48 Hours - Dead On The Boardwalk

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

On August 17, 2002, Justin Barber was walking on the beach with his wife, April, when they were gunned down. April died and Justin sustained four bullet wounds but survived. Justin told police they were attacked by an unknown assailant, but after an extended investigation, Justin was arrested for the murder of his wife. “48 Hours" Correspondent Harold Dow reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 6/23/2007. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin is very kind and he's gentle and he's very giving. He's got a great sense of humor. He can make anybody laugh. My name's Lisa. I was Justin's best friend. The winner this year, of course, is Justin Martin. I was a young man with the world at my fingertips. I had everything to look forward to.

I wanted to be CEO, chairman of the board. of the board. I wanted to run a major company. He loved April very much. She was an extremely special person. Sunshine. Commitment to family. Just in April hit it off instantly. April and I both were initially very impressed with what he was setting out to do. He definitely pursued her and she was willing. We were very, very attracted to each other, I think instantly. We were married in the Bahamas. It was a very fun, very fun time.

This case started out on a Saturday night, August 17, 2002. My name is Howard Cole, and I'm a detective with St. John's County Sheriff's Office. They were walking on the beach. They were approached. The guy had pulled again. We were struggling. It was a fight. His wife was shot, and he was shot. And I left her there. I was trying to find help. to find help.

He was shot four times. And within a centimeter of my lung, a bullet passed. I was deeply shamed. I had abandoned her there alone on that pitch. We initiated an extensive search of the area, and we found his wife, April Barber, dead on the boardwalk. The gunshot went to the face. And I think that I went crazy at that point.

He'd wake up screaming. He would be sleeping, and he would be drenched and sweat. His nightmares were heartbreaking. I'm a broken man. Fortunately in this case, the victim April Barber left us enough clues to continue on with the investigation. April's tires were slashed. There are certainly a few people that had a romantic interest in April.

We need to talk about the car that was seen at the location. We need to find the driver of that car. April told different people in her life, different pieces of information. None of us had the whole story. Secrets in the Sand, tonight's 48 hours mystery. They were a really cute couple. Very fun-loving, carefree couple. And they looked really good together.

April Barber had the kind of wedding most girls only dream about. She was beautiful. A beach in the Bahamas at sunset, a beautiful dress, a handsome groom. A special day, special time for her wife. special time for her, wasn't it? It was very much so. Was she happy? She was.

She was. But April's aunt, Patty Parrish, says April was hardly a traditional bride. She had a gorgeous white dress that I remember her cramming into her suitcase, and here we are trying to get the wrinkles out of it the day of the wedding. She was more of a country girl at heart. That whole week was special. We spent a week there together. The lucky groom was Justin Barber.

What kind of things you do after the wedding? as newlyweds. You don't have to go in any detail. I'm talking about like things you did out in the public, you know. I don't think we spend a lot of time in public. Okay, let's move on. If anyone deserves such a happy day, it was April. So many of the days before it had been difficult and sad. Her mother had passed away when April was 17. She died from cancer. That was very difficult for April. She was finishing her senior year in high school. Her mother's death made April grow up fast. Her father, her father, fell apart and later got into trouble over drugs. So April briefly took over the mothering

of her younger brother, Kendon, who was only one, and her sister Julie, who was nine. She took care of us. She would get me up for school, get me off to school. She cooked us dinner. She just took the place of our mother. Losing her mother also gave April's life a purpose. She went to college, determined to pursue

a career in medicine, treating cancer patients. She definitely didn't take life for good. didn't take life for granted and had pretty clear goals about what she wanted out of life. This is a few months after we met. Her best friend Amber Mitchell says college also opened up a whole new world for April. And at the Kappa Delta sorority house, she found a new home. She was extremely cheesy, happy, bubbly. And if you stood next to her, you went forward.

In 1998 when she was 23, April's world became even Even brighter, she met Justin, at the time a top student in the University of Oklahoma's MBA program. Amber was there the night they met. A lot of the guys she'd recently dated had not yet sort of found their place career-wise, and Justin came along as such a complete opposite, and I think that was very attractive to her. And when Justin first brought April home, his mother Linda took to her right away. I liked her immediately. She was very beautiful. very natural. You could just tell she was a good person. She fit in real well with the family.

