Clergymen hear many confessions and are trained to handle a variety of situations. Nevertheless, even the most stoic man of the cloth hears an occasional admittance that takes him aback. Such a confession occurred on April 25, 1979, in Everett, Massachusetts, a town of 40,000 people four miles north of Boston.

That evening, an unshaven and rumpled man entered St. Therese’s Catholic Church. The man was nervous and intoxicated, and the reverend on duty, William Foster, did not recognize him at first. Soon, though, he saw that it was Tim Barry, a twenty-nine-year-old Everett native whom the reverend had known for most of his life.

The disheveled Tim nervously said he had something to confess. Reverend Foster was startled by Tim’s appearance, and he would soon be shocked by what he told him.

For several moments, Tim trembled and struggled to speak. When the words finally came out of his mouth, the reverend could not believe what he was hearing.

With his body shaking and his voice trembling, Tim softly said “I’m the one that kidnapped Nancy.”

Tim Barry

Reverend Foster immediately knew to whom Tim Barry was referring.

Twenty-three-year-old Nancy Brown had been the talk of the town for the past eighteen months.  She had not been seen since the morning of October 6, 1977.

Nancy Brown

Tim Barry was married to and had two children with Nancy’s older sister, Andrea, and he had a great relationship with her family. Her mother, Ita, and Andrea’s sisters, Allison, Maura, and, in particular Nancy, all thought the world of him; following the death of their father, Richard, in 1975, the younger Brown girls looked to Tim as the loving male family head.

Nancy and sixteen-year-old Maura both lived with Ita. On the morning of October 6, 1977, Nancy had the day off from work at Love’s Living Room Warehouse; Maura was home from school sick. Nancy drove her mother to work at Whidden Memorial Hospital, a few minutes from their home. They arrived shortly before 7:00. Maura heard Nancy return home.

After getting a little food down, Maura went back to bed as Nancy folded laundry in the basement. Shortly thereafter, at what she believed was about 7:00 a.m., Maura heard the back door to the porch slam and the radio playing in the kitchen. When she awoke a few hours later, at 11:00 a.m., Nancy and her car were gone.

By evening, with still no word from Nancy, the Brown family grew concerned. The worry escalated when Ita found Nancy’s glasses and slippers at the bottom of the basement stairs. The finding of the glasses was particularly alarming because Nancy did not have good vision; she was described as “practically blind” without them.

Two days later, Nancy’s car, a 1976 Volare, was found in a shopping mall parking lot in Malden, two miles north of Everett. The doors were unlocked and the keys were under the driver’s seat. The car alarm was off, which was unusual as Nancy was always diligent about setting it when she left the vehicle. The only other oddity were some particles of sand found in the car.

No Nancy

Tim suggested looking for Nancy’s car at the Malden mall, and the Brown family thought it made sense because she frequently shopped there. Investigators, however, thought it was more than a coincidence.

Ita, along with Andrea and her sisters, noticed a change in Tim’s behavior following Nancy’s disappearance. He became short-tempered and began drinking heavily. Whenever the subject of Nancy came up, which it obviously often did, Tim would leave the room. The Browns thought it was because he was so distraught over her vanishing.

Investigators, however, believed Tim’s angst was brought on by something more. They were zeroing in on him as the prime suspect in Nancy’s disappearance, and Tim likely knew it.

Suspicions were aroused when Tim refused to take a polygraph test and investigators learned that he had been charged with the murder of a soldier while he was in the military in Germany. Though a military court acquitted him, he was still viewed with suspicion. The incident was unbeknownst to Andrea and her family.

Confirmation of Tim’s involvement in Nancy’s disappearance came seven months later with his confession to Reverend Foster.

The Prime Suspect

A tearful Tim told the reverend that he broke into the Browns’ home at around 5:00 a.m. on October 6, 1977, and waited for Nancy in the basement. When she came down to do laundry, he said he abducted her at knifepoint and blindfolded her. Tim said he then forced her into her own car and made her sit on the front passenger floor. Nancy was crying and, although her vision was obscured, Tim said she knew it was he who had abducted her. She repeatedly asked him why and begged him to let her go.

