The Misery Machine - The Tragic Death of Judith Barsi

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the tragic life and death of Judith Eva Barsi, who was an American child actress of the 1980s. The child of Hungarian immigrants, Barsi was very small for her age, and often played much younger roles. She began her career in television, making appearances in commercials and television series such as Punky Brewster, as well as in the films Jaws: The Revenge, The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven, providing the voices for animated characters in the latter two (Ducky and Anne Marie). She and her mother, Maria, were killed in July 1988 as a result of a double murder–suicide perpetrated in their home by her father, József Barsi, an abusive alcoholic who was jealous of his daughter's success. Barsi was only 10 years old, with a promising career ahead of her. Judith and her mother were buried in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, with grave markers that were crowdfunded by fans in 2004 - their graves being previously unmarked since 1988. If you are in need of help, please call 911 or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) The National Domestic Violence Hotline: https://www.thehotline.org/ r/CalmHands: https://www.reddit.com/r/calmhands/ This episode is brought to you by Scary Time, help support us by clicking the link to check out Scary Time here: http://www.dummies.fan/mmachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #podcast #documentary #truecrime  Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Barsi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichotillomania https://landbeforetime.fandom.com/wiki/Judith_Barsi https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3038/judith-eva-barsi

I'm Yergy and I'm Drewby and this week we're doing a very tragic case one involving a child so content warning on that it is the case of Judith Barcy if you're a kid that grew up in the 80s like I did you're going to remember her as the voice of Ducky in the land before time and the voice of Anne Marie and all dogs go to heaven that's little being right there she's visiting she's visiting she's been in a bad mood but she has since come back so before we get into it if you're listening on YouTube please hit like and subscribe it goes a long way to helping us in the YouTube algorithm. We just crossed 1,500 subscribers. I really appreciate that. So if you haven't already, hitting subscribe and hitting that bell notification, helps a small

channel out like us very much. So without further ado. The case of Judith Barcy. Judith Barcy was born in Los Angeles, California on June 6, 1978. The daughter of Joseph Isfhan Barcy and Maria Virovas, both immigrants to the U.S. who had fled the Hungarian People's Republic following the 1956 uprising. The two immigrated at different times and met in a restaurant in California where Maria worked as a server. Both have been previously married. Joseph found work as a plumber, but by 1983 had begun to drink heavily and skip work. He would refuse to let his wife work, so for a while, a family lived on welfare.

Well, Joseph was terminated for his many absences due to his drinking. He didn't directly immigrate to the U.S. though. It should be noted that he spent some time in France, I believe. Paris, where he had another wife there. Not much is known about that, but how Maria and Joseph met, she was working at this restaurant and he came in there and he was paying for drinks with nothing but $100 bills. He would just come in there and he would only pay with $100 bills. I've read this account a couple of times. I just find it very weird somebody who was fleeing the Hungarian People's Republic and had access to that much money. So I don't know what he did in France.

But so it should be noted that Joseph was previously married to another Hungarian woman named Clara whom he moved to the U.S. with. The couple settled in New York City where they started a family. So this was prior to France. So he probably was making some money in New York City. But Clara left Joseph due to his alcoholism, domestic abuse, death threats. And that is what caused him to relocate to L.A. That's quite the relocation. Yes. Her mother dreamed of becoming an actress herself as she wanted. once made an effort to do so, but failed at it.

When Judith was five years old, she was discovered at a skating rink. Looking younger than she was, she was mistaken for a three-year-old. Barcy's first role was in Fatal Vision playing Kimberly MacDonald. She went on to appear in more than 70 commercials and guest roles on television. As well as her career in television, she appeared in several films, including Jaws the Revenge, and probably most famously, she provided the voices of Ducky in the Land Before Time and Anne-Marie in all dogs go to heaven. So this is actually something I've heard before about child actors. If you look younger than you are, like if you're petite of stature, you're very desirable because let's say

they're looking for somebody to play a three-year-old. Well, a five-year-old has a better grasp on directions than a three-year-old does. So they're obviously going to grab the five-year-old, especially for more complicated roles. So that and they can use you for longer. So another thing to kind of know is she was in tons of commercials in TV shows in the 80s. So, I remember her being in like peanut butter commercials, juice commercials. She was on Punky Brewster at one point. So she did so much. Yeah, I do recall the Punky Brewster episode that is very, very hazy when I saw the clips of

the episode on YouTube. But the commercials might have been a little before my time. Yeah. So by the time she had started fourth grade, Barsi was earning an estimated $100,000 a year. Pretty crazy money at the time. Yes, for a child in the 80s, which helped her family buy a three-bedroom house in West Hills, Los Angeles, which you could never do now. No, never.

