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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
And I'm Melaina. And this is Morbid.
this is morbid yay it's COVID but almost without almost so close to being without so close she sent her test this morning and it had the faintest line and I said well we're related anyway and we gotta get back to work and and I need to come in I've done a good job we isolated the hell out of me right away I still don't know where I got COVID by the way I don't go anywhere so there's that like we were saying like with the stomach bug you couldn't even get it off like a Starbucks cup I know that's why I'm like what the fuck but the good news is no one else got it yeah that's correct like no one
else got it I think we're good at this point but I think no one else got it we isolated the hell out of me right away smart thank goodness for John shout out to John shout out to John into my mother -in -law for being the greatest people ever Yeah, we love.
Because, goddamn. I know.
I felt so bad for you.
I was in the pool at my all -inclusive resort when you texted me, and I sent you a little picture like, oh, that sucks.
And I was like, yeah, I'm dying.
Yeah. I felt really bad.
You were like, yeah, I just broke my 103 -degree fever.
I was like, oh, I'm drinking a pina colada.
Not relatable. Watching a little lizard run by.
Oh my god, there are so many cute little lizards in Aruba.
It's true. A little honeymoon.
Aruba is beautiful.
Oh my god, it was so much fun.
take me back take me back it was fun but that was like the longest vacation no that was like one of the longest vacations i've ever gone on and the first we've gone on in a long time um and it was amazing and like a lot of fun but by the end of it i think like we got there on friday and i feel like by like wednesday thursday we were like okay i want to go home now yeah he's like all right we're such homebodies we are too yeah so it's like i can have a little bit of of it and then i'm like like all right I want to be home in my pajamas on my couch with my kids.
Yeah me too with my kids because you're watching them on the cameras.
Oh yeah. You're watching the cats on the cameras.
Little cat kids. I miss Remy and Franklin and Lux.
And I really missed your kids.
I know they missed you.
Yeah it was a wild week.
It was but I'm back.
You're almost COVID free and here we are.
Here we are. So we're gonna start off 2024 strong.
Yeah. Ending 2023 really strong.
Yeah for real. Didn't wait you had COVID right around this time last year not last year was that two years yeah it was like two years ago oh god what's time I think it was like 2021 yeah oh okay um yeah oh yeah you're right you're right you're right and it was around the same time yeah around this time last year you had that crazy stomach bug and you couldn't do thanks oh yeah I got the stomach bug on Thanksgiving but we got to do Thanksgiving this year which was nice we did I waited and and that's that's what's even funnier is i waited only about a week after thanksgiving to get covid so i really
not even a week barely barely made it happen but you know apparently thanksgiving is tough for me but i don't know what it is well i feel like you do a lot like you put a lot on your plate and it's at the end of the year where like your kids already probably brought home something nasty that's very true so you're run down and so i just get it all attack you you know that's it but i gotta say john is like the greatest human ever because he just kept the house running yeah kept the kids running yeah like just they had their their teeth were brushed their hair were brushed that's the thing like they
were washed they were washed you posted that video but i see it all the time of like millennial dads just like being like way more hands -on than dads of past generations being parents instead of a babysitter oh my god i was just gonna say like just raising their kids instead of babysitting.
Because he always hates when somebody will be like, oh, is dad babysitting?
And he's like, I'm not babysitting my fucking kids.
These are mine. They're dad.
I'm raising them alongside this other human.
Drew said that the other day.
He was like, I hate when dads will say that.
And I was like, that makes me want to have five million babies.
That is a good thing.
But yeah, he's kept this whole shit afloat.
So shout out to John.
And you're so close.
I'm so close. I can feel it.
I feel great. Yeah, you look great.
you don't even look bad yeah i feel great so i'm really just waiting for that little little line to disappear i do like your hospital socks thank you i do have i do have grippy socks like straight up hospital socks yeah they're straight up with like the little feet yeah they're comfy what the i fall a lot i slide i can't have bare feet i'm like walking around like that's fucked up uh disagree yeah just in my own head that's fucked up i just hate when my toes feel like too bunched together nope my toes can't touch but no like no thank you i'm a i'm a free i need socks but i have hardwood floors
everywhere and i will fall true in a sock and it has happened before so you broke your tailbone just like my kids need to have grippy socks i need to have grippy socks so grippy socks out here grippy socks forever um but moving away from grippy socks yeah uh to someone this is gonna be like real depressing i just want to put that out there right ahead of time we're gonna talk about velma barfield okay she's a poisoner oh she's a extreme cream poisoner oh but my goodness she has the most depressing life oh ever like it's just you're like welcome back yeah welcome back it's but my she was she's
cold as ice that her her like her life just makes you be like whoa like nothing good was happening here at all like there's no good nothing so really not good i mean it looks like she you know her she loved her kids okay and her kids seem to love her and honestly i feel i feel very much for her kids she has a son and a daughter um they seem to love her and i don't think they got the same person that that did these things so it's like i really feel for them because i'm sure they're still trying to reconcile that yeah that's like a lot to digest and that's a lot and again she has a really fucked
up like childhood and she has a fucked up just life that you're just like damn like how were you handed so many bad cards damn but some of the bad cards she took on herself so all right let's get into this let's talk about velma so when velma barfield's trial came in the late 70s which trust me we'll get to the 70s um it was like late 70s early 80s, it was the time in the United States when Americans were really just beginning to even deal or grapple with the concept of a serial killer at all.
Like even a male serial killer, any serial killer.
Never mind the idea that a woman could commit anything like that.
Right. And although women had been sentenced to death for murder before in the U .S., none had confessed to methodically killing multiple people in such a cold -blooded callous way and for such a seemingly trivial reason as velma okay so let's talk about who velma is let's margie velma billard margie was born october 29th 1932 in cumberland county north carolina i think she's a libra she was oh she was a libra like mikey i think right october 29th look at that I'll double check, but I'm almost sure.
No. No? Fuck me. He said that's a nor.
Hold on, wait. Don't tell me.
What's after Libra?
I know, just don't tell me for a second.
I won't because I don't know.
Sagittarius, right?
Where am I? Mikey's just going, nope.
October 29th. Oh, she's a Scorpio.
Oh, all right. Okay.
There it is. Yeah. She was the second of nine children.
Okay. And her parents were Lily and Murphy Bullard. Unfortunately, she had the displeasure of entering the world during the worst part of the Great Depression.
profession so her early life was tough in many ways her father was a farmer so the collapse of cotton prices hit him hard financially very hard and it became next to impossible for him to earn enough money to support his very much growing family and also support his aging parents which he had been doing for some time so in 1935 he gave farming up and went to work for a logging company for a bit and then he found work at a textile mill in Fayetteville now in Velma's memoir she wrote a memoir uh she wrote i was afraid of my daddy even while still a small child he had a violent temper and none of us
wanted to be around when he blew up oh wow according to velma nearly anything could set that temper off no matter how little and there was no way of knowing what or when it would happen like what was going to happen and when it was going to happen no rhyme or reason he's and she said quote he usually took out his anger on us kids as well as the of furniture that's so fucked which like can you imagine being such a tiny little person to take your anger out on a small child no or tiny person or even like on furniture in front of your kids like to create such a violent like that like what are you
doing just grow up besides being an asshole murphy was not good at managing the family's finances even before the depression hit hard really so that made things worse uh he had a strong work ethic and wasn't afraid of a a full day's work but he also really wanted to impress people he was a keep up with the joneses kind of guy and he would spend money on trivial things for himself instead of things the family needed so he was already setting them up for failure as well even before the depression happened a relative once said he bought what he wanted instead of what he needed his pocketbook was always
too small for his operation if you know what i mean so lily the mother would try to to do whatever she could about murphy's explosive anger and violence she would try to like intervene try to smooth things over to try and stop him from reacting to everything with anger and she would hide incidents or any accidents that happened that would lead him to abusing the kids so if they had an accident like knock something over she would be like that was me you know what i mean like she would just take it on now unfortunately she was rarely successful and And Velma came to resent her mother for the way
she tolerated and catered to her father, what she thought was catering to her father, and for what she saw as failing to protect her children from his wrath.
Yeah. Which, obviously, that's tough.
And honestly, it's like I can't imagine being in Velma and the children's place, and I can't imagine being in Lily's place.
No, it's impossible.
One day when Velma was 12, she asked her mother, Mama, why do you put up with him?
Why do you stay with him like this when she was 12?
Wow. And the answer, of course, was that Lily had nowhere else to go.
Right. And she definitely didn't have the resources necessary to raise nine children by herself.
And that was the story in a lot of these households that we come to, especially in this time period.
It was just a matter of I can't do this by myself.
You couldn't do it alone.
But to Velma, who was 12, she thought that excuse was insufficient.
She said, I'd sure find someplace else to go and I will too when I get older.
her it unfortunately that's not true yeah and it's one of those things where it's like you just don't have the life experience to know the position that your mom is in exactly of course not you're 12 you look at it this is a terrible situation you why would you deal with it and you can understand she's 12 she has no fucking clue how hard it is to do anything else yeah you know to get out of that situation and how dangerous it is right now um as a child velma sought to escape in school and she was a very good student oh that's good but she didn't do well being grouped in with many other children
she didn't do well with team things huh which i feel that as well i saw a little glimmer in your eye there i was like same um even though she was a good student the teachers would often kind of like chastise her or punish her for her boisterousness and unruly behavior and noted her tendency to have angry outbursts when things didn't go her way even as a young girl yeah so she's learning setting the groundwork Murphy is teaching her when you don't get your way you beat the shit out of the furniture or someone else around you that's what you do use outbursts so it's like you teach your kids how
to react and it's like this is a perfect you know and it's like also who knows if it's like a genetic component there that she's just got anger in her blood that she's gonna have to figure out how to control or not and And Scorpios are fiery.
There you go. So to make matters worse, many of Velma's classmates came from families that were much better off than her own.
And this was made apparent to everyone because she would come to school in secondhand clothing or handmade clothing.
And she always brought a very small, very kind of sparse lunch with her.
That's so sad. And in order to try to, you know, minimize this bullying that she was facing, Velma started stealing coins from her father's pants pockets and using it to buy candy and other things for classmates, kind of like trying to buy herself into people liking her.
Right. And it seemed to work a little bit, but it's not a great way to find friends, I guess.
She's not learning a lot of really great lessons here.
Now, when she reached her teenage years, Velma started dating Thomas Burke, who was a boy she met at church and he was a boy her father greatly disapproved of for the most part they seemed to you know like just hang out do some mundane activities like drive around go to the movies like normal teenage stuff but velma often had a difficult time enjoying herself she later said as much as i like being with thomas and going places with him i was bothered by I thought that I should be home instead.
Hmm. I think Velma had like the weight of the world on her shoulders at too young of an age.
Probably depressed.
She was thinking about too many problems because she was probably thinking about, you know, like her brothers and sisters and, you know, her father's an angry, scary guy and her mom.
And she probably feels some kind of responsibility at a way too young of an age to be in the home to try to intercede things.
That's just really tragic.
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Now, she's felt this strange pull, which I understand in these situations, to live up to her father's expectations no matter how unreasonable they were she just didn't want to disappoint him because he was scary and her relationship with thomas started to become a kind of a welcome escape from the violence at home and you know she had the violence at home and then the kind of challenging environment at school that she was still trying to navigate and one evening about a year into their relationship thomas and velma were driving home from a movie be when he turned to her and said Velma let's get
married random now immediately she panicked because she knew her father would lose his mind and would definitely not allow it and would probably react with violence if it was even brought up to him but the question caused her immediate anxiety and she was like you know what I enjoy being with Thomas this is a nice escape so she's like you know what I might not know if I love him or not and I don't love him the way that he loves me but it's a way i kind of want to do this so a few days later while they were driving velma brought up the subject and because she didn't immediately answer him and she
reminded thomas that her father would definitely not approve and this time however there were additional complications her father had found a new job and would be moving the entire family to wade which was about an hour away oh okay and so thomas said then let's get married right away so thomas said before your daddy leaves let's just elope now although she wasn't exactly sure again whether she really loved him or just the thought of you know losing him was upsetting her she didn't want to lose him and she figured you know being uprooted from her current life no matter how distressing it is would kind
of stress her out more because she's kind of used to this awful routine so it's kind of like choosing the less of two lesser of two stresses exactly but she ended up agreeing to his plan and the two began making plans to run off and get married on december first 1949 velma's friend alvie pender came by the house to pick her up for what she told her parents was going to be just a night out then the two of them picked up thomas and the three of them drove to nearby dillon south carolina where velma and thomas were married and alvie was their witness okay once they were married they returned to their
respective homes and didn't say a word they planned to spring the news on lily and murphy just before they moved moved so they figured that that would mitigate like some of the negative reactions but i don't know about that or probably just like they would have less time yeah it's like on you yeah now that plan only lasted a little more than a day because thomas convinced velma that they needed to tell their parents but thomas was like we can't do this yeah now velma decided to start with her mother smart hoping she could convince lily to tell murphy uh but her mother was like uh no and And she
was essentially like, you did this, you tell them like you decided.
