‘EVERYONE WHO MY MOTHER GETS CLOSE TO DIES...’
GOD-FEARING GRANNY WAS COLD-BLOODED SERIAL POISONER IN FRIDAY’S
“YOU know, it’s the saddest thing but it seems like everybody my mother ever gets close to dies,” Velma Barfield’s son Ronnie Burke once said.
“How could the good Lord allow this to happen to a faithful Christian like Velma Barfield?”
It was a question a lot of people wanted to ask. How indeed?
Even after the truth had come out and Barfield was waiting to become the first woman to be executed in America in 22 years, many couldn’t understand how she got there.
She was a grandmother, a churchgoer, and so devoutly religious that even world-famous pastor Reverend Billy Graham sang her praises.
For a time, she had the world so charmed that they were protesting for her freedom.
Barfield was born Velma Bullard in rural South Carolina but was raised near Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Her father was physically and sexually abusive – and her mum, Lillian, never intervened to stop.
Barfield claimed to have been tormented for years by her father who, looking from the outside in, seemed to be a doting, loving dad. But when the curtains were drawn, Barfield’s father would break into the room of the daughter he called “daddy’s girl”.
She only escaped her horrible situation by marrying Thomas Burke in 1949, and the couple had two children.
And they were happy – until Barfield had a hysterectomy and began suffering chronic back pain.
That led to a huge change in her behaviour, as well as an eventual drug addiction.
The marital problems at home began to build up, too.
Burke began drinking heavily and Velma’s complaints about that turned into bitter rows between the two.
On April 4, 1969, after Burke had passed out in a drunken stupor, Velma and the children left the house.
When they returned just hours later, the house was burned down and Burke was dead.
A few months later, her own home burned down, but it was insured.
Vomiting
In 1970, she married widower Jennings Barfield. Less than a year later, he died from heart complications.
Then, in 1974, Lillian Bullard, Barfield’s mum, showed symptoms of intense diarrhoea, vomiting and nausea.
But she recovered a few days later.
By Christmas the same year, Bullard once again experienced the illness – and died in hospital a few hours after being admitted on December 30.
In 1976, Velma began caring for the elderly, working for a couple called Montgomery and Dollie Edwards.
Montgomery fell ill and died on January 29, 1977.
A little over a month later, Dollie suffered identical symptoms to that of Barfield’s mother and died on March 1.
Velma later confessed to her death.
The following year, she took another caretaker job – for 76-year-old Record Lee, who had a broken leg.
On June 4, 1977, Lee’s husband, John Henry, had unbearable, racking pains in his stomach and chest and started vomiting and having diarrhoea.
He died soon after – and Velma also later confessed to his murder.
Fearing her boyfriend Rowland Stuart Taylor – a relative of Dollie Edwards – had found out she had been forging checks on his account, Barfield laced his beer and tea with an arsenicbased rat poison.
He died on February 3, 1978, while she was trying to “nurse” him