It was just 10 months after they began dating that Justin and April eloped to the Bahamas. I just worried that it was really quick and that maybe they didn't know each other well enough yet to do that. But I supported her completely because she was happy and I wanted to see her happy. When they returned from the honeymoon, April and Justin moved to Georgia for work. and April's siblings, Julie and Kendon, came to live with them for a while. But it didn't last. It was too much for the young couple to handle. Of course, it was difficult for them because they were so young

and trying to raise two kids. They tried the hardest to give us everything that we could possibly want or need. I think there was stress almost immediately. They're still getting to know each other, and they've got other people in their home, and careers they're starting, and just a ton of change. It's a lot for any newie married couple to take on. Then, just two years into the marriage, April and Justin's careers forced them apart.

April, who worked in radiology, took a new job in Georgia. But Justin, a business executive, was transferred here to Jacksonville, Florida, nearly three hours away. They saw each other mainly on weekends. Did you want her to come and be with you and leave that job alone? It wasn't just a normal job that she took there. It was the next step up in her career. And it was a very, very good opportunity for her at an early age. And so I fully supported that.

They had lived like this for more than a year, when in the summer of 2002, April came to Jacksonville to celebrate their third wedding anniversary. On the night of Saturday, August 17th, they went out for dinner and drinks. April wanted to eat at Caracas, had a nice dinner, shot a few games to pool. After pool? Decided to go for a drive. Justin says their destination was a remote state beach. We had been there a few times before April's previous birthday, and I think perhaps the year before,

it was a place that we would go to be alone on the beach. The couple took off their shoes and started walking along the shoreline. Suddenly, Justin says, a strange and threatening man appeared in front of them. He was Caucasian. He had a hat on. It was a dark hat with a logo. How big was he? In relation to me, slightly taller and heavier. 200 pounds. Do you think it was robbery?

Yes. Did you hear anyone say, give me your money? He was yelling. Yelling what? I don't know exactly what was yelling. I assume that he wanted money. Did you see a gun? Yes.

Justin says he lunged at the man. We were struggling. It was a fight. Then shots rang out. Justin doesn't remember what happened next. He thinks he passed out. After it was all over, you came to? Yes.

And what happened you looked around? Yes. What did you see? Nothing at first. April was nowhere to be seen. Did you call her name now? Yes, I was yelling her name. Justin's wife and his attacker had both disappeared into the darkness.

I ran down the beach. I couldn't find her. I was screaming. I remember feeling confusion. I remember feeling nauseous. Panic. Panic. After desperately scouring the beach in search of April,

Justin Barber says he finally found his 27-year-old wife floating face down in the surf. He rushed into the water and tried to revive her. She wasn't responding to me. So what'd you do, Justin? I pulled her out of the water. Justin says he pulled April to shore, and that's when he noticed she'd been shot.

He tried several times to live. her into his arms, but he couldn't do it. My body just was not responding the way that I think that it should have. Panicking, he bent over April's limp body and grabbed the waistband of her pants, then dragged her several hundred feet. We got to the point at which the boardwalk meets the sand. And then there's a set of stairs that lead up to the boardwalk. I couldn't very well drag her up the stairs.

I wanted to lean her over my shoulder and try to carry her that way to the road. But his last ditch effort to lift April also failed. I dropped her. And I think the sound of her hitting the ground caused a reaction in me. And I knew at that point that what I was doing was just not working. It was at that moment, Justin Barber says,

that he figured out what was wrong. The reason he couldn't carry his petite wife to safety was because Justin himself had been shot. And not just once, but four times. And now Justin says he was forced to do the unthinkable, leave his wife here on the beach while he blazed a trail to find help alone. I don't know what the thought process was, but I left her. And where did you go?

I ran across the boardwalk to the highway looking for help. And that's when I saw the first car coming. Realizing he had left his cell phone at home, Justin says he darted into the middle of the road to wave for help. But three cars whizzed past him. I ran to our vehicle. I remember getting in the truck and driving back to town. Shaken and injured, Justin sped off into the darkness.

I was driving erratically. I was looking for help. I was looking for attention. I remember seeing a red light and stopping there and cars were there. And I started yelling for help. There, at a major intersection, Justin Barber says he finally found a good Samaritan who called 911. I think somebody's been shot. Okay, is he conscious at all?

Yeah, he's conscious, trying to keep him. They're trying to keep him that away. Okay, do you see a gunshot? Within minutes, the paramedics arrived. Justin told them what happened to April, and they rushed him to the emergency room. We got a call of a reported robbery, an attempted robbery with a shooting.

