[7][citation needed] In 1974, Lillian Bullard, Barfield's mother, showed symptoms of intense diarrhea, vomiting and nausea, only to fully recover a few days later.

Later that year, during the Christmas season, Bullard fell ill again with the same symptoms, but died in the hospital a few hours after being admitted on December 30, 1974.

[8] In 1976, Barfield began caring for the elderly, working for Montgomery and Dollie Edwards in Lumberton, North Carolina.

Just over a month after the death of her husband, Dollie experienced symptoms identical to those of Bullard and died on March 1.

On June 4, 1977, Lee's husband, John Henry, began experiencing wracking pains in his stomach and chest along with vomiting and diarrhea.

[1] Fearing he had discovered that she had been forging checks on his account, Barfield mixed an arsenic-based rat poison into his beer and tea.

[13] Barfield's involvement in Christian ministry was extensive enough that an effort was made to obtain a commutation to life imprisonment.

[4] A second basis for the appeal was the testimony of Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine and an authority on violent behavior, who claimed that Barfield suffered from dissociative identity disorder.

[2] Barfield was buried in a small, rural North Carolina cemetery near her first husband, Thomas Burke.