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By Chris Tisch - Tampa Bay Times

The saint

Barbara was devoted to her disabled sister. Endlessly patient, everyone said. Then a body was found in an abandoned double-wide, a bullet through the forehead. And Barbara was gone

By Lane DeGregory - Tampa Bay Times

September 18, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - There's a dog in there, the woman next door told him. At least there was a dog. One of those yipping little ones, with long hair. Wonder what happened to that dog.

No one has lived in that mobile home for months, the woman said.

Phillip McCain already knew that. For six months, no one had paid the mortgage on the double-wide near the end of Yellow Pine Street. The bank was foreclosing. McCain and his son Jason had been hired to clear out the place.

McCain unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen. It was May 4, about 1 p.m. The house was dark. All the blinds were drawn, curtains closed. The air was thick and hot. Sour.

McCain's stomach churned. What was that rancid smell? Like rotten food, only worse. As he walked into the living room, the odor got stronger.

He clicked on his flashlight, aimed the beam up and down. It looked like someone had just walked away and left everything: couch, TV, computer. The walls were papered with Star Wars posters; every shelf was full of Star Wars games, Star Wars magazines, little R2-D2s and a Yoda. Some spoiled kid must have lived here, McCain thought.

He followed the hall to the bedrooms. Two doors were open. The third was closed. As McCain approached the closed door, the stench grew.

He pushed it open, and almost retched.

Someone had tried to mask the smell. Dozens of cardboard air fresheners dangled around the room. Plug-in air fresheners bloomed from every outlet. In the master bathroom, empty spray cans of air freshener filled the trash can, the tub, the sink.

McCain and his son looked at each other. What was this?

"You don't reckon," he remembered saying to Jason, "that someone just left that dog in here to die?"

Two single beds shared the room, set close, in an L-shape. One of the beds was piled with sheets and blankets. Someone had strewn baskets of potpourri across the covers.

McCain reached to pick up the pile of bedding, but couldn't lift it.

Something was in there. Something heavy.

His son tried to help. He tugged at the fitted sheet, and the whole pile thudded to the floor. Jason started peeling back the layers.

Then he ran, screaming, out of the house.

The McCains had been expecting just another cleanup job. What they uncovered was the story of two desperately intertwined lives: a story of love, death and crushing obligation.

Susan Ignacio, from the Pinellas County Medical Examiner's Office, knelt in the front bedroom and began to unwrap the body.

A Star Wars comforter formed the outer layer of the shroud. She turned it back and found a brown blanket, and beneath that, a white shower curtain. Inside the shower curtain was a 2004 Star Wars calendar marked only with the times of a few TV shows, or countdowns to the shows. Its owner didn't seem to look forward to much else.

Next came a light blue comforter, then a faded Star Wars sheet. The medical examiner pulled at the sheet and found, finally:

A skull cradled on two pillows.

It looked as if the person had been sleeping, lying on the left side. The right arm was bent at the elbow, draped across the chest. The left arm was tucked beneath the pillows. The body was so badly decomposed, Pinellas County sheriff's deputies couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman, black or white, old or young.

In the front of the skull, right in the center of the forehead, was a hole where a bullet had gone in.

By the time Detective Ed Judy arrived about 5:30 p.m., 15 officers already were working the scene. The deputies logged everything that might be a clue: a Sony camera, a wedding veil, a blood-stained mattress and box spring.

But they had only a few facts. A call to the power company let them know that the electricity had been cut off seven months earlier. In the two months before that, the power bill had more than tripled. It seemed someone had cranked down the air conditioning as cold as it would go, and left it there.

The investigators found out something else. Through tax records, they learned that the mobile home had been occupied by two women.

Barbara and Debbie Burns.

The neighbors didn't know much about the women who lived in the white double-wide.

At door after door, deputies heard the same answer: We don't know them. Never met them. We hardly ever saw anyone go in or come out.

Only the woman next door had talked to them. "They were sisters," Shirley Greilick told detectives. "They moved in four or five years ago. Always stayed to themselves.

