Between June 1992 and February 1995, four people in Jack Kenneth Barron's household died: his wife, Irene, who was 34; their son, Jeremy; their daughter, Ashley; and his mother, Roberta Butler. The first three deaths left pathologists unable to fix a cause. The fourth, in Benicia, did not. A pathologist concluded that Butler had been smothered, and her death led to a fresh look at the others.
Barron was tried before a judge, without a jury, in Sacramento County Superior Court. He denied killing anyone, and his defense argued that a rare inherited heart condition, long QT syndrome, explained the deaths of his wife and children. The judge convicted him of three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Irene, Jeremy and his mother, with a multiple-murder special circumstance, and acquitted him of murdering Ashley. On April 14, 2000, he was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole. State appeals failed in 2002, and a federal judge denied his habeas corpus petition in 2008.
In 1992 Barron lived in Sacramento with Irene and their two children. Jeremy was 3 and Ashley was 2 that year. Barron worked the night shift at a grocery store.
At trial he described his marriage in warm terms. He testified that he and Irene had had only two minor disagreements and that divorce had never come up. The Court of Appeal later called that testimony "rose-colored," and other evidence painted a different picture. In March 1992 he told a friend that he and Irene "had been having some problems." A different friend testified that in 1989 Barron had said he would "do away" with a spouse rather than go through a divorce. That friend said Barron's tone "was not a joking one." Barron also told a coworker that he would never seek a divorce.
After Irene's death, her mother found an undated letter among her belongings that Irene had written to her husband and never delivered. "It really upsets me when I hear you talk about divorce," it said in part. The letter would become the main subject of Barron's appeals.
On the night of June 7, 1992, Barron arrived for his shift at the grocery store at 11:30 p.m. A coworker testified that he looked pale and upset. He told her that Irene had been having bad headaches, and that he would have stayed home if she had not insisted he go to work because they needed the money.
Irene was found dead the next morning, June 8, between 7 and 8 a.m. She was 34. Dr. Gregory Schmunk, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, could not determine the cause of death, and he could not exclude suffocation. The death was not treated as a homicide at the time.
A month or two later the coworker, who had separated from her husband, moved into the house with her own children at Barron's suggestion, and the two began a relationship.
Jeremy died on February 7, 1993. A babysitter arrived at the house shortly before 1 p.m. that day and got no answer, although she knocked repeatedly. Barron later told her by phone that he "must have been in the shower." When she came back, he told her Jeremy was not feeling well and that he had given the boy cough medicine, and then said he was going to bed. A couple of hours later the babysitter could not wake Jeremy. He had died.
Dr. Schmunk again could not determine the cause of death. He could not exclude suffocation, and he could not exclude a condition of the heart or brain.
There was also evidence about Barron's words. According to the Court of Appeal, he "had threatened to kill Jeremy" and "more than once had stated that it was better that Jeremy had died." At trial he denied the remarks or said they had been misunderstood, but the witnesses who heard them took them as meant.
After Jeremy's death, doctors examined Ashley to see whether she had a genetic heart defect or a sleeping problem. Her QTc readings, a heart measurement, were in the upper range of normal or slightly elevated. Her doctors recommended a Holter monitor. Barron did not obtain one, despite several requests.
Ashley died on August 6, 1994. Dr. Gregory Reiber, a pathologist, could not determine the cause of her death, but he could not exclude homicide. Barron was later acquitted of her murder.
By early 1995 Barron was living with his mother, Roberta Butler, in Benicia, and was finishing a probationary period as an assistant conductor for Amtrak.
A friend who stayed with Butler in the week before her death described the relationship between mother and son as "extremely tense." Butler told the friend she suspected her son was spending the life insurance money from Ashley's death, which the court record puts at "a few thousand dollars," on a married woman. She planned to confront him about it on February 27.
Barron's account to police was that his mother came home about 10:20 p.m. on Sunday, February 26, stressed, with a headache, and saying she felt out of shape. He said he left the house at 4:50 the next morning and came back at 2:17 p.m. to find her not breathing. He called 911, and emergency crews responded at 2:21 p.m. on February 27, 1995.
Dr. Brian Peterson, the pathologist who examined Butler, concluded that she "had been smothered to death." When Jeremy's death came up at the scene of Butler's death, Barron appeared "perturbed," the Court of Appeal noted.
After Butler's autopsy, and at Dr. Schmunk's suggestion, Dr. Reiber reexamined the deaths of Irene and Jeremy. In an addendum, he concluded that Irene had died of "probable traumatic asphyxia." He agreed that the cause of Jeremy's death could not be determined.
When the reexamination took place, and when Barron was arrested, has not been reported. He was charged in Sacramento County with the murders of all four.
The case was tried to the bench in Sacramento County Superior Court. Barron testified and denied killing any member of his family.
The pathologists described what they had found and what they could not determine. The defense called a cardiologist, Dr. Steven Correa, who testified that sudden cardiac death from familial long QT syndrome, which the federal court described as "a rare and generally hereditary form of heart disease," was the likely cause of the deaths of Ashley, Irene and Jeremy. He measured Ashley's longest QTc at .51 and her average at .482. He did not regard Butler's death as relevant to his opinion. Irene's mother had QTc readings between .424 and .47, and the court record notes that it would be "very, very unusual" for her to have the disease. Neither Irene nor Jeremy had shown symptoms.
