Velma Barfield | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

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

On November 2, 1984, fifty-two-year-old Velma Barfield was executed by lethal injection at North Carolina’s Central Prison, bringing an end to years of legal appeals and emotional debates over the death penalty and how, when, and to whom it gets applied. For six years, Barfield had sat on death row following her conviction for the poisoning murder of her boyfriend Stewart Taylor in 1976; however, during her trial she confessed to killing at least four other people.

Velma Barfield’s trial came at a time in the United States when Americans were just beginning to grapple with the concept of a serial killer, and the idea that a woman could commit such heinous acts seemed entirely inconceivable. Although woman had been sentenced to death for murder before in the US, none had confessed to methodically killing multiple people in such a callous way and for such a trivial reason. The debate only became more complicated following her death sentence, an already complicated subject among Americans that became exponentially so in 1984, when Barfield’s case and personal story became a major talking point for politicians running for office around the state.

Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for Research!

References

Associated Press. 1984. "Hunt hopes Barfield's death will be deterrent." Asheville Citizen-Times, November 3: 1.

—. 1978. "Woman charged in poisoning ." Charlotte Obvserver, March 15: 1.

Barfield, Velma. 1985. Woman on Death Row. Nashville, TN: Oliver-Nelson .

Bledsoe, Jerry. 1998. Death Sentence: The True Story of Velma Barfield's Life, Crimes, and Punishment. Dutton: Boston, MA.

Carroll, Ginny. 1978. "Confessed poisoner awaits death." News and Observer, December 10: 1.

Charlotte Observer. 1984. "New Evidence: Velma Barfield's Sickness." Charlotte Observer, October 31: 12.

Journal Wire. 1984. "200 gather at funeral of Velma Barfield." Winston-Salem Journal, November 4: 35.

Margie Velma Barfield v. James C. Woodward, Secretary of Corrections; Nathan A. Rice,warden; Rufus Edmisten, Attorney General, Appellees. 1984. 748 F.2d 844 (US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, November 1).

Maxwell, Connie. 1984. "State executes Velma Barfield." Chapel Hill Newspaper, November 2: 1.

Monk, John, Sue Anne Pressley, and Gary Wright. 1984. "Velma Barfield executed by injection." Charlotte Observer, November 2: 1.

Ness and Observer. 1978. "Jailed woman eyed in more deaths." News and Observer, March 15: 1.

New York Times. 1984. "Relatives of murder victims urge no clemency for Carolina killer." New York Times, September 20: B15.

News and Observer. 1980. "Lawyer says he coached Mrs. Barfield." News and Observer, November 18: 17.

Pearsall, Chip. 1978. "Barfield jury calls for death." News and Observer, December 3: 1.

Stein, George. 1978. "Arsenic trail: Lumberton asks where it will end." Charlotte News, May 27: 1.

The Robesonian. 1969. "Parkton man succumbs to smoke inhalation." The Robesonian, April 22: 1.

Tilley, Greta. 1980. "She doesn't want to die." News and Record, September 21: 1.

Connect with Wondery http://wondery.com/shows http://facebook.com/WonderyMedia http://twitter.com/WonderyMedia http://instagram.com/WonderyMedia

Brief Summary

Velma Barfield, a serial killer, poisoned multiple victims, including family, and was executed in 1984 after being convicted of murder.

Key points

Homebody Confessions. Ash and Elena discuss their preference for home over vacations, revealing their comfort zones.
Velma's Guilt. Velma grapples with overwhelming guilt after marrying Thomas, questioning her choices.
Velma's Hysterectomy. A major turning point in Velma's life that led to emotional struggles.
Nervous Breakdown. Velma's long-standing stress culminates in a nervous breakdown, revealing deep-seated issues.
The Tragic Death of Thomas. Thomas dies from smoke inhalation after falling asleep with a lit cigarette, leaving Velma devastated.
Velma's Impulsive Marriage. Velma marries Jennings just months after her best friend's death, seeking comfort but feeling trapped.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I feel great so I'm really just waiting for that little line to disappear.

Elena expresses her hope for recovery from illness.

4:26WatchDec 18, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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