie like just loved his parents and you can
00:41:23
tell that he just like wanted to be a good son and like wanted them to be better like wanted to help he just
00:41:27
wanted to take care of them he wanted to be a good son sad like looks at his mom
00:41:31
is like someone needs to take care of dad I will stay here to take care of him and it's like you shouldn't have to take
00:41:36
care of your parents I know it just breaks my heart it really breaks my heart but like what a good son yeah and
00:41:43
when Thomas came uh came to the next morning Ronnie told him about the whole thing was like yeah do you remember any
00:41:49
of this and he was like um he was like you know Mom left and is fully intending on divorcing you so like you really done
00:41:57
it this time you [ __ ] up and Ronnie blamed his father's drinking because he was like this is your fault and Thomas
00:42:03
blamed velma's pill addiction and he was nonetheless remorseful though and he was
00:42:09
like I don't want this to happen I this shouldn't be what ends everything and he
00:42:13
told his son I I want to get sober I want to bring this family back together wow um and he said like it was when you
00:42:19
were younger like I want it to be like that and later that afternoon Ronnie told his mother this like what his
00:42:25
father had said and everybody was very hopeful at this moment so Velma came home that's like the worst knowing know
00:42:33
the Hope yeah and for a few days there was like an uneasy like chillness like peace in the house but everybody was
00:42:40
probably so trepidacious yeah and Thomas managed to make it about a week without
00:42:44
drinking and Velma did her best to take her pills as directed right but then it was just too late too much damage had
00:42:52
been done to the relationship and honestly neither of them knew how to fix it and neither of them knew if they
00:42:57
really wanted to fix it at this point so after a couple of weeks things in the house unfortunately returned right to
00:43:04
the way they were before Velma left and it was pretty clear to everybody that you know like it was clear to her that
00:43:10
Thomas wasn't going to change Thomas knew she wasn't going to change and that marriage was over damn now several weeks
00:43:17
later on the weekend of um of April 19th Ronnie and Kim decided to go you know they needed to get away from their
00:43:24
parents endless fighting and this whole thing that had turned into so they went to stay with Lily and Murphy their
00:43:30
grandparents for the weekend what they're like we need to get away from that so we're going to go to Lily and
00:43:35
Murphy who are like super chill now but exactly and I'm like damn you should have known but Velma was Home Alone that
00:43:41
morning when Thomas stumbled in after getting off of work clearly drunk uh they exchanged like very at this point
00:43:48
they were barely speaking to each other if they weren't fighting they like roommates so they were like just hello
00:43:54
and Thomas sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette but then he started passing
00:43:57
out so the lit cigarette was still in his mouth and VMA noticed that it fell out of his mouth and rolled down his
00:44:04
shirt so she ran to grab it before it like burned a hole in him and she basically yelled at him and was like you
00:44:10
know what like you're bur your and she literally said burn yourself up for all I care like Jesus Christ right like she
00:44:16
was just she had enough and so she when she yelled this Thomas woke up and he got off the couch and went into the
00:44:22
bedroom where he lay down on the bed and went back to passing out now Velma was [ __ ] frustrated at this point so she
00:44:29
left the house went to her parents house and picked her mother up to take her out
00:44:32
shopping for the afternoon later that afternoon she came back to her house and she came in to find it filled with thick
00:44:40
smoke oh no couldn't find her husband so she ran outside just as Thomas's sister
00:44:45
Francis happened to be driving by the house and Velma was shouting for her to call the fire department the volunteer
00:44:52
fire Squad arrived minutes later made their way through the the house and they hadn't been in there for more than a
00:44:58
minute or two when they came out to get a stretcher they came back out and they were carrying Thomas on a stretcher
00:45:04
Velma was begging them to tell her what the [ __ ] happened and she said I kept bu
00:45:08
begging but they wouldn't tell me anything inside I knew he was already dead oh God now later that day the fire
00:45:14
inspector told Velma that Thomas had died from smoke inhalation it appeared as though he had fallen asleep in bed
00:45:20
with a lit cigarette but at some point he must have woken up because it looked like he had tried to Stomp on the rug
00:45:26
trying to put the fire out and according to the investigator there was very little damage from the fire only a small
00:45:32
part of the mattress and the pile of clothes on the floor and the floor underneath appeared to be ruined but
00:45:37
otherwise everything was pretty much unharmed okay um the official cause of death death was listed as smoking in bed
00:45:45
and the case was closed and they think like he was you know he was really drunk so he couldn't get out of the house
00:45:50
right like what a way to go and Thomas's death was a tragedy and it hit the family the children and Velma really
00:45:58
hard and no matter what this was not the outcome anyone was looking for obviously
00:46:03
now in the months after Thomas's death Velma came to rely even more on the tranquilizers to get her through the day
00:46:11
uh the life insurance policy on Thomas barely covered the funeral or any of the other costs associated with his death
00:46:18
and that meant that Velma didn't have the luxury of taking any moment off from work to grieve right go through any of
00:46:24
it he was husband as much as that whole relationship had disintegrated and it was [ __ ] that's the father of your
00:46:32
children you were still living with him you you hadn't divorced yet yeah there's
00:46:36
always some kind of love there I'm sure yeah there's something there's something
00:46:39
there you know and this that's just a shock yeah and so Velma pushed herself to stay focused on work which was at
00:46:46
Belk's department store okay uh she hadd been employed there for several years um
00:46:51
and it gave her something to focus on it filled her days up she was just really like moving forward
00:46:56
and she also liked it because she could take rare moments aside to chat with her
00:47:00
friend Pauline Barfield who worked in the store next to Velma um and they had known each other for a while they'
00:47:06
become very close like velma's closest friend uh very much her Confidant and had on several occasions introduced um
00:47:14
she had introduced Velma to her husband Jennings um and like they were just like
00:47:19
best friends like she told her everything now just a few months after Thomas's death Velo has dealt another
00:47:26
when she received news that Pauline had died unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage holy [ __ ] it was a shock a
00:47:34
shock oh my God yeah and it was even more of a shock because one of the things that they always talked about was
00:47:42
that Pauline's husband Jennings had been disabled by emphysema and diabetes and they honestly thought he was the one
00:47:49
that would most likely pass away first so this was like a real shock and it was probably equally surprising when Velma
00:47:57
found herself in a full-blown relationship with Jennings so I was going to ask that cuz the Barfield of it
00:48:02
all yeah what uh that happens though like I've heard of that more of like like a a lot like I've heard of that a
00:48:12
yeah I don't understand it I think it's it's some weird grief tie yeah I would haunt the [ __ ] out of any of my friends
00:48:24
retweet I would I would Poltergeist that [ __ ] allu your [ __ ] life oh mark my
00:48:32
words yeah told I'm it's just black and white for me I'll ruin your [ __ ] life even if it's not my best friend you
00:48:39
can't move on sorry yeah I'll become a demon I'll become a demon specifically so I can ruin your life yeah exactly so
00:48:46
just know that but is it isn't that strange it is it's a strange phenomenon I told a story like that recently I feel
00:48:52
like I can't I can't put my finger on exactly who it was but I have heard of that like multiple times didn't it
00:48:56
happen with Stevie Nicks yes it did didn't she it's like she had like a come to Jesus moment my girly yeah I mean
00:49:03
it's just it but that shows like it's a strange phenomenon it is it really is and I think I think a lot
00:49:11
ofical oh 100% it has to do with cuz grief will [ __ ] you up like grief changes a lot of things well if you
00:49:19
think about it like you have a lot in common with your best friend so that I'm sure there are attribute attributes that
00:49:25
bring your partner that like reminds the the partner who's still alive of the partner that passed and that brings you
00:49:31
even closer yeah I mean like I don't understand it but I'm not going to say that I could understand it because
00:49:38
thankfully you know knock knocks I've never been in that position to understand that and again we'd haunt
00:49:43
them so yeah and I would turn into a demon remember yeah uh I won't even be human anymore no
00:49:49
demon uh demon Elena so uh that but you know yeah so and he's not in good health though so
00:49:59
I'm like velby you're kind of setting yourself up for some more heartbreak here yeah I don't think this is a great
00:50:04
move and it um spoiler alert it's not um and honestly this was just a couple of months after Pauline's death they began
00:50:12
a relationship and that that's usually what you hear like a couple always like right then and it's like I don't get it
00:50:17
man but like do you do you but she found herself you know liking the attention it
00:50:23
gave her something else to focus on besides like you like we were just saying the constant death in her life
00:50:28
and the addiction that surrounded everything um and she later wrote the kids they didn't need me the way they
00:50:35
had when they were young I was grateful that he wanted to take me out it made me
00:50:39
feel good oh it's the that's sad that is yeah of course absolutely but after dating only a few months Jenning
00:50:48
surprised VMA again when one dinner one evening at dinner he asked her to marry him this was only after dating a few
00:50:54
months and after his wife has just died I don't think I think that's very impulsive I think it's very impulsive I
00:51:00
think any therapist would be like I think we should talk a little longer well she said I agreed to marry Jennings
00:51:06
Barfield even though I wasn't in love with him which it's like stop marrying people you're not in love with my friend
00:51:12
like you got to stop doing that you only marry people you really really really love but what she said was I knew that
00:51:18
Jennings didn't drink and that he wouldn't treat me bad I just wanted someone to be with me and to talk with
00:51:23
me I wanted someone so bad to fill the emptiness of my life wow that's gut-wrenching so [ __ ] sad cuz it cuz
00:51:31
you that's all anybody wants somebody to talk to you and comfort you and accept you and just like be a nice
00:51:39
person you don't have to settle man and it's so much more magical there's a lot going on with Velma it's a sad story it
00:51:48
is but my God does she turn callous and I'm waiting for it yeah um on August 23rd 1970 a little over a year after the
00:51:57
death of Thomas Burke Velma married Jennings barfields but very little changed she said I was I was as unhappy
00:52:05
married as I had been alone of course you are you don't love him right and she found also that Jennings house health