Meanwhile, Detective Howard Cole and the entire St. John's Sheriff's Department immediately sprang into action. We had a gentleman up there who had been shot four times. Initially, we didn't know where. We just knew that he had said that it was on the beach. When police reached the beach, they instantly made a chilling discovery. When the deputy found her, she was laying there on her back at the foot of boardwalk completely wet.

She was pronounced deceased right there at the scene. Police now had a homicide investigation on their hands and a killer on the loose. Cole rushed to the hospital to find out from Justin everything he knew. He just said, how's my wife? And I basically said that paramedics were on scene. They found her and she was deceased. Justin managed to compose himself and tried to describe the gunman who killed April. He did not know what the guy looked like.

He did not see his face. It was too dark. His description of the suspect at that time is that he was taller than me. He was stronger than me. And he had on a baggy t-shirt and a ball cat. Cole then photographed the wounds the gunmen had inflicted on Justin. He had been shot in his left hand, his left shoulder, the base of his neck, and most alarmingly, his chest.

I don't remember feeling pain at that time. My mind was on April. Justin's wounds turned out not to be life-threatening, and doctors released him the next day. Soon after, he flew back to Oklahoma to face the grim task of burying. his wife. Well, the funeral was, it was both lovely and awful. April's best friend Amber says the funeral made it clear just how many people loved April and felt close to her.

We did everything we could to make it a tribute of how wonderful she was. Justin, however, seemed distant, according to Amber. Justin was almost mute. He was looking at the floor. He wouldn't make eye contact with anybody. Justin's brother Charlie wasn't surprised. He says Justin was simply overcome with grief after losing April. He was emotionally devastated, physically wounded and emotionally devastated.

I've never seen him like that, even when our dad died. Charlie was so worried about Justin he wouldn't leave his side, so they flew back to Florida together. Once there, Charlie says, Justin was able to put his grief aside for one reason only. He wanted to get back as soon as possible so he could help in any way he could with the investigation. Even returning to the place where April died and spending over 10 hours with police to help look for clues Everything they asked for I gave them every time they wanted me to come back to St. John's County and talk to them some more I did whenever they wanted a statement I gave it to them

But almost immediately Justin felt police were overlooking critical clues that pointed to April's possible killer The biggest one? Witnesses told police they had seen a second car parked at the beach. Around the time Justin and April was shot. They saw a car right there at the boardwalk. They described the car and the police chose to do nothing. We didn't have a tag number. We didn't have a reliable make. I would have loved to have found it because you know what? That was a potential witness in my mind.

The simple fact is we could not. Justin was also mystified why police weren't thoroughly investigating suspicious incidents that happened while April was living on her own in Georgia. April had a stun gun because she did not feel safe there. April's car was broken into, and just three weeks before the murder, so was her house. We did speak with the investigator. That actually worked at burglary. There's no connection with that with this case. Were there any people in April's life who you would consider to be a threat to her? I think that we're stretching a bit when we say that. I think that there

some folks in April's life that should have been investigated. But there are certainly a few people there that had a romantic interest in April. But did the police follow up on those leads? No, I don't believe they did. But what Justin didn't know is police were pursuing leads of their own. And in fact, they thought they were already zeroing in on April's killer. To Detective Howard Cole, Justin Barber was the prime suspect in April's murder from day one. The situation as he presented it wasn't adding up.

Even the basic premise of Justin's story didn't make sense to Cole. Is this the kind of place, this area right here, where someone would stick somebody up, rob somebody? I don't see why they would. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. It's never happened before and it hasn't happened since. Cole's suspicions were first raised when he found out nothing was taken during the alleged robbery, including Justin's wallet and April's Diamond Ring. And when Cole took Justin to the beach after April's funeral,

he became even more suspicious. He certainly appeared to be crying, but there was no tears coming down his face. He was almost like rubbing his eyes, just like that. You know what I mean? Like trying to force up some emotion. So Cole took a closer look at Justin's account of what happened after he left April on the beach that night, beginning with his attempt to flag down three passing cars. If what he was saying is true, I would have expected to get numerous 911 calls, and we received none.

Most troubling of all to Cole was that when Justin got into his car to find help for his wife, he drove almost 10 miles before stopping. Here's a McDonald's right here. That would have been open. There's a Walgreens right here. It's 24 hours that would have been open. Just north of here, you'll come up. There's a 24-hour shell station.

