Town note
Early in the 20th century Irvington was a farm community and the centre of the tung oil business.
about 0:13:29The story
Irvington sits on the coastal panhandle of Alabama, about twenty minutes from Mobile, and in 1992 it was a scattered settlement of trailers and small houses rather than an incorporated town.
He was born in Mississippi and, as a very small baby, was adopted by an aunt and uncle who raised him as their own son and never told him the truth. The family stories about his biological parents were confused, but the prevailing account was that they were related to one another and involved in a semi-incestuous relationship. He was a poor student and felt rejected by his family and his peers. After that he drank heavily and used LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, prescription drugs and crack cocaine.
In 1990 he married Sandra Elsie. In the first year of the marriage he attempted suicide, and he was violent towards her, slapping her, pulling her hair and once hitting her hard enough to break her glasses. They divorced after about ten months, though she later let him move back in. In January 1992 she found needles in the house and discovered that he had been stealing her prescribed tranquilizers and filling her prescriptions to build his own supply. She asked him to leave. He moved in with Gerald and Claire Paravacini, whom he had known for about eight years, and their teenage son Jeffrey Carr. After about two weeks there he talked Sandra into a reconciliation.
The reconciliation was set for Valentine's Day, 14 February 1992. They went to a club, had a few drinks, bought sandwiches at a deli and, at about eleven o'clock, Sandra wanted to go home. Instead he bought LSD and prescription pills, possibly ecstasy, from a man in the club bathroom, drank heavily and went with friends to a crack house, where he smoked crack through the night.
He walked the rest of the way and knocked on the window of Jeffrey Carr, who let him in. Jeffrey watched him pace back and forth. On the other end of the line Sandra heard a bump against the trailer wall, then Claire Paravacini calling for help.
Jeffrey ran outside to a neighbour for help and Gerald, bleeding heavily, also got out of the trailer and collapsed near the road. Claire then went back into the trailer to look for something to stop Gerald's bleeding and for her car keys. He smashed her in the face with the butt of the rifle, breaking her jaw, but did not shoot her. He left with her purse, which contained credit cards, a cheque book and more than $500 in cash.
Dewey pulled the keys from the ignition, jumped out and ran into the woods with the keys in his hand. He then walked about a hundred yards up the road to the home of Linda and Freddie Barber. Linda, who worked for the U.S. Post Office, was getting ready for work when she answered the door. He walked into the kitchen and shot Freddie Barber in the head as he sat at the table drinking coffee. He found Brian Barber asleep in his bed and shot him three times, two of the wounds in the head. Brad grabbed the barrel of the rifle, was shot through the hand and managed to break free and escape through the back door to his sister's house on the other side of the woods.
He drove across Mississippi, stopped to smoke crack with the money he had stolen, and eventually reached the Mississippi-Louisiana border. From a pay phone he called Sandra. She told him the police were at her house and that he should surrender. He walked to the nearest police officer and turned himself in, about a hundred miles west of Irvington. He told officers he had been drinking heavily and taking LSD. He said he had thrown the rifle away and disposed of Freddie Barber's wallet after taking the money.
The prosecution pointed out that he had said none of this when he first spoke to police. Dr Claude L. Brown, for the defence, diagnosed borderline personality disorder and said LSD had produced a psychosis.
By a vote of ten to two it recommended death.
Further state and federal petitions failed.
Governor Robert Bentley declined to intervene. He did not request a last meal, but ate hot wings and vending machine sandwiches that relatives bought for him. His last words were that he hoped the families of the victims would forgive him. He died at 6.19 p.m. Ten members of the victims' families watched, including Jeffrey Carr and Brad Barber. Freddie Barber's older brother, Louis, said the family had suffered for two decades and that Brad, who was sixteen at the time, still had nightmares, but that he thought justice had been served.