A Blond-on-Blond Marriage Goes Dark
(“As the Tide Turns,” Forensic Files)
Justin Barber and April Lott’s union started with a destination wedding in the Bahamas and ended with a homicide on an empty Florida beach three years later.
Like two other killers previously covered in this blog, Justin Barber placed the blame on an anonymous attacker and injured himself so he’d also look like a victim. But he didn’t opt for just a few lacerations (Jeff MacDonald) or a single bullet wound to the fleshy part of an arm (Brenda Andrew).
Barber went above and beyond. Nonetheless, police won a first-degree murder conviction against him for his wife’s death. Here’s a summary and update:
JUSTIN BARBER
Episode: As the Tide Turns
DOB: 03/02/1972.
Appearance: 5-foot-9, blue eyes, blond hair, 145 pounds.
Facility: Walton Correctional Institution, DeFuniak Springs, Fla.
Outlook: Life without parole.
CRIME: On August 17, 2002, April and Justin Barber went for an evening stroll on a Jacksonville beach. Justin claimed that a robber shot April once in the face and shot him four times — in the hand, neck, and both shoulders. But the blood evidence didn’t wash, and his computer revealed online research on creating bullet wounds without hitting major organs. Justin, a 30-year-old MBA, was also having an affair with a tennis gal pal, was deep in credit card debt, and was the beneficiary of April’s $2 million insurance policy. Investigators theorized he wanted to get his hands on the money before his wife, a radiology technician, divorced him. They believe Justin shot himself and April. A jury recommended the death penalty in 2006, but he got life instead.
LIFE BEHIND RAZOR WIRE: The Florida Department of Corrections lists Justin’s custody status as “close,” the second-most restrictive category. But his facility offers nice-sounding programs such as cabinet-making, smoking cessation, and (best of all) R.E.A.C.H, whereby inmates train and rehab dogs that have been neglected or abused. On the down side, the Miami Herald reported in 2018 that mortality rates for inmates in Florida prisons have surged and the deaths are occurring at a younger age. The influx of K2 has contributed to the problem. In 2018, one of Barber’s fellow inmates at Walton C.I. died from smoking the synthetic drug.
UPDATE: Barber requested a new trial based on the ever-popular “ineffective counsel” claim, but was refused in 2013. Despite being maligned by Barber, his original defense lawyer Robert Stuart Willis “still believes in Barber’s innocence,” the St. Augustine Record reported. Reader comments left at various videos are divided between those who find his teary laments insincere and those who think he’s an innocent man railroaded.
ONE OBJECTION TO THE CASE: The fact that Barber downloaded a Guns ‘N’ Roses song with the lyrics, “I Use to Love Her But I Had to Kill Her” was used as evidence of his intent. Please, it’s just a song. Fifty million have listened to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on YouTube since 2009, and I’ll bet most of them are still alive.
TAKEAWAY: Research your diabolical schemes offline.
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime.
You can also see the Dateline Mystery about the case online.
Thanks, RR – a nice summary, as always. I recall this ep. I wonder why he got life, not death? To me, the circumstances fit the egregious, heinous category: carefully(-ish) planned, coaxing the victim into vulnerability (a lonely beach), so premeditated; for pure greed; strenuous attempts to deceive the law; he (had) enjoyed a comfortable background and good education (so should have known better). Again, people could be forgiven for perceiving ‘white privilege.’ Would a black person have been spared the death penalty?
One of the interesting facets of FF is in seeing the different outcomes for crimes of apparently equal malevolence, etc. Fairness, as in equal treatment before the law and the punishment fitting the crime, so often seems missing: one of the main reasons I reject the death penalty. “Capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment.” – John Spenkelink
Marcus you are definitely obsessed with race.
Steve: Perhaps – but only with the demonstrable inequality before the law, which ought to be considered outrageous by us all: justice is notionally administered on our behalf – the people – so you and I should be concerned that people of different race and/or socio-economic circumstances, are treated differently.
Blacks generally do worse out of it, but if they have money/fame the tables may turn. Simpson is a notorious likely exemplar of that.
In a country that executes people (unlike here in UK) it’s a profoundly serious matter…
So you’re admitting that the issue is actually economic and not racial, since you admit that money and fame turn the tables.
So why bait with race at all? The real issue is the horrendously difficult life of poor people and how they get smothered in the justice system. Poverty knows no race. I ought to know. I’m from several races here in the U.S., and they were all poorer than dirt.
