Cold Case Files - REOPENED: A Husband's Secret

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

After the murder of Barbara Jean Galliher goes cold investigators are left with few options. Almost three decades later, after being caught in a compromising situation by his wife and admitting to a sex addiction, Donald Vanderbent has something else he wants to get off his chest.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. On the evening of August 15th, 1970, in the dusty town of Sedalia, Missouri, Helen Galaher is worried. Her daughter-in-law, Barbara Jean Galaher, is not picking up her phone. Helen knows the newlywed is alone in the house. Her husband, Stephen, is stationed in the military overseas. So why does the phone continue to ring?

And where is Barbara Jean? Finally, Helen walks one block to her daughter-in-law's house and lets herself in. A few minutes later, Helen calls the local police department. Barbara Jean Galaher is dead, and a murder investigation begins. Pettus County Sheriff Emmett Fairfax takes up the case. When he had a body laying in the living room floor with things scattered around, Barbara's hair had been on rollers, and there was rollers different places in the room, so there'd been somewhat of a struggle there.

Barbara Jean's shirt is ripped open, her shorts half-zipped. Her neck shows scratch marks, and there was blood caked around her mouth. Strong indications the victim might have been strangled. Close by the body is a note printed in block letters, apparently left by Galaher's killer. Well, it was kind of a misleading note. I told you to stay away from him. So it was a little bit of a mystery. To police, the note would seem to imply it was written by a woman who perhaps fought with a victim over a man.

Details on the note are kept secret from the public. The media, however, does get a look at the body. In 1970, Pete Daniels writes for the Sedalia Democrat. The mark that I saw on her neck indicated to me, even as a young 30-year-old journalist, that whatever it was that happened here, was done by someone from behind and that it was extremely violent. For those living in Sedalia,

the sudden presence of a corpse makes death a personal and constant companion. Even worse, whoever killed Barbara Jean Galaher most likely knew her and was probably living in their small town. Two days later, Fairfax reviews Galaher's autopsy report

as he thought the young woman had been strangled to death. Surprisingly, no evidence of seaman found. Meanwhile, the best piece of evidence, a mysterious note found at the scene, is shipped to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for Forensic Analysis. Using the chemical Ninhidrin, the Bureau is able to lift fingerprints from the notepaper. The most interesting set comes from a man investigators had already interviewed and dismissed as a suspect, a neighbor of the victim, named Donald Vanderbent. Demeanor was very calm. I mean, he wasn't agitated or anything, So that's why it's pretty tough to get much out of somebody that appears, tries to appear that he doesn't know what happened.

Vanderbent is brought in a second time for questioning and refuses to talk. The print match is not enough to support a charge of murder. The neighbor is released and the murder of Barbara Jane Galaher goes into the cold files. Whoever it was had to constantly be looking over his shoulders because of that knowledge. afraid that somewhere or somehow, someday, he might make a mistake that would let the cat out of the bag. The small town that knew Barbara Jean Galaher waits for an answer to her murder, a weight that will last more than three decades. In 1999, nearly 30 years after Barbara Jean Galaher was murdered, Donald Vanderbent resides in St. Augustine, Florida. He is now an alcoholic and addicted to pills.

In March of 1999, he marries Julie, a woman he had already once divorced. I was so taken. It sounds selfish. Taken in the moment of just being with him, even in the shape he was in. A year into her second attempt at marriage, Julie Vanderbent climbs into bed with her husband, and everything changes. I got into bed and right next to him were my daughter's underwear. Donald Vanderbent tells Julie he is a sex act. addict and used his daughter's underwear for masturbation. But Bent doesn't stop there.

He tells Julie he's been on the internet, taken a test for sex addicts, and answered yes to every single question. Julie Vanderbent believes her life has hit rock bottom, that things can't get any worse. But then, her husband confesses one more thing. And he said, I have to know if you're in this marriage for the long home, because I'm going straight to hell,

and you've got to decide if you're coming with me. 30 years ago, I murdered someone. And I said, you're lying to me. Banderbent insists he's not, and that the woman he killed was his next door neighbor. I said, you have to turn yourself in. And he said, I am not going to prison. Do you hear me?

I am not going to prison. He said, are you going to stick with me through this? I said, isn't that what a wife does? Vanderbent appears relieved and within minutes is sound asleep. Julie Vanderbent, however, lays awake wondering just what to do. In 1999, Julie Vanderbent gave her ex-husband a second chance at marriage. A year later, Julie's marriage to Donald Vanderbent falls apart in an instant when her husband confessed he was a sex addict and then revealed the secret of a murder he committed 30 years earlier.

Julie decides to bring her story to the police. James Jim Minero has been a detective at the St. Augustine Police Department for just a little over a month when Julie Vanderbent walks in. I was a brand new detective, eager, trying to learn. I go up to the front office to get some paperwork or look up a report, and she's in the lobby crying hysterical. I was hoping they'd tell me he was lying to me, or that he had supposed he'd done something that he didn't.

Jimonero doesn't give Julie the news she is hoping for, Instead, he asks her to go undercover and work with police to build a case against her husband. We did something that was very risky. We said, look, Julie, we don't have a lot of stuff to go on. I'm going to have to ask you to go back to your house and act like nothing ever happened and to try to get more information for us. He wanted me to find out if I could get a year that he did it, how he did it, and a name. I said, well, I'll try.

