Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Mark Barton - Family Destroyer and Mass Murderer

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

Six years before he became known as the Day Trader who went on a murderous rampage, Mark Barton was the suspect in the death of his first wife and her mother while they were camping at a lake in North Alabama. Today, Joseph Scott Morgan shares  personal memories of working the homicides in Atlanta, as well as breaking down the murders of Mark Barton’s first wife and her mother in the camper, and his second wife and children in their apartment.. Dave Mack fills in the back-story on how Mark Barton may have gotten away with murder and child molestation, but he couldn’t escape himself.     Transcript Highlights  00:00:08 Introduction of geography, family killer, mass murderer  00:02:46 Discussion of Mark Barton  00:07:21 Discussion of murderers and weapons  00:11:44 Talk about day traders in Atlanta  00:16:04 Discussion of murder in camper trailer on lake  00:21:17 Discussion of “robber” that left behind cash and jewelry  00:26:26 Talk about blood in the Camper  00:31:02 Discussion of Mark Barton cheating on his wife  00:35:57 Discussion of timeline of family murders and Buckhead massacre  00:39:49 Discussion of Barton killing second wife and children with a hammer  00:43:06 Discussion of murders at Momentum and All-Tech  00:46:20 Conclusion, Barton shoots himself in the head   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. I've always been a fan of geography. I was a fan of maps for years. I would look at any map. And I think that that may have translated over to my son because now my son is a GIS major. You know, he does the geospatial information system stuff. And finishing up college right now.

I'm so proud of him. And he makes maps. That's kind of cool, I think. And he studies satellite imagery and all of that. But one of the things I've always been fascinated with regarding maps are looking at the origins of things. And specifically, you say, well, Morgan, how can a map have an origin? Well, the map itself has an origin.

But what I'm talking about are bodies of water, particularly moving bodies of water. And those are most of the time where they originate from. Those are called headwaters. Today, I want to talk about the headwaters of one of my favorite locations in the world. And my buddy Dave Mack will attest to this and that's the Coosa River. The Coosa River starts way north of where I live now but I enjoy it all the time with my old boat that I've got. But the Coosa River flows through a lake and it's a world famous lake, actually for a very specific kind of fish called crappie. Yeah, you heard that term right. Crappie, crappie. South Louisiana would call them succulae.

But what I want to tell you about is something that happened in an RV park many, many years ago involving one of the most notorious mass killers in history of the South. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I always talk about, you know, I love my boat, man. I love my boat. I love my wife. I love my son and my daughter i love my grandbabies but your feelings for your boat go even deeper don't they i tell you what but you know the case

that we're literally i'm doing a disservice by saying case yeah boy i gotta use not just little plural i gotta use gigantic plural today. Man, you know, because we're talking about cases. Talking about Mark Barton and the guy who pulled off. I don't know if that's not the right term, but the guy who committed the worst mass casualty shooting in the state of Georgia. And that wasn't all he killed. That wasn't the only time that he I mean, when we talk about a mass killer of going in and killing a bunch of people in one day or one spot, he is that guy.

But besides those that he killed in one spot or two spots in a general vicinity in Atlanta, he had already killed three others previous to that and two others previous to that, separated by a number of years. Mark Barton, when I dug into this story, is the filthiest, disgusting killer I've ever seen in all of the dealings we've had to deal with, Joe, because he doesn't kill in just one way. I don't know if you would call him a spree killer because he certainly kills his own family members. He kills the people that he's closest to. And then he kills people because he believes that they did him wrong in business. This guy, if he wasn't already gone from this earth by his own hand, he would have been killed in prison because of all the damage he did to innocent people who had nothing but love for the guy.

Yeah. And he's, look, I'm not going to diminish in any way. Anyway, I'm going back to your comment about prison. If he had survived to that point, um, he's a child killer too. Yes. I mean, he is a child killer. He killed,

uh, beaucoup adults, but he, and he's quite possibly a child molester. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I,

I, I heard through this story, his daughter at two and a half years old, not in the middle of a divorce or a custody issue or anything else. She uttered to a teacher at daycare that her daddy molested her. And there was an investigation. Now, I know I'm putting the horse ahead of the cart, isn't what you're saying. But that was one of the many things I found out when we're talking about a child killer.