00:52:12
problems were quite a bit more complicated than Velma had realized and required a high level of care and
00:52:17
attention diabetes alone has a lot to manage diabetes mixed with empa and she was Ill equi to provide these things as
00:52:25
a result of the increased stress she began relying more on vum to get through the day valum and it didn't take long
00:52:32
for Velma to realize Jennings health problems while certainly not his fault were at least partially worse worsened
00:52:38
by his refusal to follow any doctor's orders to make any kind of life improvements oh no uh he had bad empyema
00:52:44
but he wouldn't quit smoking the same was true of his diabetes he wouldn't change his diet or exercise um and the
00:52:53
only things worse for Velma was he said The more obstinate he became the more medicine I took the more exasperated I
00:53:00
grew the more desperate woof and these are the things though where it's like Velma you're just blaming everyone else
00:53:09
you took the action here you married this man you don't love you you knew he had health problems right and now you're
00:53:16
blaming his health problems on your stuff like you're blaming his your stuff on his health problems when you knew
00:53:23
what you were entering into you knew it Pauline told you you were best friends you were Confidant she told you what he
00:53:29
needed yeah so it's like you went into this knowing he was going to have a lot of things that he needed mhm and you
00:53:36
probably knew that he was pretty stubborn and he wasn't going to change [ __ ] cuz I'm sure Pauline told you that
00:53:40
[ __ ] your best friends that's what you tell your best friends 100% And it's like and you married him knowing you
00:53:45
didn't love him well and I think that's the root of the issue road before because if you loved him these things
00:53:50
wouldn't be as deal love him you would you could you know sink your heels you be
00:53:57
like so this didn't hit the same and it's like but you're not recognizing that these you're you're doing this [ __ ]
00:54:04
to yourself I can't imagine walking down the aisle to a man that I didn't love oh
00:54:09
no like to know cuz you hear that people are like oh like on my wedding day right
00:54:14
before I walked the a like am I doing the right thing and it's like why did you why did you go through all of that
00:54:21
yeah it's a lot yeah now Velma had been married to ings for less than a year and
00:54:26
she already felt more trapped than she ever had before and to make matters worse Robbie had graduated from high
00:54:32
school that spring and began working at the Cola Company where his father was once employed um but in the fall he was
00:54:38
going off to the University of South Carolina was you like good for these kids for like getting into college and
00:54:43
[ __ ] like good on you for all the [ __ ] that was going on in your lives good job
00:54:48
that's huge um but Velma is going to lose one of the few constant sources of happiness and support that she had left
00:54:55
in her life now this is horrible yeah so and yeah and so she was already worried about Ronnie graduating you know
00:55:04
going to college but then he was drafted into the army a few months later with plans to be sent to Vietnam during one
00:55:12
of the biggest troop surges oh my God now by the winter of 1971 life had become uh unbearable yeah
00:55:21
just suffocating for Velma who was honestly in this office cycle of depression addiction
00:55:28
hopelessness yeah and also self- sabotage that she was just constantly cycling through she was full of regret
00:55:35
she was now very resentful of Jennings that's not fair she felt that he trapped her in the marriage that she didn't
00:55:42
really want girly pop you said yes yeah and then those feelings turned darker oh
00:55:47
no not Jennings now all the Death abuse depression addiction disappointment she had cycled through she found herself
00:55:54
wishing Jennings was dead she's going to kill her best friend's husband after she
00:55:59
married him months after she died yeah uh she was really wanting to be free of what she considered to be a burden
00:56:08
there's this thing it's called divorce yeah you know of It Go like you just go go for it girl I know it can be messy
00:56:15
but you know what is Messier murder and you know everything's messy at this point like let's go seriously now in
00:56:21
late March of 1971 fueled by anger and you know whatever else she was dealing with Velma bought a bottle of arsenic
00:56:30
poison where do you buy arsenic I always wonder that I'm like where you is it just like a bottle with a with a skull
00:56:37
and crossbones on it at the grocery store and you're like going to grab this and she wrote part of me cried that it
00:56:44
was the only way it's Not Another Part Of Me begged to stop who and she had said she wanted to make him sick as pun
00:56:54
punishment for what he put her through he already is sick girlfriend like super sick and she said then he'll be sorry
00:57:01
he's caused me so much trouble and he won't do it again he'll start acting right and he won't bother me anymore so
00:57:08
do you see the little switch that's sadistic yeah wow cuz it's like up until this point you're like [ __ ] Velma like
00:57:15
what a sad life and like damn I'm feeling bad for you and then at this point you're like oh like look at that
00:57:22
damn shorty look at that I don't feel bad at all anymore no I don't and this man this man who has had chronic health
00:57:30
problems lost his and lost his wife your best friend yeah that is beyond now what's worse is and maybe she didn't
00:57:41
know this or maybe she didn't care maybe she knew and she didn't care but Jennings had come to the same conclusion
00:57:48
he was going to kill her he wasn't going to kill her oh my God I was like what that their marriage had been an
00:57:52
impulsive mistake yeah and that it had been done out of grief like he he came to thatz he was like you know
00:57:58
what and in fact just days before his death Jennings had contacted his lawyer to discuss a divorce what the [ __ ] he
00:58:07
was a devout Christian and he cared very much about how he was perceived by others and he had become embarrassed by
00:58:14
velma's you know he had become embarrassed by velma's you know what her addiction was doing to her her erratic
00:58:23
Behavior it had certainly become subject of Gossip around town at this point and
00:58:29
he was like and you know she doesn't want to take care of me she doesn't really love me like I can see this and
00:58:34
like why am I bickering B and he's basically sitting there going why am I making her take care of me when she
00:58:39
doesn't love me yeah she's not happy I'm not happying so he went he went about this the rational way cuz he was like
00:58:45
you know what let's separate and we'll move on with our lives like it'll be fine we did this impulsive thing oops
00:58:51
let's move on yeah that's great unfortunately for Jennings his realization came too late because on the
00:58:57
afternoon of March 21st Velma put the poison in Jennings food she put a lot of poison in people's food she didn't do
00:59:04
the slow arsenic poisoning that you hear about um the arsonic took took effect almost immediately um it's unclear
00:59:12
whether she felt uh I mean it's pretty clear to me but it's unclear whether she felt guilty or was trying to You Know
00:59:19
cover her tracks but but when it became apparent that Jennings couldn't breathe she rushed him to Cape Fear Hospital but
00:59:27
doctors there weren't hopeful that he would make it through the night and they were correct because Jennings Barfield
00:59:32
died the following morning from heart failure but did they think it was because of the empa that's the thing she
00:59:39
picked people who this would not be shocking that they died and they wouldn't look into it and they wouldn't
00:59:44
look into it and arsenic poisoning is a very tough one to unless you are getting
00:59:49
an autopsy because you think something happened then you're not going to know I mean one of the things that I read about
00:59:55
was um you can smell garlic breath yeah read that's an aric thing um and you know there's there's some other things
01:00:02
like we'll get into it that um so so I don't know what kind of arsenic that Velma was utilizing here but upon
01:00:10
further research there's um trivalent arsenic is the worst kind I didn't realize that there was even different
01:00:17
kinds so trivic arsenic has the added harshness of having a corrosive effect so it will leave oral sores in someone's
01:00:24
mouth as well and it will cause GI bleeding and dysphasia um which is when somebody has trouble swallowing yeah um
01:00:32
trient basically like the way reason it's called that it has to do with the molecular structure of the Arsenic
01:00:38
molecule itself trivalent means there's three veence electrons I'm going back to
01:00:43
organic chemistry dominated me but I actually liked organic chemistry that's wild it
01:00:49
means there's three veence electrons veence electrons are the electrons on the outermost shell of an atom these
01:00:55
electrons take part in a chemical reaction that will follow they can form a chemical bond with another atom to
01:01:02
make this happen Okay trivalent atoms can form three Cove valent bonds which is just sharing electrons between atoms
01:01:08
to form electron pairs sure they can they do this so they can be more stable okay so the reaction becomes more stable
01:01:15
more you know it does more damage now arsenic poisoning especially in such a large and focus dosage like velmo is
01:01:23
using on her victims right is [ __ ] violent this is not it's an awful death this isn't oh no I don't feel well and
01:01:32
then you pass out it's hours sometimes days of excruciating pain and Agony oh man it is
01:01:42
awful you will be vomiting extreme stomach pain to the point of like B like just not even being able to
01:01:51
breathe ex you will be vomiting uncont controllably diarrhea you will have oh my God it's just Agony so she's causing
01:02:01
and watching these people in the worst pain you can possibly imagine it's [ __ ] awful cuz it causes like GI
01:02:10
bleeding and [ __ ] like so it makes you really [ __ ] up did she ever say why she picked that like why she wanted to
01:02:18
poison no I know like women are more likely to Poison by statistics but I think some of it is probably because she
01:02:24
wouldn't be caught yeah they weren't going to she picked people who they weren't going to probably ask for an
01:02:29
autopsy cuz it'll eventually cause cardiac arrest cuz your body goes into shock right because there's so much
01:02:34
happening to your body it's that bad that your body literally goes into shock and you have a heart attack and die
01:02:40
right like that's how they all died like they bodies went through [ __ ] Horror in front of her take a deep breath and
01:02:49
then her B their bodies all went into such shock that they all had a heart attack and died and then most of them
01:02:55
are older as we'll see so they don't question it and did she do that with everybody give them like a huge amount
01:03:01
MH really oh yeah she liked at one point she said she watched it and she felt nothing wow like she watched them go
01:03:08
through the after effects and felt nothing wow so she's a real monster she's a real
01:03:16
monster unbelievable MH okay keep going now despite having caused Jennings Barfield Jennings Barfield death Velma
01:03:26
was depressed still because you know she's alone now again do you think any part of her felt guilty um no I think to
01:03:35
me I don't think she feels guilty I think she just realizes that she puts herself back into to square one okay and
01:03:41
then she's depressed again now as she'd done so many times before she turned more to her addictions to dull these
01:03:48
