Snapped: Women Who Murder - Barbara Pasa

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Firefighters are called to the scene of an Iowa family’s home to find the residence up in flames. As the smoke clears, they discover the charred remains of a man and question whether the fire and his death were truly accidental.Season 34 Episode 05Originally aired: Sun, Aug 4, 2024Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A suspicious fire claims the life of a small town family man. He had been burned very, very badly. We started looking at search protectors, the wires and everything. We didn't find anything like that. You start to run scenarios through your head. Why wouldn't somebody wake up when there was a roaring fire right next to him? Strange discoveries at the scene create new questions. Usually you can see a burn pattern, but we didn't see nothing like that.

like that. I start to think maybe they were poison. Propofal is going to cause a person to sleep and a sufficient concentration can lead to death. The investigation reveals a family in crisis and a killer who will do anything to keep up appearances. Her son stated that fights were happening more often. She didn't want people to know the truth. She wanted to appear to be the perfect family.

have the perfect home. She stated very loudly that if she wanted to get rid of someone, she knew she could. May 5, 2018. It's a quiet Saturday morning in Centerville, Iowa. But for one local man, the weekend starts with an unexpected emergency. Someone was leaving Centerville that morning.

As he was leaving town, he drove by South Park and noticed smoke coming from the residents. Centerville is a real close-knit community. Neighbors help each other out. He stopped and tried to see if there was anything he could do to render assistance. Uncertain if anyone is inside the home, he calls 911. We knew that this was the home of Tim and Barb Pazza because they're kids associated with my kids.

As soon as they opened up the door, they was met with a dog that come running out and then heavy black smoke from floor to ceiling. Once they discovered that, they'd started to advance on down the hallway into the room where they've seen some fire in there. The fire at that point was contained primarily to a master bedroom on the southeast corner of the residence. The blaze is extinguished before it engulfs the house, but as the smoke starts to settle, firefighters make a gruesome discovery. On the bed, they find the charred remains. of a middle-aged man.

Although the damage to his body is severe, first responders know the family well enough to recognize the victim is 50-year-old Tim Pazzo. Since we know that there's a body inside of the structure, it changes the content of everything. When you got another team together, which ended up doing the search of the entire house, because we got more people in here.

Several people tried to make contact with Barb. We didn't know where she was. They just said that there's two kids, are they accounted for? We're checking underneath beds. We're checking on top of beds and everything. We'll go there first. Okay, this is clear. Clear.

We're going to the basement. Copy that corner to the basement. We check in all the rooms, just to clear and make sure that there's nobody else in the house. She just said that there's two kids, and she was just wanting to make sure that they were accountable. They weren't here. Barb, which was Tim's wife, was not in the house. We radioed that to our command, which is outside, let them know we've been in a search, and nobody else has been found.

It was shocking to me when I received that news that Tim had passed away. I'd known him for a long time. And when I was younger, just out of high school, we'd all spent a lot of time together. It was definitely not the phone call I expected to get that day. Timothy Dale Paza was born and raised in Centerville. He attended the only high school in town, where he made lifelong friends. I went to high school with Tim,

and he was just an all-around good guy. He's the youngest of four children, I believe. Loved music, loved playing the guitar. Tim and several other guys would come out to my parents' house and set up in the garage. He played the guitar as good as anybody I'd ever seen. Music, I believe, was Tim's outlet. He ended up being a lead guitar player

and a fabulous country band. At one of his shows in 1999, Tim hit it off with a 25-year-old local named Barbara Glasgow. Barb grew up in Centerville and graduated from Centerville High School. She worked as a nurse. Once I got to know her, it didn't take long to realize that she was funny, she was witty. She was more outgoing than Tim was. And she had told me that she, you know, she loved to see him on stage. She loved his demeanor.