This guy is the I didn't realize how bad he was, Joe. I mean, I know we're dealing with our murderer, but sometimes. Sadly, we detach when somebody does something that just seems to be. Like a shotgun approach to life. You know, they just indiscriminately shoot people that they don't really have a personal connection with. That somehow we separate those types of killers from those who do kill a family member,

somebody they have a relationship with, or the types of the way that they kill. Normally, when we have somebody who has committed more than one murder, they do have their own SOP. They've got their own standard operating procedure or modus operandi. However you say these things, you know that. I mean, they do kill.

They prefer a certain method, and they stay down that path. They do. And, you know, one of the things that – and this – listen, this term, maybe it had been prior to me. Listen, I don't know everything. And if you ever come across somebody that claims they do, run away. Don't walk. Run away as fast as you can from somebody that says they know everything. And they want to be president of the United States.

When they say those two things, I know everything. I'll fix every problem. Vote for me. There you go with there's a term that has come up and you're talking about familiarity relative to uh killers um and i know you've heard this uh murder kit where they have a set of tools right that they operate with and we've heard this over and over again about serialized events israel keys oh my gosh yeah yeah exactly um that the and methodologies methodologies vary uh dependent upon what what the goal is and you can think about a

spree killer could a spree killer be could they have a murder kit well they put together a kit many times if they if they got multiple weapons with them, they won't fail safes, that sort of thing. Is that a murder kit? Yeah, possibly. But when you hear the term murder kit, you think about, well, they've got tape, they've got bindings,

maybe they've got things to clean up with. And of course, they've got weapons that they prefer, not something that's going to be a weapon of convenience. But look, I got to take you back in time. You know, I was working. This goes back to, well, the main thing here is, you know, we talked about the mass shooting that took place in Atlanta. I was a senior investigator with the medical examiner's office.

In 1999 when this happened? Yeah, in 1999. And what became known as the Buckhead Massacre. And it was a weird time back then because just a week before the Buckhead Massacre, we had worked another massive loss of life event in southwest Atlanta that I think, and I'm going to get this wrong probably, but I think it's referred to as the Mechanicsville Massacre. And we had a whole family that was wiped out in a tiny little home with one of the children surviving, an 11-year-old that had hid in a closet. And I actually got injured on that scene. I slipped, pulled a groin muscle. I was wearing a Tyvek suit, and there was so much blood in that house

that when I put my foot down in the hallway, and they were old hard pine floors that were polished, there was so much blood dave that i slid and um and split the tyvek suit and pulled a groin muscle all at the same time and i'm wearing like a mask over my face i've got a head cover on gloves that sort of thing and i had to you know get myself out of the house and retool, refit and get back in. Because even though I'd injured myself, there ain't nobody else to do the job. You got to get back in there.

And I'll never forget that. You only get one shot at it, man. You only get one first look. I preach that all the time, you know. So, you got to live by your preaching, man, if that's what you're going to do. And you have to stay on. It doesn't matter. Now, I mean, if you lose an arm or something, you're obviously.

But if you can, because no one has the mindset that you do. If you're the primary investigator on a scene and you've already seen everything. Every minute gets further and further away from the moment it happened, which means it's a changed circumstance. Now, it's a changed circumstance now. It's a changed situation. It does. And then the next week, we had the Buckhead Massacre with Mark Barton. And it wasn't, Dave, it wasn't just a single building. He migrated from one spot to another, just raining down hell. And we're talking about what was, and I, most, many people,

particularly those that are much younger in our audience are not even going to be familiar with this term. There's a term called day trading. Oh, wow. And you would go to, you would go to a specific location where they had dedicated computers and you had to pay for time at this thing. And you would sit down and you would do trades like you were on the floor. Right. You know, up at one and they had the tickers everywhere and all this sort of thing. But you were an individual doing this and people would do their own LLCs, you know, and just go to the terminal.

It's a dedicated terminal, hardwired in, and you'd be trading all day long. And that's what Mark Barton did. He actually was a day trader. He didn't start out that way. He did not start out with a goal of being a Wall Street day trader. By the way, when this happened, I remember how it was covered in the media by people like me. Because for many of us, we heard of day traders. If you remember back in the late 90s, there was a lot of fast happening on the on Wall Street and on the Nasdaq. There was so much happening because of the tech stocks.

