Housekeeper to face trial

Barbara Clark is charged with murder in two fatal beatings at Fearrington Village

PITTSBORO -- A panel of citizens last week determined that there was sufficient evidence to try a Chatham County housekeeper charged with beating her employers to death in December.

The Chatham County grand jury handed up indictments on charges that Barbara Turrentine Clark, 41, killed two elderly women and sent a third to the hospital.

Clark will appear in Chatham County Superior Court on Feb. 18 to face two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder and one count of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. She remains jailed without bail.

Authorities say Clark murdered Mary Corcoran, 82, and Margaret Murta, 92, for whom she worked as a housekeeper, and beat their neighbor Becky Fisher with a blunt object, attempting to kill her.

District Attorney Jim Woodall said the state is charging Clark on both the assault and attempted murder charges in Fisher's beating because authorities believe the attack was premeditated.

"You can punish a person for both crimes," Woodall said.

The attacks shook bucolic Fearrington Village, a wealthy subdivision between Chapel Hill and Pittsboro.

Murta and Corcoran, two retired social workers, had hired Clark, a convicted felon, to clean their apartment at Galloway Ridge, an assisted living facility at Fearrington Village.

Authorities say Clark was Murta's and Corcoran's housekeeper and had argued with them over money on the morning of the attack.

Seven years ago, a judge ordered Clark not to work with elderly people after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $5,000 from a 90-year-old man at a Durham retirement community.