"The older one, Barbara, I'd just see her going in and out to her car. That was it. I never saw any company come. Never saw anyone else over there at all. We'd just say, "Hello,' or, "Nice weather.' That was it.

"The younger one, Debbie, you couldn't understand her real good. She'd try, but you know, I think she was retarded or something."

Debbie didn't drive, the neighbor said. Barbara had to take her everywhere she wanted to go.

The neighbor told detectives she hadn't seen Barbara in months. But it had been even longer since she had seen Debbie. Once, she had asked Barbara if her sister was sick or something.

Debbie's in California, Barbara had said. Taking care of our aunt.

The night the body was found, detectives worked until dawn trying to identify the victim.

They learned that Barbara Burns was 53, Debbie 40. A background check showed neither had ever been arrested. From picture IDs, the detectives could see that both sisters were short and stocky, with shoulder-length light brown hair. The kind of women you'd walk right by without noticing.

"They looked a lot alike," the neighbor had said, except for their smiles. Debbie had only three teeth. Barbara didn't have any.

That description helped detectives determine which sister was dead: The skull on those pillows had three rotten teeth.

Now detectives knew it was Debbie Burns who had been shot.

The obvious question: Where was Barbara?

Barbara drove a gray 1994 Dodge Caravan, which she had bought at Pinellas Auto Brokers, Detective Judy found out. He called the car dealership and talked to a woman who remembered the Burns sisters.

They were very nice, the woman said. When they came in to make their car payment, they'd bring cupcakes.

But the woman hadn't seen them since last year. They had stopped paying on the van, and repo men had spent months searching for it.

Around January, the woman said, she got a call from someone at the Greyhound station in St. Petersburg. The Dodge Caravan had been abandoned behind the bus depot. Homeless people were living in it.

Barbara's credit application at the auto broker showed she had worked for 10 years at Howard Johnson's in St. Pete Beach, then at Bealls Outlet and Lowe's. Detective Judy tracked names and phone numbers of Barbara's bosses. He talked to them that day.

They all used the same words to describe her: quiet and reliable, straightforward, honest. One of the most patient people you'll ever meet.

"Barbara was very nice," said Linda Ware, who was Barbara's supervisor at Bealls. On birthdays and holidays, Linda and Barbara would go out for a drink on Treasure Island. Barbara would always bring Debbie along.

Linda said Debbie walked with a limp and had the mind of a child. She could be demanding, Linda told the detective. Whenever Barbara was having fun, Debbie would start complaining, loudly, saying she was tired, ready to go home RIGHT NOW. Like a first-grader throwing a tantrum.

Barbara was always kind to her sister, though, Linda said. Even if Barbara hadn't finished her first Coors Light, she'd help Debbie up from her chair and drive her home.

Then Linda told the detective something else. Sometime around 2000, Debbie had inherited some money. She didn't know how much.

Was money a motive for the killing, Judy wondered? It didn't seem likely: All the evidence showed the sisters were broke. Barbara had filed for bankruptcy just three years later: July 2003.

That same month, she had started working at Lowe's as a cashier for $7 an hour.

Barbara was always on time, her boss, Jason Carrier, told the detective. She never argued. She was friendly to the customers. She was voted Employee of the Month. Once, she gave a co-worker a smiley face coffee cup.

After working at Lowe's for more than a year, Barbara abruptly quit. She said she had to take care of a sick relative.

That was in late August 2004, eight months before her sister's body was found.

Two days into his investigation, Detective Judy discovered someone was still cashing Debbie's disability checks. The money was going to a bank in Virginia Beach, Va., into the account of Barbara Ann Burns.

Bank statements also showed Barbara was getting paychecks from a 7-Eleven in Virginia Beach. The detective called the convenience store. The manager said Barbara was on the schedule for the next night.

It was a big break. Now detectives knew where Barbara was and when they could find her. Barbara hadn't changed her name or tried to hide her identity.

