Marion was in disbelief on February 19th, 1973, when Mary Ann Damico came home from school and found her 50 year old paraplegic mother, Martha Damico, senselessly murdered in their home at 825 Morgan Drive. Martha, who was confined to a wheel chair, had been murdered that morning shortly after her daughter left for school by Cynthia “Cindy” Barnes, 17, whose mother lived not far away at 840 Morgan Drive.
Barnes managed to steal cosmetics and about $15 worth of bills and change from the Damico home, after which she purchased a pair of pants and left town for Chicago. She was quickly discovered and later pled guilty to the murder and robbery, receiving 20 to 100 years in prison.
Cynthia Barnes, 17, Plead Guilty to Murder, Southern Illinoisan, May 30, 1973
Cynthia “Cindy” Barnes, 17, Marion, Tuesday, pleaded guilty to murder, of a paraplegic in an armed robbery.
Judge William Lewis deferred sentencing until after a hearing on aggravation and mitigation and a report.by the Williamson County probation officer. The hearing and sentencing will be at 9 a.m. June 13.
Miss Barnes was scheduled to go on trial June 4 on a charge of murder for the stabbing and strangulations of Martha Damico, 50, a paralysis victim confined to a wheelchair, at her apartment in a federal low rent housing project in Marion.
After a lengthy explanation of her legal rights and the processes of a trial, Lewis said to Miss Barnes, “I will ask you, did you on February 19, 1973, at approximately the hour of 8:45 a.m. kill Mrs. Damico?”
She said, “Yes, I did. “Did you have legal justification?” “No.”
Under questioning by Lewis Miss Barnes admitted to stabbing Mrs. Damico with a meat fork and taking “certain items, including a pouch,” from the Damico home.
Consequences Explained
Lewis explained to Miss Barnes that on her plea of guilty he could sentence her to a minimum and maximum term of years. He said the law sets the minimum of at least 14 years, but the sentence can be any number he sets.
He asked Miss Barnes if she understood that she could be sentenced to prison for the rest of her life. She said she did.
However, by law, a person is eligible for parole after serving 11 years and three months of a sentence regardless of the number of years set.
State’s Atty. Robert Howerton said the killing of Mrs. Damico was “a heinous crime” and indicated he win ask a maximum sentence. He said there was no plea bargaining with Miss Barnes’ Attorney.
The defendant’s mother, Alice Barnes, a waitress in a Marion motel, broke down during Tuesday’s courtroom questioning. Miss Barnes remained calm until the hearing was over, then she and her mother put their arms around each other and cried.
Miss Barnes, who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 115 pounds, wore a brown miniskirt and blouse. She wiped tears from her eyes with paper tissue during the presentation of “a factual basis” for the indictments as Howerton described the robbery and killing. Mrs. Barnes broke down during the description and Miss Barnes gave her a handkerchief.
Howerton said evidence he would have presented in the court trial would have been this:
Miss Barnes, who was living at the time in a Chicago apartment with Ed McBride, returned to Marion on Feb. 18 with Charles and Dorothy Simpson, 1111 W. Hendrickson St, Marion, and spent the night in their home.
On Feb. 19, Miss Barnes went to her mother’s home in the housing project, 250 feet away from the Damico home, fixed breakfast for her brother and then took a paring knife and pair of nylon hose with her when she walked to the Damico residence.
Asked for Ride
She knocked on the door and when Mrs. Damico answered, Miss Barnes asked if Mary Ann Damico, 18, a daughter, was going to school and if she could ride with her. When Mrs. Damico said Mary Ann left, Miss Dames asked if she could use the telephone.
When Mrs. Damico had her back turned, Miss Barnes while pretending to dial then pulled the telephone wire from the wall, wrapped the nylon stocking around Mrs. Damico’s neck. It broke, Howerton said, and then Miss Barnes attempted to choke Mrs. Damico with her hands.
Howerton said she then stabbed Mrs. Damico with the paring knife and the victim fell from the wheelchair onto the floor. Miss Barnes then took the meat fork from a kitchen drawer and stabbed Mrs. Damico twice. The meat fork penetrated the heart and embedded in the spinal cord. Miss Barnes then wrapped the electric cord around her neck and strangled her.
After that, Howerton said, Miss Barnes went through the house and took certain items, including a leather pouch containing old coins, Canadian coins and a dollar bill, and Mrs. Damico’s cosmetics. Howerton said some of the items were recovered by officers in the search of the apartment in Chicago when Miss Barnes was arrested.
Miss Barnes then returned to her mother’s house, where she put back the paring knife, attempted to clean up and returned to the Simpson house.
Changed Clothes
Howerton said Mrs. Simpson would have testified Miss Barnes had changed clothes since she left earlier and that she had scratches on the backs of her hands and nose. Miss Barnes told the Simpsons she had been in a fight at the housing project.