And oh, yeah, they were everywhere. We were on the front hand side of the bubble. And boy, it was like people. It was a wild west, man. People were making hundreds of thousands of dollars with minimal investments. It was a huge time. And Mark Barton, in the summer of 99, this is two years before the bubble burst. Just to give you an idea, there were ups and downs, but a lot of people were making bank.

And Mark Barton, whatever he chose chose was the wrong way for a while. And he had had a number of really down months financially as a day trader that brought him to a point of desperation. But Joe, I don't know that that was the only reason when we look back at his life, this man had gotten away with murder already. Before he ever pulled a gun on the people he blamed for losing money, he was already a murderer who hadn't been convicted. And isn't that the fascinating thing about this? You talk about, you know, we go on and on about people that walk into businesses and schools and all of these horrible, just tragedies that happen and people hold on to your hat here, Dave. I got to tell you, even though you're not wearing a hat, I'm looking at you right now.

It's almost rote now because it seems like every talking head in the media will always ask this question. They'll say, were there warning signs? He was always such a nice guy. Yeah. In this case, Dave, oh, let me tell you something. There were warning signs. And those warning signs came in the form of a double homicide at the headwaters of the Coosa River in Cherokee County, Alabama. David, I wanted to go down this road with you about Mark Barton because I was sitting here and I was thinking how the Buckhead Massacre this summer.

It will have been a quarter century since that happened. And I still remember all of my colleagues that were involved, you know, there physically on the scene. We were back in taking the bodies at the morgue, you know, trying to make sure that we could get people identified because it's a total just frenetic mess. And it was horrible, these things that we were witnessing. I got to tell you, when we found out about the suspect in the shooting and that he also had two open homicides that had been laid at his feet, the authorities thought that – and they had happened six years earlier. And that's the reason I made the comment about, oh, gee, were there any warning signs? It's not like he's running around the neighborhood naked and howling at the moon or anything. No, nothing quite that subtle. We're talking about somebody that went to a campground and killed his then wife and mother-in-law with a sharp instrument.

I was going to say allegedly, allegedly because he was never convicted of that crime. He's dead now. And he was the only suspect they ever had. And you, you know, the warning sign, I,

I actually pulled this quote, Joe, because I wanted to, yeah, it was, um, you're talking about his wife and her mother. It's Labor Day weekend.

They're at Weiss Lake up in Cherokee County, Alabama. And his wife and her mother are murdered inside the camp, the trailer. And his father-in-law says, until the murders, Mark was the perfect son-in-law. Until the murders, Mark was the perfect son-in-law. Until the murders, Mark was the perfect son-in-law. So how did they die? Because there was no forced entry, right? Didn't it look like a robbery? Yeah, but there was even jewelry and like $600 cash left behind.

I don't know if it's... Thieves don't do that, do they? No, they generally don't. And also thieves that force... You think about force entry and people literally kicking in doors. I've had this happen. I've had people throw stuff through windows to gain access to individuals and murder them. All kinds of stuff like that that you see out there. But anytime that we have no signs of force entry, and that's always our qualifying remark, no signs of force entry or struggle. You always hear that in every one of these police reports.

And I've always wondered, is it really that big or is it a TV thing? No, no. It's true. The TV world took that from us. It's something, it's a canned comment that is made throughout the country. I've come across it, reviewing reports.

But, you know, you're making a very broad assertion here. Okay. That upon my initial observation, this bloodbath that I wound up walking into, I didn't see any forced entry, you know. Or now, as far as the struggle goes, there was blood that was essentially cast off all over the bathroom mirror you know in this place and here here's the thing they didn't find a weapon either but they kept saying i've heard i've heard people say that they were bludgeoned yeah and i've had other people say that it was sharp force and i've heard hatchet and this is from a forensic, one of the things that you get with a hatchet or an axe is that when you start doing these strikes on an individual, it has a, let's see, how can I put this? sometimes of a blunt force okay because you're coming down if you just imagine just imagine a

hatchet right now something you buy at a big box store or whatever it's got a single blade and then you think about the back side of it okay that back strap on it that's very weighted that's the reason axes are made that way they're like a gigantic steel wedge that you can drive through the air and cut something. Well, sometimes they get twisted, you know, as this feverish thing that's going on. You're not always going to hit perfectly with that leading edge. So you'll get these big, nasty contusions. Now, you will get a leading edge there that's kind of clean if they can drive that edge through the body.

