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Terra.Anatolia
  • 5 days ago
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00:00in the kitchen. For Barbara Scott, it was home-cooked meals and a garden full of herbs.
00:07But beneath the rose of rosemary and thyme, Barbara buried a sinister secret.
00:16Benny and Barbara were a very happy couple. This was an idyllic 67-year-old grandmother
00:23and seemingly the perfect family in a small little town.
00:27A beloved couple living the ideal life are right at the center of a shocking case.
00:35He couldn't speak. He can't talk to you on the phone.
00:38Her daughter gets suspicious. Barbara looks at her and says,
00:43okay, here's the truth.
00:44A grandmother's story unravels like one drop stitch after another.
00:50It went from somebody slipped and fell in the tub to a bag,
00:56fully wrapped body in the ground.
00:59It's hard to imagine Barbara premeditating something like that.
01:03Barbara's previous husband had died unexpectedly.
01:08It's like being in a twilight zone.
01:12I just couldn't believe it.
01:13Who, especially a grandmother, drags a body to a backyard and plants an herb garden over it?
01:20It was shocking. The sinisterness of a sweet-looking old lady.
01:37Lake Alfred is a beautiful section of Florida.
01:41It's a very idyllic little community. You really would never suspect that there was anything awry.
01:49One of the happy couples living there is Benny and Barbara Scott.
01:54They'd been married 11 years. Barbara was well-liked by everybody in the neighborhood.
01:59And from all outward signs, she was an idyllic 67-year-old grandmother.
02:07She took care of her grandson, cared for her parents, loved her husband.
02:13Benny was initially from Oklahoma. He was 11 years older than she was.
02:18He moved to Florida from Oklahoma with Barbara. And everybody was happy.
02:23In January of 2012, Benny's health takes a mysterious and unexpected turn.
02:36Barbara was sending me text messages saying that dad had developed this cough or this sore throat.
02:43And then as time went by, it's developed into this where dad had laryngitis.
02:49He couldn't speak. He can't talk to you on the phone.
02:51And this went on for several months.
02:56When Barbara was telling Pam that Benny was sick with some throat infection,
03:02you know, I was kind of worried, hoping that he got better.
03:07I didn't have any reason not to believe her that dad had a throat ailment. He couldn't speak.
03:12I had no idea, sadly.
03:14Benny and my mother, Flo, met through a National Guard in Oklahoma.
03:25They fell in love and got married when I was six. And he adopted me.
03:33Dad was Creek Indian, Seminole Indian. And he had two biological children. That was Tommy and Christy.
03:41Dad was very funny. He had the driest sense of humor. But he was strict.
03:48Boy, he was into manners. It was yes, ma'am. No, sir.
03:54I hated it at the time. But when I grew up as an adult, boy, those manners really come in handy.
03:59Benny and Pam's mom were married for 10 years before they split up, but remained close.
04:08They got divorced when I was 15 or 16. And we always, always kept in touch.
04:17Barbara came along several years later when I was in my early 30s.
04:23She lived just right next door to us. She lived there with her husband. And after he passed away,
04:32dad and Barbara just kind of hit it off. And one thing led to another. We were all kind of surprised,
04:39but hey, dad and Barbara had a great relationship. Barbara was real crafty. She was so talented. I was
04:48always amazed at the stuff that she would come up with making. And dad loved that. And then she loved to cook.
04:56They had a great life.
05:00Benny and Barbara eventually got hitched. And their two families, grandkids and all, became one.
05:08She was a grandmother to Kenny, which is Benny's daughter's son.
05:14Barbara was wonderful at taking care of him. She would buy school clothes for him.
05:18They were all the time going places. And she loved Kenny.
05:23Barbara doted on Kenny in Oklahoma, but she really missed her grandson in Florida.
05:29Then her daughter Sonia offered a great chance to bring everyone closer together.
05:34She had encouraged dad and Barbara to come there. They owned the house directly across the street from where
05:40they lived. And they said, you know, hey, we'll set you up in this house. Just come and help take care
05:46of Sonia's son and come enjoy Florida. And that's where they both moved to. They were there quite a few
05:53years. And dad loved it. We'd see them around Christmas. They would come back to Oklahoma and
06:02just kind of random other times. They made the trip by car and Barbara would always drive.