It would have been open. And they're very well illuminated. If you truly were trying to get help, that certainly would be a place that I would consider getting help. I don't think anybody would accept that that man left his wife and drove 10 miles away to get help. That just doesn't even, that defies reason. Meanwhile, April's family and friends, like Amber Mitchell,

were comparing notes and growing suspicious of Justin too. When you put it together, it was frightening what was really going on. The story they began to piece together was of a marriage in trouble. And they realized that problems surfaced right at the beginning when April's siblings, Julie and Kendon, came to live with the newlyweds in Georgia. Whenever we first lived with them, it was good. Towards the end of living with them, it got kind of... I was very strong-willed and I didn't like it.

So the family brought Julie back to Oklahoma and Kendon soon followed against Justin's wishes. He was really angry. None of us understood why he cared so much about it except for if he liked the appearance of being such a noble guy to take in these children. Amber says she realized appearances were very important to Justin. He would put his high school jeans on. his high school jeans on once a month to make sure they still fit. And if they didn't, he would fast until they did. He gave April a hard time about weight to the point she was almost paranoid about gaining weight.

And she was tiny. Amber also knew that April suspected Justin was having an affair in Jacksonville. She didn't know her name, but she had learned that Justin was playing tennis with her, and April was certain that there was more than tennis and that it was. an affair and confronted him about it. Detective Cole discovered the woman was Shannon Kennedy, who worked at the agency where Justin's company rented cars. Cole invited Shannon to the police station the same afternoon he was interviewing Justin.

Shannon Kennedy came in right away and she was very honest. She said it started out as kind of a social relationship to go out and have drinks and whatnot and eventually progressed into a sexual relationship. Justin, however, was less honest, at least at first. He adamantly denied having any affairs with anyone. Shannon Kennedy specifically. I said, well, I'm going to bring her in this room. We're going to get to the bottom.

He said, no, no, no. He said, I did, I did sleep with her. I have been having an affair with her. Only confronted with, you know, her and he being in the same room, did he tell the truth? To me, that's huge. When he searched Justin's apartment, Cole made another discovery. Two life insurance policies,

one in Justin's name, one in April's, for $2 million each. I thought we could be looking at a possible motive. I mean, $2 million, that's a whole lot of money. April's Aunt Patty Parrish says she had always been troubled by that. And April thought it was a lot of money. Neither April nor I could understand why he was insisting to have a $2 million life insurance policy on her life.

Amber Mitchell thinks she knows why. He was in debt up to his eyeballs. Stock market losses and other expenses had left Justin over $50,000 in debt. By the summer of 2002, between the affair and the money problems, April had had enough. She was leaving him. She told him that she was leaving him. As the circumstantial evidence implicating Justin was mounting, Detective Cole began to examine the crime scene more closely. And now, even the fact that Justin had been shot four times began to be shot. times began to seem suspicious.

He had one wound to his left shoulder, which was out and away. He had another one in his right shoulder. Same thing, it was kind of out in a way. You're saying out and away from vital organs? Yeah, I'm saying out and away from center mass, exactly, from the stuff that counts. Justin and his brother Charlie found Detective Cole's description of the wounds preposterous. It hurt him. He was in a lot of pain for a few weeks after.

He had to keep the one arm in a sling. Have you ever been kicked by a horse? No. I have. And I felt like I'd been kicked by a horse in several places. It was painful. It was painful. Then just months after the murder,

while police were still trying to gather hard evidence against him, Justin suddenly moved to Oregon, where he got a new job, a new woman, and started a new life, far from Detective Cole's scrutiny. But suspicions about Justin Barber persisted. He's very controlling, he has no feeling. I'm not a violent person. Very intelligent, very charismatic.

I would never ever consider doing anything like that. And he was committed to this situation turning out successfully for him. And I did not kill April. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailen Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying, true, or... urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts

Pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. Even though Justin Barber had moved to Portland, Oregon, far from the scene of April's murder, she was always on his mind. I wore my wedding band on a leather thong around my neck. Why did you wear that ring around your neck? Because I wasn't ready to let it go. It was a reminder of her, and it was a reminder of my failure during our marriage. So Justin distracted himself with work. Come on, Angel, go.

