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That's BlueNile.com. Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were. What they did. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. And tonight, dear listener, a fresh Serial Killer expose. As I have mentioned in earlier episodes, even though the vast majority of serial killers are male...
There are many female serial killers. Few of them attain the fame and silver screen representation as this shows to date. Only female serial killer Eileen Vournos did. But tonight, I will do my part to change that, perhaps a little. For tonight, we stare into the abyss once more as we look into the case.
of the Death Row Grandma, Velma Barfield. Please check out my fan page on Facebook. Go to facebook.com slash the SK podcast for discussion, bonus content, and frequent interaction with me, your humble host.
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Remember, buying TSK merchandise helps keep this podcast alive, and your friends and family will envy your excellent taste in fashion while doing it. Imagine, if you will, dear listener, the friendly, rural Dixie state of North Carolina in the late 1970s. We are staying in the deeply religious county of Cumberland,
riding along with a large, sturdy man called Stuart Taylor. Next to him is his girlfriend. She's plump, bosomy, and 46 years old, and she's called Velma Barfield. Stuart is happy and looking forward to him and his sweetheart going to a revival meeting of the famous preacher Rex Humbard.
Although Stuart was not extremely religious, he knew that his girlfriend was a devoutly pious Christian, and she would love hearing the respected evangelist in person. Stuart was aware that there were contradictory aspects of Velma's personality. She was living out of wedlock with him, a move that had shocked her children. She also had a criminal record for forgery.
a fact that Taylor had discovered by accident, and led him to decide he did not want to legally marry her. However, as Christians say, it's a fallen world, and many people do not live up to their own ideals. Both Stuart and Velma were dressed to the nines.
attired in their Sunday best as they settled into chairs at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The Civic Center exists today as well, but under a new name as Cross Insurance Arena. It's a huge building.
"'able to house 6,206 seated guests, and as many as 9,500 during concerts, where many are standing. "'Their religious service had just begun when a wave of nausea rolled over Stuart. "'I'm feeling sick,' he whispered to Wilma. "'Maybe it's something I ate.'
Rex Humbard, who died as late as 2007, was a famous televangelist who had become a national religious icon with many prominent admirers, for example Elvis Presley.
Unlike later televangelists, Humbard stayed away from controversial political topics, famously stating that if Jesus was alive today, he would never get into politics. As Humbard preached his sermon regarding the virtues of Christ, Stuart began feeling worse. Fierce pains gripped his stomach.
"'I've got to go to the truck and lie down,' he told his sweetheart in a very weak voice. The fifty-six-year-old farmer rushed out of the packed room and into the coolness of the evening air. He opened up his truck and lay down on a seat. The feelings inside him grew worse. He could hardly think, as words were pushed out of his mind by sheer, awful, physical pain."
Still miserable with nausea when the meeting was finished and Velma got into the car with him, Stuart lay back and writhed in pain as she drove them home. "'Stop,' he said at one point, his skin grey and clammy with sweat. She pulled over to the side of the road. A pale and sweaty Stuart stumbled out of the vehicle and vomited onto the dirt.'
At home, he was in too much pain to sleep. In the wee hours of the morning, Velma phoned his pregnant daughter, Alice Storms, to tell her of her father's disturbing condition. It was Alice's husband, Bill, who answered the phone. Velma apologized for waking him up, but said she thought it important that Stuart's daughter know that he was frighteningly sick.
Later, Alice phoned to ask Velma about Taylor's illness. They both concurred it was probably just the flu. Still later, Velma visited one of her boyfriend's best friends, a man named Sonny Johnson. "'Stewart's sick and he wants to see you,' an obviously distressed Velma told him. Johnson rushed over to see his friend.
He found an ashen-faced, weakened Stuart Taylor lying in bed with a washbasin beside it to throw up in. "'Could you take care of the pigs for me until I'm over the flu?' Stuart requested. His friend assured him that he would. Stuart's condition got worse. His chest, stomach and arms were all wracked by pain and he vomited incessantly.'