I can't say I blame her.
I'd be like, girl, you're a married woman now.
Yeah, she was like, and she literally was like, you got married?
That was your choice.
This is your stuff to tell.
So the next day Velma told her father about the marriage and he reacted slightly as expected.
He yelled, he threw things, he demanded they get the marriage annulled.
But then all of a sudden he sat down, put his head in his hands and started sobbing.
What the fuck? this was obviously very unexpected she had never seen her father sob very unnerving and he was usually violent and angry so this was just not she was like what the fuck so immediately she felt overwhelming guilt and she was like I shouldn't have married Thomas what the fuck did I do and she actually never learned why he reacted that way but she said from that moment on there There was a drastic change in her and her father's relationship.
I wonder if it was a moment of self -realization for him of like it was so bad that she saw this as her ticket out.
And like what does she see in this guy?
That's exactly what I think.
I think he violently disapproved of this guy, which as we will find out, Thomas ends up being not a great husband.
And he violently disapproved of this guy.
And so he's looking at this guy like there's no fucking way in hell you're going to marry this guy.
And she goes and does it.
And he probably is sitting there, like you said, being like, she had no other option to get away from me.
Like I drove her to this.
But to marry this guy who like I know is not a good guy.
It seems like it really was a moment of clarity.
And it's like I wonder if he was just like, what the fuck have I done?
Like I think I really do think that was a moment which it's like, I'm glad it came.
But my God, dude, it came too late.
Too little too late.
Like, it's like, and it also looks like, you know, like, spoiler alert.
Later, it looks like Lily and Murphy end up really loving being grandparents.
Like, they fall really hard into the grandparent role.
So, I do wonder if this was the moment that Murphy just said, fuck, what have I done?
And then his grandkids, like, really brought that, like, fatherly thing out in him.
Right. Which you hear about that sometimes where, like, somebody's a fucking shit parent.
and then they become a grandparent and you're like and the the kid is like why weren't you like this for me but you're like which is great that you're like this for my kids like i'd rather my kids having this but like i would have loved this yeah and like where like obviously the side of you was there it's there somewhere in there so why didn't you give it to me you know like but it's it's strange it's a strange phenomenon family trauma yeah exactly but uh velma wrote oddly Oddly enough, after that night when I told daddy about my getting married, he wasn't mean to me ever again.
Wow. I just got chills.
Yeah. Isn't that a wild one?
Now, days later, Velma left her parents' house to live with Thomas and his parents a few miles away.
And finally, free of all the, you know, abuse, the violence that had basically dominated her life for 17 years, Velma, you think, would feel relieved, you know?
But she couldn't shake the feeling that she had fucked up and she had hurt her family deeply.
And she, that was what kept sticking to her was I feel like I did something wrong.
I hurt my family. Now, in retrospect, Velma remembers the first few years of her marriage to Thomas as quote, the happiest years of her life.
So there was good times.
Shortly after the wedding, they both dropped out of school.
Thomas got a job at the cotton mill in nearby Red Springs.
and they spent most of 1950 and early 1951 living with his parents, things were generally good.
That's great. Unfortunately, though, the job at the mill was tough.
Thomas fucking hated it, so he ended up quitting in early 1951.
They then moved in with Velma's oldest brother, Olive, and Thomas found work as a salesman with Double Cola Bottling Company.
Now, Thomas's job with the cola company paid enough that they were able to actually get a house of their own, a small house of their own.
a few months later, and soon after, Velma became pregnant and gave birth to her son, Ronald, who they called Ronnie, on December 15, 1951.
And she later wrote about this, I was thrilled beyond words, I cried, I was so happy.
Now, bless his heart, he was ugly, but I thought he was the prettiest baby I had ever seen.
What the fuck, Velma?
I was like, Velma girl.
I thought parents weren't even capable of realizing that their kids were ugly.
I know, I was like, damn.
I thought there was other people that realized that.
Bless his heart. He was ugly, but I thought he was the prettiest baby.
And it's like, maybe he was then.
Well, did you? Maybe he was just straight up the prettiest baby like you thought he was.
Damn Velma. But two years later, Velma gave birth again on September 3rd, 1953 to a daughter they named Kim.
Cute. Now in the book we are going to link on here, the Bledsoe book, he refers to her as Pam because she is referred to as Pam sometime.
Is that a nickname for Kim?
I don't know if it's for Kim.
Oh, it's like, why?
Why? But I'm thinking, tell me if I'm wrong.
In The Great Gatsby, doesn't she call her daughter Pammy at one point?
I think it was like a nickname of endearment.
I don't know if I'm making that up, though, because I know her daughter wasn't named Pam.
But I feel like she does call her Pammy, or maybe it's in another book that I read.
I can't remember. I'm going to look it up.
I think back then it might have been like, oh, you little cutie.
like you know really I think I don't know if I'm just like having a moment of delusion the blood so book is just like about this case so I don't know why he would refer to her unless like she wrote about her in that way like well she refers to her as Kim huh that's the thing it doesn't it's like maybe later in life she started going by Pam yeah I don't know I don't know I don't really know but I want to look it up because now I'm feeling I'm like am I i delusional or is that a thing that i've heard before i'm sure it's a thing i have faith in you thank you i'll interrupt you this is me having
faith oh wait hold on oh google just filled in the rest for me no i don't know you're like no i'm just kidding i've never heard that but i don't doubt you yeah i don't know yeah i don't know i thought i heard that at one point in life i don't know email me if i'm right you know let's see email me if i'm right if i'm wrong don't say anything but yeah she had a daughter named kim who is referred to as pam and in some other sources but at the time the birth of a second child really only brought more joy into what was feeling like a all right life at that point i'm like where did it all go i know
well velma later said i loved my children and somewhere in those first two or three years i learned to love my husband husband now even though even their relationship with velma's parents lily and murphy like i said had been better and like i was saying before both lily and murphy loved being grandparents yeah loved ronnie and kim and it sounds like the relationship with tom's thomas's parents was good because they were living together yeah so velma didn't just love being a mother she was by all accounts very good at it wow uh ronnie her son later said i wouldn't say i was a mama's boy but i was close
to it i really loved my mama to death i a real adoring type love oh which breaks my heart for these kids because i'm like they saw someone different than the rest of the world saw and i don't want to ever like take that from them you know what i mean like it's like and you can't the story is a rough story and she did some fucked up shit but i feel for them that they got that that different side of her because what a mind fuck that is.
That's always so interesting to me too.
Like we've talked about murderers before where like their family at home had no idea what was going on.
Like their wife never knew.
Their husband never knew.
And it's like it's so interesting to me how you can hide that part of yourself from other people.
Compartmentalize these pieces of you and give love.
Or what you think. I don't even know.
I don't know how to classify it because it's like I believe she loved her kids like from all accounts they loved her and she seems to have loved them so it's like how do you compartmentalize like evil and love inside of you that's I don't know but people do it people do it all the time it's well it's even like Israel Keys like he was one of the most terrifying people we've ever spoken about but like loved his dog yeah so much yeah so you are because a lot of times you hear are like oh sociopath not capable of love whatsoever but I don't know how true that is yeah because he had strange well well
not every killer is a sociopath that is true that's the thing so I think that's the that's one of the issues is it gets it gets to be a blanket thing for everybody and it's like so there's so many variables in all of these cases that's why even Even entering into this podcast in the beginning, I was unaware how many variables lie within each different case.
Like, I went in thinking, like, you're a psychopath.
Every killer. You kill people, you're a psychopath.
Same. That's it. And it's like that is indeed the case in many cases.
But not all. There's so many other things at work.
It's fascinating and horrifying.
Like, it really is.
It is an interesting study, though, just like the psychology of it all.
Yeah, and I don't know if we'll ever fully grasp it.
I think there's more to it than just science.
There's a lot to it.
There's a lot to it.
Like, this is a perfect example, because when you see how cold and callous she is about what she does, it's really hard to reconcile the mother in there.
But, I mean, I'm glad the kids got, you know, a loving mother, I suppose, out of it.
But they didn't have an easy life, that's for sure.
These kids did not have an easy childhood.
because a lot was going on.
To get bad with Thomas at some point.
Yeah, and things started, you know, it was tough.
They unraveled a bit.
But again, like Ronnie said, he loved his mother.
And actually on occasions where she had to be separated from her children for any kind of period of time, she said that she would feel physically ill and she would only be able to feel better once again when she was with them.
Wow. And this became a bigger problem when Ronnie entered the first grade and Velma took a job at a textile mill because she was working the overnight shift. So there would always be someone home for the children.
So like Thomas would work the day shift, she'd go at night, she would work at night and he would come home.
But then that means she probably missed out on a lot of seeing the kids because they got school during the day.
Exactly. Now, a few years later in 1962, Velma began having significant health problems and was eventually diagnosed with fibroid tumors on her uterus.
Oh, wow. This caused intense pain.
Anybody who's had to deal deal with that and heavy bleeding uh velma's doctors said they strongly recommended a hysterectomy to take care of this and they said it was really the only way to eliminate the problem completely her brother john later said after she had that hysterectomy seemed like she was never the same again that's interesting and later velma would acknowledge that this period was a major turning point in her life i feel like i've heard that with other women too that undergo hysterectomies Well, the hormonal changes are significant.
Vast, yeah. And after the surgery, the doctors warned her of this, the hormonal changes that could very much be disruptive.
But she said lately, like, there's no way to prepare for it.
The shift in your moods and emotions in the weeks and months that followed. And she wrote later, I didn't know how to handle my nerves.
From my early childhood, when anything upset me, it made me nervous and afraid.
All of that got worse after my hysterectomy.
That's really sad. And I think that's part of the issue here is like she grew up in such a tumultuous and traumatic childhood that she's already got a lot to contend with.
And then you throw hormonal like wildness in there just like that you can't control and can't even conceive of.
I can't even imagine what that will do.
Right. And back then they didn't have the medicine that could regulate that.
That's the other thing.
That's the problem here is there wasn't a lot to do.
And she found that her emotions were much stronger after the surgery.
And she had a lot of intrusive negative thoughts.
And they were being harder and harder to combat.
And she said, I had hidden my feelings and kept so much inside me that I had built up over the years.
As I got older, I still didn't know how to do anything about the anger and the guilt.
In the 1960s, like we were just saying, talk therapy as we know it today was in its infancy, to say the least. and mental and emotional health care was still a very taboo subject um it was and this was particularly true for the average american housewife who yeah in the mid -1960s it was a different kind of situation they were undergoing a kind of identity crisis at this point because there was a huge shift in the meanings and identities of women and mothers in western culture so without any professional help or even just like a social network that she could turn to for any of these problems she
attempted to do what she had always done which is just keep things to herself push all the negative feelings down and just hope they go away right and that's not gonna recipe for disaster yeah and before long her fluctuating moods and instability uh started taking a toll on her marriage uh which by 1965 had already kind of hit a rough patch yeah thomas's his father had passed away and he received some minor injuries in a car crash oh wow and as a result of the car crash he had been in pain so he had started drinking more than usual as a means of escape oh no this was soon exacerbated by him joining
a civic organization in which the members were also heavy drinkers velma said as thomas started to drink more his whole personality changed and that was probably really triggering for her from her childhood exactly and now she's trying to protect the kids too from this whole thing.
She's become her mother who she resented so much. Exactly.
It's a real cycle of sadness in this episode.
It really is. Now already stressed out by her own issues going on and you know the emotional stuff the lingering effects of surgery which she's still trying to get over.
That's a massive surgery.
Oh yeah. Velma struggled to understand or even tolerate her husband at this point.
She had already had to learn to love of him.
Exactly. So having this happen was like, no, that can unravel something.
So their relationship was reduced to little more than her losing her patience and starting arguments with him and him drinking heavily and starting arguments back.
She said, we had so much good in the first years of our marriage that I couldn't accept the difference.
And that's the other thing.
It's such a slap in the face.
Cause it's like the beginning was so good.
