warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
61-year-old truck driver Philip ‘Buckie’ Barlow left home for his night shift after one last call with his fiancée — and was never seen again. The next morning, a passerby spotted his truck on a rural road and alerted police, uncovering the start of a chilling mystery.
This officer has just found the abandonned truck of a missing man .
61 year old truck driver Philip Buckie Barlow had left home for work the night before after his last phone call with hi fiance,only to never be seen aqain.
Now, his blood has been found inside the truck , but there’s no sign of him anywhere.
Motor oil was poured across the vechicle and smoke was filling the cabin,someone clearly tried to set it on fire.
The question is , did buckie manage to escape or was he murdered under supspicious circumstances?
Hours turned into days and days into months , police found themselves facing a tangled web of suspects , each with a reason to kill.
what started as a simple routine call soon turned into a nighmare for a small town .for months ,the town would be consumed by whispers, rumors, and endless theories about the man’s disappearance.
But what police didn’t realize …
…Was that the answer to this mystery had been in in front of them from day one.
A small lie, one that months later would finally unravel the truth behind this horrifying case………….
On September 29th, a women in Preston County,West Virginia, contacted police to report an odd discovery on Shower Bath Rd.
A marron pickup truck was parked off the road just past Route 26 ,that road runs right alongside the Cheat River.
The inside of the truck was empty,thick smoke filled the cab, making it hard to see, smoke was even drifting out of the passenger side window ,and that’s why the caller first suspected it might be drug use.
Looking closer ,the officer noticed traces of an oily substance,he could smell it too.
Signs that someone had likely tried to set the truck on fire, but failed.
He immediately called in the fire department.
Beside the pickup, tire tracks from another vehicle were visible on the ground.
It’ suggested that a a second car might be have been involved, possibly the one our suspect used to get away.
The local fire chief and one of the first responders on scene was Perry Barlo.
he gave police their very first lead,the truck looked painfully familiar to him
And when he read the license plate, his suspicion was confirmed,he knew exactly who the owner was.
The truck belonged to 61 year old Philip Buckie Barlow.
The condition of the vehicle immediately raised concern.
Officers found two containers of motor oil,one of them empty.
Spilled oil had soaked the rear seat.
Motor oil is combustible but it doesn’t burn quickly.
To Perry , none of this looked accidental, he knew Buckie would never abandon his truck, and he certainly wouldn’t try to destroy it.
Buckie was just weeks away from the retirement
he had been waiting on for years.
He and his partner of more than 17 years, Mary Butler, were planning their new life together in Indiana.
The two had first met in 2002, and from then on, they built a life side by side.
Though Bucky never had children of his own ,he was deeply connected to his large extended family.
He was one of nine siblings, the second youngest in the family.
In 2011.Mary made a difficult decision to return to her home state of Indiana.
For Buckie, moving meant finding a new job late in life, something he wasn’t ready to do.
So ,the two decided to live apart for a few years, waiting until Buckie’s retirement, when they could finally be together again.
Now, with just weeks left until that moment,Buckie’s maroon pickup was found abandoned on a rural roadside in Preston County.
Partially burned under suspicious circmstances.
In the local area , none of Buckie’s four sisters or two brothers or their families had heard from him, the night before, just before midnight , he had spoken to Mary one last time while getting ready for work.
But now, it was clear he never showed up for his shift.
Police immediately conducted a welfare check at Buckie’s home .
Just a 10 to 15 minute drive away to see if they could find any answers,there was still no sign of Bucky.
With the growing concerns and evidence at hand , police quickly opened a missing person’s case and began searching the area around where the truck had been found.
Family members and Buckie’s friends joined in , walking along the river banks and covering as much ground as possible ,hoping to find any trace of him.
Police also began knocking on doors , questioning neighbors and anyone who might now something,hoping that someone could offer even the smallest clue about what had happened to Buckie.
Laura Lynn Martin and Robert Joesph “Bobby” told police that they had been in bed the night before and with both a fan and the washerdryer running they wouldn’t heard anything unusual.
None of the neighbors could give police anything useful.
But this couple weren’t Buckie’s only neighbors.
His property boredered land owned by a man named Craig McCloud.
As police continued questioning people in the area, two names kept coming up .
Craig McCloud and his friend Chris thorn.
Rumors suggested these two men didn’t get along with Buckie and some even believed they might have been involved in his disappearance.
Mary traveled straight from Indiana to Buckie’s home to meet with police.
She immediately gave them permission to search the house,there were no signs of a struggle or anything suspicious inside the house.
Police also checked Buckie’s cell phone records, the ping showed that his phone had stopped transmitting about half a mile from his home ,right along the road he would have taken to work.
But when officers searched the area , there was no trace of the phone.
