The defense
burial.
And now it’s even worse for her: Barrow will be back on trial for a second time starting Monday.
“On a technicality he gets a new trial,” McGuire fumed in an interview.
The Florida Supreme Court found Barrow, 57, is entitled to a retrial on a firstdegree murder charge because his jury was denied an opportunity during deliberations to hear conflicting witness testimony read back.
“What happened to Meichelle’s rights?” asked her mother.
She hopes the next jury will reject his claim there’s no proof of a crime because his 36-year-old neighbor left town.
“He made her disappear,” McGuire said, pointing to allegations Barrow once confessed to bludgeoning Tener with a rock and dumping her remains in a canal. “He is responsible. There’s enough evidence and there’s no getting by it.”
Barrow denies beating the woman to death, but the prosecutors again will call on their key witness, Barrow’s ex-girlfriend, to testify that he told her in graphic detail how he committed the crime. McRoberts told the last trial.
Tener then threatened to call police and Barrow snapped, pummeling his neighbor with a rock. He put her inside a garbage bag, placed the bag in the van and drove west to a canal, according to the prosecutor.
There, he beat Tener with a sledgehammer and tightened a plastic zip tie around her neck, breaking it, before allegedly tossing the body into the water so it would be consumed by alligators, McRoberts said.
The corpse was never found because shortly after her disappearance the canal was twice flushed into the ocean to prevent flooding from hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, according to the prosecution. the jury in
Barrow told police that he and his nephew went on a beer run with Tener on the night of the party. He also said she came to his trailer at 11 p.m. and again at midnight looking for her son and LaSalle. Barrow said he was drunk and it was the last time he saw Tener, according to court records.
In 2015, when Barrow was serving as his own lawyer, he suggested Tener returned to Ohio, where she lived before moving to Florida in late 2003.
“The alleged victim could be alive and well,” Barrow wrote in a court document. “After all, if someone wants to hide ... how are you going to find them?”
Barrow is now represented by defense attorney Peter Grable, who was appointed by the court.
He recently tried to discredit the DNA evidence by obtaining an independent review of the blood stains. But the defense expert confirmed all of the findings of the prosecution’s DNA expert.
This leaves the defense to try to raise doubts about how Tener’s DNA wound up in the van. In the first trial, Barrow’s previous lawyer argued Tener had ridden in the van before and just a few drops of blood were found, which didn’t match the allegation that Tener was violently beaten.
LaSalle, however, testified she was at a car wash with Barrow and witnessed him scrubbing the seats inside the van. She said he told her he had used a towel to wipe Tener’s blood off the passenger seat.
The defense at the first trial attacked LaSalle’s credibility and conflicting statements over the years. She had never told the cops about the car wash incident, for example.
LaSalle also admitted she had a bad memory because of mixing alcohol and Xanax at the time Barrow supposedly confessed the crime to her. And testified that she once filed a domestic violence complaint against Barrow for pushing her into a railing, the same railing Tener allegedly hit her head on.
Barrow’s lawyer asked the jury to disregard her testimony as that of a jealous drug addict who had once threatened to break Tener’s kneecaps if she found her sleeping with Barrow.
Among other doubts raised by the defense: Despite the allegations of a vicious attack on Tener, no one in the community of about 500 homes reported seeing or hearing anything.