He was calm to her storm, and that was something that attracted her to him. Barb started showing up at all of Tim's shows, and the two quickly fell in love. They got engaged in a few months and then got married, and then they started a family. Their son was in my son's class. The daughter was also in my other son's class. Tim was a very present father. He was at every single event that I attended. attended. Anytime we spoke, he bragged up his kids. They were doing this and they were doing that. Even from T-ball days when they played, he would always be, you know, right at the fence watching and cheering on the boys. He was always involved and his pride of them just shown through. They were

his greatest gift. Both Tim and Barb worked hard to provide for their growing family. He was always working. He worked at Lockridge for several years and then became an EMT. And then he became a customer representative for Alliant Energy here in town. Barb worked for Mercy One Medical Center here in Centerville. She was a nurse in the surgical unit. I felt that she was a very caring nurse. She always seemed like she wanted to be there. She truly cared about the people she was taken care of. After 11 years of marriage, the Pazas were doing so well, that they bought and remodeled a home in an upscale neighborhood. Barb and Tim seemed to have a great life, and she was so proud of her home.

She always had pictures on Facebook. It seemed to be a well-rounded family. But now, their picture-perfect life has gone up in smoke. Firefighters have just found Tim's dead body in the smoking ruins. Both the police and fire departments are at. anxious to know how it happened. People had been trying to call. Barb, let her know that the house was on fire,

and she didn't answer them. Once the fire was contained and extinguished, then firefighters at that point removed the body of Tim Passa from the residence. They had a lot of trouble with it just because of the size. Tim was a big individual. I just start looking around the room, see if I see anything else.

I noticed a candle on the left side of the bed, which would have been opposite side of where we found the victim at. It was actually down on the floor that was a little suspicious. We noticed that a smoke alarm inside the master bedroom area was on the ground. The battery was out of the battery compartment, and the smoke alarm was not melted or burned like you would see in a typical fire. We also noticed on the opposite side of the house a separate smoke smoke alarm between the two kids' bedrooms, the battery compartment was open, making it inactive.

These were just some things that kind of stuck out to me as red flags, because this is not normal stuff that you usually see. You start to run scenarios through your head and start to try to figure out, you know, what could have happened here, wasn't an accident or was it purposely set. Coming up, Barb Pazza blames herself for her husband's death. I said, we found a candle in there. Do you know why it was in there? She said, I lit it.

But an autopsy reveals the shocking truth. They found no smoke inhalation in Tim's lungs. On May 5, 2018, police and fire investigators are working to determine the cause of the deadly blaze that killed Tim Pazza at his home. His wife, Barb, rushes home after learning about the fire. People had been calling her, but she said that she didn't have self-service where she was, traveling to the soccer game. Eventually she did answer one from her daughter, who was on the school bus,

had received information, too, that their house was on fire. Once she did finally arrive on scene, I went and made contact with her and advised her of Tim's death. When I relayed that Tim had passed, Barb didn't seem to have any emotion. I think we all chalked it up to shock. and overwhelming situations that morning. People grieve differently. We don't know what's going through her mind at that time. Officers in the fire department started kind of talking with Barb,

trying to put together at how the things had transpired before she left. She told them that she had left earlier in the morning to go to her kid's soccer tournament. She had stayed up tonight. It would have been Friday night, late, until about midnight. She was baking cookies, but making snacks and things like that to take the kids. and things like that to take to the soccer tournament. She went to bed, and then about 5.30 a.m., she woke up,

again, started making breakfast for the kids to get them ready for their soccer meet. About 6 a.m., the kids woke up. They had breakfast that Barb had prepared for them. She said she left the residence between 6.50 a.m. and 7 a.m. that morning, it was predetermined that Tim was not going to go to the soccer match that day. When Barb left the residence, Tim was asleep in bed and snoring. When they ask Barb if she knows why the smoke detectors were disarmed,

she says that was her fault. She said something had burned while she was in the process of baking and set off the smoke alarms. And so she asked him to take the batteries out of the smoke alarms until they could get the smoke cleared out of the room. That made sense. You know, I think most of us have probably done that in our house at some point. I said, we found a candle in there.

Do you know why it was in there? She said, I lit it. I don't remember if it was on the bathroom sink or if I put it on the in table in the bedroom. The reason I put it there and I lit it was because the dog was in there and a dog peed on the carpet and it was kind of covering up the smell. After answering investigators' questions, Barb asks to see her husband's body.

