Killer Grannies - Season 1 Episode 02- Granny's Garden
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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
00:22and seemingly the perfect family in a small little town. A beloved couple living the ideal life
00:31are right at the center of a shocking case. He couldn't speak. He can't talk to you on the phone.
00:38Her daughter gets suspicious. Barbara looks at her and says, okay, here's the truth.
00:45A grandmother's story unravels like one drop stitch after another.
00:50It went from somebody slipped and fell in the tub to a bag, fully 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 the twilight zone. I just couldn't believe it.
01:14Who, especially a grandmother, drags a body to a backyard and plants an herb garden over it?
01:21It was shocking. The sinisterness of a sweet-looking old lady.
01:37Lake Alford is a beautiful section of Florida. It's a very idyllic little community.
01:44You 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.
02:00And from all outward signs, she was an idyllic 67-year-old grandmother. She took care of her
02:08grandson, cared for her parents, loved her husband. Benny was initially from Oklahoma. He was 11 years
02:16older than she was. He moved to Florida from Oklahoma with Barbara. And everybody was happy.
02:25In January of 2012, Benny's health takes a mysterious and unexpected turn.
02:32Barbara 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. He couldn't speak.
02:50He can't talk to you on the phone. And this went on for several months.
02:54When Barbara was telling Pam that Benny was sick with some throat infection, you know,
03:02I 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 and he couldn't speak.
03:11I had no idea, sadly.
03:14Benny and my mother, Flo, met through a national guard in Oklahoma. They fell in love and got married
03:27when I was six. And he adopted me. Dad was Creek Indian, Seminole Indian. And he had two biological
03:38children. That was Tommy and Christy. Dad was very funny, had the driest sense of humor, but he was strict.
03:48Boy, he was into manners. It was yes, ma'am, no, sir. I hated it at the time. But when I grew up as an
03:57adult, boy, those manners really come in handy. Benny and Pam's mom were married for 10 years before they
04:05split up, but remained close. They 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. She lived just right next door to us.
04:27Barbara. She lived there with her husband. And after he passed away, dad and Barbara just kind of
04:35hit it off. And one thing led to another. We were all kind of surprised. But hey,
04:41dad and Barbara had a great relationship. Barbara was real crafty. She was so talented. I was always
04:48amazed at the stuff that she would come up with making. And dad loved that. And then she loved to cook.
04:54Barbara. They 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. Barbara was wonderful at taking care
05:16of him. She would buy school clothes for him. They were all the time going places. And she loved Kenny.
05:21Barbara doted on Kenny in Oklahoma. But she really missed her grandson in Florida. Then her daughter
05:30Sonia offered a great chance to bring everyone closer together. She had encouraged dad and Barbara
05:36to come there. They owned the house directly across the street from where they lived. And they said,
05:42you know, hey, we'll set you up in this house. Just come and help take care of Sonia's son. And come
05:48enjoy Florida. And that's where they both moved to. They were there quite a few years. And dad loved it.
05:56We'd see them around Christmas. They would come back to Oklahoma and just kind of random other times.
06:03They made the trip by car. And Barbara would always drive.
06:11The last time they drove to Oklahoma was in December 2011.
06:17Barbara and Benny came to visit for the holidays.
06:23And they were going to be here a week or so. So I had offered up my mother's home.
06:28At this point, my mother had been passed away by almost a year. And so I just said,
06:35dad, Barbara, just stay here. Enjoy 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.
07:08It 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.
07:27But I had no suspicions at all about the well-being of my father until the day I got a phone call from Stephen, Barbara's son.
07:41And he called me and he said, Pam, when's the last time you talked to your dad?
07:46And I said, well, it's been a couple of months because he can't talk on the phone. He doesn't have a voice.
07:51And he said, Pam, he said, I don't know what to tell you, but your dad, he's lying to you.
07:56He'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 Oklahoma
08:06and 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.
08:18He's talking to his sister. His sister's talking to Barbara, trying to piece everybody's stories together.