06:11The last time they drove to Oklahoma was in December 2011. Barbara and Benny came to visit for the holidays.
06:21And they were going to be here a week or so. So I had offered up my mother's home. At this point,
06:30my mother had been passed away by almost a year. And so I just said, Dad, Barbara, just stay here.
06:38Enjoy yourselves.
06:40Last time we seen them, they were just like they always were. Seemed just fine to me.
06:45Now, what goes on behind the scenes in people's lives, you never know.
06:58A few days after they returned to Florida, Barbara texted Pam that Benny was under the weather.
07:04And then he apparently stayed sick from January through March.
07:09It had been months since I had talked to my dad over the phone.
07:14Much less see him. He was in another state. So all I had were these smatterings of text messages from
07:22from her saying, Benny's going to go to the doctor. They're going to have to do a surgery.
07:28But I had no suspicions at all about the well-being of my father until the day I got a phone call from
07:38Stephen, Barbara's son. And he called me and he said, Pam, when's the last time you talked to your
07:45dad? And I said, well, it's been a couple of months because he can't talk on the phone.
07:50He doesn't have a voice. And he said, Pam, he said, I don't know what to tell you, but
07:54your dad, he's lying to you. He's been back in Oklahoma for the last two or three months.
07:59I was stunned at first. And then I was like, look, Stephen, my dad would never come back to
08:05Oklahoma and not contact me. There's no way, no way. Stephen had told me that's what Sonia said.
08:13So he got real quiet and he said, I'm going to, I'm going to call my sister back.
08:20He's talking to his sister. His sister's talking to Barbara, trying to piece everybody's stories
08:25together. He did contact me back fairly quickly and said, I don't know how to tell you this, but
08:32apparently your dad is, is passed away. Barbara found dad in the shower in the bathroom on January
08:422nd and freaked out, didn't know what to do and basically just dragged him out and buried him in
08:49their backyard. I swear, it's like being in a twilight zone. I mean, I just couldn't believe it. I,
08:57it was so shocking, so shocking. As soon as Pam has a chance to catch her breath,
09:04Stephen lets her know that his mom and Sonia are on their way to see the police.
09:14My duty officer that day, Officer Jeff Blows, called me and said that he needed to talk about
09:20something and it was kind of bizarre. He had Barbara Scott at the police department.
09:26She said her husband had died and she had buried him in the backyard.
09:34With the information that we had preliminarily was she could have been tampering or failing to
09:40report a death. But this story being so bizarre, you really need to look a little more in depth.
09:46Is there a mental situation going on with this person? Maybe dementia, something else is involved
09:54that we don't know about? After hearing the story, Officer Jeffrey blows. He pulls Sonia aside and goes,
10:03is this real? I mean, she's 67. She's elderly. Does she have dementia? Is she making up? And Sonia,
10:10still in somewhat of a state of shock, says to Officer Blows, I believe my mother. I think it really
10:18happened. My mother buried him in the backyard. She didn't want to notify authorities because she was
10:29embarrassed and panicked. We first dig the herbs up and we get a hint of the smell of decomposition.
10:37The neighbors are saying, well, Barbara, why are you selling all of Benny's stuff?
10:44Nothing matched. Are we looking at a pattern of a psychopath? I mean, what are we looking at?
10:48When beloved granny Barbara Scott drops the bombshell that she buried her husband, Benny,
11:00in their backyard, the startled Lake Alfred officers know they need backup right away.
11:06I made contact with the Polk County Sheriff's Office to request assistance.
11:13I was told that Barbara Scott was at the Lake Alfred Police Department with her daughter and
11:18her attorney. I then proceeded to the Lake Alfred Police Department to
11:22get as much information as I could and figure out what the heck was going on.
11:28As Detective Clark heads to the station, the cops split Barbara and Sonia up.
11:33They're gonna want to interview Barbara alone. I get to the police department. When I first saw
11:40Barbara, she wasn't nervous. She just had that look like a, um, you know, sophisticated grandmother.
11:47I sat down with Barbara Scott and her attorney and I asked them to run me through what was going on
11:54and Barbara said that her husband, his name was Benny, had died while he was in the shower on January 2nd.
