Jerome Barrett - '75 murder of Marcia Trimble - 7/2009
Suspect in '75 slaying pleads not guilty The man accused in the 1975 slaying of a nine-year-old girl pleaded not guilty in a Nashville courtroom Wednesday. Jerome Barrett, 61, is suspected in the death of Marcia Trimble, a Girl Scout who disappeared while selling cookies in her Green Hills neighborhood. Her body was found about a month later in a neighbor's garage. The murder has been one of Nashville's most notorious unsolved cases. Barrett, who lived in Memphis at the time of his arrest last fall, told the court he couldn't afford to pay a lawyer, although he makes almost $29,000 a year from a Veterans' pension, owns a HumVee worth $25,000 and a work-truck for his Memphis-based landscaping company. He told the court he gave away lawn maintenance equipment that belonged to him once he was charged. "I gave that to my brother-in-law and my son-in-law," he said. "They're both in the lawn care business." In the end, Judge Steve Dozier said $29,000 is too much to qualify for a public defender and ordered Barrett to pay attorney Kerry Haymaker $500 a month to represent him. Barrett has already served more than 20 years in jail for raping and murdering a Belmont University student. He will go to court in October for the death of Vanderbilt University student Sarah Des Prez. She was killed a few weeks before Trimble. Barrett is next scheduled to appear in court on August 14. http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8611212

Could Trimble's Death Have Been Averted? 1976 Magazine Article Mentions Jerome Barrett As Possible Suspect Reported By Demetria Kalodimos POSTED: 2:53 pm CDT July 2, 2008 UPDATED: 9:16 pm CDT July 2, 2008 NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A magazine published in 1976 is offering new insight into what may have been mistakes and missed opportunities that allowed Jerome Barrett to elude murder charges for more than 30 years. Police have said they never thought until last fall to look at Barrett in the deaths of Marcia Trimble and Sarah Des Prez. But there was an article printed in Official Detective Magazine on January 1976 and titled "Riddle of the Murder-Rapes of the Tennessee Co-eds." Not only did the magazine cover the two deaths, it recognized the Metro Police Department with a "meritorious service citation" for solid investigative work. However, the centerpiece of the article, the homicide of Sarah Des Prez, went without an arrest for 33 years. Police insist their first notion to look at Jerome Barrett in the cases came in the fall of 2007. Why did it take 33 years to make an arrest in these cases? Less than a year after the deaths occurred, the magazine drew strong similarities between Barrett's highly publicized rape of a Belmont student and the rape and murder of Des Prez. Tying the cases together in 1976, a detective wrote, "Of more immediate concern was the matter of comparing this case with the unsolved one involving a Vanderbilt University co-ed. Her name was Sara 'Sally' Des Prez." A few paragraphs later in the article, there are more parallels to the cases. The magazine writes, "Now, two weeks later, a rapist had violated another co-ed and the modus operandi was quite similar to that in the Des Prez case. Both victims were female college students. Both were alone in their living quarters when assaulted. Both were attacked early on a Sunday morning, and both lived in the same part of town." The magazine pointed to Barrett by name, calling him, "a professed black Muslim who claimed to be a laborer for the Nation of Islam." The article goes on to say, "Police admitted questioning him about the Des Prez case. He reportedly denied any knowledge of that affair. Investigators had nothing to link him to it and have made no accusations in that regard." Despite this statement, there appears to be some clues to link Barrett to Sally Des Prez. The search warrant police filed to get a DNA sample last fall said one of the key pieces of evidence that detectives have always had in the Des Prez case were hairs from a black man. The search warrant also points to "a rash of rapes and sexual assaults occurring in the same general area" as compelling evidence that could point to Barrett. "Obviously the evidence already existed," said Deputy District Attorney General Tom Thurman. Some people are wondering if Barrett had been investigated seriously in Des Prez's death in 1975, could Trimble's homicide been solved or averted? Barrett is set to stand trial in the Des Prez case in Oct. 6. http://www.wsmv.com/news/16772214/detail.html?rss=nash&psp=news

Trimble Suspect Faces New Witnesses Statements To Become Public Record At Some Point Reported By Dennis Ferrier POSTED: 5:35 pm CST November 6, 2008 UPDATED: 11:28 am CST November 7, 2008 NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- There are two new surprise witnesses in the Marcia Trimble murder case. The district attorney was forced to discuss those two new witnesses on Thursday during a court hearing for accused murderer Jerome Barrett. Barrett walked into court Thursday to discover that his already complicated case was now more complicated. Barrett allegedly made self-incriminating statements to another inmate and then got in an argument with that same inmate and made more self-incriminating statements. All of this was allegedly overheard by a third inmate. Barrett and the two informants are all represented by the public defenders' office. This is why the new information leaked Thursday, as there is a potential conflict of interest. It is unclear what was said by Barrett and heard by the inmates. The identities of the informants are being withheld for their own protection, but those statements will become part of the public record at some point. Of what was overheard, defense attorney Jim Todd said, "It's a lot more valuable if we have it on tape." The convicted rapist is accused of killing Vanderbilt student Sarah Desprez and Girl Scout Marcia Trimble in the mid-1970s. Barrett is scheduled to go to trial in July in connection with Trimble's death. Judge Steve Dozier has not ruled on the conflict of interest issue. http://www.wsmv.com/news/17926556/detail.html?rss=nash&psp=news

