On a Dark, Deserted Highway

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Speaker 11 Tonight, on dateline.

Speaker 12 I don't remember if I cried. I don't even think I cried.
It's shock.

Speaker 14 Complete shock.

Speaker 15 Oh,

Speaker 16 I need medical. Send back up, unit.

Speaker 12 The longer time goes on without him, it's really hard.

Speaker 17 That's how it ended.

Speaker 18 This is how it started.

Speaker 19 He took a gun and put it to my head.

Speaker 19 It wasn't until I heard the click that I realized it wasn't loaded. I let him take Marshall.

Speaker 19 He had the boys run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads.

Speaker 20 What were they turning into living with him?

Speaker 19 Monsters.

Speaker 22 He was talking about police officers. If any cop ever got in my face, I'll kill him.

Speaker 12 Let's call it what it was. An execution.

Speaker 23 I think he's one of the most evil people we've ever dealt with.

Speaker 19 The threat of death was very real from him. Would I end up leaving or end up in a bag in the ocean?

Speaker 11 A father leads his sons down a dark and deadly path. You'll be in on the chase to catch him before he can kill again.

Speaker 13 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 11 Here's Keith Morrison with On a Dark, Deserted Highway.

Speaker 25 It was deep country, dark, just after 2 a.m.,

Speaker 27 as the small-town Montana deputy cruised home.

Speaker 7 End of a quiet shift.

Speaker 31 It was May 2017, and outside his car, the air was fresh with the smell of new planting.

Speaker 33 He was happy he'd be home early for once.

Speaker 36 And quite suddenly, a car whistled past his patrol vehicle, just like this.

Speaker 25 Here's the actual video.

Speaker 38 The deputy giving chase, as the driver of that speeding Chevy Suburban seemed to want him to.

Speaker 39 And then.

Speaker 40 I'm just trying to get some help here.

Speaker 15 My officer is not answering me now. What?

Speaker 40 Yeah, I don't like that he's not answering me. I hate that.

Speaker 28 The reason became apparent when backup finally arrived.

Speaker 16 The let the deputy's car door opens.

Speaker 41 Mile marker 109.

Speaker 15 Take on foot.

Speaker 42 Oh.

Speaker 16 Close with 320. I need medical.
Send backup units.

Speaker 44 As EMTs roared off to attend to the deputy, the speeding suburban vanished down the highway, and word was flashed to every available law officer for miles.

Speaker 46 I just said, God, come ride with me.

Speaker 7 All pulled into one of the most furious chases you've ever seen.

Speaker 48 A Wild West gun battle at speeds up to 140 miles an hour.

Speaker 50 That feeling.

Speaker 51 Scariest moment of my life.

Speaker 49 Until two hours after it began. began

Speaker 17 it happened just over yonder under the big montana sky and instantly became one of the most notorious crimes in montana history but it was much more than just one crime or even a series of crimes this crazy tale of the shapeshifter missionary man to madman to monster.

Speaker 56 I think that this is probably one of the most savage and dangerous people that I've ever seen.

Speaker 57 I was in fear for a very long time. A very long time.
I want to say 30 years.

Speaker 12 I don't remember if I cried. I don't even think I cried.

Speaker 15 It's shock.

Speaker 12 Complete shock.

Speaker 59 But the story, the story we have pieced together year by year, person by person, begins long before the night on the highway.

Speaker 61 More than 50 years before, in the small town of McCammon, Idaho, where two boys met in grade school, Michael Cobia and a kid named Chip.

Speaker 53 Michael remembers it to this day.

Speaker 22 We became fast friends and did lots of adventurous things together. And I mean, during the summer, you had no supervision whatsoever.

Speaker 63 And as teens, Mike and Chip got mixed up in some rather unwholesome activities.

Speaker 65 Until it was Chip who turned things around.

Speaker 22 He moved in with a bishop in Chubbock, Idaho. And that bishop started getting him to read the Book of Mormon,

Speaker 22 the Bible.

Speaker 65 Chip found religion.

Speaker 46 and got Mike back on a righteous path.

Speaker 22 It had a profound impact on me. I threw away my my drugs and went on a Mormon mission within six months.

Speaker 37 Which Chip did too, set off on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Speaker 30 And when he did, he sent a note to his girlfriend.

Speaker 55 A note so remarkable, she saved it all these years.

Speaker 19 You're very special to me, Tracy. Keep up the good work.
Continue to do what your Heavenly Father wants you to do, and I know you'll be happy. I love you, Chip.

Speaker 33 The woman was Tracy,

Speaker 55 Chip's sweetheart.

Speaker 19 We had talked about getting married when he got back off of his mission. And in my culture, in the LDS culture, you know, you kind of waited for your missionary and you live happily ever after.

Speaker 33 And sure enough, when Chip returned, all grown up, now going by his given name, Lloyd Barris, He married Tracy in the Idaho Falls LDS Temple.

Speaker 28 Sealed, as Mormons believe,

Speaker 66 for time and all eternity.

Speaker 7 Tracy did her best to be a good wife.

Speaker 13 She gave Lloyd two healthy boys, Marshall and Jeffrey, names you'll want to remember.

Speaker 19 He was actually a really good dad. He'd play with the boys.
He was really proud of them.

Speaker 19 You know, Marshall, everything he did. He thought it was funny.

Speaker 31 Lloyd was a good provider, worked in construction.

Speaker 69 And at the heart of things, he was a God-fearing man.

Speaker 30 He'd been a missionary, after all, and he made it clear, said Tracy, he was the sole arbiter of right and wrong.

Speaker 19 He wanted to let me know right away that

Speaker 19 I was his wife and wives are supposed to submit to their husbands. And if I even slipped up and I said hell or damn, he'd reach across the table and slap me across the face.

Speaker 17 Because saying hell or damn is a bigger sin than slapping your spouse across the face.

Speaker 19 Clearly, yes.

Speaker 7 But she had ears.

Speaker 26 They hadn't been married long when she could tell, she said.

Speaker 72 Lloyd began getting mixed up in something secret.

Speaker 39 The phone calls began from people she didn't know.

Speaker 19 And they'd talk in code if I answered the phone. They'd say, this is the password.
Tell him 7 o'clock. He'll know what it means.

Speaker 44 He wouldn't tell her where he was going, she said, but when he returned, he'd rant like some 19th century fundamentalist prophet.

Speaker 19 And he started going on and on about how the government had no right to tax us.

Speaker 19 Like if he'd get a speeding ticket, he'd go to court so he could argue with the judge over the government's role in our lives and how, you know, they were trying to control us.

Speaker 35 And all the while, she said, she lived in fear of his moods, his sudden flashes of anger, his violence.

Speaker 19 Back then, we didn't talk about abuse. And if you did, what you were told is, you need to quit provoking him.

Speaker 17 Until Tracy grew so desperate, she went on her own to talk to her LDS bishop.

Speaker 15 What happened?

Speaker 19 He called Lloyd in, and Lloyd made it just seem like

Speaker 19 I was just having a harmonial mood swing and that he'd never done anything bad.

Speaker 53 Marriage is sacred, the bishop reminded them. They should keep trying.

Speaker 36 How trapped did you feel?

Speaker 19 You'd like to leave, but you've been sealed in the temple.

Speaker 33 But it did not get better, she said.

Speaker 28 Far from it.

Speaker 19 If I didn't do exactly what I was told, my punishment was marital rape.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 there was a time when he took a gun and put it to the temple of my head and fired it. And it wasn't until I heard the click that I realized it wasn't loaded.

Speaker 52 Good God.

Speaker 19 The thing that was the most scary was when he put the bullets back in the gun and handed it to me and said, if you hate me so bad, kill me.

Speaker 19 That's when I realized that I had to get out of there because one of us was going to die.

Speaker 19 But how?

Speaker 5 She had those boys, Marshall and Jeffrey.

Speaker 42 What would happen to them?

Speaker 24 To all of them?

Speaker 11 When we come back, Tracy escapes from one nightmare into another.

Speaker 11 Lloyd had snatched their boys.

Speaker 19 My downstairs neighbor called me and she said, I think he took them.

Speaker 35 What was that like?

Speaker 19 Crying and crying.

Speaker 11 And it wouldn't be easy to get them back.

Speaker 19 Would I end up in a bag in the ocean?

Speaker 38 They were young still.

Speaker 7 when Tracy finally had her fill of Lloyd Barris.

Speaker 31 35 years ago, before before the gunfight on the highway that led us to this tale and to this man.

Speaker 31 Back then, Lloyd was convinced he was right.

Speaker 28 Tracy couldn't take him anymore.

Speaker 44 He'd been about to take a trip to Alaska to work on a construction project.

Speaker 28 Seemed like now or never.

Speaker 37 So she said it.