12:01She said she found the body at 11 a.m., somewhere roughly around there.
12:12And that she thinks that he hit his head and fell because there was some blood around his head.
12:18And she didn't know what to do.
12:20Barbara says when she gathered her thoughts together, she put him on a bathroom rug and then dragged him into the backyard.
12:30She said that he would be underneath the herb garden that she planted over him after, um, she buried him.
12:37My first instinct was who, especially a grandmother, drags a body to a backyard and buries it and plants an herb garden over it.
12:51So, I tried to dwell a little deeper, especially into him hitting his head.
12:58What did he hit? Where did he fall?
13:01She seemed a little perplexed by my questions.
13:04And then I was asked to step out by her attorney so they could talk some more.
13:09Ten minutes later, um, you know, I went back in and her attorney said they needed to clarify some things,
13:14that it was possibly a bullet hole in his head because she did find a gun outside the shower.
13:22She says, well, I think he might have shot himself, but I'm not sure.
13:26But I saw the gun. I saw the blood. Maybe he didn't shoot himself. Maybe he hit his head.
13:31We have a story changing.
13:33But in the versions of the story, she didn't want to notify authorities because she was embarrassed and panicked
13:40and being embarrassed for the family that Benny would have done that to himself.
13:48When we look at people responding to traumatic events, they're quite unpredictable.
13:54So, it's not outside of the realm of possibilities that, in this case,
13:58someone discovers that their partner or their husband committed suicide and they're shocked by it.
14:04It could be a possibility that someone will react in a way that they're trying to hide
14:10what happened.
14:11Barbara had told everyone in Florida that she talked to that Benny was in Oklahoma.
14:16She told everybody in Oklahoma that Benny was there in Florida, sick with throat cancer,
14:21and couldn't talk on the phone. In talking to Ms. Scott, she was very lucid. I didn't think she had
14:26any memory issues or any onset of dementia or anything.
14:31With Barbara's story changing, first it's an accident, now it's a suicide.
14:36The cops want to see the house before they talk to anyone else about whether or not Benny might have killed himself.
14:44We concluded the interview and I write a complete search warrant for the residents
14:50and prepare to start the following morning.
14:56We first dig the herbs up and then we get down maybe, I want to say four, four and a half feet
15:03and we get a hint of the smell of decomposition.
15:07So we slow down and layer by layer start removing the dirt and we find a body that is wrapped in a tarp.
15:21Slowly bring the body out of the tarp.
15:24We can clearly see the bullet hole in his head and realize that he is bound, his hands and his feet tied behind him in a ball.
15:38Looks like it's been a professional hit.
15:42Everybody was shocked. This does not look like a suicide. This looks like a homicide.
15:48When you're hearing a story and it went from somebody slipped and fell in the tub to
15:54somebody committed suicide to we have a bag fully wrapped body in the ground, just extremes in
16:03where we're at at this point. It was something I hope I never have to see again in my life
16:09and it definitely was a different mindset that day seeing that body brought from the ground.
16:14My immediate reaction was, I need to talk to Barbara again to clarify some things.
16:24So I called her attorney, told him we had some issues that I needed to talk to him about.
16:29And I explained to him what I saw and he himself was shocked. Told me he'd get back with me,
16:35called me back an hour or so later, said he's talked to Barbara. And at this point,
16:40he was requesting that I not have any more communication with her, which I understood.
16:46He said that Barbara explained that after she found his body, she took him to the garage and
16:53put him on the tarp and left him there for a few days because she didn't know what to do.
17:00And then decided that she would tie him up to make it easier to drag him through the home.
17:06And then buried him like that.
17:13And he told me where the gun was in a drawer within the home.
17:17And that was pretty much the extent of it.
17:22Was Barbara embarrassed that he committed suicide or was there foul play involved?
17:27We certainly know there's tampering with evidence,
17:30but we didn't really have that full picture about what happened to Benny.
17:36You're innocent until proven guilty.
17:38So we needed to look into every aspect of Barbara's statement.
17:42And so we transported the body to the medical examiner for an autopsy.
17:47Next up, the investigators searched the house for
17:51anything that might back up or contradict Barbara's story.
