Part 2: A Dark Beach, A Bloody Boardwalk, and A Brutal Murder - One of Florida's Most Debated Homicide Cases

So I'm going to kind of go through this like a checklist just so that you can get the context and also the depth because there was a lot and afterward, I'll talk about reasons why Justin could have exhibited these behaviors. But let's start with when Detective Cole first encountered Justin at the hospital. He made a note about Justin's body language and his demeanor that it didn't seem appropriate for someone who had just lost his wife. And then when he asked Justin why he drove past so many open businesses without stopping on a 10 mile drive from the beach to when the driver stopped and called 911 for him. I mean, listen, he drove past McDonald's, a Walgreens, a 24 hour gas station, apartment complexes, and other well lit locations. So why didn't he stop Justin told Cole he couldn't remember he couldn't tell him anything about that drive. He was in a panicked state. It wasn't really an explanation. It was just sort of a blank, but eventually he said that he didn't want to wake up anyone living there, which made no sense at all given the urgency of this situation his wife was potentially dying. Three cars allegedly passed him as well on that road without stopping. That's what he said, but there were no other 911 calls that they received from anyone reporting a wounded man, anyone in traffic or driving radically. And trust me, he would have stood out. Cole thought it was odd when Justin claimed both he and April were tipsy that night because when April's autopsy results came back, it confirmed her blood alcohol was zero. She hadn't been drinking at all. If she had, it would have been hours before she was killed. And Justin said they went right over to the beach after drinking all night at the Brits and plain pool. And then there was the fact that April was still wearing her jewelry, her diamond ring, Justin had his wallet, nothing was taken directly contradicting the robbery narrative, especially if the so called robber shot both of them. Why not take things? Plus, if Justin had blacked out in pain or in shock at the time, wouldn't it make sense of the attacker would search him and take what he came here for? And then there was what Justin said about the attacker in his description that he couldn't see the attacker's face because it was too dark. But somehow he described him as having a tant face with pale hands. How? That's pretty distinctive. It was almost as though he wanted to make it seem like it was unsure. Of this person's ethnicity, that he could be white or maybe he could be black, leaving things ambiguous. And I know that Justin was shot four times. But none of his wounds were life threatening. The doctors who worked on him noticed that the trajectory of those wounds were aligned outward, which was not the norm in shootings. It was as though the gun was purposely pointed away from vital organs. Major arteries weren't touched and critical bone structures were not either. It's definitely not consistent with what you would expect in a chaotic, close range struggle. Those situations are fast paced, and you would expect injuries that were kind of less selective if you want to put it that way. Most shooters are aiming to kill. He kept all these thoughts to himself, and he just kept listening and kept making a note of things, which brings up another point. April suffered a head wound in a very specific and vital area of her body, while Justin, who was bigger and obviously more of a threat, was shot four times. None were near his head. One wound near Justin's right chest appeared like it was almost a grazing wound, and then there was an area on his shirt. It had gunshot residue on it, but no corresponding bullet hole. That was consistent with Cole's theory. He thought Justin was the one holding the gun against his own body. And I know there's a lot going on here, but there's more. Over the following days, Cole kept circling back to the details of what Justin had told him and kept finding things that didn't add up a robbery that produced no robbery, a phantom attacker who left no footprints, the only ones on that beach were justins along with the drag marks from April's body, no shell casings, no DNA, no trace of any kind on a beach that his team had covered from every angle. And then when Cole went out there with Justin just a week after April's funeral, the woman he swore he was in love with. Justin wasn't crying. Now he appeared to be. Cole said he had seen enough people actually break down in his career. And this wasn't that. Justin was rubbing his eyes, pressing them hard with his fingers, almost like he was hoping he could produce tears. But none of them ever ran down his face and Cole observed it carefully. He felt like he was watching a man perform grief rather than feel it. And that observation went into the file alongside everything else. There was one more thing Cole noticed that he couldn't shake and it was actually an absence rather than a presence in all the time since April's death Justin had never once picked up the phone and called the investigators on his own. He answered when Cole reached out. He cooperated when he was asked. But he never called to ask how things were going. He never asked whether there had been any developments. He never asked whether this person who allegedly attacked them and killed his wife was still out there. And whether he and his family might be in danger, not one time. That silence on its own was a kind of signal. Cole said plainly in his own words every fact he gathered leaned more towards Justin's guilt than his innocence. No, could there be a reason because as they say everyone grieves differently was Justin just dealing with a lot and not dealing with it very well. Cole didn't know Justin. Maybe this is how we always reacted to traumatic experiences. So Cole had to get more intel from those that had experiences with him and Cole didn't have to reach out. The calls started coming into him. The day after April's funeral, Patty, April's clothes is on to pick up the phone and call detective Cole. She said she couldn't sleep. She had been sitting up at night with things she knew, things that have been in the back of her mind since long before April was killed. And after watching the way Justin behaved at the funeral, she wasn't willing to stay quiet any longer. So let's start there at the funeral and work backward. Justin was withdrawn. He would look down. He wouldn't make