By slathering that issue with an incoherent race view, you’re muddying up the waters badly. You’re helping to drown out the real problem.
JM: Not in the slightest. Ceteris paribus (other things being equal) – an essential criterion in a discussion of this sort – blacks do worse in the criminal system. So it most certainly is a race matter – race and economic status being related variables.
The error in your argument is to treat them as exclusive – which you cannot in social phenomena.
You don’t improve your argument with words such as ‘bait’ and ‘slathering.’ It’s novel to suggest the view I espouse is ‘incoherent’ (‘expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear’ – you mean incorrect or erroneous): you’ll find it common in academic, legal, and sociological analyses of criminal law, the inequality broadly around racism as well as poverty (poverty being both cause and effect of RACIAL inequality).
In short, race and poverty in the US are linked and cannot be understood as unrelated phenomena, as you aver. You further imply that there is no native racism in criminal administration. Very many would disagree – though I suspect there is much less today than in previous decades. You only have to go back five decades to discern overt racism among prosecutors, judges and juries – never mind tacit…
I agree with Marcus’s right to examine things including race/ethnicity.
To the author of this article — I found the fact that he had downloaded that Guns N’ Roses song to be absolutely incriminating. Don’t fear the reaper is not at all a similar spirit. Bizarre parallel to try to draw. Don’t fear the reaper is ominous and mysterious in its treatment of death — the Guns N’ Roses song is more than on the nose — it is literally portraying descriptions of killing someone… this guy is obviously guilty and gaslighting the world because he can’t just admit it. He’s a sociopath.
Hello Bobbi: I’m not so convinced as you about the music on his computer, but the non-fatal parts of one’s anatomy for bullet wounds does it for me — particularly if that search was done close to crime date. In the circs I don’t know how you’d explain it except that ‘someone used my computer to frame me’!
Still, shooting yourself four times for plausibility takes great fortitude and must be most unusual in the annals of self-inflicted injury for ‘cover.’ The defence surely leveraged this…
I’m with you: he’s guilty as sin.
I’m from Jacksonville, Florida. This case is infamous! He was cheating with a girl who worked at Enterprise Car Rental with my ex. Diabolical, selfish, greedy and dripping with “white privilege.” The side chick immediately knew he did it. He’s exactly where he deserves to be.
Glad to hear this — would hate to think he was sitting in prison an innocent man.
How about not doing the damn crime in the first place?!
You’re right there! Explanation (insofar as possible) isn’t justification.
Well put.
I guess, there was just enough doubt, although not rising to the level of “reasonable doubt” to make his sentence appropriate. Once there is an execution, there is no turning back. Too many innocent people have been killed by the death penalty. I believe it should require unquestionable forensic evidence, of which there was “almost enough” here.
Not quite. The jury predominated for death, but the likelihood is that as they weren’t unanimous the judge let sentence fall to LWOP, rather than there being any doubt of his guilt or that his crime qualified him for death. In some cases just 1/12 jurors opposed to death prevents it, in states where unanimity’s needed (though it’s not in FL).
Forensic evidence CANNOT be assumed to be better than circumstantial, and has caused the wrongful convictions you complain of, due to poor execution or junk science. You probably mean that sound forensics is necessary, but even then it’s only as good as the interpretation made of it. The gold standard for convictions is sound circumstantial AND forensic evidence.
While I refute the death penalty, the claim that innocents have been executed is contested. Sadly it’s bound to’ve happened, but I’m unaware of consensus as to who (in US). When UK had capital punishment there is a case attracting consensus: that of Timothy Evans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans
His is one of an array of reasons for abolition of capital punishment.
You’re a HATEFUL RACIST…!!
It seems most often that those that get the DP and it remains unchanged throughout the appeals process have a history of violent felonies in their past and have proven that 20 to life, life w/ parole, etc., just haven’t done the job. A one-off murderer (unless it was particularly egregious) usually gets life or less or LWOP.
Of course in Canada a life sentence seems to end up being just a few years (looking at you, Schneeberger) because I guess they’re just friendly up there.
I watched this trial and this dude didn’t do shit to his wife. Not even close to enough evidence to prove without a reasonable doubt.
The evidence does not support the guilty theory. There was a witness another vehicle was at the scene and no gun was found. Come on he did not kill her. They wanted someone for the murder and pinned it on Justin. Another example of how our justice system fails us.
