McDANIEL, Barabara Ann: 1942-1984

MCDANIEL, TREAT, STEPHENS, CRAFT, ANDERSON, CRAIG

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri
Date: 3/1/2013 at 06:51:00

The Fairfield Ledger (Ia.)
Monday, May 7, 1984

Mt. Pleasant woman, son drown in ditch

A flooded county gravel road led to the drowning of a Mount Pleasant woman and her 7-year-old son 12 miles northeast of Fairfield.

The Iowa State Patrol said Barabara Ann McDaniel, 41, of 928 Keene Drive in Mt. Pleasant lost control of her westbound 1975 Chevrolet station wagon while rounding a curve on 80th Avenue Northeast Saturday night.

The car landed upright in a ditch on the south side of the road and was submerged in up to eight feet of water. The patrol said the accident happened about 7 p.m. but the car was not discovered by a passer-by until 13 1/2 hours later.

Six inches of water from the flooded Skunk River covered the road at the time of the accident, which took place southwest of the Merrimac Bridge just east of The Real Thing.

Acting county medical examiner, Dr. Jim Watson, said Ms. McDaniel and her son, Warren Nickolas Treat, both drowned. They apparently were trapped because of the surrounding water, which filled the car.

Watson pronounced the two dead at the scene at 10:15 a.m. The patrol was notified at 9:39 a.m.

The car apparently remianed submerged in the ditch unnoticed overnight. As the water receded Sunday morning the auto's roof was spotted and authorites were called.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy Walt Hill and Iowa Highway Patrolman Jay Ohlensehlen, who investigated the accident, were out of town today and could not be reached for comment.

Services for the accident victims will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Weir Funeral Home in Mount Pleasant with the Rev. Thomas Speigel officiating. Burial will be in Forest Hill Cemetery.

Visitation will be at the funeral home after 3 p.m. Tuesday. The rosary will be recited at 7;30 p.m. Tuesday.

Ms. McDaniel was born July 8, 1942, at Lewiston, Mo., the daughter of Charles and Edith Stephens McDaniel.

She is survived by her father, who lives in Hillsboro; two sons William L. Anderson, California, and Timothy Craft, Morning Sun; two daughters, Wanda Anderson, California; and Ann M. Craft, Morning Sun.

Also surviving are two grandchildren, a brother, Russell McDaniel, Hillsboro, and three sisters, Vera Hoffeditz, Burlington; Ruth Forrester, Stronghurst, Ill.; and Rachel Shaddon, Russellville, Ark.

Ms. McDaniel was a member of St. Alphonsus Church in Mount Pleasant.

Warren Nicholas Treat was born Nov. 17, 1976, in Iowa City. He was in first grade at Harlan Grade School in Mount Pleasant.
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The Fairfield Ledger (Ia.)
Friday, June 8, 1984

Mother, son drownings ruled suicide-homicide
By LARRY JOHNSON

The state medical examiner has ruled that the May 5 Jefferson County drowning deaths of a Mount Pleasant woman and her 7-year-old son were a suicide-homicide.

Area law enforcement officials say that an obsession with suicide and despondency exacerbated by alcohol led Barbara Ann McDaniel to drive her automobile into a flooded ditch, killing herself and her son, Warren Nickolas Treat, on a rural Jefferson County road.

Jefferson County Attorney John Morrisey said today that the ruling by State Medical Examiner Thomas Bennett caps an investigation by Iowa Highway Patrol Lt. Fritz Langen, Mount Pleasant.

The two perished after their 1975 Chevrolet station wagon left a partly-flooded road 12 miles northeast of Fairfield southwest of Merrimac Bridge.

Langen said Ms. McDaniel ended her life after several stormy months which included the suicide death of her boyfriend, repeated comments to friends about her plans for suicide, problems with the Henry County Department of Social Services and at least two attempts which investigators say she made on her own life.

The drownings were first believed to be an accident.

"After going over the accident scene, there were certain questions in my mind," said Langen. "Then I started talking to friends, relatives and acquaintances, and found that she'd been telling everybody not only that she was going to do it, but also how."