eye contact. He wasn't engaging with people around him. People who truly loved April, they were craving together, comforting one another, but their Justin was stoic. Some even called him mute, just sitting alone staring at the floor, Patty and Amber noticed it and they thought it was odd. The thing is they had both already shared their thoughts with one another before this. Both of them immediately thought of Justin when they heard April was dead. Justin, not a stranger, and there were reasons for that. To find out more, Cole was put in touch with Amber herself, April's best friend, the person who introduced Justin to April, something that she was feeling like she regretted. Amber said that April told different information to different people. So no one had the entire story. She told Cole would need to piece it all together from talking to everyone she confided in. Justin had already told Detective Cole that his marriage to April was a happy one. It was normal. They got along, they were in love, and now weekend was all about celebrating their third wedding anniversary. But Amber had a different story. She told Cole the marriage was definitely not what Justin represented to him, not even close. It was a marriage that had been unrestrained almost from the very beginning, shaped by pressures that built quietly over time and ways that most people on the outside never saw. Amber thought it moved way too fast from the beginning, but that wasn't the issue. Justin was right after the wedding, the cracks were showing. Amber, how about a month after they got back from the Bahamas, April's younger siblings, Julie and Kenden, came to live with them in Georgia? Well, Justin wasn't happy about it. There was immediate tension in that house, Justin wanted to be the one that made the rules. He wanted Julie and Kenden to be disciplined the way he saw fit. When Julie was a teenager, she was strong-willed and Justin clashed with her. When April would not stand her ground and punish Julie the way Justin wanted her to, they would get into an argument. He would argue with April about how she should handle things, telling her how strict she needed to be, what rules to enforce, how to manage conflict, and it escalated quickly. The living situation became a constant source of friction, and at some point during this period of time, Justin told April that he would never let her have his children. And yes, he said it during a fight, but there was April, a woman who would spend years taking care of other people's children, and all she wanted was a family of her own. He was holding that over her head, making it about him, not something that they both would be on board with. Amber also told Cole about the patterns she started to notice in Justin over time. The things that on their own might seem kind of small, but put together, painted a picture of someone who cared immensely about it. about appearances in a way that went beyond normal concern. Justin wanted to look like he and April were the perfect couple, like they had it all together. And when I say appearances, I actually mean it literally, like the way they looked. He was critical of April, but also himself, this man, would try on his old high school jeans every single month. And if they didn't fit him, he would stop eating until they did. And he would make fun of his own mother behind her back, calling her overweight, something that he thought was disgusting. And April, she was criticized publicly. Everything from her singing voice, her clothing choice, her weight, even though April was already a very small woman. Those comments wore on her. They made her increasingly self-conscious and anxious about her own body in ways that would stay with her. I mean, this was the man that she loved. It hurt. She wanted things to work out so badly. So she tried harder and harder. And that's why, by late 2000, her sister Julie and brother Kenden had gone back to Oklahoma to live with other relatives. April was trying to hold on to Justin. Now it did resolve some of their tension, but it didn't undo what had already been built up between April and Justin, and it didn't change who Justin was, especially when no one was watching. Amber told Detective Cole that April told her Justin had been very upset about the kids leaving, which was odd. He was more upset than it would make sense, because he was the one that had been fighting about them constantly. And what Amber thought about this, was that it had nothing to do with genuine concern for Julie and Kenden. She thought it was about how it looked, about Justin's image of looking like the man who stepped up instead of the one putting everyone down. And things only got worse. By early 2002, just months before April was killed, she confided in Amber that she thought something was very wrong in her marriage. The move alone was hard. Having Justin in another state turned their marriage into something that operated in these very short windows of time, the weekends, that were supposed to feel like a reset, but they can't, because the weight of everything had not been resolved during the week. April could have found a job in Florida, but Justin acted like he didn't want him to be the reason she quit since her career was on the rise. He made it seem like he wanted to respect that. But the distance created a kind of space between them that made things harder and also made it easier for things to go unnoticed and Justin used that space, but not for making things stronger with April. One weekend, when she went to Justin's condo in Jacksonville, April found an earring in his bed. And it wasn't hers. This was right after she was already made aware that Justin was spending time with a woman named Shannon Kennedy. Someone that he had met through his company, April found out that Justin was playing tennis with Shannon on a regular basis. They were talking all the time. And April firmly believed it had crossed a line. So she confronted her husband and he denied it completely. And then in July of 2002. So we're talking a month before she died. April sent Justin an email at work. She asked him, please, please just tell me when you're spending time with other women. She deserved that much. But his response was so sarcastic and hurtful. He listed every single female that he had seen that day from the cashier at a random store to a gas station attendant. He took it literally. But it was only because he was being an immature a-hole. That was the answer that April got when she tried to