Being a True-Crime Talking Head Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

I’m guessing most of you guys don’t watch true-crime series on the tube. I certainly don’t, but I’m a true-crime talking-head veteran. I talked about the same trawler murders twice—same story, different networks. And I’m here to tell ya: These true-crime folks don’t do nuance.

On the surface it was a simple boy-meets-girl story: Boy with boat meets girl. They marry. Boy is actually a monster. Boy and girl divorce. Girl gets boat in divorce. Boy kills girl and new boy inside boat, then burns boat to the waterline. Police gun down boy. The end.

But there was another interesting twist to this story, which goes unexamined by both shows. Maybe, because a nuanced examination might cross some true-crime line by suggesting that the victim was somehow less than saintly in her own behavior.

Two Shows

The were a couple differences between the two treatments.

The 2019 “Dark Waters: Murder in the Deep” episode entitled “Burned,” mixed talking heads with actor reenactments. The reenactments were a little cheesy because the actors were younger and, of course, better looking, but at least they had an actual Great Harbour trawler for the filming, even though it was a GH 47 instead of an actual 37.

This year’s “Deadly Waters with Capt. Lee” episode “River of Fire” didn’t have much in the way of reenactments, but it did have Capt. Lee. I didn’t know anything about Capt. Lee until now. He was the “beloved” Capt. Lee Rosback of the “Below Decks” reality show until he was sidelined with a medical issue.

Nothing against Lee—he is a salty old dude—but his commentary in between us talking heads seems like a distraction, at least during the episode in question.

So, what is my beef with these dueling true-crime narratives? Neither thought it was worthwhile getting the murderer’s side of the story. Don’t get me wrong, David Trauger is no less a villain just because he acted out of love. For his boat, that is. He loved that trawler so much that he rather die than give it up.

How do I know what Trauger may have been thinking? I asked Trauger’s lawyer. That’s why I was twice recruited to be a talking head; I had written stories about the case for Soundings and PassageMaker magazines. When you are trying to do journalism, your job is to get all sides of the story.

Trauger may have been dead, having succesfully suicided-by-cop, but not before he had told his side of the story to Crystal Ferrier. Ferrier is an attorney in Brunswick, Georgia, just down the road from the scene of the crime, St. Marys.

Neither show quoted Ferrier. If they had, they would have learned that she had scheduled a court date to ask a Georgia judge to nullify Trauger’s divorce from Karen Barnes based on fraud. Trauger never showed up for the August 14, 2012 hearing because there was really no need to. He had spent the night before murdering Barnes and her friend (and possible lover) Larry Ford.

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Prized Possession

One thing that both shows agreed upon: Premium Time was insurance man David Trauger’s most prized possession. He also had a first ex-wife of 22 years that he owed $235,000. Ferrier said Trauger was terrified that she would try to collect by executing a lien on Premium Time, which Trauger had purchased for $558,000.

The divorce from Karen, according to Ferrier, had been a sham, an ill-conceived scheme to put Premium Time beyond the first ex-wife’s reach. Trauger and Barnes would continue living together and then remarry sometime in the future, or so Trauger thought.

Why this rings true:

1. Trauger loved his boat. Yes, indeed, the true-crime shows agree, but they don’t follow that notion to any logical conclusion.
2. Trauger was well off financially. He had other assets and property that would have satisfied the financial distribution requirements of an ordinary divorce, given the circumstances of the marriage. His decision to relinquish a prized possession should be seen as odd, out of character.
3. Chime in here, divorce attorneys: Isn’t a $558,000 item a pretty hefty settlement for a marriage that had lasted only 27 months, assuming the going rate in 2012?
4. The divorce was entirely amicable: No haggling over the boat was reported, even though it was Trauger’s prize possession, etc., etc.
5. In fact, the divorce was so amicable that they had gone on a vacation to Hawaii just before Trauger transfered Premium Time’s documentation into Barnes’s name and the divorce became final.
6. Even though divorced, Trauger continued to live on Premium Time with Barnes for a couple months after the fact, until early June 2012.

Isn’t any of this worthy of mention in a serious conversation about the crime. Shouldn’t Trauger’s lawyer have been one of those talking heads?

