Felicia Barden

A Mississippi fireman is shot to death in his own home.

“They discovered the cease mail and they backed them forward.”

The only people that were at the residence were the victim and the two suspects. As the investigation unfolds, detectives must assess conflicting narratives. She's just in front of her. OK, mission into what led up.

It was suspected that it could have been a domestic type situation. That's all. There's a shell for the knife that seemed to be really out of place. In wires, we're coming out of the scene. When a missing clue is discovered, the truth behind the shooting

starts to surface. Would your fingerprints be out there? Maybe. He wanted somebody to work together and make me happy, but it's not what he got.

There was search results for how to get away with murder.

I've never had a definite scare me.

She scares me.

“I said, she's a tiger, and you don't need to bring it.”

[MUSIC PLAYING] November 12, 2019. It's 7.30 a.m. in Olive Branch, Mississippi. When the sheriff's office receives a cryptic 911 call. [MUSIC PLAYING]

The caller did not give us their name or provide any other additional information. They're upset, they're frantic. They just want to report the call, and they don't give a lot of detail.

First responders race to the address, a sprawling home in an upscale neighborhood.

The first officers who arrived at the scene

talked to a young male named Joshua. He indicates that he is the person that called now one one and said someone was shot at this particular residence. Joshua lived with his mother, Flish Barton, and in a home with a Willie Barton.

I got there, didn't know exactly what was going on. My mom's very frantic, walking, running to her, and running to her. I just had the simple question of words, Willie,

“and then honestly, it was all adjourned in the field.”

So we're at a roto police, it's just we're at a rosin, no that happened. You're not upset. I'm like, everybody, blood, gun, shot, and it was horrible.

This first thing that was mouth was my mom shot,

Willie, and self-defense. He's crying a little bit. They get him secured. They get him in the back of a patrol car. They make entry into the house.

That's where they find Felicia Barton. She was crying. She was acting frantic. And she did have a gash on her forehead that was bleeding. The officer's asked if she's OK, she said she didn't know.

I had no idea what happened. It was a blood on her face, and I was still out of it myself. I didn't even really notice, you know, I'm saying all the injuries. They bring her out, secure her the back of a patrol car.

And they appear at the house. And that's where they discovered deceased male, and they backed them floor. The victim was identified as Willie Barton, the husband of Felicia Barton.

The body was turned over, and it was determined that he had suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. At this point, it looked like a domestic violence situation. We have someone who's murdered and a female with injuries. We don't know anything else.

Willie James Barton was born on December 29, 1963, to a large and loving family. There were eight male children born and six female children born to my mom and dad. So a total of 14 kids.

We grew up in four city Arkansas, a little small town about an hour away from Memphis. My mom and dad took her out all 14 of us, you know, good Christmas, good Thanksgiving, good holiday, you know. Willie, we had a good upbringing.

With so many siblings, Willie had to find ways to stand out. He wouldn't want other wars to get in trouble.

He enjoyed school. Early on, he had a vision problem that wouldn't recognize. And once that was the school, and he got to hesitate, he started to excel.

Once he started excel, and then doing great in school, he was getting out parents' recognition for doing well. After high school, Willie attended the University of Central Arkansas. But quickly realized it wasn't the right path for him.

So instead, he dropped out and began working for a cookware company. He was a team leader there.

“And I think that's where he met his wife, Cassandra.”

He loved a really hard, so like, in relationship that he was in, he gave it his all. He looked like cows, he would cook, flowers, all that, so. He didn't even treat him a lot of nice. She had an older daughter that he was raised into.

He treated her just like she was his daughter. That's one of the things that I think Willie wanted for his life was to have a family like his mom and dad in here. Willie got his wish, having two more children with Cassandra over the next several years.

His wife worked there night, so you come home. You cook for everybody, and have her food. And the microwave is getting what you get on, stuff like that, so, man. He was amazing dad, amazing husband, from what I saw. He could more than my husband did.

He'd always could, he'd love to cook, and work, and clean.

He did it all. He might have been a world-class father, but Willie still longed for a career he was passionate about. In the early 2000s, he decided to try being a firefighter. He wanted to have a career, and he also wanted to help people.

When he took the firemen test, his stuff, and he got on, he was so excited. He was one of the older guys on the fire at the apartment. He didn't mind how I worked. He worked hard. You know, all his life in every way.

