The Life of Lucy Combs: Part XVI Winter Bare's Story
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WILKES COUNTY, N.C. — THE HOMEPLACE OF AMERICANA MUSIC Contact us at 336-667-0134, e-mail [email protected] In Sports A sports column My first love and about the truest of Tom Graves?? true love stories See Welborn, page 6A See Lankford, page 7A Carmel Schmidt Toliver Kaylee Brown of North Wilkes works toward the goal NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2019 VOL. 37, NO. 32 Only 25¢ Pedestrian crosswalks: Sadly, they are mostly ignored By JERY LANKFORD ly speak to them if they seem like Record Editor they wouldn't mind being spoken to. Sometimes, in the mornings in I also watch traffic as it flows particular, I like to sit on the church along the now two-way path of Main pew outside the Street in North Wilkesboro. To that Column offices of The end, I have noticed a rather disturb- Record and Thursday Printing. ing phenomenon regarding pedestri- As I sit there, usually drinking a ans trying to cross the street — cup of coffee and (I know, I know) mainly that many times they are Record Reporter Heather Dean, costumed and with cane, attemps to walk across Main smoking a cigarette, I like to watch quite completely ignored by drivers. Street in North Wilkesboro at a pedestrian crosswalk as vehicles whiz by. folks as they come and go and usual- See Crosswalks, page 3A Record photo by Jerry Lankford Winter Bare’s story The life of By LARRY J. GRIFFIN Lucy Combs: Special Reporter for The Record Editor's Note: This is a follow-up story to the Part XVI 28-installment series, "Murder at Jumpingoff Place," published by The Record from By LARRY J. GRIFFIN September 26, 2017 until April 18, 2018. The Special Reporter for The Record series details the murder of Sherry Hart how I have heard so many tales. I go search out what I hear. I have Richard Lynn Bare, the brother of, Bobby Bare, searched so many places; I've run out. was arrested and later escaped from jail. — From the Diary of Lucy Combs Richard Lynn Bare continues to dodge arrest. Lucy Combs has heard numerous stories from sundry sources By LARRY J. GRIFFIN regarding the disappearance of her younger son, Jeff - some absurd, Special Reporter for The Record others plausible. I'll never [for]get that feeling of first meeting "I was…told there was a bear over at the river [that] ate him. you; you were my father, the man I dreamed Another time, I was told that he was paid a whole lot of money to go about my whole life. If I could have only bot- to prison in someone else's place….[A] detective told me he was cut tled that feeling up…I would have. up in pieces by a — Winter Bare, in a Facebook post to Father machete," Lucy Bobby Bare upon learning of his death confided in her diary. Winter Bare vividly recalls the first time that Some of the she met her father, Bobby Bare, face-to-face. Winter Bare more credible On Oct. 2, 1983, Winter Ann Bare was only accounts, detailing 7 months, 12 days old when Bobby killed Jeff's fate, have Matthew Anderson, her Grandmother Laticia been offered by Cooley's boyfriend at that time. In the shoot- work colleagues at ing's aftermath, her mother, Yolanda Cooley, Tyson Foods. decided to take her daughter back to California "I was told that to live, as she had no desire to remain in the they, 'put him in unfamiliar High Country culture to which she the back of a truck was ill-suited. and that I won't "She was unaccustomed to living the way ever see or hear of she was having to live. She hadn't even seen a him again…,' she trailer park in her life until she lived in Ashe said. "And there County," Ms. Bare explained during an inter- was a man at the Camping remnants along Reddies River view. river who had an Once back in California, Grandmother old black truck." Laticia married an Air Force pilot; so, Yolanda Lucy learned later that the pickup belonged to a man, whom she and her daughter moved into their own apart- previously encountered on the riverbank during an initial search for ment. Eventually, Winter's mother married a her son in which she was accompanied by her family. man named Todd Wynn with whom she had a Bobby Bare Over five-years ago, a co-worker at Tyson's approached Lucy about Jeff's disappearance. "He asked me if I knew where a well was son, Phillip, in 1986. "We lived in a house on end of my sixth-grade year in school." behind Robby's Army Store (now Dollar General on D Street in Todd's mother's property," Winter recalled. It was