17:56There was areas throughout the house where you could see
18:00that there was blood that had been cleaned up.
18:04We did find some blood in the shower.
18:08We found little spots of blood where it looked like maybe he did get taken to the garage and
18:13did get pulled from the garage because we had it through the counter, which led to the back door.
18:17In the garage on the floor, you could actually see where somebody had tried to clean
18:25something up, but you could still see that there was blood
18:28stained there in the concrete on the carport floor.
18:31So the blood evidence that we found matched that yes, he likely died in the shower because there
18:40was blood on the ceiling and that he was probably taken to the garage. That corroborated at least
18:46that part of the story. And then we did find the gun that Barbara had said would be in one of the drawers.
18:52It was in a crown royal bag. They found the box of ammunition, 25 bullets in there and a 22 caliber gun.
19:04And there is one spent shell casing that they find in the gun.
19:14We had checked to see if Benny or Barbara had any guns that they had purchased and they hadn't
19:21purchased anything. Knowing that Benny and Barbara did not have any registered firearms or known to have
19:27firearms, it was absolutely important to track down where this firearm came from and be able to
19:33pinpoint the responsible person that may have had the gun to prove it's a suicide or it's a murder.
19:40Detectives, they are asking a little bit more questions to try to understand whether Benny was
19:45depressed, fatalistic, where those would be markers consistent with someone on a downward spiral.
19:58Looking for anything that can help them figure out if Benny Scott took his own life,
20:03or someone else did, the cops decide they need to hear from people who knew the couple. While they get
20:10ready for a longer chat with Barbara's daughter Sonia, they reach out to neighbors first.
20:18The neighbors reported they hadn't seen Benny in weeks or months. And we did determine from one
20:24neighbor that Barbara had been having garage sales in the front of her house.
20:29Some of the neighbors that had been to the garage sales had said that they had noticed a lot of
20:36Benny's stuff was being sold in those sales. And the neighbors are saying, well, Barbara,
20:43why are you selling all of Benny's stuff? And she says, well, he's going to stay in Oklahoma. He's having a
20:49blast with his friends. And he just realized he was not cut out to be in Florida. Our marriage is over.
20:57I don't want to keep his stuff. So I'm going to sell his stuff off.
21:03One neighbor said that she had questioned Barbara a little more and that she got a little agitated and
21:08upset about it, which he found a little odd. So at this point, I'm getting suspicious of everything.
21:17I think that she's just probably a pretty devious woman.
21:21So next, the detectives sit down with Sonia, Barbara's daughter, to see if they can get any
21:27more details about what's happening. They want to know, what do you know about what your mom did to Benny?
21:34Barbara's daughter had mentioned just shortly after the new year that her mother had went into cleanup mode.
21:41She got spray bottles and cleaning supplies. Barbara had told her that she had had some fleas in the
21:47house. And they bombed the house, tried to get rid of the fleas. Can't get rid of the fleas. So nobody
21:53can come to the house. Nobody can see Benny at all.
21:56Sonia says she understood about the fleas. Her mom obviously didn't want them to spread. But once they
22:05were gone, Barbara casually announced that Benny was back in Oklahoma. He wanted to be with his friends.
22:12So for about two months, Sonia's just figuring that's where Benny is.
22:17And the March, Steve Broadway, who is Barbara's son and Sonia's brother and still lived in Oklahoma,
22:27calls Sonia. He says, we got a call from mom. And she said that there's storage unit in Oklahoma
22:37that I need to clear out. Steve opened it up and saw a bunch of Benny's possessions.
22:48Now they're still thinking that Benny is in Florida. So he says, mom wants me to
22:56junk all of Benny's stuff. I just don't think it's right. And then Sonia says to Steve, well,
23:04he's in Oklahoma. Why don't you ask him? Steve says, he's not in Oklahoma. He's in Florida.
23:13Pam Harris told me that. Sonia, after talking to Steve and realizing something's not right,
23:20she says, mom, let's go for a drive. So they drive to Lake Alfred Park. And she goes, mom,
23:28something's not right here. Steve talked to Pam. And she said that he's not in Oklahoma. He's in
23:35Florida. And finally, Barbara looks at her and says, okay, here's the truth. Benny slipped in the shower,
23:44hit his head, and he died. And I just took him into the backyard and buried him. And Sonia
23:55is trying to remain calm about this. But inside, her emotions are in complete turmoil.