08:27He did contact me back fairly quickly and said, I don't know how to tell you this, but apparently
08:33your dad is is passed away. Barbara found dad in the shower in the bathroom on January 2nd and freaked
08:44out, didn't know what to do and basically just drag him out and buried him in their backyards.
08:49I swear it's like being in the twilight zone. I mean, I just couldn't believe it. It was so shocking, so shocking.
09:01As soon as Pam has a chance to catch her breath, Stephen lets her know that his mom
09:06and 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.
09:25She 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.
10:36The 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?
10:54When 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.
11:07I made contact with the Polk County Sheriff's Office to request assistance.
11:12I was told that Barbara Scott was at the Lake Alfred Police Department
11:17with her daughter and her 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.
11:25As Detective Clark heads to the station, the cops split Barbara and Sonia up. They're going to want
11:35to interview Barbara alone. I get to the police department. When I first saw Barbara, she wasn't
11:41nervous. She just had that look like a, you know, sophisticated grandmother. I sat down with Barbara
11:49Scott and her attorney. And I asked them to run me through what was going on. And Barbara said that
11:55her husband, his name was Benny, had died while he was in the shower on January 2nd.
12:05She said she found the body at 11 a.m., somewhere roughly around there.
12:10And 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. Barbara says when she gathered her thoughts together,
12:24she put him on a bathroom rug and then dragged him into the backyard. She said that he would be
12:32underneath the herb garden that she planted over him after she buried him.
12:41My first instinct was who, especially a grandmother, drags a body to a backyard and buries it and plants
12:51an herb garden over it. So I tried to dwell a little deeper, especially into him hitting his head.
12:58What did he hit? Where did he fall? She 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, 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.
13:20She says, well, I think he might have shot himself, but I'm not sure. But I saw the gun. I saw the blood.
13:28Maybe he didn't shoot himself. Maybe he hit his head.
13:31We have a story changing. But in the versions of the story, she didn't want to notify authorities
13:37because she was embarrassed and panicked and being embarrassed for the family that Benny would have done
13:44that to himself. When we look at people responding to traumatic events, they're quite unpredictable.
13:54But it's not outside of the realm of possibilities that, in this case, someone discovers that their
14:00partner or their husband committed suicide and they're shocked by it. It could be a possibility
14:06that someone will react in a way that they're trying to hide what 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 and couldn't
14:21talk on the phone. In talking to Ms. Scott, she was very lucid. I didn't think she had any memory
14:27issues or any onset of dementia or anything. With Barbara's story changing, first it's an accident.
14:35Now it's a suicide. The cops want to see the house before they talk to anyone else about whether or not
14:42Benny might have killed himself. We concluded the interview and I write a complete search warrant for
14:48the residents and prepare to start the following morning.
14:53We first dig the herbs up and then we get down maybe, I want to say four, four and a half feet and we get a
15:04hint of the smell of decomposition. So we slow down and layer by layer start removing the dirt and we
15:14um, find a body that is wrapped in a tarp, slowly bring the body out of the tarp. We can clearly see the
15:26bullet hole in his head and realize that he is bound, his hands and his feet tied behind him in a ball.
15:37Looks like it's been a professional hit. Everybody was shocked. This does not look like a suicide.
15:46This looks like a homicide. When you're hearing a story and it went from somebody slipped and fell in
15:53the tub to somebody committed suicide to we have a bag fully wrapped body in the ground. Just extremes
16:02and where we're at at this point. It was something I hope I never have to see again in my life and it
16:10definitely 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 and I explained
16:30to him what I saw and he himself was shocked. Told me he'd get back with me, called me back an hour or so
16:37later, said he's talked to Barbara and at this point he was requesting that I not have any more communication
16:42with her, which I understood. He said that Barbara explained that after she found his body she took him
16:52to the garage and put 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. And 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? We certainly know
17:28there's tampering with evidence but we didn't really have that full picture about what happened to Benny.
17:36you're innocent until proven guilty. So 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. Next up, the investigators
17:49searched the house for anything that might back up or contradict Barbara's story. There was areas
17:58throughout the house where you could see that there was blood that had been cleaned up.