And with a new woman. He would take me to the movie somewhat, take me to dinner. We were just best friends. Lisa, who asked us not to use her last name, says Justin often relived what happened to April that night on the beach. He felt like he just abandoned her. He never forgave himself. Justin never forgave April's family either.

It was because of them, he claims, that he remained the prime suspect. Did April's family suspect you right away? I believe now that they did, at least very, very quickly. And now I've learned that they've voiced. their accusations to the police immediately. April's aunt, Patty Parrish, makes no apologies for putting the spotlight on Justin. He planned every moment of it.

This was premeditated, cold, calculated. Yet months, and then years went by without an arrest. So Patty, who was a judge in Oklahoma, stepped up the pressure on Florida prosecutors to arrest Justin. Judge Patty was insistent that we keep this case on the front burner. But State Attorney John Tanner worried his prosecutors would get burned by the case. We knew it was a case that could be lost. You just don't expect a person to shoot themselves four times, but as we began to search

for who did it, we determined that all the evidence led back to the husband. After years of pressure and painstakingly weighing the evidence, which was largely circumstantial, prosecutors finally rolled the dice. In July 2004, a very different-looking Justin Barber was arrested for murder. Did you kill your wife? No, sir, I did not kill my wife.

Did you shoot yourself four times to cover up the murder? Oh, that's ridiculous. Did you love April? I did. I still do. June 2006, four years after April's murder, All right, Mr. Bailey, show the jury in. With his family behind him, Justin Barber is finally put on trial in St. Augustine, Florida.

When you take common sense with you and apply the evidence, you'll be convinced that the defendant murders life. The state attorney's office is seeking the death penalty, and two of its youngest prosecutors, Matt Foxman and Chris Frasman, and Chris France are trying this high-profile case. I call you next week. What was your gut reaction when you first received this case?

Well, it's a career case, I think, for a prosecutor. The threshold problem for us, I think, would be to convince a jury that someone would shoot themselves four times. Justin Barber has insisted, and I believe that he's an innocent man, and the only thing we're interested is an exoneration. This is treated with simply a child. Justin's attorney, Bob Willis, will try to convince the jury that a robber and not Justin Barber killed April on the beach. You will find that within a very short period of time, after April Barber's death, it was found on the evening of August 17, 2002,

that the police focused exclusively their attention on Justin Barber. The prosecution's star witness, Detective Howard Cole disagrees. If information had led to another suspect, would you have been open to it and investigated it? Absolutely. Cole testified that he asked Justin why he drove more than nine miles from the beach after the shooting. He said he didn't really remember much about that drive. Did you ask him why he didn't stop at any houses? Yes.

And what did he tell you? He said he didn't want to get some old man out of bed. Cole also testifies that even though Justin said he dragged April by her waistband and had a bullet hole in his hand, his blood wasn't visible on her pants. Looking on the top line of her pants there and her stomach, do you see any evidence of anyone's blood? No, sorry, don't. But the defense strikes back. They say Justin's blood was found. on April. How about the blood that was here on her, right here, inside upper left arm. Did you know at that time

that that was Justin Barber's blood? No, sir. You know it now, though, don't you? Yes. Okay, Mr. Kennedy, if you just come right up here, please. Prosecutors turned their attention to Justin's possible motives and call Shannon Kennedy to the stand. When he became involved with the defendant, did you know that he was married? Not originally, no. Did you ultimately come to that conclusion though yes and what sort of things did the defendant say about his wife or his marriage he said that he loved her he just couldn't live with her if you want to look at just the fact that he was cheating on his wife and the fact that there was two million dollars and you want to stop right there then we can't do anything about that if on the other hand you're really

seriously interested in who killed april barber let's look at the evidence that's exactly what prosecutors do next when they drop a bombshell all right call you and Make sure, Sam. Say we're called Chris Hendry. Six months before the murder, they say, Justin went online to research how to shoot himself without getting hurt. A computer expert recovered a record of those Google searches. You recognize what I'm showing?

Yes, sir, I do. It was a Google search in which the keyboard's medical trauma, gunshot, and chest performed. Finding that computer search where he was actually shot, that was the first indication that He had researched a specific location, and he just happened to be shot there. That was a pretty big turning point. Then just hours before April was murdered, Justin went online again.

