The full story of a truck driver found dead in a creek after being reported missing back in 2019 has been released as part of a true crime series.
61-year-old truck driver Philip “Buckie” Barlow was reported missing by his girlfriend of nearly 20 years, Mary, after he didn’t show up to his driving job at Hillside Trucking at 1 a.m. on May 29th, 2019, near Tunnelton, West Virginia.
“Philip talked to his girlfriend on the phone before leaving for work around 11:30 p.m.” Hillside Trucking wrote in a Facebook post reporting his disappearance. “He was getting his bucket packed and water jug filled. He arrives for work around 12:15 am to 12:45 am every work day. He always liked to be the first truck, so he left early. He did not show for work. [Barlow’s] pickup was seen on camera footage being followed by a white pickup truck.”
Barlow’s pickup was discovered on fire at about 7 a.m. that morning, but Barlow was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until June 8th that Barlow’s body was discovered in a creek bed by some hunters.
“Once I got on scene, myself and another officer were able to approach the body,” said retired Preston County sheriff’s Capt. Travis Tichnell. “It was moderately decomposed. He did not have a shirt on. His jeans were around his ankles. He was face down in the water… There was a significant injury to his throat area. The jugular was cut, the artery was cut, the esophagus was severed; trachea was severed.”
“Mr. Barlow was, for all intents and purposes, completely decapitated,” said Perry County prosecutor Megan Fields to Oxygen. “He was just as brutally injured as you can imagine.”
“I was hysterical because I didn’t want it to be true,” said Mary, who had recently moved away from Barlow to Indiana to prepare the new home they had been planning ahead of Barlow’s impending retirement from trucking.
After investigators interviewed all of Barlow’s neighbors and those living near the crime scene, they noticed a discrepancy between one couple’s description and decided to follow up – and that’s how the conviction of Laura Lynn Martin and Robert Joesph “Bobby” Quinn began.
“During the [initial] conversation with Mr. Quinn and Ms. Martin, nothing out of the ordinary was noted. Nothing stood out to law enforcement at that time with them,” said Tichnell. “I went back and listened to those statements again.”
Both Quinn and Martin had mentioned the noise of their AC blocking out any sounds from the outside during their interviews.
“Kind of stood out to me that it just seemed a little bit out of context,” Tichnell said. “Seemed like a pretty minute detail to be specifically remembered. I wanted to speak with them again.” But by the time Tichnell decided to speak with the two again, both had already been incarcerated in Maryland for a series of breaking and entering crimes.
Tichell reviewed phone calls made by the couple in jail, and found that Martin had made multiple, “sexually explicit” calls to an ex-boyfriend, not to Quinn. Tichell then used this information to get Quinn to confess to the crime as a way to get back at Martin for her romantic betrayal. Once investigators got a confession out of Quinn, they were able to piece together the events of the crime through interviews with them both, along with interviews with their fellow inmates.
“They were basically pointing the finger at each other,” said Tichnell. “But I don’t believe that one person could have done that alone.”
Tichnell eventually determined that the couple had initially planned to only rob Barlow for money to pay their electricity bill, but the crime spiraled out of control when Barlow told the two he knew who they were. Martin and Quinn ended up murdering him and dumping his body in the woods.
“She admitted to [fellow inmates] that she had killed Buckie, and she made some very disturbing statements,” said Tichnell. “…Ms. Martin also claimed to her fellow jail inmates that after they killed Buckie, she and Robert [Bobby] took his lunch that he had packed for his shift and ate his sandwiches with his blood still on their hands.”
“Laura indicated that she loved the way Buckie’s blood felt running through her hands and that she wanted to feel that sensation again,” said prosecutor Fields.
“The way that she described the pure joy that she felt is something that I’ll never forget,” said another Preston County prosecutor James Shay.
Laura Lynn Martin and Robert Joseph “Bobby” Quinn both pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree robbery in connection with the killing of Philip Buckie Barlow, and were sentenced in October 2022. Each received a life sentence with a recommendation of mercy, plus 180 years, reported WV News. Martin will be eligible for parole in 2081, nearly 56 years from now. Quinn will be eligible for parole in 2080.