And when you see what's really impressive is you go down to the bone. And if you do like a microscopic section, a cross section of the bone, when you're looking at it, Dave, the thing has got a, it looks like the V hole on a boat. It's got a perfect V shape in there and it kind of trenches out, but then you'll get these little spider web fractures that run away from it. And since they didn't leave a weapon at the scene back in 93 when they were doing the autopsies on both his wife at that time and the mother-in-law, they were thinking, hey, you know, we don't have the weapon. But boy, this sure does look like an axe or a hatchet here because you're going to get these two injuries that kind of communicate. But here's the big question. And you know me, brother, you know I hate the word why. I do. Let's say what? What would have

been the motivation of Mark Barton killing these two women? Well, they found out pretty quick what they think was the motivation. I'll let you do this big reveal, because I got to tell you, you know what they say, the root, right? The root of what? You know, so you go back and you think about the later day trading career that he was to have. The love of money, friends. There were two things.

One, as they began investigating, okay, no sign of forced entry. I read this in the report on the police investigation. They found out, though, immediately since there's no forced entry, who did they know that would have access? OK, what kind of relationship does he have with his wife? And, you know, they were looking at his father in law, too, because, you know, his wife's dead. And so they're looking at these guys and lo and behold, they find out. Four days ago, four days ago, Mark Barton took out a $600,000 life insurance policy on his wife.

Oh, my goodness. There's ding, ding, ding. Number one, Deborah Barton has $600,000 in life insurance. So they talked to the insurance company and find out, well, he actually wanted a million, but he couldn't cover the payment. So they settled for $600,000. That was their first tip off of who their suspect might be. Now, taking it a step further, they looked at the crime scene. A purse had been dumped out of Eloise Spivey, the 59-year-old mother of Deborah Barton.

Her purse is dumped out, and it's made to look like a robbery. The problem was, yes, there were a couple of pieces of jewelry missing, but there's an envelope with six $100 bills in it. And no robber in his right mind is leaving cash. It just ain't gonna happen no and and most of the time when you get these kind of robberies these home invasion kind of robberies like this um and there have been a there have been these things where you will have um rv parks where you'll have like ne'er-do-wells they're like camping out in the woods adjacent to

it lots of times they're druggies. Oh, yeah. And these things are generally very violent. But, Bubba, let me tell you something. They're not walking out of that scene without everything of value. They're like vultures. They'll pick over everything. And so when you, you know, you had pointed out, well,

why would they leave cash behind? Jewelry is one thing. You got to take jewelry to either somebody that can fence jewelry or somebody or to a pawn shop. And that's going to catch people's eye. Cash. Yeah, buddy. Cash is king. If you got the greenbacks, baby, you can go spend that anywhere.

You can go buy a pack of gum with it. The next thing you know, you got $80 in cash. Well, I'll say 80. That'd be a lot of gum. Yeah, but you're spending it as you leave. know you don't have to do anything cash is king but yeah when they start investigating and again this wasn't they didn't solve it they had a suspect in mark barton but according to the investigators and the sheriff they all everybody was looking at mark barton i mean the family was everybody liked him for this crime.

And you know, I still can't find out, Joe, and I have looked for this. His alibi was that he was home, Marietta, or just outside of Atlanta, with the two kids. Two children, very small. Very small. Did he

bring them with him? There you go. There you go go and leave them asleep in the minivan while he sneaks in in the middle of the night and destroys his wife and her mother and then i mean he's going to have to be covered in blood how does he get out of the camper without being covered in blood joe it's bone chilling uh and he yeah he would have had to have had because listen if you're if if you're going to attack somebody with a weapon like this they're not just going to sit back and allow you to attack them they're going to see it coming they're going to throw up their arms they're going to try to move out of the way it's not like a static thing where you know like if you've got oh let's just use the example of an axe you've got a piece of wood before you, or maybe you're chopping down the tree.

