| 2 Arrested in Brutal Slaying of Processor
Barbara White murdered over decade ago September 14, 2005 By PATRICK CROWLEY |
| In the fall of 1994, a young mother from the Washington, D.C., area was beginning to turn her life around with a new job as a mortgage loan processor.While in high school, Barbara White had fallen in with a rough crowd. She was not into drugs, but people she had associated with were.
“Barbara never had much self-esteem,” her sister told the Washington Post at the time. “She was a follower, not a leader.” After becoming pregnant her senior year in high school and giving birth to a daughter, Lexie, White started to straighten out. At 19 she got a job at a Metropolitan Mortgage Co. in Forestville, Maryland. A job as a receptionist grew into training as a mortgage loan processor. Her employer was pleased with her performance and, for the first time in long time, White’s future looked bright. But then on Nov. 30, White’s father made a horrific discovery at his daughter’s Fairfax County, Va., apartment. She had been reportedly gagged, beaten and stabbed 82 times, her lifeless body found in the bathtub, where her murderer apparent tried to electrocute and drown her. Lexie, by then a year old, was inside the apartment during the murder. For 11 years the crime haunted Robert J. Murphy, a homicide detective with Fairfax County Police. He refused to give up on finding who killed White in her apartment while her daughter was nearby. White was dead almost a full day before her body was discovered. Based on footprints found in the apartment, Lexie apparently walked in her mother’s blood as she wondered from room to room. “This was just one,” Murphy told MortgageDaily.com by phone from California, where he is following another case, “that I never wanted to let go of.” In late June, police arrested two men and charged them with White’s murder — Arlington Johnson Jr. and Lonnie T. Barnett Jr. Police aren’t saying much about how they broke the case, but Murphy did say that the murder was somehow drug related. Basically, Murphy said, White was assassinated for no other reason than knowing the wrong people. “We had a group of suspects from the beginning,” Murphy said in the interview. “Barbara White dated a guy…who was in the drug world. There was a rival drug dealer he had a dispute with and Barbara too knew too much. “It’s a shame because she was not into drugs,” Murphy said. “She was not a threat to anyone. She was going to work, living with her daughter, doing all the right things.” Murphy said based on information he had at the time he knew White enjoyed her job. “She was working her way up and actually doing quite well,” he said. Murphy, a 24-year law enforcement veteran, investigated the original murder and continued to pursue it when assigned to the department’s “cold case” squad, which focuses on unsolved murders. “You never let them go…because you never know when you’ll get a break,” he said. White’s daughter is being raised by a family member. At the time of her death, The Washington Post printed the epitaph that White’s father, Paul White, wrote for her funeral. “I want you to remember that I admired your courage, determination and will to succeed,” her father reportedly wrote. “I want you to remember that your daughter will never want for anything and will be raised with a clear and unwavering understanding of how much you loved her, and died for her.” |
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Patrick Crowley is a MortgageDaily.com feature journalist and blogger, and a reporter, blogger and columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer. e-mail Patrick at: PatCrowley@MortgageDaily.com |