Right. And now it's just shit.
And it's like, and it seems like it happened like boom.
It's like, where did we veer off here?
Now Velma blamed, one thing we will find out about Velma, she's been through a lot.
She's been dealt a lot of shitty cards.
But Velma is one of those people that has trouble taking any kind of responsibility for her own stuff too.
She only blamed Thomas and his drinking for anything that was going on in that household or that marriage.
But she was also going, she had an explosive temper.
Yeah, it takes two.
You know what I mean?
It's not like they were, you know, getting along and then like he started drinking and everything went south it's like you know and obviously the hysterectomy happened and that's not her fault that's her dealing with those hormonal you know fluctuations but when she's already going into it with an explosive temper and no patience it's like this is all a recipe for disaster big time um in the mid -1960s they had fallen on hard times financially and velma started writing a number of bad checks that once discovered to be fraudulent she was told she had to pay the money back i always wonder why people
think that's a good idea they always go to bad checks gonna get caught always like don't fuck with the bank it's a legitimate paper trail yeah like it's physical paper it's like you're not gonna get away with that in the end it's just gonna cost you more that you don't exactly and because it's just like desperation yeah usually and it's get me out of it it's the it's the it's the mindset that a lot of these people have which is fix it right now fix it now deal with it later like i'm not gonna you know what i mean i'm not gonna try to come up with an actual plan i'm gonna just get it out of my
way right now i think the worst possible way to deal with it i don't fucks with the bank don't do it man they're they're rough uh to make matters worse thomas had a falling out at the cola company and impulsively quit his job oh with nothing lined yeah which is bad bad and it was several months before he found another job so there was a big lack of time so she was desperate this was desperation time finally and probably more importantly velma began having severe back pain in 1964 and it led to a doctor prescribing her pain relieving tablets which velma quickly grew addicted to and god only knows
what was in those those back then and I can tell you right now this pill addiction that she has becomes the basis of a lot of her bad decision really um by 1968 Velma and Thomas's relationship was just deteriorating um she was becoming increasingly reliant on pain medication for basic functioning and he was retreating deeper into alcoholism so this was just really sad and at the same time the children are now teenagers so they become more independent and kind of defiant at that time and just defiant in a way that normal teenagers can do especially teenagers in a home that's unstable and it's that they're
dealing with a lot um so the whole family dynamic was very strained by then velma's personality had changed in a lot of ways and like her father she was becoming much quicker to anger her um i didn't read anything that said she was much quicker to anger with the children okay it was thomas yeah uh she said anything that my husband would do to agitate me she said the slightest inconvenience or the slightest anything she perceived as a slight or annoying she would lose her mind um and i guess the children would try to de -escalate the situations a lot and try try to separate them wow ronnie her son said
she wanted to stay and fight and yell she was very combative so that's even him saying like this this was a different person yeah this was somebody who wanted to just fight now throughout the later part of the 1960s belma had done her best to try to fix things she tried to get her thomas in um into a rehab program she actually checked him into one for drinking what about you girl and i was well that's the thing she paid virtually no attention to her own right physical and mental health right she was kind of just which you don't know what that with a thought process there was if she was in denial
thinking she didn't have the issue or she was just like i'm gonna suck it up and deal with it but he needs to let's get him fixed okay i don't know which one that was i'm not i'm not velma no uh but she really ignored her own well and it seems like she already resented him so much and had so much against him that it's one of those those things where it's like he's the problem well that exactly she she has a she has a nasty habit of blaming everybody else and it seems like this is one of those things where volma just said well he's the fucking problem right like once he's better i'll be fine yeah
everything will be fine he's the problem and she i'm sure and this is just me guessing but like she would probably get irritated with him and that would lead her to using more in her own addiction exactly because it was the stress and the frustration all that so maybe she figured if i get him taking care of of that i won't be so annoyed all the time yeah now by 1968 the stress and anxiety she'd been pushing down for decades did finally come up it came to head oh no she collapsed in her kitchen where the last thing she remembered was getting up to make breakfast for the kids wow thomas was too
drunk to help her in this situation oh no and so it was ronnie her son who had to call his grandfather murphy oh wow and murphy drove velma to the hospital this is what i mean with like lillian murphy really turned around turned around and became like the lifeline but then they saw like look what look what happened look what's happened because of everything that's you know like they're they're in the same situation that we've been in yeah and it's worse yeah it's just it's such a cycle generational trauma is wild it is it's horrifying now she ended up being admitted for what she would later be
told was a nervous breakdown.
Velma remained in the hospital for observation and treatment for about a week, and then she was discharged with a prescription for tranquilizers.
Oh, no. And a strong recommendation that she seek mental health treatment and get professional help with her marital issues as well.
Getting out of the hospital, she didn't take any of that advice.
She, basically the marriage just continued to disintegrate.
She just kept on keeping on.
and she turned to the tranquilizers now relying on them to make life more bearable she said i found i could cope better if i took it and then not just one i knew that two would be better than one i could feel that now as 1968 came to a close there wasn't much of a relationship between velma and thomas left um he was really losing a battle with alcoholism uh it had consumed him so much that he was he ended up losing his job he was unemployed for much of that year and that just added more stress financially and although he would try and occasionally get get better uh he would go short periods without
drinking like it really never lasted long and he would fall right back into it takes your whole life i can't imagine i really can't um and the more thomas drank the the stranger his behavior became.
According to Jerry Bledsoe, the book I was talking about before, he said at times he would sit in the car in the carport, drunk, revving the engine at full speed, sometimes until the car ran out of gas.
Strange. And when Velma or one of the kids would try to intervene, he would become physically or verbally abusive until passing out inside the house.
So it's just awful.
Yeah. It's just like an awful.
awful. Now by the winter of 1969, Thomas had managed to find work at the mill.
The mill was his first job that he had.
The one he fucking hated.
And he had to go back to it.
Yeah. In this shape.
Yeah. And at first Velma was like, you know what?
Maybe after so long and after being unemployed for so long, maybe this is what's going to do it.
It's going to snap him into like a routine.
He's going to have to go to work.
He's going to have to get it together.
But she said having to go back to the mill was a real blow to his pride and he seemed to drink even more now as that got worse so did the fights that they seemed to have every single night one evening in march thomas came home drunk and the inevitable fight happened and velma was telling her husband that she couldn't put up with her drinking and this fighting anymore and thomas passed out on the couch and velma packed a suitcase for herself and for kim her daughter and they went to stay with her parents while Ronnie who is now almost an adult at this point stayed behind because he told his mother
someone needs to take care of dad oh my god so their whole family just got fractured and it's like these kids too much responsibility so much responsibility and it's like Ronnie just especially because I don't we don't find out a lot about Kim yeah but I'm sure she was the same way but we see that Ronnie like just loved his parents and you can tell that he just like wanted to be a good son and like wanted them to be better like wanted yeah he just wanted to take care of them he wanted to be a good son like looks at his mom is like someone needs to take care of dad I will stay here to take care of him
and it's like you shouldn't have to take care of your parents I know it just breaks my heart age it really breaks my heart but like what a good son yeah and when Thomas came uh came to the next morning Ronnie told him about the whole thing was like yeah do you remember any of this and he was like um he was like you know mom left and and is fully intending on divorcing you.
So, like, you've really done it this time.
Like, you fucked up.
And Ronnie blamed his father's drinking because he was like, this is your fault.
And Thomas blamed Velma's pill addiction.
And he was nonetheless remorseful, though.
And he was like, I don't want this to happen.
This shouldn't be what ends everything.
And he told his son, I want to get sober.
I want to bring this family back together.
Wow. And he said, like, it was when you were younger.
Like, I want it to be like that.
that and later that afternoon Ronnie told his mother this like what his father had said and everybody was very hopeful at this moment so Velma came home that's like the worst I know the hope yeah and for a few days there was like an uneasy like chillness like peace in the house but everybody was probably so trepidatious yeah and Thomas managed to make it about a week without drinking and Velma did her best to take her pills as directed right but then it was just too late too much damage had been done to the relationship and honestly neither of them knew how to fix it and neither of them knew if they
really wanted to fix it at this point so after a couple of weeks things in the house unfortunately returned right to the way they were before velma left and it was pretty clear to everybody that you know like it was clear to her that thomas wasn't going to change thomas knew she wasn't going to change and that marriage was was over damn now several weeks later on the weekend of um of april 19th ronnie and kim decided to go you know they needed to get away from their parents endless fighting and this whole thing that had turned into so they went to stay with lily and murphy their grandparents for the weekend
what they're like i need to get away from that so we're gonna go to lily and murphy we're like super chill now exactly and i'm like damn you should have known but velma was home alone that that morning when thomas stumbled in after getting off of work clearly drunk uh they exchanged like very at this point they were barely speaking to each other if they weren't fighting like roommates so they were like just hello and thomas sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette but then he started passing out so the lit cigarette was still in his mouth and velma noticed that it fell out of his mouth and rolled
down his shirt so she ran to grab it before it like burned a hole in him and she She basically yelled at him and was like, you know what, like, what are you doing?
And she literally said, burn yourself up for all I care, like, Jesus Christ. Right.
Like, she was just, she had enough.
And so when she yelled this, Thomas woke up, and he got off the couch and went into the bedroom where he lay down on the bed and went back to passing out.
Now, Velma was fucking frustrated at this point, so she left the house, went to her parents' house, and picked her mother up to take her out shopping for the afternoon.
Later that afternoon, she came back to her house and she came in to find it filled with thick smoke.
Oh no. Couldn't find her husband, so she ran outside just as Thomas' sister Frances happened to be driving by the house and Velma was shouting for her to call the fire department.
The volunteer fire squad arrived minutes later, made their way through the house, and they hadn't been in there for more than a minute or two when they came out to get a stretcher.
They came back out and they were carrying thomas on a stretcher Velma was begging them to tell her what the fuck happened and she said I kept bugging begging But they wouldn't tell me anything inside.
I knew he was already dead Oh god now later that day the fire inspector told velma that thomas had died from smoke inhalation It appeared as though he had fallen asleep in bed with a lit cigarette But at some point he must have woken up Because it looked like he had tried to stomp on the rug trying to put the fire out and according to the investigator there was very little damage from the fire only a small part of the mattress and the pile of clothes on the floor and the floor underneath appeared to be ruined but otherwise everything was pretty much unharmed okay um the official cause of death
death was listed as smoking in bed and the case was closed and they think like he was you know he was really drunk so he couldn't get out of the house right like what a way to go and thomas's death was a tragedy and it hit the family the children and velma really hard and no matter what this was not the outcome anyone was looking for obviously now in the months after thomas's death velma came to rely even more on the tranquilizers to get her through the day uh the life insurance policy on thomas barely covered the funeral or any of the other costs associated with his death and that meant that velma didn't
have the luxury of taking any moment off from work to grieve right go through any of it he was still her husband yeah as much as that whole relationship had disintegrated and it was shit that's the father of your children you were still living with him you hadn't divorced yet yeah there's always some kind of love there I'm sure yeah there's something there's something there you know and that's just a shock yeah and so Velma pushed herself to stay focused on work which was at Belk's department store okay and she'd been employed there for several years and it gave her something to focus on it filled
her days up she was just really like moving forward and she also liked it because she could take rare moments aside to chat with her friend pauline barfield who worked in the store next to velma's um and they had known each other for a while they'd become very close like velma's closest friend uh very much her confidant and had on several occasions introduced um she had introduced velma to her husband jennings um and like they were just like best friends like okay she told her everything now just a few months after thomas's death velma was dealt another blow when she received news that pauline
had died unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage holy shit it was a shock a shock oh my god yeah and it was even more of a shock because one of the things that they always talked about was that pauline's husband jennings had been disabled by emphysema and pass away first so this was like a real shock and it was probably equally surprising when velma found herself in a full -blown relationship with jennings so i was gonna ask that because the bar field of it all yeah what uh that happens though like i've heard of that more off like like a lot like i've heard of that a lot i don't understand it i think
it's it's some weird grief tie yeah i would I would haunt the shit out of any of my friends.
No, retweet. Re -tweet.
I would poltergeist that shit all the way up.
I'd ruin your fucking life.
Oh, mark my words. Yeah.
Oh, I told Drew. It's just black and white for me.
I'll ruin your fucking life.
Even if it's not my best friend, you can't move on.
Sorry. Yeah. I'll become a demon. I'll become a demon specifically so I can ruin your life.
Yeah, exactly. So, just know that.
But isn't that strange?
