A Baseball Coach Makes a Fatal Error
(“Broken Promises,” Forensic Files)
Barbara Stager demonstrated a recurring Forensic Files theme: People who get away with murder once just can’t stop pushing their luck.
Like fellow Forensic Files hall of shamers Jill Coit and Mark Winger, Barbara Ford Stager killed a spouse for financial gain and didn’t face any legal consequences at first. But, like the other two, she was too greedy to stop scheming and eventually landed behind razor wire.
Four-eyed girl. For this week, I checked around to find out whether Barbara, whose two marriages ended in gunfire and insurance claims, is still in prison and whether she has a chance of getting out on two feet. I also looked into what the North Carolina native, who looks more like a librarian than a free-spending femme fatale, did with the money she squeezed out of both of her husbands.
So let’s get started on the recap of “Broken Promises,” along with extra information culled from internet research:
Barbara Terry was born in Durham, North Carolina, on Oct. 30, 1948, the daughter of a secretary and a longtime Duke Power Company employee.
She had to wear thick eyeglasses from early childhood and was described as shy and sexually repressed, according to the book Before He Wakes by newspaper reporter Jerry Bledsoe, who viewers may remember from his appearance on Forensic Files.
Open house. Barbara married at a young age and had two sons. She crossed paths with Allison Russell Stager III, known as Russ, after her first husband died.
Russ was a well-liked driver’s ed teacher and baseball coach at Durham High School. He cared about the school kids and even paid for some of his students’ baseball uniforms himself, according to a 2015 Fatal Vows episode titled “No Accident.”
His first marriage, to Jo Lynn Snow, didn’t work out, but the two of them remained friends after their divorce.
Barely a year later, Russ met Barbara when she came to look at a house he had on the market.
Newly formed family. No real estate transaction occurred between them, but a red-hot romance did after Barbara, 31, ended up buying a place near Russ’ house. Russ proposed after just a couple of months and they married in 1979.
Russ adopted her sons, ages 6 and 11, from her previous husband.
The newlyweds were both devout Baptists and involved in their local church’s activities.
Auto lovers. Although Forensic Files portrays Barbara as the spendthrift of the pair, Fatal Vows depicts both of them as frequent and enthusiastic shoppers. They loved outfitting themselves in new clothes and even sported matching Rolex watches, according to the show.
They liked larger items as well. Friends joked that instead of changing the oil, the Stagers would get a new car. The couple also bought a beach getaway.
Barbara, who was in charge of the couple’s finances, worked as a secretary at Duke University and an ad salesperson for a radio station. She was also an aspiring author.
Regular June Cleaver. Except for the fact that friends couldn’t figure out where the couple’s seemingly limitless supply of disposable income came from, everything seemed great on the surface.
Neighbors described Barbara Stager as a “perfect homemaker, loving mother of two, valued employee, and staunch Baptist,” according to a Knight Ridder account.
At some point, however, Russ discovered that he and Barbara were deeply in debt. Barbara, it turned out, had been running a mini-Ponzi scheme, whereby she’d borrow money from a bank, then pay it off with a loan from a different bank. Russ found out that she had been forging his name on financial paperwork.
Paper hanger. She had also lied about the manuscript of her novel being purchased for $100,000. The letter from a publishing house that Barbara showed off to Russ turned out to be a convincing fake — she’d created it by cutting out a logo from a rejection notice and then used the document as collateral of sorts to secure bank loans.
Barbara also wrote a lot of bad checks, according to Before He Wakes.
It’s not clear how she duped Russ into thinking the family could afford the many extravagances, but my guess would be that she exaggerated the amount of the windfall from her first husband’s estate.
Cover story accepted. Whatever the case, Russ reportedly forgave Barbara for botching their finances — but he insisted on taking control of the couple’s bill-paying himself. To get back on their feet budget-wise, the Stagers quit their country club and moved to a smaller house. As for the existing debt, Russ’ parents agreed to help the couple pay it off, according to Fatal Vows.
Then, on Feb. 1, 1988 — shortly after the austerity plan went into effect — Barbara Stager called 911 to report that she’d accidentally shot Russ. He kept a loaded gun under his pillow for protection and it went off when she tried to move it because she thought she heard an intruder.
Russ was still alive when the EMTs arrived, but died hours later from a bullet wound to the back of his head.
Barbara’s story about the gun accident sounded plausible enough to police, who had all but closed the case until Jo Lynn came knocking at the lead detective’s door.
