Jason Hartley: A 15-year-old, desperate to lose his virginity, pays a classmate for sex. Then she mocks his performance and things turn bad... very bad.
Dakotah Eliason: Dakotah’s grandparents had taken him in when his parents failed him. He loves them dearly. Why then, is he planning their destruction?
Berenice Juarez: Bernice does not approve of her mother’s lifestyle and she specifically does not like her new lover. She has a plan for that.
John Totherow: The boy claimed that someone had broken in and murdered his mom. The truth was closer to home... and far more shocking.
Krissi Caldwell & Bobby Gonzales: Krissi’s parents disapprove of her boyfriend. She won’t give him up. A clash is coming. There will be blood.
Aiden Fucci: A 13-year-old cheerleader sneaks out in the middle of the night to meet up with a classmate. She thinks they might fool around. He has other plans.
Alsa Thompson: She was a sweet and intelligent child who delighted all who encountered her. She may also have been a serial killer.
Killer Kids Volume 16
Adam Barney
Adam was a 15-year-old from McKinney, Texas, who stood accused of murdering his 50-year-old mother. The details of the crime were disturbing. Stacey Barney had been clubbed into submission with a hammer before the last vestiges of her life were extinguished by her son’s strangling hands. Testimony of such an event would be traumatizing to anyone who had to hear it. This case, however, had an extra dimension of horror. There was video footage to be viewed. The murder, in all its savagery, had been caught on film.
To call Adam Barney a troubled child, would be to vastly understate the issue. This was a kid with severe behavioral and psychological problems, a kid who’d spent much of his youth in treatment centers and juvenile detention, who’d once told his mother that he wanted to murder his entire family. He was just seven years old at the time. Since that troubling revelation, his parents and siblings had lived through years of abusive behavior, manipulation, unprovoked aggression. It did not take much to set Adam off and when he unleashed he was a destructive force of nature.
Craig and Stacey Barney did what they could for their son, seeking out the help of specialists and treatment facilities. But nothing seemed to work. It was as though something was broken in Adam, something severely off-kilter. “There is nothing more hurtful than to hear that he wanted to kill all of us,” Stacey recorded in her journal. She and Craig eventually took to locking their bedroom door at night, lest Adam pay them an unwanted nocturnal visit. They took the same precaution for their other two children and made sure that all of the knives in the house were under lock and key. Such were the measures needed to ensure their safety.
In January 2021, large swathes of the country were under a storm warning. A severe ice storm was predicted, one that would paralyze several states over the next few days. At their home in west McKinney, Craig and Stacey Barney were cloistered together in earnest conversation. They’d just received good news. An out-of-state treatment facility had agreed to take on Adam’s case. The experts there had reviewed his medical and psychiatric records and were confident that they could treat him. They’d had success with similar cases. That was all very well but Craig and Stacey still had to break the news to their son. They were not at all sure how he would take it.
In the end, Craig decided that the direct approach was best. Adam was called to the living room where his parents told him how much they loved him, how much they wanted him to get well. They then informed him about the treatment center and explained that they would be bringing him there in a couple of days. To their surprise, Adam showed little response. He listened attentively, nodded solemnly at the end, did not raise any questions when given the opportunity to do so. He then asked if he could be excused and went to his room. Craig and Stacey could hardly believe that it had gone so well.
Craig Barney retired to bed soon after this exchange with his son. Stacey stayed up, watching TV in the living room. She was still out there when Craig woke some hours later. He looked at the bedside clock. Well past midnight. Stacey had probably dozed off on the couch, he decided. He should probably go and wake her. Swinging his legs out of the bed, he left the room and padded down the hall. The TV was still on, the sound turned down low so as not to disturb the other residents of the house. Craig rounded the couch to shake his wife awake. That was when he saw the blood. He’d barely had time to register what was happening when a figure detached itself from the shadows and came at him. It was Adam, and he was wielding a screwdriver.
Just after 01:00 a.m. on that January morning, a 911 call came into the McKinney Police Department. The caller identified himself as Craig Barney and said that his teenage son had attacked his wife, who was covered in blood and did not appear to be breathing. The boy then tried to attack him, he said, but fled into the night after he fought back.
Units were immediately dispatched to the scene. They were there within minutes but arrived too late to do anything for Stacey Barney. Stacey was dead, the back of her head beaten to a pulp by some blunt object. She also bore the marks of manual strangulation on her throat, telltale bruises where her killer had fastened his grip. It was hard to believe that a child could have done this to his own mother.
But any doubts as to who was responsible were removed when Craig Barney handed over the tapes from his home surveillance system. Here, every gory detail of the lethal attack was caught on film. Adam is seen walking into the garage. He rummages through a toolbox and selects a hammer and a screwdriver. Then, he re-enters the house, coming up beyond his mom as she sits watching TV. He says something, then attacks before Stacey even has time to turn around.
The first strike is inflicted with extreme force. It renders the unfortunate woman unconscious before she can cry out. But Adam isn’t stopping, he continues to rain down blows on his mother’s head, clubbing her ten more times before casting the hammer aside and putting his hands on her throat. It is uncertain whether Stacey is still alive at this time, although Adam maintains his death grip for several minutes before releasing. Perhaps he has heard his father approaching. The surveillance footage then shows the brief tussle between father and son before Adam breaks off and flees.
A search was now launched for Adam Barney, a massive manhunt that had every available officer out in the difficult conditions. It was supported and coordinated from the air by a police helicopter. It is easy to understand why the police took such robust action for a juvenile offender. Given Barney’s mental health issues and history of violence, there were genuine concerns that he might attack someone else. Not only that but he wasn’t exactly dressed for the extreme weather conditions. He might freeze out there.
In the end, neither of those things happened. Barney was arrested at around 08:00 a.m. that morning, walking down a road, hunched up against the cold with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He offered no resistance when an officer snapped the cuffs on him.
Adam Barney was charged with first-degree murder, with the Collin County District Attorney stating his intention to try the teen killer as an adult. That left Barney’s defense team with few options. The entire murder was caught on tape. Denial was pointless. The only issue up for debate was the appropriate punishment for such a brutal act.
Defense attorney April Steele argued that her client’s history of mental illness should be taken in mitigation. She also contended that he’d suffered sexual abuse at various treatment centers, physical abuse at home, and bullying at school. The second of those claims was fiercely contested by the prosecution. Every piece of testimony suggested that Craig and Stacey had been devoted parents who had done everything they could to get help for their son. He had repaid their devotion with years of intimidation, culminating in an act of extreme violence. According to the prosecutor, the boy was “beyond rehabilitation” and should be locked away for life.
This was where the jury came in. This was where the unfortunate twelve had to sit through a screening of the savage murder. Many could not make it to the end and the judge called a stop before the video played out. They’d all seen enough. One small detail was added during this process. It was the words that Adam Barney spoke before landing the first blow on his mother’s head. Taken in context, they are chilling. “Goodnight. I love you.”
Adam Barney was sentenced to life in prison, with the jury taking just over three hours to reach its decision. Parole was not ruled out. However, it will take many years, perhaps many decades, before it is deemed safe to let him rejoin society.
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