Birmingham News:
January 20, 2000
A Killer still walks free
The murder of two teens in Ozark is a mystery that authorities have yet to
unravel
01/20/2000
ROBIN DeMONIA
News staff writer
OZARK The call came just after 11:30 p.m., just after Tracie Hawlett's
curfew. The 17-year-old told her mother she had gotten lost and wound up in
Ozark. But she said she knew how to get home to Dothan, that she and friend
J.B. Beasley were on their way.
They never made it home.
Police found Miss Beasley's black Mazda 929 just before 8 a.m., less than a
mile from the pay phone Miss Hawlett had used the night before.
Six hours after finding the abandoned car, officers popped the trunk. The
missing girls were inside, each dead from a 9 mm shot to the head.
The grisly discovery Aug. 1 struck nerves in the Wiregrass and beyond. Parents
tightened the reins on their teenagers. Churches counseled their youth. Rival
high schools temporarily joined hands in tribute to the victims. Public and
private donors pooled $45,000 for a reward.
The crime seemed pointless and cruel even in a society dulled by violence. Miss
Hawlett was a majorette who wanted to be a doctor and missionary. Miss Beasley
was an aspiring and talented dancer. Both were beauty contest finalists.
The girls had no alcohol or drugs in them. And whoever killed the popular
Northview High School seniors didn't even bother to take their jewelry or cash.
It wasn't until months after the crime that forensics examiners found what
authorities now consider the key to the unsolved murders: semen on Miss
Beasley's clothes and skin.
"You have to assume it's a sex offense, or at least came out of a sex offense,"
said David Emery, the district attorney of Dale and Geneva counties. "If we
could find who donated that semen, I think we'll have the killer."
But in some ways, finding a possible motive only deepened the mystery. It freed
the one person who had been charged in the case, a man who claimed at various
points to know something about the crime or to have witnessed it. A grand jury
refused to indict Johnny Barrentine, 28, of Ozark on capital murder charges
earlier this month. DNA tests ruled him out as a source of the semen.
After 5 months of investigation, there are frustratingly few clues about what
happened that hot summer night. After pleas from Miss Hawlett's family, the
state is sending investigators to try to unravel the mystery.
"It seems like every time they get something, the bottom falls out," said Mike
Roberts, Miss Hawlett's stepfather, who has sometimes challenged Ozark police
and who went to Gov. Don Siegelman's office last week for help. "I'm not trying
to make anybody mad or cause anybody trouble. I'm trying to get something
done."
The unanswered questions have fueled rumor, speculation and fear. One theory
hangs the crime on a police officer or someone posing as an officer. Roberts
has raised the possibility himself, saying he believes the girls would not have
stopped for anything other than a blue light. In addition, Miss Beasley's
window was halfway down, he said, and he's been told her license was on the
car's console.
Efforts to reach Ozark Police Chief Tony Spivey for the past week were
unsuccessful.
Ozark Mayor Bob Bunting said he's heard the questions about police, but it's
far from the only theory about a crime that was front-page news every day for
weeks in the town of 17,000.
"I've heard every rumor you can imagine," said Bunting, who understands why the
unsolved case draws speculation. "It makes you wonder. It was like an
execution. There's nothing clear-cut there. Every rock around here has been
looked under. It's just a mystery."
Bunting is one of countless military retirees in Ozark, which considers itself
home to nearby Fort Rucker. The town boasts of its Consumer Digest ranking as
one of the 25 best U.S. places to retire. It doesn't consider itself the kind
of town where teenage girls are abducted on the street.
Kathy Cook, who operates a beauty shop near where Miss Beasley's car was found,
said townspeople have groped for an explanation. "It's kind of a sleepy
one-horse town," she said. "It's just a real quiet community. The most
excitement we ever have is when there's a ball game."
She said she's always guessed the girls stumbled on something they weren't
supposed to see. "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said.
Despite its brutal ending, the Saturday evening began on a festive note.
It was Miss Beasley's 17th birthday, and there was much to celebrate. She was
an up-and-coming high school senior. Her future was promising, even if her past
had not been trouble-free. Her relationship with her mother was admittedly
strained, and her dance instructor had become her legal guardian.
Even now, Cheryl Burgoon describes her daughter as rebellious and manipulative
- albeit very smart. But others considered her spirited, including her pastor,
Lawson Bryan of First United Methodist Church in Dothan, who called her an
"extremely vivacious, friendly, outgoing person."
Fellow dancer Janna Hare was hosting the birthday party at her home in rural
Henry County that night. Miss Hawlett finished her shift in the men's wear
department at J.C. Penney after 9 p.m., came home to change, and headed out
with Miss Beasley at just past 10, Roberts said.
The girls were spotted in Headland at about 10:30 p.m., but they never found
the party.
Instead, they ended up in Ozark, at a Big/Little convenience store next to a
railroad track and just down the street from a strip of stately, historic homes
near the town's central business district.
The store had closed for the evening when Miss Hawlett stopped to use the
phone. But the teenagers encountered two women who provided directions to U.S.
231, which would take them the 20 miles southeast to Dothan.
The women later told police the car was spotless, the girls were clean and
nothing seemed awry. Carol Roberts got the same impression while talking to her
daughter.
