Houston: Revenge a dish best served up cold?

[seamusTX]

Houston police on Monday arrested a woman in the Sept. 13 shooting death of a man who had been linked to the brutal slaying of a Rice University student more than 20 years ago.

Brenda Fay Nelson, 50, is charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Perry Joshua Barefield, 52, as he sat in a car parked along the 14000 block of Mary Kay Lane in south Houston, authorities said. How Nelson knew Barefield could not be determined.

In April 1986, Perry Barefield, his brother John Kennedy Barefield and another man grabbed architecture student Cindy Renee Rounsaville, 25, at gunpoint as she walked to her car in an apartment parking lot.

They forced Rounsaville, the daughter of a Tulsa, Okla., orthopedic surgeon, to withdraw all the money she could from an automatic teller machine then drove to a remote area near the Fort Bend County line where she was sexually assaulted, police said.

“Then they took her out and executed her. They shot her in the back of the head,“ said Jim Peacock, who prosecuted the case in 1986.

The woman's partially clothed body was found in a field the next day. Police said her attackers burned her car, which was found nearby.

“It was just a real tragic thing,” said Peacock, now in private practice. “They (her parents) were destroyed by what happened to her.”

John Kennedy Barefield, 22 at the time, was arrested the next month on an unrelated case. He confessed after police found Rounsaville's Rice University class ring and the murder weapon, a .22-caliber pistol, in his possession.

Perry Barefield later surrendered after he learned that police were searching for him.

John Kennedy Barefield was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection 1997.

Perry Barefield did not share his brother's fate. In a 1987 plea bargain, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for aggravated robbery.

“He was not the shooter,” said Houston attorney Will Outlaw, who defended Perry Barefield during the trial.

Outlaw last saw his former client two or three years ago when he was released from prison.

“He came by to thank me for ‘saving his life' as he put it,” Outlaw said Monday.

In their short visit, Barefield appeared to have begun to put his life back on track, Outlaw said.

“He seemed to be doing well. He had a full-time job,” Outlaw said. “It didn't appear to me that he was on drugs.”

Outlaw said he heard from Barefield only once or twice since the post-prison visit.

The motive for Perry Barefield's slaying wasn't known Monday. The Houston police detectives assigned to the case couldn't be reached for comment.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 99926.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I dunno.

- Jim

[karl]

Reminds me of the movie "Law Abiding Citizen". I think it's a little sad when an accomplice to murder gets out of jail in less than 25 years. On the other hand I don't agree with vigilante justice, sometimes it works but other times it doesn't.

[seamusTX]

Karma, if that was the motive.

- Jim

[ELB]

Interesting that the story says there were three men involved in the original crime, but does not give his name or that he was ever convicted, or even arrested. Odd.

Some googling says the third man is Earnest Lee Sonnier, who is serving a life sentence for an un-related aggravated kidnapping of a 24 year-old woman.

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/statistics/ ... rfield.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[frazzled]

Excellent.

[casingpoint]

I dunno.

I do. Brenda Faye Nelson finally served up justice on Perry Barefield. Good riddance. Too bad it's probably gonna cost her time.

[TDDude]

My guess is that this scumbag was involved in the death of another that we'll never know about. I’d bet Charles’ next paycheck that this guy was a murderer long before the event he was convicted of.

And no, I'm not for vigilante justice either, unless of course it was one of my beautiful daughters, whom I saw come into this world, for whom the doctor asked me “You wanna cut the cord” who I later changed the diapers on, who I led by the hand through countless parking lots not allowing them to run. Unless of course it was one of my daughters whom I helped with her homework, and it’s all homework because we are a home schooling family, who sat in my lap and let me cover her eyes when the “bloody” part of the TV show came on because she just knew she would get nightmares if I didn’t. Unless of course it was one of my beautiful daughters who collect scars on her legs as if they were trophies to show off, who has been rushed to the doctor countless times with high fever or some other malady and whom I’ve prayed for quick healing. Unless of course it was one of my daughters for whom my daily prayer is that they grow up to become Godly women. The daughters whose husbands I’m already praying for; young men whom I don’t even know yet because my daughters are still young. I’m not so sure how I would feel about Vigilante justice if it were one of mine that was kidnapped, brutally raped in the backseat of some pimpmobile, dropped by the side of the road and then shot in the back of the head.

Not sure what I’d do if I knew who the “98% bags of sewer water” were.

Yup. Vigilantism is bad and I’m human and I’m still working on it.