Planned Execution | Darryl Barwick and the Murder of Rebecca Wendt

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning, Unspeakable is intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, Kelly Jenning's here. I'm back for another episode of Unspeakable. How are y'all doing?

1:02 What is going on? Listen? I don't know what kind of mindset you're in right now, but it's the end of the school year, and as y'all know, I don't podcast full time. I teach full time, and mama's ready for some summer. Mama's ready. I'm about done. Okay, So you need to tell your kids, if you have kids, be nice to their teachers, because we are losing our minds at this point. But before I get started on today's episode, I want to remind y'all, Hey, if y'all work at the Crime Lab. I'm gonna be at that Louisiana Forensics Association conference this week that this episode is dropping, and so I'll get to see y'all, So come say hey to me if I'm there, so I don't feel like a like I'm by myself. I want to come meet everybody, but I'll be speaking and I'm pretty excited. I got some good stuff for y'all that I'm gonna be putting out in my little show that I'm gonna do for you. Also, I have to say hello to a new Crime Family member that added this week. And her name is miss Mary Snipes and she is from Pembroke, Georgia. And I gotta give Georgia a shout out. Man. We were looking at some statistics, me and Noel, Jimothy and Georgia's rocking it out. Georgia likes some unspeakable So y'all tell your friends, tell everybody to listen. I'm really appreciating y'all. But I also have to give Dallas and Houston. I mean, Texas ain't playing Texas is there. I really really hope that Bregman is listening to me from the Astros.

2:27 If you're listening. Breggie Pooh, I've been your fan for a hot minute since you were playing baseball. But I've also got Denham Springs and Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Y'all are killing it too, So thank y'all so much for listening. It means everything whenever you download and listen to my episodes. It is literally a labor of love to do these episodes, so I'm so glad that y'all are enjoying them. Now, the case I'm gonna do today, I want you to know it's an older one. It's got a current event though that's gonna tie into it, so you might really enjoy this. So I'm gonna take it back to i'ma City now. This was in nineteen eighty six, so I was only two when this occurred. But we're gonna keep going back if we have to, because these victims need their stories should still be still be heard. And this is going to be about two women that lived together, Michael Ann Went and her roommate who happened to be her sister. Her name was Rebecca, and they lived together in an apartment and there were just two young girls, just you know, living their life, getting out on their own and doing what young girls do right, just trying to make a living and make their mark on the world. Well, the morning of March thirty first, Michael Anne left because she had an appointment in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, which hey shout out to Fort Walton Beach.

3:42 I love going there. We go to Destin all the time and we go to that area. It's beautiful. So I know why she was going there. She probably wanted to go see some beautiful sights. I don't know that, actually, but I get it. So she left to go to her appointment, but her sisters stayed back, and Rebecca was her sister, and she said at the apartment and she decided, did you know what, I think I'm gonna go do some laying out this morning. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, so she went outside of the apartment complex, went out by the pool, and she was outside sunbathing until about eleven forty five am. The reason that we know that is because there was another female resident that lived at the apartment complex. I don't have her name. I did look for it, and I didn't find it. At the time that I'm coming in to record this for you, but she was also outside sunbathing, and she said that she stayed sunbathing until about twelve thirty that day. So it was described as a normal day. It was quiet, everybody was simply going about their business, just another typical day at the apartment complex. Well, later that afternoon, Michael End returned to the apartment and it had been some hours right because she was gone on her at her appointment, and so she goes up and walks into the apartment, but she is utterly shocked when she finds that Rebecca's body is in the bathroom and it's wrapped in a comforter. So she's like, oh my god, my sister.

4:58 She calls nine one one, but unfortunately, by the time that nine one one got there, there was really nothing that could be done and she was pronounced dead. So investigators were called to the scene, and while they're looking around the apartment trying to figure out what's going on, they observed a couple of things. They had footprints, bloody footprints all over the apartment and at various places throughout the apartment. So it wasn't like this crime scene was just like one small area. It was all over the place and in addition to that, they found bloody fingerprints throughout the apartment, but also on the victim's purse and on her wallet, So you know, it makes you immediately wonder, okay, well, is this going to be, you know, a robbery? Is that the ultimate goal of why this person broke in? Did she scare them? Did she surprise them? You know, why would he choose that apartment? It kind of makes you wonder, you know why that one. Something else that investigators noticed while they were in there was that when they unrolled Rebecca from the comforter, that her swimsuit was displaced. It was still on her, but it wasn't like in the normal you know places that you would expect the swimsuit to be. So okay, now we have a possible sexual motive. Is immediately what you would jump to. Why would someone swimsuit be you know, disheveled and then rolled into you know, a comforter.

6:15 Sex and money or two of the oldest motives in the book, right. I mean, if anything, there's any reason someone's going to kill somebody, it's going to be sex, revenge, money. You know, there's really no other things that usually get people wanting to kill others except revenge, and this didn't seem like this was someone who necessarily knew her. But it was very obvious that Rebecca had suffered what looked to be multiple knife wounds when they were looking at her body. So they take her to the morgue and the autopsy revealed that she sustained are you ready for this, not one, not six, not ten, but thirty seven stab wounds to her upper body. Thirty seven. This isn't all out slaughter of this woman. It's not like someone was trying to just go, you know, ju ju jug and then get out of there. They took the time to absolutely annihilate her with a knife. When looking at her body, they also noticed that she had a bunch of defensive wounds on her hands. Now, I know everyone's probably heard of defensive wounds, but I thought i'd go a little bit deeper into this so you can understand why they're called defensive wounds. But they are more often than not going to be found on the hands of someone who has been attacked or involved in a fight, And normally when we describe them as defensive wounds, they're going to be found on the hands, the fingers, on the arm or the forearm of the person that's been attacked, and even sometimes the attacker, because you never know what all went on during the fight.

7:44 So just because someone survives doesn't mean that they don't actually still have the defensive wounds. Now, whenever and you know a body is being looked at, even though you see these defensive wounds, it doesn't just say, oh, yeah, there was a fight. You can actually learn a lot from the play spin of the defensive wounds, how many of they are there are, and things of that nature. So some of the things you can also find out is how much of a struggle did the victim put up right, So if they're not struggling at all, maybe they weren't, maybe they were knocked out or unconscious whenever this happened. But if they are all over their body, then they're going to be showing how much of a frenzy the attacker was in. And I like the word frenzy because it kind it kind of denotes what I mean by when someone is just going after somebody. If you're an all out frenzy, there seems to be sometimes no rhyme or reason to what's happening. But many violent crimes tend to leave the victim's hands and arms covered in these wounds, and the blade of a knife is something that is common.

8:43 You can also see biting or scratching, and sometimes you even can see clawing, like if someone was clawing at the ground trying to get away, their fingers might be tore up, their nails ripped off. And violent crimes that you see defensive wounds in often include things like rape, murder, assault, and even robbery. But for the most part, assault, rape and murder are the most common crimes to have defensive wounds. And like I said, you know they're on the on the hands, and on the arms, but that's because the victims trying to protect their face and their upper body from the attack of the assailant. But think about it, I mean, if you were being attacked, you know, most people do try to protect their computer. I mean, that's what I call the brain right, protect your computer because if you get knocked out, you can't defend yourself. I mean, even when you're shooting. When I was learning you know, shooting and defensive tactics. When you're shooting, you know, defensively speaking, you take you know, with a pistol, you take an Isosceles position and your head.

9:43 Your goal is to make it small because when you make your head small and you raise your gun up and you punch out, it also helps to ideally make your computer small makes it harder to shoot. Hopefully they'll shoot your your hands or your gun first before it would actually just go a bullet straight through the head. So if you don't protect the computer or the brain, then you don't want to be mortally wounded. And looking at statistics, attacks often take place at night and in darkly lit areas, which also made this crime a little bit more unusual. This is broad daylight, you know, I mean this was not you know, in the deep in the dark, in the back, in the corner of the booth. I mean, this was right there where anyone could could see. Basically so according to explore Forensics, which is a site I like to look at. In the case of sexually related crime, assailants often bring weapons with them and guess what. Most often that weapon is a knife. Well, this fits that motive perfectly because it was knife wounds. It seems to have a sexual nature to it because their swimsuit was all disheveled. Now the cuts, like I said, tend to appear frenzied oftentime, like there's no rhyme or reason behind them. And that's because, in particular, when we're talking about sexually motivated crimes, the rush of adrenaline and excitement that the attacker feels it's going to make them lash out without thinking, and they're simply just trying to overpower their victim. And that seems to be the case here. There was blood everywhere, and yeah, she's a woman. It doesn't say any everything I read nothing said that