He felt like he was on fire from inside. The next day, Velma drove her terribly sick lover to the hospital. While the doctors examined and tried to treat the man, she discussed what she knew of his medical history. She was not well informed about it, but she knew he was a heavy drinker. After answering the physician's questions, Velma called Alice.
She, in turn, phoned her brother Billy, who went to the hospital. Together with Velma, he heard the doctor say his father's dreadful condition was gastritis. The doctor prescribed medicine and told Velma she could take Stuart home that night, which she did. Sonny Johnson again visited his friend at the latter's large, white, steeple-topped farmhouse that afternoon.
Stewart had finally improved. He still looked van, but was sitting up in bed, chatting and smoking. He asked Johnson to talk to him from the doorway because he didn't want to present Smith his flu. The next day was a Friday. At around 8 p.m., Stewart had taken a drastic turn for the worse. Velma phoned John McPherson, a neighbor and friend.
"'Steward needs an ambulance,' she told him in a voice that sounded full of fear. Macpherson called an ambulance, then drove to the house himself. He found Stuart Taylor looking terrible. The room had a nauseating odor because the sick man had suffered an attack of diarrhea in his bed.'
The arms and legs of the sweaty and chalk-faced man thrashed around, and he made incoherent moaning noises. From time to time, he screamed. Velma had surrounded the bed with chairs, their backs to the bed to prevent him from falling out of it. When finally the rescue squad arrived, they worked quickly and efficiently to bundle him into the ambulance. Its siren veiled as it raced to the hospital.
His concerned lover followed in Stuart's own truck. Doctors did what they could and rushed to his side, but Stuart Taylor died one hour after arriving at the hospital. In the waiting room were Stuart's children, Alice and Billy, and the girlfriend who had nursed him through the illness, Velma Barfield. The doctor said he was puzzled by the man's sudden death and suggested an autopsy.
Both Alice and Billy asked Velma what she thought. If you don't do it, she said, you'll always wonder. Stuart Taylor's adult kids told the physician to perform an autopsy. Velma Barfield and her adult son Ronnie Burke sat with Stuart's grieving family at his funeral.
Velma placed a comforting arm around Alice and said the words so commonly repeated under such circumstances by believers in an afterlife. He's in a far better place. As Ronnie left the service, he looked at another person there and observed, "'You know, it's the saddest thing, but it seems like everybody my mother ever gets close with dies.'
As a Christian person would ask, how could the Christian God allow such tragedy to befall a faithful Christian like Velma Barfield? Earlier that same Sunday, a phone call had awakened Lumberton Police Detective Benson Phillips at his home. The caller was weeping and babbling.
The detective could not easily make out her slurred, shrill words. He was able to gather from some of the sounds the following. Murderer. I know who did it. You've got to stop her. You've got to stop her. The sleepy police officer sighed. Just what he needed to start his day. Damn crank call, he thought.
He had heard of no murder in the small town of Lumberton, and he would have if one had been committed, since he was the one who investigated all homicides. However, he suggested the caller call him at the station before he hung up the phone. When he got to the station, he found, as he expected, no homicide reports. The nutty morning caller faded from his thoughts as he got on with his day's work.
Then she did phone. According to Jerry Bledsoe's book, Death Sentence, this time the caller, a woman, was calmer, more coherent. She still didn't want to give details, but Phillips gradually coaxed them from her. She revealed that she was calling from South Carolina, but she couldn't give her name. She didn't want anybody to know that she had called. The man who had been murdered...
she said, was the boyfriend of Velma Barfield, who had killed him, just as she had killed her own mother. The caller admitted she could offer no proof, but she was sure, too, that Velma's boyfriend and mother weren't the only ones. Too many other people close to Velma had died, including two elderly people Velma had worked for, but she didn't know their names.
When Philip pressed for evidence, she could offer none. "'How do you know about all this?' Philip asked. "'Because,' she said, "'Velma is my sister.'" Philip was utterly baffled by this strange caller. He did not trust her, but then again he could not quite dismiss her out of hand. He had to do some checking to make sure.