The guy cheated on his wife — so what? I watched the 1st 48 episode, and I saw so many issues never addressed. 1. Did they test his hands for gun shot residue? 2. He allegedly shot his wife 1 time, and himself 4 times — where is the gun? He had to dispose of it somewhere? 3. There was another vehicle parked very close to their SUV, witnessed by passing cars, left skid marks on the road — why was this never followed up on by either side?? This is enough for me to have reasonable doubts!
What a good little Marxist you are.
OJ says Hi.
PS I meant to add above that I agree with the lack of probative quality in the song/title, of the order of the ‘silly string’ issue (Darlie Routier). Although, to those who claim that such nonsense damages the defendant, I argue the reverse. That it’s obvious nonsense damages the prosecution, making it look gullible and desperate to a jury – surely?
As you suggest, how many perps have been caught via their own virtual hand – their computers? Have they not heard of public libraries with computer access, or Wal-Mart (ASDA here in UK) for a cheap PC that they can discard after their ‘research’? I know many of the cases are at a time of computer forensic infancy, or before realisation that one’s IP address can be obtained from the internet supplier and used to trace visited sites, but it should occur to perps that if you type something, which must be interacting with your internet supplier, a record either with it or in the machine may exist, and “how to poison people” – when you’ve just done that – may look suspicious…
To paraphrase an internet meme: “Dance like no one’s watching. Google like the results will be read aloud in court.”
Clever….True…!!
LOL research your schemes offline!
Isn’t that the way you’ve always done it?:)
This one was hard to watch due to the similarities in my life. Barber reminds me of MY blond ex, whom I left because despite being a CPA, he’d conned me into signing joint credit card accounts and got us $20,000 in debt (in 1995). Like Barber’s dead wife, I too am a healthcare professional. Fortunately for me, my ex didn’t try to kill me; he just married a lawyer and together they managed to screw me out of more money and financial problems.
ANYWAY, having got that out of the way, I can ponder the facts. I think the GnR song was simply the signpost pointing the way to the investigators that something was amiss, and upon probing his computer and talking to people they discovered his debt and affairs. It may have been FF that produced the show to highlight the GnR song, and that may not have been part of the actual trial. I’d have to watch the episode again to see, which I won’t do cuz I’m still triggered emotionally by it.
Marcus, regarding your “why not the death penalty” question: in the US each state has its own laws. Texas (“Don’t mess with Texas”) is the state with the harshest death penalty laws AND the most executions. Contrarily, California has the death penalty but not even Charles Manson was executed. And there are more states than not that DON’T have the death penalty. Florida, where this occurred, does have it, but who knows why he wasn’t given it.
My professional thoughts have to do with the medical examiner. I rewound his appearances on the episode several times:
1. On his left arm he has what appears to be a plastic tube sticking out of it. It looks vaguely like a drain for a wound. Or maybe something for dialysis. Is he sick?
2. His speech. He says “drownding,” which is not a word. The credits say he’s an MD. We know from researching previous episodes that an MD can be obtained from another country. To become a medical examiner may not require much education or training, I don’t know.
3. I’m curious about the “foam” on her lips, that he says is due to “drownding” before the gunshot, not afterwards. I’d have to do more research on that but it’s a head scratcher for me.
Charles Manson could not be executed because he wasn’t even on death row. He was given the death penalty after he was convicted, but shortly afterward his sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole due to a Supreme Court decision that halted death sentences across the country. (He was given the next most severe sentence under California law; life without parole did not yet exist in that state at the time of the murders.) The same is true of the rest of the Manson “family” – that is why their parole hearings periodically come up in the news. He probably would not have been executed (most death row inmates in CA die of natural causes because they actually carry out the sentence so infrequently), but in his case it wasn’t in the state’s hands to execute him or not.
As of March 2019, Gov Newsom has reprieved 437 death penalty inmates at San Quentin prison in the Santuary state of Ca., including Scott Peterson. Wonder if he can reprieve the 100s of murdered victims,
I don’t think so.
Manson never killed anyone. When it comes to murder, is Manson actually the first one you think of?
Good point. Manson never did kill. He may have urged his so-called followers to murder, but he never did anything. If you tell someone to kill, and they go do it, are you really responsible?
Hello Lili: This ep’s just been on UK tv. It seems FF didn’t foment the music thing: the exam of the computer threw up that he’d deleted the song just prior to the murder. Coincidence? It need have no significance, but it could have. Were I prosecuting I’d have mentioned it – but that’s all. There was much better probative evidence.