"Nothing was wrong in Tracie's voice," Mrs. Roberts said. "It was, 'Mom, I love
you. Be home soon.'"
Exhausted from a double shift as a nurse's aide at Wesley Manor nursing home,
Mrs. Roberts fell asleep after the call. When she awoke at 5 a.m., her daughter
had not returned.
By 8 a.m., she called Dothan police.
Officers find car
At about the same time, officers in Ozark found Miss Beasley's car parked along
a houseless stretch of a residential street. It was muddy and almost out of
gas, despite a fill-up the day before.
When the girls were discovered in the trunk, they were clothed and showed few
signs of struggle. Miss Hawlett's arm was scratched, her pants had briars, and
the $95 New Balance tennis shoes she had bought the week before were covered in
mud. First into the trunk, she had been shot once in the temple.
Miss Beasley was dirty, too, and also had been shot once, apparently in the
cheek, Roberts said. But everything else looked intact - her purse, her money,
her jewelry. Only her car keys were missing.
It's still anyone's guess what happened between the phone call and the girls'
discovery on Herring Avenue, a site now marked by crosses bearing their names.
It's not clear where or how they were joined by a killer, or what might have
happened from there.
The girls were shot inside the trunk, but not necessarily while the car was
parked on Herring Avenue. The car was spotted there as early as 3 a.m., but
preliminary autopsy results placed the girls' time of death at 12:30 a.m. to 2
a.m.
Miss Hawlett's family said they believe the killer may have taken the girls
somewhere before Herring Avenue. Other stops could explain why the car was
almost out of gas and how mud got on the victims during a summer dry spell,
they said.
Authorities are trying to test soil from the car's tires. They also have one
palm print from the trunk lid, Roberts said.
That same night, Johnny Barrentine came home shortly before 1 a.m., visibly
upset. He told his wife his car had been hit by a black truck with a Dothan tag
near Herring Avenue. In the days that followed, Barrentine confided to others
that he knew something about the deaths of the teenagers, according to his
lawyer and the victims' families, who watched his videotaped statement.
"He just said he thought he might know who did it," said Avalyn Murphy, whose
boyfriend, Leon Jordan, encouraged Barrentine to go to authorities and collect
the reward.
Barrentine, who worked unloading trucks, took the advice. He spoke with police
for four hours, offering six different stories and sometimes placing himself at
the scene of the crime.
At one point, he told police he was driving with his neighbor when they saw the
girls at the convenience store. He said the neighbor got into the girls' car.
Barrentine said he followed the car to Herring Avenue and gave his neighbor a
ride home after the killings.
Barrentine was charged with capital murder Sept. 1. But there were problems
with his account. He never mentioned sexual activity that would account for the
semen found on Miss Beasley. The neighbor he implicated had an alibi for the
evening and, like Barrentine, did not match the DNA samples.
Barrentine said he had been lying to collect reward money.
Daleville lawyer Joe Gallo said he doesn't believe police, who are under
intense pressure to solve the case, would drop charges against his client if
they believed he was remotely involved. Yet Gallo offered no explanation for
Barrentine's stories, except to say his client suffered mild mental
retardation.
"You've got me," he said.
Police have said Barrentine could be charged later if new evidence points to
him. Meanwhile, they are awaiting other reports from the state forensic labs.
For now, there are more questions than answers, questions that frighten some
teenagers and their parents even more.
"When it first happened, my mother didn't want me out at night," said Melanie
Ogden, a 17-year-old Carroll High School senior in Ozark. "She's kind of
loosened up about it now, but she's still not letting me stay out as late as
she did before."
Not forgotten
In a north Dothan community, the legacy is a grief too profound to die.
At Northview's football half time shows last fall, a vase of roses stood in the
place where Miss Hawlett would have twirled. A page in the football program was
dedicated to the memory of her and Miss Beasley. Friends and acquaintances have
not stopped sending letters, poems and tributes.
In private, two families are left to grapple with their loss.
"I'm so spent it takes all that I have just to be alive," Ms. Burgoon said.
"The pain is unbearable."
The Roberts family is determined to keep alive the memory of a girl who
finished each night with a devotional and who designed her senior class ring to
include a Bible and cross.
The walls are covered with her photographs and mementos, including a framed
Mother's Day card she made last spring for Mrs. Roberts.
Holidays are especially hard. Miss Hawlett's senior portraits, taken the week
before her death, arrived the week before Christmas. So did the footstone for
her grave.
But Mrs. Roberts' biggest torment is the thought of her daughter suffering or
being afraid before her death.
"At some point, those girls had to know what was about to happen. Can you
imagine how horrified they must have been?" Mrs. Roberts asked. "I still wake
up at night and I see Tracie running and I hear her screaming and I hear her
saying, 'Please, God, help me."
Mrs. Roberts remains composed until she speaks of the things her daughter will
never get to experience: her dreams of marriage and children, the senior year
she so anticipated, even the graduation ceremony she won't attend.
"At church, they said she won't have a cap and gown, but she'll have a crown, a
halo," Mrs. Roberts said, breaking into tears. She doesn't apologize for her
pain. "Instead of breaking my heart, it's like someone reached in and ripped it
out," she said.