18:02We did find some blood in the shower. We found little spots of blood where it looked like maybe
18:11he did get taken to the garage and did get pulled from the garage because we had it through the counter
18:15which led to the back door. In the garage on the floor you could actually see where somebody had tried
18:24to clean something up but you could still see that there was blood stain there in the concrete on the carport floor.
18:35So 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 that
18:47part of the story. And then we did find the gun that Barbara had said would be in one of the drawers.
18:54It 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. We had checked to see if
19:16Benny or Barbara had any guns that they had purchased and they hadn't purchased anything. Knowing that
19:23Benny and Barbara did not have any registered firearms or known to have firearms, it was absolutely important
19:29to track down where this firearm came from and be able to pinpoint the responsible person that may
19:36have had the gun to prove it's a suicide or it's a murder. Detectives, they are asking a bit more
19:42questions to try to understand whether Benny was depressed, fatalistic, or if those would be markers
19:49consistent with someone on a downward spiral.
19:52Looking for anything that can help them figure out if Benny Scott took his own life or someone else did,
20:05the cops decide they need to hear from people who knew the couple. While they get ready for a longer
20:11chat with Barbara's daughter Sonia, they reach out to neighbors first.
20:15The neighbors reported they hadn't seen Benny in weeks or months. And we did determine from one
20:25neighbor that that Barbara had been having garage sales in the front of her house.
20:31Some 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 cells.
20:38And the neighbors are saying, well, Barbara, why are you selling all of Benny's stuff? And she says,
20:46well, he's going to stay in Oklahoma. He's having a blast with his friends. And he just realized he was
20:52not cut out to be in Florida. Our marriage is over. I don't want to keep his stuff. So I'm going to sell his stuff off.
21:01One 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. So next, the detectives sit down with Sonia,
21:24Barbara's daughter, to see if they can get any more details about what's happening. They want to know,
21:30what do you know about what your mom did to Benny? Barbara's daughter had mentioned just shortly
21:37after the new year that her mother had went into cleanup mode. She got spray bottles and cleaning
21:44supplies. Barbara had told her that she had had some fleas in the house. And they bombed the house,
21:49tried to get rid of the fleas. Can't get rid of the fleas. So nobody can come to the house. Nobody can see
21:55Benny at all. Sonia says she understood about the fleas. Her mom obviously didn't want them to spread.
22:04But once they were gone, Barbara casually announced that Benny was back in Oklahoma. He wanted to be with
22:11his friends. So for about two months, Sonia's just figuring that's where Benny is.
22:18End of 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 units 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,
22:55mom wants me to junk all of Benny's stuff. I just don't think it's right.
23:00And then Sonia says to Steve, well, he's in Oklahoma. Why don't you ask him?
23:09Steve says, he's not in Oklahoma. He's in Florida. Pam Harris told me that.
23:16Sonia, after talking to Steve and realizing something's not right, she says, mom, let's go for a
23:21drive. So they drive to Lake Alfred Park. And she goes, mom, something's not right here. Steve
23:31talked to Pam. And she said that he's not in Oklahoma. He's in Florida. And finally,
23:38Barbara looks at her and says, okay, here's the truth. Benny slipped in the shower, hit his head,
23:46and he died. And I just took him into the backyard and buried him. And Sonia is trying to remain calm
23:57about this. But inside, her emotions are in complete turmoil. Sonia looks at her mother and says,
24:06we'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
24:37he actually got emotional and was scared of his mortality and made the comment that,
24:43I hope we can get this fixed. I don't want to die. I'm not ready to die. And that
24:47he 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?
25:02She told us that Barbara had been under a lot of stress, that she had been taking care of her
25:07mother and her stepfather, and she was having to take care of Benny, and that he wanted her by her
25:12side at all times, and that she was overwhelmed, and she got emotional sometimes about it.
25:19Our pressure is not only internally in fulfilling those roles, but society as well, that she's doing her
25:27duty 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 murderous
25:52way would be grandma. So detectives are trying to figure out what's going on, put all the pieces
25:59together. And if Benny didn't commit suicide, could it be premeditated, something much more sinister?