Detective Judy and his partner flew to Virginia Beach and staked out the 7-Eleven. Barbara looked so much older, more worn out, than in her driver's license photo. Dark circles underlined her tired eyes. Her frizzy hair was streaked with gray. She kept slumping against the cash register. All night, she sold cigarettes and lottery tickets: other people's escapes and dreams.

As he watched through the window, Detective Judy kept wondering: What makes a person suddenly snap? He thought about all Barbara had done for her sister: paid the bills, bought her drinks, helped her walk, driven her places, even shared a room with her.

How could she have wrapped Debbie in blankets and left her to rot?

At daybreak, when Barbara's shift ended, the detectives introduced themselves. "We're from Florida," Detective Judy told Barbara. "We want to talk to you."

Barbara followed them to their car. She didn't ask why or how they found her.

She seemed to be expecting them.

On the way to the Virginia Beach police station, detectives asked Barbara about her house and family. She said she was living in a homeless shelter. She swore she had never owned a mobile home - not in Florida or anywhere else - and didn't have any family. Again and again, she said she never had a sister.

An hour into the interview, Detective Judy showed Barbara copies of the deed for her mobile home, her power and cable TV bills. Barbara kept saying she didn't remember signing them. She insisted she had never lived in any double-wide in St. Petersburg.

"Barbara," the detective said. "At this residence, uh, we found a body."

"A body?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I don't - I don't know. I couldn't tell you."

"Couldn't tell me?" the detective repeated.

"Well, whatever you're asking."

Detective Judy pulled out some pictures: Barbara, holding a long-haired chihuahua; Debbie, hugging the same little dog.

Barbara's face fell. She stared at her lap. "Could you pick that up and look at it?" the detective asked, sliding the photo toward her. "Do you recognize her?"

"Honestly, I've never seen her," Barbara said quickly.

Detective Judy pulled out more pictures. He said he had talked to Barbara's neighbor, her bosses, people who could confirm she had a sister. Then the other detective, Misty Manning, turned to Barbara.

"While he's been talking to you, I've been just sitting here observing you," she said. "Every time you look at this picture, you tear up."

Barbara wouldn't look up. "I do," she said softly. It was a statement more than a question.

After almost three hours, Barbara admitted she had a sister. She told detectives how much Debbie loved soap operas and Star Wars and her little dog, Leo. How sweet Debbie was. How they'd watch movies and sometimes go to the mall together.

"I loved when she was fine," Barbara said.

"You loved when she was fine?" Detective Manning asked. "Okay."

Debbie was fine, Barbara insisted, the last time she saw her. The day she drove away. "I just, uh, got in the van and left," Barbara stammered. "I told her I needed some down time. That's what I told her, and she said okay."

She said she waved goodbye to her sister through the front bedroom window. She said she never called Debbie after that.

The detectives pressed her. You wouldn't just walk away from someone you loved, someone who needed you, they told Barbara. You're not that kind of a person.

"All the people we have interviewed, they said Barbara is an unbelievable person," Detective Judy told her. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but the word that was used to describe your sister, who you loved, was a bitch. And, and I apologize to use that language in front of you. She was demanding; I'm not making this up."

"Yeah, I know," Barbara said. "She was demanding."

"Okay, and they said they did not understand how you could - you were a saint."

Barbara started sobbing. "I was a saint," she echoed.

Then the saint told detectives what she had done, and why.

CLEARWATER - "Patience is my virtue," Barbara Burns says through the video screen at the Pinellas County jail. Visitors aren't allowed into the lockdown, so she has to hold a phone and look into a camera.

"I'm very patient," she says softly. "You wouldn't think so now. But I am."

Barbara has been in jail for four months, ever since a cleanup crew found her sister's body in an abandoned mobile home in St. Petersburg. Debbie had been shot in the forehead and swaddled in Star Wars sheets.

It's late August now - a year since Debbie died.

When detectives first questioned Barbara, she insisted she never had a sister. Later, after seeing a photo of her sister with her dog, Barbara broke down and confessed.

"She kept crying. She said she wished she hadn't done it. She was sorry," Detective Ed Judy would say of the interview. "She's a really nice person, as far as murderers go. She's the nicest murderer I've ever met."

