A man on Arkansas' death row is expected to plead guilty today to the rape and strangulation of a Bridgeville woman while she was vacationing in Florida in 1991.
Lorraine Anne Barrett's father said the family is "ecstatic" over news that her killer finally will be punished.
"Even though it's been a long time, it helps the family to know that all this is finally coming to an end," John Barrett, of South Fayette, said Thursday. "We're glad that in addition to the death sentence he received in Arkansas, he will get a life sentence in Florida."
Lorraine Barrett, who died at 32, graduated from South Fayette High School in 1977 and worked as a customer service representative for Bell of Pennsylvania in Washington, Pa. She was killed less than 12 hours after arriving in Fort Lauderdale to visit friends.
A motel maid found Barrett's body on her mother Marlene's 55th birthday. John Barrett believes the stress of their daughter's slaying contributed to a stroke that left his wife disabled.
"It was a very bad time for us. She took it hard," he said.
Police released a sketch of the killer and had been told by witnesses that Barrett had last been seen socializing with a heavily tattooed man, but her killing remained unsolved for more than a decade.
In 2002, Fort Lauderdale police Detective John Curcio took over the case and submitted DNA samples found at the scene of Barrett's slaying for testing by the National DNA Indexing System.
The DNA was matched to Jack Harold Jones Jr., 40, who is awaiting execution by lethal injection for the 1995 rape and murder of a 34-year-old Arkansas woman. Jones also attacked and almost killed the woman's 11-year-old daughter. An execution date has not been set.
Jones' tattoos and facial features also matched those in a police sketch of the man witnesses said they saw with Barrett the night she died. Detectives also learned that Jones was living in the Fort Lauderdale area in 1991.
Jones was flown to Florida March 1 under tight security from the maximum security prison in Tucker, Ark., and charged with raping and killing Barrett.
Jones has said he will plead guilty to first-degree murder when he is arraigned today in Broward County Circuit Court, Curcio said.
"He says he is going to accept responsibility, and his big concern ... is for not only the victim's family out in Arkansas, but the victim's family here in Florida," Curcio said. "And he's not going to prolong anything. He's fully accepted the fact that he is going to die in Arkansas' death row, and he is trying to make everything easier for the victims' families in both cases."
Tony Loe, the assistant state attorney prosecuting the case in Florida, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper that authorities offered to waive the death penalty in Barrett's murder in exchange for Jones' guilty plea.