26:08So they looked into her past, and they found that Barbara, the kindly caregiving 67-year-old
26:16grandmother had a rap sheet. When the cops go digging into Barbara Scott's background,
26:27guess what? This seemingly gracious granny has a rap sheet. I found where she had a pretty significant
26:37arrest back in 1988 for embezzlement in Norman, Oklahoma.
26:47Detectives found out that Barbara was working in Norman, Oklahoma, as the manager of an insurance
26:53company. And she subsequently fired the bookkeeper and took over the duties. All of a sudden, the owner
27:01of the insurance company was getting suspicious. Things weren't adding up and jiving in the books.
27:08So he confronted Barbara and said, what's going on? And she admitted that she had been taking a little
27:13bit of money. She was then fired. They did an audit and found out that over time, she was taking a
27:23little bit of money here, a little bit of money there. And it was about $64,000. And she ultimately did
27:28five years in prison for that charge. For Barbara to be able to pull off the crime
27:35for as long as she did, she did have to be somewhat controlled, well-controlled and well-rehearsed. So
27:42that starts to come off as someone who has some antisocial personality traits. When thinking now of
27:49Barbara's possibility of her harming her own husband, predictors are present of her willingness to step out
27:56the social norms to break the law in order to solve her own problems or satisfy her own need.
28:03We 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.
28:18Are we looking at a pattern of psychopath? I mean, what are we looking at?
28:27I 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 words,
28:41he drank himself to death. He was 53 years old. Not only did Marvin have a ton of alcohol in his system,
28:51but 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.
29:04While 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
29:19alleged 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, 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, but he was basically asking,
29:49did any of us think that he could have killed himself? And did anybody think that Barbara could
29:56have done it? It was just such a surreal moment. There was a lot of anger. And I knew, I knew my dad,
30:04my dad would never have shot himself ever. Pam did say to the detective that when Barbara and Benny last
30:13visited Oklahoma, they 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.
30:28You 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 conclusion of the autopsy, he advised us that
30:59this was 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.
31:20So it would have been almost an impossible shot that Benny could have done himself.
31:28Dr. Nelson ruled the cause of death to be the gunshot wound to the head
31:31and the manner of the death to be homicide.
31:33Dr. Nelson, the medical examiner, also finds that he has the pacemaker, gets the serial number off the
31:43pacemaker and contacts the manufacturer, which then allows them to find the exact time of death.
31:53And 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 was true.
32:09Barbara said that this happened between 9 and 11, so nothing matched other than the location of
32:16the gun and the location of the body. That's the only thing that she said that was true.
32:20We know the gun was a major part of this crime scene. We need to find out where the gun came from,
32:28because the time frame 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 where that gun came from,
32:56and when Barbara got it, because that information could prove that she did it, and planned to.
33:01I start questioning Benny and Barbara's family members. One person I talked to was Benny's son-in-law, Gary.
33:11I knew that Barbara and Benny had visited Oklahoma, and I asked him, did they own guns? He said they did.
33:18At Pam's mom's house, we had a gun safe in a closet, but it was locked up, and we had the key to it.
33:28Gary said that he was pretty confident all his guns were locked away in the safe, and that they were all
33:33accounted for. So I asked him if they would just double check, because I wanted to make sure I covered
33:38all the bases.
33:39So me and Pam get in the car, and we're driving to my wife's parents' house, and on the way over there,
33:47it hit me that a gun that I had put in the garage was maybe gone, because like a week before that,
33:56I had cleaned everything out of that garage, and that gun wasn't there when I cleaned the garage out.
34:01And so we get over there, and the first thing I do is I go to where I knew that gun was on that shelf, and it was not there.
34:17And that's when we called David Clark back, and he asked if I could describe it, and I said, yeah,
34:23it was a little short-nosed .22 with a little leather case.