Speaker 19 He was very upset when I told him I wanted a divorce, and he asked me, would you mind if I at least took Marshall with me for a few weeks and I'll bring him back?

Speaker 19 I thought thought he'd be back very shortly and I was wrong. He didn't come back for a long time.

Speaker 26 A long time.

Speaker 46 Six months.

Speaker 60 Didn't return with son Marshall until the divorce was final.

Speaker 55 It was a quick 20-day divorce with shared custody of the boys.

Speaker 36 Tracy said Lloyd asked to reconcile and she said no.

Speaker 26 And Lloyd ransacked her apartment, threatened her.

Speaker 19 My boss at work was very concerned about my safety.

Speaker 29 I'm not surprised.

Speaker 19 She said, just get get out of town for the weekend, get away from him so you're safe.

Speaker 2 So Tracy did just that and also made a decision she would forever regret.

Speaker 3 She asked a neighbor to watch Marshall, not quite four, and Jeffrey, who was two, while she was away.

Speaker 19 She called me and she said, I think I made a mistake. Lloyd showed up and he asked if I could let him into your apartment to just get a jacket for the boys.

Speaker 19 And she said, but Tracy, he came out with bags and bags of their stuff. I think he took them.

Speaker 35 What was that like?

Speaker 19 Crying and crying and not knowing what to do or where to turn.

Speaker 20 Nor did she know where he had taken them.

Speaker 2 Didn't know he was now more than 700 miles away in Tacoma, Washington.

Speaker 28 Or that he joined an LDS ward there where he'd caught the eyes of some ladies who had a friend named Deborah, a newly divorced mother of two daughters.

Speaker 57 They said there's a young man at church that is single and looking. They gave him a couple of kids, too.
Phone number, yeah. He had two little boys.
And then we started dating.

Speaker 21 Who called whom?

Speaker 57 He called me. Yeah.
There was a lot of good chemistry between us.

Speaker 44 He seemed like a nice guy.

Speaker 57 Yes. He was a nice guy, and

Speaker 57 he was a great provider.

Speaker 53 She knew only the story he told her, and she liked that story.

Speaker 57 I prayed to know if he was the one for me, and the answer was yes, so we got married.

Speaker 80 Another temple ceiling for time and all eternity.

Speaker 35 Just five years after Lloyd's first eternal ceiling to Tracy,

Speaker 64 who had no idea Deborah even existed.

Speaker 57 I was elated, and I took on those two little boys and loved them and cared for them as though they were my own.

Speaker 24 They weren't, of course, her own boys, that is.

Speaker 47 In fact, Marshall and Jeffrey's mom, Tracy, back in Idaho, was frantically looking for them until she finally learned where they were.

Speaker 44 Did you ask for advice from a lawyer or anything about getting them back?

Speaker 19 Yes. I went to see an attorney, and we were trying to at least make him bring them back for my 50%

Speaker 19 custody.

Speaker 31 Tracy didn't call the police. She didn't know who to call.

Speaker 28 Back then, there were no Amber alerts.

Speaker 24 States didn't cooperate like they do today.

Speaker 71 The FBI rarely got involved in child custody cases, so Tracy's attorney told her this.

Speaker 19 He said, we bring them back and all he has to do is kidnap them again and take them to another state, and we have to start all over. And you and I both know that's what he'll do.

Speaker 83 Oh, my.

Speaker 19 And I said, I think I need to go kidnap him back. And he said, don't do that.
He said, if you do that, you don't have a leg to stand on legally and I can't protect protect you.

Speaker 25 By that time, it was too late.

Speaker 76 Lloyd had moved his new family a world away.

Speaker 19 They'd moved to the Aleutian Islands, Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Speaker 31 Nearly 4,000 miles from Tracy in Idaho.

Speaker 19 And there are no commercial flights. No.

Speaker 19 I'm a waitress making $2.50 an hour plus tips. Now what do I do?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 19 And the terror also of would I end up leaving or end up in a bag in the ocean.

Speaker 68 Meanwhile, Deborah with no idea at all of Lloyd's past or that he had kidnapped Marshall and Jeffrey from their mother gave Lloyd another son a year later.

Speaker 28 They called him Alma.

Speaker 57 There is a character in the Book of Mormon who is a very valiant character and that's why Alma is Alma.

Speaker 2 Alma would soon have two more sisters.

Speaker 39 bringing the number of children, his, hers, and theirs, to seven.

Speaker 64 Lloyd decided to build a house for his growing family, and he bought land in Anchorage, where he began getting all secretive again, this time with one of his neighbors, and pretty soon the two of them started thumbing their noses at local ordinances and refusing to pay taxes, that sort of thing.

Speaker 73 Two outlaws against the government.

Speaker 57 Once he met this guy, it was as though they had a marriage instead of us.

Speaker 85 Nearly all his life, Lloyd had been, or claimed to be, a faithful Mormon.

Speaker 4 But now that was changing, too.

Speaker 2 The church wasn't enough for him anymore.

Speaker 4 He stopped going to his LDS ward and began attending a different sort of meeting altogether.

Speaker 16 Sounds like he discovered a better life.

Speaker 58 How are Amway?

Speaker 14 So can you.

Speaker 46 Amway.

Speaker 5 Ads like this spoke to Lloyd.

Speaker 74 He wanted a better life.

Speaker 33 He wanted his own business.

Speaker 64 He embraced the booming multi-level marketing company with the same all-in faith he had once given to his church, an allegiance that seemed almost fanatical to Deborah.

Speaker 61 Called himself Diamond Lloyd Barris.

Speaker 37 But when Lloyd's Amway distributorship didn't take off.

Speaker 57 He was so angry at me because he wasn't getting any people to join him in this Amway business. And it was all my fault because of the sadness that was on my face.

Speaker 57 And he gave me the hand mirror and made me fake a smile with it in front of my face. He said, you will hold that smile all night long just so that you can know that this is how it has to be.

Speaker 57 And of course, I was absolutely terrified. And needless to say, there wasn't a lot of sleep that happened on my end that night.

Speaker 24 Surely it couldn't get any worse.

Speaker 26 But of course,

Speaker 24 it did.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 57 He said, if you try to leave, I will take you out back and shoot you in the head.

Speaker 11 It was time to escape.

Speaker 21 But how?

Speaker 57 That's when I started devising a plan.

Speaker 18 When dateline continues.

Speaker 44 There was a moment that might have saved them.

Speaker 7 The boys, that is, the two sons of Lloyd Barris and his first wife, Tracy.

Speaker 3 Lloyd had snatched Marshall and Jeffrey and taken them far away to Alaska, where eventually Lloyd told Deborah the truth.

Speaker 65 And when the boys were around five and three,

Speaker 38 Deborah secretly arranged for them to contact their mother.

Speaker 19 Deborah would sneak away from time to time and let them call me from a pay phone, but she wasn't allowed to say where they were.

Speaker 37 Then, a couple of years later, Lloyd agreed to let the boys visit Tracy in the lower 48, but with a warning.

Speaker 19 I'll come down there with a gun and you guys will be sorry if you pull any funny business. And I wanted to just keep them.

Speaker 75 She consulted a child psychologist who said, don't do it.

Speaker 19 Well, what she told me is the worst thing I could do is kidnap them back.

Speaker 61 She sent the boys back to Lloyd.

Speaker 38 No idea what she was sending them to.

Speaker 17 Did he have many weapons in the house?

Speaker 57 He had had a closet full of weapons and was constantly had his eye on the next one.

Speaker 57 In the evenings after we'd put the children to bed, he would practice fight moves in front of the mirror and, you know, tell me he wanted to become a mercenary.

Speaker 38 He began acting like the star of his own action movie.

Speaker 62 He disappeared for days at a time.

Speaker 37 CIA missions, he called them.

Speaker 80 When a neighbor reported Lloyd for breaking county environmental codes, a neighbor who happened to have a black glab puppy.

Speaker 57 He came in the house and got a pistol out of the closet, so I peered through the door and witnessed him put that pistol behind that puppy's ear and shoot it in the head.

Speaker 57 And then he picked it up by the tail and flung it around and tossed it into the woods.

Speaker 66 Deborah wanted out and Lloyd seemed to sense it.

Speaker 57 He said,

Speaker 57 if you try to leave, I will take you out back and shoot you in the head. And in God's word, it says I can do that.

Speaker 44 What did it feel like to be you listening to these things?

Speaker 57 That's when I started devising a plan.

Speaker 66 And then one evening at supper time, Lloyd announced he had to work all night on a local construction job.

Speaker 57 He said, I'm going to take Marshall with me because I need extra hands. Marshall was 12 at the time.
And after he left, I

Speaker 57 started loading up all the things and then one by one I took a child out of their bed and put them in the suburban and off we went.