Willie's newfound success came at a cost, however, his marriage to Cassandra ended in divorce. And he found himself splitting time between the firehouse and his children.

“We grew up with both our pairs, and that's what he wanted to do as well.”

But it didn't work out like that. He tried to make it work. They'd get back together, but they couldn't make it work. In 2005, Willie got a second chance at love with a bright, single mother named Felicia Christ.

While my mother's favorite story to go to, I know you used to see her in her all the time, and in one day I guess he got the carers to say something to her. From my understanding of what he said, they meant he gave her his number and Walmart, and she waited a year before she calmed in.

My mom is a hard person to talk to, but it was amazing how, you know,

it's insistency where going and talking to her and being very polite to her. Yeah, they got together. They loved watching movies. They hung out like best friends.

“They were like pretty close, never heard.”

Right, brother, he likes drama women. She fits straight and then a strong note. One in. She's very straightforward, no nonsense, no silly business. She's already divorced once, but she's been successful throughout her life.

She went through college, she's got a mess of her age. She had a good job with the IRS down here.

My mom and Willie took the time and they always say about six years

till they like officially moved in together. In 2012, after seven years together, the couple finally decided to tie the knot. They told us that it was one as you make it a man. They didn't invite anybody, they just went off and they came up. This didn't very happy.

With two children each from previous relationships, Willie and Felicia bought a large home in Olive Branch to accommodate their blended family. He wanted to be married and wanted to settle down and just raise his children. He just wanted a happy life. It appeared Willie and Felicia had built the perfect life together.

Now, he's lying dead on the bathroom floor of their dream home.

where the gun is located, and a drawer under the kitchen sink, that is collected.

“Unlike Joshua, Felicia was not open to talking.”

She is in the back of a troll corps. She's kind of slowing down. I try to approach and talk to her, but she's not really responding very well. After Paramedics treat Felicia's head injury, she and her son Joshua are taken to the station for questioning. Investigators give Felicia an opportunity to tell her story, but she stays silent.

A lot of people when they get into a situation like this, they shut down and that's exactly what she did. She wouldn't tell me anything about her head, but the window or forehead seemed at the time to be self-inflicted to me, because it was perfectly straight up and down right in the center. I've seen people hit themselves in the head before it leaves that perfect line.

That was the first thing that I had that something wasn't really quite right.

Coming up, investigators find signs of a troubled marriage and volatile temper. He did initially describe her as kind of a domineering personality. And a witness comes under fire. This is your chance to tell the whole truth, even if it's something you did that you shouldn't have done. Disoto County Sheriff's Deputies are questioning Felicia Barton and her 23-year-old son Joshua

about the fatal shooting of her husband, Willie. You would assume that domestic violence situation occurred. Based on the evidence, but it doesn't mean it necessarily did happen. At this point, we don't know why he was shot. I don't take anything at face-value uniform here because everything kind of runs the gamut.

So I'll listen to everything before I can make a determination of anything.

So far, Felicia has refused to say anything, but Joshua seems more than willing to talk.

That could tell that he really wanted to tell the story that he had, so I got him back to the office pretty quickly to interview him. What understand you weren't all the same? All right, you're a good mom talk with you. So that kind of makes you a witness. But I'm arranging random rights anyway to see you understand what we are.

Do you want me to rate these two? You're a good person. We'll ring them yourself. And then you calm down, take a breath. I have to sit inside. Follow those comments on this one, just like that. What happened today?

I was at work. I received a call.

“Okay, tell me when you need to, because I was panicking on my nose,”

that she said that he was shot. And did a lot of that what time she called? Sit there, something. I know that I was supposed to be off work. And I get a call from my mom.

She said it was a horrible emergency, and I was like immediately hung up. I just felt very adrenaline-filled and had to get there for the family. I was driving extra fast. In the moment, I didn't dare if I get pulled over. What she tell you happened when she got there? She said nothing, she was just afraid of it.

She never told you anything.

She said she shot him. Okay, they shouldn't tell you what left up. She hasn't, like, bleeding and like, right on her head. And like, she was kind of crunched. So I feel like it was like a fight that happened, maybe?