difficult emotions and tried she had this thing she would do where she would try to soothe her guilt by telling
01:03:54
herself well he was in poor health health anyways so she just speeded it along that and she would tell herself
01:04:01
that a lot like oh that person was going to die anyway so who ke like who cares if they went out in excruciating pain
01:04:06
[ __ ] and throwing up all over themselves like that's what was going to happen anyways right like no I don't
01:04:11
think that was going to happen but thank you following her second husband's death
01:04:15
she once again found herself shockingly in financial diff difficulties cuz she didn't plan for that so she rented out
01:04:22
the house she had been living in with Jennings and Sheen Kim moved back into the home she and the kids lived in when
01:04:27
she was still with Thomas the one with the fire uh it had been twice damaged by fire but she later said I couldn't stand
01:04:34
being back in that house I redecorated and bought new furniture I tried but I just couldn't feel good in it being in
01:04:40
that house that Thomas had built made me think I was drowning and didn't know how
01:04:43
to swim wow now things only got worse as 1971 came to a close because La Ronnie had tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully
01:04:52
to get a deferment for his Enlistment and Kim's impending graduation meant that one more of her constant companions
01:04:59
was going to be taken away and the stress of everything collapsing around her caused Velma to lean much harder
01:05:06
into her addictions and by the end of the year she experienced another drug overdose oh another one yep she had
01:05:12
already had a couple oh um I don't know when they were so I didn't want to name them because they happened at different
01:05:18
periods um but this one she claimed was she later recognized as a half-hearted attempt to end her own life wow um
01:05:27
eventually the you know the drugs and depression began affecting her performance at work and she was showing
01:05:33
up late constantly and just not showing up at all and after 7even years as one of the more reliable employees at Belk's
01:05:40
department store her boss had to fire her in December of 1971 wow now completely depressed and unemployed she
01:05:48
entered 1972 living off what little insurance money she got from jenning's death
01:05:54
and running out of money felma moved in with her parents in early 1972 and this was just as her Father
01:06:02
Murphy's Health had begun to decline due to respiratory problems oh man uh later
01:06:06
he it was diagnosed as lung cancer now by the time it was diagnosed his cancer was too advanced to treat so he was
01:06:14
checked into the hospital with no plans for a discharge he was basically in hospice really sad now during this time
01:06:20
Velma found work at a knitting plant in nearby Rayford just to help her mother with the bills and she was able to
01:06:27
maintain that employment for a little over two months and then her father died in May and it sent her hurdling back
01:06:34
into her bad habits and by January 1973 Velma had now overdosed twice in as many
01:06:42
months and had begun stealing any pills she could find in her neighbors houses in wow you know anybody's medicine
01:06:50
cabinets like she was really in a place where she needed a lot of help and she was and it was basically to
01:06:56
saave off withraw at this point right now she couldn't function without it so and she also couldn't maintain
01:07:02
employment because of it isn't it crazy how like you can't function with it and then it becomes such a big part of your
01:07:08
life that you can't function without it yeah it becomes a NeverEnding what feels like a
01:07:14
NeverEnding cycle that you can't get off just an you know an escalator that just
01:07:19
keeps going round and round it's just so crazy how your body is meant to function
01:07:24
obviously like without drugs most of the time but then you can become so dependent on them that you have to have
01:07:29
them it's it's such a weird thing to reconcile in your bra it's really scary but she ended up kept living with her
01:07:36
mom after her dad passed away um in partially to help her mom just to like be there for her but also she didn't
01:07:43
really have any other option yeah now her father I guess ended up later in life kind of acting like a buffer
01:07:51
between her and her mom her mom were fine like her mom wasn't abusive or anything like that they didn't get but I
01:07:56
think her and Lily just didn't get along that much like they they kind of buted heads well she had resented her even
01:08:01
from a child I think that's what it is because it sounds like Lily wasn't really doing anything like outwardly
01:08:08
wrong or anything I think she just like rubbed Velma the wrong way who Velma do seem to have a whole lot of patience as
01:08:14
we can see it's probably like Emily Gilmore lur like when you look when you watch the series back a lot of the times
01:08:20
you're like she's really not doing that like there's times when you're like [ __ ]
01:08:23
you Emily but 100% I think that's what kind of what Lily is it's like this time you're like all right Lily yeah but
01:08:29
there's most of the time you're like I think you just don't think you're being a petulent child now it got worse so
01:08:36
Velma said Mama Liked to sit and talk about the old days when we were kids she was getting old and maybe that's why she
01:08:42
kept talking like that that pissed her off she's not going to kill her mom is she and for whatever reason her mother's
01:08:48
you know Nostalgia and comp what she saw is her complete disregard for the unpleasant memories of her childhood she
01:08:57
didn't want to talk about it like she was like you're only focusing on the nice things which is like she's old so I
01:09:01
think that's just let her have she lost her husband like I don't know I don't know I don't know I can't I was going to
01:09:06
say I can't speak for it so I'm not going to if you're an abused child and somebody's only focusing on the
01:09:12
wonderful times I'd be like yeah get your [ __ ] face on of La I was going to say like I I went to say like I don't
01:09:17
know just let her like hang out and like talk about the nice things if it makes her happy which like I like from my
01:09:23
point of view I look at it that way like if it makes but I'm like I'm not an abused child so I can't understand the
01:09:29
trauma that comes along with that and how angry you would be I I would say try your best to let her but it's like do
01:09:35
that but I can see where it's it's bigger than you yeah it's hard you got sometimes like it's
01:09:42
every once in a while I have to make sure I put myself in a different position yeah instead of looking at it
01:09:48
only from my right my happy position over here like you know what I mean like I didn't have that ceaseless unending
01:09:56
trauma yeah growing up so it's like an abuse and [ __ ] like that so it's like I
01:10:01
can sit here and say that cuz I can't imagine sitting with like I mean my mom was a single mom but I can't imagine if
01:10:07
like my stepdad was still a part of my life and hearing him be like all these awesome times be like you shut the [ __ ]
01:10:13
up Kyle like really shut the [ __ ] up Kyle his name is not Kyle but it's like but so I can understand that like I can
01:10:19
see it cuz at first when I read it I was like girl and it's also I think because
01:10:22
Velma is a [ __ ] that I'm like your first to disagree with her of course but there's times
01:10:28
when you're like all right I guess traumatized child I suppose yeah um but yeah it pissed her off she was not happy
01:10:35
with it I could I could definitely see that um and her anxieties were further inflamed by the fact that Kim now
01:10:41
graduated from high school and out of the house was engaged to be married oh man oh wow the way that just came full
01:10:49
circle [ __ ] yeah exactly and she's out of money at this point she can't pay for
01:10:55
any kind of wedding she can't help with any of that and velmo went to the bank and took out a loan okay and she used
01:11:01
her mother's house as collateral unbeknownst to Lily yeah yeah she told the bank that Lily was too ill to come
01:11:08
and fill out the paperwork herself and they just let her [ __ ] Banks were Wy back then that's the thing you don't
01:11:13
[ __ ] with the bank but sometimes you do [ __ ] with the bank and they're like fine
01:11:17
sometimes the banks [ __ ] with you yeah but in early December 1974 notices began
01:11:22
arriving from the bank addressed to Lily and they were demanding payment on a loan that Velma had taken out on her
01:11:29
behalf wow so Lily is older now and she's assuming oh well like the bank made a mistake so she's just throwing
01:11:36
them out not even thinking about it like just do too and but belma was seeing the
01:11:41
notices right and she's panicking and she's sure her mom's going to find out then she's going to be caught and she's
01:11:47
not going to know what to do one day in mid December Velma had gone to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription and
01:11:53
part purchased another bottle of arsenic before leaving the store kill her own mother she said I don't remember
01:11:59
thinking about what I would do next but somewhere inside me I must have already conceived of the plan I had done it once
01:12:05
even though I had blotted that from my conscious memory later Velma would claim that she
01:12:10
had only planned and this is her constant claim constant every time she does this she claims this and I'm like
01:12:16
girl we don't believe you what did she say bu claimed that she'd only plann to make her mother sick for a while just
01:12:22
long enough to give her time to find a job and pay back the loan and stop the notices from coming no whatever the plan
01:12:28
had really been it didn't happen that way BMA poisoned her food and not long after she ate it Lily began
01:12:34
uncontrollably vomiting complained of agonizing stomach pains and velma's mother um Velma called her mother's
01:12:43
doctor but her doctor assumed that she had the flu which was going around at the time so he declined to see her and
01:12:49
was like oh I'll just call her on a prescription it's okay now the medicine obviously didn't help her mother cuz she
01:12:55
did not have the flu right so she called her brother Olive and they both arranged
01:12:59
for an ambulance to bring Lily to the hospital while Lily was in ICU Velma kept repeating to everyone that the
01:13:05
doctor told her there were a lot of people dealing with this kind of illness right now so that's what it was she just
01:13:11
had to convince herself that what she had done to her mother was not what was causing this illness it was secondary
01:13:17
now later that afternoon her mother died of a heart attack cuz her body went into
01:13:21
shock from arsenic yep and she later said that she kept repeating to herself Mama died because of her heart trouble
01:13:28
it had nothing to do with the poison did she even have heart trouble previously now since the death of Thomas
01:13:34
Burke in 1969 Velma had descended deeper deeper into this addiction that she was
01:13:39
living in until her entire life was revolving around the pills she took just to get through the day right and before
01:13:45
she knew it the addiction had become a trap in which she was willing to do anything to avoid the Panic of being cut
01:13:51
off from it following her mother's death mother's murder yeah uh Velma moved in with her
01:13:58
daughter Kim and her husband her new husband but her drug abuse immediately caused problems in an effort to help
01:14:04
their mother Kim and Ronnie would regularly round up all the pills and flush them down the toilet o but Velma
01:14:11
always found a way to get more and one day while she was cleaning out some things at her mother's house she found a
01:14:16
