Woman Claimed She Killed Husband in Self-Defense — But Security Footage Told Different Story

When Olive Branch, Mississippi man Willie Barden was shot and killed in his home, only one other person was there: his wife, Felicia. Police suspected from the beginning she was the one who murdered her husband — but they had to prove it, which turned out to be difficult when Felicia Barden stayed silent.

“I think it just boiled down to narcissism,” said DeSoto Co. Sheriff’s Lieutenant Jeff Logan on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “That, ‘I’m going to be smarter than everybody and I’m going to get away with this.’”

Police soon saw footage that confirmed Felicia was lying about what happened that day.

“This woman is very calculating,” said prosecutor Angela Huck on Snapped. “She wanted Willie to look like the bad person in this situation …I’ve never had a defendant scare me. She scares me.”

On the morning of Nov. 12, 2019, Felicia Barden’s son from a previous marriage, Joshua, called dispatchers to report that his stepfather had been shot.

“The first thing out of his mouth was, ‘My mom shot Willie in self-defense,’” Logan said.

Joshua claimed his mother had called him at work with an emergency, and when he rushed home, he found his stepfather dead, and his mother bleeding with a head wound.

“My mom is very frantic, walking room to room, room to room … Whatever I told the police is what I know happened … dead body. Blood. Gun. Shot. It was horrible,” Joshua said on Snapped.

He later told police his mother admitted to him that she shot Willie — but didn’t explain why. He assumed from her injuries that it was self-defense.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Joshua said. “Just seeing the blood on her, I was scared for my mom. Period.”

Joshua admitted to police that he did move a gun in the house.

“I hid the gun in the kitchen,” he said during recorded police interview. “I just didn’t want ... you know ... on the bed, it was on the bed when I came in … I just thought that was the right thing to do, was to put the gun in the drawer.”

Several security cameras were set up in and outside the home, but the system for storing the recorded footage was missing.

“It tells us there’s possibly evidence that is useful on that system,” said DeSoto Co. Sheriff’s Detective Lynn Starkey on Snapped.

Police later found the recording system in a garbage can outside the home and worked to restore it.

Felicia and Willie Barden first met in 2005 and got married in 2012. From the beginning, Willie’s family didn’t care for Felicia, calling her manipulating and controlling.

“I said, ‘My first impression is not a good impression.’ I said, ‘I think she’s a tiger, and you gonna be the prey,’” Willie’s sister, Dywarn Barden Dawson, recalled on Snapped.

Joshua told police his mother and stepfather often fought — a claim backed by police reports of domestic trouble at their home dating back to 2009.

Felicia Barden. Photo: Oxygens

“He did say that Felicia, about a week prior to the shooting, told him that Willie was sexually and physically abusing her,” Logan said.

Joshua said his mother told him she believed Willie was trying to poison her with sleeping pills, a claim she also repeated to her brother.

“Right before the homicide, Felicia had told him that Willie was trying to poison her, put stuff in her food to kill her,” Logan said.

Willie Barden’s son, Nicholas, confirmed the couple had a volatile marriage.

“Nick said that in the home was chaos, all the time,” Barden Dawson said. “He just got so tired of it he had to leave. He said he couldn’t take it.”

But rather than Willie, Felicia’s coworkers indicated she was actually the one more prone to conflict.

“They said she is a difficult woman to get along with,” Logan said. “Really domineering and difficult. They eventually suspended her.”

Willie’s family also told police Willie was planning to divorce Felicia and had made that known to her before his murder — creating a motive for Felicia to want her husband dead.

“Her husband wanted a divorce and she was not having that,” Huck said. “She was not going to let him divorce her. She was not losing that battle.”

When technical experts were able to recover the footage from the Barden security cameras, police were shocked by what it showed. The day of the murder, Felicia was captured walking out of the master bedroom at 6:45 a.m. She was seen going to the garage, and then coming back to the master bedroom with a gun.

“She has no concerns or issues. She just kinda strolls into the garage, comes out, and just kinda a slow walk with the gun in her hand,” Logan said. “Felicia looks like a psychopath, to be honest with you. I mean, she looks like she is not bothered at all by what she is about to do.”

There were no camera views that captured the murder itself, but they did record the aftermath.

“She went into that bathroom where he had no escape,” Huck said. “No way to get out. And shot him in cold blood. She didn’t have a care in the world. She wasn’t frightened. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t crying.”

Felicia Barden was filmed putting the gun under a couch cushion and later moving it, as well as going upstairs to remove the recording device.

One final piece of security camera footage negated her self-defense claim.

“You can still see her face clear enough that she still does not have any wounds to her face,” Logan said, indicating the wounds were self-inflicted after the murder.

Joshua agreed to testify against his mother to avoid charges in Willie Barden’s murder. He also admitted to police to helping his mother get rid of the video recording device.

In June 2021, a jury found her guilty of murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped on Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen and the next day on Peacock.