Tim, instead, drove Nancy to Crane Beach Reservation in Ipswich, twenty miles north of Everett. As Nancy begged for her life, the man she trusted and loved like a big brother forced her to walk through the dunes into a heavily wooded area where he repeatedly stabbed her and beat her to death with a shovel. Afterwards, he buried her in the sand, which explained the particles found in Nancy’s car.

Reverend Foster told Tim he needed to tell the police what he had confessed to him. Tim agreed to do so and led officers through the woods behind the beach to Nancy’s body. When the police unearthed her remains, Tim let out what they called a sigh of relief.

Tim had been forthcoming about how he had killed Nancy and where he had buried her. He answered all the investigators’ questions except one; he refused to tell police, as well as Reverend Foster, his reason for brutally murdering his sister-in-law who adored him.

On February 11, 1980, Tim Barry was convicted of second degree murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison plus five-to-ten years.

Sour Barry

Although Andrea severed ties with Tim after he was convicted of murdering her sister, she allowed him to remain in contact with their children. She says he continued to love them and remained devoted to them.

For over eight years, Tim Barry was a model prisoner and allowed to work outside the prison. On November 8, 1988, he was part of a crew moving furniture and repainting the Department of Corrections offices on the twenty-second floor of the Saltonstall Building in downtown Boston. It was Election Day, and the building was swarming with people.

Tim was granted permission to use the men’s room. Instead, the model prisoner simply blended into the crowd and disappeared.

One-and-a-half years later, on Memorial Day weekend 1990, Tim and Andrea’s children, then age seventeen and twelve, were staying with their aunt Allison in Vermont. Andrea was not with them. As Tim and Andrea’s son glanced out a window, he was surprised to see a man emerging from the woods and walking to the home. As the man came closer, the boy realized, to his amazement, it was his dad.

Tim told his kids he loved them and apologized for the ordeal he had put them through. He tearfully said he would probably never see them again.

Tim stayed for approximately ten minutes. Afterwards, with his children begging him to stay longer, he disappeared back into the woods, not to be seen again for four years.

Escapes Prison

On November 7, 1994, four days before Tim Barry was to be featured on Unsolved Mysteries, he was arrested in Akron, Ohio, after a man recognized him from seeing him featured in a preview of the upcoming show. The fugitive was working as a truck driver under the name John Prendiville. His wife of five months, Lorraine, worked part-time at a dry cleaner. She did know she had recently tied the knot with an escaped murderer. He was arrested without incident at the couple’s apartment.

Tim Barry was returned to Massachusetts to serve his life sentence. Had he not escaped from prison, he would have been eligible for parole in April, 1994, seven months before he was captured.

Captured

It was soon discovered that Barry, under the name John Prendiville, had been arrested in Akron the year prior for drunk driving, but had been acquitted of the charge.

Arrested, But Acquitted, of DUI One Year Earlier

Now seventy-three-years-old, Tim Barry remains imprisoned. A 2012 Concord Monitor article says he is now imprisoned in Concord, New Hampshire, as opposed to Massachusetts. The article also said he had an upcoming parole hearing, but I have been unable to find when it was held.

A 2016 article said he was still imprisoned in Concord, and a search through the Massachusetts Department of Corrections website show a Tim Barry incarcerated in New Hampshire. I cannot find any source stating why he is now imprisoned in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts.

Barry appears to be making the most of his life behind bars, taking advantage of a state-funded program teaching inmates a skill in the hope of enabling them to earn a living and receive job-training skills meant to help them if they were to get out of prison.

Grevior’s Furniture in Franklin, New Hampshire, sold, through the State of New Hampshire’s request, artwork made by inmates. Barry has become an artist, and several of his works were formerly displayed and sold at the store.

Inmate Art

Tim Barry had escaped prison on November 8, 1988, which was Election Day. He was captured one day short of six years later, on November 7, 1994. The following day of November 8 was also Election Day that year. 

Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis lost his bid for the Presidency on the day Tim Barry escaped. One of the issues for which he had been criticized were his prisoner furlough programs. Many political pundits believe the ads blasting the Governor’s furloughs played a significant role in his lopsided defeat by Vice President George Bush.

Election Connections

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/243435688/nancy-ellen-brown

SOURCES:

• Boston Globe
• Boston Herald
• Concord Monitor
• Deseret News
• UPI
• Unsolved Mysteries