After 10 minutes at the Simpson home, Miss Barnes went to the home of Larry and Melody Bearden, with whom she had made arrangements to ride to Chicago.
Before they left Marion, they stopped at a teen clothing store and Miss Barnes went inside for a few minutes, returning with a sack. Howerton said she paid $14.95 for a pair of slacks she had laid away, $7 of the payment in coins.
Howerton said a tape recorded confession and statements she made to interrogation officers would have been presented in the trial.
Lewis said ”the court finds a factual basis” for the charges after Howerton’s presentation.
Kenneth Hubler, public defender appointed to represent Miss Barnes, presented Lewis and Howerton with reports of a psychiatric examination Hubler had requested.
Dr. Clarence E. Boyd said in the report he found Miss Barnes not to be mentally ill, capable of understanding the charges against her and able to assist her counsel in her own defense.
Miss Barnes has been held in the Williamson County Jail without bond on the capital charge since her arrest Feb. 22.
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Cynthia Barnes Gets 20-100 Year Sentence, Southern Illinoisan, June 22, 1973
Cynthia “Cindy” Barnes, 17, Marion, today was taken to the Dwight Women’s Reformatory to serve a sentence of from 20 to 100 years.
Judge William Lewis sentenced her Thursday in circuit court in Marion for the murder of Martha Damico, Marion. The Sentencing followed a four and a half hour hearing on aggravation and mitigation of the sentence. She will be eligible for parole after serving 11 years and 3 months.
State’s Atty. Robert Howerton said circumstances of the unexplainable crime deserve more than the minimum sentence of 14 years set by law.
Public Defender Kenneth Hubler said a lengthy term would not benefit society. He asked the court to make the sentence “the minimum or very nearly the minimum.”
Lewis offered Miss Barnes the opportunity to make a statement in her own behalf before he ruled on the sentence.
After a brief silence, Hubler whispered in her ear and then Miss Barnes said, “Well, I’m very sorry that I did it.”
Lewis said if he set a lengthy sentence as punishment on a revenge basis “I would be setting myself up as God Almighty.”
He said the state criminal code sets the penalty according to the nature of the offense end the possible rehabilitation of the defendant.
Lewis said the stabbing-strangulation of the 50-year-old paraplegic in her low-rent housing apartment was premeditated and coldblooded “but it would not do any good to rehash it.”
Sees Possible Rehabilitation
He said he has “confidence in our society” and thinks that advances in science might make possible the rehabilitation of Miss Barnes in the future.
Lewis said psychiatric reports and his observances in court lead him to think there is “not remorse, no guilt. This is what much feeling . . .no feeling of scares me.”
He told Miss Barnes he encouraged her to cooperate with as the Department of Corrections, “the more you cooperate, the more knowledge you gain to help yourself.”
Lewis told her, “You have a rough row to hoe.”
He said circumstances of the crime led Him to set higher than the 14-year minimum.
Luther Barnes, 45, a heating repair shop operator and a Baptist minister testified for mitigation of the sentence of his daughter.
Barnes said she was “a good, average child” who went to school regularly and attended church from nursery age without any problems until Barnes and his wife, Alice, 38, a waitress, were divorced in 1969.
After that, Barnes said, she “became more obstinate. She wouldn’t mind as well as she had.'”
He said he became aware that she was not getting on when Judge A.R. Cagle telephoned him from circuit court in Marion In 1972 and asked him to take custody of the girl. Barnes said the essence was that she was out of control of her mother.
Barnes said he had no problems with her until he re-married and then she began skipping school. He said he tried counseling for her by the Granite City Youth Organization but “it didn’t seem to help.” He lived in Granite Cay at the time.
Miss Barnes dropped out of school in the tenth grade. She worked for a short time at a doughnut shop in Granite City but quite to take a trip to Florida.
She returned to Marion and worked two months as a waitress at the Uptowner Restaurant. She quit that job and then worked at the Orpheum Theater in Marion five months before she was fired in October for arriving late for work.
One letter
Barnes said he got one letter from her during the working period in Marion and he said he “thought she was coming out of it, I really thought that she had found something.”
He said the next thing he heard was that she had met a man and was no longer living with her mother.
Authorities have said Miss Barnes was living in a Chicago apartment with Eddie McBride, at the time she returned to Marion on Feb. 18.
Howerton described how Miss Barnes went to the Damico home the following day with a paring knife and pair of nylon hose as weapons in a robbery. He said she tried to strangle Mrs. Damico with the hose, which broke, and then with her hands, then stabbed her with the knife she brought and with a meat fork from Mrs. Damico’s cabinet.
She ransacked the apartment and used the $14.95 she got about an hour later to buy a pair of slacks at a Marion store where she had laid them away earlier, Howerton sold.
