I believe we are entitled to set a moral standard that violent murder will not be tolerated by civilized people. The rule of the law requires that at some point the community is likewise entitled to justice ---- Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore

With no witnesses and little physical evidence, Norfolk, Virginia investigators concentrated their efforts on attempting to learn what motivated the slaying of lovely, brown haired, Sarah Wisnosky. By all accounts, the 17-year-old freshman at Old Dominion University, was deliriously happy living with her roommate in a pleasant dormitory on the third floor of Rogers Hall, located on 49th Street overlooking Colley Bay, a tributary of the Lafayette River. Sarah had established a superb relationship with several students at the university, police learned. But the hazel-eyed teenager often broke the cardinal rule of the college by staying out all night, away from campus. That's why Sarah's roommate wasn't worried when she wasn't home by dawn on September 21, 1993. How was anyone to know that particular Wednesday, was Sarah Wisnosky's last day on earth.

Sarah's roomie became troubled when she didn't show up for classes on Thursday. Police were called and detectives immediately began questioning everyone on campus to determine if anyone had seen or heard anything that might give them a clue to her whereabouts. This avenue quickly proved futile, and another squad of sleuths began questioning students on the third floor of Rogers Hall to determine if anything had been taken from her room which might indicate that she had ran away. Her clothing, and other valuables were still there. So the run-away theory was ruled out. Detectives covered all the bases in their probe. They checked and rechecked for physical evidence. If they found anything, they weren't releasing any data to the press. They interviewed everyone at Rogers Hall on multiple occasions and talked with family members of the missing girl over again. But after a solid week of investigation, the trail was cold.

Certain that she had become a victim of foul play, more than 500 volunteers and officers launched a massive search for Sarah Wisnosky. The day dawned grey and rain threatened the area as the determined search parties divided into small groups and fanned out like lions on the hunt. Volunteers were given road maps with their search area marked in yellow.

Two weeks shy of Sarah's 18th birthday, the intensive search came to an end at the shores of the Lafayette River. When police arrived they were told that a woman walking her dog saw what appeared to be a mannequin floating face-down in the muddy river. The only clues on the naked corpse were a high school ring bearing the initials, "SW," a moccasin on a nearby bank, and a discarded bloodied towel.

After photographing the crime scene and searching the river bank for a mile in each direction, the officers summoned an ambulance to take the blue-bloated corpse to a Norfolk forensic laboratory for an autopsy and positive identification. There had been little question in the minds of crime flouters about the identity of "SW," but positive identification of Sarah Wisnosky came several hours later from the forensic laboratory.

Services were conducted for the murdered student three days later in the college auditorium. In various churches throughout the vicinity, mourners from surrounding regions attended services for Wisnosky. Numerous businesses in town closed down for the day out of respect for the slain college girl.

An autopsy, performed by a state deputy medical examiner. revealed that she had sustained some 10 vicious blows to the back and right side of her head, fracturing her skull. The blows had been inflicted by a blunt weapon, possibly a ball-peen hammer. The autopsy further revealed that the disheveled victim had sustained numerous bruises to her abdomen, which, the coroner said, could have been caused by a blow to Wisnosky's abdomen or by the assailant's kneeling on his victim to hold her in place while he raped her. Bruises to her head, face and Larynx and petechiae, the medical examiner said, were "a manifestation of mechanical asphyxia." Her cause of death was listed as "manual strangling." Samples of public hairs and semen were taken for further analysis and sent to the Virginia State Crime Lab in Richmond. Mranwhile, the hunt for Sarah's killer demanded every ounce of concentration.

Naturally, female students were frightened and walked in groups or pairs while on campus. Security was beefed-up and vehicle patrols became more active. All eyes were suspicious of wily strangers. Public opinion polls on campus indicated that most of the community believed the killer was an outsider, and not anyone connected the university. This was not only the opinion of the students but police and university administrators as well. Local citizens, outside the university, were also concerned about their peaceful community being terrorized. Turmoil erupted. Nobody in the city felt safe. The killer-rapist could strike anywhere, anytime, and the police were helpless to prevent another crime of this sort from happening again.