He said his mom shot Willie, his death father, in self-defense. Like what it looks like, self-defense. That was there, but at the same time, in that moment, yeah, I was terrified. I don't know what happened, so just seeing the blood on her, I was scared from my mom period. When investigators asked him about the gun,

he is open about why he knew exactly where it was. I hit the gun, and the kitchen. I had just didn't win, and the work just didn't come in under the roll. On the bed, it was on the bed when I came in. So he left the gun, from the bed to the kitchen.

Yes. Why would you leave the gun? I didn't want to hit him, I didn't want anything.

“I just thought that was the right thing to do with the gun, I mean, that's why.”

The fact that he knew where the gun was, and he said he hid the gun, also implicates him as a suspect. Joshua's answers are consistent with his 911 call, but investigators want to compare his story to the evidence at the scene. They didn't have much to go on, except what Joshua told them.

At this point, they only had a dead body, and his mother has an injury, and we don't know how that occurred. Back at the Barton House, detectives have been conducting a more thorough search,

He was laying face down on the floor. One arm was out just a little bit,

“but his face was smashed into the floor.”

Just a little bit of blood was coming out from under 18. When he does have his underwear on, it does appear that he is about to shower for his job. There were a spent showcase again, the bathroom underneath the cabinet. There were sleeping pills scattered all over the floor. We found a razor, an open razor blade, and we collected that because we knew she had the wind

or forehead. While trying to make sense of the scene, investigators search every room of the house. While they were looking through the house, they noticed that they had cameras all over the house. There were several security cameras inside and outside the house. Notable, there was one right above the master bedroom door.

I see people put security cameras in their home, but not normally right above the master bedroom door. That was unusual for me.

“You have to wonder what the security concerns were.”

Whatever reason the Barton's had for installing the cameras, their presence could provide detectives with some much-needed answers. They thought, wow, this is great for us, this is great for our investigation. If we can get that footage, we're going to know exactly what happened. That led them to try to determine where the DVR was in the house.

We did find a location, upstairs in the closet. Where the wires came into, but the system itself was missing. It appeared that it was ripped out of the wall. I saw all there's a shell for the knife that seemed to be really out of place. In wires were coming out of the ceiling.

As far as investigators are concerned, there's only one reason why someone would get rid of the recordings.

“It tells us there's possibly evidence that is useful on that system.”

Knowing that this is such a critical piece of evidence,

the officers were prepared to do whatever it takes to try to locate this. You'd be surprised to encounter people that throw evidence and go over scans. And one of the detectives just happened to lift it up to look in, and there's a DVR. It's just sitting basically on top of the garbage. We knew that if we were able to get that information off that DVR,

that it would blow the case wide open, we were either going to see evidence of a domestic violence situation or a cold bloody killer. After recovering the security system from the Bardens trash, detectives immediately reconnected to see if Willie Bardens shooting was caught on tape.

That's a critical piece of evidence.

We're still not sure that we're going to be able to get it to work. Our concern was that we wouldn't, because at this point in the investigation, all we had was what Joshua told us. So we had to leave it in the DVR system and go through the software contained on the DVR. Part of that was there was administrative password and it locked it down.

The device is sent to text specialists to unlock it, as investigators consider their next steps. That led officers to go back to Joshua. They thought maybe Joshua knows about this. Maybe he can shed some light on why it was ripped out of the wall.

With Felicia still too upset to talk, they get Joshua back in an interrogation room and turn up the heat. This is your chance to tell the whole, even if it's something you did that you shouldn't have done for something that your mom had you do. This is the time you don't want me to find out later, because there's still a whole team of people at that house doing stuff fine. So be honest, okay?

Joshua starts by describing what life was like in the Bardens household. When I was 18, I immediately moved out when to college, but I was just living by myself. So my mom begged me to come to the state where her eventually moved back and it was in that that great. Joshua did initially describe his mother as kind of a domineering personality. It can be difficult to be around.

Joshua says he saw William his mother fight a lot, but he never actually saw him hurt her.

I've been this just a yellin screaming, but I've never in my presence that somebody touched my mom.

that you never seem to know if I was a fool, and I would think you would do it a couple of while I was a loser.

My mom was a, she was the other. She is just hard to talk, hard to, whenever one, she wants it one way, it's going to be that way, and it's basically how she usually acts, and that's just how it is. They had no more arguments like any other couple, and that's as far as he got in my eyes. While he never saw any violence, Joshua says his mother did accuse William of abuse.

