Death Sentence Read Free Page A

would be kept on his mother through the night.
    Ronnie and Pam agreed that they would meet at her apartment later to await Parnell’s call, and Ronnie left to tell his wife, Joanna,* what had happened. As he drove home, trying to grapple with the events of the past few hours, he was struck by a sudden, chilling thought: the man Wilbur Lovett had gone upstairs to confer with was none other than Joe Freeman Britt. That was when the real consequences of his actions hit him, and the irony was overwhelming. He had spent years struggling to save his mother only to turn her over to somebody who would, if his record held true, send her to the gas chamber.
    Only then did he realize that he should have insisted that his mother have a lawyer before he allowed her to talk with the detectives.
    It was almost ten before Alf Parnell called Pam’s apartment and asked to speak with Ronnie.
    Ronnie and Pam had spent much of the evening calling relatives. Their mother had a large, close family. Her sisters, Arlene and Faye, had just arrived after a three-hour drive from Charleston.
    “Ronnie, I hate to tell you this,” Parnell said, “but it’s worse than we thought.”
    Worse ? Ronnie thought. What could be worse?
    “There are other people,” Parnell told him.
    “Other people?” Ronnie said. “What do you mean?”
    “Other people she’s killed.”
    Ronnie’s pulse jumped. His stomach knotted. His brain didn’t want to register what he had just heard.
    “Alf,” he responded, “you’ve got to know how unbelievable this is for me.”
    “It’s the same for me,” Parnell replied. “But she’s told us this, and we’re going to be looking into it.”
    When Ronnie hung up and turned to give the others the news, he looked pale and dazed.
    “Y’all are not going to believe this,” he said, the words coming slowly. “She’s confessed to killing three other people.”
    “Who?” cried Faye.
    Ronnie named two elderly people his mother had assisted as a live-in caregiver. Then he paused, as if unable to go on. He had to force out the next two words:
    “… And Grandmother.”
    Her own mother.
    Faye screamed and bolted for the door, running out into the rain that evening had brought, still screaming. Pam collapsed in her husband’s arms, sobbing. Arlene stood rooted.
    “What is wrong with her?” Arlene pleaded. “What is wrong with her?”
    Many people soon would be asking that question. With time even Velma Barfield herself. For after her bitter encounter with Joe Freeman Britt had sent her to death row, she would begin an examination of her life that would lead her to repentance and would cause many people to believe in her redemption. And as she fought for her life in a society torn about the death penalty, she would draw more attention to the morality of capital punishment than any other murderer to that point, her case raising issues that still were being debated two decades later. But she could not foresee that in her despair and dejection as Alf Parnell drove her the two blocks to the Robeson County jail this night. Nor could her son foresee that the death sentence his mother would receive would turn into a life sentence for him.

Part One
    Escaping South River

1
    A sense of desolation is inescapable in the flat, sandy farmlands that border the South River, which separates the eastern North Carolina counties of Cumberland and Sampson. The river itself is narrow, black and forbidding, often without definable banks, wandering aimlessly through cypress-studded swamps. Even in the lushness of summer, with crops at their peaks and marshlands and woods in rampant tangle, an impression of emptiness prevails.
    Bullards have lived on this land for generations. John Bullard raised cotton and tobacco on the Sampson County side of the river until he swapped farms early in this century with Frank Autry, who lived on the Cumberland side. In the deal Bullard ended up with more than two hundred acres and a small house into which he