I explained to Barb that Tim was in the ambulance and that he had been burned very, very badly. She was insistent on spending some time with him. Barb had told Assistant Chief Moore that, you know, I'm a nurse, I've been a nurse for a long time. I've seen things like this. This is my husband and I want to see him before he's taken away. We see that a lot with family members. They do want to see their loved ones at the scene rather than maybe later at a funeral home. I decided to let her go into the ambulance, and I gave her a couple minutes to spend alone with Tim.

When she came out, you know, we were waiting for her, and she was very stoic. I just thought she was in shock. She didn't show a lot of emotion, and I was concerned that when she broke, it was going to be bad. Anytime there's a death where it's not under doctor's supervision, an autopsy is going to be completed to determine the cause of death, to get the answers needed. When I told Barb that an autopsy would be conducted, she became almost mad that it was going to be conducted,

and she had no say in that. I thought Barb's reaction to that was not typical. I just felt that maybe she was being overwhelmed. with everything that had gone on that morning. Despite Barb's reservations, Tim's body is transported to a funeral home in preparation for the autopsy. Barb had said she was going to her mom,

she was taking the kids there, and that she would be staying there. At that point, we were not able to determine if the fire was started because of the candle or if it had any relevance to the fire. But we knew where the items were found and located and it was just something suspicious in nature. I went back in a look on the end table

to see if I could see the markings where the candle actually was setting before it was, you know, in case it was moving or not. I could not find it, so it was really, really puzzling to me. We start looking at all the electronic surge protectors, the wires and everything. They look and see if there's any possibility of where that stuff could have shorted out. In this case, we didn't find anything like that.

The fire marshal determines that the candle barb Pazah put in the bedroom isn't to blame either. He had told us that, in his opinion, that the fire had burned rapidly, more so on top of the bed, and is also on the side of the bed where Tim was sleeping, which was the opposite side of where this candle was. Investigators face another mystery. In a situation like that, whenever there's fire, especially if it's on your person or somewhere, you're going to be moving to get away from it. Even if a smoke alarm didn't go off, the smoke, the heat, and the flames would have woken somebody up. And there was no indication that that happened.

That was another little part of an investigation that piqued your interest as to why. Why wouldn't somebody wake up when there was a roaring fire right next to them? Things just kind of started looking a little more suspicious. Three days after the fire that claimed the life of Tim Pazza, Centerville authorities are hoping an autopsy will provide answers. The one big question was, is what is the autopsy going to show us as far as the nature and the cause of death? As part of that autopsy, they do a full examination of the body.

They wanted to make sure that there were no obvious science. of death such as stab wounds, bullet wounds, in general like that. All of those things were ruled out. While there are no immediate signs of foul play, the medical examiner does note something unexpected. They found no smoke inhalation in Tim's lungs. That was the key piece of information that we were looking for, because for that to happen, Tim had to have been deceased before the fire.

Barbara told us that when she had left the residence, Tim was asleep in bed and snoring. That was not possible. Tim was already deceased when she left the residence. There was no natural reason, no indication of bad health or a heart attack or any such nature. Now we need to determine what actually took place that morning. That completely changes our investigation into a homicide investigation. investigation. In light of this development, police wonder if Barb's lack of emotion at the scene wasn't shock, but the reaction of a guilty conscience.

You start putting these pieces together that is going to start moving us towards a criminal investigation. I start to think of, well, something had happened to incapacitate them where they were not able to wake up. Maybe they were poison. It was determined that Barb was diabetic, and so we did find a lot of diabetic medication, insulin, syringes throughout the house. We informed the medical examiner of the vials of insulin that were found out of the residents and gave him that information to try to locate in the toxicology report insulin in Tim's body.

