Neighbors Uneasy When Child Killer Moves In

AYLETT, Va. — The view from the deck around Dennis Mundie’s pool is blocked on one side by a bright blue tarpaulin--a flimsy curtain of fear erected between his family and the convicted child killer who has moved in next door.

“My wife and daughter are out there in their bathing suits,” Mundie said softly. “It makes me feel better somehow to have that hanging there.”

Mundie and his wife, Janet, fear both the known and the unknown about Glen H. Barker.

They reel off the details of the decade-old crime with a practiced air: A 12-year-old Charlottesville girl is missing and her bloody underpants are found in Barker’s sock drawer. A friend of the child’s tells police Barker plied the girls with beer.

“With people like this you never know if they might do it again,” Janet Mundie said. “There are no children in jail they can rape and kill, and they can be real good Christians in front of the parole board. But I don’t think society can ever trust them.”

The Mundies and their two teen-age children are watchful and angry.

Robert Ressler, a former FBI agent who helped investigate Barker, said the Mundies and their neighbors have much to fear because child killers often strike more than once.

“For the type of crime he committed and his age and background, he does not present a good model for rehabilitation,” Ressler said.

Barker was convicted of second-degree murder in 1983, although Katie Worsky’s body was never found. He was released from prison on April 30 after serving about half his 18-year sentence. Under a Virginia law mandating early release for well-behaved prisoners, the state could not hold him any longer.

Barker was freed because he met all the requirements set out in the state code, said Mindy Daniels, spokeswoman for the Virginia Parole Board. “It’s not like the parole board just decided it was time for him to go.”

In fact, Barker was denied parole several times after he became eligible in 1986.

The Mundies got an anonymous call last spring, telling them Barker would soon be released and planned to join his mother at her home in rural King William County about 30 miles northeast of Richmond.

They sent a news clipping about the crime to other neighbors and urged them to protest Barker’s parole. Most neighbors needed little prodding.

“Once people heard about it, they were pretty upset,” Janet Mundie said.

About 30 neighbors picketed Barker’s home and urged Barker and his mother to move from her recently purchased house. The mother, Dorothy B. Phillips, refused.

Phillips has refused to comment on the neighborhood reaction. She has said she believes her son is innocent. Neither she nor Barker could be reached for comment. Their telephone number is unlisted and no one answered a knock at the front door, although cars were in the driveway.

“We’re kind of resigned to it now, that he’s here and we’ll try to live with it,” Janet Mundie said.

Living with it means the Mundies have bought a gun and set new restrictions on their children. It also means constant unease and a new, unsettling sense that urban problems have come to the cornfields around their comfortable home.

“This area will not be the same. People are looking over their shoulders now,” Janet Mundie said.

“There’s really nothing we can do, we know that,” said Rose West, another neighbor. Her 9-year-old daughter was so frightened of Barker she refused to be in a room alone. “We just have to teach our children and help take some of the fear away that they have been living with,” West said.

Barker’s case spotlights the expectations society holds about its judicial system. Barker was convicted of a crime, served his time and was released, just as thousands of parolees are each year.

But because of the nature of his crime, Barker’s right to live peaceably rubs against society’s right to feel at peace.

“It pits the fears of the community against the rights of an individual,” said Stephen B. Pershing, legal director of the Virginia affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We leap to conclusions far too often about people with criminal histories. We have no evidence that this guy is doing anything wrong and yet we react based on nerves or fears,” Pershing said.

Pershing said neighbors’ fears are understandable. “But he might very well encounter opposition wherever he moves. If we allow that opposition to control what happens, we’re basically saying the guy can’t live anywhere.”

Still, former FBI agent Ressler insists that Barker, 33, fits an established profile for sex offenders. Typically, men who commit “crimes of fantasy” hold those fantasies through middle age, he said.

“One must be very suspect about a guy like Barker. You can’t just say he’s paid his debt to society so society can put its feet up.”

The Mundies think the legal system failed them, and they’re pushing for changes in the law that would make it harder for serious offenders to get early parole.

“We are not protected, our kids are not protected, but (parolees) are protected and they’re criminals,” Janet Mundie said.

The Mundies have never met their new neighbors face to face. Janet Mundie called Phillips once.

“I figured it didn’t hurt just to call her and see what she had to say. She said there was nothing to worry about, that he had never hurt anyone. I think she’s convinced herself he didn’t do it.”

And if Barker himself paid them a neighborly visit?

“I wouldn’t let him in the door, no. Absolutely not. There are too many things we don’t know,” Janet Mundie said.