He did say that Felicia about a week prior to the shooting told him that William was sexually and physically abusing her. She told him she suspect they have helped him poison her food because she was sleeping off, she needed to.

“Did she tell you that he is biting sleeping pills in her face?”

Yes. And if William was hurting his mother, that makes sense that he might be protecting her. And according to Joshua, his mother wasn't William's only targets. Joshua also indicated in his interview with officers that he did not get along with his stepfather. He said his stepfather had pointed a gun at him during an altercation,

and he also grabbed him by the throat. Joshua said that Nicholas, who is the victim's son, was present when this occurred. While he gets so mad, why did he turn in that moment? I was asleep, and I didn't know he was talking to my mom. And he didn't like me saying to be honest, he doesn't like right the meaner.

Like, I'm, uh, he said that had to be stimulated. So far, Joshua has stuck to his initial story of how William was shocked. Uh, I got it to the house. Well, I actually was pretty hurt. Just sitting there in the room.

You called the police? Yeah, I called the police on my phone. Like, did you help move anything? Like, in one way, anything. That ought to do other than the gun.

Did you pick up, move, alter, nope. They proceeded to tell him that they found the DVR in the garbage can in the backyard.

“You need to, like, just come and claim if you know something,”

because you know, we're going to think of free it. Would you think of freeing something out there? Yeah, maybe. That quickly unraveled to him at his mother's direction. And removing it, ripping it out of the wall and throwing it in a garbage can.

She said grab that box and throw it away. And I was like, "But he blew me up, I was the gun." But you knew what that ball did. It wasn't right. No, I had a problem with the gun.

I didn't, okay. You had the idea why she wanted to throw that box away. This can back up her story. I don't think that's cool.

Now we know that he has tampered with critical evidence

that could possibly tell us exactly what happened. Suspicious continues to grow when investigators follow up with Willy's son, Nicolas. They wanted to talk to him specifically about the instance that Joshua had talked to investigators about claiming that Willy had held a gun to his head. I asked Nicolas about that incident and his version was basically completely

opposite of what Joshua was was. Nicolas says that Joshua actually had a plate that he was going to throw at Willy. And that's when Willy drew his gun. Joshua told the story that he was in his room. Basically, my name is Albezzanus and Willy comes in with a gun.

He did not, according to Nicolas, didn't clean it at him.

But basically, told him you're not going to attack me at my own home.

It said the in-home was chaos all the time. It was this chaos all the time. He just got so tired of the heat, the lead. He said he couldn't take it.

“That was a key piece that Joshua left out of that story.”

And why would he do that? Coming up, a background check catches detectives attention. They said she is really domineering and difficult and they eventually suspended her. And when police finally cracked the DVR, the video evidence is chilling. We knew that that was the piece of the puzzle that was going to put everything together.

After poking the holes in Joshua's initial account, investigators questioned everything he told them about Willy Barton's murder. He did give, basically, not about why he wouldn't have been involved. That he was at work at Circle K, so myself and another detective, we went to the Circle K.

They have video footage of him leaving the gas station

“after he received the call from his mother, corroborating what he said to police initially.”

So we knew he was at work at the time of the murder. Despite their suspicions, it's clear Joshua couldn't have been the one who pulled the trigger. So now that Joshua has been ruled out as a suspect, we're focusing in on Felicia. Was it a domestic violent situation?

Or did Felicia just murder Willy? Sometimes people that kill some of his offense, they will lie about some of the smaller stuff involved. But they're not going to lie about. I was basically brutally attacked in that that I had to kill somebody to save my own life. They won't you to know everything that happened.

So it's pretty unusual for somebody to want to claim self-defense, but then try to destroy all the evidence that would help your claim. While specialists work on cracking the security camera footage, detectives check police records for any history of domestic violence. While we found out with Felicia and Willy was, I mean all the way back in 2009,

we were finding police reports from Memphis where they were calling out one one on each other.

Although in a rest was never made, investigators know from experience that situations like this

often escalate. Typically if somebody's involved in a domestic violence relationship, it happens more than once. When speaking with Felicia's family members, none of them seem to be aware of any issues going on between the couple except Roland who is Felicia's brother. Right before the homicide, Felicia had told him that Willy was trying to poison her,

but stuff in her food to kill her. Which was basically why Joshua described it in the beginning. Being concerned for his sister, Roland did contact Willy and asked him about the allegations. Willy denied it. He said, "There's nothing going on. We'll work this out." And Roland seemed to be satisfied with that answer.