At that point, they were not able to locate any insulin in the toxicology. As far as investigators are concerned, Barb is now a person of interest in a potential murder. The question is, what reason could she have to want her husband dead? Later that night, I was contacted by a family member of the Pazas who advised me that Tim and Barb's son wish to speak with me in regards to the fire and Tim's death. I agreed to meet with Tim and Barb's son later that evening at the Law Center in Centerville. He advised that the evening before the fire, him and his father, Tim, had gone on a walk together, and Tim had expressed to him that they were going to be getting a divorce

and that that was going to be taking place sooner rather than later. Tim and Barb's son was very distraught and upset. He stated that it hadn't been good for quite some time, that fights were happening more often than not. It was apparent that he truly believed that Barb may have had something to do with Tim's death. I've been around Centerville my whole life, and there's been very few intentional homicides in this community. But the original picture that you have starts to change.

From what we saw at the very beginning to where we were now was substantially different. Coming up, a marriage on the brink of disaster. We probably lived paycheck to paycheck. We got behind on our mortgage and had to refinance. And detectives fined the smoking gun. That conversation led the laboratory to test for a drug called Propheaval. Officers now have a suspect in the fiery murder of Tim Pazza, his wife of 18 years, Barbara Pazza.

To understand her motive, detectives need to know just how deep the problems in their marriage go. Generally, you want to speak with friends and family members and try to see what you can come up with. One of those in particular was Sonia Carson. She had reached out, and she had some information that she thought maybe we would want. to know. I knew Barb all through when she was in school. 2004, 2005 is when we became closer friends.

Barb and Tim were never an affectionate couple. Even when the kids were younger, they never were one to touch each other or show affection. I just thought that was Barb's demeanor. She wasn't really an emotional person. And I think if she would have been more affectionate, Tim would have reciprocate that. to Sonia, Tim and Barb's relationship continued to deteriorate over the years. I think they stayed together for the kids, primarily just for them. And I think Barb, she did not want to have a marriage that ended in divorce. In her eyes, she would have felt like she wouldn't be accepted or that she wouldn't be able to do things with us as couples, as we sometimes did because of our children.

Their relationships seemed to reach a breaking point in 2018, two weeks before the fire. We had gone out to eat one evening, and there were three of us, and we were just sitting there talking about, you know, life, our kids, our husbands. And out of the blue, she stated very loudly that she was very upset with Tim. She talked about a pending divorce and how she was concerned. the kids would actually want to stay with her or if they would want to be with Tim. And she was concerned about their finances. I think she really wanted people to know how much she was giving or how much she was doing. I believe she was trying to portray herself to be the perfect mom and the perfect family.

Barb always wanted the kids to have the best of everything. And, you know, they drove nice cars. They had newest shoes or whatever that they wanted. She also spent a lot of time. shopping for herself and also for friends. Spending money was one of her favorite things to do. She continued to become more upset about it and said that she hated him. She said it with a lot of emotion and that if she wanted to get rid of someone, she knew she could. When she said that, I kind of chuckled because I thought, you know, I'm sure we've all been mad at our husbands

and have said that. I didn't think anything of it. I just thought she was visiting. Investigators wonder if Barb decided to make good on her threat. We found documentation showing that the house was about to go into foreclosure. We saw credit card bills that were way past due. Barb had maxed out Tim's life insurance from $50,000 to $200,000. That had happened approximately five months prior to this incident. We were also able to determine that she had increased the amount on the homeowners insurance for the residents. Knowing how far Barb and Tim were in a financial struggle, Tim was worth a lot more to her dead than alive.

She was going to, quite frankly, make a good payday upon his death. Barb's motive seems clear, but there is still no direct evidence she had anything. to do with Tim's death. A lot of it was circumstantial evidence. We needed to try to get Barb to answer our questions and tell us the truth about what took place that morning. Investigators ask Barb to come in for a more formal round of questioning. Hi, Mark.

Good, sir. You don't want to sit that close to me. Oh, you smell pretty good. We wanted to get a baseline from Barb about her relationship with Tim and the family setting. Barb did admit that her and Tim had talked for quite some time about getting to divorce, but that financially she didn't know how that would work. We'd probably live paycheck to paycheck. We got behind on her mortgage and had to refinance and some creditors.