He called the Lumberton Hospital and inquired if anyone had died over the weekend. Yes, he was told. A man called Stuart Taylor had indeed died. It seemed to be a death by natural causes. Phillips immediately asked if an autopsy had been ordered and performed. Regional medical examiner Dr. Bob Andrews had performed an autopsy but did not yet have all the results back.
Phillips was intrigued and disturbed, but also in an awkward position. He ascertained that Taylor had been brought to the hospital from the countryside near St. Paul's. That would put any investigation under the jurisdiction of the sheriff, and as such, Phillips didn't have jurisdiction. He had no responsibility. Still...
He made a note to call his old friend Wilbur Lovett at the Sheriff's Department on the following Monday to tell him about it. In the meantime, Dr. Andrews, who knew nothing of the detective's suspicions or those nagging doubts that Phillips related to Sheriff Lovett, was puzzling over the results of his autopsy.
Stuart Taylor had seemingly died of gastroenteritis. The diagnosis is also known as infectious diarrhea and includes inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that involves the stomach and small intestine. Symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain. It was odd for a man as sturdy and healthy as Taylor...
To be killed by that alone. And Dr. Andrews determined to look further. Finding an inexplicable abnormality in some liver tissue, he put some of Taylor's tissue samples into plastic bags. Then he mailed it to North Carolina's chief medical examiner and asked for more tests.
Dr. Andrews was still waiting for the results of those tests when he spoke with a distraught Alice Storms. Her father had been so hale and hearty. She was angry and frustrated. She had to know. So Dr. Andrews phoned North Carolina's chief medical examiner, Paige Hudson. Hudson did not know about the tissues Andrews had sent for examination.
However, she asked Andrews for details about the death. Andrews told him about the girlfriend, Velma Barfield, who had brought Stuart Taylor to the hospital, and described Taylor's symptoms. Now, dear listener, Hudson instantly grasped the situation. I quote, "'Where'd she get the arsenic, Bob?' he asked."
Soon authorities took a second look at the death certificates of the several people close to Velma Barfield who had died. Even when an autopsy had been performed, no special test had been done for poison. Rather, with stunning regularity, those she knew expired of gastroenteritis. The investigators were pretty certain they were dealing not only with a murderer, but
But a serial murderer. The police always prefer it, if they can get a confession. In order to get one from Velma, they decided to surprise her. They would pick her up for questioning on one of the multitude of bad checks she had written. Then confront her with Stuart Taylor's death. Since the checks had been written in Lumberton, Benson Phillips would question her.
Sheriff Lovett and homicide investigator Al Parnell were present as well. They went over the checks, and this was well-ploughed territory for Barfield, and she appeared nonplussed. Then Phillips began discussing her poor boyfriend, Stuart Taylor, who had so recently and so tragically died. "'Do you know he was killed by arsenic?' the detective asked.'
The plump grandmother appeared stunned by this news, so Phillips pressed on. He asked for details about their relationship. He was especially interested in knowing if Barfield had reason to be angry with Taylor. "'Y'all think I poisoned Stuart, don't you?' she gasped in outrage. The two of them were in love, she maintained, and planning to wed. She had nothing to gain by killing him."
It was dreadful for them to suggest such a horrible thing. Why, she was the one who had nursed the poor man through his illness. She was the one who had rushed him to the hospital. And now they were trying to throw dirt on all her good work. Well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Would you like to take a lie detector test? Lovett asked. Certainly. She had nothing at all to hide.
They told her a polygraph examination would be arranged and that she was free to go. Just as she got up to exit, Parnell sprung on her. Well, ma, you know, this can go all the way back to your mother, she glared at the investigator, made no remark and left with an angry sigh.
That Saturday morning, Ronnie Burke was visiting his in-laws when his mother, Velma Barfield, phoned their house and asked to speak to her son. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you.
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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night.
For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Ronnie Berg was a 26-year-old man with multiple responsibilities. He had a wife and a three-year-old son.
