Following more than four years of painful, but necessary, litigation, all parties convened for 17 minutes Thursday afternoon in Trigg County Circuit Court — as Judge Jamus Redd sentenced Jonathan McCoy to 50 concurrent years in prison for the September 2020 murder of Thelma “Ileen” Barnett, and the arson of her Will Jackson Road home.
It’s a case, Redd said, of which he was all too familiar.
A daughter of Barnett’s, Connie Rogers delivered a victim impact statement, calling her mother “a gentle sweet, simple spirit, loving Jesus, family, friends, her home, her pets and her flowers.”
Known throughout the community for sharing her flower seeds, Rogers said her mother must have been horrified realizing someone entered her home to harm her, and “fought with all of her might” to resist her hands being tied, before begging McCoy — and possibly others — to “take everything she had, but let her go,” before being choked to death, and the family homestead destroyed.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Carrie Ovey-Wiggins said Barnett’s daughters showed “great strength” during this process, in what she dubbed a “horrific case.”
She called the crime “not only an act of violence, but a clear disregard for human life.”
Ovey-Wiggins also noted McCoy serves as the “true definition of a career criminal” — having only been out of prison for about 18 months following a serious youthful offense earning him 25 years, before turning against Barnett.
And though Thursday brought some resolution, she added so many questions yet remain.
McCoy did not speak, but instead submitted a handwritten letter to the Commonwealth and to Redd. It was not shared.
Ovey-Wiggins said the family agreed to all terms set forth in this, and other, pleas involved in the case, and that McCoy would “very unlikely ever be a free man again.”
McCoy’s defense team — Wesley Boyarski, Rick Lawniczak and Christy Hiance — did offer several corrections to the pre-sentence investigation.
According to her obituary, Barnett went on her first date at 14 years old for Bernard Barnett’s 16th birthday. Married December 30, 1955, they stayed together for 36 years, nine months and five days — before his October 5, 1992, death following injuries sustained in a logging accident at the former Averitt Lumber Company.
Over the years, she had been employed as a seamstress at Elk Brand Manufacturing in Cadiz, Flynn Enterprises in Hopkinsville, Cumberland Manufacturing in Princeton, and L&G in Cadiz. She timbered some with her late husband, and also sewed for Knight & Hale Game Calls.
Her beloved chihuahua, Missy, did not survive the home’s arson, and she was cremated and placed at Barnett’s feet to be buried with her in the Marvin-Oliver Cemetery — right along the Trigg/Lyon county line.
