Nicholas Barrows goes on trial today in Crawford County Circuit Court, charged with capital murder in the June 2014 shotgun slaying of an Alma man whom Barrows accused of raping his girlfriend.
Barrows, 20, and his half brother, Jonathan Bridgewater, 28, are accused of killing 19-year-old Jamie Plum of Alma and burying his body in a shallow grave on their grandmother's rural Crawford County property.
Bridgewater also is charged with capital murder, which is punishable by life in prison or death. Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune has said he is not seeking the death penalty against Barrows.
The two men also are charged with committing a felony with a firearm. Barrows also is charged with criminal use of a prohibited weapon, accused of having three pipe bombs in his possession.
Barrows is the son of former Fort Smith Police Department Maj. Jeff Barrows. The elder Barrows has been subpoenaed by Nicholas Barrows' attorneys to testify during the trial, but an attorney representing Jeff Barrows has filed a motion to quash the subpoena.
One of Nicholas Barrows' attorneys, Katherine Streett with the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, filed a response to the motion last week asking Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell to deny the request, arguing that stress due to testifying at his son's trial was not a valid reason for quashing the subpoena. Cottrell had not ruled on the motion as of Monday.
Bridgewater, whose trial is scheduled to start Oct. 5, is expected to testify against his half brother during the three-day jury trial before Cottrell.
Barrows and Bridgewater were arrested a week after the June 24, 2014, killing when Bridgewater's then-girlfriend Elizabeth Henry reported to the sheriff's office that her boyfriend had shown her a dead body on property off Arkansas 348 in Rudy, where he and Barrows lived.
She told a deputy that Bridgewater had asked her to walk with him into the woods on his grandmother's 12-acre property, according to the sheriff's office records. In the woods, he asked her whether she had ever seen a dead body, then had her lift a tarp covering Plum's body.
She told the deputy that Bridgewater boasted he was wearing Plum's sneakers and that Barrows had taken his wallet and a marijuana pipe.
In an affidavit for a search warrant, Henry told a deputy that on the day of the killing, Bridgewater picked her up from work and was in a hurry to get home, saying '"the guy is probably dead by now.'"
Shortly after arriving at the property, Henry told the deputy she heard a gunshot, screaming and another gunshot. She saw Barrows limp out of the woods carrying a shotgun and a machete that he placed in Bridgewater's vehicle.
Henry reported that Barrows shot Plum because he believed Plum had raped his girlfriend.
Throughout that week, Henry said Bridgewater told her he was digging a hole in which to place the dead man.
Plum's mother, Lorie Ann Plum of Alma, reported to the sheriff's office that her son had been missing for a week. According to reports, she told deputies her son was friends with Barrows and Bridgewater, but they had been fighting over a girlfriend and she was afraid something may have happened to him.
Sheriff's deputies, Arkansas State Police investigators, and members of the coroner's and prosecutor's offices converged on the property to search it July 1, 2014.
With the help of a cadaver dog, deputies found Plum's body buried in a shallow grave. Others found pipe bombs in Barrows' bedroom, according to reports.
A Special Weapons and Tactics team was en route to the property when it came across a disabled vehicle along the highway in Rudy that fit the description of Bridgewater's vehicle. Officers approached Barrows and Bridgewater, who said they had run out of gas, and arrested them.
Metro on 08/11/2015