Barbara is charged with first-degree murder. Her court-appointed lawyer hasn't decided whether he'll enter a plea or take the case to trial.

He told Barbara not to talk about what happened to her sister.

But if you visit Barbara, if you sit and talk with her through the video screen, she'll tell you about herself and her sister, about their lives together, how she looked after Debbie, helped her walk, drove her everywhere she wanted to go.

"I just took it all in to the breaking point," Barbara says softly, through the jail phone. "Then I exploded."

Barbara looked after her disabled younger sister for 40 years - Debbie's whole life. People described Barbara as an angel, or a saint.

She paid a price for her goodness. Being selfless means you lose yourself. And there's a fine line between saint and martyr.

Barbara grew up in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Her dad, John, was a printer who worked nights, drank days; her mom, Margaret, stayed home with the kids.

Barbara's parents had four kids in five years. For a long time, when she was little, her dad would drive the family to Virginia Beach every summer, Barbara said in the jail interview. She loved splashing in the surf with her brothers and sister, building castles in the sand.

Then along came Debbie, who changed everything.

Barbara was 13 when Debbie was born. Debbie was the baby, so she was spoiled from the start. Plus, it was hard to take a baby to the beach, so that ended their vacations.

Then, when Debbie was 2, she got scarlet fever. She was never right again, said her brother Bob, a truck driver who lives in Maryland. The high fever, raging for days, damaged Debbie's brain. Doctors said she would grow to have, at best, the mind of a 6-year-old. She would never be able to take care of herself.

The next year, their dad died. Their mom had to start waiting tables to pay the bills. She couldn't afford child care, so she made Barbara drop out of school to look after Debbie.

Barbara was 16, the age most girls' lives begin. Debbie was 3, still in diapers.

"That was it for Barbara. After that, she just stuck around the house all the time," Bob said. "She never had any friends or went out with anybody that I know of. Only Debbie."

Soon, the other siblings moved out. Barbara and Debbie stayed in Maryland with their mom, in the house they grew up in, sharing a room, sleeping in single beds, side by side.

"Barbara was slow too. Not as bad as Debbie, just slow," Bob said. "My mother was always brow-beating her, telling her, "You're not smart enough to go out alone.' Barbara didn't leave because she didn't have the confidence to leave.

"But she never complained," Bob said. "She never asked for help. It was like that was what she was supposed to do, take care of Debbie."

In 1981, when their mom got too tired and arthritic to work, Barbara and Debbie moved with her to Florida. Barbara was 30, Debbie 17. Now Barbara had two people to care for. Her mom's Social Security plus Debbie's disability checks didn't even cover the rent on their little house in South Pasadena. So Barbara had to become the breadwinner too.

Her first job was dishwasher at the Howard Johnson's on St. Pete Beach. Barbara said she loved that job, loved having a reason to get out of the house. She would wake up an hour early and ride her bike to the beach. With her headphones on, a Garth Brooks tape blaring, she would walk the sand behind the motel, watching the sunrise, waiting for her shift to start.

Those were the only hours Barbara ever had to herself.

For more than a decade, Barbara worked at the Howard Johnson's, moving up to busing tables, then cooking. She always worked the day shift. She had to be home in time to make dinner for her mom and Debbie. She never had time for hobbies, not even much TV.

Debbie, though, had all day - every day - for whatever she wanted to do. She loved Star Wars and Snow White and soap operas, especially General Hospital. She spent hours on computer chat rooms. She adored dogs. She always went overboard, craving more of whatever she was into. She was always bombarding strangers with her stories.

"Debbie would get into these conversations that would go on and on and on, about Elvis, Star Wars, whatever," said Debra Henson. Henson worked at the Mail Boxes Etc. near where the Burnses lived. Once a week, the sisters would come in to buy a money order or mail a package.

"I guess Debbie had met someone on a chat room, and she'd send him things: T-shirts, teddy bears, little trinkets and stuff," Henson said. "She said she was going to marry him, but you never knew what to believe."

