Cold Case Files - Death of a Baseball Mom

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

When beloved mother and sister Janora Stevens is found brutally stabbed in her Tulsa home, her family is bitterly divided and increasingly suspicious of each other.  Hers: Start your free online visit at forhers.com/CCF for your personalized weight loss treatment options. Mint - To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to MINTMOBILE.com/coldcase Progressive - Progressive.com  Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today! 

Hi Cold Case listeners, I'm Marissa Pinson, and if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now, on to the show. The following episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. The way I would describe my mother is very beautiful, very loving, everything a mother is supposed to be. Janora and I had this bond. She was very protective of me, which is funny because she was the younger sister. I'd just been asked if I'd killed my mother. I was frantic, and I was screaming.

Janora was stabbed almost 30 times. But the crime scene left a lot of questions. No evidence, no leads. So many twists and turns. Genora was very good at covering things up. You drive yourself crazy thinking of all these things that could have happened. It never leaves your mind. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America.

Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's May 12, 1987 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Genora was a sweetheart. She was funny and witty, just like our dad. She was very athletic. She used to speed skate and played softball. She was good at everything she did.

Glenda McRae and her sister, Janora Stevens, are more like best friends than siblings. It was like, you know, you've heard of soul sisters? That's how we were. We'd talk on the phone plus have lunch every day. And she was a talker like I am. She told me everything and I told her everything. Troy Stevens is Janora Stevens' son. My mom was fantastic. She was my best friend growing up because I didn't have brothers or sisters. My mother and I did a lot together. She was the quintessential baseball mom, for sure.

Carrie Montgomery is Janora Stevens' niece. Troy was a little ornery, fun. He loved sports, and he spent a lot of time at the ballpark. He was a very good, he was a good ball player. She was at every practice, every game. My father coached the team, but my mother was the glue, and she was my biggest fan. She was super involved. Troy was kind of her whole life, to be honest with you. He really was. On May 12, 1987, Janora and I did not have lunch because she said she was going to have lunch with her husband, Phil,

because her husband and my husband were going to go fishing that evening. As their husbands will be at the lake, the sisters make plans of their own that day. Me and Carrie went to Janora's house because we were all going to go shopping for a prom dress for my daughter Carrie. Later that week, there was a prom at the private school that Troy and my daughter Carrie attended. When me and my mother arrived, Troy and Janora were arguing. Troy had gone to have his hair cut that day.

He was due to have his pictures taken for school before the prom, and she wanted his hair to be longer. And because of that, Genora was furious. They were loud, yelling at each other, going back and forth. And so me and my mother stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. And we were kind of overwhelmed by that. I don't think it was very unusual for them to argue like that, but at the intensity that they were arguing, it was pretty high. She and I had words. It was a little more out of hand than it should be. The blow-up continues until Troy has to leave to go to

a defensive driving class. I had gotten my first car and I got into a little fender bender, and I had to do that to keep my insurance clear. The last words that I heard from my first car and I got into a little fender bender and I had to do that to keep my insurance clear. I lost words that I heard from my mother where I love you and we'll talk when we get home. We spent all evening looking for a prom dress and we got back to Janora's house and she got out of the car and went to the back door and she came through the house and went to the back door. And she came through the house and went to the front door and opened the door and stepped out on the step and waved bye to me.

And I thought, good, she's okay. So I went home. I would never have guessed that would be the last time I'd ever see her. And still to this day, I can't believe it, you know. Glenda and Carrie head for home. Troy Stevens arrives back at his mother's house half an hour later. I got home after school at about 10 o'clock. When I walked into the house that night, from the doorway, I could see her laying in the floor. The closer I got, the more vivid it became.

I saw my mother just brutally, brutally, brutally just butchered. I don't know how else to put that. There are certain things we're just not meant to see. I remember physically going into shock. Strangest thing, but from the shins up, I remember that. I just remember that feeling in my body. I was pretty frantic, and I was screaming. I wasn't trying to piece together what had happened. I just knew that my mother was gone. I backed up into the kitchen to go use the phone and we got an ambulance on the way.