It is. It's a strange phenomenon.
phenomenon i told a story like that recently yeah i feel like i can't i can't put my finger on exactly who it was but i have heard of that like multiple times didn't it happen with stevie nicks yes it did didn't she it's like then she had like a come to jesus yeah my girly yeah i mean it's just it but that shows like it's a strange phenomenon it is it really is and i think i think a lot of it is kind of psychological oh 100 it has to do with because grief will fuck you up yeah Like grief changes a lot of things.
Well, and if you think about it, like you have a lot in common with your best friend.
So I'm sure there are attributes that bring your partner, that like remind the partner who's still alive of the partner that passed, and that brings you even closer.
Yeah, I mean, like I don't understand it, but I'm not going to say that I could understand it because thankfully, you know, knock, knock, I've never been in that position to understand that.
And again, we'd haunt them.
Yeah, I would turn into a demon, remember?
Yeah. I won't even be human anymore.
Demone. Demone Elena.
So, yeah. But, you know, yeah.
So. And he's not in good health though.
So I'm like, Belbi, you're kind of setting yourself up for some more heartbreak here.
Yeah, I don't think this is a great move.
And spoiler alert, it's not.
And honestly, this was just a couple of months after Pauline's death they began a relationship.
And that's usually what you hear like a couple of months.
right then and he's like i don't get it man but like you do you but she found herself you know liking the attention it gave her something else to focus on besides like you like we were just saying the constant death in her life and the addiction that surrounded everything um and she later wrote the kids they didn't need me the way they had when they were young i was grateful that He said he wanted to take me out.
It made me feel good.
It's, that's sad. Yeah, of course.
That's sad. But after dating only a few months, Jennings surprised Velma again when one dinner, one evening at dinner, he asked her to marry him.
This was only after dating a few months and after his wife has just died.
I don't think that's a good idea.
I think that's very impulsive.
I think it's very impulsive.
I think any therapist would be like, I think we should talk this through a little longer.
Well, and she said, I agreed to marry Jennings Barfield, even though I wasn't in love with him, which it's like, stop marrying people you're not in love with, my friend.
Like, you've got to stop doing that.
You only marry people you really, really, really love.
But what she said was, I knew that Jennings didn't drink and that he wouldn't treat me bad.
I just wanted someone to be with me and to talk with me.
I wanted someone so badly to fill the emptiness in my life.
Wow. That's gut -wrenching.
So fucking sad. That's all anybody wants.
is somebody to talk to you and comfort you and accept you and just like be a nice person but like i love it you don't have to settle and it's so much more magical there's a lot going on with velma it's a sad story it is but my god does she turn callous and i'm waiting for it yeah um on august 23rd 1970 a little over a year after the death of thomas burke velma married married Jennings Barfield, but very little changed.
She said, I was as unhappy married as I had been alone.
Of course you are. You don't love him.
Right. And she found also that Jennings health problems were quite a bit more complicated than Velma had realized and required a high level of care and attention.
Diabetes alone is a lot to manage.
Diabetes mixed with emphysema.
And she was ill -equipped to provide these things.
And as a result of the increased stress, she began relying more on Valium to get through the day.
Valium. And it didn't take long for Velma to realize Jennings' health problems, while certainly not his fault, were at least partially worsened by his refusal to follow any doctor's orders to make any kind of life improvements.
Oh no. He had bad emphysema, but he wouldn't quit smoking.
Uh -huh. The same was true of his diabetes.
He wouldn't change his diet or exercise.
And the only things worse for Velma was he said the more obstinate he became the more medicine I took the more exasperated I grew the more desperate wolf and these are the things though where it's like Velma you're just blaming everyone else you took the action here you married this man you don't love right you knew he had health problems right and now you're blaming his health problems on your stuff like you're blaming I mean, your stuff on his health problems. Right.
When you knew what you were entering into.
You knew it. Pauline told you.
Yeah. You were best friends.
You were confidants.
She told you what he needed.
Yeah. So it's like you went into this knowing he was going to have a lot of things that he needed.
Mm -hmm. And you probably knew that he was pretty stubborn and he wasn't going to change shit because I'm sure Pauline told you that shit.
Yeah. You're best friends.
That's what you tell your best friends.
100%. And it's like...
And you married him knowing you didn't love him.
Well, and I think that's the root of the whole issue.
You've been down this road before.
because if you loved him these things wouldn't be if you liked him you would you could you know sink your heels in and you'd be like let's go right like you didn't love him so this didn't hit the same and it's like but you're not recognizing that these you're you're doing this shit to yourself i can't imagine walking down the aisle to a man that i didn't love no like to know because you hear that people are like oh like on my wedding day like i knew it right before i walked like am i doing the right thing and it's like Like, why did you go through all of that?
Yeah. It's a lot. Now, Velma had been married to Jennings for less than a year and she already felt more trapped than she ever had before.
And to make matters worse, Robbie had graduated from high school that spring and began working at the Cola Company where his father was once employed.
But in the fall, he was going off to the University of South Carolina, which, like, good for these kids for, like, getting into college and shit.
Hell, yeah. Like, good on you for all the shit that was going on in your lives good job that's huge but Velma was going to lose one of the few constant sources of happiness and support that she had left in her life now this is horrible yeah so and yeah and so she was already worried about Ronnie graduating you know going to college but then he was drafted into the army a few months later with plans to be sent to Vietnam during one of the biggest troop surges oh my god now by the winter of 1971 life had become uh unbearable yeah just suffocating for velma who was honestly in this awful cycle of depression addiction hopelessness
yeah and also self -sabotage that she was just constantly cycling through she was full of regret she was now very resentful of jennings that's not fair she felt that he trapped her in the marriage that she She didn't really want.
Girly Pop, you said yes.
Yeah. And then those feelings turned darker.
Oh no, not Jennings.
Now all the death, abuse, depression, addiction, disappointment she had cycled through, she found herself wishing Jennings was dead.
She's going to kill her best friend's husband after she married him months after she died.
Yeah. She was really wanting to be free of what she considered to be a burden.
There's this thing.
It's called divorce.
yeah you know of it go like you just go for it girl i know it can be messy but you know what is messier but murder and you know everything's messy at this point like let's go seriously now in late march of 1971 fueled by anger and you know whatever else she was dealing with valium velma bought a bottle of arsenic poison where do you buy arsenic i always wonder that i'm like where do you it's just like a bottle with a with a skull and crossbones on it at the the grocery store.
And you're like, I'm going to grab this.
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lie and she wrote part of me cried that it was the only way it's not another part of me begged to stop who and she had said she wanted to make him sick as punishment for what he'd put her through he already is sick girlfriend like super sick and she said then he'll be sorry he's caused caused me so much trouble and he won't do it again he'll start acting right and he won't bother me anymore so do you see the little switch that's sadistic yeah wow because it's like up until this point you're like fuck velma like what a sad life and like damn i'm feeling bad for you and then at this point you're
like oh like look at that damn shorty look at that i don't feel bad at all anymore no i don't and this man this man has had chronic health problems and he just lost his wife your best friend yeah that is beyond now what's worse is and maybe she didn't know this or maybe she didn't care maybe she knew and she didn't care but jennings had come to the same conclusion he was gonna kill he wasn't gonna kill her oh my god i was like what that their marriage had been an impulsive mistake yeah and that it had been done out of grief right he he came to that he was like you know what what do we do here
and in fact just days before his death jennings had contacted his lawyer to discuss a divorce he was a devout christian and he cared very much about how he was perceived by others and he had become embarrassed by velma's you know he had become embarrassed by velma's you know what her addiction was doing to her her erratic behavior it had certainly become subject of gossip around town at this point and he was like and you you know she doesn't want to take care of me she doesn't really love me like i can see this and like why am i probably bickering and he's basically sitting there going why am
i making her take care of me when she doesn't love me yeah she's not happy i'm not like let's move on so he went he went about this the rational way because he was like you know what let's separate and we'll move on with our lives like it'll be fine we did this impulsive thing oops let's move on yeah that's great unfortunately for jennings his realization came too late because on the afternoon of march March 21st, Velma put the poison in Jennings' food.
She put a lot of poison in people's food.
She didn't do the slow arsenic poisoning that you hear about.
The arsenic took effect almost immediately.
It's unclear whether she felt, I mean, it's pretty clear to me, but it's unclear whether she felt guilty or was trying to, you know, cover her tracks.
But when it became apparent that Jennings couldn't breathe, she rushed him to Cape Fear Hospital.
hospital. But doctors there weren't hopeful that he would make it through the night.
And they were correct because Jennings Barfield died the following morning from heart failure.
But did they think it was because of the emphysema?
That's the thing. She picked people who this would not be shocking that they died.
And they wouldn't look into it.
And they wouldn't look into it.
And arsenic poisoning is a very tough one to, unless you are getting an autopsy because you think something happened, then you're not going to know.
I mean, one of the things that I read about was um you can smell garlic breath yeah that's an arsenic thing um and you know there's there's some other things like we'll get into it that um so so i don't know what kind of arsenic that velma was utilizing here but upon further research there's um trivalent arsenic is the worst kind i didn't realize that there was even different kinds so trivalic arsenic has the added harshness of having a corrosive effect so it will leave oral sores in someone's mouth as well and it will cause gi bleeding and dysphagia which is when somebody has trouble swallowing
yeah um trivalent basically like the way reason it's called that it has to do with the molecular structure of the arsenic molecule itself trivalent means there's three valence electrons i'm going back to organic Organic chemistry dominated me, but I actually liked organic chemistry.
That's a wild thought.
It means there's three valence electrons.
Valence electrons are the electrons on the outermost shell of an atom.
These electrons take part in a chemical reaction that will follow.
They can form a chemical bond with another atom to make this happen.
Trivalent atoms can form three covalent bonds, which is just sharing electrons between atoms to form electron pairs.
They do this so they can be more stable.
Okay. So the reaction becomes more stable, more, you know, it does more damage.
Now, arsenic poisoning, especially in such a large and focused dosage like Valmo is using on her victims is fucking violent.
This is not, it's an awful death.
This isn't, oh no, I don't feel well.
And then you pass out.
It's hours, sometimes days of excruciating pain and agony.
agony oh man it is awful you will be vomiting extreme stomach pain to the point of like like just not even being able to breathe you will be vomiting uncontrollably diarrhea you will have my god it's just agony so she's causing and watching these people in the worst pain you can can possibly imagine it's fucking awful because it causes like gi bleeding and shit like so it makes you really fucked up does she ever say why she picked that like why she wanted to poison no i know like women are more likely to poison by statistics i think some of it is probably because she wouldn't be caught yeah they
weren't gonna she picked people who they weren't gonna probably ask for an autopsy because it'll eventually cause cardiac arrest because your body goes into shock right because there's so much happening to your body it's that bad that your body literally goes into shock and you have a heart attack and die right like that's how they all died like they bodies went through fucking horror in front of her like take a deep breath and then her body their bodies all went into such shock that they all had a heart attack and died and then most of them are older as we'll see so they don't question it and did
she do that with everybody give them like a huge amount really oh yeah she like at one point she said she watched it and she felt nothing like she watched them go through the after effects and felt nothing wow so she's a real monster she's a monster unbelievable okay keep going now despite having caused jennings barfield jennings barfield's death velma was depressed still because you know she's alone now again do you think any part of her felt guilty um no i think to me i don't think she feels guilty i think she just realizes that she puts herself back and to square one okay and then she's depressed
again now as she'd done so many times before she turned more to her addictions to dull these difficult emotions and tried she had this thing she would do where she would try to soothe her guilt by telling herself well he was in poor health health anyways so she just speeded it along and that was it and she would tell herself that a lot like oh that person was gonna die anyway so who kept like who cares if they went out in excruciating pain shitting and throwing up all over themselves like that's what was gonna happen anyways right it's like no i don't think that was gonna happen but thank you
following her second husband's death she once again found herself shockingly in financial difficulties because she didn't plan for that so she rented out the house she had been living in with jennings and she and kim moved back into into the home she and the kids lived in when she was still with thomas oh wow the fire uh it had been twice damaged by fire but she later said i couldn't stand being back in that house i redecorated and bought new furniture i tried but i just couldn't feel good in it being in that house that thomas had built made me think i was drowning and didn't know how to swim
wow now things only got worse as 1971 came to a close because ronnie had tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get a deferment for his enlistment and kim's impending graduation meant that one more of her constant companions was going to be taken away and the stress of everything collapsing around her caused velma to lean much harder into her addictions and by the end of the year she experienced another drug overdose oh another one yep she had already had a couple oh um i don't know when they were so i didn't want to name them because they happened at different periods um but this one she claimed
was she later recognized as a half -hearted attempt to end her own life wow um eventually the you know the drugs and depression began affecting her performance at work and she was showing up late constantly and just not showing up at all and after seven years as one of the more reliable employees at belk's department store her boss had to fire her in december of 1971 wow now completely Completely depressed and unemployed, she entered 1972 living off what little insurance money she got from Jennings' death.