This exhibit, what does it say was downloaded? Basically, it's telling me that the MP3 guns and roses used to lover was downloaded. How significant was that song in this case? Well, it was significant because of the timing. Downloaded just hours before the murder. Then when he's set to turn his computer over to long enforcement after the murder, that was the only song deleted. Justin surfed the

internet so often his lawyer says the evidence is meaningless. Out of potentially 2,200 queries, they wind up with two that look bad in retrospect. I think I could probably do that on anybody's computer. And Justin says he's not giving up. I will fight until I have no more options. Then you'll be screaming all the time that you're innocent yes because I am innocent as Justin Barber's murder trial drags into a second week the pressure is growing on two families once were close this is devastating for us and it's devastating for them it's particularly tough on April's siblings Julie and Kenden whom Justin once helped raise it was heartbreaking because somebody

that we trusted and somebody that we had loved would would be capable of doing something like that to our sister. We both looked up to him. Dr. Stern, if you'll come right up here, please, and raise your right hand and purple screen. Justin's defense now attacks one of the most critical points in the case, whether Justin's wounds were superficial or not. A defense expert testifies that Justin's wounds were serious.

One nearly struck an artery. What would be the result if that's a phlegia artery which was penetrated? Extensive hemorrhage. And possibly dead? Possibly, yes. Then prosecutors present two witnesses who say they saw another car at the crime scene.

The problem is they can't agree what color the car was. It was an older model car, light colored. I want to say it was dark in color. The trial finally boils down to a key point, illustrated by this graphic. which represents a crime scene photo of April's face that the jury was shown. To prosecutors, the blood flowing in a single direction proves Justin is lying. The blood flow is everything. Justin Barber's story is that she was shot down by the water

and then carried 18 different positions with her head moving in all kinds of directions. The blood flow would be everywhere. Instead of, it's in a unified direction. And what what the significance of that is, his story just wasn't true. But the defense's expert testifies the blood flow is consistent with Justin's story. In my view, she was shot in that location near the water, and plus other blood, which had come out, was probably washed away by the waves because she was, as I understand, found face down in approximately one foot of the water. Finally, the case draws to a close.

This is a pure circumstantial evidence case. The gun was not recovered in this case. There's certainly no one that ever saw him involved in any aspect of this crime at all. He wanted it all. He didn't just want to evade a prosecution. He wanted that for sure. And he wanted the $2 million. And he wanted sympathy for being shot.

And he wanted to look like a hero who tried to save his wife. If the jury finds Justin guilty, he could be sentenced to death. What was the first thing the jury did when you went in the liberation room for the first time? I pray. What did you pray for? Wisdom. One person's already dead and another one might die. So we wanted to make sure that we were sure.

Deliberations drag into a second day. Agony. Agony. Agony. It was very, very difficult, waiting there all day. We're up to about hour 28 of deliberations. Then a third. By the third day, I was beginning to fear that the jury was hung. But jurors are still trying to sort it all out. All right, Mr. Barbara, would you please rise for the verdict?

Finally, on day four, a verdict. With a jury, fine and defendant, Justin murders Barbara as follows. Guilty of first degree premeditated murder as charged in the indictment. April's family and friends are overcome, but their emotions are mixed. I was happy, but then again, it breaks my heart. It's understandable. Kendon, your reaction to the verdict? Joy.

Joy? Yeah. But then I live with him for... Your thoughts, you're feeling. Relieved for an instant and then heartbroken for Justin's mother. You will, of course, be remanded to the sheriff of St. John's County pending the penalty phase.

Justin's family does not have mixed emotions. They're simply furious. I would love to know what those jurors saw that made them think that he did this. because he didn't, and they didn't prove that he did it. So I don't know what they went by. The jurors say they were swayed by many factors, especially the blood evidence.

If she had been shot out on the beach, there would have been some smearing, some blood flow in another direction. So the blood flow on her face did not match the story that Justin told. Correct. Also, there was the computer that he had searched for gunshot wounds.

Gunshot trauma right chest. And he gets shot in the right chest. I really can't tell you on national TV what I think about him. But it's not good. It's not good at all. We were adults here. Tell us, George.

I think he's a dirty son of a bit of a bit. That's what I think he is. But Justin Barber, who might now be sentenced to death, is defiant. If that jury thinks I killed April, then they should execute me. I would never ask for mercy for the person who killed her. Why not? Because they don't deserve it.

And if that jury believes that I'm that person, then they should send me to death row. The jury recommended the death penalty for Justin Barber, but the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole.