Family and friends knew something wasn’t right when a well-liked truck driver in a small West Virginia town went missing in the spring of 2019. In the tiny town of Tunnelton, as well as in nearby Kingwood, word was quick to travel soon after authorities discovered his abandoned pickup truck on the side of the road, bearing the telltale signs of an intentionally set fire.

Law enforcement in Perry County, West Virginia waged a 10-day search to locate 61 year-old Philip “Buckie” Barlow. After hunters discovered Barlow’s body in the bed of a remote local creek, their worst suspicions were confirmed: Buckie Barlow had been brutally murdered, and the hunt was on to track down the killer — or, perhaps, the killers.

Who was Philip “Buckie” Barlow?

Born in 1957 as one of nine West Virginia siblings, Buckie Barlow grew up in a tight-knit family in Preston County in the state’s rural northern reaches.

“His dad was a coal miner. My aunt was a homemaker,” reflected Gregory Maxwell, Buckie’s cousin on Snapped: Killer Couples, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “Everybody did their share on their farm.”

Buckie began his lifelong career as a truck driver soon after dropping out of high school, eventually meeting Mary Butler, his future sweetheart, in 2002. Over the next two decades, Buckie and Mary remained together, making plans to some day move to Indiana after Buckie’s truck driving days were behind him. Mary even made the move ahead of him several years before he died, each partner holding up their end of a hopeful but sometimes difficult long-distance relationship.

“He thought Mary was the world,” remembered Michele Bucklew, Buckie’s niece. “He would spend as much time [as] possible with her as he could.”

How was Philip “Buckie” Barlow murdered?

Buckie was only four months away from his long-awaited retirement when responders received a concerning call: A pickup truck had been found half-burned and abandoned along a rural Preston County road, with no signs of the driver or other occupants in sight. In a community where the locals tend to know and look out for each other, it didn’t take long before authorities realized that the truck belonged to Buckie.

The truck bore the burn marks of an intentionally set fire; one that singed but did not fully consume the vehicle.

Ten days after Buckie first had disappeared, hunters placed an emergency call when they discovered a body lying face down in an isolated area of a nearby creek.

“Once I got on scene, myself and another officer were able to approach the body,” said retired Preston County sheriff’s Capt. Travis Tichnell. “It was moderately decomposed. He did not have a shirt on. His jeans were around his ankles. He was face down in the water… There was a significant injury to his throat area. The jugular was cut, the artery was cut, the esophagus was severed; trachea was severed.”

An examination of the victim’s dentures confirmed that the body was that of Philip “Buckie” Barlow. Law enforcement was taken aback at the evident ferocity betrayed by Buckie’s wounds: “Mr. Barlow was, for all intents and purposes, completely decapitated,” said Perry County prosecutor Megan Fields. “He was just as brutally injured as you can imagine.”

Thew news devastated Buckie’s loved ones. 

“I was hysterical because I didn’t want it to be true,” said Mary, whose dreams of finally bringing Buckie with her to Indiana — only months away from being fulfilled — had been forever crushed.

Who killed Buckie Barlow?

Turning back to review previous statements from everyone they’d initially questioned, investigators noticed a small but significant discrepancy between what two prior interviewees had told them. A neighboring couple who lived close by to Buckie — Laura Lynn Martin and Robert Joesph “Bobby” Quinn — had offered slightly different accounts to law enforcement of what they said they remembered about their activities on the day of Buckie’s disappearance.

“During the [initial] conversation with Mr. Quinn and Ms. Martin, nothing out of the ordinary was noted. Nothing stood out to law enforcement at that time with them,” said Tichnell. “I went back and listened to those statements again.”

Martin and Quinn each told investigators that they knew nothing about why Buckie had gone missing, each relating that they were inside at home where a noisy air conditioner prevented them from hearing activities outside on the day he disappeared. But their emphasis on the noise distraction didn’t quite satisfy Tichnell.

It “kind of stood out to me that it just seemed a little bit out of context,” he said. “Seemed like a pretty minute detail to be specifically remembered. I wanted to speak with them again.”

To again interview both Martin and Quinn, Tichnell had to travel to the Garrett County Jail across the state line in Maryland. By that time, each had been incarcerated there for an alleged series of string of breaking and entering crimes. Re-interviewing Martin yielded a subtle change in her original statement after she cited a washer and dryer — rather than an air conditioner — as the source of the noise inside their home. But the case finally cracked open after Tichnell uncovered the true nature of the conflicted couple’s romance.

Bobby Quinn and Laura Martin confess to Buckie Barlow’s murder

Laura Martin and Bobby Quinn had been a couple since first meeting in 2018.

“I love her to death, but she does not know how to pick a man. She fell in love with the jailbirds; the troublemakers. Their relationships never really lasted long,” said Laura’s adult daughter Cheyann Martin. But, she added, when her mother met Bobby, she “fell for him, head over heels.”

In visiting Martin and Quinn at the Garrett County Jail, Tichnell reviewed all the phone calls the pair of suspects had made during their time behind bars. What he found was a series of calls between Laura Martin and an ex-boyfriend named Mark; calls that clearly demonstrated that Bobby wasn’t Laura’s only romantic interest.

“During these jail calls, she is being sexually explicit with Mark telling him things she wants to do to him,” recalled prosecutor Fields.

Armed with that new information, Tichnell decided to share it with Bobby to see how he might respond. 

That decision proved the difference in the case. Sensing an apparent romantic betrayal, Bobby Quinn confessed that he and Laura Martin had encountered Buckie Barlow on the night of Buckie’s disappearance, intending at first to rob him before things got out of hand. Subsequent one-on-one interviews with each suspect pieced together the puzzle of how events had unfolded, though both Martin and Quinn each nudged investigators toward the other as the culprit who ultimately was responsible for Buckie’s murder.

“They were basically pointing the finger at each other,” said Tichnell. “But I don’t believe that one person could have done that alone.”

Further interviews with fellow inmates suggested that Laura Martin played the dominant role in her relationship with Quinn, and revealed potentially gruesome details about how Martin allegedly relished the part she played in Buckie Barlow’s death.

“She admitted to them that she had killed Buckie, and she made some very disturbing statements,” said Tichnell. “…Ms. Martin also claimed to her fellow jail inmates that after they killed Buckie, she and Robert [Bobby] took his lunch that he had packed for his shift and ate his sandwiches with his blood still on their hands.”

“Laura indicated that she loved the way Buckie’s blood felt running through her hands and that she wanted to feel that sensation again,” added prosecutor Fields.

Fellow Preston County prosecutor James Shay said he was struck by Martin’s apparent callousness: “It was horrifying, to put it in a simple word,” he reflected. “The way that she described the pure joy that she felt is something that I’ll never forget.”

In the summer of 2022, Laura Lynn Martin and Robert Joseph “Bobby” Quinn each pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree robbery in connection with the killing of Philip Buckie Barlow, and were sentenced that October. Martin will be eligible for parole in 2081; Quinn will be eligible for parole in 2080.

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped: Killer Couples on Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen and streaming on Peacock.