As she was short for her age, as we mentioned, she stood at 3 foot 8 by age 10. She began receiving hormone injections at UCLA to encourage her growth. Her petite-ness led casting directors to cast her as a child that were younger than her actual age. So around this time, she was playing a 5, 6, 7, 8-year-olds. I couldn't find any information on what was the outcome or the success of the hormone injections. A lot of times if you are small, Malin's stature like this. It is, in some cases, a form of dwarfism. I've known people that have had to do

this, and you don't really grow that tall. Like, she had she survived, probably would have been in the mid to high four foot range. Yeah, probably. Probably on the line of dwarfism, which I can't remember the exact height. I knew a girl who was four, seven, and she claimed to be on the line of dwarfism. This is when I was like 15 or 16, so I don't know if she was telling the truth. Yeah, I had a friend of mine who had to have many, many, many injections. They were in the three foot range and then eventually ended up being 410, 410 at their tallest with the injections. If anyone knows the legal limit of that, let us know in the comments section. Yeah, definitely.

As Barcy's career success increased, her father, Joseph, as we mentioned, an alcoholic, became increasingly angry and would routinely threaten to kill himself, his wife, and his daughter. His drinking led to three DUIs, and in December of 1986, Maria reported his threats and physical violence towards her to the police. After the police found no physical signs of abuse, she decided not to press charges against him. He would threaten her. He would throw things. He would break her toys. He would say things that were inappropriate to her friends, all sorts of things. He would name-call her.

He was just a terrible piece. He was very jealous. And the only thing that I could really assume. assume from this is that seeing Judas' success at such a young age probably reflected his failures as an adult man. That's the

only thing I can think of, but he was very jealous of his daughter. So after the incident with the police, Joseph reportedly stopped drinking, but continued to threaten Maria and Judith. His various threats included cutting their throats as well as a burning down their house. He also reportedly hid a

telegram informing Maria that a close relative at Hungary had died, in an attempt to prevent her from leaving the United States with Judith. The physical violence continued with Barcy telling a friend that her father threw pots and pans at her, resulting in a nosebleed. Also during this time, Joseph carried on multiple affairs and had other girlfriends outside of his marriage, but would refuse to leave Maria. In an attempt to get Joseph to leave her, Maria stopped caring for herself and keeping up on her housework, all to no avail. What should be mentioned as well is there was a threat to.

to cut their heads off if they did not return back from their filming of Jaws. It was some weird request despite the multiple day schedule needed to film. Like he didn't have an understanding of just how much time it took to film a live action movie. And they were in the Bahamas. Yeah. So just ridiculous stuff. And regarding the affairs, I want to be clear, these aren't just like he's out sleeping with other women. And he actually had other girlfriends that he would spend a considerable amount of time with, buy them gifts and things like that.

Things he took very seriously. Just very weird stuff. And he also, from what I understand, told his friends repeatedly just how much he hated Judith and Maria. And he's just like, one day I'm going to kill him. One day I'm going to kill him. And he said it all the time that just people just didn't take it seriously. They thought that was just a part of his everyday talk about his displeasure towards his family. So as a result of her abuse, Judith began gaining weight and exhibited some disturbing behavior, such as plucking out her own eyelashes and pulling out her cat's whiskers.

It is believed that Judith suffered from trichotillomania. Yeah, trichotillomania or hair pulling disorder, which is a mental disorder characterized by long-term urges that result from the pulling out of one's hair. This occurs to such a degree that hair loss can be seen. A brief positive feeling can occur when you pull out your own. hair. So that's people wondering, why would you pull out your own hair? There can be relief in some patients that pull out their own hair. They get a dopamine rush, I'd imagine. Efforts to stop pulling hair typically fail and hair removal may occur anywhere. However, the head and around the eyes is the most common by far. The hair pulling is to such a degree that it results in distress. Anxiety, depression,

OCD are more frequently encountered in people with trichotillomania. So this is a very real thing. And I can kind of talk about this a little bit. I do not have trickotillomania. I have what is known as habit tick deformity on my thumbs. So this has been a thing that has been going on since I was a teenager. I sit and pick my cuticle and it will bleed and then it will heal. But there is a feeling of euphoria in removing the cuticle.

And it's a very strange thing. And I didn't really know what this was until actually pretty recently when I did some research on it. You thought it was a nail bed deformity at first, right? Yeah, I thought it was a nail bed deformity from when I used to get my nails done at the salon, when I used to get like acrylics put on. That's what I thought it was that I had damaged my nail bed in some way. But no, it's because I have damaged my cuticle so badly that this is a thing. And it is tied to OCD. It is tied to anxiety and depression.