Running out of money, Thelma moved in with her parents in early 1972, and this was just as her father Murphy's health had begun to decline due to respiratory problems. Later, it was diagnosed as lung cancer.
Now, by the time it was diagnosed, his cancer was too advanced to treat, so he was checked into the hospital with no plans for a discharge.
He was basically in hospice.
Really sad. Now, during this time, Velma found work at a knitting plant in nearby Rayford just to help her mother with the bills.
And she was able to maintain that employment for a little over two months.
And then her father died in May and it sent her hurtling back into her bad habits.
And by January 1973, Velma had now overdosed twice in as many months and had begun stealing any pills she could find in her neighbors houses in wow you know anybody's medicine cabinets like she was really in a place where she needed a lot of help and she was and it was basically to stave off withdrawal at this point now she couldn't function without it so and she also couldn't maintain employment because of it isn't it crazy how like you can't function with it and then it becomes such a big part of your life that you can't function without it yeah Yeah.
It becomes a never ending, what feels like a never ending cycle that you can't get off.
If you don't get the help.
Just an escalator that just keeps going round and round.
It's just so crazy how your body is meant to function obviously like without drugs most of the time, but then you can become so dependent on them that you have to have them.
It's such a weird thing to reconcile in your brain.
It's really scary. But she ended up, kept living with her mom after her dad passed away, way um partially to help her mom just to like be there for her but also she didn't really have any other option yeah now her father i guess ended up later in life kind of acting like a buffer between her and her mom her mom were fine like her mom wasn't abusive or anything like that but i think her and lily just didn't get along that much like they they kind of butted heads well and she had resented her even from a child i think that's what it is because it sounds like Lily wasn't really doing anything outwardly
wrong or anything. I think she just rubbed Velma the wrong way.
Velma doesn't seem to have a whole lot of patience as we can see.
It's very Emily Gilmore Lorelai.
When you watch the series back, a lot of the times you're like, she's really not doing anything.
There's times when you're like, fuck you, Emily.
Yeah, 100%. I think that's kind of what Lily is.
This time she's like, alright, Lily.
But most of the time you're like, I think you just don't.
Like you're being a petulant child.
Now Now it got worse.
So Velma said mama liked to sit and talk about the old days when we were kids.
She was getting old and maybe that's why she kept talking like that.
That pissed her off.
She's not going to kill her mom, is she?
And for whatever reason, her mother's, you know, nostalgia and what she saw as her complete disregard for the unpleasant memories of her childhood.
She didn't want to talk about it.
Like she was like, you're only focusing on the nice things, which is like, she's old.
So I think that's just let her have that.
She lost her husband.
been like I don't know I don't know I don't know I can't I was gonna say I can't speak for it as a not going to if you're an abused child and somebody's only focusing on the wonderful times I'd be like yeah get your fucking face on the yeah I was gonna say like I went to say like I don't know just let her like hang out and like talk about the nice things if it makes her happy which like I like from my point of view I look at it that way like if it makes it but I'm like I'm not an abused child so I can't understand the trauma that comes along with that and how angry you would be I I would say try
your best to let her but it's like do that but I can see where it's it's bigger than you yeah it's hard you got sometimes like it's every once in a while I have to make sure I put myself in a different position yeah instead of looking at it only from my right my happy position over here like you know what I mean like I didn't have that yeah ceaseless endless unending trauma yeah growing up so it's like an abuse and shit like that so it's like i can sit here and say that because i can't imagine but i can't fathom i mean my mom was a single mom but i can't imagine if like my stepdad was still a part
of my life and hearing him be like but the good times sometimes i'd be like you shut the fuck up yeah you'd be like really shut the fuck up kyle his name is not kyle but it's like but so i can understand that yeah like i can see it because at first when i read it i was like girl and it's also i think because velma is a a fucking serial killer that i'm like your first thing is to disagree with her of course but there's times when you're like all right i guess no i see this traumatized child i suppose yeah um but yeah it pissed her off she was not happy with it i could i could definitely see that and her
anxieties were further inflamed by the fact that kim now graduated from high school and out of the house was engaged to be married oh man oh wow the way that just came full circle shit yeah exactly And she's out of money at this point.
She can't pay for any kind of wedding.
She can't help with any of that.
And Velma went to the bank and took out a loan.
Okay. And she used her mother's house as collateral.
Unbeknownst to Lily.
Yeah. She told the bank that Lily was too ill to come and fill out the paperwork herself and they just let her.
Shit. Banks were wily back then.
That's the thing. You don't fucks with the bank, but sometimes you do fucks with the bank and they're like, yeah, it's fine.
Sometimes the banks fuck with you.
Yeah. But in early December 1974, notices began arriving from the bank addressed to Lily.
And they were demanding payment on a loan that Velma had taken out on her behalf.
So Lily is older now and she's assuming, oh, well, like the bank made a mistake.
So she's just throwing them out, not even thinking about it, like just do to do.
And but Velma was seeing the notices.
Right. And she's panicking and she's sure her mom's going to find out that she's going to be caught.
And so she's not going to know what to do.
one day in mid -december velma had gone to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription and purchased another bottle of arsenic before leaving the store she said i don't remember thinking about what i would do next but somewhere inside me i must have already conceived of the plan i had done it once even though i had blotted that from my conscious memory later velma would claim that she had only planned and this is her constant claim constant every time she does this she claims this and i'm like girl we don't believe you what did she say velma would claim that she'd only planned to make her mother sick
for a while just long enough to give her time to find a job and pay back the loan and stop the notices from coming no whatever the plan had really been it didn't happen that way velma poisoned her food and not long after she ate it lily began uncontrollably vomiting complained of agonizing stomach pains and Velma's mother um Velma called her mother's doctor but her doctor assumed that she had the flu which was going around at the time so he declined to see her and was like oh I'll just call her in a prescription it's okay now the medicine obviously didn't help her mother because she did not have the flu
right so she called her brother Olive and they both arranged for an ambulance to bring Lily to the hospital while Lily was in ICU Velma kept repeating to everyone one that the doctor told her there were a lot of people dealing with this kind of illness right now so that's what it was she just had to convince herself that what she had done to her mother was not what was causing this illness it was secondary now later that afternoon her mother died of a heart attack because her body went into shock from arsenic yep and she later said that she kept repeating to herself mama died because of her heart
trouble it had nothing to do with the poison she even have heart trouble previously no now since the death of thomas burke in 1969 velma had descended deeper deeper into this addiction that she was living in until her entire life was revolving around the pills she took just to get through the day right and before she knew it the addiction had become a trap in which she was willing to do anything to avoid the panic of being cut off from it following her mother's death mother's murder yeah velma moved moved in with her daughter Kim and her husband, her new husband.
But her drug abuse immediately caused problems. In an effort to help their mother, Kim and Ronnie would regularly round up all the pills and flush them down the toilet.
Oof. But Velma always found a way to get more.
And one day, while she was cleaning out some things at her mother's house, she found a checkbook from an old account she had opened when Jennings was still alive.
So she had no money, and so she remembered the checkbook and wrote a bad check to the pharmacy, knowing but really not caring that she was going to be caught because she she was using it to get pills yeah and it was a bad check right so just days after writing the check two sheriff's deputies showed up at her door to discuss the bad check at first they went easy on her and were like listen if you just repay the money we're not going to cause you any trouble right but she didn't have the money to pay and so velma made another half -hearted attempt to take her own life by overdosing on pills again but she
woke up in the hospital later that day her collarbone actually broke from the fall that she took when she passed out oh wow and it was while she was in the hospital that the two sheriff's deputies returned this time they had a warrant for her arrest she had no options to pay the pay back the money so she had to plead guilty and was sentenced to six months at north carolina's correctional center for women in raleigh and while the time in jail seems like it would have been a great opportunity for velma to get get sober there's more in jail than there is on the streets but instead she spent most
of her time just looking for what you thinking about what she was going to do when she came out and after receiving an early release for good behavior after serving four months of the sentence she stole a check from her son -in -law's checkbook the minute she got home and went straight to the pharmacy and filled the prescription wow not long after kim learned she was pregnant and with a baby on the way she was like there's not enough room in this house for all of us and i can't have a baby around all this dysfunction i can't imagine what was going exactly she was like no i feel so bad for kim i
know to have to like like for lack of a better term kick your mother yeah to have to be like we can't i need to focus on my family oh that's really sad it happens to ronnie too oh so she found a new arrangement with an elderly neighbor and she was gonna live with her oh fuck and she was gonna provide limited in -home care in exchange for room and board. Gurley, you can't even care for yourself and you're going to care for this elderly person?
Now, at first, this seemed like an ideal job to her.
But then it became clear to her that the woman's needs were far greater than what she could meet.
And after four months, she was moved.
This woman, this elderly woman, thankfully for her, was moved to a long -term care facility, which put Velma out of a job and out of a home.
But unfortunately, but fortunately for her, there is no shortage of elderly people in need of care.
so she found herself in a new live -in care position with an elderly couple couple named montgomery and dolly edwards shut your face right now i know the cutest names montgomery and dolly yeah i love them forever they were made to find each other yeah they were now i know right in in november 1975 dolly edwards had decided she wanted to bring her husband montgomery home from the hospital okay but they were older she had neither the energy nor the strength to meet the demands of his care um it was the county nurse who had recommended velma to dolly girl bye she had met her a few months earlier when velma was hired
to care for her elderly sister that other person okay okay after just one brief conversation dolly was like sounds good to me and she offered the position to velma and she would get room and board and also would get a salary of 75 a week now like so many of the relationships in her life it didn't take long before she was just fucking annoyed by these people that's the thing with velma it's like get the fuck over yourself yeah what is wrong with you like don't be around people if you don't like them but she don't take care of people if you don't like them like jesus christ these are older people
they're just like living their lives yeah but they have things that she wants and she came came to resent them and how do you resent montgomery and doll exactly velma she was very quick to become irritated and hated the way which this annoys me hated the way that dolly always hovered around her when she was tending to montgomery's needs and criticizing the way she did things bitch you better bet that i'm gonna criticize the way you're taking care of my man well that's what i'm like you think dolly is not gonna give a fuck what you're doing to montgomery over there you just got out of the hospital
also she's she brought his ass home that he can stay Stay home?
Yeah. Fuck you, Bona.
Are you kidding me?
I would, I will fucking micromanage what you do to my elderly husband.
Absolutely. Like, fuck that shit.
Like, that's mine. Like, that's love.
I heard that. And that's the thing.
I'm like, she doesn't understand that.
She doesn't understand that kind of love, that kind of devotion, that kind of caring.
Because she never was with a man that she loved.
Get it. So she doesn't understand why Dolly has to sit there and see everything she's doing.
That's wild. and then she claims that she says at times i felt i saw flashbacks as if i'd gone back home again she acted like my mother always telling me what to do and never pleased with the way i did things and it's like well no that's grow up because that's her guy you know and but then even ronnie would later say that he overheard several arguments between his mother and dolly that reminded him very much of the arguments she would have with lily before she died oh wow and i'm like like i think this is velma's problem yeah uh velma also greatly disliked the way dolly talked about her nephew
stewart taylor velma had met stewart a few times while she was working for the edwards and he always seemed like a perfectly nice guy but he's not which i was like velma you're not one to have like your taste is not is not killing it right you know i don't think you are the end doll be all of who's a good guy but dolly always made a point of speaking very ill of him criticizing criticizing him for his drinking uh -huh but it's her fucking family she knows and also like i'm sorry you've seen what drink what like you know somebody who like prioritizes that over everything like you know that doesn't
work for you and i was gonna say you didn't like it now that fall steward asked velma if she would like to have dinner with him and she happily agreed oh man you're hearing what he's like dude like this is what i mean i'm like come on but it's like it's It's one of those things where it's such a cycle for her because she went after Thomas after her parents disapproved.
Look what happened.
And now this woman who's like her mom disapproves of this guy.
She's one of those people where you disapprove and it makes her go after it harder.
And she's living the same lives.