With the community in a clamor over the slaying of the young college student, officers continued to work around-the-clock to gather evidence, still maintaining a silence about their findings. Terrifying happenings can not long be kept secret, and police finally admitted that they had a suspect. Acting on information from several sources, law officers issued a warrant through the state's attorney general's office for Derek Rocco Barnabei, who had fled the area the day after the murder.

As investigators pored over Derek Barnabei's life, they became more and more convinced that he could be involved in her murder. A nationwide manhunt was launched for Derek in connection with the rape/slaying of Sarah Wisnosky. City police vowed that his apprehension would remain top priority and the governor ordered the chief of police to assign as many probers as necessary to bring him in.

Lawmakers printed and circulated hundreds of pamphlets with a description and composite sketch of the 24-year-old suspect. The results, however, were negative. A coordinated effort to locate Derek continued, but he evaded capture. Meantime, his family insisted that he was not in hiding, but constantly on the move. In questioning the suspect's kindred and friends, police kept a list of Derek's regular hunting grounds and made regular routine checks of these places. They followed his seemingly endless list of girlfriends and talked to every snitch they came across. The hunt for the suspect was stone-walled until three months later. Reports had been circulating in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, that a man answering the description of the fugitive, Derek Barnabei, was living in the area under a pseudonym. Arrested, Derek steadfastly denied he had anything to do with the murder of the college freshman from Lynchburg.

The more investigators learned about Derek Barnabei the better he looked as a suspect in the shocking murder of Sarah Wisnosky. For one thing, she was last seen alive in a house he shared with several other young men in Norfolk. Also, DNA tests revealed Sarah's bloodstains on the walls and mattress of his room. The clincher: his spermatozoa was found in Sarah's vagina. Upon his return to Norfolk by two armed detectives, Derek was asked by a bee-hive of reporters if he killed Sarah. He returned waspishly, "No, I did not. I stand on the firm foundation of a consciousness of innocence. I know ultimately the truth will come out. I am truly innocent."

With that short statement, Barnabei was taken in for questioning and reporters gained no further information, until the following morning, when they were told police had enough evidence to indict him for murder. Authorities refused to give any specifics of the case against Derek except that he had admitted that he had intercourse with Sarah the day she vanished. Derek emphasized time and again that any sex he had with Sarah was consensual. Everyone in Norfolk embraced themselves for a long-drawn-out courtroom battle.

In his opening statement to the jury, the prosecutor regaled his listeners with a lurid version of the murder, based, he declared, on the sworn testimony of eye witnesses and homicide detectives who had worked the case from day one.

A gaping audience sucked in every word. Derek's protestations of innocence reached the shores of Italy. Now Derek was not alone. His inner transformation had earned him new friends, distinguished Italians offered their help. Journalists from the Italian News Wire began arriving in Norfolk in droves. The Italian press clamored for a not guilty verdict.

Gradually, in the Norfolk County Courthouse, public opinion turned against the defendant . That feeling was put into action as the prosecutor took his spectators back to to beginning -- weeks before Sarah had suffered what he called, "the lengthiest and cruellest torture he could imagine."

Derek Barnabei arrived in the Norfolk vicinity in 1993, settling in Virginia Beach. He identified himself as "Serafino." His street name was "Serf." He saw himself as a "womanizer," and wooed his seemingly unlimited supply of "small-town girlfriends" with his smooth talk and fabricated tales about himself. He saw himself as somewhat of a martyr to gullible people in his circle while claiming to be a Rutgers University graduate and Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity member. His fellow members at TKE and ODU, described him as "the completest fool, charlatan, rattle-pate, windbag and pretender."

