On September 3, 1986, Barbara Hatch Pelkey was beaten to death at her factory job. Kevin Benefield, who worked nearby, raped and killed the 30-year-old during her late-night shift. But another man named Kenneth Ireland was wrongfully convicted of Barbara's murder and spent 21 years in prison, only being freed once DNA evidence demonstrated that Kevin was the actual killer.
Kevin had beaten Barbara so badly that her funeral had to be held with a closed casket. In the wake of Barbara's loss, her grieving family became homeless. Her husband, Arthur Vernon Pelkey, eventually took his own life by walking into an ice-cold lake. According to one of their four children, "Losing her made my father a broken man... I was 15 and living in a youth emergency shelter when I heard he'd killed himself... At the funeral, seeing him lying there, I touched his hand and kissed him goodbye. It was the happiest I'd seen him look in years."
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