Velma Barfield

What the record shows

Margie Velma Barfield was a North Carolina woman convicted in December 1978 of the first-degree murder of Stuart Taylor, a St. Pauls farmer she had been dating, who died of acute arsenic poisoning on February 3, 1978. She also admitted poisoning three other people between 1974 and 1977, including her own mother, but was never tried for those deaths. Sentenced to death in Bladen County Superior Court, she was executed by lethal injection at Central Prison in Raleigh on November 2, 1984, the first woman put to death in the United States since executions resumed in 1976 and the first since 1962.

Barfield was born in 1932; sources disagree on the exact date and birthplace, with the Wikipedia article giving October 29 in Eastover, North Carolina, and NCpedia giving October 23 on a farm in South Carolina. She married Thomas Burke as a teenager and lived for many years in Parkton, in Robeson County. Burke died in 1969 of smoke inhalation in a house fire. In August 1970 she married Jennings Barfield, a widower, who died in March 1971. NCpedia records that she served time in 1975 for writing bad checks, and court records describe a pattern of forged checks that she said she used to support a dependence on Valium and other prescription drugs.

According to United Press International, her mother, Lillie Bullard, 74, died in December 1974, and two elderly Lumberton residents who had hired Barfield as a private nurse, Dollie Edwards, 85, and John Henry Lee, 80, died in 1977. Each death was initially put down to natural causes. Taylor fell ill in early 1978, and when he was brought back to the hospital on February 3 he died in the emergency room about an hour after arrival. The autopsy found arsenic in his blood and liver, and the pathologist concluded that he had died from acute arsenic poisoning, according to the North Carolina Supreme Court's opinion.

NCpedia says Lumberton police were alerted by a call from Barfield's sister. The state Supreme Court opinion records that she was questioned at the sheriff's department on March 10, 1978, and gave four statements to officers on March 13, in one of which she said she had given poison to people before and they had died. She told investigators she had bought an arsenic-based ant poison and had put it in Taylor's drink; at trial she said she had forged checks on his account, feared he would report her, and meant only to make him too ill to examine his bank statements. On March 18, 1978, the bodies of her mother, Edwards and Lee were exhumed, and Jennings Barfield's body followed on May 31. The federal appeals court later noted that autopsies on the exhumed bodies showed arsenic poisoning. Barfield admitted poisoning her mother, Edwards and Lee, but consistently denied any role in the deaths of either husband.

The case was moved from Robeson County because of pretrial publicity, first to Scotland County and then, over defense objection, to Bladen County. She pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecution introduced evidence of the four other arsenic deaths to show intent. On December 2, 1978, the jury convicted her of first-degree murder and found three aggravating circumstances: that the killing was for pecuniary gain, was committed to hinder law enforcement, and was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. It found no mitigating circumstances, and a death sentence was imposed.

The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence on November 6, 1979. A state post-conviction motion was denied in November 1980, and federal habeas relief was refused by the Eastern District of North Carolina in May 1982 and by the Fourth Circuit in October 1983. During her years on death row Barfield described a religious conversion and drew support from evangelists including Billy Graham. Governor Jim Hunt denied clemency on September 27, 1984, saying her victims had been literally tortured to death, UPI reported. A final claim that drug withdrawal had left her unable to assist at trial was rejected by a Fourth Circuit panel on November 1, 1984, and she chose not to take it to the US Supreme Court.

Barfield was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. on November 2, 1984, aged 52. According to UPI, she told warden Nathan Rice she was sorry for the pain caused to all the families. She donated tissue for transplant, and her corneas, some skin and bone tissue were recovered. She was buried near Parkton beside her first husband. Taylor's daughter, Alice Storms, publicly supported the governor's decision. Barfield's memoir, Woman on Death Row, appeared in 1985, and Jerry Bledsoe's book Death Sentence followed in 1998.