Nearly 60 years after 18-year-old Karen Snider was found stabbed to death in her Calumet City home, the ex-wife of the man now charged with her murder took the stand this week and testified that she heard him come home around dusk on the night Snider died. Paula Turley's account, delivered in the ongoing trial of James Barbier, quickly became a flashpoint as defense attorneys pushed back on how reliable her decades-old memory really is.
Turley testified that she last spoke with Snider on the morning of Nov. 12, 1966, when the two friends talked about feeding their baby daughters, born within the same month, and about Turley's upcoming birthday, according to the Chicago Tribune. Later that day, while her parents and brother were visiting her at her home in Gary, Indiana, Turley said she heard Barbier arrive around dusk. She also testified that she heard the basement washing machine running, which she said was unusual because Barbier never did laundry, and that he was wearing clean clothes with cuts on his face, the Tribune reported.
Defense attorney Tom Justic, an assistant public defender representing Barbier, challenged Turley's memory of that day, pointing out that her previous interviews differed from her trial testimony about whether she actually saw Barbier come home. Per the Tribune, Justic also said Turley had described Barbier's facial injuries differently in earlier interviews than she did on the stand. Turley testified that Barbier and Snider's husband worked together at the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad and were close friends; she and Barbier divorced about a year after Snider's death, and she testified she never received financial support from him afterward.
A Funeral Appearance and a Move Out of State
Turley's testimony also touched on Snider's funeral, where Barbier served as a pallbearer despite having a bandaged face, and on his departure for Missouri sometime after Snider's death, both details reported by the Tribune. Barbier was arrested as part of the original 1966 investigation but was never charged at that time, according to the Chicago Tribune's earlier reporting on the case. The investigation sat cold for decades until December 2022, when a call to the Calumet City Police Department prompted detectives to re-examine evidence, the same report noted.
That renewed effort led police to meet with Barbier in April 2023 to interview him and collect additional DNA, the Tribune's 2024 account states. According to a Yahoo News report on the case, the relative who contacted police in 2022, Kevin Seeley, was a member of the Snider family. Barbier was ultimately arrested in St. Louis County, Missouri, in 2024 and charged with first-degree murder in Snider's death.
Disputed Wound Count and Contested DNA
Accounts of the prosecution's opening statement differ on exactly how many times Snider was stabbed. Yahoo News reported that prosecutor Siefert told jurors Snider was stabbed more than 120 times, while a separate account from abc7chicago.com stated prosecutors said she was stabbed 120 times across her body. Either way, the attack was extensive: medical testimony has described wounds to Snider's neck, chest and abdomen.
Prosecutors have pointed to DNA evidence from re-examined blood samples as pointing to Barbier, according to Yahoo News. Justic has pushed back, arguing in court that the DNA evidence was far from a perfect match and that substantial crime-scene evidence from the original 1966 investigation had been lost over the decades, the outlet reported.
A 91-Year-Old Witness Recalls 1966 Evidence Collection
The trial has also featured testimony from John Collins, who processed the crime scene as an evidence technician in 1966 and testified at 91 years old. Collins said evidence technicians did not wear gloves at the time and that he did not know what DNA was back then. The crime scene photographs he took were in black and white.
The case, now unfolding at the Markham courthouse nearly six decades after Snider's death, has drawn attention for the unusual gap between the original 1966 investigation and the charges filed in 2024.