checkbook from an old account she had opened when Jennings was still alive so she had no money and so she remembered
01:14:24
the checkbook and wrote a bad check to the pharmacy knowing but really not caring that she was going to be caught
01:14:30
cuz she she was using it to get pills yeah and it was a bad check right so just days after writing the check two
01:14:36
sheriff's deputies showed up at her door to discuss the bad check at first they went easy on her and we're like listen
01:14:43
if you just repay the money we're not going to cause you any trouble right but she didn't have the money to pay and so
01:14:50
Velma made another half-hearted attempt to take her own life by overdosing on pills again but she woke up in the
01:14:55
hospital later that day her collar bone actually broke from the fall that she took when she passed out oh wow and it
01:15:03
was while she was in the hospital that the two sheriff's deputies returned this time they had a warrant for her arrest
01:15:10
she had no options to pay the pay back the money so she had to plead guilty and was sentenced to 6 months at North
01:15:16
Carolina's Correctional Center for Women in Raleigh and while the time in jail seems like it would have been a great
01:15:23
opportunity for Velma to get sober there's more in jail than there is on the streets You' think but instead she
01:15:29
spent most of her time just looking for what she thinking about what she was going to do when she came out and after
01:15:34
receiving an early release for good behavior after serving four months of the sentence she stole a check from her
01:15:40
son-in-law's checkbook the minute she got home and went straight to the pharmacy and filled the prescription wow
01:15:47
not long after Kim learned she was pregnant with a baby on the way she was like there's not enough room in this
01:15:53
house house for all of us and I can't have a baby around all this dysfunction I can't imagine what was going through
01:15:58
her head exctly she was like no I feel so bad for Kim I know have to like like for lack of a better term kick your
01:16:05
mother out yeah to have to be like we can't I need to focus on my family oh that's really sad it happens to Ronnie
01:16:10
too oh God so she found a new arrangement with an elderly neighbor and she was going to live with her oh [ __ ]
01:16:18
and she was going to provide limited inhome care in exchange for room and board girl you can't even care for
01:16:24
yourself and you're going to care for this elderly person now at first this seemed like an ideal job to her but then
01:16:30
it became clear to her that the woman's needs were far greater than what she could meet and after four months she was
01:16:36
moved this woman this elderly woman thankfully for her was moved to a long-term care facility which put Velma
01:16:42
out of a job and out of a home right um but unfortunately but fortunately for her there is no shortage of elderly
01:16:50
people in need of care so she found herself in in a new Livin care position with an elderly couple couple named
01:16:57
Montgomery and Dolly Edwards shut your face right now I know the cutest names Montgomery and Dolly I love them forever
01:17:06
they were made to find each other yeah they were right in in November 1975 Dolly
01:17:13
Edwards had decided she wanted to bring her husband Montgomery home from the hospital okay but they were older she
01:17:20
had neither the energy nor the strength to meet the demand of his care um it was
01:17:24
the county nurse who had recommended Velma to Dolly girl bye she had met her a few months earlier when Velma was
01:17:31
hired to care for her elderly sister that other person okay okay after just one brief conversation dolly was like
01:17:37
sounds good to me and she offered the position of Elma and she would get room and board and also would get a salary of
01:17:43
$75 a week now like so many of the relationships in her life it didn't take long before she was just [ __ ] annoyed
01:17:51
by these people that's the thing with Velma it's like get the [ __ ] over yourself yeah what is wrong with you
01:17:57
like don't be around people if you don't like them don't take care of people if you don't like them like Jesus Christ
01:18:02
these are older people they're just like living their lives yeah but they have things that she wants she came to resent
01:18:07
them and how do you resent Montgomery and Dolly exma she was very quick to become irritated and hated the way which
01:18:15
this annoys me hated the way that Dolly always hovered around her when she was tending to Montgomery's needs and
01:18:21
criticizing the way she did things [ __ ] you better bet that I'm going to criticize the way you're taking care of
01:18:26
my mans well that's that I'm like you think dolly is not going to give a [ __ ] what you're doing to Montgomery over
01:18:31
there he just got out of the hospital also she's wants to that he can stay home [ __ ] you are you kidding me I would
01:18:39
I will [ __ ] micromanage what you do to my El elderly husband like [ __ ] that [ __ ] like that's that's
01:18:48
mine like that's love I heard that and that's the thing I'm like she doesn't understand that she doesn't understand
01:18:55
that kind of love that kind of devotion that kind of caring cuz she never was with a man that she loved get it so she
01:19:01
doesn't understand why Dolly has to sit there and see everything she's doing that's wild and then she claims that she
01:19:08
says at times I felt I saw flashbacks as if I'd gone back home again she acted like my mother always telling me what to
01:19:14
do and never pleased with the way I did things and it's like well no that's cuz that's her guy you know and but then
01:19:22
even Ronnie would later say that he overheard several arguments between his mother and Dolly that reminded him very
01:19:28
much of the arguments she would have with Lily before she died oh wow and I'm like I think this is velma's problem
01:19:34
yeah uh Velma also greatly disliked the way Dolly talked about her nephew Stuart
01:19:40
Taylor Velma had met Stuart a few times while she was working for the Edwards and he always seemed like a perfectly
01:19:46
nice guy to I bet he's not which I was like Velma you are not one to have like your taste is not is not not killing it
01:19:53
right now I don't think you are the end doll be all of who's a good guy but Dolly always made a point of speaking
01:20:00
very ill of him criticizing him for his drinking uhhuh but it's her [ __ ] family she knows and also like I'm sorry
01:20:07
you've seen what drink what like you know somebody who like prioritizes that over everything like go that doesn't
01:20:14
work for you and I was going to say you didn't like it now that fall Stuart asked Velma if she would like to have
01:20:19
dinner with him and she happily agreed oh man you're hearing what he's like dude like this is what I mean I'm like
01:20:26
come on but it's like it's one of those things where it's such a cycle for her because she went after Thomas after her
01:20:33
parents disapproved look what happened and now this woman who's like her mom disapproves of this guy she's one of
01:20:40
those people where you disapprove and it makes her go after it harder and she's living the same lives of like moving in
01:20:45
with Dolly and Montgomery Dolly she says reminds her of her mother and then she's
01:20:49
like going against her now Stuart and Velma went out a couple of times a week for about 6 weeks until he stopped
01:20:55
coming by the house completely out of nowhere oh he ghosted her yeah when VMA mentioned it Dolly said Stuart and his
01:21:03
wife had reconciled and we're hoping to get back together BMA was disappointed but was like whatever D Moving On Now by
01:21:11
January 1977 Montgomery had passed away at the end of the month so now noral circumstances yes okay so now Velma was
01:21:20
left alone with dolly in the house oh without Montgomery to care for Dolly found new chores and responsibilities
01:21:28
for Velma because she was like you still want to be paid you still want somewhere
01:21:30
to live um which Velma interpreted as new excuses for Dolly to criticize her it's like girly she's putting a [ __ ]
01:21:37
roof over your head of money in your pocket and Velma said over the last few months the pressure had built up so much
01:21:43
that every time Mrs Edwards started to complain I wanted to scream at her I began to hate Mrs Edwards I wanted to
01:21:49
hurt her in some way then leave that's not normal no of of course it's not that's not normal thought patterns like
01:21:55
I want to hurt this elderly woman that's terrifying you bye like you go get another job with another elderly couple
01:22:02
who you can decide to hate right now after a little more than a month alone with Dolly she couldn't stand it any
01:22:08
longer and poor dolly is also probably depressed of after husband and on February 28th what did Velma do she
01:22:18
poisoned the elderly woman in the same way that she had done the others wow dolly was in excruciating pain for about
01:22:25
a day until she passed away the following morning with Velma so out of it that she was
01:22:32
oblivious so so dolly for a whole day was an excruciating torturous sickness and pain and while
01:22:43
Velma just sat there and used just disassociated this poor elderly woman by lost her husband just
01:22:53
torturously excruciatingly dying in her own house oh it's just that's a horrible
01:22:59
thing to think about I just thought of this too it those last like couple months for Edward were probably awful
01:23:04
too because there was such dysfunction in the house yeah for Montgomery you mean yes for Montgomery yeah just last
01:23:11
parts of their lives made awful yeah it seems to be what she does she sucks now under most
01:23:19
circumstances the amount of tragedy and death that seemed to follow Velma would have been suspicious but remember she's
01:23:25
picking sick and elderly people so their deaths are like not they're shocking but
01:23:32
not shocking you know what I mean like they're not like unusual mhm and in the beginning of April she sat wondering
01:23:39
what she was going to do now the Edwards were dead so she received a call from a
01:23:44
woman who was looking for someone to provide living care services for her parents these people were John Henry and
01:23:50
record Lee Miss Mrs Lee had recently broke her leg and at 80 years old her husband was unable to take care of her
01:23:58
80 years old you live your whole life and then [ __ ] Velma moves in with you yep she was going to get room and board
01:24:03
she would get a small salary so she agreed to work with the Le in late April now just as before Velma immediately
01:24:11
found the job annoying she found her employers intolerable like get another [ __ ] job then and she said they
01:24:18
argued a lot constantly bickering over things of no importance I'm like yeah they're old yeah like that's what that
01:24:24
what old people do 100% And after a few months velma's undue resentment of the couple had gone right into what it
01:24:30
normally does a hatred that's wild that's the thing I'm like your your hate and temper and anger is is evil like
01:24:40
that's evil [ __ ] so she spent her days just seething and dreaming about how she
01:24:45
could just she was like I just wanted to walk out and abandon them and it's like
01:24:49
then do that I was going to say go for it but she fig figured if she quit her job she would have no money and so
01:24:55
things changed in late summer when Velma needed to see a new doctor for her her prescriptions and this required a sum of
01:25:02
money she just didn't have so to cover the cost she stole a check from John Henry's checkbook and wrote out the
01:25:08
amount of $50 forging his name at the bottom what a piece of [ __ ] the doctor accepted the check without question
01:25:15
which I'm like everybody everybody else needs to check themselves here too like what's wrong with all of you and Velma
