By Deborah Buckhalter
In early 2008, Greenwood resident Dewayne Barrentine sat down with Jackson County Sheriff Lou Roberts and poured out a story. It led to a years-long investigation and a murder conviction against Barrentine’s old girlfriend, Tausha Fields.
In early 2008, Greenwood resident Dewayne Barrentine sat down with Jackson County Sheriff Lou Roberts and poured out a story. It led to a years-long investigation and a murder conviction against Barrentine’s old girlfriend, Tausha Fields.
Roberts was still Marianna’s police chief at the time, and what he heard would occupy him long after he pinned on his Jackson County sheriff’s badge in November of that year.
That journey ended late last month, when a jury convicted Fields of first-degree murder
Barrentine’s explanation took some time. He outlined for Roberts the discoveries which had brought him to meet with the then-police chief.
Barrentine said he had heard some questionable stories from girlfriend Tausha Fields over the course of their relationship. A suspected infidelity had spiked his growing doubts about her truthfulness. He began to look at her life a little closer.
He told Roberts he’d gotten an unexpected opportunity one night, when Tausha brought over an old boyfriend she’d recently broken up with, Keith Jones.
When the two men found themselves alone for a moment that evening, Barrentine asked Jones to tell him more about what he knew of Fields.
Jones dropped a bombshell. He confided that Fields once told him she’d had a role in the murder of one of her ex-husbands.
Jones hadn’t reported that to police, perhaps believing it was one more of Fields’ outlandish story.
Jones, like Barrentine, had heard some unusual stories from Fields.
One of them, according to Barrentine, was pulled from the script of the movie “Chinatown.” She claimed that her father had raped her and that a child had resulted. That proved to be false. Barrentine was also sorting through Fields’ various name changes he discovered as he checked up on her.
Barrentine wasn’t sure, either, if there was anything to Fields’ murder story. But he locked it away in his memory, and soon would find something on Fields’ MySpace page that brought it back into sharp focus.
Barrentine already knew Fields had been married to a man named Mitchell Kemp. He’d found the old marriage license two weeks after he met Fields back in early 2007.
When he checked her MySpace page some time after talking with Jones, he found a chilling e-mails from a member of Kemp’s family, and a friend of his.
They were asking Tausha if she knew where Kemp was — they hadn’t heard from him in four years.
After Barrentine saw that, and noted that she hadn’t posted any responses, Barrentine confronted his girlfriend with this question: “Where is Mitchell Wayne Kemp?”
She told him Kemp was a crack addict and was “probably in a ditch somewhere,” Barrentine later told authorities.
Armed with the e-mails he’d captured from Fields’ MySpace page, Barrentine headed for Roberts’ office at the Marianna Police Department and laid out his story.
Roberts made some inquiries, and learned that Kemp had been on probation when he disappeared from Missouri in 2004. With nothing else to go on, authorities there had figured he’d simply slipped out of sight to avoid supervision. As far as they knew, Kemp was simply a fugitive from justice.
But soon Roberts and authorities in Missouri were working together to solve the mystery of Kemp’s disappearance. They couldn’t find one piece of evidence to suggest that Kemp was still alive.
They kept plugging away at the case, though, and eventually hit pay dirt.
Along the way, they found out that Jones had more crucial information. Jones knew Fields was married to Gregory Morton when Jones and Fields first got together.
Jones later testified at Fields’ trial, saying that she’d told him Morton killed Kemp, and that she helped bury the body.
As the case was progressing, authorities in Alabama helped Roberts and Missouri law enforcement track Fields to her latest dwelling, in Coffee County, Ala., as the investigation matured into a case of murder.
They found Morton working as a lineman in St. Louis in July 2008.
Morton eventually confessed to killing Kemp. In exchange for his testimony against Fields, his original charge of first degree murder was reduced to second degree murder. He is now serving time for that offense.
Morton testified that Fields had tricked him into killing her estranged husband, by telling him that Kemp had raped her and sexually assaulted her daughter, who was less than two years old at the time Fields made that allegation.
Morton said Fields had lured Kemp to a property Morton owned. Morton shot Kemp seven times, firing the final, and fatal, shot into his heart.
Morton testified that Fields spit on Kemp as he lay dying.
The two buried him in a shallow grave on Morton’s property. Fields eventually led police to the spot.
Expressing remorse for the shooting, Morton said at trial he no longer believed Fields’ story of Kemp’s child abuse, and that he now feels he probably killed an innocent man.
Fields maintained at her trial that Morton killed Kemp out of jealousy, acting alone, and that she only helped bury the body because she was afraid to cross him. However, throughout the investigation, Fields’ story about her role changed several times.
Her defense team has said the conviction, delivered by a jury in Columbia, Mo., June 29, will be appealed.
Roberts said several people were key players in solving the Kemp case.
If Jones hadn’t confided in Barrentine; if Barrentine hadn’t confided in Roberts; and if Roberts hadn’t connected with the right people in Missouri and Alabama, the case might never have progressed beyond a boyfriend’s nagging suspicion that something just wasn’t right about Tausha Fields.
Roberts said he handled Barrentine’s information the same way he handles tips of every sort.
“You have to take everybody’s story with a certain amount of credibility. You can’t take anything for granted, and the more I looked into this, the more it looked like someone removed (Kemp) off the face of the Earth,” Roberts said. “I had my part in it, but there were a whole lot of other people involved to make this thing come together.”
As the Kemp case progressed, authorities looked back into the death of another of Fields’ previous boyfriends, a professor in another state who hung himself after their break-up.
While living in Jackson County, Fields had a number of romantic relationships, and worked at a number of jobs, including the local hospital and a day care center in Marianna.
She tended to move from one relationship to another, and was attracted to men in uniform and positions of authority, Roberts said.
Among her known romantic associates were a 21-year-old police officer she dated when she was 36 years old and living in Jackson County; a deputy in Texas; an assistant school principal in another state whom she eventually married; and the college professor whose death got a second look as the Kemp case was being investigated.
Roberts did not know the result of that review.
The Kemp case has attracted national media attention, including the crime story TV program “48 Hours.” The program’s team has made contact with people in Jackson County, and has shown interest in doing an episode on the Kemp case.
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