address issues in their marriage, like an adult. And he wasn't acting like one. April spent her whole life showing up for the people she loved, even when it cost her. And now she was standing inside this marriage that had been built on a version of Justin that was starting to feel like it never existed that it was all a show. And on August 4th of 2002. There are third wedding anniversary, three years to the day. From when they stood on that beach in the Bahamas, she had finally pushed past her own doubts. April told Justin, she was done. She was leaving him. And then 13 days later, she was dead. That timeline did not seem like a coincidence to Amber, to Patty, or to Detective Cole. Cole described that moment in simple terms, he said. The very next time April saw Justin after that conversation was August 16th. And on August 17th, she was dead. After this, Cole didn't stop. He talked to even more of April's family and friends. Her cousin, Randas Honeman, so that April had confided in her, that April had directly told her she was leaving Justin and moving back to Oklahoma, not just separating. She was done. She was coming home. April had also been quietly looking for real estate in Oklahoma. She was talking about whether there were any job openings there she could take. She was building a life on the other side of this marriage piece by piece. And she had been doing it without Justin knowing. Or so she thought. And she had thought she was getting out for good. But remember, April told each person a piece of the puzzle and Cole went back to Patty. And that's because Amber had mentioned something else that happened during the funeral. Justin had asked Patty to pay for it. Because according to him, he was broke. Patty told Detective Cole that Justin had accumulated over $58,000 in debt through stock market losses in high interest credit card borrowing. But there was way more context to this interaction they had. Back in the summer of 2001, the year before April died, she called Patty. And she told her that Justin wanted to take out a life insurance policy, one on each of them, not small ones either, $2 million each. Patty said April seemed really uncomfortable that she thought the amount was excessive and didn't fully understand why Justin was pushing so hard for it. And then Patty told Cole, April had specifically asked her, do not mention this to Justin. Because if he finds out that I told anyone about it, he would be furious. Well, that didn't really sit right with her. Why would he be mad about discussing an insurance policy if there was nothing nefarious going on? Well, eventually, Justin went to the insurance agent alone to secure the policy and you probably could have guessed. Justin was listed as a sole beneficiary. Even though April had the intention of protecting her younger siblings if anything happened to her, however, April was able to add her aunt Patty as the contingency beneficiary, the person who received the payout, if the primary beneficiary, which was Justin, was unable to collect for any reason. But the timing mattered. Justin took out that policy on September 17th, 2001, eight months after he moved to Jacksonville. So in that time frame, he was out there living alone, hanging out with other women. And Cole knew he had to keep going. He spoke to April's boss at the oncology center next. He had watched April navigate a clearly difficult period in the month leading up to her death. But what he told Cole was something that had been sitting with him since the moment he heard it and now she was gone. He said one day out of nowhere, April had looked at him and said, "If anything happens to me, suspect foul play." He actually answered with a joke and she looked really hurt and she looked at him like he wasn't taking her seriously, like she needed him to actually hear what she was saying and he just laughed it off. But he never forgot about it. And now he's sitting across from a detective, telling him about it because April had been murdered. When it was time to make the funeral arrangements, Patty asked Justin what he was planning to do. And he initially just shrugged. There was no devastation, there was no emotion, just shrugging it off. And that's when he asked Patty to pay because he said he couldn't afford it. But she snapped back at him and she said, what about the two million? Referring to the life insurance policy, she knew Justin took it out. He was startled. He said, did April tell you? It was obvious she had at which point Justin told Patty, oh, I thought the policy had been canceled that it lapsed. Well afterward, Patty looked into it and she confirmed that the policy was very much selective. Cole went one step further. And he found out the years ago, back in 1997, Justin had filed a $15,000 insurance claim. He reported a burglary at his home in Oklahoma. So he had a pattern and it didn't stop there. Just two months before the murder, Justin reported his Audi stolen and his nine millimeter was supposedly inside. So he filed a claim with state farm for $39,000. Huh, it seems like money is very important to Justin. But were these claims even legit? Now I think you know why Justin was at the top of Cole's list. However, I did tell you that I was going to mention possible reasons why Justin acted the way that he did. I guess it could account for some of his peculiar behaviors by saying like I said, maybe he was in shock, maybe he was grieving. But then there's the life insurance, the snarkiness. The sneakiness, the emotional immaturity that he displayed when April was still alive and all the timing. So, there really was no good excuse. And Cole had been an investigator long enough to recognize a pattern when he saw one. In this case, fit a pattern he had studied in similar murders across the country. Money, a mistress, and a staged robbery. He had seen that combination before, but recognizing a pattern wasn't same as proving a case. And Justin Barber, he was the all-American boy who's polished, he's cooperative, he's consistent in his account. Cole knew he was going to need more to crack open this case. So he got in touch with Shannon Kennedy. He asked her to come down to the police station, and at the same time, he called up Justin, who remembered never refused to cooperate when they called him. So there they were. He is supposed mistress and Justin, sitting opposite of each other in two different interview rooms at the police station. And Shannon was more than willing to cooperate. She was honest with Detective