Speaker 57 One of the hardest parts of leaving was that I couldn't take those two little boys that I had mothered for eight years.

Speaker 73 Yeah, they were his boys.

Speaker 57 And Marshall of course wasn't there. Jeffrey, I had to leave sleeping in his bed.

Speaker 44 There was one boy who left the house that night, along with his four sisters.

Speaker 85 Remember Alma?

Speaker 37 He was now six years old.

Speaker 89 I remember asking my mom, can we take Jeffrey?

Speaker 89 And she was not legally allowed to. It would have endangered us taking him.
I know how much my brothers loved me and it was so difficult that we had to leave them.

Speaker 28 Deborah went straight to a domestic violence shelter in Anchorage and called her LDS bishop.

Speaker 57 And he went to the airport in a disguise to purchase airplane tickets for me and my family because he knew the danger that was in disguise.

Speaker 69 He had to actually not look like himself for fear of what Lloyd might do.

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 57 As soon as we left the women's shelter, this is how afraid we were.

Speaker 57 When we got in the taxi,

Speaker 57 I said, everybody lay down because I didn't want him to recognize us.

Speaker 57 So we rode to the airport,

Speaker 57 everybody laying down.

Speaker 70 Did you have a sense of safety or freedom as you took off and flew away?

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 57 I knew that we were finally safe for a while until he figured out that we were no longer in the state.

Speaker 58 Lloyd Barris was not a man to let something like this go, even after Deborah filed for divorce.

Speaker 5 Less than a year later, thousands of miles from Alaska, there was a knock at Deborah's door.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 57 He had a knife in his boot and a gun in the small of his back, and he pulled me off into the trees.

Speaker 11 And while in Alaska, Lloyd had been training soldiers for his own militia.

Speaker 19 He had the boys convinced that there was going to be a war with the U.S. government.
He'd have them run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads.

Speaker 2 Curious thing about Lloyd Barris, the zombie had not changed at all, still a fine man, dedicated and hardworking.

Speaker 28 To his wife Deborah, he had become frightening. And 28 years now, before that terrifying night in Montana, it was terror she felt as she ran from him.

Speaker 31 Only Marshall and Jeffrey were left behind with Lloyd, who, just as I could expect, was doing all he could to track down his missing family.

Speaker 57 After I left, he had threatened all of my friends from church that if anybody helped me in any way,

Speaker 57 that he would kill their pets and their children.

Speaker 53 Deborah knew she had to be evasive.

Speaker 20 She went to Arizona first, and then she moved again to a city on Washington's Puget Sound.

Speaker 65 It was where her parents lived.

Speaker 47 So, not evasive enough, because a year later, who was standing on her doorstep?

Speaker 57 Lloyd went into a car dealership and pretended as though he wanted to purchase a vehicle. He asked the person that was helping him to, he gave him my social security number and asked him to

Speaker 57 run it and find out

Speaker 79 where

Speaker 57 the person was. And because of that, he came knocking at the door.

Speaker 57 I immediately went into Hollywood actress mode and

Speaker 57 started telling him how sorry I was that I had left and how I couldn't wait for us to get back together. All of this just so that I could keep my parents and my children safe.

Speaker 37 How did he react to this?

Speaker 57 He believed it. He had a knife in his boot and a gun in the small of his back.

Speaker 57 So I asked him to please take a walk with me. So we walked, you know, a mile or so down the road and he pulled me off into the trees and

Speaker 57 proceeded to try to undress me. And I began to cry, so he stopped.

Speaker 57 And we got back to the house with my parents and the kids.

Speaker 55 And then, as if by providence, a visitor stopped by.

Speaker 57 The bishop of our church at the time noticed a strange vehicle in the driveway, and he stopped to see if everything was okay,

Speaker 57 which put a little bit of excitement in the moment, and he reached for his knife.

Speaker 7 Lloyd did.

Speaker 35 Reach for his knife when the bishop is there.

Speaker 57 Because he felt threatened by someone that he didn't know. And I said, listen, this is the bishop.
He's just checking on us.

Speaker 48 With false promises of a reunion soon in Alaska, Deborah talked Lloyd into leaving.

Speaker 57 As soon as he left the driveway,

Speaker 57 I started trying to figure out what we were going to do next because now he had entered our safe place.

Speaker 25 And thus began an odyssey all too familiar to the victims of domestic violence.

Speaker 2 A haze of hotels and friends' homes, couch surfing, always accompanying fear.

Speaker 57 I would not be sitting here doing this interview with you if I hadn't had the presence of mind to get away when we got away.

Speaker 17 Were you afraid of him in the years after you left Alaska with your family and lived in various places?

Speaker 89 No, I was not so acutely aware of the danger that my mom was in. He called us one time.
I said, this is your son, Alma.

Speaker 89 And he said, I would like to talk to you, but I can't. It crushes your heart.

Speaker 89 It was difficult growing up without a dad.

Speaker 85 Or maybe lucky.

Speaker 3 Lloyd went back to Alaska, found a third wife through Amway,

Speaker 69 fathered five more children. Later, Tracy's boys, Marshall and Jeffrey, told their mom about life with Lloyd.

Speaker 19 The boys told me that their dad would be gone on binges and not come home for days, so they'd rob homes to get money for food.

Speaker 55 The boys should be soldiers, Lloyd decreed.

Speaker 63 They had to be made ready.

Speaker 19 Lloyd felt he was in a righteous militia. He had the boys convinced that there was going to be a war with the U.S.
government. But he'd have them run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads.

Speaker 54 These are the little boys you gave birth to.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 20 What were they turning into living with him?

Speaker 19 Monsters. They were conditioned to have such aberrant beliefs and aberrant behaviors, Jeffrey scares me to death.
Jeffrey's eyes glaze over and he looks at you like there's no soul.

Speaker 5 When the boys became young adults, they scattered. But before long, Lloyd and Jeffree met again.

Speaker 5 A long, slow, and violent end game had begun.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 7 A showdown in the desert.

Speaker 92 My phone rang and an investigator told me there was something weird happening in Death Valley and a lot of very odd things happen out there.

Speaker 18 When dateline continues.

Speaker 53 Lloyd Barris just wasn't a one-woman man.

Speaker 77 In the summer of 1999, 18 years to go until the night it all came down in Montana, Lloyd was living in Idaho with a new girlfriend.

Speaker 25 By then, Lloyd had gone through three wives, had ten children, and told his childhood friend Michael Cobia it was all the government's fault.

Speaker 22 He proceeded to tell me how he'd tried to build a home in Alaska and they wouldn't let him and he did it anyway

Speaker 22 and that his wife got scared and took off with the kids.

Speaker 44 Lloyd opened up, vented to his old friend.

Speaker 2 After that woman left him, he said, everything just went wrong.

Speaker 22 He had refused to pay child support and lost every one of his professional licenses. There was a lot more to the conversation.

Speaker 85 Oh, yes, there was.

Speaker 77 Lloyd wasn't just angry at the government.

Speaker 22 He was talking about police officers. The gist at the end was

Speaker 22 that if any cop ever got in my face, I'll kill him.

Speaker 71 But just a few months after that conversation, Lloyd was on the run, so he wouldn't have to face the law.

Speaker 28 In March of 2000, he'd been summoned to an Idaho court on DUI and other charges.

Speaker 77 But instead of showing up, he and the girlfriend skipped town.

Speaker 2 And at the wheel of the getaway car, Lloyd's son Jeffrey, then 20 years old.

Speaker 46 They drove through the night, and as morning approached, they're heading north on US 95, 60 miles from Las Vegas.

Speaker 44 where John Koonag, a freshly admitted highway patrolman, was on his way to an overtime assignment.

Speaker 14 I was probably doing about 75

Speaker 14 and I saw a car coming up from behind me. All I see was headlights.

Speaker 14 And they just kept accelerating.

Speaker 38 My thoughts were: this guy's crazy, I need to stop him.

Speaker 69 That was just kind of a knee-jerk response.

Speaker 14 I was out here not familiar with this area, didn't know I didn't have radio coverage on my to talk to dispatchers.

Speaker 21 All right.

Speaker 47 No way to call for backup.

Speaker 68 Still, all alone in the dark, John threw his lights and sirens on and pulled the car over.

Speaker 7 And then he got out to ask the driver for his license and registration.

Speaker 14 There was a female in the back seat behind the driver.

Speaker 41 Two men in the front?

Speaker 14 Two men in the front.

Speaker 26 Jeffrey was behind the wheel.

Speaker 31 Lloyd was in the passenger seat.

Speaker 39 And next to his leg was a shotgun.

Speaker 14 So I asked the driver how many more weapons he had in the vehicle, and he looked right at me, what we call the thousand-yard stairs, looking right through you, and he said, as many as I want.

Speaker 36 So, this was trouble.

Speaker 28 John went back to his car and tried again to call back up.

