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Saturday, January 29, 2005 --
1:00 PM
After interviewing Grant Sexton and learning of Nicole Barry's
connection to the victim, Denise Hartigan, Detectives Murphy and
Armstrong contacted Ms. Barry and asked her to come in for an interview.
Nicole Barry was interviewed at the Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's
Department. The interview was conducted by Detectives Armstrong and Murphy and was
recorded on a portable tape recorder with the witnesses' knowledge and
consent.
- TA = Detective T. Armstrong
- SM = Detective S. Murphy
- NB = Nicole Barry
TA: For the record, please state your name, age, address and
occupation.
NB: My name is Nicole Barry. I am 28. Live at
325 CR 432 in Yocona.
And I'm a professional singer.
TA: Where do you sing?
NB: All around. I'm sure you've heard of my band, Kitten Sack.
SM: Right. Would you tell us about your relationship to the victim?
NB: I always thought we were a pair of disenchanted souls, a couple of
bare-naked butterflies floating on life's cold winds to more hopeful
skies. We got matching tattoos to commemorate. See?
TA: That matches the one we saw on the deceased.
NB: Denise.
SM: Yes.
NB: Her name is Denise. Not "The Deceased."
TA: I apologize. Ms. Barry--
NB: Will you please not call me that? I really hate it. Call me Nicole
or "hey, you" or anything, but--
TA: Fine. Look, Nicole, we'll call you whatever you want. Just answer our questions, please,
and let's not waste time haggling over vocabulary, okay? We want to know about your
relationship with Denise Hartigan. Simple and straightforward.
NB: Okay. We were friends.
TA: Is that all?
NB: What are you saying?
TA: I'm just asking.
NB: I thought you were trying to be respectful. Is this really
necessary?
SM: Okay, then. When did you meet Ms. Hartigan?
NB: I met her at a Widespread Panic concert in
Morrison, Colorado. I remember
the date and everything. June 25th.
SM: The year?
NB: Um... 1999.
SM: How did you meet her?
NB: I don't remember exactly how I met her. I had been on the
road with these friends of mine for a couple of weeks, and I really got
absorbed by the lifestyle. I can't say I liked it that much, but I was
in it, and in that lifestyle you just bump into people. It's like a big
family, I guess. In a way. I don't know. Everyone's so stoned out of
their melons.
SM: Did you travel with her?
NB: Yeah, we traveled from then until around
May of the next year.
Almost a year. We were never separated the whole time. We were, like,
beyond soul mates. Like one soul. It was a beautiful thing.
TA: Did you use drugs with her?
NB: Uh, yeah. Sure we did. I just said, that was the
lifestyle.
TA: What drugs did you take?
NB: Um, mainly pot and mushrooms. We took acid every now and then.
Some ecstasy, coke, pills. Yeah, we did a lot. It didn't seem like it
then, but it does today.
TA: Have you cleaned up?
NB: Depends on what you mean by "cleaned up."
TA: Are you still taking these drugs?
NB: Look, I thought we were talking about Denise. Do I need a
lawyer or something? This is bull.
SM: Okay, never mind. Just tell us how long your relationship lasted.
NB: On and off, I guess. Until she came back here.
TA: When you say on and off, did you see her often?
NB: I saw her a few times, and we talked on the phone occasionally and
we wrote to each other.
TA: When was the last time you talked to her?
NB: She called me and asked me to pick her up at the airport when she
was flying into Memphis last month.
SM: Do you remember the date?
NB: Yes. She was scheduled to arrive on December 22nd, and she
called me the Wednesday before that. Exactly one week earlier.
SM: That's December 15th.
NB: If you say so.
SM: What did she say during your phone conversation on
December 15th?
NB: Let's see, she was wigging out of her mind. I hadn't heard from
her in like six months, and she calls me out of the blue telling me that
she had to come back to Oxford. It was an emergency. She said she was
staying with a friend in Cleveland, some guy who knew her sister. He
obviously must've told her some horrible stuff about her sister, but she didn't
go into it over the phone. Anyway, she was coming back and needed a lift
from Memphis to Oxford. She emailed me her travel information from
Travelocity.
SM: Do you still have that email?
NB: I don't know. Maybe.
SM: Would you look for it when you get home? And forward it to
me, if you do have it?
NB: I guess so.
SM: You can send it to me at
murphy@crimescene.com. Here's
my card. It has my email address on it.
NB: Okay.
TA: So did you pick her up?