Cole from the beginning. She admitted that she and Justin started out as acquaintances. It was merely a social relationship. It developed after an office sponsored happy hour. They had drinks, they went out, and eventually, it did progress into sleeping together. She confirmed everything. It wasn't just a gut feeling the April had. Justin was cheating. Shannon said that Justin never mentioned that he was married when they first got together. And the affair only went on for three weeks because she found out about April. And she wasn't interested in continuing to see him. She too was already in another relationship and living with another man, and she had no intention of leaving him. In three weeks before the murder, Justin actually asked Shannon to go with him to California. She declined. She only talked to him one more time and it was after she found out that April had been killed. She said that Justin was a wreck and that he said, I tried my best to save her. Cole left the room. He moved into Justin's and he asked him directly about Shannon, Kennedy, about the affair, about the relationship, and Justin denied it firmly, completely. And Cole let that sit there for a moment. And then he told him, Shannon was in the next room. He could bring her over right now if Justin wanted to sort it out that way. And that's when he backed down. He said, no, no, no, no, I did sleep with her. I've been having an affair with her. So only when he had no other choice did the truth come out. He admitted he lied and there had been a relationship and he was cheating. So Cole, this was huge. Justin had looked him in the face and lied about something that could directly relate to why his wife was dead and he only admitted it when cornered. That was the moment that Cole said he knew exactly what he was dealing with and that he never met anyone like Justin Barbara in his entire career. And that was saying a lot. The question now wasn't whether Justin was lying. The question was, how does he prove what he thinks he's done? When the interrogation was over, Justin just sat there. He was just staring at Cole. And then he asked if Cole could go ash in and if she would give him a ride home. She said no. And speaking of Justin's home, with everything adding up the debt, the affairs, the insurance policy, the timeline, Cole had probable cause to obtain a search warrant for the condo. Now, I'm kind of surprised that it hadn't been searched yet, but I do understand procedural steps that are necessary. I'm going to make this quick though. This wasn't a crime scene. There wasn't anything of evidentiary value uncovered. We know that April didn't live there on a regular basis and the murder happened at the beach. But long before this, Justin had willingly handed over his personal laptop to the investigators without hesitation. And this was early in the investigation. And when he did, it was already boxed up and ready to go when they asked for it. Which Cole had also noted, they seized his company issued laptop as well. So when nothing turned up in the condo search, the computers were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where forensic analyst Christopher Hendry took over. Now, Hendry's job was to go through everything on those hard drives, every file, every search term, every piece of data, including anything that had been deleted and to reconstruct a picture of what Justin had been doing digitally on those devices and when. But this was happening while the investigation was still going on. And I know you're not going to like to hear this, the months go by and years go by. It wasn't until July of 2004, two years after April's murder, when the advances in technology enabled them to fully extract all the data I know. So all that time, April's family was just waiting for answers. And meanwhile, Justin actually tried to collect on April's life insurance policy, but her family filed a civil lawsuit against him blocking him from collecting the $2 million. And that legal action froze the payment while everything played out. I thought this was interesting and I know some of you might not know because I didn't understand how it all happens, but rather than paying either party, the insurance company filed what's called an inter pleater complaint. They're essentially saying, we have two competing claims on the same money and a court needs to decide who's going to get it. So those proceeds were deposited into a bank account until a court could decide. But now I have to tell you what investigators found on these computers. And it was damning. I'm going to preface it with that. You can decide though how damning it was. It started with internet searches on February 9th of 2002, six months before April was killed. Justin had used his company issued laptop to search Google for the phrase, "Medical trauma, right, chest." And then one week later on Valentine's Day, he searched again. This time, gunshot wound, right, chest. Is Justin a psychic or is he planning a murder on Valentine's Day while April is going to work every day, helping cancer patients, trying to build a life with him? Her husband's sitting there in his Jacksonville condo, searching the internet for information about gunshot wounds to the right chest. The same area of his body that he would later get shot in on the night, April was killed. I bet Detective Cole was like, "I knew it when he was reading all this, but there's more." Then on July 19th, 2002, less than a month before the murder, Justin searched for Florida Divorce. Now, this search combined with what I already told you about the timeline, the insurance policies, it told its own story. And that's because investigators had already confirmed. Fifth, April had filed for divorce in Florida, Justin would lose his ability to collect on her life insurance policy. It would block him. It severed the beneficiary's status because once you've all for divorce, things that you had said in place when you were married, they're not going to stay that way. And there was Justin looking up what divorce in Florida actually meant for him financially. Three weeks later, April was dead. Now, there were additional searches that forensic analyst Hendry had recovered from the hard drive. There were gunshot wound, chest trauma, missing person declared dead, American death certificate in Mexico, and searches into what it would take to immigrate to Brazil. Taken together, these weren't just random browsing history of a man that was living a completely normal life. They were the research of someone thinking through a very specific set of outcomes. What it looks like to survive a gunshot wound, what it takes to have someone declared dead when a body isn't found. And what life might look like somewhere far away when all of it was over. But the single most stunning piece of evidence on that computer had nothing to do with this or tension, and this is probably my favorite part. On August 16th, the same Friday that April had been driving the three hours from Georgia to Jacksonville to celebrate their anniversary, Justin downloaded 16 songs on his laptop. 