Battle Creek police believe they're closer to solving a 31-year-old murder of Gayle Barrus

Trace Christenson | Battle Creek Enquirer

The partially decomposed body of Gayle Barrus was found 31 years ago by hunters in Emmett Township.

A Battle Creek police detective thinks he found her killer days ago, buried in a Texas cemetery.

"There is satisfaction that it might be the guy," Detective Scott Marshall said. "As I am standing there watching them exhume him, it is a very satisfactory feeling that knowing all the work has led you to that moment. And you are surrounded by people who are all just as excited as you are that you may have that suspect right here and you may be able to close a case."

Marshall, 41, has been a law enforcement officer for 22 years, including 13 years with the Battle Creek Police Department. He spent spent a year working on the Barrus homicide before arriving at the Travis County International Cemetery in Austin, Texas, to watch the exhumation of the body of Richard Compton.

It still may be six months or a year before Marshall and the department will know if the 59-year-old Compton, who died homeless in 2009, was the person who sexually assaulted and stabbed to death the mother of three, who was last seen at a Battle Creek restaurant on Oct. 9, 1988.

Investigators from the FBI took DNA from Compton's bone, which will be compared to DNA evidence collected at the crime scene where Barrus' body was found three decades ago.

"Just because it is cold, it does not change that you hope there are more leads," said Lt. Matt Robinson, who oversees the cold case investigations for the Battle Creek Police Department. "Homicides are treated at the highest level. It doesn't matter how long it’s been."

Gayle Barrus

For family members of the victims, almost progress in a cold case is satisfying.

"I am excited about where we are and very grateful about the effort put forward," said Jim Barrus, 44, of Dayton, Ohio, and the son of Gayle Barrus. "We are very hopeful from where we are."

"Scott is speaking for mom," Barrus said. "He is her voice."

Gayle Barrus was a hard-working, 30-year-old single mother who was living in Urbandale when she disappeared, Marshall said.

She had been working at two bars, The Beer Keg in Battle Creek and the Redwood Inn in Augusta.

She was last seen between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. at Speed's Koffee Shop at 1425 W. Michigan Ave. She left with a dark-haired man. She wasn't seen again until her body was discovered 16 days later on Oct. 25, 1988.

"That was not like her," Marshall said. "They started a missing person's report, but it wasn’t until the hunters found her in Emmett Township that they realized that it was a homicide."

She was killed where she was found, Marshall said, but Battle Creek police took the investigation because they had started the missing person case.

Police at the time developed a suspect involved in a prior sexual assault and kidnapping and who matched the description of the man Barrus was with the night she disappeared.

When Battle Creek detectives attempted to talk with him in Bellevue, there was a struggle and he was shot and killed.

His DNA was sent to a laboratory out of state for analysis. It came back nine months later. It wasn’t a match from the crime scene.

Investigators had spent that time assuming they had the suspect, Marshall said, but, when he was cleared, the Barrus case went cold.

Richard Compton

But Marshall said his investigation pointed to Richard Compton, a friend of the original suspect, who had been questioned and released and months later was long gone. Police had not taken his DNA.

The case was reviewed by cold case detectives years later. It went cold a second time, at least until Marshall was assigned as a cold case investigator in 2016.

Barrus was one of 60 cold case homicide cases from the city of Battle Creek and Bedford Township. The case files are kept in a room in the department's detective bureau.

"I started out and reorganized the whole case and got all the reports and started the investigation myself," Marshall said.

Small pieces of information from witnesses had to be checked. For instance, was Barrus seen late one night or early in the morning the next day.

Marshall began to look for Compton because he found Compton matched the description of the man Barrus was with and might have borrowed and been driving the truck owned by the original suspect.

"He had access to the original suspect truck because they were roommates and co-workers," Marshall said. "He had a violent past and ran in a motorcycle gang.

"Gayle was a social person and could make friends easily," Marshall said. "She could have met him through the bar or Speeds Koffee Shop in Urbandale, and it may have been one of those things that she met this individual. She had made mention to friends that she met a new guy."

Marshall started his search for Compton, first using the internet, and eventually found he had moved around the country and been arrested in several places. He said Compton was estranged from his family. (They declined a request from the Enquirer for an interview.)

