MURDER MOTIVE OFTEN INSURANCE

Augusta Chronicle, The (GA)

Author: Carmela Thomas

Staff Writer

Last week wasn't the first time an alleged murder-for-insurance-money plot involved a Fort Gordon soldier.

Twenty-five years ago, Fort Gordon Pvt. Kenneth Barnes, 19, from Ohio, was shot to death, and it was made to look like an accident involving someone else.

For years people believed the buried body was that of Augusta Quarry worker John Owens. Nellie Owens collected on her husband's life insurance, and the couple enjoyed spending it for years before getting caught, officials said.

In the past week, 31-year-old Gina Lynn Spann was accused of luring four teen-agers into killing her husband for insurance money.

Mrs. Spann, her 18-year-old, live-in boyfriend Larry Wayne Kelley, his friend Christopher Bargeron, 16, Matthew Clark Piazzi, 16, and Gerald Horne, 18, are all in jail charged in connection with the shooting death of Mrs. Spann's husband, Fort Gordon Staff Sgt. Kevin Leroy Spann, 35.

Mrs. Spann was the beneficiary of a military life insurance policy worth $200,000 and a civilian policy worth $100,000. She allegedly had promised Mr. Piazzi and Mr. Horne $5,000 each when the policy was paid. All were arrested the day after the death.

But the Barnes scam lay dormant for years.

For years, the missing Pvt. Barnes was listed as a deserter. But in 1982, police exhumed a body from Hillcrest Cemetery after getting a tip about an insurance fraud scam. The body was sent back to Pvt. Barnes' family.

Martinez couple John and Nellie Owens and a former Fort Gordon police officer were charged in connection with Pvt. Barnes' death, given prison sentences and fined thousands of dollars.

For about nine years the Owenses got away with making people think Pvt. Barnes' body was Mr. Owens' while they lived under new identities in Florida, enjoying the $104,000 that Mrs. Owens collected on his life insurance policy.

``An informant called me one day and told me the body we had in the ground wasn't Mr. Owens like we thought it was,'' said Quentin Conway, the district attorney's investigator who was a lead detective in the case.

Police say it would be harder to get away with the Owenses' scam today because of new technology, procedures and cooperation among insurance companies, victims' families and police.

Pvt. Barnes' death was ruled accidental. The two gunshot wounds were not noticed, and the body was buried one day after it was found. That wouldn't be likely today, police said.

``We have a crime lab here in Augusta now that wasn't here then, and if we need people from the lab to go to a crime scene they will,'' said Chief Deputy Sidney Hatfield of Richmond County's Sheriff Department.

``Before, the evidence had to be sent to the crime lab in Atlanta and would take awhile to get results back,'' the chief deputy said.

``We also can videotape crime scenes. . . . We're much more thorough now,'' he said.

It was an Owens family members who told police about the scam.

That's what happened to Pamela Hartley, 29, who was arrested March 1, 1996, in Augusta while living with her mother in her Richmond Hill Road home across the street from Mayor Larry Sconyers' house, said Brian Stamper, special agent in charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Fla.

Ms. Hartley, who grew up in Augusta, was convicted in 1996 of killing her husband, Navy Lt. Verle Lee Hartley, by poisoning him with arsenic 14 years ago while they were living in Florida. Ms. Hartley received at least $35,000 in insurance money, at least $10,000 a year in veteran's benefits and free military medical benefits.

``When she was questioned by investigators in 1982, she denied giving arsenic to her husband and there wasn't enough evidence against her,'' Agent Stamper said.

But new technology and time helped the case.

The investigators used databases and the Internet to find people who knew the Hartleys in the 1980s and to locate her. Several witnesses said Mrs. Hartley had asked them about hiring an assassin.

``Some family members, friends and neighbors have known for years she did this. Relationships change over the years, so people who didn't say anything back then were willing to talk now,'' the agent said.

There are no numbers kept on how many murders involve insurance as a motive, and there's no way of telling how many murders have been committed for money, police said .

Many officers, insurance company representatives, lawyers and officials say they were not surprised by Mrs. Spann's alleged murder-for-money plot.