16 songs in a single afternoon, a playlist, if you will. Okay, Brian coberger. Now, if you didn't know, Brian coberger, Idaho murders. He listened to a remix of Britney Spears song criminal after the quadruple homicide. And the lyrics include, he's a villain by the devil's law. He's a killer just for fun, fun, fun. That man's a snitch and unpredictable. He's got no conscience. He's got none, none, none. And of course, the chorus, mama I'm in love with a criminal. Well, it seems like Justin had a little musical inspiration as well, because one of the songs was downloaded at 5.16 pm, roughly five hours before April would be found dead at the base of the boardwalk. And that song was called "Use to Love Her" by Guns and Roses. a song with lyrics that go in part, quote, "I used to love her, but I had to kill her. I put her six feet under and I can still hear her complain." The song is literally about killing a woman that you once loved. Yikes. And now here's the thing. There were 15 other songs which I could not find anywhere in any document online. And Guns and Roses was a part of Justin's normal listening behavior. He had November Rain, which by the way I walked on the aisle to at my wedding. And he also had knocking on Heaven's door, saved, but not that night. That was in the library he already had on his computer. The reason he used to love her was so important was because that song was not in the active files on Justin's computer. They were in the deleted files. It had been removed from the hard drive. Every other song downloaded that afternoon was there. That specific song was the only one that had been deleted. And Henry confirmed it. It had been deleted after the murder before Justin turned over his computer to the investigators. Every other song stayed. That one was gone. Just like April. Now on its own a downloaded song is not a crime. We know that. Plenty of people listen to dark music and they have plenty of it on their devices and they've never killed anyone or even heard anyone. And the song itself has been said to be just dark humor and exaggeration, not a literal killing. But this wasn't a song that had been sitting on Justin's playlist for years, buried in his library of old downloads. It was downloaded the same afternoon. His wife drove to Jacksonville and it was deleted after she was dead. So just to explain the combination, the timing and the deletion, that was what investigators could not overlook. And at this point, there are questioning Justin anymore. They're actively building a case against him. And by July of 2004, Detective Cole had enough. He had the motive. He had the digital evidence. He had the forensic picture and he had the words of the people who loved April and who would watch Justin long enough long before anyone was looking to know something was right. And Detective Cole said it plainly in his own words. He said, with every fiber of my being, there is no doubt. I believe we have the right person. On July 9th of 2004, nearly two years after April Barber was found dead at the foot of that boardwalk at Guana State Park, 32-year-old Justin Barber was arrested. Now just the day before, he stood at the St. John's County Grandery and testified for several hours. And the judge decided there was enough evidence to move forward. Justin was taken into custody. He was charged with first degree murder and held without bond. Prosecutors immediately announced the intended and did seek the death penalty. This was Florida, after all. And when Detective Cole was finally able to call April's family and tell them the day had come, he said it was a relief unlike anything he had felt in a long time. And for Patty, it had been far too long. She said there had been many moments where she wondered if this case would ever even make it to a grand jury and eventually to a trial. It did, but not for two more years. More waiting. It was a very controversial case because on one side, you had people who loved Justin who knew him or thought they knew him and that he could never have done this and others who loved April and thought he could and that he did. The trial of Justin Barber began on June 12th of 2006 in a courthouse in St. Augustine, Florida. Now finally a jury of 12 people were going to decide what exactly happened on that beach. The courtroom was packed from day one. Justin's family sat on one side, his mother Linda, his father, his brother Charlie, the people who stood by him through all of it. And April's family and friends sat on the other side. 10 feet of aisle between them. That was it. And as one reporter covered the case said, it may have been an ocean for the distance it represented. Patty said it was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Sitting in that room, looking at Justin, knowing what she believed he had done, and then looking past him, and at his mother, and at his family. And they were also grieving, but they were grieving differently. There was pain on both sides. It just came from a very different place. The state's case was being presented by two of the youngest prosecutors in the state attorney's office. Assistant state attorney is Matt Foxman and Chris France. And they were trying a high profile capital case in a small coastal community where everyone had already heard something about this story. The defense was led by Robert Willis, a Jacksonville attorney who had been by just inside since the beginning, and who genuinely believed as he would publicly state even years later that his client was an innocent man. And from the moment those opening statements began, the jury understood very well, they were being asked to choose between two completely different versions of the exact same night. I'm not going to go through everything, but I definitely want to tell you what happened. Prosecutor Foxman stood up there in front of the jury and he didn't waste a minute. He actually pointed directly at