Trimble murder trial: Mother describes her ordeal Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:53pm By E. Tom Wood Virginia Trimble Ritter on Wednesday took the stand in the trial of her daughter's accused killer and had to relive the worst moments of her life during her testimony. Photo: Matthew Williams for The City Paper Virginia Trimble Ritter relived the worst moments of her life in public this morning, stoically maintaining her composure throughout her testimony about the 1975 murder of her 9-year-old child, until the very end. When prosecutor Katie Miller asked Ritter to identify the blouse Marcia Trimble was wearing when she disappeared and when her body was found — the blouse on which FBI scientists detected semen allegedly containing the DNA of defendant Jerome Sidney Barrett — it was finally too much. Sobbing audibly, the mother nodded to confirm that she recognized the blouse. Ritter had previously been shown a group photograph from a birthday party, taken the Friday before Marcia disappeared on a Tuesday, in which she was wearing the same blouse. It was a hand-me-down from a teenaged neighbor, she recalled, and a favorite of Marcia's. Trimble was the first witness called by the prosecution after both sides completed brief opening statements in the long-awaited trial. She recounted the story, now familiar to many in Nashville, of how her daughter left the house to deliver Girl Scout cookies late one winter afternoon and was never seen alive again. The morning's proceedings began when Miller stepped before the jury box and read the grand jury's indictment of Barrett, handed down last summer. As she read the words "did kill Marcia Virginia Trimble," Barrett closed his eyes and shook his head slightly as if in denial. He clasped his hands, a tattoo of a crescent and star visible on the back of his right hand. Lead prosecutor Tom Thurman was only seconds into his opening argument when a spectator's mobile phone sounded off with the University of Oklahoma's fight song as a ringtone. The offending party fled the courtroom in a hurry, and a chuckling Thurman resumed his address. Describing the DNA testing that led to Barrett's prosecution, Thurman said it was scientifically possible for only one person in 6 trillion to match the profile found in the sample from the blouse. "He was the one in 6 trillion," Thurman told the jurors. "A lot of things have changed in 34 years," Thurman said in concluding his statement. "One thing that hasn't changed is the guilt of Jerome Sidney Barrett. He is a cold-blooded coward." Laura Dykes, one of Barrett's attorneys from the Metro Public Defender's office, focused in her opening on the unanswered questions that she said still remain about the case. The case "confounded" police from 1975 onward, she said, "because the evidence is confounding." Dykes told the jurors: "When you have heard all the evidence, you will have more questions than answers." Also testifying this morning was Harold Moffett, who discovered the girl's body on Easter Sunday 1975, 33 days after she went missing. Moffett was a house guest of a family at 4007 Estes Road when he went out to the detached garage on that property to fetch an outboard motor that he was going to buy from the owner. Sorting his way through the cluttered garage, Moffett reached its left rear corner. There he looked down. "I saw a little girl's face looking up at me," he recalled. "That, I guess, is when I went into shock." The trial continues this afternoon, with testimony largely focusing on forensic analysis of the evidence prosecutors gathered in 1975. http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/trimble-murder-trial-mother-describes-her-ordeal

Sex offender convicted in 1975 Girl Scout murder Associated Press • July 19, 2009 NASHVILLE — A mom who waited 34 years for her daughter's killer to be convicted says she finally feels she knows what happened on the day the 9-year-old disappeared while delivering Girl Scout cookies. The 1975 strangulation death of Marcia Trimble was Nashville's most notorious unsolved crime until Saturday, when a jury convicted Jerome Barrett of two counts of second-degree murder. The 62-year-old Barrett, formerly of Memphis, was in prison on sex charges between 1974 and 2002, except for about a year when the girl disappeared. He became a suspect in the case 11/2 years ago through DNA testing after he was arrested in the 1975 rape and murder of a Vanderbilt University student. He was sentenced to life in prison in the trial involving the Vanderbilt student and faces up to 44 years in prison in the Trimble case. Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier will hold a sentencing hearing in September. After the verdict was read, Marcia's mother, Virginia Trimble-Ritter, said she never gave up hope that her daughter's killer would be found, and she only hoped that it would be during her lifetime. "We only wanted the truth," she said. "I think today we got the truth — some of it anyway, at least most of it." Marcia's disappearance led to a massive 33-day search that ended when the body was discovered on Easter Sunday in a small garage 100 yards from her home. For years after Marcia was slain, police had theorized the killer was a teen in the neighborhood, likely someone the girl knew. It was thought that an outsider, such as Barrett, who is black, would have been noticed in the white suburban neighborhood. But prosecutors told the jury that DNA found on the girl's shirt proves Barrett murdered her. Experts testified that only one in 6 trillion people would have the same DNA makeup. Prosecutors also relied on the testimony of two jail inmates who said Barrett admitted to the killing. Defense attorneys said the DNA evidence wasn't so simple. They said some swabs taken from the girl showed multiple DNA profiles, none belonging to Barrett. The seven-woman, five-man sequestered jury delivered its verdict after about 8 hours of deliberation. http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20090719/CRIME/907190346/1002/rss