11:15 she was like a strong woman or a large woman. So the average woman, what five four to five to seven, she's young. I bet she weighs what a buck twenty? I mean, I don't know, but this isn't some large woman. And you've got someone who was able to powerfully overthrow her, stab her thirty seven times, and then steal her shit. So I don't know about you, but it's already starting to irritate me. The whole case is just starting to irritate me. So you know, it's important to remember at first glance that when you're looking at the wounds of the victims, it may seem like, oh, well, this was just a last ditch attempt to try to save yourself from an attacker. But they're super important to when we want to identify the perpetrator because we can learn about the crime based on the wounds. And when a forensic pathologist is going to look at these signs of self defense, they're going to record them in multiple ways.

12:09 They're going to look at them pictorially, they're going to measure them, they'll calculate their depth, the distance between them, and they can basically construct an analysis of information that could potentially include the perpetrator's height, the direction that they were attacked from, and other little things that you wouldn't think necessarily mattered, but they become big things whenever you're trying to prove what happened, And in this case, it helps to build a profile of the attacker. But also, what if there was a serial to attacker on the loose, their m O right, their modus operandi might be brought to attention based on the wounds of the victims. In this specific case, the medical examiner concluded that the potentially life threatening wounds were the ones that she sustained to her neck, her chest, and her abdomen, and the medical examiner made a point to state that you know, she didn't die immediately. She could have died anywhere between three to ten minutes after the first stab wound. That matters to me.

13:11 That matters because that means that she wasn't It wasn't like instantaneous death where she was shot and she hit the ground before she knew what happened. No, she faced this person who viciously attacked her, and then she had to lay there and suffer for ten minutes by chance, you know, up to ten minutes before she finally you know, lost her fight. But interestingly enough, the examiner did not find evidence of sexual contact on her or in her. But guess what that lab did find, And this is going to be a shout out to my crime lab people that I go see this week, that crime lab wasn't playing. They found a seaman stain on the comforter that was wrapped around Rebecca's body. Okay, I'm not proud of this, but when I was reading about this case, I was like, how much damn seeming to people leave behind like shit? It seems like every time you listen to a case there's seemen everywhere? Is it shit dripping from the roof, like, good God Almighty. So I did the dirty work. Okay, I know you think I'm weird. I am, but I did the dirty work.

14:18 And I literally googled to my embarrassment what is the normal volume of seamen per deposit? And the answerer, wait, go ahead, guess right now, out loud in your car wherever you are. Guess how much do you think it is? Okay, boom, here we go. The normal volume varies from one and a half to five milli leaders per deposit. Now, I don't know if you're like me, but numbers and math ain't my thing. Okay. So then I was like, well shit, now I got to do some type of calculation. I gotta do some kind of conversion table to know how much semen there is. So I did, and that's one teaspoon basically, so while the man jam may be small, it is super spreadable. Not to self, be careful if you're gonna rape somebody, because that little teaspoon will end up everywhere, including the comforter that you rape.

15:11 I mean that you wrap your victim up him. Okay, So back to the crime scene. Remember that other woman that was sunbathing at the same time, as Rebecca, well, she's going to turn out to be a freaking hero. She gets in contact with investigators and she tells them that she saw a man walking around the complex about twelve thirty that afternoon, and she said that she even saw this guy walk towards the Wentz apartment, which is Rebecca went towards their apartment, and then later on she saw him leave from the direction of the Wentz apartment and then walk into the woods. Okay, well that's like creeper level one thousand, right. So after some discussion, she goes, wait a minute, I think that was Daryl Barwick. I think that's who that was that walked by. So old Darrel gets a little chitty chat with the police and he don't know nothing, y'all nothing. What are they even talking about. He didn't do anything even there. This is just rude that they would even assume that he was identified by someone who knew him.