When investigators talked to the couple's friends and co-workers, however, they said Felicia was the one prone to violence. We spoke to her work. They said she is a difficult woman to get along with, really domineering and difficult, and they eventually suspended her. However, we could not find one person anywhere to say anything negative about Willy Barton.

We spoke with both of his bosses who couldn't say nicer things about him.

He was a great employee. He was always on time. He never missed work. He was pleasant.

He got along with everybody.

“Everybody would know him that was the amazing, funny guy. I can't even remember how we get mad.”

According to Willy's loved ones, Felicia was a source of conflict long before they were married. Willy wanted somebody there to work together and have something. And be happy. But that's not what he got. He got somebody that wanted to but throw him and manipulate him and separate him from his family and including his children. She had an error about herself that she felt like she might be better than most people.

She could be a rude and accrued at times. She couldn't admit when she knew she was wrong. You know it all. After I had met her, he called me and said, "Good boy. He said, "What do you think about me, Maran Felicia?"

Willy asked him, "My first impression is not a good impression."

“I said, "I think she's a tiger. And you're going to be the prey."”

They say things only got worse after Joshua moved in. Willy was like a clean, very clean person, organized. But from Maran, it's sunny. Josh wouldn't clean or do anything. My brother and I want to talk to him about his rules. They didn't really have a good relationship at all. It was a big argument, argument of thing, or anything. But at the same time, people have emotions.

I understand why he would be upset because we would smell like marijuana all the time and that's

He had told that somebody's got to leave the house, either him or Joshua.

“And talking with Willy's other family members, they indicated that he recently”

within Weeks prior to the murder told them that he was going to divorce Felicia. And it seems Felicia knew Willy was planning to leave her as well. Willy's brother did tell us that Willy had told Felicia that he planned on divorcing her. You know, that's certainly could be a motive for murder. Was it just that if she can't have him, nobody can.

Less than 24 hours into their investigation, Mississippi detectives are questioning

everything they've been told about Willy Barton's death. And the one person who could clear things up

still refuses to talk. Investigators met with Felicia to see if she wanted to give a statement.

“She exercised her ride to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. Detectives only chance of finding out”

what really happened is locked away on a security camera record. We had a little trouble with this particular system because we couldn't remove it from the DVR to extract data from. So we had to leave it in the DVR system and go through the software contained on the DVR. Fortunately in this case, we were able to bypass the Administrative Password. And from there we were able to view the video and export video.

Although the cameras do not cover the bathroom where the shooting took place,

they do give investigators an extensive view of the rest of the house. Though it came right above the master bedroom door showed the stairway off the hallway

“in the living area. There was one security camera in the kitchen. It showed the entire kitchen and”

another little hallway. There was a security camera that showed another back part of the house. That has security cameras everywhere. From the video footage you can tell that the day before was like any other day, you see that Willie and Felicia actually hug at one point. She hugs him back like you would expect a husband and wife. There's no it doesn't appear to be any animosity or fights between them. He goes into the bedroom and

then that's the last time you ever see Willie. On the morning of the shooting, Felicia appears on camera right in early around 6.45 a.m. You can see her come from the master bedroom, walk down the hall, go left out the door to the garage. When she comes back into the house, she's walking down the hall with the gun in her hand. She has no concerns or issues.

She just kind of strolls into the garage. It comes out and just kind of have a slow walk with the gun in her hand. Felicia looks like a cycle path that we obviously need. I mean, she looks like she is not bothered at all about what she is about to do. She didn't have a care in the world. She wasn't frightened. She wasn't scared. She wasn't crying. Investigators can only speculate about what happened next.

It looked like Willie was getting ready for work as he normally did. He was in the bathroom about to take a shower. We know that the gun shot was close range. So she went into that bathroom where he had no escape, no way to get out and shot him and called blood. Little while later, Felicia Barton comes out of the master bedroom with a firearm and appears to go into the living room and possibly place it under a couch cushion.