Julie challenges her husband, telling him she doesn't believe he really killed someone. She says, I don't believe you. Tell me more. I don't believe it happened. You just want attention. So, of course, at that point, he gets a little more specific as far as the details and how we broke in, how we waited for. Vanderbent tells his wife he only meant to rape his victim, but things got out of control and he killed his neighbor with a piece of wood. Then Vanderbent composed a note and left it by the body. He told me he left a note next to the body in all capital letters that said, I told you once to stay away from him. I said, why?

I left that note. He said because I wanted to divert suspicion and have them think a woman did it. Julie presses for the woman's name, but Vanderbent says he doesn't remember. He gets very edgy at that point and I stop because at that point I'm getting more and more afraid. Over the next four days, alone in her house, Julie Vanderbent continues to play detective, picking through her husband's belongings, looking for some clues as to whom he might have killed. All she is sure of is that the crime happened sometime in the early 70s. I asked her to go back and look at his military files and to find out where he was stationed at in this time period he says this occurred.

In the early 70s, Donald Vanderbent was stationed at, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. For Cold Case detectives, it is at least a starting point. Jim Minero composes a teletype, providing details on the alleged murder and asking for information on Donald Vanderbent. On the afternoon of February 22nd, Jimonero's teletype comes into the police department in Sedalia, Missouri and makes its way to Commander Jim Gardner. He immediately recognizes the description as belonging to the most famous murder in Sedalia's

history, the unsolved slaying of Barbara Jean Galaher. I had always thought, you know, one of these days, when I get some time, I'm going to pull that file up and take a look at it and see what we've got. Now Gartner has his opportunity, and he pulls the Galaher file. Not only do the facts fit the St. Augustine teletype, so does the suspect. The Donald Vanderbent, who confessed to his wife in Florida, was a neighbor of Barbara Galaher in Missouri, was questioned about the crime, and even, even has his prints on a note found beside Galaher's body.

Gartner and Lieutenant Bill Shob get on the phone with Jim Minero in St. Augustine and compare notes. When we received the information and checked with Air Force officials and also pulled up the old case, it was clear to us that we were talking about the same person, Donald Vanderbent. Cold case detectives tell Julie Vanderbent the man she married is most likely a killer. They ask her to sit tight and not alert her husband.

Julie agrees to continue to help. You know what happened? The victim, Barbara Jingel of her, she then had a name. He was able to tell me a name. And from time I heard her name, I knew I knew I'd done the right thing. Jim Gardner is leading the investigation.

For 10 days, his men watched Vanderbent, hoping the suspect would provide them with more evidence of his guilt. On March 1st, concerned about Julie Vanderbent's safety inside the house, detectives decide to confront Vanderbent directly. I felt that it was time to roll the dice with Donald Vanderbent. We had one shot to do it and we better get it right. Donald Vanderbent is working at an aluminum factory in St. Augustine, Florida, when police show up and ask him to come downtown.

Now, 49 years old, Vanderbent is not told exactly why the law wants to talk with him. He does, however, have a suspicion. Somewhere along the line on the ride from work to where we were going at that point, I didn't know. But I knew there was like a column came over me, and I knew where we were going and why we were going there. Fifteen minutes later, Vanderbent walks into a police interrogation room. On the table is a case file and pictures of Barbara Jean Galaher. Special Agent Rick Look and Chief David Shore handled the interrogation. I think it took it right back to 1970.

He hung his head and started crying. He felt we were going to be very successful at that point. He wanted to tell his story. And most people do, I think, subconsciously. They wanted to tell their story. Vanderbent freely admits strangling Galaher. The details of his story, however, are far different from the tale he told his wife.

Now Vanderbent claims the murder was merely a flirtation gone horribly wrong. Vanderbent is trying to finesse the story, minimize his guilt, and perhaps make a plea of manslaughter. Cold case detectives will have none of it. The 49-year-old is returned to Missouri and pleads guilty to murder in the second degree. He was free for 30 years. That was his parole. Now it was time for him to pay the price for killing Barbara Jean Galaher. Donald Vanderbent is sentenced to 25 years for killing Barbara Jean Galaher.

He does his time at Missouri's Northeast Correctional Center. With parole a possibility down the road, Vanderbent admits the story he told police was a lie. There was no flirtation with Barbara Jean Galaher, just a man lying in wait with a piece of wood in his hand. I was trying to reduce my culpability and make myself not look as guilty. I was trying to put some of the fault on it, on Barbara Jean.

And there was absolutely none. This was my fault. Plain simple. As for the woman who put him in prison, Julie Vanderbent has moved on, putting her husband and the horror behind her, holding on to only one thing. the memory of a young woman who deserved better in life and found a friend 30 years after her death.

I had a very hard time. From the day that I found out, this was true. I had a name and a face of a beautiful woman. And when I got the case file before me was a picture of her body and what he did to her. And when I saw that picture, I said, Thank God I did what I did.

Thank God. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by podcast 1. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at A&TV.com. Hello, and welcome to Plutofo. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV. your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long. Catch Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy.

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