WKRN, Nashville, Tennessee News, Weather, and Sports |Suspect in '75 slaying pleads not guilty

Suspect in '75 slaying pleads not guilty

The man accused in the 1975 slaying of a nine-year-old girl pleaded not guilty in a Nashville courtroom Wednesday.

Jerome Barrett, 61, is suspected in the death of Marcia Trimble, a Girl Scout who disappeared while selling cookies in her Green Hills neighborhood.

Her body was found about a month later in a neighbor's garage.

The murder has been one of Nashville's most notorious unsolved cases.

Barrett, who lived in Memphis at the time of his arrest last fall, told the court he couldn't afford to pay a lawyer, although he makes almost $29,000 a year from a Veterans' pension, owns a HumVee worth $25,000 and a work-truck for his Memphis-based landscaping company.

He told the court he gave away lawn maintenance equipment that belonged to him once he was charged.

"I gave that to my brother-in-law and my son-in-law," he said.  "They're both in the lawn care business."

In the end, Judge Steve Dozier said $29,000 is too much to qualify for a public defender and ordered Barrett to pay attorney Kerry Haymaker $500 a month to represent him.

Barrett has already served more than 20 years in jail for raping a Belmont University student.

He will go to court in October for the death of Vanderbilt University student Sarah Des Prez.

She was killed a few weeks before Trimble.

Barrett is next scheduled to appear in court on August 14.