Barbara didn't talk much, Henson said, except to urge Debbie along. "She was always nice to Debbie, she wouldn't fuss at her, even when she wanted to leave and Debbie kept talking. She was always totally patient," Henson said. "Debbie limped, a bad back or something. And Barbara was always helping her get around."

When they walked out of the shop, Henson said, the sisters usually were holding hands.

In the fall of 2000, everything changed. Barbara and Debbie's mom died, leaving the sisters alone.

Within days, they got a call from a lawyer. Their brother John had just died of diabetes and left his entire estate - about $350,000 - to Debbie, to make sure she was cared for.

"That's the last time I talked to either one of those two, when I told them there was money coming their way," their brother Bob said. "I got nothing. Our sister Jo, nothing. Barbara and Debbie, they were just gone after that."

Bob said he called them seven or eight times and left messages. Then the number was disconnected.

"For a person who never had money, to get a boatload of it," Bob said, "well, you might go a little crazy."

Debbie had always been excitable. People said she acted like a little kid, upbeat one minute, brooding the next. She could be demanding.

She knew just what she wanted to do, now that she was rich. She wanted to travel, see places she'd seen on TV. And collect Star Wars stuff. Lots of Star Wars stuff. Oh, and buy a pinball machine and a foosball table and a dart board and a skateboard . . .

On a computer chat room, Debbie read about a General Hospital fan club convention that was coming up. In California. Barbara booked two plane tickets and a hotel room and the sisters flew across the country.

Australia was another adventure, Barbara said from jail. The leading man on General Hospital was supposed to be from Down Under, so of course that's where Debbie wanted to go. Barbara got the brochures, made the reservations and the sisters flew to the other side of the world.

In October 2001, home from their travels, they put a down payment on a double-wide near the end of Yellow Pine Street in the Tyrone area of St. Petersburg. They signed a loan for $81,126: their first house.

The mobile home has three bedrooms. But Debbie was scared of the dark, scared of being alone, scared of everything. So Barbara stayed in the front room with her. She pushed her single bed close to Debbie's, their heads almost touching.

Every night, Barbara said, she fell asleep listening to her sister breathe.

The money trickled away, sand through a sieve. In less than three years, the Burns sisters blew through the $350,000.

Barbara declared bankruptcy. She had to go back to work. She started working as a cashier at Lowe's, taking extra shifts, trying to meet the mortgage.

Debbie was home alone all the time, so Barbara bought her a dog. It was a tiny chihuahua with long, silky brown hair like a guinea pig, pointy ears like a gremlin and a triangular nose that made it look like a teddy bear. Debbie loved that dog. Barbara too. They called him Leo.

Even working holidays and overtime, Barbara couldn't make the $766 monthly payment on their double-wide. In 2003, the bank started calling. Barbara said she was trying.

Before she knew what it was like to have money, she said, she didn't miss it. But once she and Debbie got the inheritance - once they got used to eating out, traveling, buying whatever they wanted - they got used to an easier lifestyle. That made everything so much harder when the money ran out.

Especially when Barbara was working so hard, taking extra hours, and still couldn't keep up.

Especially when her sister was sitting home all day watching soap operas, ordering pay-per-view movies, playing with her Yoda doll, complaining that Barbara was home late, and demanding: Where's dinner?

After awhile, Barbara got tired of it. But there was no one to help, no one even to talk to. No end in sight.

Much later, when the detectives tracked her down, Barbara had no trouble remembering the exact date of the shooting. Aug. 15, 2004 - Debbie's 40th birthday.

She had taken her sister out to dinner at Macaroni Grill the night before, she told them. They had started arguing about money. Debbie wanted more and more things, and she got angry when Barbara said they couldn't afford them. Debbie couldn't understand why not, since her brother had left her all that money.

All the way home, they fought, all the way through that night's TV news. A little after 11 p.m., Debbie fell asleep. Barbara lay in the bed beside her.

A few hours later, before it got light, Barbara got up. She told detectives she walked to the dresser, opened the third drawer from the top and took out a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. She had bought it years ago at a pawn shop to ward off intruders.

