Survivalist Charged in ’86 Slaying of Activist : Courts: Police say William Barnes killed Carlos Vazquez because of an unrequited love triangle.

William Barnes, a skinny, stringy-blond-haired survivalist and paint-gun warrior, fancies himself a freedom fighter.

Although he never served in the Army’s Green Berets or in Vietnam, he lists himself as a veteran of both in a book he wrote on paint-gun warfare tactics.

And although never romantically linked to Dolores Esparza, he apparently considered himself her liberator from her marriage to a darkly handsome Chicano activist and musician named Carlos Vazquez.

Two days after Vazquez, 25, was shot to death the night of Jan. 2, 1986, as he unlocked a gate after arriving in the driveway of his El Monte home, his distraught wife reported receiving a telephone call from Barnes.

“I freed you. You’re a free bird,” Barnes allegedly said.

But the evidence needed to arrest Barnes was not there, detectives said at the time.

Now, six years later, and after Barnes fell into another unrequited love triangle--and was convicted of killing his 60-year-old rival in the woods of rural North Carolina--the evidence against him in the El Monte slaying has surfaced.

Shara Ammen, Barnes’ cousin, testified in a preliminary hearing in Rio Hondo Municipal Court on Tuesday that Barnes confessed the murder to her two years ago.

Ammen, 23, who avoided looking into Barnes’ piercing gaze, testified that she finally told California investigators about the confession when she realized that her cousin, then on trial for the North Carolina murder, might be acquitted.

“I’ve always had an underlying fear of him,” Ammen testified quietly in her slight, Tarheel State accent. “I’ve always been afraid of him.”

After the preliminary hearing in the El Monte courtroom, Barnes was ordered to stand trial for murder July 21 in Pomona Superior Court.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Davis, said that because of the North Carolina conviction and because Barnes allegedly lay in wait to kill Vazquez, he will recommend seeking the death penalty if Barnes is convicted.

The trial will probably throw into high contrast the dramatic, and tragic, collision of two very different men. Barnes is a man with a troubled past who apparently seeks refuge in make-believe and illusion. Vazquez, also with a troubled past, used it to forge a dedication to the American Indian and Latino communities and their political causes.

There is a history of suicide in Barnes’ family, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said. His grandfather asphyxiated himself in a car; his brother took his own life when Barnes was a 7-year-old, and 10 years later his father shot himself to death on New Year’s Day.

Ammen, who was taken into the Barnes’ family home in Kernersville, N.C., and reared as Barnes’ sibling, said her cousin was “always very controlling.” After his father died, the witness recalled, Barnes would throw midnight fits in the home, screaming and destroying the contents, which forced his mother and Ammen to take refuge in a hotel.

“He was very abusive toward his mother and the police came to the house many times, but she would never press charges,” Ammen recalled on the stand.

As a juvenile, Barnes stabbed one youth and shot another but was placed on probation in the nonfatal incidents, Ammen said.

Barnes interests included playing rock guitar and paint-gun warfare--mock war games in which weekend warriors use guns that fire paint ball ammunition. Sheriff’s detectives said Barnes competed on a national team and authored “The Survival Game,” a book of tactics.

When he moved to California, Barnes continued that pursuit, and also began pursuing Dolores Esparza, authorities allege. The dancer testified in court Tuesday that she considered her relationship with Barnes one of friendship. Esparza said she introduced Barnes to her fiance, Vazquez, eight months before the couple was wed.

Barnes immediately blew up, she recalled. He threatened Vazquez on the spot, left and then returned a few minutes later to attack the window of the apartment in which the couple lived. They eventually had to change residences because of continued harassment from Barnes, Vazquez’s widow testified.

But at the time Vazquez was shot to death with a .22-caliber weapon, Barnes was nothing but an unpleasant memory, said Miguel Vazquez, 45, Carlos’ brother.

“I hadn’t heard his name mentioned for months,” Miguel Vazquez said of Barnes. “We wondered who would want to hurt my brother? He was like in heaven: a 4-month-old daughter, he never went out with the guys to drink a beer. . . .

“Calling his house was like calling Dial-A-Prayer, you’d get all this flowery energy coming out.”

Barnes began his harassment all over again, with letters and phone calls, including the one in which he allegedly confessed the murder to his brother’s widow by saying he had “freed” her, Miguel Vazquez said. The family was outraged that detectives could not make an arrest.

Then, the harassment suddenly ended. Investigators say Barnes moved back to North Carolina to help his mother run a convenience store. There, he fell in love, again. She was a 30-year-old woman who had a long-term relationship with an older man, garage owner Jesse Lemons.

On Halloween night, 1990, Lemons was at his garage in Eden, N.C., decorating it for his son’s birthday party. When he stepped outside to his car, three shots from a .22-caliber weapon killed Lemons. His girlfriend ran outside but could not see the assailant.

As in the California murder, police immediately suspected Barnes. Although the evidence against him was circumstantial, Eden Police Detective Sgt. Barry Carter said, the district attorney won a conviction. Barnes was sentenced to life in prison without parole and extradited to California, where the death penalty would take precedent.

For Miguel Vazquez, last week’s court decision means that justice will finally be done. Coming six years after the slaying, the trial also bears witness to his dead brother’s spirituality, Vazquez said.

“It was on my birthday, Jan. 28, that police called me to say they had new evidence on Barnes,” he said. “My brother was a very spiritual person. So, how do you explain it?”

Vazquez remembers his brother as a soft-spoken, gentle man with a forgiving temperament. He practiced his spirituality--derived from his Roman Catholic background and from American Indian and Mexican-American roots, Miguel Vazquez said.

The activist politics came from his family--migrant farm workers from Keene, Calif.--who were among the first to join Cesar Chavez’s effort to organize farm workers.

“He grew up a United Farm Workers brat,” Miguel Vazquez said.

But his brother also had an untamed side. Carlos was thrown out of junior high school and out of continuation high school, finally landing in San Diego to live with his college-bound older brother.

The two brothers began a musical group and took a joke name, Los Perros del Pueblo (The Town Dogs). Carlos played the requinto , the difficult, high-stringed tenor guitar.

The brothers moved to Los Angeles and soon the group made a name for itself, playing benefits for social activists in the Chicano movement and social service agencies.

Carlos became a drama major at Cal State Los Angeles, where he was elected student body president and where he met his wife-to-be. He was a cast member of “Beto’s Dream,” an anti-drug, Latino-oriented student production that received much media attention.

But death interrupted the life aimed at movies and theater. More than 1,000 mourners attended his funeral, and Miguel Vazquez said he still receives phone calls from people his brother helped.

“If he had lived, he probably would be another Eddie Olmos,” Miguel Vazquez said, referring to actor Edward James Olmos--”an actor, an artist, a community oriented philanthropist.”