01:25:21
was able to get the the medicine but just as in the case of the loan taken out on her mother's house she
01:25:26
immediately began to panic that John Henry was going to get his bank statement and discover what she had done
01:25:31
right she said in a state of panic I again bought poison she said I don't think that she really was in a state of
01:25:38
p no she liked doing this just she got the added bonus of getting some money out money out of it exactly she said
01:25:45
telling myself that I only wanted to make him sick so that I could leave get a different job and replace the monies I
01:25:51
had taken by for and that's not true she is full of [ __ ] cuz that's it you make
01:25:55
him sick for a little bit he's still going to go over his bank statements when he gets better and you know that
01:26:00
you didn't want to make him sick you wanted to kill know you've seen that the amount of arsenic you're putting in food
01:26:06
is killing people not just making you're not changing it up like it's just and also that's also [ __ ] up I love I just
01:26:14
wanted to make people's bleed I don't understand why that was a problem and it's like you
01:26:20
[ __ ] like that's in that's why yeah she's evil that she's literally saying like what I just wanted to poison
01:26:26
them a little and it's like they are 80 years old you [ __ ] [ __ ] that's wild so a few days later Velma served
01:26:33
John Henry The Poisoned food and the Arsenic immediately went to work she said he went through the same kinds of
01:26:40
pain that the others had gone through again I watched in a detached way feeling no connection between my actions
01:26:47
and his pain wow so she watched this poor old man in excruciating pain 80 years old John Henry died on June 4th
01:26:55
1977 with the medical examiner listing the cause of death as a heart attack that's horrible now and to think that
01:27:03
these people could have lived longer and like gotten more out of life than just VMA she just takes it because she's
01:27:09
annoyed now just days after John Henry's death Velma was shocked when she answered the Lee's front door to find
01:27:16
Stuart Taylor what he tracked her down standing before her hadn't seen Stuart in over a year
01:27:22
and Velma didn't understand why she was seeing him now but he quickly explained that he was in the process of divorcing
01:27:27
his wife and he wanted to check on Velma to see how she had been doing after you
01:27:31
just [ __ ] walked out of her life FMA invited steuart in and they spent hours catching up following John Henry Lee's
01:27:38
death the Lee family convinced felma to stay on to take care of record they that's even sadder right they convinced
01:27:45
her to stay to take care of their you know the wife yeah cuz they had no idea and Velma agreed but it didn't take long
01:27:54
before she started getting that feeling again oh my God uh suddenly she was feeling resentment anger irritability
01:28:02
and the only thing that made those months tolerable she said was that Stuart had become been coming by for
01:28:07
visits regularly and before long they'd become a proper relationship picking up where they had left off you know the
01:28:14
year before and Velma spent a few months in the Lee home after John Henry's death
01:28:19
but eventually that anger and you know feelings came too much so she found a job as a nurse's aid at a nearby nursing
01:28:26
home where she worked third third shift and the salary was higher than anything she had made in recent years so she was
01:28:33
able to move into a trailer home by herself which seemed to improve her mood a little bit okay now after a while
01:28:41
Velma began to notice a pattern in Stuart's behavior that made her a little uneasy he would come around for a few
01:28:48
days in a row and then disappear for a week binge drinking with with no you nailed it yeah um and then he just show
01:28:55
up again like nothing had happened and on one of these occasions Velma had become concerned and called Stuart's
01:29:00
stepmother who told her not to worry he's been on one of his drinking binges again exactly by late summer velman
01:29:07
Stuart were spending nearly all their free time together you know going on short trips like you know really going
01:29:13
for it okay for a time it seems the rage and numbness was kind of keeping at Bay
01:29:19
you know she was feeling a little happiness was steart I guess which only or what she thought was happening I was
01:29:24
just going to say do she know what say I was going to say which only increased in
01:29:28
the fall of 1977 when Stuart asked Velma to marry him now the kids her kids Ronnie and Kim
01:29:36
were very immediately concerned they were like I think you're rushing into marriage again and I think you're
01:29:42
rushing into marriage with another alcoholic again like why would you do this and like I don't think this is
01:29:48
great and he could be potentially violent like we've seen how this happens a so Velma assured them that Stuart was
01:29:56
working on that working on that okay and besides you know they couldn't get married until Stuart's divorce was
01:30:01
finalized in May so you know there was time to make everything work oh my God can you imagine having to deal with this
01:30:08
with your mother I literally can't that's horrible now years later Velma would acknowledge that a marriage to
01:30:13
Stewart would have been a bad idea she said okay so she doesn't do it she said I never felt close to him at all which
01:30:19
is like you did which is like damn you really are cold old as ice cuz it's like you pretended like what the [ __ ] she I
01:30:26
don't believe that she didn't feel close to him I can't comprehend why I wanted to be with him sometimes we're just
01:30:31
lonely somebody to talk to you know I think that is who she is at her core damn it's like this call as ice person
01:30:40
now regardless of how she claimed to feel about him later at the time Velma seemed to go out of her way to get
01:30:46
steuart's attention that's the thing and like and she went out of her way to get
01:30:49
her previous husband's attention one's even Wilder because she went to extremes to get his attention here in one
01:30:56
incident in November police were called to her trailer when a friend stopped by to check on her and found Velma duct
01:31:03
taped by her hands and feet with another piece at top across her mouth she claimed she had entered the bathroom
01:31:09
that morning about to take a shower when a man entered her trailer threw a towel
01:31:14
over her head and forced her back into the bedroom where he secured her to the bed she claimed she never saw her as
01:31:20
salent and certainly couldn't I identify him by voice alone she of course not and
01:31:25
she had been taped to the bed but she hadn't been assaulted by anybody in any way mhm and there was nothing missing
01:31:32
from the house in fact nobody had even gone through the house like there was nobody had clearly opened anything to
01:31:39
look for valuable as nothing what the [ __ ] and although they didn't say it at the time the officers at the scene were
01:31:45
like I think she did this to herself how do you tape yourself to and they said they think she did it to get sympathy
01:31:51
from Stuart and it worked when Stuart arrived at her house a short time later the officers quote noticed how
01:31:58
solicitous and reassuring he was being and he demanded Velma wasn't going to stay another night alone and insisted
01:32:04
she move in with him immediately I've got to go like I've got to go yeah now if Velma had thought that moving in with
01:32:13
Stewart would be like a positive step in their relationship she was probably disappointed uh cuz it made it harder
01:32:21
yeah Stuart became very suspicious of Velma because she's a suspicious [ __ ] well she has an addiction as well like
01:32:28
Stuart began going through her things while she was out and found several letters from people she'd met in prison
01:32:34
what Velma had never mentioned to her fiance that she had gone to prison oh my God so that was a big Revelation to him
01:32:41
oh which is something you should probably tell someone and from there the relationship just began to deteriorate
01:32:47
velman Stewart spent more time fighting than anything else they just could not get along
01:32:52
so no longer happy with that life felma fell right back into her old habits started forging checks stolen from
01:32:58
Stuart's checkbook so was stealing checks from him you're with a conw woman baby and he received his bank statement
01:33:05
in December notice the forge checks used to pay the pharmacy and confronted Velma
01:33:10
and he was like listen if you don't return the money like I'm going to have you arrested yeah like this is [ __ ] up
01:33:16
and with their relationship effectively over she belma ended up going to her son
01:33:20
Ronnie's house hoping she could move in with him but Ronnie was like you can't like I'm living with my wife and he was
01:33:28
like he had an infant child at that point and he was like the way you are is not conducive to me having a happy
01:33:36
family life with my little family like I need to take care of my child and my wife I so hate that both of her kids
01:33:42
were put in that position but also good for them good for you guys for putting your family first those boundaries and
01:33:49
those putting your own little Families First is sometimes necessary and you did the right thing absolutely absolutely
01:33:57
well done but I'm sorry you had to go through that that's I can't imagine how distressing that is because no matter
01:34:04
what like it's your family it's your mom and then you have to choose like another
01:34:09
part of your family over her like and she should have never put them in that position but like really good for them
01:34:14
for recognizing that like that would be starting a cycle that could really turn out bad and especially to realize that
01:34:22
like in that time period too where again talk therapy wasn't like the biggest thing yeah so that's like good for them
01:34:28
yeah but this you know this rejection was a big one especially her son uh which her son's it's that just
01:34:37
seems to be a different a different thing for her yeah uh and it was she went from uncontrolled sobbing to a kind
01:34:44
of Rage that Ronnie said he had never seen in his mother and he also was like hey um this is exactly why you can't
01:34:50
live here he said it was a mean mean look real Angry unlike any I've ever seen before wow and I even literally
01:34:57
wrote in my notes you did the right thing Ronnie yeah absolutely I like I need you to know you did the right thing
01:35:02
I would be like you're proving me right right now I can't you near my infant child and my wife doing this like you
01:35:08
you were the you were being the dad you were taking care of your family good for
01:35:12
you yeah and Kim did the same good for Kim being the mom and taking care of her [ __ ] oh yeah now by January 1978 Velma
01:35:18
had quit her job and was hospitalized again for a brief period of time uh without money to pay for anything she
01:35:25
again stole checks from Stuart which triggered that Panic that he was going to report her and that
01:35:31
familiar Panic said in she was only going to make him sick she told herself doubt it just long enough for her to
01:35:38
replace the money so he wouldn't find out about the checks of course felma did not just make Stuart sick she poisoned
01:35:45
him with arsenic just as she had the others Stuart spent the evening of February 3rd in absolute agony and
01:35:52
eventually Velma took him to the hospital but by then it was too late within a few hours he was pronounced
01:35:57
dead so she killed three people within the same family mhm that's nuts yeah like a couple months apart yeah wow and
01:36:08
