By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

The man who took Amber Barr to a Joplin hospital suffering from severe dehydration says he did not have anything to do with her death.

Authorities say Barr, 29, told a nurse before she died Sunday at St. John’s Regional Medical Center that she had been held hostage without food or water.

“That story is not true,” Bobby Stogsdill said Tuesday during a telephone interview.

Stogsdill, 67, acknowledged that Barr moved into his home in Fairland, Okla., about three weeks ago. It was voluntary, and he did not prevent her from leaving, he said.

“I didn’t hold her against her will,” he said. “She had food to eat. She had water. I cooked for her three times a day.”

Stogsdill said Barr could not have been talking about him when she made that claim to the nurse.

Fairland police and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation are looking into the woman’s death as a possible case of abuse. The case was referred to them by Joplin police.

An autopsy on Barr was performed Tuesday morning in Springfield. Jasper County Coroner Rob Chappel said Tuesday night that he was still waiting to speak with the pathologist about any preliminary findings.

The coroner has said that members of the St. John’s medical staff believe Barr died of severe dehydration, and that she showed signs of malnutrition.

Stogsdill said he moved to Fairland from Miami, Okla., earlier this year. He said he first met Barr about four years ago. He described their relationship as “on-again, off-again” over the four-year period. He said she had other boyfriends, including one with whom she lived just before moving in with him.

Barr had been in declining health in recent weeks, Stogsdill said. She was at Integris Baptist Regional Health Center in Miami about a month ago, he said. He was uncertain what was ailing her at that time, but she had told him it was a problem with a kidney, he said. She also had been to St. John’s previously, he said.

“She had something wrong with her,” Stogsdill said. “I don’t know what was wrong with her. But she had something wrong with her.”

He believes she may have died of pneumonia. He said she had lost a lot of weight by the time she moved in with him three weeks ago. She was down to about 100 pounds, he said. When he first met her, she weighed about 160, he said.

The first night she moved in with him, he took her out to eat at Best Western, Stogsdill said. He said she was having “some trouble with her stomach,” but she was eating. He said he had overheard a doctor at St. John’s tell her on a previous occasion that she needed to be eating pureed foods. So he got a blender from a neighbor, and began feeding her chopped up and blended foods, he said.

Stogsdill corrected some information the Globe obtained from Joplin police and included in two articles on Barr’s hospitalization and death. He said he never spoke to a police officer at the hospital the day he took Barr there.

Stogsdill said he denied having held the woman hostage without food or water to a nurse and not to a police officer. He said he told the nurse that he had given Barr two glasses of water on the way to the hospital. He said he left the hospital when the nurse asked him to leave Barr’s room.

The Joplin Police Department confirmed Tuesday that the information concerning Stogsdill’s denial came from a nurse and not Stogsdill.

Stogsdill said Fairland’s acting police chief talked to him about the case over the weekend and wanted to interview him again Tuesday night. He said he has been cooperating with investigators.

He said Barr had told him of abuse by a previous boyfriend. He said he thinks Barr may have been confused and talking about that when she talked to the nurse.

“She would get me and him mixed up,” Stogsdill said. “When she was at my house, she would think she was at his house.”

A Joplin Police Department report states that an ex-boyfriend of Barr’s called the hospital shortly after she was taken there. He reportedly told a nurse that Barr had moved in with Stogsdill two weeks earlier, and that he had been holding her hostage and keeping her under his control with “mind-altering drugs.”





No charges



Bobby Stogsdill has not been charged and has not been identified as a suspect in the investigation.