Barton: More on First Wife's Death
Patty
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/Jul1999/31-e221497b.html
Investigators think Mark O. Barton came to an Alabama campsite in 1993 to
tell his wife he was leaving her for another woman, but ended up killing her
and his mother-in-law instead.
Danny Smith, an investigator with the Cherokee County district attorney's
office, said he believes Barton planned to divorce his wife, Debra Spivey
Barton, so he could be with his girlfriend, who later became his second wife
and the woman he killed in Georgia this week.
"He came down here to ask her for a divorce. I think they argued. The
argument escalated to an altercation. The altercation escalated into an
assault, and once he got started, he couldn't stop," Smith said.
Debra Spivey Barton, 36, and her mother, Eloise Powell Spivey, 59, both of
Lithia Springs, Ga., were found beaten to death inside their
blood-splattered trailer at a campsite on Weiss Lake in northeast Alabama in
1993.
snip
In the note, Barton wrote: "There may be similarities between these deaths
and the death of my first wife. ... However, I deny killing her and her
mother. There's no reason for me to lie now."
Smith said there were similarities between the crimes. All the victims were
killed with blunt force trauma, and there were attempts to clean up at both
scenes, he said.
Maj. Phil Miller, an investigator with the Douglas, Ga., sheriff's
department, said Barton had a motive to kill his first wife. He had taken
out a $600,000 insurance policy on her shortly before her death and moved in
with his second wife shortly afterward.
Smith, the Cherokee County investigator, said Barton also had taken out a
$100,000 policy on his first wife from a Texas agent.
"We know he's a murderer," Miller said. "That's obvious from the 12 people
he killed. Why not the other two? In my mind, he was a very greedy, selfish
person. He killed to obtain money and he killed out of frustration."
Barton got $194,000
The life insurance company sued to void the policy on Barton's wife,
contending he killed her to collect the money. The suit was settled in 1997,
with Barton receiving $194,000 and $150,000 going into a trust fund for his
children.
Robert Hughes, an Atlanta attorney who represented Barton in the suit, said
he doesn't think Barton was the culprit in the slayings. "He had a good
alibi. ... He was at home watching the two children while his wife and
mother were at the lake," Hughes said.
He also said the Spiveys had just bought the campsite at the Riverside
Campground in Cedar Bluff, Ala., and Barton did not know where it was.
Hughes said there was no physical evidence to link Barton to the slayings.
And he suggested Alabama authorities did not follow a lead that the killings
were done by an someone else.
Alabama investigators acknowledged the weapon, something with a "sharp,
heavy blade," was never recovered, and they said they were unable to place
Barton in the trailer.
"We could never prove he had ever been in this county," Smith said. But he
said they did follow all leads and ruled out the other suspect.
Smith speculated that Barton, described by Alabama authorities as
controlling, arrogant and quick-tempered, was prompted to get rid of his
first wife after his girlfriend filed for divorce a short time before the
slayings.
snip
Smith said a test that detects blood reacted to something in Barton's car,
but investigators were never able to prove it was blood. When they tried to
analyze the spot again, he claimed to have spilled a soft drink, destroying
any evidence.
Barton, a chemist, had ordered a $350 study on the test, focusing on how it
reacted with different chemicals, Smith said.
"Within a week, he was calling to tell us what it would react to," Smith
said.
Larry Wilson, an investigator with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department,
said Barton tried to control interrogations.
"If he couldn't control the conversation, he would either stop talking or
switch to something else," Wilson said.
snip
Sherry
>From the Birmingham News:
>
>http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/Jul1999/31-e221497b.html
>
>
>Investigators think Mark O. Barton came to an Alabama campsite in 1993 to
>tell his wife he was leaving her for another woman, but ended up killing her
>and his mother-in-law instead.
Bbbbut....why did he (and his girlfriend) take out huge life
insurance policies on the lives of spouses only weeks before these
'spontaneous' deaths if they were seeking divorces? That is the
dumbest theory I've heard yet. He went there to kill her . They had
probably entertained fantasies of killing Leigh Ann's hubby as well,
but all the ruckus caused by Spivey's murder investigation and the
light being shown on Barton probably squelched that.
sherry
Patty
Excerpts from the Mobile Register:
As their TVs carried the grisly reports from Atlanta on Friday, the campers
continued to wonder why didn't anyone hear the screams that Saturday night,
Sept. 3, 1993.
Maybe it was the music. Their next door neighbor, Bill Shields, and a group
of his friends had put on a country music concert for the Labor Day weekend
revelers up at camp headquarters a few hundred yards away.
There were so many people in the campground that night, Cherokee County
Chief Deputy Larry Wilson said, "Anyone could ease in and out so long as he
didn't draw attention to himself."
According to Clarence Higginbotham, a sort of campground gadfly who owns a
lot down the way from the murder scene, Shields and his wife returned to
their trailer after the concert about 11:30 p.m. They sat at a picnic table
just a few feet from the camper owned Mrs. Spivey.
The table was so close, Mrs. Spivey and her daughter could have heard the
Shields whispering.
But by then, they couldn't hear anything. Sheriff's department officials
believe that by the time the Shields were enjoying their coffee, the mother
and daughter were already dead.
The next morning, as they do every Sunday morning here, residents and
visitors went to an interdenominational service at a pavilion right across
the road. Around noon, after the last hymn was sung, Mrs. Sara Rose and
another woman noticed that Mrs. Spivey's red Thunderbird had not been moved.
Higginbotham said Mrs. Spivey had told folks she planned to take her
grandchildren, Matthew, then 5, and Shelly, then 3, to Six Flags over
Georgia in Atlanta.
Higginbotham said the women became concerned because Mrs. Spivey had
mentioned she had been having trouble with a stove.
The women knocked on the door, then opened it.
"She took one look and started screaming," another neighbor, Herb Wilson,
said of one of the ladies who discovered the bodies.
Within an hour, the campground was swarming with investigators and sheriff's
deputies.
Chief Deputy Wilson (no relation) said Mrs. Barton was lying just inside the
door.
Her mother was lying on a bed in the back part of the camper. Someone had
used a hatchet or a pickax-like weapon on them, said Wilson, one of the
first law enforcement officers on the scene.
"Nothing like that ever happened here," Wilson said. "You could tell he was
very angry. It looked like he took almost all of his aggression, the worst
of it out on Debra."
The "he" Wilson referred was Barton, 44, the same man who Atlanta police
said was responsible for Thursday's carnage.
snip
Wilson said law officials called Mrs. Spivey's husband at his Lithia
Springs, Ga., home after finding the bodies, and that Bill Spivey and Mark
Barton arrived at the campground together.
Spivey was "very upset, hollering, wanting to know where his wife was."
Barton, Wilson said, "stood in the background, showing no emotion, his arms
crossed, showing no emotion whatsoever."
All he said, according to Wilson, was, "I've never been here."