She pulled out a box of bullets and loaded one into the steel blue gun.

The shot was fired from 2 feet away from Debbie's forehead, detectives said.

Barbara tucked the gun back beneath some clothes in her dresser. The detectives found it much later, among things the cleanup crew had taken out of the double-wide.

How can you take care of your sister for 40 years, love her, raise her, put up with her, protect her, fold your whole life into hers, then suddenly do away with your only companion?

Experts say sister killings are extremely rare. And it's unusual for caregivers to harm their patients. Barbara Burns was the rarest case of all: a sister and a lifelong caregiver.

For other caregivers, duties eventually end. Parents die. Children grow up. You may end up looking after your spouse your whole life, but when you get married you know that's a possibility.

It can be even harder to take care of someone when you didn't choose it. Things can work out if you have other people to help you and you have a life of your own, says Dr. Kathleen Heide, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida.

"But if the two individuals do not have other healthy relationships and good boundaries in place," Heide says, "the relationship can become increasingly taxing for both parties."

Even the most devoted person can run out of patience, Heide says. "Issues can be minor," she says. Over the years, the buildup of little things can lead to suppressed rage. "The triggering incident for the explosion of a torrent of homicidal rage can be quite trivial."

Debbie wanted to order more premium cable channels and Barbara couldn't make her understand they were broke.

A few hours after shooting her sister, Barbara told the detectives, she went to work at Lowe's. When she got back to the mobile home that night, she moved her mattress out of the front bedroom. For the first time in 40 years, she slept by herself.

Later, Barbara returned to Debbie's body, which still lay on the bed. She wrapped Debbie in blankets, then a shower curtain. She added comforters, threw in a Star Wars calendar.

For the next six weeks, she stayed in that double-wide, living with her dead sister. She kept adding air fresheners and baskets of potpourri to mask the smell. She turned down the air conditioning as low as it would go.

She knew she didn't have long. Soon, the bank would come to reclaim the double-wide.

One day last fall, Barbara's neighbor saw her digging in the front yard, a hole at least 3 feet long and just as wide. Barbara had lined four bags of concrete mix along the driveway. The neighbor had never seen Barbara working in the yard, so she asked what she was doing.

"She said she was going to put a piece of concrete out there to put her chair on. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, her whole front is already concrete!' " Shirley Greilick said. "But I never asked anything more about it."

Barbara quit her job at Lowe's, telling her boss she was going to California to care for a sick aunt. On Oct. 1, she packed two suitcases, ditched her van at the bus station and rode the Greyhound to Virginia Beach. No one noticed she was gone. Nobody missed Debbie, either. For the next seven months, no one asked about the Burns sisters - not until the crew came to clean out their abandoned mobile home.

In Virginia Beach, Barbara moved into a homeless shelter within walking distance of a 7-Eleven. Now that she didn't have to cook dinner for anyone, she worked the night shift.

In the jail interview, Barbara remembered how she spent her free time. Every morning when her shift ended, she would walk to the beach and watch the sunrise, a new day. She loved being back on the same sand she used to chase her brothers on, back when she was a girl, and had a life.

"I'm finishing high school here. They're helping me," Barbara says through the video camera at the jail.

She spends her days, now, talking to the other inmates, eating meals someone else cooks, watching TV she never had time for before.

She's making friends here, she says. Everyone treats her real nice. When you've already served a life sentence, the county jail might not seem so bad.

One more question, Barbara, before the guards cut us off: Whatever happened to that little dog you and Debbie loved so much?

"Oh, Leo!" Barbara says, and her face lights up for an instant. "He was real sweet. When I left, I had to put him in the shelter."

Barbara sounds sad now. She says she hopes someone nice took him home. She didn't want to drop him off there, but she says she didn't have a choice. Did she?

She couldn't just leave a little dog like that all alone, to die.

*****

The Saint: a story of love, duty and betrayal

July 6, 2005: Back in Pinellas County, Barbara is arraigned. She is being held without bail pending trial.