"He was transient and didn't have a place to call home and moved around a lot," the detective said. "He was working in construction or as a handy man. Nothing long term."

Using law enforcement records and those from the cemetery in Texas and the memory of the sexton, Marshall said, he concluded that Compton had been homeless for several years before his death and was buried in a pauper's grave in Travis County.

Exhuming the body

Working with the FBI in Detroit, Austin and San Antonio, the Travis County Sheriff Department and the Michigan State Police, Marshall obtained a search warrant to exhume the body.

"It was the original sexton who buried him 10 years ago, and he came out and exhumed him for us," Marshall said. "He gave us some history that (Compton) had ended up in a homeless camp and died of some medical complications."

Two weeks ago, a team from the FBI and the other departments, carefully over five hours, opened the grave and confirmed, with fingerprints and teeth gone, that the body was Compton based on recorded tattoos. Then they took DNA from Compton's body and sent it to FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for testing and a comparison.

"We confirmed it was him and removed a DNA sample and sent it on," Marshall said. "It will prove or disprove."

Marshall said he must now wait for the results, and the comparison before he can either close the case or look elsewhere.

"Cold cases are not quick," he said. "This is a year in the making, and we are another six months out to get the results."

Despite delays, Chief Jim Blocker said, it's important to pursue cold cases.

"As a law enforcement agency, we have a contract with the community. It is an inherent moral responsibility to vigorously investigate and follow any lead to any case whether active or cold. That is our role."

He said the investigations are not only for the victim but for the family, because something has been taken from them with the death of a loved one.

The big questions for family members of homicide victims is always why it happened, he said.

"A lot of times we don't have the answer, and, in cold cases, we might get to the who which gets us closer to the explanation about what happened.

Not closure, but healing

Blocker doesn't use the word closure, when he talks about investigating homicide cases, but rather healing which he said can't happen without some answers to the mystery.

Both Blocker and Detective Sgt. Todd Elliott, supervisor of the detective bureau, said the department must balance the use of detectives for cold cases and the current caseload but are committed to continued cold-case investigations. Several are underway.

Elliott said Marshall spends about 75 percent of his time working on cold cases but "when other cases come in it sometimes gets pushed aside.”

Blocker said devoting resources to old cases can be expensive "but it is unquestioned that we are going to allow it. It is our moral obligation to leave no rock unturned and no dark space uncovered as long as it wasn't looked at before. The budget doesn't drive those decisions."

Phil Reed, an associate professor of criminal justice at Olivet College, retired 16 years ago as commander of investigations at the Battle Creek Police Department.

He supervised a larger Cold Case Unit and now with a class at the college, reviews some cases with detectives.

"There are only about 10 percent of police departments that are investigating cold cases, and there are a lot of murders in the Midwest that are unsolved," Reed said. "They shouldn't end up in a box somewhere on a shelf."

The cases are like puzzles, Reed said, but they are important to those left behind after a murder. He believes all the cases should be investigated.

"That is the ultimate crime, and I can't think of anything worse that to have a family member die and not having it solved," Reed said. "It leaves a lot of broken hearts. It is something that we as police departments owe it to family members of victims to do the best we can."

Reed continues to study cold cases and teach his students about them.

He said improving technology helps investigators, but, as time passes, evidence can be lost or destroyed, memories fade and witnesses die.

The biggest deterrent to solving homicides is a lack of information from witnesses, Reed said.

"Why don't they get solved? Mostly people don't want to talk. The suspect is developed but no one is talking."

Reed said many cold cases are solved when people decide to provide information, even years after the murder.

‘Truth is really important’

Jim Barrus said he is hopeful that his mother's murder will be resolved.

"Just knowing who did it and understanding possibly why," he said.

Barrus has created a Facebook page and obtained part of the police file as he worked on theories about his mother's death and the person who killed her.

"I am still steadfast to do what I can to get the answers

"I have just been trying to put all the parts together," he said. "Truth is really important for a lot of the family and closing the door, and they can get on with parts of their life.

He said the death of his mother changed the lives of many other people, even including his own children who never knew their grandmother.

"The bad thing is that mom was the victim, but, in many ways, there is more than one victim."

Contact Trace Christenson at 269-966-0685 or tchrist@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @TSChristenson