Well, you can hit the tree as many times as you want. You can take chunks out of it. The tree ain't going to move. Right. Human beings, when they're hit with an edged weapon, trust me, those pain centers are firing, and they're trying to get out of the way. This is something, Dave, that has always held through in my career. I see, you know, I'll think about it. I'll think about it when I'm in the because you are you're literally in the wake of these horrific events and you're looking at it. And first off, you're thinking about the person you're thinking, does your mind work?

You know, what were you thinking? And you see the through line in it sometimes. And you're thinking, OK, you're you're a deputy sheriff in a small rural community in Alabama. Can you imagine showing up at that RV park? And, you know, most of the time you've got people and it's the world. It's the crappy capital of the world. I think they call it up there in Lake Weiss. People come there to catch this specific species of fish and they're everywhere.

The panfish, guys. Just so you know yeah and and like a march yeah yeah like a bluegill only gigantic and so you've got like uh what starting in late february march and going into april they're going on bed and then there's another thing that happens in the fall i'm not completely familiar with it but anyway the most you're gonna you know if you're going to say, do you have a fishing license? Or what are you doing here? Why are you drunk out here in public? Because they're going to camp out. But can you imagine being a deputy and you walk into this RV and the thing is bathed in blood?

And this person's a ghost. They've just vanished into thin air. I'm not asking you to put on Mark Barton's hat here, but I got to ask you, what do you think his motivation? I mean, what do you do with the rest of your life at that point in time? After you just destroyed your wife and her mother. I'm at the mother of your children, by the way. I believe those two children in the car. I believe those two children were asleep. I believe that Mark Barton hopped back in his Ford Taurus, which was fairly new at the time, and stripped off whatever he wore to cover himself while he was in there. He wasn't a stupid guy, knew what it was like to wear lab stuff and hopped out in the car and drove home and mark barton was the suspect he was their only suspect and there were some things that happened in the investigation they brought him in now father-in-law who said he

was great right up till the murders you know great son-in-law um mark barton would not take a polygraph so uh father-in-law not happy about that his wife and his daughter are dead and the one guy won't take a polygraph so they're chewed to pieces yeah they're absolutely and you know the father-in-law had to go back he had to see that RV you know something he had to live with so I can only imagine when this guy's

refusing to take to take the polygraph and here's another thing and I can say this as being you know being a papaw now. Mm-hmm. Can you imagine what's going on in your mind as a grandfather? Oh, yeah. This animal has my two grandbabies.

Yep. And that led to a battle, Joe. Actually, after the death, okay, after police, the guy took out a six hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy his wife's now dead four days later after he takes that out there was a battle there was custody issues over the children uh mark barton was the suspect they couldn't pin it on him joe the thing is he was living in lithia springs georgia and you had the alabama officials out of uh cherokee county alab. They're investigating a murder there. But now you've got the Georgia officers are involved in the investigation

because that's where he lives and that's where evidence might be. Evidence might be in his car. Well, here's a problem. And I'm going to throw this out there because we've got to move on. Alabama investigators, you know, they get a search warrant for the car. They get his floor mats out from his car. But you know what? They got the floor mats because it looked like it had bloodstains on it.

They let him keep the car, Joe. Yeah. And said, just don't wash it or anything. Just don't wash the car. Don't clean your car. Don't do anything. And we'll be back later. So when they did come to get it, he had spilled Coke and everything else.

Everything was destroyed in there that could have been of any evidentiary value. And I'm thinking, you know, then I have to go back and it's easy to Monday morning quarterback these guys. I know, but you're thinking. And here's the thing. They did find,

they found blood evidence in there and this gives you an idea as to how far technology has advanced. Oh, buddy. Or since then. this gives you an idea as to how far technology has advanced our sense in it gives you an idea how what size this blood these blood droplets were back then during that period of time if you wanted to do dna typing you you probably would have had to have had a sample that would have been about the size of a quarter okay really yeah now this is pre-oj trial too so we didn't have been about the size of a quarter. Really? Yeah.