Hubler said Miss Barnes understands the seriousness of the crime, never denied committing the murder and “openly and publicly pronounced that she was guilty.”
He said that voluntary plea “on one hand was baying I did it and on the other saying forgive me.” He said the court should give some consideration to that and said her plea was “a step towards rehabilitation, and that’s what this is all about.”
Miss Barnes, wearing a long-sleeved while blouse and orange hip-hugger slacks, broke down only after the sentencing was over and Lewis had left the court.
She cried briefly while relatives crowded around her. One relative sought permission from Sheriff Russell Oxford to allow her to held a young baby. It was not allowed.
Oxford and his wife, Jackie, who acts as a jail matron and who testified that Miss Barnes had been cooperative and no problem whatsoever since arrested Feb. 22, took Miss Barnes from the county about 10:00 a.m. today by car to Dwight.
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Cindy Was an Average Girl, Until…, Southern Illinoisan, June 22, 1973
Friends, teachers and officials who knew Cynthia “Cindy”‘ Barnes all agree that she was a “typical, average teen-ager” until her parents were divorced and she became involved in drugs.
Miss Barnes, 17, was sentenced in Williamson County court Thursday to 20 to 100 years in prison for the murder of Mrs. Martha Damico.
People who knew her before 1969, the year of her parents’ divorce, describe her as slightly attractive and quiet — but mainly like any other teen-ager.
A junior high school teacher and an ex-boyfriend who asked to remain anonymous both agree Cindy was an average girl. The teacher said she caused no problems in class, got average grades, spoke when spoken to and never appeared to be with any one particular group of friends. The boy said Cindy was like any other girl he dated.
Elmer Farmer, probation officer of Williamson County and a friend of Cindy’s father, Luther Barnes, said he had slight contact with Cindy before the family’s divorce about missing school, but the reason was so minor he did not keep a record of it.
Things Changed
When Cindy’s parents were divorced in 1969, things changed. Cindy was quoted as saying at the age of 12 that “families should stay together, no matter what.”
Mr. Barnes moved to Granite City and Cindy began moving back and forth between there and Marion, living with each parent for about six months at a time.
According to her school record, Miss Barnes spent the first semester of 1969, her freshman year, in the Marion school. The second semester she enrolled in Granite City.
She returned to Marion in the fall of 1970 for her first sophomore semester but quit school Nov. 2 supposedly to return to Granite City. She never returned to Marion High School.
During this time her grades began to fall. She dropped from a “C” student to a below-average one. Her first semester grade in math as a freshman was a B. In Granite City it dropped to an F.
Marion High School teachers do not remember Miss Barnes well. One teacher said she was not a class problem but could have done better in her work.
She stopped attending school in 1971. In February of 1972 she got her first job working for a doughnut shop in Granite City for a month. She quit that job and returned to Marion to live with an aunt.
In Marion, Miss Barnes held jobs at the Uptowner Restaurant and the Orpheum Theater.
By the time she returned to Marion in 1972, authorities and friends said she was taking drugs.
Court records show the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested her in May, 1972, as a runaway and for illegal possession of barbiturates and immoral behavior. She was released to her mother on the condition she consult the Franklin and Williamson Counties Mental Health Clinic.
One young man who asked to remain unidentified said he talked to Miss Barnes during that summer. Her entire conversation centered on drugs, he said.
One of her girlfriends at this time said Miss Barnes took “uppers,” mostly “speed,” and some LSD.
She stopped living with her mother in November and began staying in friends’ homes.
One of the girls with whom she stayed, said she would only sleep and eat there a few nights and then leave for days without saying anything. This girl’s parents said Miss Barnes never caused any problems there, however.
Did What She Wanted
“Cindy was the type of girl that did what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it,” the girl said.
In December, Miss Barnes met a Chicago man and left Marion to live with him in Chicago. Authorities report the man was a heroin addict.
No one in Marion heard from her again until she was arrested February 22, 1973, for Mrs. Damico’s murder.
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In May of 1974, Barnes appealed her sentence in the Fifth Appellate District Court in Mt. Vernon on the grounds that the sentence of 20-100 years was excessive for a 17 year old girl with no criminal record. State’s Attorney Howerton noted that the nature of the offense should be considered. Barnes would have been eligible for parole after serving 11 years and 3 months which would have been September 1984.
In September of 1974, the court upheld her original sentence, citing that the court found nothing to support the argument that Miss Barnes had a high potential for rehabilitation except her lack of a criminal record. But, the court ruled, that was over-shadowed by the “cold-blooded nature” of the crime.
No further articles were found related to this case, so it is currently unknown whether Barnes is still incarcerated or whether she eventually got paroled. If anyone has knowledge, please advise.
(Extracted from Southern Illinois articles, May 30, June 22, 1973 and May and September 3, 1974)