When your husband is a con man

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

The first time Joyce Reynolds laid eyes on him, her heart leaped in her chest and she knew.   Here was destiny.  This man was her soul mate.

Keith Morrison, Dateline Correspondent: What was it about him?

Joyce Reynolds: The look. First it was the look. He had the look that I just loved.

Joyce was in her mid 40s then, alone, divorced with grown children when she saw his face on the Internet.  She had been spending some time in a chat room, a sort of virtual bar in which the regulars could, if they wished, communicate with their computer video cameras. That’s what did it of course. In print, he hadn’t seemed quite so special.

Reynolds: This man has been trying to talk to me for so long and I just ignored it.

Until she caught that glimpse of him. Her heart skipped its beat, and she looked at his soul through those beautiful eyes.

With his picture up there on the screen, he typed four words, “I think I can.” 

Joyce shot back: “I think I can” what?

Reynolds: He says, “I think I can take care of you.” And I was like, “Oh really?” Well now I was  interested in what he had to say. We talked for six hours.

And every day after that.  Kept their computers humming. They talked about everything.  And the more he talked, the deeper Joyce fell.

Should she have worried? Should some alarm bell have gone off in her head?   Maybe. After all, what could she really know about someone she happened to meet on the Internet?  And why was he pursuing her so aggressively?  Is there a kind of person who has a plan for lonely women?  But he was so good looking.  Joyce’s head wasn’t really engaged.  But her heart sure was.

Reynolds:  And no matter what you talked about, he knew a little about everything. He was a very, very smart man.

His name was James Michael Barber. He was a divorcee from St. Louis, Missouri, a pediatric surgeon who, for a heartbreaking reason, really, had decided to take a sabbatical.

Reynolds:  He had a problem with his hands. With cramping.

Morrison: Had that led to some problems?

Reynolds: There was a problem with surgery and a young child had passed away.  And that’s when he said that he had met with the other people in the hospital and he felt it best that he take a sabbatical.

So after a brief, intense long distance courtship, Joyce and the doctor made plans to meet in person— in Wharton, New Jersey, a small town where Joyce lived. 

Reynolds: When we got together we were not strangers. We were not strangers at all.

Morrison: It was like you had met your soul mate in a way?

Reynolds: That’s how I felt.

He quite obviously felt that way too.

He flew back to Missouri, but as he told Joyce, he’d already closed his medical practice, so he just packed up his bags and returned to move right in with her.  When he proposed marriage, she didn’t think twice. And within a few weeks, they were married.

Before long, Joyce’s new husband began looking for work. And what did this doctor on sabbatical decide to do?  

Reynolds: He started off as a car salesman. He wanted something that wasn’t going to be so stressful.

Morrison: Completely different.

Reynolds: I was like “Okay, well, you know what. He’s in a new state, he doesn’t know a lot of people. Let him do what he wants to do ‘till we really get settled.”

Never mind that he was used to performing complicated cardiovascular surgery.  Joyce thought it was a little unusual.  But she supported him. Why not?  She was deliriously happy.

Reynolds: Three months later he lost his job and got another one as a car salesman.

Rather than try to get work at a local hospital, the “good doctor” bounced around from one car dealership to another.  In fact, he worked a half dozen odd jobs until he decided to start his own business.

He would be, he decided, a private investigator.

He’d call his new company “Fugitive Recovery Task Force,” dedicated to locating and apprehending criminals who skipped bail.

And by the way, he told the new Mrs. Barber, he’d found a partner over the Internet, just as he had found her.

Bob Donnellan was Barber’s partner. He and his wife Luvonda were already in business in Arkansas. They pride themselves on being able to catch just about anyone.

Morrison: How do you find them if they wanna disappear?

Bob Donnellan, Barber's business partner: There’s lots of ways.

Morrison: The two of you get to read people pretty well.

Luvonda Donnellan: Yeah.

Bob Donnellan : That’s what this business is really about.

Luvonda Donnellan: A lot of intuition, lotta gut feelings.

And even though Bob hadn’t met his new partner in person, had only talked to him by computer, he had a good feeling about the guy from New Jersey who approached him about starting a business together.

Morrison: What did he seem like on the phone?

Bob Donnellan: Very good.

And he had a sterling resume. 

Bob Donnellan: He was 30 year retired military at the rank of chief warrant officer four. Thirty years from 1966-1996, and he was a prisoner of war. Spent 127 days as prisoner of war.

He told Bob he’d served in Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, the first Gulf War, and even Panama.

Bob Donnellan: He claimed to be the one that physically put his hands on Manuel Noriega when we extracted him back to the United States.

And while he knew the stories were colorful and maybe even a bit exaggerated, Bob didn’t ask too many questions. This was a dream partner who, Bob was sure, would bring in lots of new business.  Besides, he also seemed to have important friends in high places.

Bob Donnellan: He claimed to be John Ashcroft’s best man at his wedding and godfather to John’s eldest son.

Morrison: Obviously, you were curious about his personal situation?

Donnellan: He’d been married to Joyce, his current wife for 39 years. they have seven children, five sons and two daughters. 

But by that time Dr. Barber had only been married to Joyce for about three years. Why would he pad the length of his marriage? Wouldn’t Bob hear the real number from Joyce?  Well, no.   At the time, Joyce was in bed recovering from a neck injury. She was heavily medicated to numb the pain and barely even aware of what was going on around her.

Reynolds: They had me on drugs. 

Morrison: What kind?

Reynolds: Morphine patches, Percodin, Vicodins. You name it, I had it.

Morrison: You were in a fog?

Reynolds: A deep, deep heavy fog. I spent most of my time in bed.

And then one fine spring morning the sound of sirens came cutting through the fog in Joyce’s head.  And two sheriff’s deputies were at the door to escort her loving husband, Dr. James Michael Barber to jail.

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