Next, Troy calls his Aunt Glenda's house. I was on the phone talking to my boyfriend and on the other line, I got a beep in and it was my cousin Troy. And he was yelling, he was screaming, I need to talk to Aunt Glenda. And he said to me, Aunt Glenda, you better come quick. Mama's on the floor. I said, honey, she's probably fainted because we do that a lot in our family. I said, okay, honey, I'll be right there because I could tell he was scared. I sat next to my mother while I was waiting on the police. And then I remember the sirens, all the emergency personnel showing up.

Jim Clark is a patrol officer with the Tulsa Police Department. We were the first car there. So we got out of our car, walked up and approached that front door. And we remained quiet so we could listen and see if we could hear a fight or a disturbance inside. I remember it was very quiet. We knocked, nobody answered. I pushed the door open, and it was then I could see from the porch all the way back

to the den, Janora leaning against a wall in a somewhat seated position. She was wearing her nightclothes. She appeared to have sustained multiple wounds. You could tell that there had been a tremendous struggle. It was an extremely vicious attack. It was probably one of the worst crime scenes I had ever seen. Someone had attacked her with such aggression that she was almost decapitated. Carrie and I started driving to Janora's house.

And as we turned the corner, about halfway down the street, I saw lights. I could see the yellow tape and a truck in the driveway. My cousin Troy was sitting on the curb, and he had a bat, a baseball bat, an aluminum bat, laying right next to him. His hands were on his head, and he was going like this, and he was shaking. And the first thought that came to my mind was, oh my God, did they get in another fight? And I went over and hugged him because I just thought, oh my god, you know, what in the world happened? My mother was dead on the floor in a pool of blood. I didn't know how to rationalize what was happening. I didn't understand it.

I think that when the young man saw what he saw, I think it just overwhelmed his senses. And he just seemed like he was very confused and disoriented to me. After talking to Troy, patrol officer Clark secures the scene and waits for homicide detective Mike Huff to arrive. On that night in May, it was a normal night, although it was a little humid, which actually played a factor into this investigation later on. I didn't know what I was walking into. Janora was lying on the floor of the kitchen wearing a maroon house robe. There was a large amount of blood. The TV was on in the adjoining family room.

There was a kitchen and a bar, and it looked like the incident happened there. There were some broken pieces of a large knife, which indicates that knife hit something hard, and it broke. So that struck me as really brutal, a lot of force. This knife looked like it came from a kitchen drawer, so maybe this wasn't a premeditated murder. On the hallway wall to the left, there was a couple large blood smears, which indicated to me that

the victim came in contact with that wall, probably trying to get out the door. She almost got out. You know how many times I've thought about, well, what if she had? She's that far away. Breaks my heart. Detective Huff searches the home, looking for a motive or any clues as to what happened. The residence didn't appear to be ransacked. It wasn't missing articles of expensive, you know, nice televisions, a stereo. There was even $1,000 cash. So I didn't think that a burglary or robbery had occurred.

The crime scene left a lot of questions. There was a fingerprint technician that went through the house. I don't recall that he got any prints that were valuable enough to be compared, but there were numerous strands of hair which appeared to be the victims. Next, Huff focuses on investigating those closest to Genora, starting with her son Troy. There were circumstances where it made you think that Troy could be a suspect. There was no signs of forced entry. He had an argument with his mother that night, and he left, and it wasn't on the best of terms. The police were, in the very beginning, checking out Troy.

If he was on drugs, if he was an alcoholic, and all that kind of stuff. Understandably so, because we even questioned it as the family for a while. Glenda can't help thinking about that phone call from Troy on the night of her sister's murder. He never said one word about, oh my God, there's blood everywhere. I mean, that's the first thing that would have come out of my mouth. And I always wondered why, you know? I thought maybe he knows more than he's telling me. I spoke with Troy for quite a while. Troy was upset.

I'd just been asked if I'd killed my mother. What in the hell are you talking about? Did I kill my mother? I believe anyone would immediately take offense to that, especially an irrational kid that just found his mother murdered like a farm animal that's just part of the job you have to sometimes be the bad guy you have to sometimes kind of test those limits to see what the response is but we saw troy very soon after the discovery, and his reactions were consistent with somebody just discovering a tragedy.