So like moving in with Dolly in Montgomery, Dolly, she says, reminds her of her mother and then she's like going against her.
Now, Stuart and Velma went out a couple of times a week for about six weeks until he stopped coming by the house completely out of nowhere.
oh he ghosted her yeah when velma mentioned it dolly said stewart and his wife had reconciled and were hoping to get back together velma was disappointed but was like whatever yeah moving on now by just january 1977 montgomery had passed away at the end of the month so now normal circumstances yes okay so now velma was left alone with dolly in the house without montgomery to care for dolly found new chores and responsibilities for velma because she was like you still want to be paid you still want somewhere to live um which velma interpreted as new excuses for dolly to criticize her it's like
girly she's putting a fucking roof over your head of money in your pocket and velma said over the last few months the pressure had built up so much that every time mrs edwards started to complain i wanted to scream at her i began to to hate mrs edwards i wanted to hurt her in some way then leave that's not normal no of course that's not normal thought patterns like i want to hurt this elderly woman that's terrifying you leave bye like go get another job with another elderly couple who you can decide to hate right now after a little more than a month alone with dolly she couldn't stand it any longer
and poor dolly is also probably depressed after montgomery just died and on february 28th what did velma do she poisoned the elderly woman in the same way that she had done the others wow dolly was in excruciating pain for about a day until she passed away the following morning with velma so out of it that she was oblivious so so dolly for a whole day was an excruciating torturous sickness and pain and while velma just sat there and used just disassociated this poor elderly woman by herself torturously excruciatingly dying in her own house that's a horrible thing to think about I just thought
of this too those last couple months for Edward were probably awful too because there was such dysfunction in the house for Montgomery so it's like the last parts of their lives were dysfunctional awful yeah it seems to be what she does she sucks now under most circumstances the amount of tragedy and death that seemed to follow velma would have been suspicious but remember she's picking sick and elderly people so their deaths are like not they're shocking but not shocking you know what i mean like they're not like unusual and in the beginning of april she sat wondering what she was was gonna do
now the edwards were dead so she received a call from a woman who was looking for someone to provide live -in care services for her parents these people were john henry and record lee mrs lee had recently broke her leg and at 80 years old her husband was unable to take care of her 80 years old you live your whole life and then fucking velma moves in with you yep she was gonna get room and board she would get a small salary so she agreed to work with the lees in in late april now just as before velma immediately found the job annoying she found her employers intolerable to get another fucking job
and she said they argued a lot constantly bickering over things of no importance i'm like yeah they're old yeah like that's what all people do 100 and after a few months velma's undue resentment of the couple had gone right into what it normally does a hatred that's wild that's the thing i'm like your your hate and temper and anger is evil like that's evil shit so she spent her days just seething and dreaming about how she could just she was like i just wanted to walk out and abandon them and it's like then do that i was gonna say go for it but she figured if she quit her job she would have no money
and so things Things changed in late summer when Velma needed to see a new doctor for her prescriptions and this required a sum of money she just didn't have. So to cover the cost, she stole a check from John Henry's checkbook and wrote out the amount of $50, forging his name at the bottom.
What a piece of shit.
The doctor accepted the check without question, which I'm like, everybody else needs to check themselves here too.
Like, what's wrong with all of you?
And Velma was able to get the medicine, but just as in the case of a loan taken out on her mother's house, she immediately began to panic that John Henry was going to get his bank statement and discover what she had done.
Right. She said, in a state of panic, I again bought poison.
I don't think that she really was in a state of panic.
No, she liked doing this.
Yeah. At this point.
She got the added bonus of getting some money out of it.
Some money out of it, exactly.
She said, telling myself that I only wanted to make him sick so that I could leave, get a different job and replace the monies I had taken by forgery.
And that's not true.
She is full of shit.
Because that's it. You make him sick for a little bit, he's still gonna go over his bank statements when he gets better and you know that.
You didn't want to make him sick.
You wanted to kill him.
You know, you've seen that the amount of arsenic you're putting in food is killing people.
It's not just making people sick.
You're not changing it up.
Right. And also, that's also fucked up.
I love that she's like I just wanted to make people People's GI bleeds.
I don't understand why that was a problem.
And it's like, you fucking like that's that's wild.
Yeah, she's evil. That she's literally saying, like, what?
I just wanted to poison them a little.
And it's like they are 80 years old.
You fucking asshole.
That's wild. So a few days later, Velma served John Henry the poisoned food and the arsenic immediately went to work.
She said he went through the same kinds of pain that the others had gone through.
Again, I watched in a detached way, feeling no connection between my actions and his pain.
Wow. So she watched this poor old man in excruciating pain.
80 years old. John Henry died on June 4th, 1977, with the medical examiner listing the cause of death as a heart attack.
That's horrible. And to think that these people could have lived longer and gotten more out of life than just Velma.
But she just takes it because she's annoyed.
annoyed now just days after john henry's death velma was shocked when she answered the lee's front door to find stewart taylor what he tracked her down standing before her hadn't seen stewart in over a year and velma didn't understand why she was seeing him now but he quickly explained that he was in the process of divorcing his wife and he wanted to check on velma to see how she had been doing after you just fucking walked out of her life velma invited stewart in and they spent spent hours catching up.
Following John Henry Lee's death, the Lee family convinced Velma to stay on to take care of Rekord. That's even sadder.
Right. They convinced her to stay to take care of their, you know, the wife.
Yeah. Because they had no idea.
And Velma agreed, but it didn't take long before she started getting that feeling again.
Oh, my God. Suddenly, she was feeling resentment, anger, irritability.
And the only thing that made those months tolerable, she said was that Stuart had become been coming by for visits regularly and before long they'd become a proper relationship picking up where they had left off you know the year before and Velma spent a few months in the Lee home after John Henry's death but eventually that anger and you know feelings came too much so she found a job as a nurse's aide at a nearby nursing home where she worked third shift and the salary was higher than anything she had made in recent years so she was able to move into a trailer home by herself, which seemed to improve
her mood a little bit.
Now, after a while, Velma began to notice a pattern in Stuart's behavior that made her a little uneasy.
He would come around for a few days in a row and then disappear for a week.
Binge drinking. With no, you nailed it.
And then he'd just show up again like nothing had happened.
And on one of these occasions, Velma had become concerned and called Stuart's stepmother, who told her not to worry he's been on one of his drinking binges again exactly by late summer velma and stewart were spending nearly all their free time together you know going on short trips like you know really going for it okay for a time it seems the rage and numbness was kind of keeping at bay you know she was feeling a little happiness with stewart i guess which only or what she thought was happening i was just gonna say i should say i was gonna say which only increased in the fall of 1977 when stewart
asked velma to marry him now the kids her kids ronnie and kim were very immediately concerned they were like i think you're rushing into marriage again and i think you're rushing into marriage with another alcoholic again like why would you do this and i don't think this is great and he could be potentially violent yeah like we've seen how this happens so velma assured them that stewart was working on that working on that okay and besides you know they couldn't get married until stewart's divorce was finalized in may so they you know there was time to make everything oh my god can you imagine
having to deal with this with your mother i literally can't that's horrible now years later velma would acknowledge that a marriage to stewart would have been a bad idea okay so she doesn't do it she said i never felt close to him him at all which is like you did which is like damn you really are cold as ice because it's like you pretended like what the fuck i don't believe that she didn't feel close to him i can't comprehend why i wanted to be with him sometimes we're just lonely somebody to talk to you know i think that is who she is at her core damn it's like this i just don't understand person now
regardless of how she claimed to feel about him later at the time velma seemed to go out of her way to get Stuart's attention that's the thing and like and she went out of her way to get her previous husband's attention and this one's even wilder because she went to extremes to get his attention here in one incident in November police were called to her trailer when a friend stopped by to check on her and found Velma duct taped by her hands and feet with another piece atop across her mouth she claimed she had entered the bathroom that morning about to take a shower when a man entered her trailer,
threw a towel over her head and forced her back into the bedroom where he secured her to the bed.
She claimed she never saw her assailant and certainly couldn't identify him by voice alone.
She, of course not.
And she had been taped to the bed, but she hadn't been assaulted by anybody in any way.
And there was nothing missing from the house.
In fact, nobody had even gone through the house.
Like there was nobody had clearly opened anything to look for valuable is nothing what and although they didn't say it at the time the officers at the scene were like i think she did this to herself how do you tape yourself and they said they think she did it to get sympathy from stewart and it worked when stewart arrived at her house a short time later the officers quote noticed how solicitous and reassuring he was being and he demanded velma wasn't gonna stay another night alone and insisted she move in with him immediately i've gotta go like i've got to go yeah now if velma had thought that moving
in with stewart would be like a positive step in their relationship she was probably disappointed uh because it made it harder yeah stewart became very suspicious of velma because she's a suspicious motherfucker won't you have an addiction as well like stewart began going through her things while she was out and found several letters from people she'd met in prison what velma had never mentioned to her fiance that she had gone to prison oh my god so that was a big revelation to him oh which is something you should probably tell someone and from there the relationship just began to deteriorate
velma and stewart spent more time fighting than anything else they just could not get along so no longer happy with that life velma fell right back into her old habits started forging checks stolen from stewart's checkbook so was stealing checks from him you're with a con woman baby and he received his bank statement in december and noticed the forged checks used to pay the pharmacy and confronted velma and he was like listen if you don't return the money like i'm gonna have you arrested yeah this is fucked up and with their relationship effectively over she velma ended up going to her son ronnie's
house hoping she could move in with him but ronnie was like you can't like i'm living with my wife and he was like he had an infant child at that point and he was like the way you are is not conducive to me having a happy family life with my little family like i need to take care of my child and my wife so hate that both of her kids were put in that position but also good for them good for you guys for putting your family like those boundaries and those putting your own little families first is sometimes necessary and you did the right thing absolutely absolutely well done and especially but i'm
sorry you had to go through that that's a thing i can't imagine how distressing that is because no matter what like it's your family it's your mom and then you have to choose like another part of your family over her yeah and she should have never put them in that position but like really good for them for recognizing that like that would be starting a cycle yeah that could really turn out bad and especially to realize that like in that time period too where again talk therapy wasn't like the biggest thing yeah so that's like good for them yeah but this you know this rejection was a big big especially
her son uh which her son's it's that just seems to be a different a different thing for her yeah uh and it was she went from uncontrolled sobbing to a kind of rage that ronnie said he had never seen in his mother and he also was like hey um this is exactly why you can't live here he said it was a mean mean look real angry unlike any i've ever seen before wow and i even literally wrote in my notes you did the right thing ronnie yeah absolutely i was like i need you to know you did the right thing i would be like you're proving me right right now I can't have you near my infant child and my wife
doing this. No. You were being the dad.
You were taking care of your family.
Good for you. Yeah, and Kim did the same thing.
And good for Kim being the mom and taking care of her shit.
Hell yeah. Now, by January 1978, Velma had quit her job and was hospitalized again for a brief period of time.
Without money to pay for anything, she again stole checks from Stewart, which triggered that panic that he was going to report her and that familiar panic set in.
she was only gonna make him sick she told herself out it just long enough for her to replace the money so he wouldn't find out about the checks of course velma did not just make stewart sick she poisoned him with arsenic just as she had the others stewart spent the evening of february 3rd in absolute agony and eventually velma took him to the hospital but by then it was too late within a few hours he was pronounced dead so she killed three people within the same family that's nuts yeah like a couple months apart yeah wow and all for the same reasons there's no same trivial you annoyed me and i
stole your money and i was scared you were gonna report me she's fucked what is she up to like how many people is she killed at this point she killed her husband her second husband then her mother then dolly dolly and dolly's husband husband uh not montgomery she didn't kill montgomery oh right so she killed dolly she killed um one john henry oh my god and she's killed stewart holy shit now until stewart's death velma's victims like we said had all been kind of sick or elderly precisely the type of people you would kind of expect to die from an illness or an accident or some kind of you know stewart
was only 56 years old at the time of his death i was just he was in relatively good health That's fucking wild.
Now, under the circumstances, like, under, you know, I guess, like, relatively good health, all things considered about his lifestyle.
Okay, okay. Under the circumstances, he wasn't on the pay.
Like, nobody expected him to just drop dead.
Yeah. Now, under the circumstances, the family was stunned and confused by his death.
And so they were like, yeah, we want an autopsy.
Right. And they were eager for a pathologist to perform one.