And apparently the only way to fix this is to put superglue. all over your nail in order to give yourself an artificial cuticle and allow yourself time to heal. And they say in some studies in about six months' time, your nail should go back to normal. I've tried this. I'm going to keep trying it, but I keep picking the super glue. Aren't you supposed to pick the super glue? I know, but I pick it clean off. Oh, okay.

I see. So, yeah, my nails. Do you realize you're doing it? No. I have no idea. Half the time that I'm doing it. Sometimes I do know that I'm doing it. It's really weird.

So my thumbnails have like weird little ridges in them. all over them and it looks like kind of like a Christmas tree pattern is the best way to kind of describe it. Maybe I'll put a picture of my thumbs. I guess I had never heard of it. I've heard of people that pick and chew their nails and stuff like that. I just had never seen that. So when you showed me, I just thought it was a deformity. Yeah.

Well, it is, but I caused it. Unfortunately. But it's not permanent, according to research. So in 1988, after breaking down in front of her agent, Ruth Hanson, Judith Barcy was taken by Maria to a child psychologist who identified severe. or physical and emotional abuse and reported her findings to child protective services. I should note that this breakdown happens during her audition for All Dogs Go to Heaven. Which unfortunately was her final role.

Yes. The investigation was dropped after Maria assured the caseworker that she intended to begin the divorce proceedings against Joseph and that she and Judith were going to move into a panorama city apartment. She had recently rented as a daytime haven from him. So they did actually rent that. It was an apartment across the street from a mall. And what she would do is she would go little by little and move things in in hopes that he wouldn't notice. And she would say that she was helping a friend move.

One day he actually followed her to the apartment. And she had to keep up with a lie that, hey, these are my friends. I've been carrying them around in my car for some time. I just needed to get them out of the car. And he bought it. But yeah, basically the whole idea is her and Judith were going to live all day long in this apartment that she was renting away from Joseph and then only go back at night. So Maria's friends urged her to follow through the plan, but she hesitated due to her fear of losing the family home and belonging. So this is quite a common thing when people are trying to leave their abusive partner.

They're like, I got to systematically get my stuff out or else they're just going to take it. And honestly, outside looking in, we're like, well, this is abusive. Aren't you worried you're going to get killed or something? Who cares about your belongings? But this is what people think. In the moment, you don't think it's going to go as far as you getting killed. killed most of the time. I know for me in circumstances I've been in, I've always been scared for my animals. Yeah. I know there was a cat involved with this. I don't know if there were any others,

but I was always in abusive situations, scared of what would happen to my animals. Looking back in on things now, you know, I've been in shitty situations. I would have not cared about any of my belongings other than my animals, you know, to be where I am now in a more positive situation and be happy. But I can definitely see as an insider looking out where Maria is coming from. Yeah. Unfortunately. Absolutely. Joseph remained a recluse and threatened to kill his wife and daughter many times at this point. Child Protective Services was called numerous times, but as Maria was reluctant to press any charges, and truly, I don't understand why given the support system she had, but she still chose not to press any charges. Because of this, the case was never followed up on. And eventually,

CPS dropped the case and I guess at the time they had too many cases. I believe the social worker that was handling Judith's case had 67 cases at the same time. They were very overworked. I mean, they're overworked now. They're overworked now. But I think it was worse than the 80s, I believe, based on what people have

told me. I don't know that firsthand. I mean, I wasn't even alive then, but I can just imagine, I mean, I've heard so many stories. I've known a couple people who've worked in that field, just hearing about the kids that fall through the cracks. I assume this is just another one of those unfortunate circumstances. So on July 27, 1988, the bodies of Judith and Maria Barsi were discovered by firefighters responding to a call from a neighbor reporting a fire at the Barsi House.

The date of the murder has never been determined. The police have said that Joseph could have killed his wife and child on July 25 or 26. It is believed that after realizing that Maria was planning to leave him, Joseph entered Judith's second floor bedroom and shot her in the head. Point blank. Point blank. And then he shot Maria in the same way as she ran down the corridor towards her daughter's room. He then drenched the bodies and gasoline and set the house on fire before shooting himself in the garage.

Here's what I don't understand. They had neighbors. I've heard of accounts of the neighbors about how Joseph kind of freak them out. How do you not hear the gunshot? I guess the neighbor did hear the gunshot. There have been some accounts about the gunshot, but there's a lot of discrepancy as well. So some reports state that Judith and Maria were killed, but then Joseph went on to live in the house with her bodies laying there for days. There are some reports in this. I've heard that too. And that Judith was supposed to show up to some of her recording for All Dogs Go to Heaven and didn't. And that's when they started to call. And they got Joseph on the phone, allegedly.