24:04Sonia looks at her mother and says, we're going straight to the police department.
24:09So at that point, we mentioned that Barbara had said he could have committed suicide. And the
24:19daughter said that she didn't feel that he would have committed suicide, that he loved life and he
24:25enjoyed his life. Barbara's daughter also mentioned a trip that she accompanied Benny to the hospital,
24:33where there was an issue with his pacemaker. He had to have it readjusted and that he actually got
24:38emotional and was scared of his mortality and made the comment that, I hope we can get this fixed. I
24:45don't want to die. I'm not ready to die. And that he was very strong about that.
24:50Detectives decide to ask Sonia two obvious questions. How was her mother acting just before
24:57Benny's death? And did she have a motive to kill him? She told us that Barbara had been under a lot
25:04of stress, that she had been taking care of her mother and her stepfather, and she was having to
25:09take care of Benny, and that he wanted her by her side at all times, and that she was overwhelmed,
25:15and she got emotional sometimes about it.
25:17Our pressure is not only internally in fulfilling those roles, but society as well, that she's doing
25:27her duty to take care of her own tribe in a way. Sometimes that role could start to chip away at
25:34someone's sense of compassion and empathy. But the daughter didn't mention that she felt that
25:42Barbara was at the point of homicide. The last person that they would think of acting out in a
25:51murderous way would be grandma. So detectives are trying to figure out what's going on,
25:58put all the pieces together. And if Benny didn't commit suicide, could it be premeditated? Something
26:06much more sinister. So they looked into her past, and they found that Barbara,
26:13the kindly caregiving 67-year-old grandmother, had a rap sheet.
26:24When the cops go digging into Barbara Scott's background, guess what? This seemingly gracious
26:30granny has a rap sheet. I found where she had a pretty significant arrest back in 1988 for embezzlement
26:41in Norman, Oklahoma.
26:47Detectives found out that Barbara was working in Norman, Oklahoma as the manager of an insurance company,
26:54and she subsequently fired the bookkeeper and took over the duties.
27:00All of a sudden, the owner of the insurance company was getting suspicious. Things weren't
27:05adding up and jiving in the books. So he confronted Barbara and said, what's going on? And she admitted
27:12that she had been taking a little bit of money.
27:17She was then fired. They did an audit and found out that over time, she was taking a little bit of
27:23money here, a little bit of money there. And it was about $64,000. And she ultimately did five years
27:29in prison for that charge. For Barbara to be able to pull off this crime for as long as she did,
27:36she did have to be somewhat controlled, well controlled and well rehearsed. So that starts to come off as
27:44someone who has some antisocial personality traits. When thinking now of Barbara's possibility of her
27:51harming her own husband, predictors are present of her willingness to step out the social norms,
27:58to break the law in order to solve her own problems or satisfy her own need.
28:02We also learned that Barbara's previous husband, Marvin, had died unexpectedly in the bathtub.
28:13You've got this, you know, sweet looking grandmother who maybe committed two murders.
28:20Are we looking at a pattern of psychopath? I mean, what are we looking at?
28:25I went out to Oklahoma City, I met with the police department there and pulled their report.
28:34It was determined that Marvin Tulate's death was caused by intense ethanol intoxication. In other
28:41words, he drank himself to death. He was 53 years old. Not only did Marvin have a ton of alcohol in
28:50this system, but he also had liver cirrhosis. So his manner of death was ruled an accident.
28:58After hearing all this, it gets your mind spinning, but you know, we had to focus on the facts of our kids.
29:06While I was in Oklahoma, I met with Benny's friends, his family, his daughter Pam, and I interviewed them
29:13about Benny's mindset and about the visit when Barbara and Benny had came up there, because Barbara was a
29:19legend. It was possibly suicide. I wanted to get statements from the family.
29:26Detectives came to the house, and that's when they told me how they found dad.
29:34And I just broke down. It broke my heart. What she did to him was wrap him up like he's a piece of trash.
29:44And I wish that I could remember all the questions that he asked,
29:47but he was basically asking, did any of us think that he could have killed himself?
