Cold case files
Read our cold case file and see if you correctly predicted the killer’s identity…
Gayle Barrus’s life revolved around her three children. A kind, compassionate woman, she had originally trained as a nursing assistant. But when that career failed to make ends meet, Gayle had started working in two bars near her Michigan home in Battle Creek – The Beer Keg and The Redwood Inn
– to give them a comfortable life. The 30-yearold single mum stood at just 5ft 2in tall, an attractive brunette with hazel eyes and a good work ethic. A reliable employee, she never failed to show up for a shift.
But her real focus was her family. In 1988, her children were 13, 12 and 10, just starting out in life. She was no doubt looking forward to watching them grow from teenagers to young adults, graduate, perhaps getting married and having children of their own.
Only, these were things that Gayle wouldn’t live to see.
The barmaid was last seen alive between 3am and 4am – on 9 October 1988 – at Speed’s
Koffee Shop on 1425 West Michigan Avenue. She’d left with a dark-haired man, but when she didn’t turn up for work – and more worrying still, had failed to contact her family, it was obvious that something had happened. Nothing would have kept her from returning home to her children…
The police were informed of her disappearance, and missing person posters emblazoned with Gayle’s face went up in the local area in the hope of shedding light on the fate of the young mum.
An agonising 16 days passed until there was news. A partially decomposed body had been discovered by walkers on River Road in Emmett Township on 25 October 1988, some five miles from Gayle’s home.
An autopsy revealed the
victim had been raped and stabbed. Devastatingly, the body was later identified as that of Gayle. All hope her family had clung to was extinguished. Their mother had suffered a brutal end.
THE SUSPECTS
The police began their investigations, and as various lines of inquiry were pursued, suspicion fell on two men.
The first was a criminal named Roger Allen Plato, a suspect in another crime that had taken place in the Battle Creek area, just a month before Gayle had disappeared, this time the kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman.
Plato had recently moved to the area from Houston, Texas, and had been released from jail in July of that same year after serving time on theft charges.
He’d supposedly told his family he’d changed, that he’d found a girl he wanted to marry and settle down with. But had he really turned over a new leaf?
When officers went to speak to Plato, then aged 24, about the first incident – and other suspected sexual assaults – things escalated. Detectives attempted to question him in a car park of a supermarket and he reportedly became aggressive.
A scuffle broke out and Plato tried to flee. He got 20ft away from officers, before Detective Al Tolf shot him fatally in the back of the head.
Despite him dying days before Gayle’s body had been found, police believed he could
‘He had respect for women. I think the police got the wrong person’
have been involved in her rape and murder.
Yet his family always protested his innocence in any sexual assaults or crimes. ‘I don’t believe he raped that woman,’ Plato’s fiancé, Vonda Dice, told a local newspaper. ‘He had respect for women. To him, rape was totally disgusting. I think the police totally got the wrong person.’
With their primary suspect dead and cremated, investigators turned their attention to Plato’s friend, Richard Compton. He refused to comply with police and remained tight-lipped when questioned about Gayle Barrus’s murder.
Despite their suspicions, the police were unable to prove anything and the case was reluctantly closed.
Gayle’s children were left to grow up without a mother, answers or justice.
The blood in the vial, stashed away forgotten for so many years, proved to be vital evidence. It matched a sample taken from Gayle’s body at the time her body was recovered.
In February 2021, with that one piece of proof, all suspicions were confirmed and all doubt removed. Roger Allen Plato had raped and killed the mum-of-three.
‘He is our killer,’ Marshall said. ‘If we were to submit charges today, it would be open homicide against Plato and a charge of criminal sexual conduct.’
Whilst Gayle’s family wouldn’t get a conviction, at
‘We are thankful that she can finally rest in peace’
least they finally had closure. After years – decades, even – of wondering, they finally knew who had killed their mother.
The police believed that Gayle was seen arguing with two men – Plato and Compton – not far from where her body was found. They also believe that while Compton may not have killed Gayle, he did witness her assault and murder.
‘Plato’s DNA had eluded BCPD, because he was shot and killed by a detective two days before my mother’s body was found. He was subsequently cremated,’ said James, who now lives in Dayton, Ohio, and has a girlfriend, Odessa L Mcdermott Angilella.
‘DNA [testing] was still in its infancy in 1988… and not very well understood, but it is very well understood today, and I knew that we would reach this milestone one day! A weight has been lifted off our shoulders.’
On 21 March this year, James, and his siblings Mitch and Mandy, invited friends and family to a gathering at Gayle’s grave to ‘pay respects and “celebrate” the closing of her case’.
There, James’s niece read the following prayer, ‘Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this beautiful day! We are grateful to be together. I can only imagine how much it would mean to Gayle to know that her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, along with other family and friends, have gathered today to honour her. We are thankful that she can finally rest in peace.’
After so long, that was all the family had wanted.