Dead on the Boardwalk

17:46Everything they asked for, I gave them. Every time they wanted me to come back to St. Johns County and talk to them some more, I did. Whenever they wanted a statement, I gave it to them.

18:00Harold Dow:But almost immediately, Justin felt police were overlooking critical clues that pointed to April's possible killer. The biggest one? Witnesses told police they had seen a second car parked at the beach. around the time Justin and April were shot. They saw a car right there at the boardwalk. They described the car, and the police chose to do nothing. We didn't have a tag number. We didn't have a reliable make. I would have loved to have found it, because you know what? That was a potential witness in my mind. But the simple fact is we could not. Justin was also mystified why police weren't thoroughly investigating suspicious incidents that happened while April was living on her own in Georgia.

18:41Harold Dow:April had a stun gun because she did not feel safe there. April's car was broken into. And just three weeks before the murder, so was her house. We did speak with the investigator that actually worked at burglary. There's no connection with that with this case. Were there any people in April's life who you would consider to be a threat to her? I think that we're stretching a bit when we say that. I think that there are some folks in April's life that should have been investigated. But there are certainly a few people there that had a romantic interest in April. But did the police follow up on those leads?

19:18No, I don't believe they did.

19:21Harold Dow:But what Justin didn't know is police were pursuing leads of their own. And in fact, they thought they were already zeroing in on April's killer.

19:49Harold Dow:To Detective Howard Cole, Justin Barber was the prime suspect in April's murder from day one. The situation as he presented wasn't adding up. Even the basic premise of Justin's story didn't make sense to Cole. Is this the kind of place, this area right here, where someone would stick somebody up, rob somebody? I don't see why they would. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. It's never happened before and it hasn't happened since. Cole's suspicions were first raised when he found out nothing was taken during the alleged robbery, including Justin's wallet and April's diamond ring. And when Cole took Justin to the beach after April's funeral, he became even more suspicious.

20:37He certainly appeared to be crying, but there was no tears coming down his face. He was almost like rubbing his eyes, just like that. You know what I mean? Like trying to force up some emotion.

20:50Harold Dow:So Cole took a closer look at Justin's account of what happened after he left April on the beach that night, beginning with his attempt to flag down three passing cars. If what he was saying is true, I would have expected to get numerous 911 calls. and we received none. Most troubling of all to Cole was that when Justin got into his car to find help for his wife, he drove almost 10 miles before stopping. There's a McDonald's right here. That would have been open. There's a Walgreens right here. That's 24 hours. That would have been open. Just north of here, you'll come up, there's a 24-hour shell station.

21:34Would have been open. and they're very well illuminated. If you truly were trying to get help, that certainly would be a place that I would consider getting help. I don't think anybody would accept that that man left his wife and drove 10 miles away to get help. That just doesn't even, that defies reason.

21:54Harold Dow:Meanwhile, April's family and friends, like Amber Mitchell, were comparing notes and growing suspicious of Justin, too. When you put it together, it was frightening what was really going on. The story they began to piece together was of a marriage in trouble, and they realized that problems surfaced right at the beginning when April's siblings, Julie and Kendon, came to live with the newlyweds in Georgia. Whenever we first lived with them, it was good. Towards the end of living with them, it got kind of tense. I was very strong-willed and I didn't like it. So the family brought Julie back to Oklahoma, and Kendon soon followed against Justin's wishes.

22:38He was really angry. None of us understood why he cared so much about it, except for if he liked the appearance of being such a noble guy to take in these children.

22:50Harold Dow:Amber says she realized appearances were very important to Justin. He would put his high school jeans on once a month to make sure they still fit. and if they didn't, he would fast until they did. He gave April a hard time about weight to the point she was almost paranoid about gaining weight, and she was tiny. Amber also knew that April suspected Justin was having an affair in Jacksonville. She didn't know her name, but she had learned that Justin was playing tennis with her, and April was certain that there was more than tennis and that it was an affair, and confronted him about it. Detective Cole discovered the woman was Shannon Kennedy, who worked at the agency where Justin's company rented cars.