Now, this is pre-OJ trial, too, so we didn't even know about a lot of this. Yeah, you didn't. I mean, we knew about it in forensics, obviously. Yeah. But the sample size had to be really robust, and you compare it till today, if we find the most minuscule amount. Touch DNA. Just touch something. It can be tested.

By the way, touch DNA might come up in the Koberger trial, just DNA. Just touch something. It can be tested. By the way, touch DNA might come up in the Koberger trial, just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gee, you think? Yeah. Yeah. It's going to come up. But you know, Joe, I noticed that when they got the car back, finally, the cops got hit. The gas and brake pedals had been thoroughly cleaned and recently conditioned with Armor All. Everything in that car, gone. So it was no use. But the thing is, he was still the main suspect. And the police were fighting every which way they could. It was the police that actually helped the insurance company do battle with him.

The insurance company didn't want to pay out. They did not want to pay out. I think they had like a negotiated settlement. They did. And they had agreed at least to put like $ hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in a trust for those kids i think it was a six hundred thousand dollar policy they negotiated it to 450 000 but 150 000 of this goes into a trust for your kids you can have access to 300 000 sign off on it and we'll walk away that's what they did so what did mark barton do well first thing is um within a week of the funeral of his

wife the mother of his children and her mother um leigh-ann vandiver a girl that he had met on his uh sales trips you know when he was working as a salesman um she started spending days over there nights over there at his house in lithia springs, the home where his wife had just been. Within six months, she moves in with him. So the girl that they suspected he was having an affair with police did moves in with Mark Barton within six months of the passing of his wife. Now, Leanne Vandiver was considerably younger than Mark Barton at the time in 1993. He was 38. Leanne Vandiver was let's see, she would been 21 and they've been dating for two years.

So she was 19 when he's in his late 30s and they're dating behind his wife's back. She moves in when she's 21 and he's 38, 39. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the term dating. Oh, when you're married? Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, it implies something else. I mean, and this guy's a real scumbag, you know, because he's running around with his wife with with these two babies and he you know obviously butchers his wife

and and his you know and and his mother-in-law and i'm thinking about this young woman and she's an adult she's made this decision to be with him and i'm thinking wouldn't you at least have an inkling of what he was in you know what happened to your first wife where is she i know you were married you know what's the story well now all of a sudden she's got an instant family doesn't she yep because he's retained two kids yeah she's retained these kids i mean he's retained the kids had to fight for them they're domiciled with him and her yeah to whom he gets married and they leave lith, which is, if you're not familiar with Atlanta, there's Marietta, which is kind of a big area.

It's kind of to the northwest of Atlanta. Lithia Springs is even further west. And so that means it's closer to Alabama. You think about the pathway he would have taken getting from eastern alabama which is where lake weiss is to lithia springs it's very easily done it's not a heavy lift right even on back roads you could get there really you know pretty quickly but you know they leave there and they wind up going down to stockbridge georgia which is where's that? Well, if you think about a clock face, and Atlanta's right in the center of it. Marietta is about at the 11 o'clock position.

Okay. Lithia Springs is at about the 10 o'clock position. All right. Stockbridge is at about the 5 o'clock position. Oh. So, it's on the other side of the clock face. Okay. From where they were. So, he moves. other side of the clock phase from where they were.

So he moves, and again, it's another suburb. It's along the I-75 corridor, just on the south side. He lived off of the I-75 corridor on the north side before that. So he can, and it's easy. I mean, it's a commuting distance from Atlanta. You're doing business in Atlanta. So he sets up, they set up.

He uses the money, the insurance money to set himself up as a day trader. He takes, Joe, we got it down to he had $300,000 in that payout. He takes $294,000 of that money and puts it into his day trading account. He's going to be a big man on Wall Street. And, oh, my goodness, Joe, it didn't take long after he and Leanne Vandiver, when she becomes Leanne Barton and stepmother to Matthew David Barton, who is he's looking up to his, you know, they were both the kids were too young when their mother passed away. Michelle was two and a half. David was five. So they were very young, or Matthew David, rather, very young when their mother passed away. Now they've got a stepmother

and their dad and stepmom is young. Now, in their first couple of years together, Joe, neighbors said it was pretty routine for her to leave and there to be a fight on the neighborhood street. Now, that's why I read some comments from neighbors the week of the massacre talking about what kind of person Barton was. Go back and talk to him later on. And they're like, no, man, they were constantly fighting. She was always threatening to leave or leaving. She spent a lot of time. There was even discussion that by the time of July 27, 1999, Leanne Vandiver was no longer living with Mark Barton all the time. And that's where he wakes up.