A ME must be a qualified doctor, so let’s assume the odd pronunciation was idiosyncratic rather than ‘red-neck’.
Thanks for the info re death penalty. I keep an eye on the execution situation in the US, and I know not to commit a ‘capital’ crime if ever staying in Texas (I know Mass and Maine a bit and like both)! Question is, allowing for the standard variables, is murder more or less common in that State than none-DP states, for that has always been a major justification for it…
Coroners in Colorado are elected and don’t have to have a medical degree or experience. You can basically qualify to run for this office if you’re alive and a US citizen.
Good update RR and good comments Marcus, Mike, and Lilikoian.
Florida has the highest number of those sentenced to prison who have escaped or jumped bail of any state.
I am currently in a rethink about the death penalty which Florida does actually carry out more often, per death row inmate, than California and most other states. I have been in favor of it when it’s certain that the sentenced is guilty of course. But that’s the rub. Too many juries are incompetent. The very voir dire process itself is a part of the problem especially in civil trails like the recent glyphosate and talcum cases.
After learning about Kirk Bloodsworth (not featured in FF), Ray Krone, and Debra Milke cases amongst the many dozens of others, I am on the verge of a Governor George Ryan conversion against it.
In my state of Michigan we don’t have it and so lack the ability to use it to pressure plea bargains, usually a good thing but sometimes a bad thing. And even though police interrogators aren’t supposed to promise life or threaten death we all know they do most of the time.
Drownding is a regional pronunciation of drowning. We could go into the linguistic reasons for it, but why bother? Most people in the US would not be confused by that pronunciation, and it is no reflection on the speaker’s competence.
Douglas: The ‘mood’ in the US now, as I see if from UK, is turning against the dp. I hope it does go, and if it does I presume Texas will be last to lose it. I argued elsewhere that I’m not opposed to the dp in principle: I think there are crimes so egregious as to merit it; but it’s so inconsistently applied, for a number of reasons, it’s fundamentally unfair, never mind the ‘certainty’ issue. We know unquestionably that people have been wrongly convicted and given the dp, but the time between sentencing and execution has allowed miscarriage to be corrected. That very time, though – 14 years on average in Texas, I believe – makes a farce of the sentence (and is cruel), as does the California situation of such sentences passed but not fulfilled. If such a sentence is passed it should be fulfilled within a maximum of, say seven years. That it can’t, in order to address the multiple, grossly expensive, appeals, renders it better simply to abolish it.
If it IS kept, it should be imposed quicker and LOOK like an execution rather than the quasi-medical procedure of injection. I’ve no problem with the chair for incorrigible quilt and egregious crime such as murderous torture. It’s part of the farce of contemporary execution culture in the US that execution has to look like something else. While those involved in its direct administration are volunteers, suicide and mental illness among them is significant.
DP is a hard call-but, check out Kenneth MacDuff, Texas. I appreciate your thoughtful comments. It is not easy for most of us to try to crawl into the brain of a cold-blooded killer. It seems most of you believe Justin to be guilty, as do I. He must have panicked with the amount of bleeding associated with his flesh wounds of bilateral hands, for instance.
You say duplicate comment: I have never sent anything prior to now.
I believe in a punishment equal to the crime or, biblically, an “eye for an eye.” The death penalty is carried out only after all appeals are adjudicated and the defendant’s guilt quantified. Name just one person in the modern age of DNA analysis put to death who was guilty and you might convince me otherwise. Personally, if I were innocent with no chance at freedom, I’d rather be executed than tossing Bubbas salad for life anyways!
Since 1973, 165 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated. And it was by intervention of legal charity, not the regular judicial system – which had found them guilty at appeals – that secured some of those now free. That must be considered a frightening and serious – but inevitable – flaw in ‘the system’…
Before c. 1960, one wonders how many innocent were executed, because the duration between conviction and execution was typically a matter of months – and the majority of the above where only exonerated years into their sentence…
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence
It’s really not as simple as you suggest…
The most incriminating evidence was the lack of blood on her pants when he was pulling her up the beach after he was supposedly shot in the hand…. justice was served.
That was the most compelling? Are you serious? What about no gun being found? They claim he shot himself 4 times. If I was doing a crime like this, I would have only shot myself 1 time. How about the car parked on the road near their SUV? It left skid marks, like leaving in a hurry. They searched everywhere for a gun — found nothing? Where did he get rid of the gun? It was never fully addressed, too much left uninvestigated here. I have reasonable doubts. Not saying he is innocent, just saying they didn’t investigate thoroughly!!