So I have heard a report of this. And then at that point, he went and, you know, set the whole house on fire, shot himself in the garage to neighbor her. it, but I don't understand how you don't hear the first two shots, then you hear the third. Yeah, and people have been like, well, he could have muffled it with a pillow or something. Well, it was enough to wake up Maria in the other bedroom. I don't know the situation. I just feel like, in most cases, a neighbor would have heard. And hearing a gunshot in that area of Los Angeles, nice neighborhood, usually people

call in the cops. So that's just a part that confused me. Sick of the boring ghost stories from big-name creators while you're in luck. It's scary time. Lock your doors, check under the bed, turn on a nightlight because it's time for the scariest stories, history, and conversations ever heard. Each week, an independent creator tells you about the paranormal, ghosts, monsters, hauntings, and more. Best of all, if you like the creator, you can follow them for more great content. What do you listen to between episodes of The Misery Machine?

How about a scary episode from another indie creator? With Scary Time, it's spooky season all year round. Check out Scary Time via the link in our show notes. If you dare. Judith and her mother were buried in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. That's commonly where a lot of celebrities are buried. In June of 2004, a fund was set up to get headstones for their graves. Judith's marker was placed on August 23rd.

2004, while one for her mother was placed on January 28, 2005. Judas Marker reads, quote, Our Concrete Angel, Yep, Yep, Yep, end quote. In reference to a popular song about child abuse, Concrete Angel, as well as her character duckies catchphrase from the land before time. Her mother marker reads, quote, The Wind Beneath, J.E.B's, Judith's initials, Wings. Yep, yep, yep.

End quote. Those of Judith's toys, which had survived the five. were later donated to Goodwill. Additional donations made to Judith's Headstone Fund went toward donating Beanie Babies to hospitalized children. One of Judith's most famous roles was voicing the character of Ducky in the original land before time. When she was questioned about it in an interview,

Barcy stated that out of all of her acting roles, both live action animated, Ducky was her favorite. Ducky is also my favorite. The Sullivan Blue Studio were so enthralled by Barsi's performance as Ducky that it led Don Bluth, the director, to hire her as the voice for Anne-Marie and All Dogs Go to Heaven, which was her final role before her death.

In an interview with Don Bluth, he praised her as being, quote, absolutely astonishing. She understood verbal direction, even for the most sophisticated situations, end quote. Bluth stated he intended to feature her extensively in his future productions. All Dogs Go to Heaven was released posthumously in November of 1989. Irene Kara and Freddie Jackson reportedly recorded the All Dogs Go to Heaven theme song,

Love survives for Judith Barcy. So another thing that surrounds Judith Barcy's death is there is this longstanding rumor that her, her mother, and her father all haunt the house. Now, I'm just putting this out there. I think it's a little exploitative, but when I try to do research on this, there wasn't much. and most things were from tabloids like The Sun. The one thing I did find is there's a show called Murder House Flip, and it's on this streaming service,

an exclusive to that streaming service, which is a pay per month to see it, and it was a three-part episode, and I didn't want to pay for it. It started with a cue. Quibi. Quibi, yeah, it was Quibi. I don't even know if that's how you say it.

I don't know. All I know is that they didn't have a whole lot of options. They had no free trial, I couldn't watch it. And I just... I think it's silly. Like, obviously, it's true crime. True crime in some cases can be a little exploitative.

But this is a bit much. So it's people who, from what I understand, buy houses where somebody died in and then flipping the house to make it livable. I'm sure people ham this up and wouldn't be surprised if every single episode had something to do with a potential haunting. I don't know. I don't think hauntings happen. in the way that they're portrayed in film and story anyway. I think you're either sensitive to it or you're not. And I think a lot of ghost hunters are full of crap. There was that trend for a while. There were so many, uh, paranormal ghost hunter shows on discovery, investigation discovery or even

sci-fi. I don't know. I never even like those as a kid. I remember watching one. It's just like, we're picking up something on the EMF reader. And it was just like nothing. It's just nothing. It just builds you up to something that doesn't even happen. It's awful. I don't know. I don't like that stuff. And from reading the synopsis of this episode about Judith Barcy for Murderhouse Flip, it seemed the most of what happened is that the person flipping the house felt a dark presence, but that's all that happened. From what I understand, the house is under new ownership. That's really it. I searched extensively. Everything else is tabloids. It's just all very said. I think I had a little bit of a difficult time with this.