July 27, 1999, Mark Barton wakes up in his bed. His wife, Leanne, is there. And according to his own actions, his own words here, Mark Barton begins the killing spree. He kills his wife in her sleep. It says he bludgeoned her. He bludgeoned his second wife in her sleep. He stuffs her body in a closet in the master bedroom and goes on about his merry way. Nobody knows about this on July 27th that morning.

The next day, July 28th, 1999, Mark Barton kills his children from his first marriage. Michelle, who was eight and Mark David, who was 11. He kills both of them by beating them in the head with a hammer and then dunking their bodies in bathtub water to make sure they were dead. They were drowned, yeah. Can I interject something here? Please. Yeah. When this occurred, and remember this occurred, it was like a two and a half day period relative to the murder of his second wife, these kids, and then leading up to the Buckhead massacre and eventually his own death um you come through an event like the massacre in buckhead where you've got nine

people that are essentially shot to death in two separate locations and for those that aren't familiar with bucket buckhead is like the upscale area of atlanta okay you're young uh you you think that you know you're going to be uh you know, the top of the heap. And that's where you would want to move. It's where all the clubs are and all that sort of stuff. So, these two businesses are up there. And they're both day trading businesses. They're kind of across the street from one another.

It was during that period. I remember talking to a colleague of mine that was like the lead on two of these bodies. And I remember them saying at the time, Dave, that when we got the news, after we had spent all day out at the scene processing the scenes, and these scenes are surreal. You know, again, bad deal. Okay, now you're talking about at the in buckhead at the okay yeah at the at the scene there was like this moment in time after they're done with this where they're told oh by the way the bodies of his current wife and his two children have been found beaten to death and stacked in a closet.

And it's like, I'm just talking about from an investigative perspective here, Dave. When this occurred, if you didn't think that the wind had already been taken out you're in you're emotionally drained because you are after working scene because they're very intense and keep in mind when the shooting took place this is hours and hours before mark barton would die himself you think that you still have a mad and they did you still you still got a madman on the loose you're gonna have to push this through all the way through work the scene do the autops autopsies, collect all of the evidence that you can, and then hopefully they're going to catch this guy and prosecute him. Well, that's the mindset they were in

and they're thinking, you know, oh my God, we've got, there's three more bodies down in Henry County, which is where Stockbridge is. And that was worked by a separate agency along with the GBI. It's hard to take the measure of it is what i'm saying we know that he all right so he kills his wife one more in her sleep then he kills the children while they're sleeping and then he so the 27th his wife 28 the kids then the 29th is when he goes into town and where he has by the way he's lost his money his money. The money's gone. He had blown $100,000 in the last couple of months. He shows up at the first place that he did a lot of trading at was Momentum Securities.

At Momentum Securities, he had been there twice that week, and they were like, you had a margin call. You got no money. He writes a $50,000 check to open up his account so they'd get trading again, and it bounces. So they're like, no, you can't do that. Well, when he shows up, they know him because he has been trading with them. When he shows up on the day of the 29th, he walks in and he's talking.

He's talking to people like everything's just fine, just normal. And then he pulls out guns, Joe. Now, so far, we know that allegedly he kills his first wife and her mother with a hatchet or something in a very confined area and leaves. He's killed his second wife and his own children with a hammer and leaves. So you would think he would stay along that same line, that he would use a hammer or something and start beating people, but he doesn't. He actually breaks out the guns when he gets at Momentum Securities. I think that this is evidence of, and this is kind of obvious, I know, but it's evidence of an escalation relative to how much havoc and how much hell can

I, can I wreak upon this world that I hate so badly because I have been robbed. So I'm going to try and, you know, look, blunt force is brutal. We know that a sharp force is brutal, but it's hardly efficient.

