A Killing in Amish Country: Sex, Betrayal, and a Cold-blooded Murder by Gregg Olsen & Rebecca Morris

Author:Gregg Olsen & Rebecca Morris [Olsen, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781466875241
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

21

Barb in Jail

He became emotional and at times his eyes teared up in disbelief at his wife’s involvement.

—FROM A WAYNE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE INTERVIEW WITH ED RABER

Barb didn’t like jail. The food. The isolation. The nosy woman in the next cell.

She thought that if she just said she was sorry, if she could just explain that the gun went off accidentally, she could go home.

Even house arrest wouldn’t be so bad.

“I just want to get out so I can spend time with my little children,” she told her husband in one of their many phone conversations from jail. She was worried that the local newspapers were writing about the murder. “People can treat me how they want. I already got treated like shit. They can keep treating me like shit. I just want to go home to my kids.”

On June 11, the day after his wife was arrested, Ed Raber sat at his kitchen table with Lieutenant Kurt Garrison. Ed’s brother, Daniel Raber, and his brother-in-law Roy Miller were present. During their conversation, the father of three cried and seemed in disbelief that his wife could be involved in the murder.

Garrison asked him what he knew about the last few days.

Ed remembered that Barb had left early Monday evening to pick up Eli and a couple of other men who had been fishing at Berlin Reservoir. She was home by 11:00 p.m. He saw her then, and a few hours later. At about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday he stuck his head into the bedroom to say good-bye. He said it was possible she’d left and returned during the several hours he slept.

Ed explained that he traveled all over Ohio and Pennsylvania for his employer, Miller’s Storage Barns, which manufactures garden sheds, two-story barns, A-frame cabins, tack rooms, and storage sheds.

Between 9:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Barb called him, crying, and told him Eli’s wife had been found dead in her bed. Barb kept him updated during the day, calling later to say that someone had gone into the Weaver house and shot Barbara.

Ed told the detectives that after the news of the murder, Barb had no appetite and cried often. She admitted to her husband that she was worried about texts she had sent Eli. When Eli had texted her about his frustrations with his wife, and said he felt like shooting her, Barb had in jest responded, “What shall I use?” She was relieved when a friend told her that the police would never be able to arrest her just because she had written some questionable texts.

Barb told Ed that if she went to prison—falsely accused, of course—she would kill herself. Ed tried to talk a little sense into her, pointing out that then she wouldn’t see her children or him again.

Ed told detectives that the four firearms found in the house during the search were the only guns they owned. He offered that Barb had borrowed a .410 shotgun from David Weaver to hunt with. He thought Barb had returned the gun, but he wasn’t sure.

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