The following day ,the search intensified, the National Guard joined the effort, and even aerial surveillance was conducted, but still, no results.
Days passed with no sign of the missing man.
The only lead police had were the rumors of Bucky’s ongoing feud with his neighbor Craig, investigators weren’t ready to let that lead go.
In the days that followed ,they turned to people who knew Craig, hoping to learn more about the disputes between the two men and why they may escalated.
Craig put his ex ‘s stuff on Bucky’s property but Buckie thougt it was trash.Buckie came out and asked Craig to move his stuff.
Craig messaged he’s ex -girlfriend sister hwo forward the message to Craig’s ex girlfriend and said that Craig was saying that he was going to go beat Bucky with the golf Club for tuching Craig’s ex girlfriends stuff.
With all this, Craig became the police’s main focus.
According to their working theory, he’d grown tired of his ongoing conflict with Buckie and decided to confront him, attacking and killing him with a golf club.
Afterward ,he may have moved the body to an unknown location,for now, Craig remained at the center of suspicion and the primary focus of the investigation.
As time passed, the rumors only grew, many believed Craig’s friend Chris was the one truly responsible.
Chris ,they said, had asked a man nicknamed Turtle about borrowing a grinder the very day after Buckie disappeared.
That rumor fueled fears that Buckie had been cut into pieces and buried in different spots across the county.
During this time, police were closing in on their suspects.
All they needed now was direct evidence,they began talking to multiple tipsters , hoping someone could finally give them the brak they needed.
Nearly everyone had reached the same conclusion.
Most locals felt they already knew what had happened to Buckie Barlow.
But without a body or any direct evidence, police still had nothing concrete.
Tensions boiled over , five people even confronted Chris directly , soon after Chris own wife walked into the police station.
Whithout solid evidence evidence , the case could only go so far, at this stage , police needed one of two things, either Buckie’s body or a direct confession from the prime suspects, one way or another ,they had to get it.
This man , Ronnie , decided to approach Chris Thorne, he offered to split the reward money for finding Buckie’s body if Chris would just confess and reveal where it was.
But this turned into another dead end for investigators.
During the conversation Chris denied everything.
The rumors, the accusations, and any connection to Buckie’s disappearance.
After 1o days of searching for Buckie , on June 8th around 9: 00 a.m., police received a call from a hunter.
He had stumbled upon a horrifying scene…
The creek was about 2o minutes from Tunelton.
Officers rushed to the scene to see if what they’d heard was true.
It was lying face down in the water, shirtless, wearing boots, with jeans pulled down around the ankles.
The body was badly decomposed, making identification difficult.
Nearby , officers found Buckie’s t-shirt with his name.
Philip, written on it.
Examiners also removed dentures that were marked with the name P.Barlow.
The body, tragically, was confirmed to be philip Bucky Barlow.
The cause of death was a deep cut to the neck that severed an artery.
Buckie had been killed with a sharp object,likely a knife, given the severity of the wound ,there must have been heavy bleeding at the scene.
But when officers searched the area , they couldn’t find any sign that the murder had happened nearby.
The same was true for Buckie’s own truck .
Blood stains , later confirmed to be his ,were found on the back seath , the steering wheel .
And even the gear shift.
Still, considering amount of blood loss Buckie would have suffered, investigators determined the murder could not have talen place inside the vehicle either.
Because of the nature of the crime , police first turned to the person closest to Buckie, Mary.
She was questioned for hours and even agreed to take a polygraph test.
But nothing connected her to the murder.
Mary also mentioned the argument Buckie had with his neighbor -Craig.
Police then spoke directly with Craig himself.
He again denied any involvement, claiming that on the night of the incident, he been sleeping outside in a truck belonging to his friend Chris.
When investigators questioned Chris , he backed up Craig story completely.
Police obtained a search warrant, examined their phon records, and brought boith men in for formal questining.
After reviewing the data from their phones and Craig’s polygraph, which came back necative, police still couldn’t find any solid link between either men and buckie’s murder.
It was also now clear that the killing hadn’t been carried out with a golf club, as some had speculated,despite long efforts by investigators ,both men were eventually cleared as suspects.
The investigation had hit a dead end.
8 months after the incident, in January of the following year , Captain Titchnell , the lead investigator on the case ,decided to go back through everything.
He reviewed all the case files, statements , any body cam footage, hoping to spot something new. …
That’s when something caught his attention.
The statements from Buckie’s direct neighbors , Laura Martin and bobby Quinn.
Captain Tchnell had spoken with the couple on the very first day Buckie was reported missing.
At the time , nothing in their story stood out to law enforcement.
In their original statements, both Laura and Bobby said that on the night of the incident ,they hadn’t heard a thing, because the air conditioning unit and the washerdryer were running.