We guys able to find common ground, at least to get that handled. He handled the bills for a while, and then he got tired of it, and kind of half-ass handed him back to me. Aside from confirming what police already know, Barb is not very forthcoming. She was fine speaking with us about the relationship and the financial situation. But when we pressed her about the morning of the fire, she just started to close up.

What was the breaking point for you? I don't have anything to say. I didn't have a breaking point. You understand what I'm coming from. I do. You watch the TV shows. You're in the medical field. You know they're going to be able to do toxicology and figure out what happened with them.

That's going to come back on you. The fire didn't destroy his body. That's going to come back to you. And then it's just going to be evidence. I'm here so I can understand. Take me through it. What led up to that decision? because we know there was no decision.

She asked to stop the interview. She told them that she wanted to go speak to her children and talk to them and then she would come back. It was my belief that she knew at that point that she was caught and she wanted to tell the kids what took place before she admitted to what she had done. Prior to Barb leaving the,

leaving the Law Center the day of the interview, we executed the search warrant over vehicle and also seized her cell phone for a search warrant to be conducted on the cell phone. The following morning, while waiting for Barb to return, investigators receive a shocking call. At approximately 8 in the morning, dispatch received a 911 call from the mother's residence,

advising that Barb was having seizure-like symptoms. I recognized the address and I went to the location and observed Barb was overdosing. At that point she was transferred to a hospital in Des Moines. Barb had taken some type of overdose of medications. She was kept for about 10 days under observation. Of course in a small town, people are talking. A lot of people questioned, you know, is she grieving? Is she grieving?

Is it because she's so heartbroken? But at this point, even though it was a few short days after Tim's passing, it was pretty evident that most people believed that it was because she was guilty of a crime that she'd committed. With Barb Paza in the hospital recovering from an overdose, police focus on finding evidence that she orchestrated her husband's death. After the initial autopsy report and the toxicology test did not reveal anything. We asked for an additional toxicology test to look further into other substances that may have been in his body. The case history was that Barbara Passa was a nurse in a medical field and had access to some of the drugs that are specifically used for anesthesia.

That conversation led the laboratory to test for a drug called Propheaval. Propheaval is a fast-acting drug that is most commonly used to sedate patients undergoing surgery. The injection of Propheaval is going to cause a person to sleep, and it can also affect the heart and lower blood pressure. It can cause an individual to stop breathing and a sufficient concentration. concentration can lead to death. The amount of Propheaval found in Tim's body was 0.18 milliliters, which is not something that a normal person would have in their system. That analytical finding is the propofal that's present in the blood.

It doesn't go to show you where the propofal is present in other parts of the body. So the finding in the blood does not account for the whole propofal don't. that was administered. We did interviews. We were able to determine that Tim was not a drug user. Tim was not in the medical field. It's clear to investigators that Barb was the only person in the Paza household that had direct access to Propheaval.

They spoke with hospital officials. When Propheaval is used, if it's in a vial and say it's 10 milliliters, and they only used five. It can only be used one time, so it was thrown in the trash. Barb's job in the surgical center was to then dispose of those containers. The containers are such that Barb would be able to reach in and grab the small vial of Propheaval, sticking in a pocket, and no one would know anything different. With Barb's access to the drug confirmed,

investigators re-examine her timeline. On the morning of the fire, Barb told police she left the house a little before 7 a.m., more than 30 minutes before the fire was reported. But when police reach out to Barb's co-worker, Megan DeCina, she says otherwise. On the morning of May 5th, as I was driving to work, I happened to notice that Arb's vehicle was at home. I knew it was her vehicle based on the personalized plates that she had that spilled out PASA. Megan has an app on her phone that she uses for her work,

and it tracks where she's at at certain times. She showed us this app, and it showed that she had been by that house at about 722 that morning. About 10 minutes later, 7.33 or thereabouts is when the 911 call was made. that there was smoke coming out of the house. That's a pretty short period of time for somebody to be there and then gone. And that also starts to tell me that fire might have been going for a while before she actually left the house.

