WOMAN, HELD IN MURDER, SUSPECTED IN 3 OTHERS: THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, MARCH 16, 1978

In the middle of March 1978 the sheriff of Robeson County, North Carolina, began saying out loud what the deaths around one woman might mean. Velma Barfield, forty-five, had been charged that Tuesday with murder in the death of Stuart Taylor, fifty-three, a farmer from St. Pauls who, friends said, had planned to marry her. Sheriff Malcolm McLeod told the Associated Press she was under investigation in three more deaths: her mother's, and those of two people she had kept house for. "She was just helping out with the housework and cleaning when the people got sick and died," he said.

Elissa McCrary's report, printed in The Salt Lake Tribune on March 16, sets out how Taylor died. He fell ill on February 2, was treated and sent home from Southeastern General Hospital in Lumberton, came back the next day and died before anyone could say what was wrong with him. The autopsy found arsenic in his liver. Barfield, twice widowed since 1969, had been living with him for several months. On Wednesday she was taken to Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh for psychiatric tests, and a friend who had visited her in jail repeated what she said there: "I can't help myself. I'm sick."

The mother the sheriff meant was Lillian Bullard, who died on December 30, 1974, after the violent sickness that Dollie Edwards, one of the people Barfield later cared for, would suffer before her own death. Barfield confessed to killing her mother, Dollie Edwards and John Henry Lee, whose households she worked in during 1977. The poison that killed Taylor was an arsenic-based rat poison, mixed into his beer and tea. She was tried only for his death, sentenced to death, and executed by lethal injection at Central Prison in Raleigh on November 2, 1984, the first woman put to death in the United States since 1962.

A wire report written within days of the charge, while the sheriff was still keeping the other names to himself: the case as it looked from the county jail, not a court record. The paper calls the dead farmer Stuart Taylor; his full name was Rowland Stuart Taylor. It gives hers as Velma Margie Barfield, though she was born Margie Velma Bullard. The jailhouse words reach the page secondhand, through a friend. Barfield was convicted of one murder, Taylor's. Her confessions added three more, and arsenic was found in the exhumed body of her second husband, Jennings Barfield, a killing she denied; none of those deaths was tried.

The byline reads "By Elissa McCrary, Associated Press Writer," and the story ran on page A4 of The Salt Lake Tribune for March 16, 1978. Utah Digital Newspapers, the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library collection that holds the scan, rates this issue "In Copyright": it appeared in 1978, under the 1976 Copyright Act, when copyright began at creation. No notice was found on the article itself, only on separately syndicated stories elsewhere in the issue. The citation and the library's rating are printed below the scan.

The story runs L-shaped down the page, so it is shown in two crops, in order: the first holds the kicker, headline, byline, the four lines of column one and the top of column two, and the second holds the rest of column two. Both parts are transcribed in full, and no word was illegible. The printer doubled the article before "a fine, upstanding neighbor," and the slip stays. The story set below column one, "Authorities Note Safeguards," is unrelated and is left out.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

Arsenic Poisoning

Woman, Held in Murder, Suspected in 3 Others

By Elissa McCrary

Associated Press Writer

LUMBERTON, N.C. — A woman charged in the arsenic-poisoning death of a farmer who reportedly planned to marry her is also under investigation in the deaths of her mother and of two people for whom she did housekeeping, the sheriff says.

"She was just helping out with the housework and cleaning when the people got sick and died," Robeson County Sheriff Malcolm McLeod said of Velma Margie Barfield, 45, who moved less than a year ago from nearby Parkton to this close-knit community of 25,000.

Mrs. Barfield, who has been twice widowed since 1969, was charged with murder Tuesday in the death of Stuart Taylor, 53, a farmer who lived in nearby St. Pauls.

Mother Died in 1974

McLeod said Mrs. Barfield's mother died in 1974. He would not reveal the identities of the other two, who reportedly died last year.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Barfield was taken to Raleigh for psychiatric tests at Dorothea Dix Hospital. A friend who visited her in jail on Tuesday quoted Mrs. Barfield as telling her: "I can't help myself. I'm sick."

Friends of Taylor described him as a "a fine, upstanding neighbor." They said Mrs. Barfield had been living with him for several months and the couple planned to marry.

Dilapidated House

Taylor became ill Feb. 2 and was treated and released at Southeastern General Hospital in Lumberton. He returned the next day and died before his ailment could be diagnosed. An autopsy revealed arsenic in his liver.

Mrs. Barfield's own residence was a small, dilapidated frame house in a run-down section of Lumberton. Neighbors said they saw little of her.

Notes: Kept as printed: "described him as a "a fine" (the article "a" doubled). The story is L-shaped: column 1 holds only the first four lines below the byline, and column 2 runs down the page. So it is supplied as ARTICLE-CROP.jpg (the kicker, headline, byline, column 1 and the top of column 2) and ARTICLE-CROP-PART-2.jpg (the rest of column 2). The story "Authorities Note Safeguards" below column 1 is unrelated. No words were illegible.