Barnes Plays Her Hand

In early June 2012, Trauger left the boat and returned to his home state of Pennsylvania to conduct business in connection with his insurance companies. He was only away for a couple weeks.

“He came back to the boat on Jekyll Island on the 22nd of June with wine and flowers in hand, and he found that the locks had been changed,” Ferrier said. Barnes had summoned a Georgia state trooper to tell Trauger he was not to go on the boat again. The trooper handed him a key to a storage locker where his personal possessions had been taken.

Why might Karen Barnes have given Trauger the impression that she was collaborating with his idea for a sham divorce?

1. Though he had seemed charming at first, Trauger turned out to be a drunken, jealous man subject to hair-trigger rages. He was physically abusive, having broken her arm during a trip to the Bahamas. Barnes was on a video call with her sister who in effect witnessed the assault.
2. Appearing to go along with Trauger’s sham-divorce plan may have seemed like the path of least resistance, a safe path toward ridding herself of a man whom she truly feared.
3. Barnes had come into the marriage without much in the way of assets. A half-million boat could provide means with which to begin a new life. She deserved to be happy.
4. All she had to do was wait for the right opportunity to make her escape. That’s the thing about a boat. It can go places.

That would not have been a bad plan, but it failed because Barnes did not flee fast enough or far enough. She and Larry Ford, a marine installer and West Marine employee, helped pilot Premium Time only as far as St. Marys, Georgia, less than a full day of travel on the Intracoastal Waterway from the marina where Trauger had found himself locked out of “his” boat.

Either they buddy-boated or took two trips because Ford’s boat ended up anchored at the same creek nearby Barnes’s boat.

There was something else neither true-crime version mentioned: A fellow trawler owner and buddy of Trauger had stoked his rage in the weeks leading up to the murder, reinforcing the notion that Barnes had been a gold-digger all along.

At one point, Trauger’s buddy shared with him a story he found on the Internet about how Karen Barnes had once been involved in some kind of grift in Kentucky. (After the murders, Loose Cannon, determined it had been a different woman named Karen Barnes.)

In July and August 2012, Trauger tracked Barnes down. There was an incident at in WalMart. Karen tried to get a protective order, someone sabotaged of Premium Time’s steering. The TV people concentrated on this timeline stuff.

As for that missed court date to undo the divorce, even Trauger’s lawyer said there was only a slim chance of prevailing. Ferrier said a Georgia judge was unlikely to look favorably on Trauger’s argument that Barnes had reneged on a contract with him—the sham divorce—when they aim of that contract was really a conspiracy to defraud Trauger’s previous ex-wife. Farrier said she only wished that Trauger had given her the chance to try to make the case.

He Lost His Mind

He had lost his wife. He had lost his boat. Then came the day, as I reported in a 2013 magazine piece, when Trauger lost his mind:

In the early morning hours of August 13, David Trauger dressed all in black. He then motored a skiff alongside a trawler anchored on St. Marys River in Southeast Georgia. According to police, he crept aboard and murdered Barnes and her new male friend. Using gasoline or some other accelerant, he “skillfully” torched the vessel, lighting the night “like rocket motors” and effectively cremating the bodies inside.

The last moments in the lives of Barnes and her companion were recorded over an open line, a 911 call from Barnes’ cell phone…

Here’s how police described the sickening final moments in the lives of Barnes and Ford: “The male on the recording sounds to be in great distress and agony. The male screams audible words occassionally such as ‘you bastard!’ and ‘why?!’ At the end of the recording is a deep voice which says, “How’d you get in here?”

These were the kind of details that true-crime TV got right—the easy part. They entertain the viewer telling how it happened. They were far less interested in why it happened, except that David Trauger was a nasty, no-good villain of a man and Karen Barnes was a good, totally good woman.

Her friends—and surely her family—will dispute my more nuanced interpretation, as they have in the past. They adhere to what I call “the St. Karen narrative.” In doing so, they fail to give Barnes enough credit. I see a woman who was engaged in an asymmetrical struggle against a monster who chose to use the best weapon she had—her wits.