He worked full-time and went to college full-time at Pembroke State University, where he sought a business administration degree. He would receive it in just a couple of months. Burke was often pressed for time and sleep, but he wanted to become the first member of his family to earn a four-year college degree, partly because he knew how much that would please his mother. For quite a while, Burke had been concerned for his mother,
She had suffered far more than her share of grief through the deaths of so many people she cared about. He also knew that she was taking more drugs than the doctors had prescribed for her. On the phone, his mother sounded overwrought. The police had taken her to the station, she told him. Ronnie was not surprised, but he was very disappointed.
He was saddened and frustrated and thought his mother was back to writing bad checks to cover drug bills. Then a shock went through him. They wanted to talk about Stuart, his mother informed him. They said he was poisoned. They seemed to think I had something to do with it. Burke was sure some cop had messed up. He knew that Taylor had died five weeks previously and his mother had been devastated.
He did not know who might have poisoned the man, but he knew it could not possibly be his own mother. So he told his mother that he would be going home soon, and she should meet him there. This was a frightful mistake, but Burke was certain it could be straightened out. The cops would learn they were barking up the wrong tree. He was anxious to comfort his mother, and let her know things would work out as they should in the end.
"'Burke, his wife, and their toddler, dwelled in a modest duplex on the outskirts of Lumberton, North Carolina. "'When Velma arrived there, he comforted her just like he had intended to. "'He did not believe she would need a lawyer. "'Attorneys are terribly expensive, after all, and he and his mother were people of very limited means.'
The police would realize soon that she could not have had anything to do with Stuart's death, and they would just drop it. There was no need to worry, he assured her. That Monday, Burke was at work, when a woman phoned. She would not say who she was, but told him, I'm a friend of your mother's. Their conversation went like this. I've heard she's going to be arrested today, she said. I thought you ought to know.
"'Are you sure?' he answered. "'Yes. They're going to charge her with Stuart's death. I know someone who works in the sheriff's department.' It did not seem possible that the police could go so wrong, Burke thought. Yet his mother had told him that they suspected her. In movies, innocent people are framed by the police, but surely he figured that sort of thing does not occur in real life.'
Burke told his supervisor he had to leave to attend a family emergency. He drove to the Lumberton Police Department and talked to Wilbur Lovett. They were not planning to arrest her that day, the sheriff told him, but they did consider her a suspect. He could not disclose why, and Burke left Lovett's office even more outraged and upset than he had been when he walked in. From there...
He drove to the home in which his mother was living. Velma Barfield resided with Mamie Warwick, a senior citizen who allowed Velma to live rent-free in exchange for her doing some household chores. Burke found his mother taking a nap. She was in bed as he spoke to her, telling her that the cops still suspected her in Stuart Taylor's death. Velma said she could not possibly do anything like that,
Then she started sobbing. Finally, she stopped crying and told her son something he had never expected to hear. Her words were soft, almost a whisper, yet unmistakably clear. I only meant to make him sick, she said. And with that, Burke felt like the floor had been cut out from under him.
So, it had been an accident. But his mother had caused it. She would have to go to the police and explain. Velma wept quietly as she sat in the passenger seat of her son's car, being driven to the sheriff's department. Burke could not be present while she was questioned. She said she did not want a lawyer. Dejected but certain he had done the right thing, Burke phoned his sister to break the sad news to her.
They agreed to meet at her home. In times of crisis, families need to be together, and Velma's sisters, Arlene and Faye, would eventually drive in to join their niece and nephew. The phone rang and Burke spoke to investigator Al Parnell. It's worse than we thought, Parnell said. Burke was dumbstruck.
wondering how it could possibly be any worse than his mother accidentally killing her boyfriend in a futile attempt to cause him illness so she could claim insurance money. There are other people. Other people she's killed, Parnell told a stunned Ronnie Burke. Parnell went on to explain that Velma Barfield had confessed to killing two people to whom she had been a paid live-in caregiver.
and she had killed her own mother, Burke's grandmother, Lily Bullard. When Burke repeated what he had been told to his sister and aunts, a pandemonium of tears and screaming broke out in the little house. Burke recalled a loving mother who had fed and clothed him, bandaged his cuts and wiped his runny nose.