16:18 So they get some DNA from him and here goes the lab again, and they conducted tests on the seamen from the scene and Barwick's blood, and the analysts determined that Barwick was within two percent of the population who could have left that stain. So that's what we and the BIZ would call a clue that it's probably him. And you know, he just was denying this. It was not him. It was somebody else. He couldn't have been there. But he would remain on the loose for another two months. But that's when he got click click, some pretty little bracelets and a nice ride, free ride to the jail because he was put under arrest on April fifteenth, nineteen eighty six. Well that's when they get this fool up in the room, start talking to him and he confesses to the whole crime. Well, you'd think signseal delivered there. It is okay, he didn't do it.

17:18 And then as soon as they put the cuffs on him, he's a little bit and he rolls over and he tells him, oh, yeah, it was me, I did it. But when asked about what happened, he said that he saw Rebecca sunbathing while he was at the apartment complex, but he went home. Whenever he went home, he parked his car, he walked into his house, and he got a knife from his house. Now, why he got the knife, he's not sure, right, why would he grab the knife? He's not sure. But then he walked back to the apartment complex. So he drove home, got a weapon, and then walked back to the apartment complex where he had seen Rebecca. And just like that sunbathing woman had said, he admitted that after he walked past her three times. He said he walked by and was checking her out in her swimsuit three separate times. That's when she got up went to her apartment, and he decided that he would follow her. Now, in typical criminal style, and this irks me. In typical criminal style, he immediately starts to minimize his role in what happened. Okay, because sure he killed her. He just admitted to that Sherry stabbed her thirty seven times. Sure he just happened to have ejaculation on this in scene, and he just happened to wrap her up in a blanket. But he only intended to steal something. That's why he went there. That was the reason. He just wanted to steal something from her, Because clearly, when she was lying in her swimsuit, all

18:49 he could think about was how vovlluptuous and sensual and sexy. Her bank account was all that would go through his mind. Right then, right, I'm sure he just wanted to motor boat his way right on into that wallet in purse. That's all he was thinking about, right, yeah, okay, whatever. So that's real interesting because the state, whenever he does go to trial, did present evidence that showed that when she was found, when we said her swimsuit was disheveled, the top portion of her swimsuit had been pulled down so her breasts were out, and the bottom portion of her swimsuit had also been pulled down in the back. So I'm just curious. I've done a lot of studying of criminals. I'm not sure why exposing breasts and the reproductive area of a female, why that helps in robbery, But apparently that's what he was going for. So then he also, as usual, puts the blame at least vocally on Rebecca. On Rebecca because this is when he states she resisted, she resisted, and so he lost control and stabbed her.

20:07 She resisted, Well, I hope she did, Podna. I sure hope she did. I hope she beat the hell out of you before you killed her. I hope she scratched you. I hope she kicked you in your crotch. Hope she knocked your teeth out. But he's gonna make it like her fault almost, like if she had not resisted, then he would have not hurt her. Sure, you just brought the knife to like, what do a magic trick for her? Oh? Watch the knife. I mean, why'd you bring it then if you had no intentions of hurting her. Get out of here with that crap. I hate when people do that. The only reason he stabbed her, he said, is because they struggled and he started stabbing her and they fell to the floor. He was only there for a robbery. But I did pull an appeal that he filed after he was convicted, okay, And the prosecution said their overall belief was that he found an opportune time. He was a crim all that you saw an opportunity and he took it. That's called an opportunist. And their quote was the defendant, in a calculated manner, selected his victim and watched for that opportune time he planned his crimes. He selected a knife and I didn't know this before I pulled the appeal, but gloves. He even wore gloves on his hands, and he also wore a mask on his face so that he would not be identified. If that's not cold and calculating, I don't know what is. He went with the intention of leaving the vehicle so no one would identify the vehicle. He got a mask to cover his identity, he

21:38 put gloves on his hands, and he brought a weapon. What more do you need to know? Right, And when struggling with the victim, the mask was pulled from his face, and knowing that he could be identified, he proceeded in a cold, calculated manner and with premeditation to kill her without any pretense of moral or legal justification. The defendant had planned a sexual battery, or burglary, or robbery or all three, had armed himself to further those purposes, and when a killing became necessary, without any moral or legal justification or remorse, he killed her. Bingo, my friends, I completely concur with that statement. That sounds exactly like what happened. And I can't come up with another concept of why he would even have been in the apartment.