Speaker 68 And this time he got through, except the nearest officer was 18 miles away.

Speaker 48 And as John took that in, Jeffrey, still in his own car, did something strange.

Speaker 94 He was calling me, yes, come back up here.

Speaker 14 And after I kept telling him I wasn't coming back up, the female in the left rear seat, she got out and said she needed to talk to me.

Speaker 44 By then, it seemed obvious, they wanted to lure him back to shoot him.

Speaker 75 So John stayed out of sight and kept all his spotlights pointed at the Barris' car.

Speaker 44 When backup arrived, what happened then?

Speaker 14 We went to make a, what we call a high-risk stop, which is where we have our weapons out, get on the loudspeaker, and call the driver back to you.

Speaker 38 And when we did that, they took off.

Speaker 21 Hit the ass.

Speaker 92 Correct.

Speaker 7 By the time John got back to his car, Lloyd and Jeffrey and the woman were already out of sight, but he knew the road would lead them to a town called Beatty.

Speaker 92 If they had turned right in the town of Beatty instead of turning left, it would have stayed a Nevada problem and not become a California problem.

Speaker 46 But Lloyd and Jeffrey turned left.

Speaker 20 And that's when they started shooting at the cops who were chasing them as they headed straight into California's Inyo County, District Attorney Tom Tom Hardy's jurisdiction.

Speaker 92 My phone rang and an investigator told me there was something weird happening in Death Valley.

Speaker 9 Death Valley.

Speaker 92 There's several hundred miles of very remote, very rugged territory, and a lot of very odd things happen out there.

Speaker 27 Wasn't Charlie Madsen picked up in Inyo County?

Speaker 78 He was.

Speaker 24 So it came as no surprise to the prosecutor that three people with a carload of guns fleeing from law enforcement ended up in Death Valley.

Speaker 92 Well, I don't think they had any idea they knew where they were going at this point.

Speaker 92 Jeff drives the BMW off into the desert and almost immediately becomes stuck. They bailed out of the car and they grabbed three rifles and three handguns.

Speaker 59 Was it armed for Armageddon or what?

Speaker 92 Mr. Barris seemed to be very fond of firearms.

Speaker 8 Though it was springtime, it was hot.

Speaker 75 And with law enforcement not far behind, Jeffrey, Lloyd, and his girlfriend lugged their arsenal for miles across the desert and then dug a makeshift bunker that they could not hide from the unforgiving Death Valley sun.

Speaker 92 They had lots of firearms, but they had no water.

Speaker 31 As the standoff went on, some of the cops said they could hear moaning coming from the parched holdouts in the bunker, and they couldn't help but hear the gunfire.

Speaker 92 And then CHP had a helicopter about 11.30 that morning, ended up being shot down by Jeff.

Speaker 92 He fired a rifle and was able to put around round through the oil cooler in the helicopter and basically disabled it.

Speaker 63 He brought it down.

Speaker 92 Yeah, they basically had to do an emergency landing in the desert.

Speaker 63 By some miracle, all four on board survived.

Speaker 66 But all was not well in the bunker.

Speaker 30 18 hours after the high-speed chase began in Nevada, they gave up.

Speaker 31 walked out of their bunker and straight into the lines of law officers who had them surrounded.

Speaker 9 Lloyd and his sons had had brushes with the law before, but this time there'd be consequences.

Speaker 48 Big consequences.

Speaker 64 Coming up, Lloyd has a strange wish

Speaker 64 and turns on his own son.

Speaker 92 Jeff was the person who was really shooting, not me.

Speaker 3 The jig was up for Lloyd and Jeffrey Barris.

Speaker 38 Lloyd had opened fire on police during that high-speed chase from Nevada to California.

Speaker 59 In Death Valley, son Jeffrey had shot down a CHP chopper, the only time in history that's happened.

Speaker 51 To anybody hearing the story, it sounds like they were desperados out to kill as many people as they could and go down in

Speaker 73 a blaze of glory.

Speaker 36 You don't see it that way?

Speaker 92 I guess at the time, no. In Jeff's initial interviews, he was almost apologetic.
Every time they asked, well, did you shoot at this person? Yeah, I hope I didn't hurt anybody.

Speaker 92 I mean, it was bizarre because you're right.

Speaker 92 It seems like they're desperados out to get somebody.

Speaker 4 But that's not how it was, said Lloyd.

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 7 The real story?

Speaker 7 Someone, said Lloyd, was out to get him.

Speaker 54 I just thought he was choosing, you know, but he didn't.

Speaker 93 For me, I wanted to be nothing alone. I just want to be dead.

Speaker 66 Hours after Lloyd was taken into custody in Death Valley, tapes were rolling as Lloyd went on a hot rant.

Speaker 54 Was that what this was all about? You were trying to commit suicide?

Speaker 96 Lolly stressed their mac.

Speaker 96 I've run into too many bad cops over too many years.

Speaker 93 When you're ready to die, and you can't get them engaged, how you gonna get this son of a bitch engaged, right?

Speaker 30 Much of Lloyd's interview just didn't make sense.

Speaker 93 One time I wrote a letter to President Bush. Did you? Oh, it worked out great.

Speaker 93 I got a green graze at me and everything.

Speaker 92 Some of the statements I certainly thought were delusional.

Speaker 44 Doctors gave Lloyd psychological evaluations and diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder.

Speaker 31 So before he could go on trial, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

Speaker 8 Jeff took a plea deal and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes he said he was forced to commit.

Speaker 19 Jeffrey told me when the shootout took place that he hesitated and his dad said, you're either with me or against me and those that are against me die. And he held a gun on him.

Speaker 19 Well that was enough to trigger Jeffrey's wild animal response and he just went crazy.

Speaker 55 When Lloyd was well enough to tell his part of the story, he had a slightly different version.

Speaker 92 Lloyd was always very coy about whether he fired any shots or not. He was like, yeah, Jeff was the person who was really shooting, not me.

Speaker 17 Did it strike you as a betrayal of his own son that he would first of all order him around to get him involved in this pickle?

Speaker 53 And then when it came time for him to make a deal, say, well, really, you know, he did most of the shooting.

Speaker 29 I didn't.

Speaker 92 Well, I mean, short answer, yeah.

Speaker 33 So, it was father against son.

Speaker 43 Lloyd agreed to plead no contest and was sent to prison for 15 years, a decade less than Jeffrey.

Speaker 37 From prison, Lloyd wrote to his other son, Alma, and invited him to visit.

Speaker 89 Kind of made it seem like it was all Jeffrey's fault.

Speaker 73 Yeah, I just was wondering what it was like when you

Speaker 73 realized that he was BSing you.

Speaker 89 It's disappointing. I was hoping that he would apologize.

Speaker 61 To Alma, that is, for not being there, for him, for everything.

Speaker 26 That didn't happen.

Speaker 59 Lloyd quietly served 13 of the 15 years to which he'd been sentenced.

Speaker 30 And then, on January 3rd, 2013, he was released, walked out of prison a free man, moved to Bakersfield, found himself another girlfriend.

Speaker 92 Some attorneys joke about having lifelong cases, and this is one where it never goes away.

Speaker 24 No, not this one.

Speaker 2 Because once he was out of prison, the old Lloyd Lloyd began to re-emerge.

Speaker 68 And that old Lloyd discovered something new.

Speaker 71 For him at least.

Speaker 28 Social media, where he documented his life and beliefs.

Speaker 89 I was watching his Facebook, seeing the stuff that he would post.

Speaker 63 Predictions of an imminent military coup.

Speaker 20 Fevered allegations of government genocide campaigns.

Speaker 39 Photos of lynchings.

Speaker 9 Alma was alarmed.

Speaker 89 I got a bad vibe from it, and I called his parole officer, and they said he's graduated from parole. I said, Can you tell me where he is? And they said, Sorry, we can't tell you that.
We don't know.

Speaker 89 I wanted to try and stop him somehow. I was hoping there was like law enforcement or something that could help me.

Speaker 26 But no one did.

Speaker 84 Maybe no one could.

Speaker 13 And Lloyd Barris, amped up on dark fantasies, got into his car

Speaker 66 and pointed it north toward Montana.

Speaker 64 Coming up, a speeding car. Speed, sir,

Speaker 64 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 11 And gunfire as Lloyd's anti-government obsession comes to a deadly climax.

Speaker 18 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 8 What would Lloyd do now that he was free?

Speaker 67 Was there ever any doubt?

Speaker 77 In May 2017, Lloyd Barris, fresh off parole in California, traveled to Montana to see his firstborn son, Marshall, now 38 years old.

Speaker 74 Remember him?

Speaker 28 After growing up with Lloyd, he'd made a mess of life.

Speaker 2 His five kids had grown up without him. He'd struggled with booze, had been charged with burglary.

