THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408120518
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
BEFORE HE WAKES
A True Story of Money, Marriage, Sex, and Murder
JERRY BLEDSOE
Dutton. 368 pp. $22.95.
HAVE I GOT a trashy read for you. It's Tobacco Road trash, the kind of trash that smolders in a large stinky pile on a rural Southern road, singeing your exposed parts if you get too close, which, of course, you do, because you just can't help yourself.
Before He Wakes, former Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record reporter Jerry Bledsoe's latest foray into true crime, delivers in fascinating, absorbing and gossipy detail exactly what its subtitle promises: ``A True Story of Money, Marriage, Sex, and Murder.'' And then some. But what Bledsoe (Bitter Blood, Blood Games) actually sells here is a trashy, two-faced, Bible-totin', Southern jezebel, a profile of ``evil.''
Bledsoe, an exceedingly competent and methodical writer, could never have invented the anti-heroine of this sordid little morality play: The Baptist black widow with an insatiable appetite for sex and a compulsion to spend, spend, spend - and the panache to obtain loans, loans, loans - is straight out of ``America's Most Wanted.'' She's that cute blonde with the painted-on smile who can put a bullet in the back of her husband's skull, clean the bloodied linen and then teach a Sunday school class without missing a beat.
In this case, she is Barbara Terry Ford Stager, a 40-year-old mother of two who decides that husband No. 2 must be dispatched like husband No. 1, the victim of an early-morning ``accidental'' shooting in the couple's bedroom. Floating too many debts and fretting over recent check forgeries, Barbara urgently needs life-insurance cash to revive her extravagant lifestyle.
There is nothing comical about the fates of the naively trusting husbands or the deep sadness felt by their families, especially their devout parents, who are touchingly portrayed here; and yet the manipulative Bledsoe imbues his narrative with so much melodrama that he sometimes goes over the top. His book is less about human failings and personality disorders than it is about near-mythic archetypes and classical betrayal. I raced through Before He Wakes, gobbling up the trashy tidbits and eagerly anticipating the legal outcome, only to leave the table unfulfilled: How could so many people (especially creditors) be so gullible and stupid about the scarlet Miss Barbara?
True to genre technique, Bledsoe opens the story with the crime itself - the shooting death of popular Durham (N.C.) High School coach Russ Stager, 40, at 6 a.m. on Feb. 1, 1988 - and then drops back to develop the characters and their motivations before covering the criminal investigation and the eventual murder trial. He is thorough and engrossing, but amateurish in his psychological analysis.
Barbara tells police that she sleepily reached under Russ' pillow, removing the loaded and cocked pistol (!) that the skilled reserve soldier kept there for protection against prowlers, and the pistol discharged. Never mind that none of the forensic evidence - the bullet's trajectory, the location of the rejected clip, the body's position - supports her claim. The Durham Sheriff's Department accepts the demure, dry-eyed housewife's version of the ``tragedy'' and quickly moves to declare the death accidental, as did Randolph County, N.C., sheriff's officials who botched the investigation of first husband Larry Ford's death. An autopsy isn't even ordered.
Are N.C. criminal investigators usually this bad, or were they especially lax and incompetent in this case?
Bledsoe never judges the adequacy of the law enforcement; he just gives the facts, ma'am. But it is clear that if Russ Stager's first wife, Jo Lynn, had not reported to Durham authorities Russ' fear of Barbara and his request that Jo Lynn question anything ``suspicious'' that might happen to him, Barbara might have gotten away with murder twice.
Many friends, family members and former co-workers weigh in with conflicting opinions and incriminating anecdotes about Barbara, a shy, unattractive, sexually repressed girl dominated by her demanding mother, who blossomed into an accomplished nymphomaniac, liar, embezzler and spendthrift, and ``loving and devoted'' wife and mother. Barbara's trial is interesting for its unusual evidentiary rulings, its invocation of the death penalty, its jury and its small-town venue, but the woman herself is the main event.
Bledsoe ends his seamy Southern saga right where he began, on Tobacco Road, amid the trash, contemplating God, forgiveness, salvation, and evil. The Elmer Gantry of true crime, he gives a virtuoso performance. Heaven help us all. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is a lawyer and book editor for The Virginian-Pilot and
The Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Jerry Bledsoe's ``Before He Wakes'' delivers on its sordid promise.
Jacket design by NEIL STUART
Jacket photo by GEORGE KERRIGAN
by CNB