So I didn't come away thinking he was a viable suspect. About, I want to say, 1 or 2 in the morning, Phil, the husband, arrived home. I spoke to him and found out that he had come home from a fishing trip. Phil's demeanor was demanding answers, what happened to my wife. But I don't recall Phil being very candid about their relationship. If you just met Phil on the street, he was a nice enough guy. He was a nice looking guy. He had been a Marine, so I always respected

him for that. I acted like I liked him because of Genora, but I didn't like him. Never liked him. He was a shyster. Phil was my uncle and a real strict father to Troy. very controlling, very intimidating. When I went over to their house, I would always ask my cousin, will you go get me a drink? Because I really was kind of scared of him. Janora was very good at covering things up and being loyal to her husband. But you could tell, because she'd have bruises.

And, you know, I encouraged her, to be honest with you, to leave him. But like most battered wives, they don't do it. Janora's sister Glenda has good reason for suspecting Phil. The night that we went shopping, she said to me, Glenda, if anything ever happens to me, will you promise me that you will never let Troy live with Phil's mother? And I said, of course. You don't have to worry about him

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There were traces of semen that were found on her body that shows she was sexually assaulted sometime during this intrusion. This was before DNA. It's not going to lead you to an exact person. And she had severe gashes in her fingers and her hands, where you could tell that she had tried to deflect the knife. She was feisty, and she was a fighter. And I can't help but think that she was scared to death. And just that in itself, It was the most horrible thought that she was that scared. And I know she was. With no new leads from forensics,

suspicion shifts back to Janora's husband. I did think Phil was capable of murdering my sister. Yes, I did. I suspected Phil because he acted so remorseful. About a week or so after her funeral, Phil said that he wanted to go and get her clothes and pack them. And so I went with him because, you know, I felt sorry for him. And Phil sat in the floor and opened the drawer of the dresser and took her lingerie out and

smelled it. It was weird. And then he literally just got rid of everything that reminded him ever in a week. Didn't even ask any of us if we wanted anything of hers. Phil ended up marrying a girl that he went to high school with three and a half months or so after Janora was buried. And Janora and I both knew he was seeing her before and so that was even harder. It just made me hate him that much more. We did take a set of fingerprints to see if they matched anything in the blood because

it's his house. His fingerprints will be there, but if there was a print in the blood, that would be a big deal. And there weren't. There was no evidence, no leads. Phil had an alibi that he was fishing. That alibi checked out. We just got past him as a suspect. Having a bad marriage doesn't automatically make you a killer. Almost convinced that Phil has nothing to do with Genora's murder, Huff falls back on old-fashioned police work, looking for fresh leads. I spent a lot of time just sitting in the neighborhood, just watching what was going on,

just getting an idea of what this neighborhood was like. Three months after the murder, Huff's patience pays off. In early August, I saw a couple girls sitting in a car down the block smoking marijuana. And I asked them, do you remember when that lady got murdered? And they said, oh yeah. That night, we were sitting down here and this guy came walking up to our car, asked us to give him a ride somewhere. They said for some reason he had on a light blue jean jacket, and it was buttoned all the way up. And that was very odd because it was so warm and humid.

They saw some scratches and marks on his neck that made them think he'd been into a fight. And this really interested me. Hey, we're on to something. We've got a path here, so let's go with it. They told me the guy's name was Quentin Barnes. Quentin Barnes was a teenager. He had some background in some minor crimes, either drugs or property crimes, but no crimes of violence that we knew at that time. He was living on and off next door to Janora Stevens. His sister,

Victoria Barnes, lived in the house next door, and he would stay some time with her and her boyfriend. Huff checks the sister's address. Quentin Barnes is not there. I did speak to Victoria Barnes about her brother, and she was not uncooperative, but she had no information that was helpful that she would share with me. She defended her brother and said that there's no way that he could have been involved in such a horrific or brutal crime. Ultimately I figured out where Quentin was staying and I put together an affidavit for a search warrant to search for any evidence specifically for a jean jacket.

I found an unkept apartment and I went into a closet and there was a light blue jean jacket laying on the floor. I was so excited. Now here I am on the right track. When the jacket was analyzed, they found a hair that was brown.

It was dyed, as was Genora's hair. It was the same color. So I'm thinking, wow, this is good. I potentially have big evidence. It's now November 1987, six months after Genora Stevens is murdered. Detectives send the hair for testing to try and prove for certain that it matches Genora Stevens. But the analysis of the hair came back that it was not Genora's hair. It wasn't Quentin Barnes either. I wasn't happy with the process. I just felt that I didn't have people that really were up to date on the science.