all for the same reasons there's an Anno same trivial you annoyed me and I stole
01:36:12
your money and I was scared you were going to report me she is [ __ ] what is she up to like how many people has she
01:36:17
killed at this point she killed her H her second husband then mother then one Dolly and Dolly's husband uh not
01:36:28
Montgomery she didn't kill Montgomery oh right so she killed do Dolly she killed
01:36:32
um One John Henry oh my God and she's killed Stewart holy [ __ ] now until Stuart's death velma's VI victims like
01:36:42
we said had all been kind of sick or elderly precisely the type of people you would kind of expect to die from an
01:36:48
illness or an accident or some kind of you know St Stuart was only 56 years old at the time of his death and he was in
01:36:55
relatively good health that's [ __ ] wild now under the circumstances like under you know I guess like relatively
01:37:03
good health All Things Considered about his lifestyle okay um under the he wasn't he wasn't on the pay like nobody
01:37:09
expected him to just drop dead yeah now under the circumstances the family was stunned and confused by his death and so
01:37:16
they were like uh yeah we want an autopsy right and they were eager for for pathology to perform one in fact
01:37:23
they even included Velma in their decision to have the autopsy performed which she agreed was a good idea what
01:37:29
she said I didn't expect them to find anything besides my mind was already convincing me that I had not killed
01:37:36
Stuart girl dump a plate full of [ __ ] arsonic but she's probably thinking especially at this time
01:37:43
period how are they going to find it he he was vomiting and the diarrhea and system like they're not going to
01:37:52
find that [ __ ] and it's not like we're as advanced as we are now so it's like she even now it can be tough to find you
01:37:59
know what I mean like it can be it's a tough one so she's probably thinking like what the [ __ ] are they going to
01:38:03
find they're not going to find arsenic wow yeah I wonder if they wouldn't have well I don't know what happens I'm
01:38:10
assuming they do and I don't know if they wouldn't wouldn't have if she hadn't put so much I'm interested to
01:38:15
find that out she really goes now despite pressure from Stuart's family the pathologist could only work as fast
01:38:20
as his part in the lab could turn around test results so the results of the autopsy were delayed by several weeks
01:38:26
because they were trying to go through all the strange abnormalities they were discovering during the initial exam in
01:38:33
fact it wasn't until the pathologist was describing the results to the state's chief medical examiner Paige Hudson that
01:38:40
things started moving again while the technicians and Pathologists had recognized suspicious elements of the
01:38:46
autopsy it was Hudson who immediately recognized steuart Taylor death as acute arsenic poisoning damn Hudson's
01:38:54
presumption yeah um would take a little more time and a few more tests to confirm sorry I was moving that's why I
01:39:03
was like but in the meantime he had called the police and the district attorney to let them know that they very
01:39:09
likely had a murder on their hands now following Stuart's murder Velma fell right back into that cycle of
01:39:16
working the overnight shift then returning home to get lost and just dis disassociation
01:39:21
and she did get the occasional visitor but she was very surprised when the doorbell rang on March 10th and she
01:39:27
opened it to find a man she'd never seen before standing on her doorstep the man
01:39:31
introduced himself as Benson Phillips a detective with the Lumberton Police Department oh [ __ ] and he asked felma
01:39:37
to come down to the station with him to talk about a few suspicious deaths including that of her L latest fiance
01:39:44
Stuart Taylor oh [ __ ] now in the short amount of time since the abnormalities were discovered in Stuart's autopsy
01:39:51
investigators had traced a path backwards from Velma and found that Stewart was just the latest in a
01:39:57
surprising number of weird deaths that seem to involve the 45-year-old wow nurse's age she's only
01:40:06
45 the deaths included the recently deceased steuart Taylor velma's mother Lily and her former employees employers
01:40:13
they did include Montgomery and Dolly and uh John Henry Lee all having shown signs of G
01:40:22
enteritis wow yeah now in the interrogation room Velma acted stunned when the detectives
01:40:30
connected the dots between her and the other suspicious deaths she said y'all think I poison Stuart don't you and she
01:40:36
started crying and was like but on a show and the investigators are like oh great she's going to confess right here
01:40:42
and there we got her but they she called their Bluff and just maintained her innocence throughout the entire
01:40:46
conversation but fortunately a few days later the final results from the Topsy came back and confirmed that Stuart had
01:40:53
died from AR arsenic poisoning damn detective Phillips took the news to steuart's family and informed them that
01:41:00
they suspected Velma of having killed their father her sorry her children thought
01:41:06
that they that she killed their dad uh no so I should have said that a better way I'm sorry no that's okay um Stuart
01:41:13
had children oh okay okay I see uh with his uh ex yeah I I should have stated that a little better CU that would have
01:41:20
been conf ex using no that makes sense now um and this prompted steuart's daughter Alice to provide the
01:41:26
investigators with all the information on the forg checks and velma's other suspicious behavior in the weeks leading
01:41:34
up to Stuart's murder that's the thing it's like you created like you were say earlier a paper trail and on the evening
01:41:40
of March 13th 1978 detective Benson returned to velma's house this time for a warrant for her arrest for the murder
01:41:48
of steuart Taylor yeah and although investigator were tight lipped about the other deaths Velma was suspected of
01:41:53
having caused Lumberton North Carolina is a small town and it wasn't hard for the press and locals to put the pieces
01:42:01
together now confronted with the evidence against her and the threat of re revealing tests being conducted on
01:42:07
the exed bodies now of her mother and Dolly at Montgomery Edwards oh wow Velma confessed that she had indeed murdered
01:42:15
Stewart by poisoning on March 26th District district attorney Joe Britt presented
01:42:22
his case against Velma to the Robson uh Robson County grand jury who indicted Velma Barfield on one count of first
01:42:29
degree murder but Velma was absent from the courtroom at the time because she would was admitted to dorotha dicks
01:42:36
Hospital a few days for a few days for a psychological examination um a month later Dr Bob
01:42:43
Rollins a psychiatrist from the hospital completed and submitted the results of his examination of Velma in which he she
01:42:51
determined that she was competent to stand trial a month later on May 5th Velma was arraigned for the murder in a
01:42:57
Robeson County court room where she pled not guilty by reason of insanity as the
01:43:02
pieces of the puzzle began coming together in the press the residents of Lumberton grew increasingly shocked by
01:43:08
the number of elma's victims and the manner in which they were killed cuz like we said sometimes you hear
01:43:14
poisoning and you think I think your brain sometimes just goes to like oh no I don't feel well and then somebody
01:43:19
passes out and die like oh no this is [ __ ] gruesome it is an awful awful awful way to die she
01:43:28
was a real monster it's right up there with like stabbing and like doing awful like hand to hand [ __ ] you like it's bad
01:43:37
and she just sat there and watched it happen watched it happen that's even worse yeah one resident told the
01:43:43
Charlotte news you just don't expect to have a mass murderer in your town which I mean valid yeah accurate I I don't uh
01:43:50
a friend of Stewarts named Yates Allen agreed and told per reporters he was very angry at Velma he said for causing
01:43:57
a friend of mine to go through what he went through certainly he suffered the tortures of the Damned which I was like
01:44:03
Wow [ __ ] you're most people simply couldn't rap their heads around the idea of what they knew as like a pretty kind
01:44:10
helpful woman yeah because again like she' gotten recommended to work with these elderly people right she was by
01:44:17
all accounts a loving mom even though like they had a tough childhood obviously right I don't think she
01:44:23
outwardly was showing a lot of things that would lead anyone to believe she could do this um they just couldn't
01:44:30
believe she had done it and Allan again said Stuart in all his life he wouldn't go to church this one got him going two
01:44:37
or three times a week wow she was going to church this is that's the thing I was
01:44:40
like I don't know if that's the flex that you think it is cuz it's like this serial killer got him going two or three
01:44:47
times a week like I don't know what that says about anything but I feel like maybe we could just
01:44:52
leave that to the to the birds you know I think he was like damn like like like I don't know what that she this this
01:45:02
[ __ ] was going to church two or three times a week I don't I don't know I don't have a lot of words have com but
01:45:10
I'm like damn damn indeed they were sitting in pews with a cial killer that's wild and she's sitting
01:45:18
there like talking up a big game I mean according to her and you'll you'll hear she she gets saved later in prison and
01:45:26
it's like I don't believe that like I'm sorry I I'm sorry I think that's such [ __ ] you sat and watched people in
01:45:34
the most agonizing pain yeah that's [ __ ] vomiting up everything in their body to the point where they were
01:45:42
probably vomiting up like actual body fluids that they need to survive crying sobbing begging for help
01:45:51
[ __ ] themselves grasping their stomachs in agony and excruciating pain 80-year-old women your own [ __ ]
01:45:59
mother and you're sitting in a Pew and telling me well it's fine yeah that's like no I'm sorry I don't buy that and
01:46:07
you took you took people's loved ones away in like the the last years of their lives when they could have had them
01:46:13
longer you can't do you can't do what you've done and then tell me that everything's fine now you your mom no
01:46:19
it's not and like to kill Lily too who when you were a child would blame like silly things that happened on herself
01:46:27
and just to try to take it away for you it's just I don't that doesn't make sense to me which I'm like okay girl
01:46:34
like think what you want to think but like there's no way that you're getting out of this well and I just don't
01:46:39
understand the like like you're supposed to live by a certain code and then you don't and you live the farthest away
01:46:45
from it I don't get that I I just don't understand no I don't understand it either this doesn't make any sense sense
01:46:50
to me but like go off but while the locals struggled with the idea of one of their own having done any of this the
01:46:57
prosecutor's office and velma's defense team began building their cases for district attorney Joe Britt it was a
01:47:03
pretty simple case slam dunk Velma Barfield was a confess murderer of at least one but possibly as many as six
01:47:10
who killed for reasons so trivial as they annoyed the victim annoyed her literally in fact Brit was so convinced
01:47:18
the jury would only see velma's y he skipped his opening remarks all together and went right into calling his first
01:47:25
witness he was like I don't even bre from one witness to the next Joe Britt laid out a narrative where Velma had
01:47:31
stolen from her boyfriend in order to get her pills and then killed him in order to prevent her him from