22:25 And I know you're like, well down, Kelly, that was a short and to the point story. Well, maybe you're right. Sometimes crime is that way. It's short and it's to the point. It was a crime of opportunity. There's no lead up to this. He didn't know her beforehand, okay, but she suffered, y'all, and no matter how many minutes it was, she was scared, and she fought valiantly. She fought valiantly for her life. And thank god that witness spoke up and was paying attention, because to me, she's a real hero for that part that she played. Now, I wanted to tell you more about rebecca life, but the age of the case made that a little difficult for me. I even made a point to call the police department in Florida to see if I could gather more information, but up till the time right now of recording, I really didn't get anything back on her much more. Even searched Facebook, I tried a lot to find stuff about her. But what I can tell you, though, is that Barwick was convicted of first degree murder, armed burglary, attempted sexual battery, and armed robbery in November of nineteen eighty six.

23:29 Now, he was sentenced to death on a jury's nine to three recommendations, so it was not unanimous, but amazingly the Supreme Court of Florida throughout that conviction three years later because of what they said was quote prosecutorial misconduct. So I looked into what that misconduct possibly could have been. This is the only thing that I really found. On appeal. The court basically found violation of a case that was called State versus McNeil, where they they based their reversal of Barwick's convictions. And so when I looked up that case, all I could really find basically was that this was a case about the jury being excluded based on skin color. That was their argument. But looking at you know, Barwick's mug shot, He's a white boy, Okay, So all I can figure based on that jury exclusion based on skin color is that he had an all black jury, which I doubt in nineteen eighty four, I just doubt that he had an all black jury, or he was grasping at straws and said that, you know, he should have had more non white jurors.

24:44 Y'all get what I'm saying, Like I can't. I can't understand what the racial motive or bias here they're trying to say the jury may have had against him. But either way, Barwick would receive a retrial. Not remember Rebecca didn't Rebecca's fate was sign sealed and delivered that day when he decided that he wanted to raper and robber and kill her. Okay, but when he received that retrial, he was going to be convicted again. And I love that. In nineteen ninety two, he got his retrial, and that jury knew an asshole when they saw one, because this group unanimously recommended death for him. So when her winter chicken dinner, there, you went from a nine three to everyone said, no, you need to die. We're done with you. Now, here's the kicker for all the bleeding hearts out there that think everyone deserves a second chance. Anyone can change, Everyone deserves the opportunity. They may have messed up, but give them a second you know, just give them a second chance. All right, Well, this is the part that really chaps my ass, if I'm being honest. Barwick was he a first time offender who messed up in a fit of rage. She was hot, He wanted her and her money. No, let this simmer in your head for a second. Barwick killed Rebecca went less than three months after he had been released from prison. Forget this, Raping a twenty one year old woman at knife point, he shouldn't have even been out, y'all.

26:21 He shouldn't have been free. He did serve his time. I'm gonna tell you that he served his whole sentence. But if anything, that should tell you that even if people serve their sentences, you cannot change a piece of shit from being a piece of shit. It doesn't work like that. They don't care. Prison time is getting to hang out with your homies, getting to be around all your like minded individuals. Okay, And if I'm making you angry right now because you have someone you love that was released from prison, I'm sorry. Not actually, because a lot of people in prison get out and they're proud of what happened. They're proud of their prison time.