Justin, and he told the jury that man sitting at that defense table had taken a 22 caliber pistol, pointed it at his wife's face, and pulled the trigger. He framed the case around the things we know about the money, the deception, and the planning. He told them about the debt, he told them about the affairs and by the way, there were five in total. In the one year before April was killed between August 2001 and August 2002, five separate women. You already know about Shannon Kennedy. That was the last one. Before her, there was another woman in Jacksonville, two women back in Georgia, and one he met on a business trip to New Zealand. Prosecutor Foxman told the jury about everything, the insurance policy, and he used the line that landed so well. It became one of the most quoted moments of this entire trial. He said the defendant has two million reasons to commit this crime. He said this wasn't a robbery gone wrong. It was a premeditated murder carried out by someone who had spent months repairing for it, and the evidence was going to show them exactly how. Defense Attorney Willis on the other hand went in the opposite direction entirely. He told the jury that investigators had locked on to Justin from the moment April's body had been found, and they refused to look anywhere else. He said the state's case was entirely built on circumstantial evidence that it was just suspicion and inference not proof. He reminded the jury. There were no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, no one had seen Justin pully trigger. He told them about that car. The unidentified vehicle, the witnesses had seen parked on the opposite side of A1A. That car had vanished by the time they came back to look for it. He told the jury that the real killer had been in that car, and that the investigators had never properly followed that lead. This was a two week trial. The prosecutors first made her witness was Shannon Kennedy herself. Justin's last mistress. She took the stand and told the jury everything I already told you, but she added something new. That after everything, after April was dead, and Justin had been through the investigation and the interviews and all of it, he told Shannon that he loved April. He just couldn't live with her. That's pretty telling. Justin even showed up at Shannon's office after April's death and demanded to see her, but she turned him away. After Shannon, the prosecution presented their financial witnesses, the insurance agent who met with Justin alone to set up the policies. He testified about the structure of the coverage, confirming that Justin was the sole beneficiary and that the premium notices were sent directly to his condo address in Jacksonville, not to April in Georgia. And if you watch the Corey Richards trial, you would know that's not a good sign. Essentially, he was trying to make sure that April wasn't aware of any of the policy information. The prosecution painted Justin as a man drowning in debt, who added $2 million policy on his wife's life, and who knew that if she divorced him, he would lose access to that money. And then came the video, midway through the prosecution's case. The jury watched two recordings back to back. The first was the videotape reenactment from the beach where Justin walked investigators through his account, physically showing them where he and April had walked, where the man appeared, how the struggle unfolded. He was calm in that video. He was controlled, he was measured, but the second recording was a deposition. Justin had given a deposition in 2003 as part of the insurance case. And this one was a different kind of window into who Justin was. I decided that I couldn't carry her up the stairs and across the boardwalk. I was afraid that she was dead. I was afraid that I would die. As Justin was being asked questions about the attack, about his affair. affairs about his financial situation and his relationship with April. Justin answered even the most pointed questions with this composure that was very uncomfortable. His mouth was like curved down. He was dabbing at his eyes, you know, just once. Otherwise, he showed zero emotion. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because it was pretty pivotal. Because here's this attorney asking Justin to recall high points of his marriage, and you know what he said? We were in love. But he wanted specific memories or details that Justin could provide. And he said, I don't recall specifically. That was all he gave them. That was it. He couldn't even reach into whatever heart and soul if he even had one that he had to describe a happy moment that he had with his wife. And then came Christopher Henry, the forensic analyst who had gone through Justin's computers. He walked the jury through the digital trail piece by piece, the searches, the songs, the lyrics. They were even played in court. And wow, was that a spectacle? Because Justin's defense attorney was like bopping his head to the beat, disrespectful and distasteful to say the least. Prosecutors had the lyrics printed on a large poster board in front of the jury box. So every word was visible in patty sitting in the gallery was crying and dabbing her eyes with the tissue. That's the appropriate emotion response in case the defense wants to take notes. Or if there's any other attorney out there at the defense table, there was Justin scribbling on his notepad. It's like him and his attorney both like they just didn't have the awareness. But Henry confirmed on cross examination from the defense attorney that he could not say whether Justin had actually listened to the song only that it had been downloaded. And that was the only song deleted from the computer before Justin handed it over. My question is, why else would you download a song? I'm a little bit confused why that was even a question. But then there was detective Cole. It was his turn to take the stand. He walked the jury through the entire investigation from the hospital bed to the beach walk through to Oklahoma to interview April's friends and family and back. He described Justin's wounds the way they angled away from vital organs. He used in large satellite images to walk the jury through the route Justin claimed to have taken after leaving April on the beach, showing them every lit, open and accessible location that Justin had passed without stopping. Detective Cole told the jury directly, "I just don't see how anybody can accept the fact that he left his wife on the beach and was looking for help