Speaker 2 He was wearing an ankle bracelet for that, but had told his mom Tracy he was determined to finally turn his life around.

Speaker 19 Marsh and I were sitting on the couch together and he goes, Mom, I've done some really bad things in my life, but I need you to know something. I've never killed anyone

Speaker 19 and I don't ever intend to.

Speaker 53 Yes, he'd rejoined his family too.

Speaker 63 That weekend they'd all gone camping together, sober and happy.

Speaker 35 And then Lloyd joined them.

Speaker 53 The campground was near Canyon Ferry Lake in Montana's Broadwater County.

Speaker 5 The county is huge, the size of more than 50 Manhattan Islands.

Speaker 32 But only 7,000 souls actually live here, including now former Sheriff Wynne Meehan.

Speaker 4 Oh, yes.

Speaker 44 And just 10 sworn officers.

Speaker 88 This is a heck of a place to be a sheriff.

Speaker 90 Best place to be.

Speaker 90 There's no better place in Montana.

Speaker 90 Probably tell everybody, you know, Montana's the last best place place to hide. Ted Kaczynski used it.

Speaker 90 True.

Speaker 38 One of Megan's officers was Deputy Mason Moore, the one with South Carolina in his voice, and the college sweetheart, now wife, who'd stolen his heart the very first time he saw her, Jodi.

Speaker 12 I was at this party and he walked up and my first reaction was, who is that? And I need to find out who he is. And

Speaker 12 that was pretty much how that started.

Speaker 27 So in other words, you kind of stole him as opposed to

Speaker 12 that way around. My mama didn't raise any fools though.

Speaker 77 They had a yen to live in Montana.

Speaker 31 Moved here in 2011.

Speaker 47 At first Mason was a stay-at-home dad to their three kids and a volunteer firefighter, but in his heart, he was a cop, had always been a cop.

Speaker 27 If you asked him why he wanted to be a cop, what would he tell you?

Speaker 12 He would say that he didn't have a choice, that it was what he was supposed to do.

Speaker 44 Mason Moore fit in well at the Broadwater County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 36 He was a big brother of sorts to dispatcher Kylie Howard.

Speaker 91 Mason

Speaker 91 was hard to understand at first over the radio with his southern accent, but once I got past that, we were a great team.

Speaker 26 On Monday, May 15th, while the Barrises were camping in Broadwater County, Deputy Moore began his shift in the afternoon.

Speaker 12 He was sleeping during the day, and I was a consultant, so I worked at home. And then I went to pick my daughter up at school.

Speaker 12 And he was just kind of waking up when I was leaving the house, and I kissed him goodbye.

Speaker 8 Just a normal, busy day in a busy couple's life.

Speaker 12 Normal day.

Speaker 75 That evening, at the Broadwater County Sheriff's Office, the phones were dead.

Speaker 91 That was a word we don't say in law enforcement, but it was a very quiet night.

Speaker 68 Unusual.

Speaker 91 Very unusual, yes.

Speaker 43 At 2 a.m., Deputy Moore made his final rounds.

Speaker 91 He always checked the main businesses before he left.

Speaker 35 By that time, the Barris' camping trip by the lake had taken a turn. It had seemed innocent enough, Lloyd catching up with his newly sober son, Marshall.

Speaker 44 They spent time alone in Lloyd's suburban.

Speaker 36 They turned on the radio, tuned into some talk shows, and they started drinking.

Speaker 27 They drank a lot.

Speaker 50 They got agitated.

Speaker 31 Marshall pulled out his semi-automatic, began firing it into the ground, and then he cut off his ankle bracelet.

Speaker 80 And by 2:13 a.m., as you can see in the security video, a white suburban was parked at a gas station called the Town Pump, just a few blocks from where Deputy Moore was checking businesses.

Speaker 25 Less than 10 minutes later, around 2.22 a.m., The deputy passed the town pump and turned onto Highway 287, caught on camera here driving past another business, heading home.

Speaker 27 Then, six minutes later, at 228,

Speaker 69 the suburban passed the same camera, same business, same direction as the deputy.

Speaker 37 And on this dark stretch of highway about 25 miles down the road, Deputy Moore's dash cam shows the suburban roared past his patrol car fast, too fast.

Speaker 82 Deputy Moore radioed in.

Speaker 82 Patrol 438, southbound 287,

Speaker 82 lawmarker 101,

Speaker 43 white truck. Dispatcher Kylie Howard answered.

Speaker 43 Speed, sir.

Speaker 43 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 58 Deputy Moore read off the license plate.

Speaker 91 It came back to a suburban registered to Lloyd Barris. He had insurance, no warrants, nothing like that.

Speaker 60 Of course, it was Lloyd at the wheel.

Speaker 30 And five miles into the chase, he wasn't stopping at all.

Speaker 31 Instead, he hit the gas.

Speaker 71 In any pursuit, Kylie knew, she was required to notify a superior officer.

Speaker 90 When they called me, I was literally letting me know when Mason gets in custody.

Speaker 30 But just minutes after that call, out of nowhere,

Speaker 9 gunfire.

Speaker 99 438, where's your car location?

Speaker 83 438 control.

Speaker 52 You kept calling out.

Speaker 97 438.

Speaker 30 Which means...

Speaker 91 That's his badge number.

Speaker 15 You want the 438 control?

Speaker 100 I hate when they don't answer me. I'm like, oh, it just makes my heart sink.

Speaker 91 I had thought that Mason had crashed, because typically in pursuits, that's how they can end.

Speaker 52 So what was going on in your mind?

Speaker 101 Panic.

Speaker 100 I'm just trying to get some help here. I've got Mason in a pursuit.
What? Yeah, and he's not answering me.

Speaker 91 When a deputy doesn't respond to your status checks, that's the worst feeling in the world.

Speaker 32 No.

Speaker 3 It wasn't the worst feeling in the world.

Speaker 72 Turned out it was not even close.

Speaker 15 Oh, f.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 16 I need medical. Send back up units.

Speaker 11 A deputy down.

Speaker 64 And a Wild West gunfight.

Speaker 51 I propped up my gun and I started shooting through my windshield.

Speaker 61 Deputy Sheriff Mason Moore had suddenly gone silent.

Speaker 36 Fear rising in her throat, Dispatcher Kylie Howard kept calling, where are you?

Speaker 34 No answer.

Speaker 34 Have you made contact with 43A?

Speaker 40 Negative.

Speaker 42 And they had a trooper headed positively towards them.

Speaker 3 When the trooper arrived, he saw this.

Speaker 15 Oh, f.

Speaker 16 Marsman 320. I need medical.
Send backup units. WD down.

Speaker 25 That word reached dispatcher Kylie Howard.

Speaker 40 320 just checked in with me. They sit in both backup units.

Speaker 98 The deputy's down.

Speaker 40 He thinks he's been shot.

Speaker 42 Oh, my God.

Speaker 40 Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 He's down.

Speaker 42 He's down.

Speaker 25 Kylie called the sheriff.

Speaker 42 Wynn?

Speaker 100 He's possibly been shot at mile marker 109.

Speaker 32 Goal is.

Speaker 31 Sheriff Wynne-Meehan got out of bed and roared toward the scene some 25 minutes down the road.

Speaker 98 And as he drove, our trooper advises that he has called for a corner

Speaker 90 and asked for a corner.

Speaker 90 for Mason,

Speaker 90 it was like somebody hit me with a truck.

Speaker 90 When I looked inside of the car in the driver's seat, there was Mason.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 90 a trooper, a friend of mine, showed up and I said, Do you have a blanket? And he's like, Yes.

Speaker 90 So he gave it to me and I covered him up and realized what had transpired by the bullet holes that were all over the thing.

Speaker 64 Broadwater County Sheriff's Deputy Mason Moore was dead at age 42.

Speaker 90 It's my biggest fear.

Speaker 90 I never wanted to lose an officer.

Speaker 91 I mean, you know going into this job, it's something that can happen, but I guess you just don't think that it's going to actually happen, I guess.

Speaker 4 But it wasn't over.

Speaker 43 The white suburban and the killer inside were long gone, vanished in the night. And 50 miles west in the city of Butte, Officer Rich O'Brien was on the graveyard shift.

Speaker 51 We were just kind of just cruising around making sure nobody was up to no good.

Speaker 52 And what happened then?

Speaker 51 Dispatch told us that there was a deputy in Broadwater County that had been shot and they were unsure of the direction of travel of the vehicle.

Speaker 72 O'Brien was one of just five officers on duty in the county that night under the command of his cousin, Lieutenant John O'Brien.

Speaker 35 What did you say to them?

Speaker 102 To mentally prepare that this might be the night that they have to defend themselves.

Speaker 4 And then, there it was, the White Suburban.