Irene's letter came into the trial by a roundabout path. Before trial, Barron moved to keep it out as hearsay, and the judge agreed, finding that any inference of marital discord drawn from it was "necessarily conjectural and speculative in nature." Then Barron testified that his marriage had been free of serious arguments. During cross-examination the judge reviewed the letter and ruled that questioning him about it was "appropriate cross-examination," and it was admitted for the limited purpose of impeaching his testimony. In closing argument the prosecutor read the letter in full and argued motive and what he called a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" theory. The defense did not object to that use of it.
The judge convicted Barron of three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Irene Barron, Jeremy Barron and Roberta Butler, and found the multiple-murder special circumstance true. He was acquitted of murdering Ashley. On April 14, 2000, he was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole.
The California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, affirmed the convictions and sentence in February 2002. On the letter, it held that the document was admissible to show Irene's state of mind and to impeach Barron, and that the trial judge "knew how to properly consider the letter in this limited way." On Irene's death, the court said "a trier of fact reasonably could infer a motive to kill Irene," and that whatever the start of the encounter, "the trier of fact reasonably could conclude that it ended as a considered one," which supported premeditation. On Jeremy, it wrote: "We conclude the evidence is sufficient to support a finding that Jeremy died as a result of criminal agency rather than natural causes." The California Supreme Court denied review on May 15, 2002.
Barron, representing himself, filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in April 2003. The respondent was Derral G. Adams. The first petition was dismissed for naming the wrong respondent, an amended petition followed, and in early 2004 the case was stayed so that Barron could first present an unexhausted claim to the state courts. The California Supreme Court rejected his claim that the evidence was insufficient to prove he murdered his mother on December 15, 2004. His third amended petition, filed January 3, 2005, became the operative one, and the stay was lifted in May 2005. In September 2005 the court denied his renewed request for an appointed lawyer, saying "the interests of justice do not require appointment of counsel at this stage."
He raised four claims: that the admission of Irene's letter violated state law, due process and his right to confront witnesses, and that his trial lawyer had been ineffective in handling it; that the evidence did not show premeditation and deliberation in Irene's death; and that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of Jeremy's murder and of his mother's.
On June 2, 2008, the magistrate judge recommended that the petition be denied. Any error in admitting the letter under state law could not be reviewed in a federal habeas case, the findings said, and admitting it had not made the trial fundamentally unfair, since it bore on impeachment and a judge, not a jury, decided the facts. The letter fell within a firmly rooted state-of-mind exception to the hearsay rule, and any error was harmless. The ineffective-assistance claim failed because the trial lawyer had in fact argued hard against the letter. The evidence of motive and of how Irene died supported premeditation. On Jeremy, the magistrate judge wrote that the evidence of homicide "was not overwhelming," but found it sufficient, resting on the threats, the unusual circumstances of the day he died, and the evidence about the deaths of Irene and Butler. The evidence that Butler's death was a homicide he called overwhelming, and he found no sign of bias in Dr. Peterson's work.
No objections were filed. On August 4, 2008, U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. adopted the findings in full and denied the petition. The order was filed the next day.
In August 2008, when his federal petition was denied, Barron was a California state prisoner serving the life sentences imposed in Sacramento County. Where he was held was not made public.
The cause of the children's deaths was contested from the start. No pathologist could determine why Jeremy or Ashley died. The trial court found that Jeremy's death was a homicide, a finding the Court of Appeal upheld and that a federal magistrate judge described as resting on evidence that was "not overwhelming." On Ashley, the court acquitted, so her death is not a murder in law, and the record leaves open what caused it.
At trial Barron denied killing any member of his family. His defense put forward familial long QT syndrome as the cause of the deaths of his wife and children; the defense cardiologist did not offer it as an explanation for his mother's death.
1989: Barron tells a friend he would "do away" with a spouse rather than go through a divorce, according to the friend's testimony.
March 1992: tells another friend that he and Irene have "been having some problems."
June 7, 1992: arrives for his grocery night shift at 11:30 p.m.
June 8, 1992: Irene Barron, 34, is found dead; the cause is undetermined at autopsy.
A month or two after Irene's death: a coworker and her children move into the house.
February 7, 1993: Jeremy Barron dies; the cause is undetermined at autopsy.
After Jeremy's death: doctors examine Ashley for a possible heart defect and recommend a Holter monitor, which is not obtained.
August 6, 1994: Ashley Barron dies; the cause is undetermined.
February 27, 1995: Roberta Butler dies in Benicia; a pathologist finds she was smothered.
After February 1995: a pathologist reexamines Irene's death and finds "probable traumatic asphyxia."
2000: after a bench trial in Sacramento County Superior Court, convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance and acquitted of Ashley's murder.
April 14, 2000: sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole.
February 2002: the Third Appellate District affirms.
May 15, 2002: the California Supreme Court denies review.
April 23, 2003: files a federal habeas corpus petition.
December 15, 2004: the California Supreme Court rejects his claim about his mother's death.
June 2, 2008: a federal magistrate judge recommends denial.
August 4 and 5, 2008: Judge Morrison C. England Jr. adopts the findings and denies the petition.