Been a caring mother for him and his sister, taken him to church and taught him right from wrong. Disciplined him and encouraged him always to do his very best. That image was impossible to reconcile with the poisoner of four people. So, dear listener, who was this woman? How did this apparently sweet old lady become a serial killer?
and a killer whose victims died in extreme, prolonged agony. On the 29th of October, 1932, Margie Velma Bullard was born. Her parents, siblings and friends would always call her Velma. She was the second child and first daughter of farmer Murphy Bullard and his homemaker wife, Lily. They would have a total of nine children.
When Velma was born, the Bullards lived in an unpainted wooden house in rural South Carolina. The home had neither electricity nor running water. Unlike many farm families, they did not even have an outhouse. Rather, the necessary was taken care of with chamber pots and trips to the woods.
Murphy's parents lived in the home and so did his sister, Susan Ella, who was disabled because an arm and a leg had been shriveled by polio. As the Great Depression worsened, Murphy Bullard found it impossible to eke out a living from the sale of the cotton and tobacco he grew. He sought and found work as a logger in a sawmill owned by Clarence Bunche.
Through Bunch, Murphy was able to move his family into a tiny house closer to town. Here, his third child would be born. Then Murphy got a job in Fayetteville Textile Mill and moved his family back into his parents' home. His father died shortly thereafter, and his mother followed her husband to the graveyard in less than a year's time.
The Bullard family was organized along traditional patriarchal lines. Murphy Bullard was the undisputed king of whatever shabby castle his family occupied, and Lily was the submissive wife. He was an easily angered and hard-drinking man when he did not get his way, and a strict, unbending disciplinarian with his many children.
He did not spare the rod or, in this case, the strap, and the bullered youngsters often had smarting backsides. One thing that especially galled him was a kid with a smart mouth, and both his oldest child, his son Olive, and the daughter who had been born next, Velma, were known in the family for their tendency to give dad backtalk.
However, Olive believed that Velma did not get punished nearly as often or as severely as he did, which led to a lot of conflict between the two youngsters. He was convinced that their father favored Velma. She was just as convinced that their mother favored Olive. Velma disliked her mother's submissive attitude towards their father.
Decades later, she wrote in her memoirs, Woman on Death Row, Every time Velma got a beating from her dad,
She was at least as upset with the passive mother, who saw and did nothing as she was with the aggressive dad who actually inflicted it. Lily Bullard believed she had to step carefully in her own household to deal with her husband's temper. She herself was frequently in danger of being on the receiving end of Murphy's fists because he was a hysterically jealous man.
He was also himself flagrantly unfaithful, which inevitably added to family tensions. A seven-year-old Velma started school in the fall of 1939. At first, she loved it. A smart girl, she got good grades and teacher's compliments. School also offered a respite from her crowded home life, her father's trap and her often-ill mother's gripes and demands.
However, the child soon began having difficulty with her schoolmates. Velma did not wear the new, store-bought pretty dresses that so many other girls did. Her shoes were sturdy and worn. Other children sometimes made fun of her garments and of the plain lunches of cornbread with a side of meat that she brought. Velma began sneaking out of sight of the other kids to eat.
Then she began pilfering coins from her father's pants pocket to buy candies from a little store that was across the street from the school. The child also stole $80 from an elderly neighbor. Murphy Bullard found out and laid the strap on long and hard, apparently curing her of her desire to steal at least during her childhood since there are no other reports of such youthful indiscretions.
As Velma grew, she was assigned more and more chores. She had to help out on the farm, and care for her younger brothers and sisters. She resented the amount of work she had to do, but did not openly rebel, out of fear of angering her stern dad. "'I really never felt like my mama or daddy ever wanted me, except for the work I did,' she would later say."
I always felt that they just really wanted me to be a slave. Not everything was bad in the youngster's life, however. Her father could occasionally be loving with his kids and lead them in ventures that were lots of fun. Murphy Bullard often organized baseball games with his children and others. Velma was often the only girl in the game, and she enjoyed playing shortstop.
