On Feb. 23, 1942, the estranged wife of a Dallas newspaper columnist went on trial for the fatal shooting of her husband’s not-so-secret lover.

Back in 1979, D Magazine talked a former employee of The Dispatch into reminiscing about Dallas’ gone but not forgotten tabloid that drove the establishment nuts and kept its readers entertained.  No one had to twist Al Harting’s arm, however.  He liked nothing better than to relive those wild and crazy days as a reporter for The Dispatch.

One evening in particular stuck out like a sore thumb in the retired newspaperman’s memory.  It was the night in April 1941 that Juanita Barr shot to death Blanche Woodall, the beautiful blonde girlfriend of her unfaithful hubby Eddie, popular gossip columnist for The Dispatch.    

“I was on the ambulance-riding beat when the call came in,” Harting recalled in his retrospective.  “Riding to the scene, the driver informed me that Blanche was Eddie Barr’s mistress.  When the police arrived, Lt. ‘Pokey’ Wright phoned Pop’s (Spaghetti House) and asked for Eddie.”

“‘Eddie,’ I heard him say, ‘Nita has killed Blanche.’  There was silence (for) a moment, and when Pokey hung up he said, ‘Nita just went by Pop’s, threw the pistol on Eddie’s table and told him what she’d done.’”

Two hours earlier, Juanita Barr paid an unannounced visit at the apartment of the “other woman.”  The maid refused to admit the late-night caller until Blanche Woodall, not the least bit alarmed, told her to let her boyfriend’s wife in.

According to the statement the maid gave police, the two women exchanged pleasantries for several minutes.  Maybe they even compared notes on their respective marriages.  Blanche’s divorce from a boxing promoter would become final on Monday, and Juanita had not been living under the same roof with Eddie for the past week.

A telephone call to a nearby liquor store brought a bottle of whiskey, which the pair shared like old friends.  After a few drinks, they decided to hit a couple of nightspots so Blanche got dressed and put on her makeup. 

The accommodating hostess offered her guest a quick cosmetic touchup and began to pluck her eyebrows.  That was when Juanita reached for the pistol in her purse and shot Blanche twice in the face.

The victim’s two young children, ages two and eight, and her teenaged brother somehow slept through the sound of gunshots in an adjoining room, but the maid came running.  She saw Blanche Woodall lying lifeless on the floor and her killer backing out the front door with the smoking murder weapon in her hand.

After proudly breaking the news to Eddie, Juanita disappeared.  Early the next morning, sheriff deputies located her parked car in a “tourist camp” on the Fort Worth highway and hauled her off to the Dallas County jail.

By the time the case came to trial ten months later, Eddie Barr had moved to Minneapolis and wanted no part of the proceedings. Both sides agreed they could get by without his testimony and let him off the hook.

 Since their client clearly was as guilty as sin, Juanita’s lawyers went with a temporary insanity defense. But to sell their argument that Juanita was pushed over the edge by the homewrecker, they needed to show Eddie was a faithful spouse until he fell into Blanche’s evil clutches.   

The district attorney blew that strategy out of the water with, quoting the Dallas Morning News, “a parade of witnesses that testified to (his) public infidelity.”  When that line of questioning was done, the state had succeeded in proving Eddie “knew many women, that he played the field.”

Next the defense tried to pull at the jurors’ heartstrings.  Eddie’s mother took the stand to describe a meeting with Blanche two months before her demise.  Backed by the victim’s mother and sister, she begged her to let Eddie go, which, she claimed, Blanche promised to do.

In the climax of the standing-room-only trial, Juanita testified for three riveting hours before fainting into the arms of her attorney.  But before passing out, she swore the shooting was an accident.  She had brought the gun along just to scare Blanche, and it went off when she grabbed for it.

The jury deliberated 18 hours before finding Juanita guilty of the lesser charge of “murder without malice” and sentencing her to four years in the state penitentiary for women.

Al Harting tells the rest of the story:  “An appellate court ruled for a new trial, which for some reason was never held.  Though Eddie and Juanita were divorced, most who knew them think Eddie used the influence he had gained as one of Dallas’ most popular men about town to keep her from prison.

“He died in San Antonio in the late Forties.  Juanita’s fate is unknown.” 

Bartee welcomes your comments and questions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 and invites you to visit his web site at barteehaile.com.