23:37Harold Dow:Cole invited Shannon to the police station the same afternoon he was interviewing Justin. Shannon Kennedy came in right away and she was very honest. She said it started out as kind of a social relationship, they go out and have drinks and whatnot, and eventually progressed into a sexual relationship. Justin, however, was less honest, at least at first. He adamantly denied having any affairs with anyone, Shannon Kennedy specifically. I said, well, I'm going to bring her in this room, we're going to get to the bottom. He said, no, no, no. He said, I did, I did sleep with her, I have been having an affair with her.

24:10Only confronted with, you know, her and he being in the same room did he tell the truth. To me, that's huge.

24:18Harold Dow:When he searched Justin's apartment, Cole made another discovery. two life insurance policies, one in Justin's name, one in April's, for$2 million each. I thought we could be looking at a possible motive. I mean,$2 million, that's a whole lot of money. April's Aunt Patty Parrish says she had always been troubled by that. But April thought it was a lot of money. Neither April nor I could understand why he was insisting to have a$2 million life insurance policy on her life. Amber Mitchell thinks she knows why. He was in debt up to his eyeballs. Stock market losses and other expenses had left Justin over$50 ,000 in debt.

25:03Harold Dow:By the summer of 2002, between the affair and the money problems, April had had enough. She was leaving him. She told him that she was leaving him. As the circumstantial evidence implicating Justin was mounting, Detective Cole began to examine the crime scene more closely. And now, even the fact that Justin had been shot four times began to seem suspicious. He had one wound to his left shoulder, which was out and away. He had another one in his right shoulder. Same thing, it was kind of out and away. You're saying out and away from vital organs? Yeah, I'm saying out and away from center mass, exactly.

25:42from the stuff that counts.

25:45Harold Dow:Justin and his brother Charlie found Detective Cole's description of the wounds preposterous. It hurt him. He was in a lot of pain for a few weeks after. He had to keep the one arm in a sling. Have you ever been kicked by a horse? No. I have. And I felt like I'd been kicked by a horse in several places. It was painful. It was painful. Then, just months after the murder, while police were still trying to gather hard evidence against him, Justin suddenly moved to Oregon, where he got a new job, a new woman, and started a new life, far from Detective Cole's scrutiny. But suspicions about Justin Barber persisted.

26:31He's very controlling. He has no feeling. I'm not a violent person. Very intelligent, very charismatic. I would never, ever consider doing anything like that. And he was committed to this situation turning out successfully for him. And I did not kill April.

27:02Harold Dow:Even though Justin Barber had moved to portland oregon far from the scene of april's murder she was always on his mind i wore my wedding band on a leather thong around my neck why did you wear that ring around your neck because i wasn't ready to let it go it was a reminder of her and it was a reminder of my failure during our marriage so justin distracted himself with work come on angel go And with a new woman. He would take me to the movies a lot, take me to dinner. We were just best friends. Lisa, who asked us not to use her last name, says Justin often relived what happened to April that night on the beach.

27:52He felt like he just abandoned her. He never forgave himself.

27:58Harold Dow:Justin never forgave April's family either. It was because of them, he claims, that he remained the prime suspect. Did April's family suspect you right away? I believe now that they did, at least very, very quickly. And now I've learned that they voiced their accusations to the police immediately. April's aunt, Patty Parrish, makes no apologies for putting the spotlight on Justin. He planned every moment of it. This was premeditated, cold, calculated. Yet months and then years went by without an arrest. So Patty, who is a judge in Oklahoma, stepped up the pressure on Florida prosecutors to arrest Justin.

28:47Harold Dow:Judge Patty was insistent that we keep this case on the front burner. But State Attorney John Tanner worried his prosecutors would get burned by the case. We knew it was a case that could be lost. You just don't expect a person to shoot themselves four times. But as we began to search for who did it, we determined that all the evidence led back to the husband.

29:16Harold Dow:After years of pressure and painstakingly weighing the evidence, which was largely circumstantial, prosecutors finally rolled the dice. In July 2004, a very different looking Justin Barber was arrested for murder. Did you kill your wife? No, sir. I did not kill my wife. Did you shoot yourself four times to cover up the murder? Oh, that's ridiculous. Did you love April? I did. I still do.

