Wednesday, February 09, 2000
Mom slain, court told
BY DAVID ECK
Enquirer Contributor
HAMILTON — Butler County Coroner Dr. Richard Burkhardt and pathologist Dr. Norman Hurwitz testified Tuesday that Patricia Ann Barrett died of strangulation, not a drug overdose.
They were among four prosecution witnesses in the second day of Dustin Hendrix's murder trial. The body of Ms. Barrett, a 27-year-old mother of five, was found Aug. 15 in a shed in rural Oxford Township.
Mr. Hendrix, 30, of Hamilton, is charged with murder, felonious assault, abduction and gross abuse of a corpse.
Dr. Hurwitz, who performed the first autopsy, concluded Ms. Barrett died of accidental drug and alcohol poisoning.
The second autopsy, done in November, showed a fractured thyroid, which indicated strangulation. The fracture was not found during the first autopsy, Dr. Burkhardt said.
“There was a subtle finding,” he said. “At the fracture site, there was hemorrhage.”
He said the fracture and abrasions on Ms. Barrett's neck indicated strangulation.
Dr. Hurwitz also said there were contusions and abrasions on Ms. Barrett's skull, shoulder, face and back. And he said there were marks on her face that could have been made by a phone cord being wrapped around it. He also concluded that Ms. Barrett was strangled.
A phone cord was tangled in Ms. Barrett's legs when the body was found.
Butler County Sheriff's De
tective Frank Smith testified that Mr. Hendrix described to him during an interview how he wrapped the phone cord around Ms. Barrett's face to defend himself after she lunged at him while they were in his car.
During the daylong police interview about a month after Ms. Barrett's body was found, Mr. Hendrix changed his story several times. Taped portions of that interview and an earlier one in August were played in court.
In the August interview, Mr. Hendrix said he hadn't seen Ms. Barrett after they left a party at a trailer in Hamilton early Aug. 13. He first met Ms. Barrett and three friends at a Hamilton bar earlier that evening.
But in an interview with Detective Smith on Sept. 18, Mr. Hendrix said he left the trailer park and went home. He later went out driving and found Ms. Barrett walking on East Avenue in Hamilton. He said she got in his car, but became sick and died.
“I think she was dead,” he told Detective Smith on the tape. “I thought she actually had a heart attack from (doing) drugs.”
He said he then drove around in the country, saw the shed and put her in it.
On Sept. 18, Mr. Hendrix told Detective Smith that after Ms. Barrett got in the car, she became foul-mouthed and he hit her. She then got sick and died, he said. Finally, Mr. Hendrix said Ms. Barrett attacked him after he made a sexual advance.
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