Thirty-eight

Two days later, the story of the Barrons and Roberta Butler finally broke into the public eye—just as Garza and Cranford had suggested to Jack that it would. It thus appears that the authorities elected to leak the fact of their investigation to put pressure on Jack.

In a front-page article in the Times-Herald of Vallejo, staff writer Richard Freedman chronicled the deaths of Irene, Jeremy, Ashley, and then Roberta.

“Authorities inexplicably ignored the tragic pattern when Jack Barron’s 34-year-old wife, 4-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter—all presumed healthy—died suddenly,” Freedman wrote. “But the shocking Feb. 27 death of Barron’s mother—52-year-old Roberta Ann Butler of Benicia—did not elude the local police department.”

Freedman interviewed Lt. Mortensen of the Benicia Police Department, who confirmed that an investigation was underway and that Jack had been interviewed. Mortensen would neither confirm nor deny that Jack was a suspect.

Two days later, the twice-weekly Benicia Herald picked up the story, saying the local police department considered Roberta’s death to be a potential homicide, but that the Solano County Coroner’s Office had not yet determined the cause of Roberta’s death.

That wasn’t true, of course; the autopsy report by Solano’s Dr. Peterson citing “asphyxia due to smothering” had been signed on March 3, more than a month earlier. But investigators wanted to keep Jack guessing, it appears, and so withheld the cause.

Thereafter, over the next two months, the Benicia Herald reporters tracked down a number of Roberta’s friends for interviews, including Bea Kennedy. Most of Roberta’s Safeway colleagues were quoted, many remarking that Roberta’s death seemed suspicious to them.

Following their interview with Jack, the Barron task force sat down to review the videotape, with an eye toward evaluating Jack’s responses.

The thing that struck Garza most was Jack’s apparent placidity when confronted with the assertions that authorities believed he had killed Roberta and Irene. To Garza, there was no real emotion in Jack’s denials—certainly not the level of emotion one might expect from a man wrongly accused.

Certainly, Garza thought, an innocent man would first be horrified at the information the investigators had presented—that Roberta had been smothered to death—and would then demand to know what the police were doing to catch the killer. And once an innocent man learned that police suspected him, an innocent man would do one of two things: he would fervently deny it and express repeated outrage, or he would say that the police were completely wrong, and refuse to answer any more questions without consulting a lawyer. But Jack did neither.

To Cranford, the solution to Jack’s otherwise inexplicable behavior seemed clear enough: Jack loved being the center of attention, and in the interview, all the attention was focused on Jack. The plan had almost worked; on at least one occasion, or perhaps more, Cranford thought Jack was on the verge of spilling his guts, but something always made him draw back.

Cranford also began to form an idea of what made Jack tick. She began to believe that Jack had killed his family, not because of Elmore, but because he loved it when people felt sorry for him.

Meanwhile, back in Sacramento, Dr. Reiber of the Coroner’s Office was going over Irene’s autopsy one more time. Although the detectives in their interrogation had told Jack that they knew he had smothered Irene, Reiber hadn’t come to that conclusion yet, at least officially.

While he knew of Peterson’s findings in Solano County about Roberta, Reiber deliberately did not want to read Peterson’s autopsy report out of concern it might bias him. But Reiber already had his suspicions; as he said later, once he had heard of Roberta’s death, he was sure there was no natural or toxic cause of Irene, Jeremy, and Ashley’s deaths, because there were no commonalities other than Jack.

By late March of 1995, the long-ignored photographs from Irene’s autopsy had finally been developed. Now Reiber sat down with the photographs, along with the paperwork from Schmunk’s earlier report, and tried to figure out whether there was evidence of Irene being smothered.

Reiber now paid close attention to the photographs of the bruises on Irene’s body, particularly the markings on her right biceps, calf, and foot. Coupled with the way Irene’s arms had been positioned—left arm extended past the right shoulder, right arm down by her side—these could be evidence of what had happened: that someone, holding a pillow over Irene’s face to seal off her mouth and nose, had used a left knee to hold down her right arm, thus causing the biceps bruise. The bruises on the calf and foot, Reiber theorized, might have occurred as Irene struggled to free herself from the weight over her face; Reiber visualized Irene’s right leg and foot banging violently against the wooden side of the waterbed as she fought to free herself.

As for Irene’s neck, the photographs showed significant hemorrhaging in the neck area—findings consistent with compression of the neck by some outside force.

Finally, the photographs showed small, red, semi-circular indentations behind Irene’s right ear. These, Reiber thought, were probably the result of fingernail markings left by the assailant as he held the pillow tightly over Irene’s face for a lengthy period of time.

All of which raised the question about the pillowcase—the one with black streaks of apparent mascara, the covering of the possible murder weapon. Would there be evidence on the pillowcase, such as hair, saliva, or fingerprints? Could the pillowcase be linked to Jack? The pillowcase had been taken by the Coroner’s Office when Irene’s body was removed to the Coroner’s. Where was it now?

A check of the records was made, but the pillowcase could not be found. Neither the Coroner’s Office, the crime lab, nor the Sheriff’s Department knew what had become of it. Either it had been thrown away, or returned to Jack Barron, more than two years before.