Brother's Keeper

Brother's Keeper

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Michael Barbarino has spent most of his life in pain or in prison. Now, 36 years after his brother Vincent was killed, he is accusing another sibling of murder.

Michael Barbarino picked his way through the headstones at St. Nicholas Cemetery in Lodi, and though it was night, he had no trouble finding the grave. In the 34 years since his brother, Vincent, had been savagely knifed to death, Michael had visited that grave so often he could have found it blindfolded.
Still, Michael was lost.

In the weeks before that moment in the fall of 2006, the story he had so long held inside himself had explosively become public. News reports detailed how he had watched in terror as his eldest brother, Joseph, allegedly plunged a knife into Vincent again and again. Now it was all in the open. After years of failed investigations, prosecutors in Bergen County had at long last charged Joseph Barbarino Jr. with murder.

The case, in large measure, would hinge on Michael's testimony, and he was far from certain that he was up to the challenge. So he made his way to the tidy grave as he had done so often and sat there for the longest time. Send me some sign that I'm doing the right thing, he silently pleaded. But all he heard was the whistle of a chill wind.

The murder, Michael says, is his earliest memory of a childhood scarred by abuse and fear. Yet shards of earlier experiences still haunt him, like the terror he felt on those occasions when Joey dragged Vincent and him down into the dismal and dark basement clubhouse in the run-down apartment building in Lodi where his family still lives.

Even now, he says, When I pass that door, I still squeeze my eyes. Michael claims he remembers watching Joey allegedly sodomize Vincent, a pattern of abuse that prosectors say was later confirmed by autopsy. Physical examinations also confirmed that Michael had been raped, authorities have said.

One family membera sister, Annmariefurther confirms for New Jersey Monthly that Michael's memories of childhood abuse are true. But Annmarie insists that Joey did not kill Vincent and that Michael fabricated his version of the murder as revenge.

In Michael Barbarino's mind, time begins on a warm Thursday evening in April 1972. Michael, then 4, and his brothers, Vincent, 6; Anthony, 12; Peter, 14; and Joey, 15, played outside until about 7:30, then went home. Their mother, Estelle Barbarino (Stella to her friends), was not home that night. She was running an outing over at her aunt's house, Michael says. Their father, Joseph Sr., a truck driver, had come home from work and immediately bounded upstairs to his in-laws' apartment to have tea like he always did.
Joey was keeping an eye on us while my father was upstairs, Michael recalls. Peter and Anthony were asleep when Joey rounded up Michael and Vincent. We wentout for a walk with Joey down to the construction site a few blocks away.

There, he says, one of the contractors had parked a red tank truck. Joey discovered that the driver's door had been left unlocked. That's when holy hell broke loose, Michael says. We were gonna be sexually abused again.

Michael claims he was hoisted into the cab, then Joey tried to cram Vincent in. But, Michael claims, the boy either lost his balance or resisted, ending up toward the bottom where the brake and stuff are. It was then, Michael says, he noticed an object on the seat, long, narrow, and sheathed. I remember saying to Joey There's something on the seat,' Michael says. He said, Give it to me.' I passed it back to Vinnie, and Vinnie gave it to him.

I didn't even know what was in the sleeve when I passed it back, Michael says. I remember him taking it out of the sleeve and saying it was nice.

Suddenly, Michael was overcome with an urge to flee. I started to back out, he says, and even as he tells it in slow and measured words, his eyes dart back and forth as if he's still looking for a way out. I made Vinnie go out. Joey was still pushing Vinnie in. I remember Vinnie trying to stand up. Grab the wheel. Stand up. Grab the wheel. Stand up.The knife was already out. He came back. And when he came back he landed on top of the knife.

Literally gutted by the knife that Michael says was in his brother's hand, Vincent let out a piercing scream: Mommy!

I'll never forget the screams, Michael says. Nor will he forget what he saw next. [Vinnie] was out of the truck, on the ground, and when he buckled over, Joey [grabbed] Vinnie's arm and, according to Michael, plunged the knife into the dying boy just beneath his left arm. (An autopsy determined that Vinnie sustained multiple stab wounds and a fractured skull.)

Michael hid behind a pile of rocks and bricks, then bolted, his dying brother's screams mixing with Joey's howls of Michael, come back! Michael, come back!

I ran and ran, it seemed like forever, Michael says. Though he claims he had just seen his brother murdered, and though he believed that Joey would try to kill him, too, Michael never called for his mother, never tried to find his father. Instead, he burst into the apartment and raced down the hall to the room where the babies, his twin sisters, Annmarie and Mary Ann, were sleeping. That was the safest place in the house. I ran in there. I remember looking under the door, looking under the door. And I fell asleep.

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