Derek rented a room in a house occupied by four other young men, all past or present students at ODU. He met, and wooed Sarah Wisnosky. It wasn't unusual for Sarah to spend the night with Derek. One night Sarah went to Derek's rooming house to attend a "toga party," tossed by the TKE fraternity. Sarah got soused and became obnoxious. Derek avoided her the rest of the evening. He told a friend to "keep that bitch away from me" because he was trying to hook up with another girl at the party. Two other boys kept Sarah company on the front porch of the house. When one of the students asked Sarah about her relationship with Derek, she replied, "He's all right, but I have had better,"

A five o'clock in the morning, Sarah fell asleep in Derek's bed. She woke up and returned to her dormitory room unharmed. The following day, while Derek was bragging about his sexual conquests over a few beers with his fraternity cronies, one of his beer buddies blurted out Sarah's remark. Everyone present laughed and teased him. Infuriated, Derek denied ever having intercourse with Sarah, only oral sex.

The jury heard that on September 22, 1993, a little after 1 a.m., a fraternity brother named Gee drove Derek from a TKE pledge rendezvous to his rooming house, where Sarah was waiting for him. When Gee left, Sarah was still alive.

Around 45 minutes later, a student who lived in the bedroom directly above Derek's, began hearing loud music emanating from Derek's room. He stomped on the floor in an effort to get Derek to reduce the volume of the music. Derek turned the music up louder. Two roomers proceeded to go downstairs. They pounded on Derek's door for five minutes. No one answered. They tried to open the door. It was latched from the inside.

Meanwhile, another occupant was awakened when Derek rushed into his room. In a forceful tone, he demanded this roomer to move his car because it was blocking Derek's car in the driveway next to the house. The lodger grumbled, but moved his car, and Derek backed out of the driveway in a frantic state, striking the side of the house next door and nearly colliding with another vehicle. The court heard that later that same morning another lodger returned to his room to find his dog missing. In the course of looking for his dog, he rapped on Derek's door. When Derek opened his door, "very slightly," he noticed that Derek was "stark naked" and he appeared "wide-eyed, open-mouthed," and he wasn't paying attention to the man in front of him.

Unable to find his dog, the lodger left the house about 7:30 that morning, Derek was asleep on the couch in the living room. He shook him, and asked him why he wasn't sleeping in his own bed. Derek responded, "it was a long, f-----ed up story." As the lodger walked to his pickup truck he noticed a moccasin near the rear of Derek's vehicle. He tossed the moccasin and it landed on the back porch. The moccasin was later identified as one Sarah was wearing the night she vanished.

In the early afternoon of September 22, Derek was seen carrying a duffel bag and a surfboard from his bedroom. About 2:45 p.m., while giving a friend a lift home, Derek asked his passenger if he would take the surfboard to his room because he was tired of lugging it around in his car. Derek's friend obligingly took the surfboard to his room for safekeeping.

Upon leaving Derek's car, the witness said, he detected a sickening reek that seemed to be emanating from the trunk of Derek's Chevy. Derek started babbling wildly, chattering about "dirty laundry" or anything to divert his passenger's attention to the stench.

About 6 p.m. that evening, Derek called this friend and asked him if he had heard anything. "Like what?" his friend asked quizzically. "Derek replied, "Like, er, oh, nothing." Derek then told him he was going out of town for a few days to work with his dad. Derek drove to Towson, Maryland, and later to Ohio, where he was arrested in December 1993.

A police investigator testified that on September 23, after obtaining a search warrant, a contingent of lawmen went to Derek's abandoned room, where they found Sarah's other moccasin. It had blood on it. Further probing uncovered a pair of white socks in a trash can beside the house and a towel from the rear of the house next door. The towel had blood on it.

Moreover, they found what appeared to be bloodstains on his waterbed. More stains were found on a bedroom wall. A damp, red stain was discovered beneath the carpet. Bloodstains were found on the surfboard, later retrieved from Derek's friend's house. Even more astonishing to the detectives was a handwritten note which stated, "Women just don't get it."

A state forensic serologist testified that she lifted sperm from Sarah's vaginal swabs. She said she found blood beneath Sarah's fingernails, on one of her moccasins, on the surfboard, and on a washcloth and towel. She found hairs and fibers on the white socks, towel, and washcloth.