Speaker 51 They were doing 110 miles an hour coming off a homestake pass, so I had to exceed that in order to catch them up.

Speaker 2 How fast were you going?

Speaker 51 Well, I think my car hit about 146 miles an hour.

Speaker 37 146 miles an hour?

Speaker 52 Yeah. What kind of car was this?

Speaker 51 It was a Chevy Impala. It was not the pride of the fleet, so I was just hoping it stayed on four wheels so I could get up there.

Speaker 30 The odometer spins quickly at those speeds, 50, 60, 70 miles.

Speaker 51 And they just weren't stopping. No, they had no intention of stopping.

Speaker 53 Lloyd, chased all the way, sped into a fifth county, Captain Austin McHugh's County.

Speaker 8 I heard my dispatcher

Speaker 35 scream my name, and I just said, God, come ride with me.

Speaker 45 Those were my exact words.

Speaker 20 Highway patrolman Tim Wyckoff joined in too.

Speaker 25 They had to be stopped.

Speaker 89 I mean, they had no regard for anybody's life, mine, or anybody else's.

Speaker 38 And then, nearly 90 miles from the shooting of Deputy Mason Moore, like something straight out of a movie, law officers dropped a spike strip across the interstate.

Speaker 63 The suburban hit the strip at 100 miles an hour, punctured three tires.

Speaker 21 What happened then?

Speaker 1 It was like a rooster tail of sparks coming from the vehicle.

Speaker 47 But it kept going, 60 70 miles an hour on rims and a deputy chasing behind radioed a warning he just saw a male take a sniper position in the back of the vehicle who was that with lloyd apparently at the wheel police had no idea but whoever the shooter was had what sounded like a semi-automatic rifle i remember going around a big sweeping corner and all of a sudden it's just pops and muzzle flashes coming out the back window

Speaker 47 It was

Speaker 51 the scariest moment of my life.

Speaker 35 Were they coming close?

Speaker 24 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 51 I propped up my gun and I

Speaker 51 started shooting through my windshield. And that's when my front tire got shot out.

Speaker 53 Three law officers were now leading the pursuit and taking fire.

Speaker 44 John O'Brien, Tim Wyckoff, and Austin McHugh.

Speaker 64 Then, minutes later, Lloyd Barris finally hit the brakes.

Speaker 20 The suburban jolted to a stop by the side of the highway, and a passenger jumped out, rifle in hand, firing.

Speaker 102 You can start feeling the impacts from the rounds hitting my vehicle.

Speaker 89 As I was getting out of the car, a round went to the windshield where I was sitting.

Speaker 31 Right where you had been.

Speaker 9 Right where I had been sitting, yes, sir.

Speaker 45 I threw my AR up over the steering wheel and

Speaker 45 started to exchange gunfire.

Speaker 71 Through your windshield? Yes.

Speaker 63 What were you firing at?

Speaker 21 Muzzle flash.

Speaker 53 Could you see the actual person there? No.

Speaker 45 I could see the star-shaped muzzle flash indicating that it was a rifle.

Speaker 84 And then, suddenly, it stopped.

Speaker 53 You understood you hit your target?

Speaker 45 I understood that there was no longer muzzle flash coming from there.

Speaker 58 The passenger was down, but Lloyd was still firing with a 9-millimeter handgun.

Speaker 37 How long do you think that went on?

Speaker 45 Sometimes the memory feels like it was an eternity, yeah, and other times it's just gone in a second.

Speaker 2 Then, as if in some old West gunfight, the pistol was shot from Lloyd's hand,

Speaker 71 and eventually he complied with police commands.

Speaker 75 Lloyd Barris was finally in custody.

Speaker 9 But what happened next?

Speaker 80 Well, some people might find that hard to understand.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 103 I thought you guys were supposed to like glasses to pieces or something.

Speaker 24 Lloyd's death wish.

Speaker 103 I don't believe in getting locked up.

Speaker 15 I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 18 When dateline continues.

Speaker 42 Are you hurt? I don't know. I know why you go with you.

Speaker 30 Lloyd Barris, his pistol shot from his hand, had been taken into custody on that western Montana highway.

Speaker 80 And his passenger, the one wounded while firing a semi-automatic rifle at police.

Speaker 103 Go check him out,

Speaker 103 that's your son? Yes, Marshall.

Speaker 42 Marshall, he got hit?

Speaker 4 Yeah, he probably did.

Speaker 76 That's right.

Speaker 53 It was Lloyd's son, Marshall, who shot and killed Deputy Moore and was now fighting for his own life.

Speaker 75 But even then, as the sun was rising, 145 miles down the road in Three Forks, Montana, a doorbell rang.

Speaker 61 At the home, the Deputy Mason Moore shared with his three children and his wife, Jodi.

Speaker 12 In my sleep kind of fog, I thought that maybe it was that Mason had forgotten his keys and our window by the front door the blinds were halfway up

Speaker 12 and when I walked up to the front door I saw feet multiple feet

Speaker 12 and I knew right away that something was wrong

Speaker 12 and I hurried to open the door because I thought maybe he's just hurt

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 12 When I opened the door, the sheriff was right there and I saw his face.

Speaker 90 She looked at me and slammed it shut.

Speaker 12 Because I just was immediately angry.

Speaker 12 And they came into my living room and sat me down and told me that Mason was gone.

Speaker 12 And I asked

Speaker 12 what happened and

Speaker 12 they told me that he was shot and I was just very angry. Just

Speaker 12 felt like I had let him down and that

Speaker 12 we had all let him down. I just was very angry.

Speaker 17 How could you possibly let him down?

Speaker 12 I think when you love somebody you want to protect them and keep them safe

Speaker 12 and I felt like I hadn't done that.

Speaker 12 I remember walking into the funeral home and the funeral director was there and

Speaker 12 she was asking me questions about what I wanted and picking out a casket.

Speaker 12 And I looked out the window and this is May and it's snowing, big fat snowflakes. And I remember thinking, where am I? This is just can't be

Speaker 12 reality. And that was pretty much the point where I was done with that meeting.

Speaker 90 Did you go see him?

Speaker 12 I saw him

Speaker 12 in the casket,

Speaker 12 but his

Speaker 12 shoulders and head were covered up at my request.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 I was able to put my hand on his hand.

Speaker 12 But that was all I could do.

Speaker 2 What followed over the next week was a haze, a funeral at Des Moore's home church,

Speaker 61 a procession to the airport, followed by flights to take the casket bearing Mason's body home to South Carolina to be buried in the family plot.

Speaker 39 A plot where, within nine months, Mason's father and mother would join him.

Speaker 70 Did his death, do you think, contribute to theirs?

Speaker 12 Absolutely. I am really amazed that his dad survived the funeral service.

Speaker 31 And what happened to Marshall Barris, the man who'd killed Mason Moore and tried to kill more cops?

Speaker 75 He did not survive his wounds.

Speaker 76 His mom, Tracy, was able to say goodbye to him in the hospital, where Marshall was under police guard.

Speaker 19 The captain was so very kind to me. He took my hand and he said, I want you to know

Speaker 19 that after Marshall was down, every one of my officers ran to your son to render aid. I don't hold anything against those police officers.
They had to eliminate that threat.

Speaker 19 We don't know what else those two could have done that night.

Speaker 2 And as for Lloyd Barris, this was his self-introduction to the cops who said about arresting him.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I'm just leaving him where she is.

Speaker 76 The worst fears of Lloyd's ex-wives had been realized.

Speaker 31 One son dead in a gunfight,

Speaker 66 another in prison for shooting down a highway patrol helicopter.

Speaker 15 I don't believe we're getting locked up. I don't know.

Speaker 103 They wanted to hang you like it won't get you anything.

Speaker 76 Lloyd Barris never stopped talking.

Speaker 103 I thought you guys were supposed to like glasses to feast.

Speaker 26 All the way to jail.

Speaker 103 This is very disgusting. Now I gotta go hang around a bunch of god criminals.

Speaker 36 They're probably dopers and

Speaker 26 in jail, he called reporters.

Speaker 66 Ranted on as long as anybody would listen.

Speaker 99 Right now, you're messing with oath keepers. I'm an oath keeper.
I'm a cutout. While I'm gone, there'll be somebody else like me to deal with out there next.

Speaker 99 Would you say that your political views are extreme?

Speaker 99 I'm extreme, yeah.

Speaker 99 I'm extreme in that. I literally believe every word the Constitution says.
Do you feel any remorse for Deputy Moore? Well, I don't know Deputy Moore. I don't know nothing about him.

Speaker 99 You know, he's just some guy that was

Speaker 25 acting like some maniac.

Speaker 2 Lloyd even phoned his elderly mother, who had never stopped communicating with him, and he bragged about what he'd done.

Speaker 99 This is what Marcel and I have lived for, since I died for, Mother.