In fact, they even included Velma in their decision to have the autopsy performed which she agreed was a good idea what she said i didn't expect them to find anything besides my mind was already convincing me that i had not killed stewart girl and here's the thing plate full of fucking arsenic but she's probably thinking especially at this time period how are they going to find it he he was vomiting and the diarrhea and like all that came out of his system like they're not going to find that shit and it's not like we're as advanced as we are now.
So it's like, even now it can be tough to find.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's a tough one.
So she's probably thinking, like, what the fuck are they gonna find?
They're not gonna find arsenic.
Wow. Yeah. I wonder if they wouldn't have. Well, I don't know what happens.
I'm assuming they do.
And I don't know if they wouldn't have if she hadn't put so much. I know.
I'm interested to find that out.
She really goes, now, despite pressure from Stuart's family, the pathologist could only work as fast as his partners in the lab could turn around test results.
So the results of the autopsy were delayed by several weeks because they were trying to go through all the strange abnormalities they were discovering during the initial exam.
In fact, it wasn't until the pathologist was describing the results to the state's chief medical examiner, Paige Hudson, that things started moving again.
While the technicians and pathologists had recognized suspicious elements of the autopsy, it was Hudson who immediately recognized Stuart Taylor's death as acute arsenic poisoning.
Damn. Hudson's presumption, yeah, would take a little more time and a few more tests to confirm.
Sorry, I was moving.
That's why I was like...
But in the meantime, he had called the police and the district attorney to let them know that they very likely had a murder on their hands.
Now, following Stuart's murder, Velma fell right back into that cycle of working the overnight shift and returning home to get lost in just disassociation.
And she did get the occasional visitor, but she was very surprised when the doorbell rang on March 10th, and she opened it to find a man she'd never seen before standing on her doorstep.
The man introduced himself as Benson Phillips, a detective with the Lumberton Police Department.
Oh, bitch. And he asked Velma to come down to the station with him to talk about a few suspicious deaths, including that of her latest fiance, Stuart Taylor.
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Now, in the short amount of time since the abnormalities were discovered in Stewart's autopsy, investigators had traced a path backwards from Velma and found that Stewart was just the latest in a surprising number of weird deaths that seemed to involve the 45 -year -old nurse's age.
she's only 45 the deaths included the recently deceased stewart taylor velma's mother lily and her former employees employers they did include montgomery and dolly and uh john henry lee all having shown signs of gastroenteritis wow yeah now in the interrogation room velma acted stunned when the detectives connected the dots between her and the other suspicious deaths deaths she said y 'all think i poisoned stewart don't you and she started crying and was like putting on a show and the investigators are like oh great she's gonna confess right here and there we got her but they she called their bluff
and just maintained her innocence throughout the entire conversation but fortunately a few days later the final results from the autopsy came back and confirmed that stewart had died from arsenic poisoning damn detective phillips took the news to stewart's family and informed them that they suspected velma of having killed their father well sorry her children thought that that she killed their dad uh no so i should have said that a better way i'm sorry no that's okay um stewart had children oh okay okay i see uh with his uh previous wife yeah i forgot i should have stated that a little better
because that would have been confusing no that makes sense um and this prompted stewart's daughter alice to provide the investigators with all the information on the forged checks and Velma's other suspicious behavior in the weeks leading up to Stuart's murder.
That's the thing. It's like you created, like you were saying earlier, a paper trail.
And on the evening of March 13, 1978, Detective Benson returned to Velma's house, this time for a warrant for her arrest for the murder of Stuart Taylor.
Yeah. And although investigators were tight -lipped about the other deaths Velma was suspected of having caused, Lumberton, North Carolina is a small town.
and it wasn't hard for the press and locals to put the pieces together now confronted with the evidence against her and the threat of revealing tests being conducted on the exhumed bodies now of her mother and dolly aunt montgomery edwards oh wow velma confessed that she had indeed murdered stewart by poisoning on march 26th the district district attorney joe brit presented his case against velma to the robson uh robson county grand jury who indicted velma barfield on one count of first degree murder but velma was absent from the courtroom at the time because she would was admitted to dorothea dick's
hospital a few days for a few days for a psychological examination um a month later dr bob rollins a psychiatrist from the hospital completed and submitted the results of his examination of velma in which she she determined that she was competent to stand trial a month later on may 5th velma was arraigned for the murder in a robson county courtroom where she pled not guilty by reason of insanity as the pieces of the puzzle begin coming together in the press the residents of lumberton grew increasingly shocked by the number of velma's victims yeah and the manner in which they were killed because like
we said sometimes you hear poisoning and you think I think your brain sometimes just goes to like, oh, no, I don't feel well.
And then somebody passes out and dies.
And it's like, oh, no, this is fucking gruesome.
It is an awful, awful, awful way to die.
She was a real monster.
It's right up there with like stabbing and like doing awful like hand to hand shit.
And she just sat there and watched it happen.
She just watched it happen.
That's even worse. Yeah.
Yeah. One resident told the Charlotte News, you just don't expect to have a mass murderer in your town, which I mean, valid.
Yeah, accurate. I don't.
A friend of Stewart's named Yates Allen agreed and told reporters he was very angry at Velma.
He said, for causing a friend of mine to go through what he went through.
Certainly he suffered the tortures of the damned, which I was like, wow.
Shit. But most people simply couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of what they They knew as like a pretty kind, helpful woman.
Yeah. Because again, like she had gotten recommended to work with these elderly people.
Right. She was by all accounts, a loving mom, even though like they had a tough childhood, obviously.
Right. I don't think she outwardly was showing a lot of things that would lead anyone to believe she could do this.
They just couldn't believe she had done it.
And Alan again said, Stuart, in all his life, he wouldn't go to church. This one got him going two or three times a week.
Wow. she was going to church this is that's the thing i was like i don't know if that's the flex that you think it is because it's like this serial killer got him going two or three times a week like i don't know what that says about anything but i feel like maybe we could just leave that to the burns you know i think he was like damn like like like i don't know what that this this bitch was going to church two or three times a week i don't i don't know i don't have a comment but i'm like damn damn indeed they were sitting in pews with a serial killer that's wild and she's sitting there's like
talking up a big game i mean according to her and you'll you'll hear she she gets saved later in prison and it's like i don't believe that like i'm sorry i'm sorry i think that's such bullshit you sat and watched people in the most agonizing pain yeah that's fucked vomiting up everything in their body to the point where they are probably vomiting up like actual body fluids that they need to survive crying sobbing begging for help shitting themselves grasping their stomachs in agony and excruciating pain 80 year old women your own fucking mother and you're sitting in a pew and telling me well Well, it's
fine. Yeah. No. That's, like… No. I'm sorry.
I don't buy that. And you took people's loved ones away in, like, the last years of their lives… Yes!
…when they could have had them longer.
You can't do… You can't do what you've done and then tell me that everything's fine now.
You killed your mom.
It's, like, no. It's not.
And, like, to kill Lily, too, who… Yeah.
…when you were a child would blame, like, silly things that happened on herself and… Just to try to take it away.
…take abuse for you.
It's just… I don't… that doesn't make sense to me which i'm like okay girl like think what you want to think but like there's no way that you're getting out of this well and i just don't understand the like like you're supposed to live by a certain code and you didn't don't and then it's the furthest away from it i don't get that i just don't understand no i don't understand it either this doesn't make any sense to me but like go off but while the locals struggled with the idea of one of their own having done any of this the prosecutor's office and velma's defense team began building their their
cases for district attorney joe brit it was a pretty simple case slim dunk velma barfield was a confessed murderer of at least one but possibly as many as six who killed for reasons so trivial as they annoyed the victim annoyed her literally in fact brit was so convinced the jury would only see velma as guilty he skipped his opening remarks altogether and went right into calling his first witness he was like i don't even need to do this from one witness to the next joe britt laid out a narrative where velma had stolen from her boyfriend in order to get her pills and then killed him in order to
prevent her him from discovering the theft it was pretty black and white yeah as evidence of her misdeeds brit produced the four checks velma had stolen from stewart and the defense immediately objected pointing out that in order for the checks to to be relevant brint needed to point out to prove that stewart didn't authorize her to sign on his behalf which they were like you can't do that you can't prove that he's not here and he said i do not intend to introduce them to the uh i merely wanted them marked for identification and this actually turned out to be joe britt's most successful strategy
in the courtroom because because he skirted dangerously close to prejudicing the jury.
Oh, OK. Just a little bit.
But it kind of worked.
OK, I mean, in this case, you're like, God, what did you want to do?
Now, Britt relied on this same tactic a few days later when he called John Henry and Record Lee's daughter, Margie Pittman, to the stand.
Because she killed Record as well, right?
She did not. No? I don't believe so.
I think she did. I think she killed Record after, she killed John because that was the one where they convinced her to stay right yeah they she she stayed but then I think she ended up moving on to that nursing job oh and moving into the trailer before she could do anything oh okay okay um sorry it gets confusing there's a lot yeah now um her name is Margie Pittman they brought her to the stand and they drew this drew immediate objections from the defense who argued that Britt was attempting to use evidence from an unrelated crime because they're talking about Stuart's murder yeah uh to prove
intent to to the murder of Stuart Taylor.
And defense attorney Bob Jacobson said, Mr. Britt is trying to try five or six cases here rather than one.
The judge agreed, but allowed Britt to continue presenting evidence from the other cases as a means of establishing Velma's pattern of intent.
Yeah. Which I think is right.
I think that's fair.
Now, arguing in Velma's defense, Bob Jacobson presented an equally simple case to the jury.
He said she was raised by an extremely violent man who terrorized the entire entire household.
And so she went on to develop mental illness and a severe drug addiction in adulthood that caused her to lose control and made her psychotic and violent.
So he wasn't arguing that she hadn't murdered Stewart.
He was saying she did it.
And that's basically the insanity thing.
Now, Jacobson noted that his client had, like we said, killed Stewart Taylor, but she had done so in a psychotic manic state and therefore could not be held accountable for I don't agree.
Now, moreover, Velma had maintained that she had always intended only to make her victims sick.
Remember, I was just going to make them sick.
Right. Just to buy myself enough time to give back that money.
Not true. She never intended to kill them, even though she did it six times the exact same way.
That's the thing. thing and again that was that was the problem is that brit had already established that she had done this six times same outcome every time so he was like i don't know about that yeah and she actually was on the stand at one point velma they brought her on the stand and she was very combative she did not help herself she came off as a real asshole so for a case as complicated and emotionally charged as velma's was it was pretty surprising because it moved pretty quickly once the trial The trial began on November 27th, 1978.
Both sides rested within a week.
Wow. And the jury was also quick to make their decision.
They deliberated for a little over an hour and returned a verdict of guilty.
Yeah. And then they deliberated a little more than three hours before delivering a recommendation that Velma be executed in the state's gas chamber.
Now, when the verdict and sentence was delivered, Velma was emotionless.
She just sat there.
she was chewing gum just sitting there but her daughter Kim was sitting a little few rows behind her and just started sobbing of course and I can't even imagine because it's like she already was dealing with such a strange relationship yeah a strained relationship with her mom and now this comes out and you find this out and you find out she killed your grandmother oh my god I didn't even think of that who you got along with I didn't even think of that yeah like what a heavy your grandmother and multiple like your your mother killed elderly people including your grandmother wow yeah so for prosecutor joe
britt who was an ardent proponent of the death penalty the verdict was a huge victory he said if there's ever been a case deserving imposition of the ultimate penalty this is it he told recorders through a callous malicious indifferent act killed him mrs barfield killed him dead and he's gone for eternity which which I was like, I know, I mean, that's what death is, but thank you.
And it was just him emphasizing, I think, but I was like, yeah, I could have done without that.
You didn't have to get flowery with it.
Now, removed from the courtroom and taken to a maximum security wing at the Women's Correctional Center in Raleigh, Velma became the second woman on death row since the state reintroduced capital punishment the previous year.
Wow. During a jailhouse interview that they did, I think about a week after the sentence was passed, Velma told reporters she was guilty of the murder And she said if she was given a choice She was not interested in appealing her sentence She said personally I don't want an appeal Personally I'd rather go ahead The day is February 9th And that was the day they had set for her execution Whether she meant what she told the reporters Or was just kind of Talking a big game in front of cameras Nobody really knows But Velma did appear remarkably calm In the days after the sentence was delivered Well
she had attempted to take her life Yeah she had So it seems like maybe she was ready ready to she said i know people are saying poor old velma sitting up there on death row and i was like i don't know if many people are saying that but okay yeah she said but i wish they wouldn't because i know when the final breath comes it will just be goodbye here and hello on the other side i have joy unspeakable i don't know what other side you're prepared for yeah i don't know especially especially with what you believe in i don't know if you're going to the great one here yeah now Now, after being delivered
to the Women's Correctional Center, she became sober for the first time.