He had a long drive before he got to the service station. He threw it out the window. The entire road is bordered by scrubgrass. This happened in Ponte Vedra Beach, St Johns County, NOT Jacksonville Beach, which is in Duval County.
I’m Alex and I’m from Germany and I am against death penalty. The prior reason for me to be against death penalty is the matter of fact that killing the murderer won’t result in a rebirth of the victim as well as the matter of fact that no government should ever get down on the same level with a murderer, meaning that no murder should be repayed with murder.
Death penalty is a primitive instrument of justice kept alive by primitive people. You Americans you think you are the navel of the world but your economy is down and your country is more and more fucked up. I’m happy to be German.
The USA are nothing else than a state of hypocrites. You blame us Germans for killing the Jews etc. but in your own country your black citizens didn’t even have the right to vote until 1969! They died in Korea and Vietnam for a country which kept on treating them like slaves! And when Martin Luther King finally did position himself then you shot him!
So “Kind regards” you hyprocritical Freaks!
Your sanctimony is duly noted. But, like too many of your countrymen, your knowledge of history is faulty. Black men have had the right to vote in the United States since 1865 — five years before Germany was unified by Bismarck, and black women earned the right to vote when universal suffrage was passed in 1920. Neither one was anywhere close to “1969.”
Are we perfect? Of course not. But do we have to listen to lectures from people who had to fix the Reich Citizenship Act, which removed the right to vote from “non-Aryans” after 1935? Nope.
So sit down.
What he’s talking about is the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s which made illegal the practices of many states that targeted black citizens and prevented them from voting, e.g. literacy tests. Whether they could vote depended on where in the country a black person lived.
Hey Alex, I am of German decent, but born American. Anyway, I agree with most of your comments except we didn’t kill Martin Luther King. I wasn’t even born yet. I believe a lot of those assassinations were carried out by the government. During the Nixon years, a lot of horrible things went on when Nixon was president, and when he was impeached, everything he did while in office should have been erased and reversed, and they were hypocrites in my opinion, but 99 percent of us had nothing to do with any of this. We spent the last 50 years trying to fix all the mistakes made from the past governments and administrations. We are getting there, slowly, but we are making progress!
Honestly, I’m not sure that I watched the same episode that everyone else watched. The police bungled this investigation from the start. They immediately zeroed in on the husband. Never even considered that random robberies sometimes occur. Completely ignored the witness who saw a second vehicle. And the jury had their minds made up before the testimony even began. Ignored the testimony of an emt who arrived within minutes and saw no blood. Ignored the testimony of the witness who saw the second vehicle and described it very accurately. Ignored the physical evidence of another car being there, the tire marks. Ignored the fact that the defendant, although in some debt, was not in dire financial straits. Ignored the fact that there was zero evidence that he had fired a gun. Yes the marriage was rocky. Yes he had an affair. But that man was railroaded from the start and the jury was dumb enough to convict despite the fact that the prosecution in no way proved their case beyond reasonable doubt. If this is what justice looks like, then God help the people of Florida.
I just watched this too, I completely agree. Why shoot yourself 4 times. Like damn not good enough let’s go again and again?? I think the judge thought the same and didn’t give him the death penalty. Let’s not forget about no evidence he shot a gun that night from no residue on his hand! No gun recovered. They had 4 years to search with metal detectors. Search an arm’s throw from drag marks and from the road. No hard evidence!
HCD (heinous, cruel or depraved) aggravator didn’t apply, hence no death penalty.
Yet he searched how to shoot yourself without hitting vital organs. How convenient that she was shot in the face and died but he wasn’t and survived.
That is strange, I agree, but is that enough to send this man to death, or life in prison? There were a lot of other issues never addressed, the fact no gun was found? The other vehicle spotted parked close to their SUV, he never tested positive for shooting a gun, guns leave powder residue on your hands and clothes, and yes he cheated on her, but that’s 90% percent of husbands, in my opinion — did he do this? I dont know, but all I am saying is there is plenty of reasonable doubt here, and that is the law. If you have just 1 reasonable doubt, you cannot convict a man, and I just gave you 3 reasonable doubts, that means NOT GUILTY!!!!
I had to reply because it is so great to see someone else who can see that something is wrong with this case. I know Justin, and there was actually more going on that the public never knew. I was shocked when his mother told me what she did on the phone. I am amazed they were able to get away with this!