Jo Lynn filled in a little history about Barbara — namely, that the grieving widow’s first husband, James Larry Ford, known as Larry, had died of an accidental shooting in High Point, North Carolina, where the couple were raising their sons. They’d been married for nine years.
Victim’s premonition. Barbara claimed that Larry’s gun had gone off while he was cleaning it.
At the time, Larry Ford’s parents encouraged the police to investigate the shooting extensively, but they declined. The authorities bought Barbara’s explanation that it was a tragic mishap and closed the case.
After Russ’ death, Jo Lynn told police that Russ had confided in her that Barbara mistreated him and he was afraid of her.
Now, armed with the knowledge of Barbara’s track record, the police began to dig a little deeper into the circumstances surrounding Russ Stager’s death.
‘Wake up, you need to sleep.’ Fortunately, a tantalizing piece of evidence came to light, and it backed up Jo Lynn’s claims.
A student cleaning out a locker at Durham High came across an audiocassette that Russ had recorded on Jan. 29, 1988 — just three days before his own death.
In a voice from the grave, Russ Stager explained that Barbara had been cheating on him (by this time, she had apparently broken free of any sexual inhibitions of her youth) and that he suspected Barbara’s previous husband’s death was no accident. And Barbara’s behavior had been suspect. Russ recounted that, on two occasions, Barbara woke him up during the night to offer him some pills to help him sleep.
On a prior occasion, Russ had told Jo Lynn that if anything awful happened to him, Barbara probably did it.
Friends blindsided. After a thorough investigation of the forensics, police theorized that Russ’ pistol was actually kept in a drawer — he belonged to the army reserves and knew better than to leave a gun under a pillow. He also didn’t keep his guns loaded.
Ballistic tests showed that pulling the trigger on that particular .25-caliber model would require 4 pounds of pressure — way too much to have occurred accidentally as Barbara contended.
Police noticed the placement of the casing didn’t jibe with Barbara’s version of how the shooting took place.
Nonetheless, friends and neighbors of the couple were “astonished” when the seemingly ideal wife and mother in their midst was arrested for murder, according to a Knight Ridder account.
The Stagers’ church held a fundraiser to pay Barbara’s bail.
No agonizing wait. The prosecution contended that Barbara sneaked the gun out of the drawer, loaded it, shot Russ, lay a shell casing near his pillow, and called 911.
Barbara was in a hurry to rid herself of Russ because she wanted his $170,000 life insurance payout fast, investigators believed. Apparently, the lower-budget lifestyle the couple had adopted was cramping her style.
After a highly publicized trial in May 1989, a jury deliberated less than an hour before convicting Barbara Stager of murder.
She received a death sentence and the execution date was set for just two months later — they like to do things speedily in North Carolina, or at least try to.
Possibility of release. The state Supreme Court later voided that death sentence over a technicality. At the 1993 resentencing trial, Barbara’s younger son, Jason Stager, testified that he felt his mother was innocent.
This time, she got a life sentence, which allowed for the possibility of parole. (North Carolina lawmakers revoked parole eligibility for lifers the following year, but Barbara was grandfathered in.)
Sources vary as to the reason the authorities decided not to try Barbara for Larry Ford’s death. Either they thought it unnecessary under the original death sentence or they didn’t have enough evidence.
So where is Barbara Terry Ford Stager today?
She’s safely tucked away in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh.
Not walking the line. The facility notes that she’s committed a few infractions while incarcerated.
She disobeyed orders in 1989. In 1994, she attempted an unspecified “Class C offense,” a category including such misdeeds as failing to show up for work or fighting with other inmates. In keeping with her pattern of not learning her lesson the first time, she disobeyed orders again in 2017.
In 2018, she was denied parole.
As for what happened to Barbara Stager’s sons after her imprisonment, the younger one went to live with an uncle and the other was old enough to get by on his own.
Russ Stager’s first wife, Jo Lynn Snow, married again, to a kitchen remodeler whom she helps run his business, according to the News & Observer.
Blast from the past. In an interview with the Raleigh-based newspaper, Jo Lynn said that she’s haunted by the fact that Larry Ford — whom she didn’t know — never got justice.
Jo Lynn went on to appear in Fatal Vows. Unfortunately, there aren’t any quality uploads of the Fatal Vows episode available online for free, but you can see a decent upload of the made-for-TV movie version of Before He Wakes on YouTube.
The dramatization got so-so reviews, but it stars Jaclyn Smith — that’s right, one of the original Charlie’s Angels — as the character based on Barbara Stager.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
