Barkers plea after July homicide

A Faulkner County man charged in July along with his mother in the killing of his 63-year-old father pleaded no contest to first-degree murder on Wednesday, as prosecutors amended the murder charge against the victim's widow, who was sentenced to five years' probation for tampering with a corpse.

Ronnie Dale Barker, 37, was sentenced to 30 years in a state prison in the July 7 homicide of his father, Glenn "Buck" Barker, whom officials say died of manual strangulation.

Portia Barker, 55, pleaded to tampering with the corpse of her husband after police say Ronnie Barker killed him in a dispute inside the family's trailer on Lower Ridge Road east of Conway.

Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden said at the hearing Wednesday morning that even though Portia Barker was charged with first-degree murder within days of her husband's slaying, evidence later returned from the state crime laboratory indicated that the gash she caused to his forehead was created after his death. "So we would have some difficulty proving that she actually caused the death," Vaden said.

Officials were told in interviews with both suspects that Glenn Barker, whose blood alcohol concentration level was found to be more than .20 after his death, had at least verbally abused Portia Barker on the day he was killed. Ronnie Barker told investigators he was responding to a threat to his mother's life when he began to strangle his father to death, and attorneys were told the act of strangling itself could have lasted as long as 30 minutes.

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According to official reports, Portia Barker said in interviews that on the day of his death her husband "came home drunk and started arguing with her, and hitting the table with his hand," and Ronnie Barker came from his neighboring trailer to see what was happening before Glenn Barker threatened to slit Portia Barker's throat. Portia Barker told police that she could have told her son to stop strangling, but she "just let him finish," and that she and her son "freaked out" afterward, not knowing what to do.

Sheriff's lieutenant Matt Rice said Wednesday that Ronnie Barker "got sick of (the abuse) and wanted to end the whole deal," after Glenn Barker physically attacked his son. Rice said that once Glenn Barker was dead, Ronnie and Portia Barker waited at least an hour to call authorities; that together, using a cast iron skillet lid which Portia Barker showed trouble lifting by herself, the son and mother caused a gash to the victim's forehead; and that one of the suspects placed a knife in the corpse's hand to create the illusion that Glenn Barker had attacked one of them with it.

"There wasn't a whole lot of blood there at the scene, if any really," Rice said. "When we looked at the scene, we were thinking, 'Something's not right here.' And you could kind of tell, if (Glenn Barker) had been hit with a skillet lid when he was living, and his blood was pumping, there would have been blood all over the carpet and all over his face."

Rice said, "I think just over the years, (the abuse) had been happening for so long that Ronnie just wanted it to end, so he ended it. I think that the sheriff's office did an excellent job on this case, and I think that we were ready to go to court."

Reports indicate that Portia Barker found a pillow after her husband's death and gave it to her son "so he could put it over Glenn's face," in order to smother the man and ensure that he was dead.

Fourteen of Glenn Barker's close family members were present at the Faulkner County Courthouse Wednesday morning for the sentencings. Angel Hammond, 40, of Springfield, said she grew up as Glenn and Portia Barker's niece and that many members of the victim's family still believe Portia Barker was partly responsible for the killing of her husband.

"We're trying to find an attorney to file a wrongful death suit, but the only attorney we've been able to find so far is one who wants a big chunk of money up front, and the family can't afford that so far," said Hammond, who believes money motivated Ronnie and Portia Barker to kill Glenn Barker.

"That murder happened three days after (Glenn Barker) had received his settlement check in the death of his mother, Lizzy Barker, who was killed in a car accident," Hammond said of a settlement related to the death of her late grandmother, who died at 81 in a June 2005 accident on Highway 65.

"Ronnie lived on their property free of charge and never had any bills to pay, but he always needed money for something."

Attorney Frank Shaw, who represented Portia Barker, said in response Wednesday that Glenn Barker's death didn't happen "for any financial gain."

"There was no proof that she killed him at all," said Shaw, who along with sheriff's investigators believes that Portia Barker had been mentally abused by her husband for years. "There was no proof that she was involved in his killing. Her son pled guilty to it, and she received a class D felony abuse of a corpse charge because after he was dead, according to an autopsy report, that injury he sustained to his head occurred after death."

Judge Ed Clawson ordered prosecutors in July to file for a mental competency evaluation for Ronnie Barker, after the suspect claimed during bond hearings to have been "in mental facilities for four years." A forensic examination report submitted by clinical psychologist Ed Stafford, which was filed at court on Feb. 27, indicated that Ronnie Barker had been diagnosed with depression and social anxiety disorder, though he was mentally competent to be tried for murder.

Barker told Stafford he had experienced "a long history of emotional abuse, subsequent to his father's reported history of chronic alcohol dependence through the years," and that on the day of Glenn Barker's death Ronnie's "dad was drunk and drinking."

"He started an argument with my daughter," said Ronnie Barker, who himself is a father of two. "(Glenn Barker) was giving her a hard time. I told her to go on home, to leave. I left shortly after that and took my son over to a friend's house. That day when I came back home he was giving my mom a hard time. He was verbally abusive. He was upset about a surgery she was needing to have (and) his name was to be taken off the (medical) contact list. He didn't want to be a part of it. He was threatening her life. From that point I went in (and) what I remember is, he came after me and I grabbed him. I don't remember anything afterwards. I grabbed him there was so much that I had inside. My life was in danger, too. I know if I didn't save my mom, he'd kill her."

In the same evaluation, Ronnie Barker told Stafford he believed his father had given his mother a black eye months before the murder, and that Ronnie Barker himself had been "mentally abused."

Portia Barker has been free from county custody since Nov. 2, after Judge David Reynolds lowered her bond from $500,000 to $100,000. She had previously been released on temporary medical leave after a separate bond hearing in July, in which Shaw presented to the court a note from the woman's doctor saying she needed surgery for coronary hyperparathyroidism, a glandular disorder that causes osteoporosis. The surgery had been scheduled before Portia Barker was arrested in the killing of her husband.