She then proceeds to go to the master bedroom for approximately three minutes. Then she comes back out to the living area under that same couch cushion. She retrieves something. You can't see it but presumably it's the gun that she just hid. Then you see her run up the stairs, presumably to unplug the DVR or get rid of it and the video goes black. The video also confirms Felicia's wounds had to be self-inflicted. You can still see her face clear

enough that she still does not have any wounds start facing. It appears to be pre-meditated because she paved the way for a self-defense client. Detectives obtain a warrant for Felicia's

I'm Felicia Barton's cell phone. It was search results for how to get away with murder.

We also located a text message from the night before the murder where she had saved it as a draft and it appeared to be a suicide text. That would imply that this was not a spur of the moment crying that it was maybe pre-meditated because she had to think, put some thought into this message. She was going to do this Camheller High Water. We inspected that this would be a murder suicide

“and I think that's why she made the error of not turning those cameras off. She changed her mind”

and realized I've got to get rid of the video because that's going to implicate her as the murder. She started to panic and wanted help. Melon person that she had or could think of was her sign. To call him to a murder scene that she committed murder and get him involved reflects the type of person that she is. I think it just boiled down to narcissism. I'm going to be smarter than everybody and I'm going to get away with this.

Anytime you have a case like this that is potentially a domestic violence situation the jury wants to know. They want to know that it isn't. So it was important in this trial to prove that it wasn't. Investigators now have all the evidence they need to arrest Felicia Barden from murder.

“Her son Joshua is also arrested and charged with being an accessory after the fact.”

Felicia didn't tell anybody anything wouldn't speak to her lawyer. We did not know what her defense was going to be. So we felt that it was helpful to our case to cinch up some of the holes with Joshua. So we did approach his lawyer and asked if he would be a cooperating witness for the state and he agreed to do that. I didn't want to do it but that was how I got myself free

away from the situation. I was just basically telling the truth. I was there. So that's yeah.

Horrible situation. Horrible time. In June 2021, two years after Willie Barden was shot to death, Felicia's trial finally begins. The main witness for the prosecution was Joshua since he had most of the information.

“We also included numerous exhibits. We had Google searches from Felicia. We had the suicide note.”

The video footage, especially with Felicia coming down the hallway, with the gun, without an injury to her forehead, was the smoking gun, no pun intended, in this case. The jury was on the edge of their seat when they knew that was coming. Prosecutors paint a picture for the jury of a woman so psychologically disturbed that when her husband said he was leaving her, she snapped.

My goal was to prove to them that this was not a domestic violent situation. She was not a victim, but that her husband wanted a divorce and she was not having that. She was not going to let him divorce her. She was not losing that battle. She couldn't stand the thought of not being with Willie. Well, thank you, she's the type of person that will let things go.

And when he couldn't put up with her or her son, any longer, she determined that if I can't have you know what he's going to. I'm sure the divorce would be absolutely shameful to her. You know, she likes to put that shell on for everybody. She's already divorced once. So to have a second divorce would probably be too much for her.

This woman is very calculating. She wanted Willie to look like the bad person in this situation. She wanted to look like the good person. She wanted to be remembered as a victim.

I've never had a defendant scare me.

She's scares me. Despite the mountain of evidence against her, Felicia still refuses to set the record straight. Felicia did not speak during the trial nor did she take the stand. So, in essence, there was no defense. Her attorney's hands were tied because she would not speak to her attorney.

The jury takes little time to reach a verdict. Felicia Martin will file a guilty of first-degree murdering she needs to live in prison without parole.

She could never be satisfied.

“And it's kind of befitting that she's in prison.”

She has to control her nothing now, you know, trying to control someone. Now she's very controlful. A whole situation's more horrible.

The moment I'm always, she loves me.

“Like once you take the sadness out of it, the emotions out of it,”

she just taught me what you're supposed to do with certain situations,

even that you hate it. It's just a lot of emotions.

Willi, it's a good man going to something. We love everybody. They're nice to everybody. Everybody love them.

“Doing the holidays on the time we sure together, we, you know, we sent out a prayer for them.”

And we know, you know, will it watchin' over us? I miss him. I love him. I love his children. And I walked them to be okay. I know that, you know, this time helps, but it doesn't I heal. People choose to walk, or God, or they choose to walk, or say he has a choice that's made. There was no redemption for her.

(upbeat music)