Five Women Serial Killer Profiles Read Online Free PDF Page B

over the next couple of day’s Rowland appeared to be getting better, much to Billy and Alice’s relief. He had started sitting up in bed, and his stomach pains were easing but then all of a sudden he took a turn for the worse. He was raked with agonizing pain and was incessantly vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. Velma called for an ambulance and alerted Billy and Alice. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, on February 3rd, 1978, Rowland was dead.
    The doctor’s were puzzled by Rowland’s death and asked permission from Billy and Alice to hold an autopsy. Billy and Alice agreed.
    Velma and her son Ronnie sat with Rowland’s grieving family at his funeral. Velma sat comforting Alice and tried consoling her by saying , “He’s in a far better place now.”
    Velma, following Rowland’s death , moved in with an elderly citizen, Mamie Warwick, who in exchange for help around the house allowed Velma to live rent-free.
    Meanwhile, the Lumberton Police had received an anonymous tip-off that Velma had poisoned Rowland and others, as well. The police began an investigation. They first contacted the hospital and asked to be kept informed of the results of the autopsy. They then began looking into Velma’s background.
    The autopsy tests were finally completed, and the conclusion was that the cause of Rowland’s Taylor's death was arsenic poisoning.
    Velma Barfield was arrested for Rowland’s Taylor's murder. During questioning, she admitted to murdering her mother Lillian Bullard and two people she cared for : Dollie Edwards and John Henry Lee. She denied murdering Rowland saying she only “meant to make him sick.”

    For Velma’s children, especially Ronnie, it was a terrible shock. Their mother , who had clothed and fed them, bandaged their cuts, wiped their runny noses, helped them so much with her support when they had been at school, and had conscientiously escorted them to church, and taught them right from wrong was the poisoner of four people.
    The case was quickly picked up by the newspapers and TV stations, and a media circus began adding to the agony of Velma’s children.

Trial
    Velma’s trial was booked to take place at the Robeson County Court, North Carolina but because of all the pretrial publicity, it was moved to an adjoining county. The trial began in the autumn of 1978, in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. She was being tried solely for the first degree murder of Rowland Stewart Taylor.
    The prosecutor, Joe Britt, had become known as the “world’s deadliest prosecutor." He was a passionate advocate of the death penalty. During a seventeen month period in which he had prosecuted thirteen murder trials, he had won the death penalty in all ; a record in court circles which attracted Newsweek to write an article about him. He was determined to win the death sentence for Velma, as well.
    Velma's lawyer, Bob Jacobson, had never before tried a capital punishment penalty case. He had the difficult task of trying to get a lesser charge for Velma of second-degree murder and then the death sentence would not be an issue. The defense claimed that Velma had only meant to make Rowland ill so she would buy time to repay the funds she had stolen from him without him realizing she had done so and that her thinking was badly impaired by her long-term addiction to prescription drugs.
    The prosecutor argued to the judge that because the information about her other victims was crucial to showing her intent in the case of Rowland Taylor , it should be admitted as evidence. The defense argued that this was prejudicial as Velma was being tried solely for Taylor’s death. The Judge, Henry A. McKinnon, decided that the evidence connecting Velma Barfield to the deaths of Dottie Edwards, John Lee, and Lillie Bullard, her mother, should be admitted.
    As soon as the Judge made this , ruling Bob Jacobson knew Velma and he were in trouble, and he made the decision to let Velma take the stand to explain her muddled thought