01:47:37
discovering the theft he's pretty black and white yeah as evidence of her misdeeds Brit produced the four checks
01:47:45
Velma had stolen from Stuart and the defense immediately objected pointing out that in order for the checks to be
01:47:51
relevant Brent needed to point out to prove that Stuart didn't authorize her to sign on his behalf which they were
01:47:58
like you can't do that you can't prove that he's not here and he said I do not intend to introduce them to the uh I
01:48:05
merely wanted them marked for identification and this actually turned out to be Joe Brit's most successful
01:48:12
strategy in the courtroom because he skirted dangerously close to prejudicing the the jury okay just a little bit uh
01:48:20
but it kind of worked okay I mean in this case you're like God you to do now Brit relied on this same tactic a few
01:48:27
days later when he called John Henry and record Lee's daughter Margie Pitman to the stand because she killed record as
01:48:34
well right uh she did not no I don't believe so I think she did I think she killed record
01:48:43
after she killed John cuz that was the one where they convinced her to stay right yeah they she she stayed but then
01:48:48
I think she ended up moving on to that nursing job and moving into the trailer before she could do anything oh okay
01:48:54
okay um sorry I it gets confusing there's a lot of people now um her name is Margie Pitman they brought her to the
01:49:01
stand and they drew this Drew immediate objections from the defense who argued that Brit was attempting to use evidence
01:49:08
from an unrelated crime because they're talking about steuart's murder yeah uh to prove intent to the murder of Stuart
01:49:13
Taylor and defense attorney Bob Jacobson said my Mr Brit is trying to try five or
01:49:19
six cases here rather than one the judge agreed but allowed Brit to continue presenting evidence from the other cases
01:49:26
as a means of establishing velma's pattern of intent yeah which I think is right I think that's fair now arguing in
01:49:32
velma's defense bog Jacobson produ presented an equally simple case to the jury he said she was raised by an
01:49:40
extremely violent man who terrorized the entire household and so she went on to develop mental illness and a Severe drug
01:49:47
addiction in adulthood that caused her to lose control and made her psychotic and violent so he wasn't arguing that
01:49:53
she hadn't murdered Stuart he was saying she did it in basically the insanity thing now Jacobson noted that his client
01:50:00
had like we said killed steuart Taylor but she had done so in a psychotic manic State and therefore could not be held
01:50:06
accountable for her actions I don't agree yeah now moreover Velma manag maintained that she had always intended
01:50:14
only to make her victim sick remember I was just going to make him sick right just to buy myself enough time to give
01:50:21
back that money not true she never intended to kill them even though she did it six times the exact same way
01:50:27
that's the thing and again that was that was the problem is that Brit had already
01:50:33
established that she had done this six times same outcome every time so he was like I don't know about that yeah and
01:50:41
she actually was on the stand at one point Velma they brought her on the stand and she was very combative she did
01:50:46
not help herself she came off as a real [ __ ] so so for a case as complicated and emotionally charged as velma's was
01:50:54
it was pretty surprising because it moved pretty quickly once the tri the trial began on November 27th
01:51:00
1978 both sides rested within a week wow and the jury was also quick to make their decision they deliberated for a
01:51:08
little over an hour and returned a verdict of guilty yeah and then they deliberated deliberated a little more
01:51:14
than 3 hours before delivering a recommendation that Velma be executed in the state's gas chamber it now when the
01:51:21
verdict and sentence was delivered Velma was emotionless she just sat there she was chewing gum just sitting there but
01:51:29
her daughter Kim was sitting a little few rows behind her and just started sobbing of course and I can't even
01:51:36
imagine cuz it's like she already was dealing with such a Strange Relation a strained relationship with her mom and
01:51:41
you find this out and you find out she killed your grandmother oh my god I didn't even think who you got along with
01:51:48
I didn't even think of that yeah like what a heavy your grandmother and multiple like your your mother killed
01:51:55
elderly people including your grandmother wow yeah so for prosecutor Joe Britt who was an Ardent proponent of
01:52:03
the death death penalty the verdict was a huge Victory he said if there's ever been a case deserving imposition of the
01:52:09
ultimate penalty this is it he told records through a callous malicious indifferent act killed him Mrs Barfield
01:52:17
killed him dead and he's gone for eternity which I was like I mean that's what death is but exactly thank you um
01:52:24
and it was just him emphasizing I think but I was like I could have done without
01:52:27
that you don't have to get flowery with it now removed from the courtroom and taken to a maximum security Wing at the
01:52:33
women's correctional center in Raleigh Velma became the second woman on death row since the state reintroduced capital
01:52:39
punishment the previous year wow during a jailhouse interview that they did I think about a week after the sentence
01:52:45
was passed belma told reporter she was guilty of the murder and she said if if she was given a choice she was not
01:52:51
interested in appealing her sentence she said personally I don't want an appeal personally I'd rather go ahead the day
01:52:57
is February 9th and that was the day they had set for her execution Jesus whether she meant what she told the
01:53:03
reporters or was just kind of like put talking a big game in front of cameras nobody really knows but Velma did appear
01:53:10
remarkably calm in the days after the sentence was delivered well she had attempted to take her life multiple
01:53:16
times so it seems like maybe she was ready to she said I know people are saying poor old Velma sitting up there
01:53:22
on death row and I was like I don't know if many people are saying that but okay
01:53:26
she said but I wish they wouldn't because I know when the final breath comes it will just be goodbye here and
01:53:30
hello on the other side I have joy unspeakable I don't know what other side you're prepared for yeah I don't know
01:53:38
especi especially with what you believe in I don't know if you're going to the great one here yeah now after being
01:53:44
delivered to the Women's Correctional Center she became sober for the first time wow that's shocking told press that
01:53:50
she had traded all of that for a new found commitment to Christ she said I'm off drugs thank the Lord and she said I
01:53:56
turned all this trouble over to the hands of the Lord months before the trial he doesn't Promise To Go part part
01:54:02
of the way and then drop us okay just like okay uh while Velma may have been ready
01:54:08
to go forward with the execution as it had been scheduled turned out the state was not ready to do that uh following
01:54:15
her conviction and the sentencing it became her case became the subject of a many appeals on her behalf in the years
01:54:21
that followed and the execution date got scheduled rescheduled multiple times there were tons of stays of execution
01:54:27
pending the outcome of her appeals so there can be appeals placed even if you don't on your behalf it can like when
01:54:34
things change to when like laws change or bills go into effect yeah they will take another look at the case just uh
01:54:41
even if you don't care even it out with the because they have to even it out with the laws that are happening or
01:54:45
anything um and in that time belma story and defense had time to change and evolve from what was presented in the
01:54:52
court a few years later oh God in her 1978 defense Bob Jacobson argued that valmo was an emotionally disturbed
01:54:59
essentially he called her a drug addict who was unable to control her actions like he was really
01:55:05
pushing like that that kind of narrative um and could not be held responsible for
01:55:10
the outcome of anything she did um but by 1980 Velma had become a born- again Christian and was no longer welcoming an
01:55:18
execution oh she said I know I've been forgiven just like I have been able to forgive all the people I felt had hurt
01:55:24
me so many times and those I felt so bitter towards I always wonder how people know so strongly yeah that
01:55:31
they've been forgiven well and also that's a lot to you know who hasn't forgiven you I'm pretty sure the PE the
01:55:36
family members of the people you killed yeah I think those are the ones you need
01:55:39
to worry about forgiving you probably but she doesn't care about that she just care I forgive myself it's good to me
01:55:46
that's just like straight up delusion at least in I also love the like what a shastic way of saying it too is not like
01:55:53
I've been forgiven she's like I've been forgiven and don't worry I've forgiven everybody else too and it's like okay
01:55:59
I'm really glad that you've forgiven everybody Velma yeah same old Velma now around the same time it seemed Velma had
01:56:05
also changed her mind about not wanting to appeal her sentence and in 1980 she filed an appeal with the fourth Circuit
01:56:11
Court of Appeals and a petition for a RIT of habus Corpus among other things the petition argued that belma had
01:56:17
received inadequate representation and her rights had been violated when the trial judge refused her request for
01:56:23
additional counsel at the state's expense ah in defense of this of his uh effective defense Bob Jacobson explained
01:56:31
to the court that Velma was a very difficult client in a very difficult case and additional court appointed
01:56:37
attorneys were unlikely to have made the defense any more successful he said I counseled her to be a sympathetic
01:56:43
witness to look like somebody's mother and evoke sympathy and he said frankly I felt she would get into an AR argument
01:56:49
with district attorney Joe Freeman Britt and my fears came to pass and he was referring to Velma being so combative
01:56:56
and so [ __ ] unpleasant on the stand when she was being pres uh questioned by Brit yeah he was like be a mom like act
01:57:05
sympath and she was just like [ __ ] you guys like I don't give a [ __ ] now the
01:57:11
court rejected the appeal and upheld the verdict and the sentencing writing when
01:57:16
the petitioner's forecast of evidence is assessed and it's and it's best light possible in conjunction uh in
01:57:22
conjunction with those elements of respondents opposing materials that are not disputed it simply fails to raise
01:57:29
more than a basis for bald conjecture now by the early 1980s velma's case became a major talking
01:57:36
point for politicians in North Carolina uh in particular Governor Jim hunt during his re-election campaign against
01:57:43
Senator Jesse Helms in 1984 hunt tried to minimize the issue of the death penalty during the campaign he
01:57:50
said I think the effect of the death penalty will be to cause less taking of life when people do premeditate and plan
01:57:56
in advance uh that is untrue yeah doesn't do [ __ ] sir um supporters of capital punishment agreed
01:58:05
with one proponent of elma's sentence telling reporters we live by the law or we go into a country of
01:58:12
anarchism okay uhhuh uh it's like uh Studies have said that it doesn't so just saying uh by 1984 Velma had
01:58:24
exhausted her appeals and barring a stay of execution or clemency from the governor was scheduled to die on
01:58:30
November 2nd 1984 and although clemency was very unlikely by that fall Stuart's Stuart's
