Thursday, February 25, 1999
DNA clears dead man in killing
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — Detectives hoped the body of William Lee Phelps would help them solve the 4-year-old slaying of a Springboro police officer's wife.
It didn't.
Samples of bone, tissue and hair taken from the Middletown man's corpse did not match evidence left at the scene of Vickie Barton's murder, said Lt. Jerry Mays of the Warren County sheriff's office.
The samples were sent to a private, out-of-state DNA testing laboratory after Mr. Phelps' body was exhumed from the Miami Valley Cemetery near Waynesville in December.
“We were highly disappointed,” Lt. Mays said of the lab results.
That leaves detectives with a few leads but no sus pects in the case, he said.
“We're going back over it and reinterviewing people — making sure all the bases have been covered,” Lt. Mays said. “Absolutely there is hope. There's always hope.”
Detectives received a tip in November that Mr. Phelps may have killed Mrs. Barton on April 11, 1995, during a robbery at her home on Tewart Road.
Mr. Phelps, 28, committed suicide Aug. 3, 1995, by asphyxiating himself in his car.
Levada Phelps of Middletown is relieved that her late husband's name was cleared. She said she has tried to shield their small children from the publicity about the exhumation.
“It should have never been in the first place. It's been traumatic,” she said.
Mrs. Barton, a nurse, was married to Springboro Police Lt. Jim Barton. Lt. Barton told police that he found his wife shot to death at their Franklin Township farm three hours after she met him for lunch.
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