By Matt Zapotosky and Christy Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writers and Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 2, 2008

A Prince Frederick woman accused of strangling her mother and putting her body in the trunk of a car was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday in Calvert County Circuit Court.

Barbara L. Hampton, 30, was convicted in the Sept. 17, 2007, killing of Pamela S. Varner, a Defense Department worker. Police found the 53-year-old grandmother dead in the trunk of her Honda Civic two days after her death.

Hampton, who will be sentenced Jan. 16, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

"It has been a long time coming, and the jury did their job in finding her guilty," the victim's daughter-in-law Kimberly Varner of Indiana said in an interview after the verdict.

"Justice has been served. . . . The jury can sleep at night," said Debbie Pacynski, the victim's sister, who lives in Michigan. "Maybe we'll finally be able to."

But defense attorney Kenneth McPherson said the jury had gone too far.

"We are disappointed that the jury drew such powerfully negative inferences, because there did not seem to be any evidence of premeditation," he said. "We will encourage her to pursue an appeal."

In closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors alleged that Hampton and her mother had a strained relationship and that Hampton beat and strangled her mother when she refused to give Hampton money. Hampton then took her mother's credit card and a check, prosecutors said, and went on a small spending spree, buying cigarettes, cellphone minutes and a tattoo.

"What's this case about? It's all about money," Calvert state's attorney Laura Martin told the jurors.

Hampton did not testify. Tapes played in court indicated that she had given varying accounts of what happened, including that she had pushed her mother, who had muscular dystrophy, causing the woman to fall and hit her head. According to charging documents, Hampton told investigators that she "freaked out" after the incident and dragged her mother's body to the trunk.

Defense attorneys acknowledged that Varner died after an altercation with her daughter but suggested that Hampton never intended to kill her mother and that she reacted irrationally after realizing she was dead.

"What they have done is taken Barbara Hampton's ugly life before and her irrational conduct after and charged her with this premeditated killing of her mother," McPherson said. "She did some stupid things, but that does not reflect on her state of mind at the time of the altercation."

McPherson sought to rebut the first-degree murder charge, which requires prosecutors to prove that Hampton killed her mother intentionally or in the course of a robbery. He called Martin's assertion that Hampton robbed her mother "the state's way of trying to turn a second-degree murder case into a first-degree murder case."

Martin countered that Hampton, who begged a woman for money at a convenience store just before the killing, was able to make several purchases after her mother was killed. She also said Varner's body was covered in bruises, and the medical examiner testified that she died of strangulation. That, Martin said, would have required Hampton to block her mother's breathing passage for at least four minutes, a clear indication that she thought about what she was doing.

"The bruises are there. The damage to the neck is there," Martin said.

McPherson argued that the medical examiner's report indicated only that Varner died of asphyxiation, not strangulation.

Hampton and her two children lived with Varner, prosecutors said, and the two repeatedly argued over the way Hampton raised her children. A year before the slaying, Martin said, Varner called police to report that her daughter had assaulted her.

"There's a lot of anger and a lot of resentment there. . . . We know that she has to depend on Mom," Martin said. "Common sense tells us things don't happen in a vacuum."