She also liked swimming when her dad led the kids on excursions to a local pond. Despite his harsh discipline, Velma was often happy to be a daddy's girl. A ten-year-old Velma was walking through the business district of Fayetteville with her father. She admired a dress in a department store window. It was covered with pink flowers and had a wide ruffle at the hem.
She told her father how much she loved that dress and, to her very pleasant surprise, he marched straight in and bought it for her. Sadly, later in life, Velma may have become a daddy's girl in the most negative possible way.
She told a reporter from the village voice that her father had entered her bedroom, and in a hushed but stern voice told her to be very quiet. Then he removed her nightie and pulled down his own pants. Without much warning, he mounted the scared little girl and forced his penis inside her virgin vagina, causing severe pain and lasting psychological damage.
Prior to that, there had been confusing episodes where he put his hand up under her dress and caressed her buttocks or slipped a finger under her panties to touch her privates. Being an innocent young child, she was not sure if such activities was sexual or not. Now, dear listener, please remember that a key characteristic of serial killers is pathological lying.
We have no evidence of Velma's father raping her, other than her own testimony and several of Velma's brothers and sisters furiously disputed her claim that she was an incest victim. While her family had many of the traits characteristic of incestuous families, such as a severe power imbalance between husband and wife and the father who drank heavily,
It is not possible to say with certainty if her accusation was true or false. Velma certainly could lie and was a champion manipulator throughout much of her life. A claim of sexual abuse can be an easy way to play upon people's sympathies. In 1945, Murphy Bullard decided he was tired of working in the mill and he wanted to go back to full-time farming.
The economy had drastically improved in America, especially since now after World War II. He bought more acres and, with that purchase, a small but far more modern home for his family. After only a year, he realized he could not support his large brood on what he could make from his crops, so he returned to supplementing farm income with work in a mill.
Later, he got a job at a textile plant in the town of Red Springs and moved his family there. The house they moved into lacked the modern conveniences of the ones they had lived in for the last couple of years. Velma was now in high school. She no longer got the good grades she had achieved in elementary school. However, she found one activity that she enjoyed at Parkton Public School
and that, surprisingly, was basketball. Although it was not standard in that era, Pachtner had a girls' team, and Velma found the fast-moving sport a good way to work off energy. Then her mother insisted that Velma quit the team. Lily had recently given birth to twins, and she needed her eldest daughter's help with housework more than she ever had.
Velma was terribly disappointed and saddened by her mother's demand. Meanwhile, Velma and a high school boy named Thomas Burke had developed a mutual crush. A year older than she, Thomas was a thin-faced, jug-eared, dark-haired and lanky youth with a tender streak and a good sense of humor. The two found each other regularly at school to make friends and flirt.
No dating would be allowed until Velma was sixteen. Her father told her when she expressed a wish to begin seeing Thomas outside of school. Then her sixteenth birthday rolled around, but her father seemed to have changed his mind. He still did not want his daughter going out. After much pleading, Velma got Murphy to agree to her dating.
He placed firm restrictions on her, saying she usually had to double date and always had to be home by 10 p.m. on the dot. Although she chafed under these restrictions, Velma went along with them. She did not have much choice if she was to avoid her father's wrath. And so, dear listener, ends part one of the tale of the Death Row Grandma.
We'll be right back.
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The next episode of the Serial Killer podcast will air on the 15th of February 2018. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. Doing this podcast is a labor of love. Also, this podcast has been able to bring serial killer stories to life thanks to you, dear listener.
and especially those of you that support me via Patreon. You can do so at theserialkillerpodcast.com slash donate. There are especially a few patrons that have stayed loyal for a long time. Maud, Wendy, Thomas, Craig, Charlotte, Sarah, Tommy, and Brandon. Your monthly contributions really help these podcasts to stay alive.
and you have my deepest gratitude. As always, thank you, dear listener, for listening, and feel free to leave a review on your favorite podcast app or website, and please do subscribe to the show if you enjoy it. Thank you, good night, and good luck.
