Barlow ordered to stand trial for murder

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- After a daylong preliminary hearing, Associate Circuit Judge Scott Thomsen on Friday ordered Lisa Barlow to stand trial for the July 27 slaying of Michael Strong.

Prosecutor Stephen Gray presented more than a dozen witnesses as he built his case to show probable cause that Barlow had committed the crime. Barlow is charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.

Among the evidence presented Friday was information that the bullet found inside the victim could have been fired from the same gun that was allegedly used by the victim's nephew to fire into a tree 20 years ago.

Thomsen ordered Barlow to appear for arraignment Oct. 4 before Circuit Judge Benjamin Lewis. Barlow is being held in the Cape Girardeau County Jail on a $500,000 cash bond.

Strong was killed by a single gunshot to his head at his Scopus, Mo., home. Barlow lived with Strong at the time.

Barlow's ex-husband, Dale Amelunke, said in an Aug. 2 interview with the Southeast Missourian that his affair with Barlow had ended "a long time ago," months before Strong had died, which contradicted what had been in the probable-cause statement.

However, Friday, after taking the stand and swearing to tell the truth, Amelunke admitted to an ongoing affair with Barlow in the months leading up to Strong's killing.

The day before Strong was shot, Barlow met with Amelunke while he took a lunch break, and they went for a walk in a Cape Girardeau Park, Amelunke testified.

They discussed Amelunke's plans to move in with his girlfriend, which seemed to upset Barlow, he testified.

"She said, if you move into that house with her, that's it for us," Amelunke said.

Matt and Anna Strong, the brother and sister-in-law of Michael Strong, wore buttons with a photo of him as they waited Friday for the start of the preliminary hearings in the trial of Lisa Barlow at the Bollinger County Courthouse. (Aaron Eisenhauer)

Jackie Strong, the victim's nephew, testified that he distinctly remembered the first time he fired his uncle's .44-caliber Ruger Blackhawk revolver, roughly 20 years ago.

It was the same gun Sheriff's deputies learned during the course of their investigation was missing from its holster in Strong's gun cabinet.

When Strong took his nephew shooting, the bullet ended up lodged in a tree on Strong's grandparents' property, Jackie Strong testified.

Police were able to use metal detectors to locate and retrieve the slug, which they allege came from the missing gun, Cape Girardeau lieutenant Tracy Lemonds testified.

That slug was compared to the one extracted from Strong's body during the autopsy by Missouri State Highway Patrol crime lab analyst Jason Crafton.

Crafton entered both shell casings into an accredited database that matches guns with casings and learned that they could have come from one of five different types of .44-caliber revolvers. Ruger was one of them.

Barlow's defense attorney, Amy Metzinger of the public defender's office, intently questioned several of the witnesses presented by Gray but offered no witnesses or evidence on Barlow's behalf during the hearing.

"It was a shortened version of the actual trial," Gray said about the nearly seven hours of testimony.

"There was plenty we could have covered, but we didn't feel it was necessary for the preliminary hearing," he said.

Laura Roark, daughter of Michael Strong, said she sees each stage of the court proceedings as bringing her and her family closer and closer to closure.

Roark said emotion overflowed for her during certain points in testimony about her father's death, including listening to details from responding officers who found Strong's body and the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy.

Members of Barlow's family present at the hearing declined to comment.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

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