Despite the test results, Detective Huff's gut tells him Quentin Barnes is somehow involved in Genora Stevens' murder. So I go talk to Quentin and he denied and denied, saying he was never in the house, didn't have anything to do with it. Just the look in his face and his tone of voice. I'm thinking this guy's a ticking time bomb. And I was really getting upset with myself and not getting everything that we needed. You know, you get frustrated, but you try not to let it bother you. And then I got promoted, and you have to go back to a uniform division for at least a year to learn how to be a supervisor.

So I was away from investigations, and at the same time, I'm going through a really ugly divorce, okay? That kind of threw me for a loop. You know, it really stalled things a bit. These cases do affect your home life. I was always on call. I had a couple sleeping bags at my office, and so a lot of times my kids had to go to sleep at the police station. There is a balance that I didn't find. With Huff off the homicide beat, the case of the murdered mother goes cold. It got cold. It got really cold.

And for a while we were thinking, no, they're never going to solve it. You drive yourself crazy thinking of all these things that could have happened. And you get so frustrated. Everyone has their own ideas of what happened, of who was involved, and who the killer is. It never leaves your mind. It's now June 1991, four years after Janora's murder. After Mike Huff completes his supervisor training, he's promoted to head up Tulsa PD's Homicide Unit and picks up where he left off on Janora's murder. When I first got back, I kind of assessed where we were, you know, where the hair evidence was, what its status was. Huff had never been happy with the first analysis of the hair found on Quentin Barnes' jacket,

so he requests a closer forensic examination. The jean jacket was sent for forensic analysis. At that point in time, the Tulsa Police Department lab had hired a forensic analyst who had previously worked for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and it completely overruled the first hair analysis. Yes, there is a match on the hair. Janora's hair was on the jacket. And there's more damning evidence on Quentin Barnes' jacket. Fibers were found that matched the robe that Janora Stevens was wearing when she died.

And blue fibers were found under her fingernails that matched the type of fibers that were in the jean jacket that was in Quentin Barnes' closet. And it would be consistent with clawing at her attacker. I mean, this is telling a story. It was coming together. All I needed was a final piece of evidence. There were now three different ways

that tied Quentin Barnes to the scene that night forensically. The hair, the robe fibers, and the jean jacket under her fingernails. That forensic evidence was huge. This case is coming together piece by piece. If you have a business, you know how important it is to make selling to your customers as easy as possible. And for great brands like Cotopoxy or Hailey Bieber's Rode Skin, the secret to a smooth buying experience is the business behind the business. For millions of brands, that's Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. It's the home of the number one checkout on the planet.

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who lived next door to the crime scene. So much time has passed that she's more willing to talk. And what she says blows open the case. Now, she was more open to telling me some more facts. She said that Quentin made comments to her admitting guilt, that he killed her and will never find the knife. It was a huge break in the case. So I convinced the DA to file the charges,

to issue an arrest warrant, and I told him our best bet is to me to talk to Quentin when he's in custody. The determination was made that we're going to charge this case. We believe we have a strong enough case to convict him with what we have now. And we think the time to go forward is right now. Quentin Barnes at this point in time, years after 1987, was now married, had a good job, was, if you would, an outstanding member of the community. I found him at his home.

He opened the door. I said, Quentin, we need to go. He goes, Mike, you know, I didn't kill that woman. I said, Quentin, you're under arrest for murder. Never had heard of him, ever. I never even heard that name, period, Quinton. We were elated just that someone had been arrested, just happy that it was going to be solved.

Mike brought Quinton Barnes down to the police station and had a video set up to video record the statement that Quinton Barnes was going to give. At the time that was unique. You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to answer any questions or make any mistake. Do you understand that right? Yes. I know it's tough Quentin, but it's important that you get this straight. Remember in as detail as you can. I need to hear what happened, Quinn. Oh, God. He was initially a bit confused.

You know, why now? Why didn't we do this six years ago or whatever? But he was nervous. I was living with my sister. Just kind of hitting and missing, doing drugs. What kind of drugs were you doing? Cooking. Were you stealing to support your habit? Occasionally. Barnes admits to breaking into Genora's house on that night back in May 1987. I got him to draw the interior of the house on a chalkboard.