Wow, that's shocking.
And told the press that she had traded all of that for a newfound commitment to Christ. She said, I'm off drugs, thank the Lord. And she said, I turned all this trouble over to the hands of the Lord months before the trial.
He doesn't promise to go part of the way and then drop us.
Okay. So it's like, okay.
While Velma may have been ready to go forward with the execution as it had been scheduled, scheduled turned out the state was not ready to do that uh following her conviction and the sentencing it became her case became the subject of many appeals on her behalf in the years that followed and the execution date got scheduled rescheduled multiple times there were tons of stays of execution pending the outcome of her appeals so there can be appeals placed even if you don't on your behalf it can like when things change too when like laws change or bills go into to effect yeah they will take another
look at the case just uh even if you don't even it out because they have to even it out with the laws that are happening or anything um and in that time velma's story and defense had time to change and evolve from what was presented in the court a few years later oh god in her 1978 defense bob jacobson argued that velma was an emotionally disturbed essentially he called her a drug addict who was unable to control her actions like he was was really pushing like that that kind of narrative uh -huh um and could not be held responsible for the outcome of anything she did um but by 1980 velma had become
a born -again christian and was no longer welcoming in execution she said i know i've been forgiven just like i've been able to forgive all the people i felt had hurt me so many times and those i felt so bitter towards i always wonder how people know so strongly yeah that they've been forgiven well also that's a lot to you know who hasn't forgiven you i'm pretty sure the people the family members of the people you killed yeah i think those are the ones you need to worry about forgiving you probably but she doesn't care about that she's curious i forgive myself it's good to me that's just like straight
up delusion and at least in this i also love the like what a shit tastic way of saying it too it's not like i've been forgiven she's like i've been forgiven and don't worry i've forgiven everybody else too and it's like oh okay i'm really glad that you've forgiven everybody buddy velma same old velma now around the same time it seemed velma had also changed her mind about not wanting to appeal her sentence and in 1980 she filed an appeal with the fourth circuit court of appeals in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus among other things the petition argued that velma had received inadequate representation and her
rights had been violated when the trial judge refused her request for additional counsel at the state's expense in defense of this of his effective defense bob jacobson explained to the court that velma was a very difficult client in a very difficult case and additional court appointed attorneys were unlikely to have made the defense any more successful he said i counseled her to be a sympathetic witness to look like somebody's mother and evoke sympathy and he said frankly i felt she would get into an argument with district attorney joe freeman brit and my fears came to pass and he was referring
to velma being so combative and so fucking unpleasant on the stand when she was being present uh questioned by brit yeah he was like be a mom like act sympathetic and she was just like fuck you guys like i don't give a shit now the court rejected the appeal and upheld the verdict and the sentencing writing when the petitioner's forecast cast of evidence is assessed in its best light possible.
In conjunction with those elements of respondents opposing materials that are not disputed, it simply fails to raise more than a basis for bald conjecture.
Now, by the early 1980s, Velma's case became a major talking point for politicians in North Carolina, in particular Governor Jim Hunt during his re -election campaign against senator jesse helms in 1984 hunt tried to minimize the issue of the death penalty during the campaign he said i think the effect of the death penalty will be to cause less taking of life when people do premeditate and plan in advance uh that is untrue yeah doesn't do shit sir um supporters of capital punishment agreed with one proponent of elma's sentence telling supporters we live by the law or we go into a country of anarchism
okay uh -huh uh it's like uh studies have said that it doesn't help so just saying uh by 1984 velma had exhausted her appeals and barring a stay of execution or clemency from the governor was scheduled to die on november 2nd 1984 and although clemency was very unlikely by that fall Stuart's mother and daughter as well as nine family members of the other victims met with the governor and urged him not to interfere with the execution that's sad that they even had to do that they were worried that he was going to suddenly step out Stuart's daughter Alice said she's an outstanding liar a serial killer
does not want help they enjoy killing and Velma Barfield enjoys killing and that is the truth I agree with Alice lawyers working working and like i like we've said this many times about the death penalty where we stand but like i agree with her on that sentiment that i i don't believe she should have left jail no i don't either i think i'm at a place where i feel like the death penalty for me is so gray and like more like case by case yeah in this case i tend to agree with it really yeah see i think she should have just been in prison i think she didn't give a shit for what she did so it was like
yeah a lot lot of times i want people to remain in prison so they have to think about it all the time yeah i think it sounds to me like she didn't think about it very often she didn't give a shit that's true but lawyers working on velma's behalf had argued tirelessly for a stay in the weeks leading up to her execution but on november 1st velma accepted her fate and asked them to stop the next morning at 2 15 a .m marja velma barfield died by lethal injection at north carolina's central prison she was the first woman executed in the united states in 22 years wow um and what one witness said i didn't
notice any kind of suffering at all she just seemed to relax yeah it was like i don't see i don't see the justice in that fucking case because it's like she and it's and it's not even done but oh my god we're almost done but uh but like that that's where i don't i think where i I like I have gotten off the death penalty because I'm like there's no justice in that look at what the witness just said there's no suffering at all she's just relaxed but who knows but her victims went through fucking agony oh yeah final moments but it's like was she suffering when I would rather her just sitting there
I mean give her a few more years I'm sure she would I said I do see your point you know like I'm just like I'm like let her let her let her sit around and have nothing to do to me I feel like there's no in Velma's case no justice with that there's really no justice anywhere because you can't have justice when six people were fucking horrifically murdered it's like there really is no justice anywhere and it's like i don't want to watch it's it's so hard because it's like you obviously you're not like you know give her arsenic poisoning and let her die that way like that's fucked up but like like
as like a human being you know what i mean yeah but it's like i'd rather her just be bye yeah later like I don't know how I would I think I think you wouldn't know how you would feel unless it happened to you and again I'm not a family member so that's the thing I speak from an outside position never having had to dealt deal with somebody taking my family member away and I do wonder and this is this is just like a pure thought of I don't know if I was a family member of one of those people that she killed what I want her killed like is that justice you know like what I want her still to be able
to breathe oxygen that my family should be living.
That's the thing. I have no idea.
So it's like I can speak and like I fully recognize the privilege of being able to speak from a place where my family member was not taken from me by a murderer.
Right. So it's like I'm not going to sit here and say I totally understand what I would do.
And that's why I'm like you know.
So I got to give attention.
Whatever the family members want, I tend to agree with.
Like even in this case, the family members didn't want her execution stopped.
That's what they wanted.
Stop it. Right. Then that's that's what i have to go with and in a way is that justice like is that a slice of justice because they had a say in because they got a say in it because even like in the boston bombing case that the family members came forward and said they didn't want him executed and i was like then don't execute it like if that's what they want like i almost feel like it kind of should lie with the family members i know it kind of feels like they'll all come out in the end yeah Yeah, like a jury maybe, and this is just me thinking, like a jury convict and then the family members
that are remaining decide the fate.
But then that could get so fucking messy.
But it's like, I don't know.
That's the thing. It's so hard. That's why I'm always like shocked when somebody can have such a black and white opinion about things.
Because I'm like, it's just so much gray.
I don't think a lot of things in life are black and white.
The human condition is not an easy thing to just put into boxes, I feel like.
so it's like this is not because even within a family people might disagree exactly that's the thing and it's all really you know what you've dealt with yeah it's like fucked up it's for anybody who's had to be in that position I'm sorry you've ever had to be in that position because again I don't it's that must be an impossible position to be in but just before the doctors did execute her warden Nathan Rice asked her if there was anything she wanted to say and she said I want to say that I'm sorry for the hurt that I've caused I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain all the families
connected and I'm sorry that was nice that she used her final words for that I guess some of them don't most of them don't now later that day Ronnie Burke spoke to reporters about his mother's final days and he said I want people to know she wanted to live very badly she wanted to live for her grandchildren we miss her already and that's really sad and that's what makes me say that's the thing And that's where you, that's where you do sit in the gray.
There's so many parts that you're just like, well, fuck.
And it's like, that's.
Because her kids didn't deserve that.
And I think, and again, I'm going to go with, you know, the victim's family members here.
I'll never go against them for what they wanted and they wanted that to happen and that is perfectly fine.
But that's why the death penalty can be tricky because you can't reverse it.
And there are victims where like there's victims that were killed, but there's, I would say her children are victims as well.
absolutely there's there's far -reaching fuck -upery that happens when something like that happens and it's and there's so many different like that like a nasty onion of just like layers of people affected by it by one person and they all get different treatment right now like it's like they the the kids get different treatment and then the victim's family like there's so many different layers here just it's sad that makes me overall her children never got what they should have obviously for the victim's families and my heart breaks for her kids because like we said throughout this whole thing they
just tried to be the best son and daughter they could yeah uh two days later after the execution velma barfield was buried beside her first husband thomas burke in a funeral attended by nearly 200 people wow um in the eulogy reverend philip carter noted that velma was no stranger to suffering but during her six years in prison she had become a born born again Christian and helped many of the other inmates at the Correctional Center for Women.
He said she said she wanted to be known as a good Christian and nothing else.
That's what Ronnie told reporters and I was like, unfortunately that is not what she's going to be known as.
And you can't wipe away what she did.
He was hoping that the good that his mother had done in the last years of her life would offset a little bit of the pain she had caused, which like, that's definitely a child speaking of his or not a child, I mean like His inner child.
His inner child speaking for his mother.
Absolutely. Which I can understand.
But unfortunately, she's a serial killer.
And that will never go away for what she did to those families.
Un -fucking -thinkable deeds.
And she has shattered countless lives.
Yeah. And I mean, she sat there and watched these people go through something that I couldn't watch my worst enemy go through.
Wow. Velma. i told you this was a real interesting though like she's very interesting to hear about a real ride yeah because in the way you were saying like she seemed like she wasn't capable of love with what she did to people that she claimed to love and then she did seem like she could love with the way that she treated her kids yeah like she treated them badly in certain areas of life where like she just expected to be able to live with them and fuck up their lives but then she took care of them as children and like felt physically ill when she was away from them and it's like it looks like
when she you know when she like found jesus or whatever she did in prison it's like she seemed like she was trying to do better things like in there and it's like so would she have just you can never take away what she did but it's like could she have been imprisoned for the rest of her life and maybe at least reformed to the point of like you look at it and go well okay like you know like that it turned around but she's but she's in prison you know like i do think as a society we need to be more open to the idea that people can be reformed yeah and i think even as a human myself i need to be
more open to that idea it's hard because some people can't then that's the thing that's the thing it's like not everybody can i don't believe at least i know i think there are some people trust me we've covered some of them yeah that there's no fucking way but i do think we need to explore it more yeah you know i mean everything needs such an overhaul yeah it's really does like the justice system is an extreme need of an overall this one really got me thinking yeah it does this one because it's a it's a strange one layered and a disturbing one yeah she's very awful but like and it's like and And who knows,
if she ever got out, like, could she have really been reformed, or would she have done this again?
Would somebody fucking annoy her and she'd go buy arsenic?
Well, that's the thing.
I don't think she should be.
I don't think she could have been let out.
I think she had too, that disposition I don't think was going anywhere, but maybe she could have been contained in prison and been maybe more of a, like, more of a, I don't know.
I don't even know how to explain it, like a decent member of you know society in there somewhere but like i don't think she should have been let back out into ours yeah the fuck damn yeah the wheels are turning for sure yeah hope yours are too that was captivating for sure oh good and i'm really sorry to all of the victims that she but she took yeah loved ones from and her kids yeah wow so with that we hope you keep keep listening and we hope you keep it weird. But that's how weird that you go by arsenic poison when somebody annoys you, because that's really not a way to handle anything, baby.
Yeah. Go to talk therapy or I don't know, get a smoothie, get a smoothie.
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Last year, a dynamic brother duo competed and won the right to make their very own cereal.
They named it the Kelsey Mix.
This summer, the energy is being brought straight from the end zone to the breakfast aisle with three cereal -loving wide receivers, Justin Jefferson, Amon Ra St. Brown, and Jamar Chase.
You can find these football stars on limited edition cereal boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Reese's Puffs cereal starting in August. And don't miss out on Justin Jefferson's Jetta's Mix, Mix a fruity fusion of frosted lemon Cheerios and cinnamon toast crunch strawberry for a limited time only.
Be sure to score them all, where every bite tastes like a touchdown.