Speaker 80 By the time Lloyd Barris was set to go to trial, he was among the most hated humans in the state.

Speaker 30 The question was,

Speaker 64 would he ever be punished?

Speaker 28 And the answer was not obvious.

Speaker 42 Not at all.

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 23 You hear these men come back.

Speaker 79 Another tape would reveal the true horror of that night.

Speaker 23 They lodged 20 rounds into the side of Debbie Mason Warren's vehicle.

Speaker 98 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 98 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 98 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 98 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2 Since the days of the Old West, few states have had such a long and fabled history with the hangman's noose as Montana.

Speaker 38 But it may surprise you to know that no judge here has handed down a death sentence in the 21st century.

Speaker 50 Still, many who had heard Barris beg to be executed after his arrest

Speaker 66 thought, why not grant his wish?

Speaker 90 I said, if we don't file the intent to seek the death penalty, then what actually justifies it? This is an ambush of a law enforcement officer who was just trying to go home.

Speaker 90 And these guys killed him because of a uniform that he wore and a car that he drove and a job that he did.

Speaker 28 So the Broadwater County Attorney filed the intent to seek the death penalty against Lloyd Barris.

Speaker 82 A decision applauded by Deputy Mason Moore's widow, Jodi.

Speaker 12 The crime, killing a law enforcement officer

Speaker 12 in an ambush,

Speaker 12 let's call it what it was, an execution.

Speaker 12 I believe that warrants death.

Speaker 32 But a snag.

Speaker 26 Remember, in California, 17 years earlier, after that high-speed chase that ended in Jeffrey Barris shooting down a highway patrol helicopter, Lloyd Barris was examined by mental health professionals and diagnosed with severe paranoid personality disorder.

Speaker 66 Now, doctors in Montana found Barris suffered from multiple mental illnesses, including delusional disorder.

Speaker 27 Stephanie Robles and Dan Gaczinski from the Montana Attorney General's Office.

Speaker 23 Once we obtained information that he had mental illness, we did not think it was appropriate to go forward with the death penalty case.

Speaker 28 Then, because of Lloyd's diagnosed mental illness, a judge found him incompetent to stand trial.

Speaker 36 He was sent to a state psychiatric facility under doctor's care.

Speaker 23 When I asked why

Speaker 23 they found that he was incompetent to proceed, they just said he was too tangential in his thinking, too tangential in the way he conducted conversations.

Speaker 53 What the heck does that mean, too tangential?

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 23 They were saying that he couldn't communicate effectively with his defense attorneys because he was so fixated on this idea of conspiratorial thinking of the government.

Speaker 36 At the state hospital, Lloyd Barris refused to take the drugs.

Speaker 30 It might restore him to competency.

Speaker 53 So the state asked for permission to force medication.

Speaker 23 Really, the whole case hinged on this. If we were not allowed to forcibly medicate him with antipsychotic medication, then the case would have been over with.

Speaker 32 For nearly two years, they argued, until in 2020, Montana's Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of the state forcibly medicating Lloyd Barris, and he was soon deemed competent.

Speaker 44 And in September 2021, his trial began.

Speaker 82 with prosecutors quoting Lloyd's own words.

Speaker 22 I would accept death.

Speaker 37 I wish you'd take me out and and hang me.

Speaker 22 I'd accept it.

Speaker 22 A full acknowledgement of the consequences he deserves.

Speaker 1 But even then, Lloyd's story, his long, often violent story.

Speaker 27 So you'd like to be able to make an argument that says, look at this guy.

Speaker 2 For his entire life, he's been inculcating his children.

Speaker 27 He's been trying to make them into extremists.

Speaker 53 He has made them as extreme as he is.

Speaker 71 But you couldn't make that argument.

Speaker 19 Couldn't make that argument.

Speaker 56 The judge excluded that from trial, and we just had to go on what we had.

Speaker 46 Ladies and gentlemen, prosecutors couldn't bring up the California shootout or most of Lloyd's past.

Speaker 38 So they focused on what had happened just before the death of Deputy Moore.

Speaker 32 And they were able to call Lloyd's granddaughter, who was in the campground with Lloyd and Marshall, before they left.

Speaker 101 He made statements that I was born into the militia and that there was no way out of it, and that I'd make a great lady sniper.

Speaker 101 And

Speaker 19 he also told me that all police should be hung.

Speaker 26 And then, said prosecutors, before he set out to attack a few rural deputies, he presented his gift to the mother of Marshall's children.

Speaker 23 He wrote a document that we refer to at trial as his manifesto. He was talking about anti-government rhetoric.

Speaker 23 The night before he killed Mason Moore with his son, he ceremoniously signed it and dated it. And it was one of the last acts he did before he left with Marshall and killed Deputy Mason Moore.

Speaker 71 Of course, they played the tapes you've already seen.

Speaker 4 Marshall and Lloyd at the town pump gas station waiting, prosecutors said, for a deputy to drive by.

Speaker 66 Then following Mason Moore down the highway and shooting him.

Speaker 53 But then they showed the jury something you haven't seen.

Speaker 20 Something hard to listen to.

Speaker 53 It was this.

Speaker 36 Deputy Moore, grievously wounded, sitting in his car by the side of the road, struggling for breath, keying the radio, but unable to speak.

Speaker 23 Four minutes go by when you hear Mason just agonizing in the car.

Speaker 53 The Bereses had driven away,

Speaker 32 and then they came back.

Speaker 23 And after four minutes, you hear these men come back.

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 23 decide that they were going to do what they set out to do, and that was to finish

Speaker 23 killing a law enforcement officer.

Speaker 23 And they lodged 20 rounds into the side of Deputy Mason Warren's vehicle.

Speaker 5 To prosecutors and law officers, the reason was simple. The Barris has waited to return, hoping more law officers would show up.

Speaker 90 They were going to get as many cops as they could. And

Speaker 90 Lord blessed us when we, you know, could have been a lot more.

Speaker 37 So will the state rule out all the other innocent reasons for the trip than to kill the officer?

Speaker 30 Do you think that's Lloyd's defense attorneys declined Daitlin's request for an interview, but in court

Speaker 6 suggested that

Speaker 53 maybe Marshall was the guilty one.

Speaker 7 Maybe it wasn't Lloyd.

Speaker 56 Maybe it was his son who

Speaker 91 was

Speaker 56 solely responsible, that he was just the person driving the vehicle.

Speaker 23 What was somewhat shameful about Lloyd Barris' defense that he agreed to was they maligned Marshall in an attempt for the jury to shift blame towards Marshall and that Lloyd would be set free.

Speaker 23 But here's a man that his other son is in prison in California based on the encouragement of Lloyd.

Speaker 23 And so now when he's caught, he turns against his son that is dead and tries to malign him as a person and make him seem a far more dangerous person than he was in order to set himself free.

Speaker 36 The trial took three weeks.

Speaker 64 The verdict, less than three hours.

Speaker 106 On the charge of Calcon delivered homicide by accountability, we and the jury find the defendant guilty.

Speaker 5 Guilty of murder.

Speaker 59 And yet, Lloyd Barris still might never serve a day behind bars.

Speaker 23 Coming up, there'd be a potential for him to be released.

Speaker 61 And a voice from the grave is heard in court.

Speaker 105 I hope to grow old with you and see our grandkids.

Speaker 105 That is not to be.

Speaker 105 This is the man that you took from us.

Speaker 18 When dateline continues.

Speaker 43 Lloyd Barris had been convicted of multiple felonies for his part in the murder of Deputy Mason Moore.

Speaker 23 I think he's one of the most evil people we've ever dealt with.

Speaker 44 Still, there was no guarantee Barris would spend even a day behind bars.

Speaker 59 Montana law gave Barris another shot at avoiding prison.

Speaker 63 That is, if he could convince a judge that he could neither appreciate the criminality of his offense nor comport his behavior to the law.

Speaker 38 In that case, he'd spend his days in a state psychiatric hospital instead of prison.

Speaker 32 And then?

Speaker 23 So, if he were to ever convince the doctors at the state hospital that he was not a danger to society,

Speaker 23 there'd be a potential for him to be released. And of course, the attorney general's office thought that he should go to prison with not ever having even the remotest possibility of parole.

Speaker 26 For more months, the battle went on.

Speaker 20 The system Lloyd hated giving him one chance after another, after another.

Speaker 31 Until April 2022, the Broadwater County Courthouse in Townsend, Montana.

Speaker 69 Nearly five years after the murder of Deputy Mason Moore.

Speaker 30 Anything you want to say, Mr. Barris?

Speaker 94 Anything you want to say?

Speaker 94 Anybody?

Speaker 35 It was sentencing day.

Speaker 53 Boy Barris entered the tiny courtroom and walked right past Jodi Moore and her twin sons.

