Barbara Barnes and her family reportedly lived in poverty in Steubenville, a poor former steel mill city of 20,000. And her murder was not the first tragedy to affect the Barneses. Her father, Gary, had been shot to death in 1989. As the investigation into Barnes’ killing widened, suspicion began to fall on other members of her family, most notably her uncle, Louis Boyce. Boyce had a relative who owned property only a few miles away from Pennsylvania Airport, near where Barnes’ body was discovered by surveyors assessing the land, according to “Who Killed…?”
Boyce was initially active in making appeals to the public for information regarding Barnes’ murder (per Latrobe Bulletin). Nevertheless, he was later taken into custody by investigators due to the proximity of his relative’s property to the location where Barnes’ body was found. They also searched his property and confiscated shovels that they speculated may have been used in the schoolgirl’s burial. He was even made to sit a polygraph test, which Jack Swint reports he failed to pass. However, the soil samples taken from Boyce’s shovels did not match the burial site, and with no solid evidence linking him to the murder he was never charged.