during a sibling argument with one of North Wilkesboro). It's in the woods beside the trail people walk. "Her marriage to Todd was troubled, at best, her stepsisters that she learned the truth about He tells me it was…three people who [lived] in a tent on the and didn't last very long." who she was. "My sister constantly pro- river….He said that Jeff was seeing [the man's] wife and had a pre- Sometime in 1989-90, Yolanda joined the nounced my first name wrong, I guess just to scription. The husband told him to give it to him and he wouldn't." Army and was stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., irritate me -Anna [the traditional way] as According to the informant, the assailant-in-question pulled out a for two or three years. And in 1991, she partic- opposed to Ana [the 'A' pronounced as 'Ah']. pistol and shot Jeff in the face. The three tent-dwellers undressed ipated in Desert Storm. While she was away, My step-dad, Bill Elliot, became really frustrat- him, tossed his body in a well, and threw rocks in over top of him. Winter went to live with her Grandmother ed with us and lashed out. 'Your name isn't Apparently, there was a fourth person nearby who witnessed the trag- Laticia in Bossier City, La., at Barksdale Air either Anna or Ana-it's really Winter and your ic events; but, the informant declined to reveal any names. Force Base where her husband was stationed. last name is Bare!'" However, the co-worker did declare his intent to disclose the "I lived with them until I was about 1l-years- Elliot left the room and retrieved Winter's aforementioned information to authorities. "I said, 'O, please do!'" old. But I didn't refer to myself as Winter Bare- birth certificate in order to substantiate his star- Lucy recalled. I was Ana Cooley. tling revelation. "I looked at the birth certificate As Lucy continued to ask questions and gather information, she When she returned from her tour of duty, and found out that my real dad was named, was approached by one of her co-workers at Avante who expressed Yolanda had married a man whom she met in 'Bobby Bare,' and I was born in Ashe County. I concern for her safety. "[She] said I was still in danger and to keep the military. "Mom came to get me to live with was shocked; I didn't know what to think; I had my eyes in the back of my head….She was afraid for me." her and her husband, Bill Elliot. We moved to no idea that I had another name or who my Pennsylvania, lived there for a year before mov- birth-dad was. But when I entered the seventh- When Jerry Combs, Jr. [George] was sitting in a Wilkes County Jail cell awaiting trial in 2014, a couple of cellmates took him aside ing to Fort Drum (located in upstate New York grade, I called myself 'Winter Bare' for the very in the Thousand Islands Region about 30 miles first time." to relate information that one of the alleged killers - a woman - divulged in their presence. She started talking about her role in the from the Canadian border). As far as I was con- Across a number of years, Ms. Bare had cerned, Bill Elliot was my father; so, I began to disappearance and subsequent killing of George's baby brother. refer to myself as 'Ana Elliot'- that is until the See Bare, page 3A See Combs, page 3A Classifieds. .......... 3B Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Comics. ................ 4B Community ........... 4B Deaths. ............... 3A Low Low Editorial Page. ..... 6A High Low High High Low High o o o o o o o o Horoscopes. ........ 3B 55 Sunny 30 F 48 F Rain 38 58 F P/Cloudy 39 51 F Rain 44 F WILKES COUNTY, N.C. — HOME of WILKES HERITAGE MUSEUM, BLUE RIDGE MUSIC HALL OF FAME, THE RECORD PARK, CHICKENFEST and AMERICANA DAY The Record - North Wilkesboro, N.C. - January 16, 2019 - Page 2A 38th Blue Ridge Overview opened at WAG on Friday The Wilkes Art Gallery's 38th Blue Ridge Overview, a photographic juried competition and exhibition opened this past Friday at the Gallery, 913 C Street in North Wilkesboro, and will be displayed through Feb. 23. The judge was Christine Rucker of Winston-Salem who had several of her own photographs displayed as well. Sponsors of the Overview are Martha and Ward Nichols, The CatchLight Gallery, Gordon and Abby Burns, Cassie Stone Photography, Paul Breden and Dan Bumgarner. Some of the winners, shown above, left to right, are: Erin Southwell, Tea Auton, Lisa Wilmoth, Mike Duncan, Yale Miller, Martin Seelig, Franklin Millman and John Palmer of North Wilkesboro is pictured with a pho- Roy Walter.