Executed English-South African serial killer
Peter Roy Barber (1927 – 11 December 1980), known as "The Laughing Killer", was an English-born South African serial killer who murdered two mistresses and a 12-year-old girl in Pinetown between 1973 and 1979. He was additionally suspected of murdering another mistress, but was acquitted of that crime because her body was never found.
Convicted and sentenced to death for his confirmed crimes, Barber later confessed to all four murders in an attempt to have his sentence commuted. This was unsuccessful, and he was executed in 1980.
Early life
Little is known of Barber's early life. Born in 1927 in Hastings, Sussex, he joined the Royal Air Force in 1946, where he served as a batman.[1] Sometime in the 1950s, he married a woman, but the union fell through and he moved to Newbury. He opened a bakery business in Kingsclere called "Sundriesman", but the venture proved unsuccessful and he was declared bankrupt in December 1955.[1]
Affair
In 1958, Barber remarried and returned to Hastings. Over the next couple of years, he served as a chairman for the parent–teacher association at the Sandown Primary School.[1] In 1967, during a meeting at the association, Barber met fellow committee member Irene Helen Jones, a married woman with two children. The pair quickly fell in love and began an extramarital affair, with Barber often visiting the Jones household. He was ill-regarded by other family members, especially by Jones' son Bryan, who would later claim that Barber often shunned the children and even kicked him down the stairs once.[1]
Aside from his position as a chairman, Barber also owned a timber construction business which supplied local greenhouses, garden sheds and pathways.[1] By 1971, Barber had amassed a debt of £6,000. Another stragedy struck the Barber family later that year, when their 14-year-old son Timothy accidentally hanged himself off a tree branch while playing in the woods. In an attempt to start a new life, Barber and his current wife moved to live in a caravan near Pamber Heath, but he continued seeing Jones.[1]
Move to South Africa
In January 1973, Barber told his wife that he was going to find a job in Reading. However, this was a ruse, as he instead drove to Heathfield, where he had arranged to meet with Jones and her young daughter, Denise.[1] They then abandoned the car at a clifftop near Hastings, with Barber writing a fake suicide note in order to make people believe that he had taken his life.[1]
While authorities were searching for the bodies, Barber and Jones traveled to Heathrow Airport, from where they moved to Durban, South Africa. The move was supposed to be temporary, as their intended final destination was supposed to be New Zealand, but Barber insisted on staying.[1] The couple settled in the suburb of Pinetown, where Barber opened a decorating business called Kitchen Concepts, while Jones worked at a supermarket. Their relationship started deteriorating over time, with the pair frequently having arguments over trivial matters.[2]
Murders
In December 1973, Barber returned home and found that somebody had apparently tampered with his personal papers.[2] Thinking this was the work of his mistress, he went to her workplace and had an argument with her. Later that same night, Jones and her 12-year-old daughter Denise went to Barber's factory, where Irene continued arguing with him in an office.[2] In the midst of the argument, Barber grabbed a piece of cord and strangled both of them, then stuffed the bodies in two 44-gallon drums and covered them with sawdust and cement.[3] He then paid one of his workers £1 to dispose of the drums, which the man did - it is suspected they were left at a nearby rubbish dump, but they were never found.[2]
Following the disappearance of the Joneses, Barber continued living in Pinetown, where he befriended some of the local populace.[2] Among them was a local petrol pump attendant named Philippine Ndlovu, with whom he eventually began a romantic relationship. Friends of the pair claimed that the pair often had violent arguments and frequently broke up, only to reconcile on multiple occasions. One day in 1976, Ndlovu went to visit Barber at his home in Pinetown, from where she disappeared without a trace.[2]
Within weeks of Ndlovu's disappearance, Barber started another relationship with one of his female employees, 25-year-old Cecilia Majola.[2] Similarly to his previous affairs, it was a turbulent one and resulted in multiple break-ups and reconciliations, with Barber always convincing her to come back by writing her numerous eloquent love letters. In early 1979, Barber learned that Majola was pregnant with his child. Unwilling to have a mixed-race child, he grabbed an iron bar and hit her on the head, killing her instantly. He then proceeded to cut off her ears and mutilated the body in an attempt to make it resemble a muti killing, after which he abandoned Majola's body on a nearby road.[2] The ears were burned in a plastic bucket, and then thrown into a nearby river.[4]
Arrest and confessions
Around March 1979, Barber phoned a friend of his working in the local police department, Lt. Louis du Toit, saying that he wanted to buy a wreath and coffin for Majola's funeral.[2] This aroused suspicion in du Toit, who reported the call to his superiors. Barber was immediately designated the prime suspect, and on March 5, Barber was arrested and charged with her murder. Over the next couple of weeks, he was also charged with the murders of Irene and Denise Jones, as well as Philippine Ndlovu.[2]
While he was awaiting trial, a unit of police officers led by Maj. Chris Groenewald was organized in an attempt to locate the missing women's bodies.[5] Despite searching the rubbish dump, the gallons in which their bodies were supposedly stuffed in were never found.
Trial and sentence
Barber's trial began on September 10, 1979, with Deputy Attorney General of Natal Hendrik Klem serving as prosecutor, while Peter Combrinck served as Barber's lawyer.[4] Initially, both Barber and his lawyer denied the charges that the Joneses and Ndlovu were dead, citing the fact that their bodies had not been found and that thus, there was no sufficient evidence to prove they were deceased. In regards to the Majola killing, Barber admitted that he had indeed killed her, but claimed that it was done in self-defence.[4]
According to his account, Majola went to his factory one night and started a violent argument with him, in which she attempted to stab him with a knife. Barber claimed that he panicked and accidentally killed her, but as he did not want to "shame" himself by telling his friends in the police force, so he instead decided to make it appear like a ritualistic murder.[4] When confronted with the fact that he did not confess responsibility until presented with irrefutable evidence, Barber admitted that was indeed the case, and that he hoped nothing was wrong with him mentally.[4]
The sensational trial insensed the local population, so much so that extra security had to be hired in order to keep order in court.[4] Throughout the proceedings, Barber regularly took notes, consulted with his lawyers and even joked with some of the officers, leading to the press coining him the moniker "The Laughing Killer". At one point during the trial, Irene Jones' husband, Reginald, was called in to testify against Barber, claiming that he had attacked by him on at least two occasions in an attempt to make him divorce Irene.[4]
By the end, all of Barber's claims were dismissed by the court, with Justice Neville James stating that the defendant had killed the women in a "cruel, merciless and evil" fashion.[4] While he was acquitted of murdering Ndlovu due to a lack of solid evidence, he was convicted of killing the Joneses and Majola, for which he was promptly sentenced to death on each count.[6]
Imprisonment and execution
Following his conviction, Barber was transferred to the Pretoria Central Prison's death row to await execution. Despite multiple attempts on behalf of the British government to have his sentence commuted, all of his appeals were denied.[7] In an attempt to have his sentence commuted, Barber additionally admitted responsibility for killing Ndlovu, but this was considered insufficient for a reduction.[8]
On December 11, 1980, Barber was hanged at the Pretoria Central Prison.[8] When informed of the execution, Bryan Jones said that his family could now finally rest and that he was satisfied that Barber was dead.[9]
See also
References