29:54And did anybody think that Barbara could have done it? It was just such a surreal moment. There was a lot of anger.
30:01And I knew, I knew my dad. My dad would never have shot himself, ever.
30:07Pam did say to the detective that when Barbara and Benny last visited Oklahoma,
30:15they stayed in a home that Pam and her husband Gary owned for about 10 days.
30:20I didn't notice Barbara being a caregiver. I always thought Benny took care of himself pretty good.
30:29You could tell he was getting tired easier. But dad was active.
30:34I just wonder if somewhere along the way, Barbara's mind just snapped.
30:44Detective Clark heads back to Florida. Meanwhile, it's time for Benny's autopsy.
30:51Dr. Nelson performed an autopsy on Benny. And at the conclusion of the autopsy, he advised us that this
30:59was likely not a suicide. The bullet hole was on the left side of Benny's head.
31:05We knew Benny was right handed. It had also been shot from a short distance. It was not a contact wound.
31:15It was from back to front and a downward angle. So it would have been almost an impossible shot that
31:24Benny could have done himself. Dr. Nelson ruled the cause of death to be the gunshot wound to the head
31:32and the manner of the death to be homicide. Dr. Nelson, the medical examiner, also finds that he has the
31:40pacemaker, gets the serial number off the pacemaker and contacts the manufacturer, which then allows
31:48them to find the exact time of death. And the pacemaker data shows that Benny died at 3 a.m. on January 2nd.
32:00After the results of the pacemaker, it's impossible, not even plausible, that anything Barbara told us
32:06was true. Barbara said that this happened between 9 and 11, so nothing matched other than the location
32:16of the gun and the location of the body. That's the only thing that she said that was true. We know the
32:21gun was a major part of this crime scene. We need to find out where the gun came from because the time
32:29frame of that was very important to show evidence in this case of first-degree murder.
32:37At this point, I really want to find out where this gun came from and I got to find out who owns this gun.
32:42Now that Benny Scott's death is officially a murder, Detective Clark has got to figure out
32:53where that gun came from and when Barbara got it because that information could prove that she did it
33:00and planned to. I started questioning Benny and Barbara's family members. One person I talked to
33:07was Benny's son-in-law, Gary. I knew that Barbara and Benny had visited Oklahoma and I asked him,
33:16did they own guns? He said they did. At Pam's mom's house, we had a gun safe in a closet, but it was
33:24locked up and we had the key to it. Gary said that he was pretty confident all his guns were locked away
33:32in the safe and that they were all accounted for. So I asked him if they would just double check
33:37because I wanted to make sure I covered all the bases. So me and Pam get in the car and we're driving
33:43to my wife's parents' house and on the way over there, it hit me that a gun that I had put in the
33:50garage was maybe gone because like a week before that I had cleaned everything out of that garage
33:59and that gun wasn't there when I cleaned the garage out.
34:07And so we get over there and the first thing I do is I go to where I knew that gun was on that shelf
34:13and it was not there. And that's when we called David Clark back and he asked if I could describe
34:22it and I said yeah it was a little short-nosed .22 with a little leather case. Gary had mentioned that
34:29he had the gun in a Crown Royal bag in his garage and we found the gun in Barbara's house
34:37in the drawer she told us it would be in in that Crown Royal bag. So I ran down to the evidence room,
34:43pulled the gun out, took a picture of the gun in the Crown Royal bag, sent it to Gary and said
34:48well this happened to be your gun and he immediately said absolutely that is my gun.
34:59Once I realized the gun had been stolen from Oklahoma, I flew up to Oklahoma City, I met with
35:05Oklahoma City Police Department, explained to them what I had going on and I requested they go out to the
35:11house with me and do an investigation into the stolen gun just to cover all my bases. They brought a crime
35:18scene unit out and processed the area that the gun was taken from and did a report on that. I took a
35:25statement from Gary about that gun so that I had that.
35:32It's hard to imagine Barbara premeditating something like that. What in the world was she thinking?
35:38With proof in hand, Detective Clark goes back to Florida hoping to get Barbara indicted for first
35:47degree murder. If she's indicted, she'll finally be arrested.