29:49Harold Dow:June 2006, four years after April's murder. All right, Mr. Bailey, show the jury in. With his family behind him, Justin Barber is finally put on trial in St. Augustine, Florida. When you take common sense with you and apply the evidence, you'll be convinced that the defendant murders wife. The state attorney's office is seeking the death penalty, and two of its youngest prosecutors, Matt Foxman and Chris France are trying this high-profile case. I'll call you next week. What was your gut reaction when you first received this case? Well, it's a career case, I think, for a prosecutor. The threshold problem for us, I think, would be to convince a jury that someone would shoot themselves four times.

30:46Justin Barber has insisted, and I believe, that he's an innocent man. and the only thing we're interested in is an exoneration.

30:55Harold Dow:Justin's attorney, Bob Willis, will try to convince the jury that a robber, and not Justin Barber, killed April on the beach. Now you will find that within a very short period of time, after April Barber's death, it was found on the evening of August 17, 2002, that the police focused exclusively their attention on Justin Barber. The prosecution's star witness, Detective Howard Cole, disagrees. If information had led to another suspect, would you have been open to it and investigated it? Absolutely.

31:34Harold Dow:Cole testifies that he asked Justin why he drove more than nine miles from the beach after the shooting. He said he didn't really remember much about that drive. Did you ask him why he didn't stop at any houses? Yes. And what did he tell you? He said he didn't want to get some old man out of bed. I pulled her. Can I try to get her up? Cole also testifies that even though Justin said he dragged April by her waistband and had a bullet hole in his hand, his blood wasn't visible on her pants. Looking on the top line of her pants there and her stomach, Do you see any evidence of anyone's blood? No, sir, I don't.

32:17Harold Dow:But the defense strikes back. They say Justin's blood was found on April. How about the blood that was here on her, right here, inside upper left arm? Did you know at that time that that was Justin Barber's blood? No, sir. You know it now, though, don't you? Yes. Okay, Mr. Kennedy, if you'd just come right up here, please. Prosecutors turn their attention to Justin's possible motives. and calls Shannon Kennedy to the stand. When you became involved with the defendant, did you know that he was married? Not originally, no. Did you ultimately come to that conclusion, though? Yes. And what sort of things did the defendant say about his wife or his marriage?

33:00He said that he loved her. He just couldn't live with her.

33:08If you want to look at just the fact that he was cheating on his wife and the fact that there was$2 million and you want to stop right there, then we can't do anything about that. If, on the other hand, you're really seriously interested in who killed April Barber, let's look at the evidence.

33:26Harold Dow:That's exactly what prosecutors do next when they drop a bombshell. All right, call you next week, Sam. Sam, call Chris Henry. Six months before the murder, they say, Justin went online to research how to shoot himself without getting hurt. A computer expert recovered a record of those Google searches. Do you recognize what I'm showing? Yes, sir, I do. It was a Google search in which the keywords medical, trauma, gunshot, and chest were performed. Finding that computer search where he was actually shot, that was the first indication that he had researched a specific location and he just happened to be shot there.

34:06Harold Dow:That was a pretty big turning point. Then, just hours before April was murdered, Justin went online again. This exhibit, what does it say was downloaded? Basically, it tells me that the MP3, guns and roses used to love her, was downloaded.

34:38But I had to get around.

34:41Harold Dow:How significant was that song in this case? Well, it was significant because of the timing. Downloaded just hours before the murder. Then when he's set to turn his computer over to law enforcement after the murder, that was the only song deleted. Justin surfed the Internet so often, his lawyer says, the evidence is meaningless. Out of potentially 2 ,200 queries, they wind up with two that look bad. in retrospect. I think I could probably do that on anybody's computer. And Justin says he's not giving up. I will fight until I have no more options. Then you'll be screaming all the time that you're innocent?

35:21Yes, because I am innocent.