NB: Well, no, because she called up like that Friday and left a nasty
message on my machine about how she didn't need a ride and didn't want
to see me. She'd really gone off the deep end. See, we had been fighting
before all of this, so it was really weird to get all these
schizophrenic calls from her. To be honest, I really just forgot about
it after that. I mean, I have a career and a life I'm trying to live. I
kept thinking, I don't have time to worry about some fair-weather friend
and her family problems.
TA: What did you do instead of picking her up on December
22nd?
NB: I remember that day because actually I did think about her. I got
up around noon and went into town to run errands on the Square.
TA: Where did you go?
NB: I think that was the day I went to Red
Door Musician Supply to get my guitar worked on. We had a gig on
Christmas Eve and I wanted to make sure it would be ready in time. I was in there
most of the afternoon. And I went to Square Books after that, I think.
TA: When was the last time you were with Denise?
NB: You mean like...?
TA: I mean, when did you see her last?
NB: Oh. It was over Memorial Day weekend in Jackson. She asked me to
come to New Orleans, and I told her no, I wasn't going back there. So
she got a suite in Jackson, and I drove down and met her. We just spent
the weekend together.
TA: What did you two talk about?
NB: It was a big catch-up time actually, so we talked about a lot.
Mainly she was telling me about how she was going to look for her
sister. She told me she was going north to find her. She seemed to be
losing interest in voodoo, which had totally consumed her life the time
I saw her before that. She was losing interest, just like she did with
Widespread Panic. Just like she did with Grant, her fiancé.
TA: Right. Did she know where her sister was?
NB: I don't remember to be honest. I was being very selfish that
weekend. I was still pissed about that last trip to New Orleans and
about how she refused to come back to Oxford. And we ended up fighting
half of the weekend. Can you believe it? I didn't even listen to her. I
actually told her not to bother looking for her sister because Rita
probably didn't want to see her anyway. Or worse, Denise would've wished
she hadn't seen her.
SM: Did she tell you where she was going after leaving Jackson?
NB: Didn't get that far. Like I said, we parted on bad terms. That's
why it was strange getting her call. After six months, I figured we were
done for.
SM: Did she tell you why she was coming back to Oxford?
NB: No. Just that she had to be here.
TA: And did she talk much about the voodoo?
NB: I heard quite a bit.
TA: Tell us when you found out about the voodoo.
NB: Okay, it was during a trip to New Orleans. Me and Grant went down
there. He wanted to see her, and so did I. God, Grant was such a geek.
Just crazy about her. I didn't realize it until the ride down there. He
wouldn't shut up. God, we both loved her.
TA: When was it you went to New Orleans with Grant?
NB: February last year. Like the weekend after Valentine's
Day, but we weren't there the whole weekend.
SM: So what happened on that trip?
NB: Okay, we get down there, and
she's given me some strange procedure to meet her. It was like, go to
such-and-such street and wait behind this shop. I think it was a laundry
or dry cleaners. She met us there and took us on this maze through
different buildings until we're on the roof and we climb down into this
window and we're in this guy's apartment. Her lover, Papa Bokor. I think she was living with him, and it just disgusted me. He
disgusted me. They were into some sick stuff, I tell you that. Grant
split almost immediately. He couldn't take it. And I didn't know what
was going on at first, but then it became apparent that they were into
some kind of voodoo.
SM: What was going on?
NB: Well, that afternoon, this Bokor character is banging all these
women in the back of the apartment. Truly awful and gross. She gives him
a sponge bath when it's all over. Then they ate some mescaline or
something, and we all gathered into different cars and had a convoy
going out to this bayou or something. Somewhere out of town. I wasn't
participating, now. I was just watching from the fringes. Anyway, we
got out to this field and they started a big bonfire and started dancing around
it, baying at the moon. This Bokor brought out a goat and maimed and
killed it. He took its heart and passed it around and ate it. Then
everyone was dancing more, really getting into it. I almost got pulled into it. I'm telling
you, I've never witnessed anything so powerful. I can see how it would
turn out like that. I mean, it was so
powerful, these chants and dances. They just got so into it. I ran off
in the woods and hid until it was over. It quite literally scared the **** out of me.
TA: And Denise was participating in this activity?
NB: Oh, yes.
SM: Did you ask her about it later?
NB: I asked her in general what she was getting out of this scene, and
she told me the voodoo spirits moved inside of her. She said she
believed that it gave her powers she needed to cope with her life. I
said, "Look, if you want to practice this way, fine. Do what's right for
you. But don't call me down here and ask me to be with you, when you're
gonna eat a goat's heart right in
front of me! **** you!"
SM: So what did you do?
NB: Then? Nothing. Me and Grant left the next day. We were
going to stay longer, but after what we saw? We just wanted to get the
heck out of there.
