Jerry Bledsoe - Death Sentence. The True Story of Velma Barfields Life, Crimes, and Punishment

T o millions of travelers passing through on Interstate 95, the primary New York-to-Florida highway, Robeson County, North Carolina, seems to be little more than piney woods, marshes and endless fields of corn, tobacco and soybeans. They have no reason to know that they are passing through one of the most unusual counties in America.

For nearly two centuries Robesons population has been about evenly divided between blacks, whites and Lumbee Indians. Until the 1960s, doctors offices, and train and bus stations in the county had three separate waiting rooms, designated by race, and movie theaters had three different seating areas. Long-simmering racial tensions and high rates of poverty and unemployment gave Robeson an unwanted distinction. It was one of the most violent counties in America.

Until 1974 the countys murder rate was among the highest per capita in the country year after year. Nobody seemed to know what to do about it until a lanky Robeson County native named Joe Freeman Britt became the county prosecutor.

Britt was offended by lawlessness, especially murder, and he was certain that the people of his county were fed up with it as well. He mounted an offensive against murderers that came to be known as Britts Blitz. In a twenty-three-month period he won death sentences for more people than resided on the death rows of two-thirds of the states that embraced capital punishment.

At six feet six inches tall, Britt was a man of imposing presence and immense fervor. Many viewed him as an avenging angel, and he sometimes literally played out the role, swooping from the heavens onto crime scenes in his own helicopter.

By 1978, as he entered the final year of his first full term in office, Britt had won twenty-two death sentences and sent twenty-one murderers to death row without losing a case. And the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed him the worlds deadliest prosecutor.

To many, Britt was a hero. One of his admirers and staunch supporters was a young family man in Lumberton, Ronnie Burke, who had lived his entire life in Robeson County. Ronnie firmly believed that a person who with forethought maliciously killed another should pay with his, or her, own life. But he couldnt have conceived that Britt soon would put his beliefs to a test almost beyond endurance.

Ronnie was married with a three-year-old son, struggling to hold a full-time job while carrying a complete load of college courses. In just two months he was to receive a degree in business from Pembroke State University. He was twenty-six, and although he was a good student who consistently got high grades, getting through college hadnt been easy. Yet he was determined to become the first on either side of his family to earn a four-year degree.

Monday, March 13, started off sunny and breezy, the air holding the balmy promise of spring. Yellow bells and jonquils were in bloom, and fruit trees were already blossoming. Ronnie had crammed all of his classes into the morning hours so he could work afternoons. After finishing his last class, he hurried to his car, a gray, Navy surplus Dodge Dart station wagon, to drive the fifteen miles from Pembroke to Robeson Technical Institute in Lumberton. Ronnie had started college at Pembroke only to drop out after his first year. Later he enrolled at Robeson Tech to study business and had been valedictorian of his class before returning to Pembroke for the final year of his education. Now he worked at Robeson Tech in the student financial aid office.

As he drove to the campus, a collection of modern brown brick buildings in a greensward alongside Interstate 95, Ronnie was looking forward to the day when he wouldnt have to be rushing to class by seven each morning, when he wouldnt have to study until after midnight each night, when he could get more than a few hours sleep at a time. He could picture himself in cap and gown, striding across the stage to receive his diploma. His mother, he knew, would be in the audience. It was she, after all, who had always stressed the importance of education, who had always pushed him to study hard and make something of himself.

Ronnie had only been at work a short time when the telephone rang about two. Im a friend of your mothers, said a woman who didnt identify herself. Ive heard shes going to be arrested today. I thought you ought to know.

Startled, Ronnie asked, Are you sure?

Yes, theyre going to charge her with Stuarts death.

How do you know?

I know somebody who works in the sheriffs department.

Despite his shock, Ronnie hadnt been without warning that something like this could happen. Now he realized that he shouldnt have been so quick to dismiss what his mother had told him two days earlier.

He had been visiting his in-laws Saturday morning when his mother called, nervous and upset. The police had come the evening before and asked her to go downtown with them, she told him. The first thing that popped into Ronnies mind was that she had been writing bad checks again. She was dependent on prescription drugs and, when they ran out, she had to have them whether she had money or not.

What did they want? he asked, though he thought he knew.

They wanted to talk about Stuart, she said, surprising him. They said he was poisoned. They seemed to think I had something to do with it.

Her words stunned Ronnie. Poisoned? Stuart Taylor, the man his mother had planned to marry in May, had been dead for five weeks. He had been a neighbor of Ronnies boss, the president of Robeson Tech.

Ronnie was all too aware that his mother had problemslots of thembut it was inconceivable that she could deliberately harm somebody. Not Velma Barfield. She made her living caring for others. She had been at Stuarts side throughout his sickness, had tended him lovingly and had been lauded by his children for it. Clearly, this had to be some kind of misunderstanding.

Just calm down, he told her. Ill be home in a little while. Come on over and well talk about it then.

Ronnie lived in a duplex apartment owned by one of his professors off a country road near Lumberton. He took his mother for a walk along that roadSnake Road, it was called, because of the way it wound through the flat countryside. She told him a police officer had stirred her from sleep late Friday afternoonshe worked at a nursing home from eleven at night until seven in the morning and slept during the day. He had told her that he needed her to come downtown to the sheriffs department to talk about some checks.

It was true, she acknowledged, she had recently written checks without enough money in the bank to cover them. She didnt know what else to do. She had to have her medicine and she thought she could get the money to the bank in time. Ronnie shook his head at these familiar excuses. But then, she said, the officers had changed direction, telling her that they knew Stuart had been poisonedthey mentioned arsenic.