34:27Gary had mentioned that he had the gun in a Crown Royal bag in his garage, and we found the gun
34:35in Barbara's house, in the drawer she told us it would be in, in that Crown Royal bag.
34:41So I ran down to the evidence room, pulled the gun out, took a picture of the gun in the Crown Royal bag,
34:47sent it to Gary and said, well, this happened to be your gun.
34:50And he immediately said, absolutely, that is my gun.
34:56Once I realized the gun had been stolen from Oklahoma, I flew up to Oklahoma City.
35:04I met with the Oklahoma City Police Department, explained to them what I had going on,
35:09and I requested they go out to the house with me and do an investigation into this stolen gun,
35:15just to cover all my bases.
35:17They brought a crime scene unit out and processed the area that the gun was taken from,
35:22and did a report on that. I took a statement 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?
35:40With proof in hand, Detective Clark goes back to Florida, hoping to get Barbara indicted for
35:46first-degree 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,
36:01Barbara's statements, her daughter's statements, everybody from Oklahoma's statements,
36:07and we presented it to a grand jury.
36:08We spent a day presenting all the evidence we had to the grand jury. And then, of course,
36:17Barbara and her attorney have the opportunity to speak in front of them and give their side of events.
36:24Barbara told the grand jury that Benny had killed himself. He committed suicide. Too shocked to
36:31really do anything. She thinks, okay, I'm going to take him into the herb garden where the hole is already dug,
36:40and put his body in there, which is what Barbara told the jury she did. And then she said she had no idea
36:49where the gun came from. I think what Barbara was maybe trying to get across was that Ben,
36:57my dad found the gun and took it and drove it back to Florida with them. He wouldn't have done that.
37:06He's as honest as the day is long. Despite what Barbara told the grand jury, Sonia told the grand
37:13jury that when her mother told her about Benny's death, she didn't shed a tear. Initially, she was
37:20extremely sympathetic toward her mother. But as the evidence unfolded, she realized that her mother
37:29killed Benny. While the jury was deliberating, she sat by herself out there on the bench.
37:36Detective Clark had sent me a picture. The jury deliberates for only 90 minutes. That's really,
37:43really quick. Was there enough evidence to make an arrest?
37:54Two weeks after the cops first started looking into Benny Scott's death, a grand jury decides if his
38:01wife Barbara killed him. The grand jury came back with a first-degree murder indictment.
38:07And 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.
38:46Once 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.
39:02Two 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 to
39:26relieve herself of the burden of having to take care of everybody. When someone develops a distorted
39:32sense of their situation and convinces themselves of potentially maybe ending the life of her husband,
39:38maybe even helpful to him, helpful to her. At that point, they may start to rehearse in their head
39:45how they can pull this off. And then you have to gain a means.
39:51The prosecution argued that Barbara stole the murder weapon, the gun, from her son-in-law,
39:57Gary, and then planned the murder. We felt pretty confident with that short deliberation from the
40:05grand jury that we weren't going to have any problem convicting her.
40:08The attorney called us. She said, okay, the jury's going to go out and deliberate.
40:16And it wasn't even an hour and a half later. She was found guilty.
40:22She was found guilty of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence and was sent to prison for
40:30life, which wasn't very long. Her life didn't last but about a year or so.
40:37From what I understood, she was in the mess hall getting food and stood up and had a massive stroke
40:44and fell over dead. No matter how angry I am about the fact that Barbara murdered my dad, I always felt
40:54empathy and sympathy for Sonia and Stephen. If this would have been my mother, I would have totally been
41:01just devastated. Barbara's dead, but the memories and questions about this once happy couple are still
41:11swirling around. Benny, dad, he was the only dad I knew. And I was just so grateful to have been raised
41:22by a guy that had the kind of morals he had. And it formed me into the person that I am today.
41:29Benny 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? I've thought many times after this about what Barbara's mindset
41:44might have been that she would need to do this. What 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.
42:04I don't know why she did it. You can speculate all you want, but I don't think in my whole career,
42:10and I worked a lot of homicides, that I had one quite like that with the sinisterness
42:18of a sweet-looking old lady.
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