TA: Did you fear for Denise's life while she continued to participate in the
voodoo?
NB: To be honest, I think that was more than voodoo. I mean, there are
all kinds of voodoo folk in New Orleans, and I guarantee they're not
doing that ****. Voodoo's not like that. But these people were under
some heavy drugs. And this guy Bokor was definitely gone. I mean out
of his mind. Out of this dimension even. I would be surprised if he was
human. So yes, I guess I was scared for her life. But I didn't let it
get me down too much. I just channeled that frustration into my music.
TA: Did you ever see Papa Bokor hurt or threaten Denise?
NB: He rarely spoke, except in this language I couldn't understand. It
was some kind of Creole or French-sounding language. He never hurt her,
but he had some kind of mind control over her. He was scary.
TA: Did you do anything about it? Try to help your friend,
Denise?
NB: Well... sort of.
TA: What did you do?
NB: It sounds kind of crazy, but really I just wanted to help
her. To help her see the truth about what she was involved in. You know,
snap her out of it.
SM: What did you do?
NB: I... Well, I might as well tell you. About a month after
we went to New Orleans, I hired a private investigator to find out about
this Papa Bokor guy. I just knew, if I could show her how manipulative
he was, she'd see him for what he was and get the hell away from him.
TA: Did it work?
NB: Well, the PI found out some stuff, but I didn't tell her
about all of it. The next time we talked, it seemed like she was getting
out of the voodoo thing and I didn't want her to drive her back to it by
making her think I was attacking her, you know?
TA: What did you find out?
NB: That Papa Bokor -- I don't remember his real name -- was
bad news, just like I thought. He'd been arrested before and stuff like
that. Had a habit of threatening people to get them to do what he
wanted. I think I still have the file the PI gave me, if you want to see
it.
SM: We would like to see it. You can drop it by here anytime.
So during your last encounter with Denise in Jackson, you say she was
through with voodoo even without the information you found?
NB: She was a different person from the one I had been with a few
months earlier. Definitely more herself, but still more erratic and
paranoid. It was a different kind of fear.
SM: Did she talk about Papa Bokor?
NB: She mentioned him in passing, but there was something else
troubling her. I'm pretty sure it was her sister.
TA: Did she talk about Grant Sexton?
NB: God, no. She didn't care a damn about him. And he was mad over her.
SM: Who paid for the suite?
NB: She did.
TA: Do you know how she got the money?
NB: She told me she had made quite a bit of money selling gris-gris,
which I guess is like some voodoo charm. She was working with this
fortune teller, I think. They were probably swindling tourists. Anyway,
she must have made some nice pocket change. She treated me to meals as
well.
SM: How long had Grant Sexton been living with you?
NB: I'm not sure. There were always people floating in and out. It
seems that Grant just floated in and didn't leave. I remember him there
a lot before we went to New Orleans, and after that he was always there.
I have two other roommates. The girls in my band.
TA: Who are they?
NB: Greta Fuermann and
Gina Anderson.
TA: Why did you ask Grant Sexton to move out of your house?
NB: After New Orleans, he kind of went downhill. I told you he had it
bad for Denise. He became obsessed with her. He tried to understand her
lifestyle, even started getting into voodoo himself. I want to say he
even went back to New Orleans a few times, and she jilted the hell out
of him. So he became progressively more insane and impossible to live
with. And, of course, he quit his job and couldn't chip in on the rent.
So we told him to take a hike around the middle of December.
TA: May we inquire about your relationship with Mark Lynch?
NB: Ha! Oh my God. I have no relationship with that primate. What
a perv!
TA: Is it true he stalked you?
NB: He sure seemed to turn up everywhere I went there for a while. He
even came over here one night with one of his weird buddies, and I asked
him to leave. He's harmless, though. Just hitting on me. But I told him
I wasn't interested in his white trash machismo. He couldn't turn me on
if he had a 12-volt battery.
TA: But didn't you report obscene phone calls from him?
NB: You know, who knows if they were from him? He's nothing. He's a
maggot.
SM: Okay, then. One more thing before we wrap up. Would you be
willing to give us a DNA sample?
NB: Why do you want that?
SM: Just so we can rule you out. You know, since you yourself
told us that Denise asked you to pick her up at the airport in Memphis--
NB: Yeah, but she changed her mind. I told you that too.
SM: Yes, you did. But you also knew she was planning to come
to town and when, so we just need to make sure that any DNA we find on
the evidence doesn't belong to you. You understand?
NB: Hey, I told you I haven't seen her for months. You want my
DNA? Fine. You won't find anything.
SM: Thank you very much. We appreciate your cooperation.
Interview ends --
2:16 PM |