27:03 They wear it like a little badge on their shoulder. It's their war story of what they've been through, what they've been through, and what they've survived. No, Rebecca's dead. Rebecca was attempted to be raped, her money was stolen, and she didn't do anything. This ass hat was in prison already for raping someone, and then he gets out. Because we don't need to have harsher penalties, right, they're people. If we're gonna lock them up, we need to look him in the eye and and say, man, you're still a person. Well, Rebecca would still be a person too if you hadn't stabbed her. I mean, just food for thought. And to make it even better, during his confession and that he was asked why did you kill her? Why did you stab her? That many times coldly and plainly, Barwick stated that he stabbed her because, quote, he just didn't want to go back to prison. So he's selfish. Also, he's a selfish, habitual rapist, murdering piece of shit. I'm so glad he got his second chance at life. He has no redeeming value. He had no redeeming value. And this is what you get when you parole people out early who have no business being let out. I know he wasn't parole, but I'm just trying to explain to the people not everyone needs to be parolled out early, especially violent sexual offenders. There's a pattern. You should do some research on it. You should look it up. Prison does not

28:34 rehabilitate. And I'm sorry to tell you that. I know that's supposed to be like the beautiful pie in the sky thought of what prison is. Prison does not rehabilitate. People who want to change can change, but prison itself. Prison time alone does nothing to someone who doesn't care. It doesn't do anything to someone who doesn't care. And if they don't value life, it doesn't change that. He was a fricking animal. He acted like an animal. So I mentioned at the start of this case that there was a current event tied to this. Well here it is. Y'all know a little guy named Governor Ron de Santis. Anyone ever heard of him. He's a military man, and I'm about to go off topic real quick, but he looked good in his uniform too, So I do suggest if you'd like to google that, go look at Rod de Santis in his military uniform. He wore it right, But guess what he did. Governor De santist signed Barwick's death warrant last month and was like, bye bye boy, bye, catch you on the flip. This is the third execution that was scheduled in Florida this year, and it will mark the hundred and second since the reinstatement of the death penalty in nineteen seventy six. I don't know if you know this, but there was a moratorium put on the death penalty back in the gap because people felt like it was cruel and unusual punishment. You know, call me crazy, but I think stabbing a woman thirty seven times, raping her attemptedly, and stealing her money is cruel unusual as well. That said Darryl B.

29:59 Barwick, who was fifty six years old as of last Wednesday, was set to be executed at Florida State Prison in Stark, Florida, and right before he was executed. This was on Wednesday, May third, at around seven twenty nine pm, right before he was executed by lethal injection. When the screen was raised in the execution chamber, Barbock was already strapped to a table and covered with a sheet except for his face and his left arm, where the lines were put in to push the fluids. He decided to give his last statement. Now, I know what you're thinking. I know you're like, oh, good, right, he's about to be killed. Maybe he'll come to terms with the fact that he's a murderous piece of crap and he could you say her name, apologize to her, her family, the life she lost, all because he's a pervert and needed money. But this was his final statement on earth quote, it's time to apologize to the victim's family. To my family, I'd like to point out he didn't say to my victim that matters to me, to the victim's family, and to his family. I can't explain why I did what I did. Another thing, I would like to say, the state of Florida needs to show some kind of compassion and kindness for each other when so many kids are in prison.

31:21 There are fourteen and fifteen year old serving life sentences. Okay, Now even sadder was that there was no family or friends for Rebecca went there at the execution again that it was in nineteen eighties that she was killed. But his family didn't even show up either. There were seventeen official witnesses besides four members of the press and a staff and the staff from the Florida Department of Corrections. A few of them were present. So I mean, I guess he cares more about fourteen or fifteen year olds, but not enough to even say his own victim's name before he's put to death. So called me cold, but like he got to go to sleep. He got to go to sleep, while I had to fight for her life before dying of blood loss after being stabbed thirty seven times. I hope he really I hope Barwick really felt powerful when he was holding that knife and attacking a defenseless woman. I hope he did. But I hope criminals like Barwick remember that just because good people of the world choose to live in peace doesn't mean that we've forgotten how to be violent. Don't forget that just because we live kindly doesn't mean we do not have the ability to buck up when it's time. And you know, I know some people say, oh, the death penalty is revenge, it doesn't do anything, Well, you know, revenge. You're right, revenge.

32:37 Revenge does sound mean. So that's why I prefer to call it just return in the favor