and would drive that far away to get it. It's inconceivable." When the defense pressed him though about the K car, about the witnesses who had seen it, Cole did say that there were two cars at that scene, according to witnesses. And with that information being confirmed, the defense attorney pushed him more and more. This exchange between them became one of the most heated moments in the entire trial. And that's because the other car was pretty much all the defense had. But one of the prosecution's most powerful witnesses was the blood pattern analyst. He broke down exactly why Justin's account of moving April's body the way he said he did, didn't match the physical evidence. He explained to the jury in plain language, "If April's head had been repositioned nine times across nine different carries and drags, the way that Justin described as he moved her up the beach and supposedly tried to get her to the car, the blood flowing from her gunshot wound would have changed directions. There would have been different streaks across her face." If the body had been moved that many times, the head would have changed positions at which time the blood flow would have changed positions. And for example, if the head was the rock in the right, the blood would then start trying to come this way. If the head is upright as the blood flow in this way, it's going to change directions. And the state says it does it. It would have gone in multiple directions. It would have been smeared pulled. Instead, the blood flowed in one single clean downward line, one direction, consistent with a head that had not been moved after she was shot. And why I'm bringing this up the way that I am is because of the theory that this entire case was built upon. And I'm going to get there. I promise you the prosecution used that evidence to make their case about what they believe actually happened. It was brutal. They believed that Justin had first held April's head under the water until she was incapacitated. Recall the foam that came out of her mouth that autopsy was out of her nose and her mouth with the blood on top of it. It was a mere drowning experience, but it didn't work. April was still alive. He dragged her to the boardwalk and he shot her there and then staged everything around her body before going for help. Remember her cuts? Descrapes said your blood. If she had been dead from the drowning, that wouldn't have happened. And the reason I'm explaining this the way that I am is because what they're saying is he dragged her to the base of that boardwalk and he shot her and she never moved. It wasn't that he found her in the water after an attacker came in and he tried to get help. All of that they said was a lie, but the defense hit back on every point. Willis called their own medical expert who argued that any blood in April's face from the initial shooting could have been washed away by the water when she was lying at the water's edge. He said the blood that was visible in later photographs was a secondary bleed that happened after she was removed from the water, meaning the blood pattern didn't prove she was shot at the boardwalk at all. He said she was shot near the ocean exactly the way Justin had described. The defense attorney also called the Tennessee couple Jason and Kimberly prior who had testified about seeing that boxy car parked on the opposite side of A1A. Two separate eyewitnesses placing an unknown vehicle at the scene. A vehicle that the defense said was never identified and never explained. It was to bring a reasonable doubt into the case. Willis also challenged the way the prosecution had described Justin's finances because their own expert testified that while Justin had some debt, he was managing. He wasn't delinquent. He had a salary of over 70,000 and he argued that a man earning that much working for a fortune 500 company on an upward trajectory in his career was not desperate in a way that would drive him to murder. He pushed back hard on the insurance policy. He called his own expert who testified that the policy itself was completely standard and that April as the owner had full control over it, nothing about the policy the defense argued was sinister. And then there was the song. Willis made a point that his client had downloaded 16 songs that afternoon and had over 1,600 songs on his computer in total. He pointed out that Henry himself could not confirm Justin had even listened to the guns and roses track. He argued that pulling one song out of 1,600 and presenting it as evidence and intent of anything just wasn't proof. And he noted the computer had shown activity in the early morning hours of August 18th, around 3am, while Justin was laying in a hospital bed. This suggested somebody else could have accessed his device after the murder. But here's the thing, it could have been an auto update. Justin could have accessed it remotely. They don't know. They couldn't determine that. There was also a moment that had a little unexpected drama in the courtroom and it was while they were demonstrating a bullet placement. They were using a replica shirt and the defense analyst accidentally marked the shirt with ink and it transferred onto the original piece of evidence. The defense was like it's an accident, but the prosecution called it something else, like they were trying to manipulate the evidence in the case. By the time both sides rested and the case went to the jury, the 12 people in that jury box had spent over a week watching two completely different versions of August 17th of 2002, playing out right in front of them. Was Justin a murderer or a misunderstood man? The jury began deliberating on Wednesday evening and continued for four days, 33 hours total. And they of course spread this across multiple sessions. The first vote was not unanimous. Some jurors leaned guilty, some leaned not guilty, and some were undecided. They talked about it. They went back to the evidence. They went back to the blood to the computer to Justin's face in those videos. And on Saturday, June 24th, 2006, they came back in that courtroom and they finally had a verdict. I'm going to play for you now. We did jury find defendant Justin murders Barbara as follows. Guilty of first degree pre-mapted murder as charged in indictment. Guilty on first degree murder. Justin barely blinked. His family wept. April's family wept too, but differently. Paddy later said it was a relief and heartbreak at the same time. the same moment. Relief that someone had fine