01:58:37
mother and daughter as well as nine family members of the other victims met with the governor and urged him not to
01:58:44
interfere with the execution that's sad that they even had to do that they were worried that he was going to suddenly
01:58:49
step out um steuart's daughter Alice said she's an outstanding liar a serial killer does not want help they enjoy
01:58:57
killing and Velma Barfield enjoys killing and that is the truth I agree with Alice um lawyers working and like I
01:59:05
like we've said this many times about the death penalty where we stand but like I agree with her on that sentiment
01:59:10
that I I don't believe she should have left jail no I don't either I think I'm at a place where I feel like the death
01:59:17
penalty for me is so gray and like more like Case by case yeah in this case I tend to agree with it really yeah see I
01:59:24
think she should have just been in prison I think she didn't give a [ __ ] for what she did so it was like yeah a
01:59:30
lot of times I want people to remain in prison so they have to think about it all the time yeah I think it sounds to
01:59:35
me like she didn't think about it very often she didn't give a [ __ ] so that's true but lawyers working on velma's
01:59:41
behalf had argued tirelessly for a stay in the weeks leading up to her execution
01:59:45
but on November 1st Velma accepted her fate and asked them to stop the next morning at 2:15 a.m. Marg of Velma
01:59:54
Barfield died by lethal injection at North Carolina's Central Prison she was the first woman executed in the United
02:00:00
States in 22 years wow um and what one witness said I didn't notice any kind of suffering at all she just seemed to
02:00:09
relax yeah I don't I don't see the Justice in that [ __ ] case cuz it's like she and
02:00:16
it's and it's not even done but oh my God we're almost done but uh but like that that's where I don't I think where
02:00:23
I like I've gotten off the death death penalty cuz I'm like that is no justice in that look at what the witness just
02:00:29
said there's no suffering at all she just relaxed but who knows but her victims went through [ __ ] Agony oh in
02:00:35
their final moments but it's like was she suffering when she was rather just sitting there I mean give her a few more
02:00:41
years I'm sure she would I I do see your point like I'm like let her let her let
02:00:47
her sit around and have nothing to do to me I feel like there's no in in velma's
02:00:52
case no justice would that there's really no justice anywhere because you can't have Justice when six people were
02:00:58
[ __ ] horrifically murdered it's like there really is no justice anywhere and it's like I don't want to watch it's
02:01:04
it's so hard because like you obviously you're not like you know give her arsenic poisoning and let her die that
02:01:09
way like that's [ __ ] up but like like as like a human being you know what I mean but it's like I'd rather her just
02:01:16
be bye see you later like I don't know how I would I think I think you wouldn't know how you would feel unless it
02:01:23
happened to you and again I'm not a family member so I speak from an outside position and ever having had to dealt
02:01:29
deal with somebody taking my family member away and I do wonder and this is this is just like a a pure thought of I
02:01:36
don't know if I was a family member of one of those people that she killed would I want her killed like is that
02:01:43
Justice you know like would I want her still to be able to breathe oxygen that my family should be idea so it's like I
02:01:50
can speak and like I fully recognize the privilege of being able to speak from a
02:01:54
place where my family member was not taken from me by a murderer right so it's like I'm not going to sit here and
02:01:59
say I totally understand what I would do and that's why I'm like yeah you know and it so I got to give a whatever the
02:02:06
family members want I tend to agree with like even in this case the family members didn't want her execution
02:02:13
stopped that's what they wanted stop it right then that's that's what I have to go with and way is that Justice like is
02:02:21
that a slice of Justice because they had a say in the end because they got a say
02:02:25
and because even like in the Boston bombing case the the family members came forward and said they didn't want him
02:02:31
executed and I was like then don't execute it like if that's what they want like I almost feel like it kind of
02:02:37
should lie with the family members it kind of feels like they'll all come out in the end yeah like a a jury maybe and
02:02:44
this is just me thinking like a jury convict and then a the family members that are remaining decide yeah the Fate
02:02:51
but it could get but then that could get so [ __ ] messy but it's like I don't know that's the thing it's so hard
02:02:56
that's why that's why I'm always like shocked when somebody can have such a black and white opinion about things
02:03:01
because I'm like it's just so much gray I think a lot of things hard human The Human Condition is not an easy thing to
02:03:09
just put into boxes I feel like so it's like this is not because even within a family people might disagree exactly
02:03:16
that's the thing and it and it's all really you know what you've dealt with so it's
02:03:22
like [ __ ] up it's for anybody who had to be in that position I'm sorry you've ever had to be in that position cuz
02:03:28
again I don't it's that must be an impossible position to be in but just before the doctors did execute her
02:03:36
Warden Nathan rice asked her if there was anything she wanted to say and she said I want to say that I'm sorry for
02:03:42
the hurt that I've caused I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain all the fam's connected and I'm sorry
02:03:48
that was nice that she used her final words for that I guess cuz some of them don't yeah some
02:03:53
of now later that day Ronnie Burke uh spoke to reporters about his F his mother's final days and he said I want
02:04:01
people to know she wanted to live very badly she wanted to live for her grandchildren we miss her already and
02:04:07
that's really sad for that's makes say that's the thing and that's where you that's where you do sit in the so many
02:04:12
parts that you're just like well [ __ ] and it's like that's cuz her kids didn't
02:04:16
deserve that and I think and again I'm I'm going to go with you know the victim's family members here I'll never
02:04:22
go against them for what they wanted and they wanted that to happen and that is perfectly fine but that's why the death
02:04:28
penalty key can be tricky because you can't reverse it and there are victims where like there's victims that were
02:04:34
killed but there's I would say her children are victims absolutely there's there's far-reaching [ __ ] that
02:04:40
happens when something like that happens and it's and there's so many different like that like a nasty onion of just
02:04:46
like layers of people affected by it by one person they all get different treatment you know like it's like they
02:04:53
the the kids get different treatment and then the victims family like there's so
02:04:58
many different layers here just it's sad that makes me overall her children never
02:05:03
got what they should have my heart breaks obviously for the victim's families and my heart breaks for her
02:05:08
kids because like we said throughout this whole thing they just tried to be the best son and daughter they could
02:05:14
yeah uh two days later after the execution belma Barfield was buried beside her first husband Thomas Burke in
02:05:21
a funeral attended by nearly 200 people wow um in the eulogy Reverend Philip Carter noted that Velma was no stranger
02:05:29
to suffering but during her six years in prison she had become a born again Christian and helped many of the other
02:05:35
inmates at the Correctional Center for Women he said she said she wanted to be known as a good Christian and nothing
02:05:42
else that's what Ronnie told that's what Ronnie told reporters and I was like unfortunately that is not what she's
02:05:48
going to be know as and you can't wipe away he was hoping that the good that his mother had done in the last years of
02:05:54
her life would offset a little bit of the pain he had she had caused which like that's definitely a child speaking
02:06:00
of his or not a child I mean like his inner child his inner child speaking for his mother absolutely which I can
02:06:06
understand but unfortunately she's a serial killer and that will never go away what she did to those families
02:06:13
unfuckingthinkable deeds and she is shattered countless lives yeah and I mean she sat there and watched these
02:06:23
people go through something that I couldn't watch my worst enemy go through so wow Velma uh I told you this was a a
02:06:33
real in interesting though like she she's very interesting to hear real a real ride yeah because in the way you
02:06:41
were saying like she it seemed like she wasn't capable of love with what she did
02:06:45
to people that she claimed to love and then she did seem like she could love with the way that she treated her kids
02:06:52
yeah like she treated them badly in certain areas of life where like she just expected to be able to live with
02:06:58
them and [ __ ] up their lives but then she took care of them as children and like felt physically ill when she was
02:07:03
away from them and it's like it looks like when she you know when she like Found Jesus or whatever she did in
02:07:09
prison it's like she seemed like she was trying to do better things like in there
02:07:14
and it's like so would she have just you can never never take away what she did but it's like could she
02:07:22
have been imprisoned for the rest of her life and maybe reformed in at least reformed to the point of like you look
02:07:30
at it and go well okay like you know like that it turned around but she's but she's in prison you know like I do think
02:07:38
as a society we need to be more open to the idea that people can be reformed and
02:07:43
I think even as a human myself I need to be more open to that idea it's hard it's
02:07:47
hard because some people can't and then that's the thing that's the thing it's like not everybody can I
02:07:51
don't believe at least like I think there are some people trust me we've covered some of them yeah that there's
02:07:56
no [ __ ] way but I do think we need to explore it more yeah you know I mean everything needs such an overhaul like
02:08:03
it really does like the justice system is in extreme need of an overall this one really got me thinking yeah it does
02:08:08
this one because it's a it's a strange one flared and a disturbing one yeah she's very awful but like and it's like
02:08:16
and who knows could if she ever got out like could she have really been reformed
02:08:22
or would she have done this again would somebody [ __ ] annoy her and she well that's the thing I don't think she
02:08:26
should be I don't think she could have been let out I think so I think she had two that disposition I don't think was
02:08:33
going anywhere but maybe she could have been contained in prison and been maybe more of a like a more of a I don't know
02:08:44
I I don't even know how to explain it like a decent member of you know Society I don't think she should have been back
02:08:52
outs yeah but [ __ ] damn yeah the wheels are turning for sure hope yours are too
02:08:59
that that was captivating for sure oh good and I'm really sorry to all of the victims that she that she took away
02:09:06
loved friends from and her kids yeah wow so with that we hope you keep listening
02:09:12
and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you go by arsenic poison when
02:09:16
somebody annoys you because that's really not a way handle anything baby yeah don't go to talk therapy or I don't
02:09:21
know get a smoothie get a [Music] smoothie