DEREK ROCCO BARNABEI

A state DNA analyst told the court that she conducted an RFLP DNA analysis of these, and other samples. She testified that blood recovered from the waterbed frame came from Sarah and that the chances were one in 202,000 that the blood came from a Caucasian other than Sarah. She testified that the chances were one in 972 billion that the sperm found on the vaginal swabs wasn't Derek's. The analyst also determined that the bloodstains found under the carpet in Derek's bedroom belonged to Wisnosky.

The suspense was excruciating all during the trial and had reached a high pitch by the time Sarah's roommate took the stand. She testified that the night before her death, Sarah called to say she was staying with Barnabei. She said Sarah had consensual sexual relations with Derek in the past. Derek's housemates testified that the last time they saw Sarah alive she was in the bedroom with Derek.

Prosecutor's told jurors that Derek began acting strangely the night before Sarah's "cold-blooded murder." Courtroom spectators heard that around 2 a.m, he began playing the song "Head Like a Hole" by the group Nine Inich Nails. It woke up one of his housemates, who protested. Additionally, he asked another housemate to move the Jeep that was blocking his Chevrolet Impala. He was in such a hurry to get away that he hit the side of the house as he left, the court was told.

The court was told that Derek also called a TKE pledge in the early morning and asked for a blanket because he was cold. When the pledge arrived, he saw no linens on Derek's bed. The prosecutor's blunt assumption was that Derek murdered Sarah, borrowed $200 from his fraternity brothers, and fled. The Commonwealth introduced further evidence which tended to show that on the night of the murder Sarah went to the defendant's room to have sexual intercourse and was slain shortly thereafter. The sole witness to offer any evidence of rape -- on which the capital murder charge hung -- was the Commonwealth's Medical Examiner. His testimony that a "violent penetration" had occurred caused excited chattering throughout the courtroom and considerable damage to the defenses' case.

Barnabei requested that he be provided an expert of his own to show that the Commonwealth's Medical Examiner could not possibly know whether a rape occurred because, as Commonwealth's Medical Examiner himself said, the Commonwealth's Medical Examiner could not know whether a person would consent to force being used. Judge William F. Rutherford refused his request to appoint an expert.

During his closing arguments, the prosecutor told the jury that Derek Barnabei was a hardened sociopath and sexual deviate as well as a remorseless killer. He recapped the medical examiner's evidence; bruises on the introits of Wisnosky's vagina and a half-inch tear of her anal opening.

The pathologist opined that the blemishes had been sustained prior to Wisnosky's death and that the anal tear had been inflicted "very close to the time of her death." Although some water was found in her lungs, he could not completely rule out the possibility that the victim may not have been dead when her body was thrown into the water. Additionally, the pathologist opined that such a tear is usually caused by "forcible stretching."

The primary cause of death, the coroner ruled, was the head injuries, with the mechanical asphyxia a contributing factor. "If there ever was a crime that the death penalty was specifically designed for, this is it," the prosecutor thundered. The Virginia jury must have agreed with the prosecutor because on June 14, 1995 they found Barnabei guilty of throttling Sarah Wisnosky into unconsciousness and then raping her before administering the final death blows. They recommended a 13-year sentence for the rape.

In a separate murder sentencing, the prosecutors introduced a final, devastating witness, while precariously pushing for the death penalty. Barnabei's ex-wife and mother of his now-13-year-old son was called to the witness stand. She described in painful detail how their marriage deteriorated to verbal, physical, and finally sexual abuse. She took the courtroom back to the summer of 1985, when they met. She had just finished her freshman year at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. After a brief split-up, they resumed their relationship as lovers. She became pregnant in May 1986.

Only 19, and with child, she married Derek and they moved in with his family, she testified. Shortly after Serafino was born, Derek became physically abusive, slapping her around. "His anger was rather frequent," she told the court. "It progressed from hitting walls to throwing me against the walls." Through tears, she gloomily testified how her clothes were ripped almost to shreds and how co-workers questioned her about the welts and bruises on her neck and face.