Speaker 17 They'd gone through high school, through this process, huh?

Speaker 12 They were 12, I believe, when Mason was killed, and they were seniors in high school when the trial was finished up.

Speaker 30 In the other half of the courtroom, Mason Moore's brothers and sisters in law enforcement, except

Speaker 44 except for one.

Speaker 31 who was more than a thousand miles away in California.

Speaker 2 You weren't in the courtroom for the sentencing, were you?

Speaker 81 No, I wasn't.

Speaker 90 Where were you? Still sitting in treatment

Speaker 90 to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, anxiety, and things like that, and coexisting substance abuse.

Speaker 2 And you have PTSD?

Speaker 81 Yes, I do.

Speaker 86 Severe

Speaker 90 and chronic depression.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 90 I stood in that building going,

Speaker 12 I shouldn't be here.

Speaker 9 But I was like, I'm going to do it.

Speaker 90 I'm going to do it because my life was a wreck.

Speaker 86 Did it help?

Speaker 90 Absolutely. Best decision I ever made.

Speaker 35 Saved your life, huh?

Speaker 90 Absolutely.

Speaker 69 And others who were there to argue that Lloyd Barris never be released from prison also still carried scars from that night.

Speaker 2 Like Captain Austin McHugh, who fired the shots that killed Barris' son, Marshall.

Speaker 104 This man was once given a significant opportunity by a justice system to change and leave evil behind him.

Speaker 104 He chose otherwise.

Speaker 35 Mason Moore's colleagues in the sheriff's office spoke as well.

Speaker 107 Please use all of your authority to help Jodi Moore, her children, and the Moore family find peace by knowing that the evil that took Mason away from them will be locked away from society forever.

Speaker 35 Finally, what little air was left in the room rushed out as Jodi Moore stepped to the podium just a few feet from Lloyd Barris.

Speaker 70 What was that like?

Speaker 12 Well, I didn't like it.

Speaker 12 It was really hard.

Speaker 105 I've thought about this, what I would say, and how I would say it for a while, almost five years now.

Speaker 105 There have been many sleepless nights put into this and lots and lots of tears.

Speaker 81 Did you look at him?

Speaker 12 Didn't have any choice but to look at him.

Speaker 12 And yeah, I looked at him when I was speaking. I looked at him and talked to him.

Speaker 70 Did you see anything in his eyes?

Speaker 12 I never saw any remorse, didn't see any emotion, any caring in his eyes.

Speaker 12 So I didn't really hold back

Speaker 12 with my comments.

Speaker 105 Our daughter is now in middle school.

Speaker 105 Our boys did not have their dad for their first elk hunt. Mr.
Barris is pure evil.

Speaker 80 The world seemed to stop spinning when Jodi got to the final part of her statement.

Speaker 4 It was a letter from Mason.

Speaker 57 What can I say?

Speaker 105 I hoped to grow old with you and see our grandkids.

Speaker 105 That is not to be.

Speaker 71 Like many law officers, Mason had tucked away a note for Jodi,

Speaker 37 a just-in-case note.

Speaker 105 Don't dwell on the manner of my death.

Speaker 12 You married a cop,

Speaker 105 and cops tend to die violent deaths.

Speaker 105 If it is a person that got me and he or she is brought to trial

Speaker 105 and they are convicted or otherwise, don't let it rule your life.

Speaker 105 Make sure you enjoy life.

Speaker 57 I enjoyed every moment with you.

Speaker 105 I love you now and always.

Speaker 105 You're loving your husband.

Speaker 105 This is the man that you took from us.

Speaker 54 You robbed me

Speaker 105 of being able to spend the rest of my life with him.

Speaker 44 And with that, it was Lloyd Barris's turn to say something.

Speaker 26 But would he?

Speaker 37 What could he say to that?

Speaker 87 Coming up.

Speaker 11 His son Alma had something to say.

Speaker 89 He thinks he's a patriot, but he's just doing stuff for himself. He's a coward.

Speaker 11 What would the judge say when it was time for the sentence?

Speaker 35 One more time in a Montana courtroom, Lloyd Barris's government-paid attorneys fought to keep him out of prison.

Speaker 5 This is Greg Jackson.

Speaker 108 We've heard talk about him being evil.

Speaker 108 Mr. Barris is seriously mentally ill.

Speaker 108 And as a result of that, should be, in spite of what he has done, be treated humanely.

Speaker 108 We strongly urge that you consider sending him to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr.

Speaker 30 Barris has

Speaker 2 anyone listening to Lloyd's final statement could be forgiven for being a little uncertain of what he was trying to say.

Speaker 41 Yes, Your Honor. I've

Speaker 41 said throughout the nearly five years of different court hearings. I'm truly sorry for the loss of

Speaker 41 the Moore family's loss.

Speaker 41 My son, I don't see how anybody could be more

Speaker 41 upset than I am for what happened too. It's just like Officer Moore.

Speaker 73 What did he do to deserve what he got?

Speaker 41 I mean, I don't know, I don't even know him, so I have no idea. I mean, is it just like somebody that gets cancer?

Speaker 41 This life has a lot of things that are unexplainable

Speaker 41 happen to us.

Speaker 41 I guess that's all I got to say.

Speaker 53 Minutes later, the judge pronounced her sentence.

Speaker 109 Mr. Barris, I'm sentencing you to life in prison.
You will not be eligible for parole. I think the protection of society requires that he not be eligible for parole.

Speaker 30 It was a sentence that echoed across Montana, a relief for those officers who captured Lloyd and later received the National Association of Police Organizations Top Cop Award.

Speaker 43 It was also a sentence that echoed across time to Lloyd's childhood friend, Mike.

Speaker 15 I mean,

Speaker 22 I loved the guy. He was my best friend.
And to see him go from a happy, active,

Speaker 62 religious

Speaker 22 wanting the best in the world guy to a nut crazy white supremacist that wanted to kill people

Speaker 22 it was deeply upsetting

Speaker 53 but Lloyd's second wife Deborah the one who all those years before had to flee his abuse and spirit away her children in the middle of the night heard the news and relaxed a little

Speaker 57 Let's just say that Lloyd being in prison is the best place.

Speaker 57 A lot more people feel safe.

Speaker 80 Lloyd's son Alma wrote an open letter to the people of Montana, apologizing for his father's crimes.

Speaker 2 Alma had grown up to become the antithesis of his father, the son of an anti-government activist who joined the U.S.

Speaker 31 Army, served a year in Iraq, and now works for the federal government.

Speaker 39 He called Lloyd a false patriot.

Speaker 17 What do you mean by that?

Speaker 89 He likes to use the government conveniently, quoting quoting the Constitution to like its scripture. But part of building a good society is working together.
And if it's your way or the highway,

Speaker 89 you're not doing any good for your country. He thinks he's a patriot, but

Speaker 89 he's just doing stuff for himself. He's a coward.

Speaker 59 A sentiment shared by Lloyd's first wife, Tracy, the mother of a dead son and of another still in a California prison.

Speaker 19 I have thought so many times, maybe if I'd done something different, maybe if I'd gone back 40 years and made a different choice, you know, Officer Moore would still be alive, Marshall would still be alive, Jeffrey wouldn't be in prison, and you can't not feel guilty.

Speaker 7 Sheriff Wynne Meehan has escaped the demons that haunted him before and after Deputy Moore's murder, thanks to treatment and therapy.

Speaker 82 He even learned to do yoga. yoga.

Speaker 90 Like I said, the best decision I ever made in my life was to go get help.

Speaker 90 You know, and accept the, you know, just get to understand that, you know, one, you have to be vulnerable

Speaker 90 because, I mean, you got to come clean.

Speaker 88 You're a big tough cop. You're not supposed to be vulnerable.
No.

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 90 And you're not. But it's, in order to get where you need to be, it's what you need to do.

Speaker 53 And then this Jodi Moore.

Speaker 44 who did not, as many might have,

Speaker 2 return to the Carolinas where she grew up.

Speaker 8 Why did you decide to stay here in Montana?

Speaker 12 Because my kids are my top priority and they are

Speaker 15 doing great.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 also Mason lost his life here. You know, I mean, his blood was spilled here

Speaker 12 and I just

Speaker 12 didn't feel like I could or should leave.

Speaker 30 She's opened a bookstore.

Speaker 80 It's called Book Therapy and Moore.

Speaker 38 It's the headquarters for the Mason Moore Foundation, a charity Jodi founded to raise money for safety equipment for cops who need it.

Speaker 53 The group's motto is something Mason said to her a long time ago.

Speaker 28 Love wins.

Speaker 12 He loved me, and

Speaker 12 all he wanted to do was

Speaker 12 to try to make this a better place

Speaker 12 and leave his mark. And I think he did.

Speaker 11 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8th Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 11 For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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