As Captain Tishnell later put it, it seemed like a pretty minute detail to be specifically remembered .
That was enoug to make him want to talk to them again.
By that time, both Laura and Bobby were already incarcerated in Maryland for a series of breaking and entering crimes.
Her story became inonsistent what she had said before.
In their earlier statements ,boths she and Bobby claimed the AC unit was always running, making it impossible to hear anything from outside.
But this time, Laura only mentioned the washing machine.
That inconsistency was enough for captain Titchell to double check their story .
He spole wth one of the couple’s neighbors and asked the obvious question.
Was there even an AC unit in the south facing window in their house?”
The answer was no.
On its own , that might not have been enough to prove anything.
But things took a serious turn when , following his instincts, Captain Titchell discovered the couple never owned a washing machine.
After speaking with the couple’s families and friends , no one could confirm their alibis.
Even though there was still no physical or solid evidence.
Captain Titchell’s next move was to request the jail’s recorded phone calls.
To find out who they’d been talking to,Bobby had made very few calls.
Laura, on the other hand ,had placed many , especially to her ex, a man named mark, those calls were explicit and often lengthy.
As part of their strategy,investigators decided to confront Bobby Quinn with Laura’s unfaithfulness.
After hearing what investigators had to say , Bobby finally decided to talk.
He told them that Laura might not have been home the entire night.
According to him , she had confessed to killing Bucky barlow.
But he quickly tried to distance himself from it,Bobby explained that it all started with an idea for a robbery, they’d heard that Buckie was about to retire and assumed he had a lot of money.
So,they decided to steal from him.
Why? , they believed he kept his savings in his pocket.
We may never know.
In the end , all they got was $ 50 .
Bobby agreed to take police to the crime scene and explaine, Why Bucky was killed and how it all happened,he explained that Laura waited outside buckie’s house watching for him to leave for work
When he stepped out, she attacked him and a struggled broke out.
Only after that did Bobby get involved.
Together,thay dragged Buckie into the back of his own truck and drove toward an area known as Fortneey Mills.
Once there , Laura forced Buckie to walk down under the bridge.
According to Quinn , Laura threw Buckie’s wallet in the water and then forced him to his knees.
The details of Quinn’s story changed multiple times.
In every version ,he did everything he could to place the blame entirely on his former partner, Laura Martin.
Quinn said after they dumped Buckie’s truck and tried to set in on fire, they walked to the home of one of Laura’s relatives and took the keys with them.
Later they walked back home, changed their clothes, and then headed down River Road again where they burned all the evidence and their bloodstained cloths.
After that , officers went to speak with Laura.
When she learned that Bobby had talked and had blamed her for nearly everything ,she agreed to share her own version of the story .
Laura said that on the night of the incident, she and Quinn waited outside Buckie’s house wearing masks and gloves,the confrontation between Quinn and Buckie escalated.
Eventually ,Quinn forced him into the truck,they droward the creek where Quinn attacked bucky,in her version of the story , she tried to present herself as the hero trying to save Buckie.
A year after Buckie’s murder ,both of them finally confessed,they were extradited from Maryland to West Virginia and charged with first -degree murder .
As authorities were preparing for trial,police received a call that not only shed light on the couple’s cnflicting stories.
But was also deeply distrubing.
Several of Laura Martin’s former cellmates at the Garret County Jail in Maryland contacted police .
Laura had confessed that she was the one who killed Buckie,and what she told them was horrifying.
Laura said she loved the feeling of Buckie’s blood runing through her hands and that she wanted to experience that sensation again.
She also told her cellmate that after killing Bucky, she and Quinn took the lunch Buckie had packed for his shift and at the sandwiches while his blood was still on their hands.
The caller described details about Buckie’s injuries that only someone directly involved in the murder could have known.
That was enough for police to believe the confession was real.
In their relationship, Laura was clearly the dominant one,from her statements and behavior, it was obvious she was manipulative and cold.
In October 2022, more than 3 years after Buckie’s murder .
Laura Martin and Bobby Quinn were sentenced to life in prison , plus an additional 180 years for robbery , kidnapping and murder.
Despite their claims of remorse and their constant attempts to blame one another.
Both entered plea agreements for first- degree murder and first – degree robbery.
The deal would have allowed them to seek parole after 15 years , but the judge sentenced them to 180 years for the robbery, served consecutively with their life term , making parole impossible.
The couple told the court they only committed the robbery out of desperation, saying they needed money because their electricity was about to be shout off.
But for Buckie’s family, that excuse meant nothing, all he had ever wanted was to retire, to live out the rest of his days in peace with the woman he loved.
Instead , his life ended in cruelty and violence just weeks before his dream was finally within reach.