During one incident, she said, Derek told her, "If you ever leave me, maybe a year will pass, maybe two, but someday I'll find you and I'll kill you!" The witness further testified that another time Derek tried to force her to have anal sex. She said Derek forced her to have vaginal and oral sex on several occasions. A Commonwealth Medical Examiner testified that his autopsy revealed that Sarah Wisnosky had suffered similar contact.

In an attempt to knock the props from under the prosecution's case, Barnabei's defense attorneys told jurors not to take this witness' testimony "of a continuing course of threatening and assuasive conduct" serious because she could not remember each and every specific date and occasion.

Although the Commonwealth had painted Derek a bloodthirsty maniac who deserved to die for his crime, his brother, called by the defense to testify in his behalf, painted a Norman Rockwell picture of his brother for jurors. A Rutgers University graduate, this witness testified that Derek was a straight-A student. "He was nothing but kind and considerate. He got along with everybody." Asked by the defense attorney if he thought his brother was capable of murder, the witness, calm and magisterial, replied, "Certainly not."

There was subdued chatter in the courtroom as Barnabei's girlfriend, with whom he was living at the time of his arrest, was called by the defense to testify. Warmed to the task, she told the jury in Judge William F. Rutherford's courtroom, "He was very sweet, very tender and always loving."

The sounds of the crowd outside the building, chanting in support of Barnabei, could be heard through the courtroom windows. It was a perfect cue for the jury foreman to announce on that June 15, 1995, the first death sentence handed down in Norfolk in 16 years.

On appeal, Derek raised five challenges to his conviction and death sentence. First, he contended his lawyer failed to contest the prosecution's forensic evidence of rape. Secondly, he said his attorney failed to object to the verdict with which the jury sentenced him to death. Third, he maintained that the "vileness" aggravating factor for which a Virginia jury can impose a sentence of death is unconstitutionally vague. Lastly, he argued that the trial court was constitutionally required to inform jurors that a life sentence would have kept him behind bars for at least twenty-five years. He also argued that testimony by his ex-wife violated his right to due process.

After exhausting his state remedies, Barnabei filed a petition for federal habeas relief, which the district court ousted. The condemned man lost his death-row appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals in June, 2000, setting the stage for his execution. His execution date was set for September 14th. Gov. Jim Gilmore said he would not stay Barnabei's execution, adding that DNA tests proved his guilt.

As the execution neared, the case received widespread attention. Strangely, the Italian News Wire suddenly came alive. Every newspaper in Italy ran front page articles proclaiming Barnabei's innocence. Italian columnists tetchily focused on the assumption that he did not receive a fair trial. Paul II pleaded his case and Italian parliaments voiced their objections to the execution. By 8:30, 50 media members toting cameras and microphones - many from various Italian news services - descended on the Greensville Correctional Center, where executions are carried out.

Dressed in a blue shirt, dungarees, white socks and blue shower slippers, Derek was ushered into the execution chambers at approximately 8:54 p.m. He glared at corrections director Ron Angelone, who had fought strenuously for his execution. "I am truly innocent of this crime," Derek muttered as they strapped him to a gurney. "Eventually, the truth will come out." That same day, the U.S. Supreme court twice refused to grant a stay.

The lethal chemicals began flowing into the condemned killer's left arm at 9:02 p.m. He continued chanting Psalm, 55, verse 18, from the Bible, until his lip movement became paralyzed. He was pronounced dead at 9:05 p.m.

No family members attended the execution. His mother and brother visited him earlier in the day, but left before the execution. His last words to his mother were, "Mom, I can deal with it, but I'm a little afraid."

Following the execution, Barnabei's body was transported to the family's home in Somers Point, New Jersey, for burial. Derek Barnabei was the sixth person executed in Virginia since January 1, 2000, and the 79th since the death penalty was allowed to resume by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979.

Derek's victim - Sara Winosky