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Killer Trucker — Or Someone Closer to Home? The Murder of Gloria Jean Barnes
The 35-year-old was beaten and stabbed to death in 1997, and questions still abound as to who might have done it.
It was July 13th 1997, and officers from Springfield Police Department in Missouri had been called at around 8:30 AM by four truckers who had made a gruesome discovery.
They had stopped at the Seven Gables truck stop near I-44 and noticed a bundled-up pile of blankets lying in the parking lot. Upon closer inspection, they realised the material was hiding the body of a woman.
The white female was wearing black shorts and a white T-shirt with ‘Spring Break’ written on it, and she had been stabbed in the chest and leg as well as beaten around the head enough to fracture her skull.
Fortunately the woman’s fingerprints were on a state database and she was soon identified as 35-year-old Gloria Jean Barnes. However, this was where the investigation stopped being simple and turned into a web of suspicion and mystery that is still going on today.
Because, more than a quarter of a century on, no one has ever been charged with the murder and Gloria’s killer remains unpunished.