Detectives are able to track her movements after leaving the house using her financial records. That morning, she had gone to an ATM location here in Centerville and withdrew $200 from that. ATM. We were able to also get video from that ATM, which proved it was Barb and that she was in her vehicle at 7.25 a.m. in Centerville. So having all this evidence between the autopsy, the interview, the different statements, the financial information all led us to, Barb was not being truthful with us, and that Barb was involved. in the death of him and the fire at the residence. Armed with more solid evidence,

investigators present their case to the district attorney. I think Barb was in a bad place financially. She wanted to appear to be the perfect family, have the perfect home, the perfect cars. And I think it got to the point where she was not going to be able to uphold that appearance. And that's why she did what she did. Barb snapped because she didn't want people to know the truth.

She didn't want them to know that her life was not as it was portrayed. So based on our investigation in this case, we believe that sometime in the early morning, Barb was able to inject Tim with Cropafal. Once that took place, Barb then decided to try to destroy all possible evidence. If we suspect that it was arson or whatever, usually you can see a burn pattern,

but we didn't see nothing like that. So I believe that she stacked stuff up on top of him, let it be closed, pillows or whatever, started it on fire. I believe her intent was to burn the house down or burn it along the resignation where you couldn't see what was happened and then leave. At this point, we believe we had enough probable cause

to make an arrest for the murder and the arson. While investigators have been gathering evidence, Barb Pazza has been in a hospital bed recovering from an overdose. When she's released on May 18, 2018, officers are waiting to arrest her. Barb was placed under arrest and charged with the murder of Tim Pazza as well as arson. It's a small town. So you start hearing things, you know, about, well, I heard there was no smoke in his lungs and things like that.

So when I heard that she got arrested, I was not surprised at all. I really wasn't. Angry, yes. Surprised, no. Barb's trial begins on September 17, 2019. More than a year after the crimes took place. Barb pleaded not guilty. At that point, she was looking at life in jail without parole on just the murder alone, plus the arson charges.

But prosecutors know their case is still largely circumstantial. You have to convince the full jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person that was charged committed the crimes that were alleged. You know, we didn't have video of bar lighting the fire. We have to prove that the information we have, based off of all of our investigation, leads to nobody else. It had to be hurt. According to the defense, police arrested the wrong person. One of the defenses that Barb tried to use was that her neighbor, who is also a nurse and deals with anesthesiologist, was someone that could have possibly entered the residence,

and injected Tim with the Propheaval. There just was nothing that we found that ever showed he was involved in it. It was determined that he actually left at 5.30 that morning of the incident to head to Des Moines for a conference. He was not around that day. Barb chose to take the stand in her defense.

She did show some emotion throughout her testimony, which was not similar to what we had seen throughout this investigation. She talked about in her previous marriage that she had lost a child at some point, which definitely is a traumatic experience. I think she truly wanted to convince people that she was not the evil person that everybody knows that she is. By saying that she could not do that to her children or do that to Tim. The tears that she was given all phony. the entire thing was felony.

The question for the jury is whether or not they believe her. The jury ended up deliberating for approximately three hours, came back with guilty verdicts for first-degree murder and first-degree arson, which ultimately gave Barb a life sentence plus 20 years. In my opinion, this woman is a psychopath. Lucky for us, she's not a very smart psychopath. If she was as smart as she thought she was, Tim would have had smoking his lungs.

She didn't think that part out. I think as a community, it kind of maybe opened some eyes a little bit more, knowing that maybe everything isn't exactly how it's portrayed. Even though she got sent to prison for murder and arson, that was not a win. It's very sad. sad that these children lost a father and a mother both. And the kids will remember this forever, and it's just a very, very sad, very sad ordeal.

All of them had a common interest in music. Hopefully they still do. I think they do. But he could have nurtured that a lot more had he been around and been involved with their life. And she robbed him with that. Tim should be remembered for the great dad he was and for the connections he had his kids and just how proud he was all the time of them. He would be beyond proud of the lives they're living and all their successes.