The emt arrived within minutes? Really? He left and went looking for help, he obviously had this well planned out to get rid of the gun and the residue. If he was shot by someone else he would have been shot in the HEAD and died as well.
I totally agree, this case was managed horribly. Why didn’t they focus on the other vehicle? Why didn’t they focus on the fact that no gun was ever found? How can you shoot your wife and yourself multiple times, and no gun? Did the police search the water and the ten miles he drove to get help for a gun? Why was this not the most important issue? He had no evidence of firing a gun. When you shoot a gun, gunshot residue lands all over your skin and clothes. They claim he shot up to 4 or 5 shots — he would’ve been covered in residue. Never mentioned that. So he cheated on his wife — that’s not enough to convince me. He never pursued a relationship with the girlfriend,after his wife died. There was plenty here for reasonable doubt, that Florida jury was derelict in doing its sworn duty. They convicted this man, because they wanted to. Any reasonable human being can see there is reasonable doubt here. Any moron can be a juror. We need a common sense test before you let some 12 idiots decide a man’s life. Any registered voters can be jurors. We need a higher standard for death penalty cases. Have you seen the morons that show up when you go to vote? You want them deciding whether you live or die? I sure don’t!!!!
Barber fell toor the tricks-wiles of the devil (Ephesians Chapter 6 verses 10-17). He was spitting in God’s face offending Him by having sexual relationships with people to whom he was not married. Like God influences people to do His perfect will, Satan influences people to do his evil will. Remember, Satan is a MASTER OF DECEPTION practicing his trade for centuries ruining lives and conquering souls. READERS BEWARE!!! Do not pass judgement. At this very moment Satan is setting a trap against your character and personality; will you fall for it (adultery, baring false witness, coveting, fornication, lying, murder, stealing, etc….). Satan sees this event as a masterpiece and moves to the next event already in progress.
I was working at Medure restaurant that evening. I can clearly recall driving down A1A when Barber’s car was swerving and flashing its headlights. I thought it was a some drunk kids. I was so concerned I pulled over to the shoulder. Only sometime after did I understand it was him. For years I felt another local was responsible and fit the profile. Moreover the guy I’m thinking about drives the same “K-car” … my first car was a Ford Monarch. Old lady cars.
The guy I believe maybe responsible for it always wore a hat, changed his name shortly after the murder. As I said, drove the same car I saw at the beach parking lot, that was also spotted by a vacationing couple. He also had a gun, he likes to think of himself as a thug, and lived in St. Augustine.
Who shoots themselves 4 times, then draws so much attention to yourself so close to the scene of the crime? Where is the gun? The local cops are so corrupt that I’ve got stories and true accounts of their corruption that would make your head turn.
I don’t believe he did it — insurance was only a $1,000 a year. Who the hell wouldn’t buy that? I wish I could get that now…and his debt? It’s was a monthly car payment worth! Not shooting yourself 4 times and killing your wife kind of money!!!! You people are insane — take your head out of arse!!
Mate he was having numerous affairs — he clearly had a motive!
This guy is SO GUILTY!!…It oozes out of him. I mean that act he put on being interviewed…SO obvious!The guilt it seeps down the wall…
HE DID IT!
I worked with Barber. He was an egocentric who barely worked but played day trading of the stock market and was extremely in debt even though he made very good money from his job. He also was a charmer and had many of his management fooled about his true self. When he moved to Washington for work shortly after the murder, I too was temporarily transferred there and unknowing to Justin, had a hotel room next door to his. He was constantly bringing in different women and definitely enjoyed ‘loud’ relationships until the early mornings. He never mentioned his deceased wife and never acted like anything was wrong. I grimmaced everytime I had to go have dinner with him since we were both living in a hotel for weeks.
Thanks so much for writing in with this! And yikes about his behavior in the hotel! This case always puzzles me because I can’t imagine anyone shooting himself four times. But his internet searches were highly incriminating, so that pretty much wraps up the case.
The serious injuries he apparently inflicted on himself certainly reflected fortitude or desperation. I wonder why four shots? Did he think it had to be that many to look fully convincing? It could be argued that it had the opposite effect: that it’s most unlikely the perp would miss crucial anatomy four times (and when he’d managed to shoot April in the face) but rather less so once or twice. Were I prosecuting it’s a line I’d likely take: did the shooter suddenly become incompetent between his vics?
Good point–it must take more skill to hit the places least likely to cause death than to simply go for the obvious lethal places.