one. Even though we've covered heavier cases in the past, I think my issue is I didn't really handle All Dogs Go to Heaven and Land Before Time very well as a child. I found them very sad. I still like get very worked up if I try to watch them. I liked Land Before Time as a kid. I refused to watch All Dogs Go to Heaven. I refuse to watch it. And probably the same reasons I'd refuse to watch it now is because, you know, I just don't like to think about animals dying. The same thing I really loved Milo and Otis as a kid. I could never watch it now after hearing about just how many animals they mistreated and killed while filming that cute movie. So you don't really think about, like, was there one scene where the cat's going down the river and it's literally a cat going down

the river. And in the canon of the movie, I was very young when I watched this so I could be misremembering it. But in the can of the movie, I believe the cat gets saved. And when you're a little kid, you're just like, oh, yeah, the cat's fine. I would stand a guess now that probably they killed some cats doing that. I just don't want to watch anything about that. And I think what really is sad to me about Judith Barcy's death is the fact that here's this very talented young person before their prime, just getting taken and just not being able to reach their full potential. All just because their awful drunk father was jealous of them. Yes. All because somebody else just couldn't handle their own feelings, couldn't face themselves.

It's terrible. And there was nothing Judith could have done to fix the situation. She was at the mercy of her parents. I know some people say that Maria should have gotten out sooner. Maria should have taken some risks. But, you know, I just can't really blame someone in that situation. I understand worrying about what would happen, getting everything taken from you. When you have that type of power looming over you, even if it's a person,

received power. It can be really hard to leave and leave quickly. So with that in mind, we'll definitely have some resources linked in our comment section. Yes, for people struggling with domestic abuse, if you or anyone you know is suffering, there are resources for that. I think with things like domestic abuse, time is of the essence in a lot of cases. And I would just implore you to act quickly and swiftly, take a full measure, not a half measure, but the resources will be in the description. I know I have some questions about this case, I guess. So the whole fans crowdfunding of the gravestones, I don't know why if Don Bluth and Sullivan Bluth studios loved Judith so much, why didn't they take care of their gravestones? Why did they have empty graves for so long?

I don't know. I don't know if there was something within the estate that requested this. I truly do not know. This could have been at the request of the family. Yeah, it's so strange. I'm not going to speak too much on that just because there could have been some complicating issues. So I don't want to be like, oh, why didn't Don Bluth just pay for it? Because obviously they had the money to do that. Maybe they wanted to. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. It just seems strange. I mean, that's all kind of leave it at. We'll probably never know. With that, if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. I looked the other day, I think just yesterday, the time of this recording. And within 15 days, we had 200 new subscribers, which is definitely a record for us, considering it took us six, eight months to get 100.

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So I will put that forward if you're a tier two plus. Also, you get all of our secret Patreon exclusive episodes, which I think we'll be making one here pretty soon. Right. And you get your free sticker. Yes, and you get a free sticker. But if you just want the sticker itself, that's fine to PayPal.m.m.m.m. $1. Anywhere in the world. Yes, we'll ship it anywhere in the world.

And the post office has been going pretty quickly. We got a sticker out to the UK in under a week. Yeah, that was pretty surprising, especially everything that's been going on in the post office lately. Also, if I could make a request, do any of you listeners understand TikTok how to get us out there on TikTok? Send us an email, Misery Machine Podcast at Gmail. or leave a comment on YouTube because it seems to be a decent platform for putting out true crime stuff because we've been having a lot of people come in from TikTok following other true crime TikTokers. Yeah. So I want to give a shout out to a TikTok user named Tana Nishel.

We got a huge amount of volume to our old Hello Kitty murder episode. Yeah, we got, jeez like a few thousand views just off that and people kept saying they were coming in from TikTok it happened all of a sudden maybe there's something to this if we're getting all these views from other TikTokers that aren't even giving us shoutouts they're just saying hey check out this case and then people go to YouTube and find us maybe there's something to us getting on TikTok so yeah it was a very interesting video that she did she does shorter videos she's not talking in any of them. She has music playing and it's usually a picture of her and some wording talking about like a true crime case and then it will do snapshots of the case. And from there, that's how people

found us. Yeah. So if you know TikTok or if you're active on TikTok and you have good strategies on how to make decent videos or what people are looking for for things like this, hit us up because that could save us a lot of research time. Anyways, before we ramble on too much, next week we should have, if everything goes correctly, a missing person's case this time. And it's going to be kind of a big deal. Yes. We don't want to get into too many details right now, but... But be on the lookout for that one.

Yes. Okay. Well, until next week... Until next week, we love you. Love you. All right. Bye. Bye.