been held accountable. Heartbreak because April was still gone. Julie, April's little sister. The girl that April had gotten out of bed and brought to school every morning after their mother died, described it as shifting back and forth. One moment feeling something like closure, and the next remembering that none of it will bring her sister back. And across that aisle, Justin's mother Linda said she couldn't accept what she had just heard. That she felt something had gone wrong in the process. That the verdict didn't make sense to her. Well, it wouldn't. He's her son. It hits differently. You don't want to believe someone you love could do something like this. The same jury was kept on for the penalty phase. And on Monday morning, they returned to the courtroom to hear arguments about whether Justin should live or die. The prosecution argued that what happened to April was calculated, cool, and carried out by someone who had shown complete indifference to her suffering. Her best friend gave a victim impact statement. Amber brought tears to Justin's eyes. The first real emotion that anyone had seen from him throughout this entire proceedings. She stood up and she said, we carry an indescribable pain. How was it that anyone could choose to murder her? Did she know? Did she suffer? We will be haunted by those questions all of our lives. The defense, on the other hand, had nothing to present, no mitigation, and not because no one loved Justin or no one believed in him. There were plenty of people sitting in that courtroom who would have spoken for him in a heartbeat, but Justin himself told his defense attorney not to let them. He didn't want to put his family through it, but he maintained his innocence and refused to have anyone plead for mercy for a crime. He insisted he did not commit. Here's what he did say. My position has been the same from the beginning, and I will not offer any mitigation. Okay, so you do not wish to present any mitigating evidence at all to the court. Other than my innocence, your honor, no. His defense attorney turned to the jury and said, I can't say good morning because it's not a good morning. We didn't expect to be here. And after less than one hour of deliberation, the jury returned eight to four, recommendation, death. On September 15th of 2006, Justin stood before a judge in St. Augustine for the last time as a free man. The jury had already spoken. They were in favor of putting him to death. And in Florida, judges typically follow the jury's recommendation in capital cases, but judge had strong, had spent weeks reviewing the evidence. And what he concluded was more complicated than a simple rubber stamp. He found two aggravating factors that had been proven. The first was that the murder was at least partially motivated by financial gain. The second was that it was carried out in a cold, calculated, impremeditated manner. But the third aggravator, the one that would have carried the most weight towards the death penalty, the one that argued the crime was heinous and atrocious and cruel, the judge wasn't sure about the prosecution's theory. It had been that Justin had held her under water until she was unconscious and then dragged her to the boardwalk and shot her there. But the judge said the state had not proven that beyond a reasonable doubt. So he couldn't rule out the possibility that she was shot at the water's edge without certainty that April had been conscious and aware that she was suffering while Justin held her down. The heinous aggravator did not hold up so he departed from the jury's recommendation. He read his ruling in full and his words were final. Having concluded that this murder is not the most aggravated and unmitigated of crimes for which the death penalty is reserved. It is therefore the ruling of this court that you Justin Meredith Barber be committed to the Department of Corrections where you serve a sentence of life and imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Justin just stood there, he took it all in, life without parole. He later told people through his attorney that to him, life and death were the same thing. Across the courtroom his mother, the woman who had sat through every single day of that trial, believing in her son, stood up in that moment and said, "Today doesn't matter. We're going to start our appeal today." And she meant it. And they did start that day. For April's family, the sentencing was another moment that held both relief and grief at the same time. And it wasn't over yet. Because Justin kept fighting. In 2007, the Court of Appeals reviewed his conviction and affirmed it in full. Finding that while the case was entirely circumstantial, the evidence was inconsistent with his theory of events. And they upheld both the conviction and the life sentence. And that same year, the civil battle, the insurance money. Justin was still arguing, even behind bars that he should still be able to collect on April's policy. Well, the court rejected his argument completely. The $2 million was paid to Patti as the contingency beneficiary. Justin Barber never saw a single dime of that money. Rightfully so. But he kept going. In 2012, Justin dropped his original attorney, Robert Willis, and he hired a new one, William Kent. And Kent filed a motion for a new trial. He argued that the prior defense attorney was ineffective. But in April of 2013, the motion was denied. So Justin remains where he has been since 2006 at Walton Correctional Institution of Florida, serving life without the possibility of parole. He's now in his early 50s. And he's reportedly married to someone. Got married while he was incarcerated to a woman named Donna back in 2011. But the details have not been made public. But it's sad. He still gets to breathe. He still gets to laugh. He gets to feel the warmth of the sun. And he gets to be loved. But April doesn't. Justin never stopped insisting that he was innocent. He's never sub-fighting. And he has never fully explained what happened on that beach. What do you think? All I know is April was a beautiful, kind, talented woman with her whole life ahead of her. And I am so sorry to her family, to her friends, for everyone who lost her. Only the person who took her life knows the truth. But a jury said that person is Justin. And I'm going to defer to them. They sat through weeks of testimony. And none of it will bring April back. But we can remember her. And I want you to. I also want to thank you so much for being here for April's story.