COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.-
One year ago this week, ex-soldier Joseph Barker disappeared from the barracks he was visiting at Fort Carson, and the mystery of the 21-yearold’s death remains.
The Army, which has taken a leading role in investigating Barker’s death, still can’t say how he died.
Barker’s mother worries that as time passes, the case will fall lower on the priority list for investigators and the family may never know what happened in the 14 days between the disappearance and when Barker’s body was found in a sewage-treatment pond on the post.
“He was just a kid,” Barker’s mother, Lynda Carlock, said in a telephone interview from her home in Tulsa, Okla. “He deserves better than this.”
The Army’s investigation has been secretive. Army Criminal Investigation Division spokesman Christopher Grey said his agency will only confirm the investigation continues and the cause of Barker’s death is undetermined.
Grey would not give information on how many investigators are on the case or why, after a year, it remains unresolved.
Barker went to war in 2003 with Fort Carson’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team and attained the rank of specialist. He re-enlisted and got married before he was discharged in 2005 because of chronic back problems.
After the discharge, Barker drifted, separating from his wife and moving back to Oklahoma. Carlock said painful memories of war led Barker back to Fort Carson, where he could spend time with friends who shared his Iraq experience.
It was with those Army buddies that Barker spent his last day, partying at a friend’s house on post before going to the barracks with other friends for a few more beers.
He fell asleep on a bunk, where his friends saw him snoozing as they left for early morning physical training.
That’s the last time Barker was seen alive.
Soon after his disappearance, he was reported missing to authorities. His body was found Feb. 22 by a sewage plant worker who was investigating a blocked pipe.
Carlock said an Army autopsy showed only what didn’t kill her son. It wasn’t an overdose, a stabbing or a bullet that claimed his life.
But the decomposition caused by the sewage-treatment pond erased other clues to the death.
“It eats up evidence. I still don’t know how he died,” she said.
Carlock said investigators have all but ruled out suicide or accident, deeming that nobody would kill themselves by leaping into the treatment pond or accidentally fall over the high fences that surround the sewage.
But any information about what investigators may have found in hours of interviews about Barker’s death is being kept a secret even from his mother.
“I keep hoping the secrecy means the case is going good,” she said. “It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year and they still don’t know.”
Carlock said she dreams of finally knowing who or what killed her son. “I want to come to Colorado Springs, come to a trial and have this resolved,” she said.