35:54I came back and we just put everything together. We put the medical examiner's report,
35:59Barbara's statements, her daughter's statements, everybody from Oklahoma's statements and we
36:07presented it to a grand jury. We spent a day presenting all the evidence we had to the grand jury
36:15and then of course Barbara and her attorney have the opportunity to speak in front of them and
36:21give their side of events. Barbara told the grand jury that Benny had killed himself. He committed suicide.
36:30Too shocked to really do anything. She thinks, OK, I'm going to take him into the herb garden where
36:38the hole is already dug and put his body in there, which is what Barbara told the jury she did.
36:44And then she said she had no idea where the gun came from.
36:50I think what Barbara was maybe trying to get across was that Ben, my dad, found the gun and took it
37:01and drove it back to Florida with them. He wouldn't have done that. He's as honest as the day is long.
37:08Despite what Barbara told the grand jury, Sonia told the grand jury that when her mother told her about
37:16Benny's death, she didn't shed a tear. Initially, she was extremely sympathetic toward her mother,
37:24but as the evidence unfolded, she realized that her mother killed Benny.
37:30While the jury was deliberating, she sat by herself out there on a bench.
37:35Detective Clark had sent me a picture. The jury deliberates for only 90 minutes.
37:41That's really, really quick. Was there enough evidence to make an arrest?
37:54Two weeks after the cops first started looking into Benny Scott's death,
37:59a grand jury decides if his wife Barbara killed him.
38:03The grand jury came back with a first-degree murder indictment.
38:09And once the grand jury gave us that indictment, we went and arrested Barbara.
38:17The evidence showed that she was more than just a sweet little old grandmother caretaker.
38:24I was glad to hear that. I felt like that's what needed to happen. She needed to go to jail.
38:29I was shocked but happy. I knew that she had done it. It was just shocking that the woman that I knew,
38:38Barbara, it's just hard to imagine her doing that.
38:42Once we arrested Barbara, she remained in custody for about two years.
38:50Barbara maintained her innocence the entire time.
38:53She never changed that one iota. She was innocent. So she said.
39:00Two years later, Barbara's murder trial begins.
39:10Barbara still claims that she's innocent, but the lawyers present plenty of evidence that she's not.
39:16But the prosecution says that Barbara was tired of being a caretaker and she killed her husband
39:26to relieve herself of the burden of having to take care of everybody.
39:30When someone develops a distorted sense of their situation and convinces themselves that potentially
39:36maybe ending the life of her husband may be even helpful to him, helpful to her.
39:42At that point, they may start to rehearse in their head how they can pull this off.
39:47And then you have to gain a means.
39:49The prosecution argued that Barbara stole the murder weapon, the gun, from her son-in-law, Gary,
39:58and then planned the murder.
40:01We felt pretty confident with that short deliberation from the grand jury
40:06that we weren't going to have any problem convicting her.
40:13The attorney called us, just said, okay, the jury's going to go out and deliberate.
40:16And it wasn't even an hour and a half later.
40:20She was found guilty.
40:22She was found guilty of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence
40:28and was sent to prison for life, which wasn't very long.
40:33Her life didn't last but about a year or so.
40:38From what I understood, she was in the mess hall getting food and stood up
40:42and had a massive stroke and fell over dead.
40:46She was in the mess hall.
40:47No matter how angry I am about the fact that Barbara murdered my dad,
40:52I always felt empathy and sympathy for Sonia and Stephen.
40:56If this would have been my mother, I would have totally been just devastated.
41:04Barbara's dead, but the memories and questions about this once happy couple are still swirling around.
41:13And I would have been so grateful to have been raised by a guy that had the kind of morals he had.
41:25And it formed me into the person that I am today.
41:28Benny was such a nice guy, and I never talked to Barbara again, but I would have liked to ask her,
41:36why did you do that, Barbara?
41:38I thought many times after this about what Barbara's mindset might have been that she would need to do this.
41:47What was the turning point? Just not sure.
41:52She had this facade of being the kind elderly granny where I think she was just a cold-blooded killer.
42:02I don't know why she did it.
42:05You can speculate all you want, but I don't think in my whole career, and I worked a lot of homicides,
42:12that I had one quite like that with the sinisterness of a sweet-looking old lady.
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