We came back, we waited out here. We're back in. It was, there's a here, went back in. It was a little bit of a run in here. Something like that. And it was good. I mean, if I hadn't been in that house, I wouldn't have known that it was so accurate. So Quentin Barnes admitted to being there,

but being there with his sister. I don't know what she was going to get. She just said she was going to try to get some drug money. And you said Victoria wanted you to go with her so you could watch. I guess to watch and see if somebody came home or not. I wasn't in there that long. You said you were in there for three minutes. I seen my sister pick up the knife after they started wrestling around.

He pointed the finger at his sister entirely. I did not kill her. My sister did. You're saying that you saw your sister, Victoria, stab Genora Stevens, and you didn't do anything to go help the lady. And out of all the times that I've talked to you the past seven years, you've not once told me this story. It was just grasping at straws to try to blame his sister. It just didn't work. She always told me that she would try to tell everybody that I did it, that I was there, that I stabbed her. I did not stab her. She stabbed her. But Victoria Barnes had an alibi because she and her husband were at a bar the hours during the murder?

I saw Victoria drive down the street and come home probably about 11, 30 or 12 o'clock midnight that night, and we were able to go back to the bar. They knew her. They knew her husband. They said, oh yeah, she's here all evening. So she's out of it. Plus the fact that there's sperm in Janora's throat. There's no way you can shift that blame to Victoria.

Do you have sex with that woman? No, I did not. I want you to look me in the eye and I want you to look me in the eye, and I want you to tell me, did you sexually touch that woman that night? No, I did not, Mike. We're walking down the hall to get booked into jail. I said, Quentin, you didn't have sex with her.

How did sperm get in her throat? And he says, my sister's bisexual. And I said, you're crazy. Holy cow, that was really stupid. You know, he just dug himself a deeper hole. Barnes never quite confesses to the murder on videotape, but his story is so implausible, prosecutors are confident of a conviction. The trial was tense because it was a death penalty case. So there's a tremendous amount of emotion. It's just the stakes are the ultimate.

After seven and a half years, the thing that was the most shocking to me was walking in and him looking at me, staring at me. And I just stared a hole through him the whole time. I just stared a hole through him. The picture I painted for the jury is that Quentin Barnes went to that house to do a burglary. But there was a confrontation where he was discovered in the house and ended up stabbing her 30 times. That video is extremely powerful. As a jury, they want to see the reaction, the body language, how their eyes are darting in and out. Did they hesitate?

But it wasn't the end of the case because it was he said, she said. How will the jury take a he said, she said finger pointing between a brother and sister that were now, if you would, estranged? We had to build those pieces to exclude Victoria and then use that forensic evidence that we had that clearly focused on Quentin Barnes as being the killer. I put a tremendous amount of stock in the blue fibers that were found from his jean jacket. And the fingernail fibers show he was the one being clawed at. It wasn't that he was just in a back room while his sister was doing all this work.

When Victoria told her story, then that nailed him. Quentin Barnes was found guilty of first-degree murder. The day they read the verdict, it was a whole new set of emotions because it had been as long as it had been. I felt so satisfied. You know, it's a big portion of my life. It was like seven years, and that was a hard seven years.

We were all just crying to ourselves and hugging each other and everything, and it just felt wonderful. We were like, finally, finally, you know, this has come to an end. The jury came back with a recommendation of life without parole. There was a strong sentiment in the room that death was an appropriate punishment in this case. But you need 12, and there was somebody in the room that was not willing to make that step. In the end, Quentin Barnes takes that final step by himself. A couple days after trial, Quentin Barnes took his own life by overdosing on pills in the Tulsa County Jail. Ultimately, we were asking for the death penalty, and we got it. Quentin Barnes,

he got what he deserved. Divine intervention. That's exactly how I felt. That was his admission right there. My mother's murder, it has formed a lot of my life. It's made me a very cautious person. I've tried over the years to keep this in perspective. It became about life now and not about life without a mom. I loved her so much.

I just can't even tell you how much and how special she was to me. When she was murdered, it was just like I lost my right arm. She was just my baby sister. I don't like to think of that night. I don't like to think of that night. I don't like to think of her that way. My mom was something else.

I miss her. I miss what I remember of her. Pluto TV is a place for movie fans, like me. And TV fans, like me. They've got something for everyone, and it's free. We'll see you next time. Criminal Minds, solving crime after bedtime. Whatever you love to watch, Pluto TV makes it easy with thousands of free movies and shows. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.