"She'd made two attempts on her life this year, once by consuming a large quantity of alcohol and prescription drugs, and one by drinking Pine-Sol," Langen said. "After the second time, she told her friends that the next time she did it, she'd do it right. She said she'd drive her car into the water."

According to Langen and Morrisey, Ms. McDaniel and a boyfriend, David Craig, had sometimes played "suicide games" in Ms. McDaniel's apartment at 928 King Drive in Mount Pleasant.

"They would consume large quantities of drugs and alcohol and the last one awake would call the ambulance," Morrissey said.

Then on Feb. 13, Craig hanged himself in the Henry County Jail shortly after his arrest for intoxication.

"She was despondent over him, and she was also quite upset that social services was investigating (her relationship with) her child," Langen said. " We have four different statements from friends who recalled her saying she'd drive her car into a river, and a couple of people who recall her sating that "they' wouldn't take the child from her while she was alive. She was very possessive of the child."

Morrissey and Langen said Ms. McDaniel had visited a Mount Pleasant funeral home to discuss burial arrangements and cemetery plots, but had been dissuaded from purchasing funeral insurance by employees there.

Earlier on the day of the deaths, Langen said, Ms. McDaniel had been drinking at a Burlington bar and was asked to leave after creating a disturbance. After sleeping off the effects of the alcohol in Mount Pleasant, she drove with her son to the area near the site of the drowning. Langen said two men gigging carp in the Skunk River observed a vehicle matching the description of the McDaniel car driving in the area. Soon after that, at about 7 p.m., Langen contends, Ms. McDaniel drove her station wagon into a ditch. The same two fishermen heard a horn honking in the vicinity, Langen said, but couldn't remember how long the honking continued. The bodies were not discovered until about 8:30 a.m. May 6.

Langen and Morrissey said the investigation showed that Ms. McDaniel was familiar with the area. Morrissey said blood tests revealed a blood alcohol level of .162 milligrams (.100 is considered legally drunk in Iowa) but he said the woman seemed to have been in reasonably good control of the car, because she had been seen earlier by the two witnesses negotiating a difficult curve on the same road. The southbound car left the road on a straightway, apparently at a very slow speed. The car was not damaged by impact.

"The road was partly flooded but passable," Morrisey said.

"If the car had left the road on the curve, we'd have been a lot more inclined to believe it was an accident," said Langen. "My impression, was that you'd almost have to pick this place to drive off. For an accident, it just didn't look right."

The station wagon's automatic transmission was in "park" and the ignition key had been removed and placed on the front seat, Langen said. Both because the car was undamaged, he said, and because there were no injuries of any kind to either of the bodies, there was no possiblity of the victims having been unconscious following the crash.

"The key was the first clue," he said. "Even if you were in the habit of taking the key out of the ignition and putting it on the seat, why would you do that if you were about to drown if you didn't want to."

Other clues that the incident was not an accident, Langen said, included the fact that the car did not sink immediatley. A station wagon is much heavier in the front than the rear, he said, allowing some extra buoyancy. The auto had turned with the current, also indicating that it didn't sink immediately. A new car might stay afloat for about five minutes, he said tests have shown, while an older model vehicle like the McDaniel auto would be likely to float roughly three minutess.

In addition, he said, there were no signs of attempts by either person to escape from the sinking station wagon.

"I've investigated several of these kinds of cases, and people will claw and tear at the inside of a car like wild animals trying to get out," he said. "There was absolutely no sign of that, either in the car or on the bodies."

Because there was no sign of a struggle inside the car, Langen agrees that the one mystery of the case is exactly what happened in the car after it left the road.

"You don't talk a 7 1/2 year-old child into committing suicide," he said. "The only thing in the front seat was a blanket. I think I know in my own mind what happened, but it's purely investigative speculation, so I don't want to say. You can theorize and theorize, and you'll never know."

State Medical Examiner Bennett said Langen's investigation convinced him that the drownings were, in fact, a suicide-homicide.

"Absolutely. Yes, indeed," he said by phone from Des Moines. "It makes sense. Everyone is hesistant to call something like this a suicide-homicide, because they want to give the person the benefit of the doubt. But I'd say that's absolutely what this was."

(Volunteer transcription. I am of no relation.)