Okay. Medieval times, they fought with, with, with blunt objects and they fought with swords we've moved now to firearms he shows up with two semi-automatic camper yeah we're in a neighborhood home right people are going to hear a gunshot and remember it yeah not going to hear a hit to the head with a hammer no you're not cry yeah yeah you you would and i think they you know with the his

his children and his second wife he ran that risk because they were living in an apartment if you've ever i'm sure everybody in our you know sound of her voice have at least been in an apartment you can hear what's going on on the other side of the wall i hated living in apartments anyway you know it but that's the nature of it look when you show up with firearms like this and you're going into a a business uh establishment here you're purposed at that point and you know i'm listen i don't want to i don't want to forget people in this because we've got nine victims of the shooting by itself. But, Dave, there were like, I think there were like double-digit people that were injured. And, you know, in addition to this, in the office parks here.

So he's raining, you know, he's raining down havoc in this environment. People are scurrying everywhere. There's a classic image. You can see him leaving on a CCTV camera footage. You know, he's like, it's a still shot. It's black and white. Leaving momentum securities. Yeah.

And he's wearing like a white t-shirt pair shorts pair tennis shoes or whatever. Very, you know, like if you saw him, he's not going to look like, you know, some, some kind of ogre coming out of the past. Somebody lives under a bridge and eats billy goats. You're talking about somebody that just looks like John Q. Public that walks in here and it's Satan incarnate at this

point in time. I think later that same night, they tracked him down. You know, he tried to kidnap a girl as well. Back in a minute, Joe. So he goes into Momentum Securities. He kills four wounds of others.

He then walks across the street to Alltech Investment Group, makes a small talk with a receptionist there. Nobody knows what just happened at Momentum. Nobody knows his wife and kids are dead. Nobody knows any of that's going on. And he breaks out the guns and starts firing now. This all happened very quickly. The murders at Momentum and then the shooting that takes place at Alltech Investment Group

where five people are murdered there, right? Yeah, because you had a total of nine people murdered. I don't know totals on how many people were wounded. People that are still mentally, emotionally scarred for life for life so he leaves there now this is when he hops in his minivan and takes off and they get him he are they chasing him right off the bat joe they're looking for him and everybody knows what he's driving and uh i remember that going out on the air you know they're looking for this minivan i I think it was white. And so you're going to put out an APB, the all points bulletin.

And you know that he's not going to stay in the city. They knew his name, though, didn't they? Because people that survived knew him. Yeah, that's Mark Barton. Mark O. Barton. I think his middle name is Oren or something like that. And so they, you know, they know who this guy is. It's not like he's somebody that walks into, I don't know, into a big department

store just off the street. He's gone to a place that he's familiar with and that is familiar with him. And he begins to rain down this terror. And it's at that moment, Tom, as he's fleeing, and I'm not really clear about the dynamics, but I know that I have, if memory serves me correctly, from that day, he had made an attempt to kidnap a girl to get her into the vehicle with him, you know, to kind of take a hostage, I guess,

as a shield or something like this. And she's funny when you mentioned the APB. OK, there was four hours of searching for him from the time he left all tech investment group. They knew who they were looking for. They knew what he was driving. Four hours of metro Atlanta and surrounding areas terrorized by a guy who has just shot up two different businesses. They don't know what's coming next. They're looking for him. And that's when he ends up in Kennesaw. Now, where's Kennesaw in relation to Buckhead? Yeah. If you think about Kennesaw, Kennesaw is, you remember how I mentioned Marietta earlier? Well, you have to go past on, if you think about I-75 that runs northwest.

Okay. As you're leaving out of Atlanta, you're going to first pass Marietta, and then you're going to go up even further, and you're going to get to Kennesaw. Okay. And so Kennesaw is further north. And so he's cruising along. The police are on him. He pulls over into a service station. It's already dark outside by this time. He tries to take that young girl hostage. he did and they wind up surrounding she bolted thank you

yeah she got away and she called police that they didn't know he was there right they didn't know they were looking they were all looking for mark barton in the white minivan they didn't know where he was exactly until that girl she's a hero because there's no telling he was trying to take her hostage to maybe do a negotiation a shield i don't know but she calls the police and say i got him here he is and they they were there right right on top of it and they did surround him that night uh they've got police surrounding the vehicle and he makes the decision you know to put the weapon to the side of his head and kill himself. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.