35:39Harold Dow:As Justin Barber's murder trial drags into a second week, the pressure is growing on two families who once were close. This is devastating for us, and it's devastating for them. It's particularly tough on April's siblings, Julie and Kendon, whom Justin once helped raise. It was heartbreaking because somebody that we trusted and somebody that we had loved would be capable of doing something like that to our sister. And we both looked up to him. Hey, Dr. Stern, if you'll come right up here, please, sir, and raise your right hand to clerk. Justin's defense now attacks one of the most critical points in the case, whether Justin's wounds were superficial or not.

36:30Harold Dow:A defense expert testifies that Justin's wounds were serious. One nearly struck an artery. What would be the result if that subclavian artery was penetrated? Extensive hemorrhage. And possibly death? Possibly, yes. Then prosecutors present two witnesses who say they saw another car at the crime scene. The problem is they can't agree what color the car was. It was an older model car, light colored. I'm going to say it was dark in color. The trial finally boils down to a key point, illustrated by this graphic, which represents a crime scene photo of April's face that the jury was shown. To prosecutors, the blood flowing in a single direction proves Justin is lying.

37:22Harold Dow:The blood flow is everything. Justin Barber's story is that she was shot down by the water and then carried 18 different positions with her head moving in all kinds of directions, the blood flow would be everywhere. Instead, it's in a unified direction. And what the significance of that is, his story just wasn't true. But the defense's expert testifies the blood flow is consistent with Justin's story. In my view, she was shot in that location near the water. And plus, other blood which had come out was probably washed away by the waste because she was, as I understand, found face down in approximately one foot of the water.

38:04Harold Dow:Finally, the case draws to a close. This is a pure circumstantial evidence case. The gun was not recovered in this case. There's certainly no one that ever saw him involved in any aspect of this crime at all. He wanted it all. No. He didn't just want to evade a prosecution. He wanted that for sure. And he wanted the $2 million, and he wanted sympathy for being shot, and he wanted to look like a hero who tried to save his wife. If the jury finds Justin guilty, he could be sentenced to death. What was the first thing the jury did when you went into the liberation room for the first time? I pray.

38:50Harold Dow:What did you pray for? Wisdom. One person's already dead and another one might die. So we wanted to make sure that we were sure. Deliberations drag into a second day. Agony. Agony. It was very, very difficult waiting there all day. We're up to about hour 28 of deliberations. Then a third. By the third day, I was beginning to fear that the jury was hung. But jurors are still trying to sort it all out.

39:33Harold Dow:Mr. Barber, would you please rise for the verdict? Finally, on day four, a verdict. We the jury find the defendant Justin murders Barbara as follows. Guilty of first degree premeditated murder as charged in the indictment.

40:00Harold Dow:April's family and friends are overcome, but their emotions are mixed. I was happy, but then again, it breaks my heart. That's understandable. Kendon, your reaction to the verdict? Joy. Joy? Yeah. But then, I live with him for...

40:26Your now. Okay. Okay.

40:30Harold Dow:Your thoughts, your feelings? Relieved for an instant and then heartbroken for Justin's mother. You will, of course, be remanded to the sheriff of St. Johns County pending the penalty phase.

40:49Harold Dow:Justin's family does not have mixed emotions. They're simply furious. I would love to know what those jurors saw that made them think that he did this, because he didn't, and they didn't prove that he did it. So I don't know what they went by. The jurors say they were swayed by many factors, especially the blood evidence. If she had been shot out on the beach, there would have been some smearing, some blood flow in another direction. So the blood flow on her face did not match the story that Justin told. Correct. Also, there was the computer that he had searched for gunshot wounds. Gunshot trauma, right chest.

41:37And he gets shot in the right chest. I really can't tell you on national TV what I think about him. But it's not good.

41:47Harold Dow:It's not good at all. We were adults here. Tell us, George. I think he's a dirty son of a... That's what I think he is. But Justin Barber, who might now be sentenced to death, is defiant. If that jury thinks I killed April, then they should execute me. I would never ask for mercy for the person who killed her. Why not? Because they don't deserve it. And if that jury believes that I'm that person, then they should send me to death row.

42:37The jury recommended the death penalty for Justin Barber, but the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

42:48Thank you.