The call came in late and it was the kind that makes a dispatcher’s stomach drop. A man’s voice, tight with panic, explaining that his live-in girlfriend, Barbara Sheppard, hadn’t come home from her shift at Lo-Bob’s Tobacco Store in South Bend, Indiana. Deputies found her car still parked outside the shop. The doors were locked, the lights were off.
Barbara was gone, and no one had seen her leave. Her boyfriend, Jason Leiba, wasn’t satisfied with just filing a report. He told police something urged him to go back to her work and look around himself. When he walked to the side of the building, he found her.
He dropped to his knees. She was face down, soaked in blood. He thought he heard a faint gurgle, a gasp. He rolled her over, tried to find a pulse, then rolled her back so she wouldn’t choke.
He started screaming for help and dialed 911. When homicide detectives arrived, they found Jason cradling Barbara in his arms, covered head to toe in her blood, completely beside himself. But the scene itself was something out of a nightmare. Barbara had been stabbed and mutilated in a way that was deeply personal.
Her head was nearly severed, held on by only a thin piece of skin. Her hands were covered in defensive wounds. She had fought hard. Her fingernails were caked with blood and skin, and detectives sent the evidence off for DNA testing, hoping she had scratched her killer.
The crime scene was staged to look like a robbery. Her purse contents were scattered around her body, but nothing of value was taken. Detectives saw through it. This wasn’t a stranger looking for cash.
This was someone who absolutely hated her guts. Investigators pulled the store’s surveillance video. It showed Barbara clocking out and leaving through the back door just after 8:00 PM. A man pumping gas across the street told police he heard a muffled woman’s scream several times, coming from the direction where her body was later found.
Barbara had fought for her life. And in a way, she left behind a trail pointing to her killer. The next morning, Jason Leiba returned to the scene. He said he just had to be near the spot where he found her.
Detectives found that odd, especially when he claimed to have found the ring he had given Barbara lying on the ground right where police had already searched. It was a lot of coincidences. On top of that, when officers interviewed him, they found he was carrying narcotics without a prescription. He was arrested on that charge right there.
Police looked into his background. He had a minor criminal history, nothing violent. He had an alibi: he was home watching Barbara’s two young sons that night. He couldn’t have left them alone.
But they couldn’t rule him out just yet. The question was, if not him, then who? Barbara’s co-workers told police about a customer who made her feel uneasy. Whenever he came into the shop, she tried to avoid him.
It was just a feeling, a woman’s intuition that something was off with him. When they brought him in for an interview, they noticed fresh scratches up and down his face and arms. He blamed his cat, but it didn’t sit right. Still, there was nothing solid to hold him on.
Then detectives started looking at Barbara’s ex-husband, Joseph Weyer. Their divorce had been finalized just ten days before her death. Barbara had been awarded full custody of their two boys, and Weyer had made threats against her online. Her family said he was furious.
When detectives met Weyer, he didn’t act like a man who had just lost the mother of his children. He didn’t ask how she died, whether she suffered, or where she was found. He just seemed cold, rehearsed, and absolutely certain he was smarter than everyone in the room. He had an injury on his hand too.
He said he smashed his finger loading a compressor at a big box store. On a whim, police ran his name and found an outstanding warrant for failure to appear. They arrested him and took a DNA sample. The wait for the DNA analysis took nearly two months.
It was agonizing. Detectives knew a killer was walking free, and they were completely helpless to stop him until the lab called back. Finally, the results came in. The hair found clutched in Barbara’s hand was a match.
It belonged to Joseph Weyer. Detectives exhaled. Good for her, one of them said. She fought, and she caught him by fighting.
A sense of pride washed over them, even as they mourned the loss of a woman who had given everything to protect and provide for her boys. Joseph Weyer was charged with murder. He proclaimed his innocence and showed zero remorse. Investigators believe Weyer started his video game that night to make it look like he was home gaming all evening, then slipped out and drove over to the store.
He was waiting for her when she left work. He killed her in a rage, staged the scene to look like a robbery, and went home and slept like a baby. In his mind, once she was dead, he’d get custody of the boys, collect Social Security, and never have to pay child support again. That was the win.
That was the whole point. Weyer was convicted and sentenced to 65 years in prison. Barbara Sheppard died fighting. Her final act, scratching her killer, left behind the one piece of evidence that convicted the man who took her life.
Her two boys were left without a parent, raised by the people who loved their mother fiercely. It was a heartbreaking case, but it proved that even in the darkest moment, Barbara had the last word.
