By BRANDON LOOMIS

A man who escaped justice for nearly two decades was sentenced Tuesday to 99 years in prison for the 1985 robbery/murder of an elderly widow in her home.

Kenai Superior Court Judge Charles Huguelet listened Tuesday as Barry McCormack protested his innocence and condemned the legal system. Huguelet then handed down the maximum term for first-degree murder.

He also removed the possibility of normal parole, effectively putting the 56-year-old former truck driver away for life. McCormack will be eligible for so-called "good-time parole" after serving two-thirds, or 66 years, of his sentence.

"You present an extreme danger to the public," Huguelet said. "You can't be rehabilitated, and you should never be released."

Last year a jury convicted McCormack of killing 65-year-old Opal Fairchild during a robbery in her Soldotna home. Prosecutors said he got less than $100, and probably just $20, from the robbery.

"It was premeditated. It was without passion. It was for money, plain and simple," Huguelet said from the bench.

Defense attorney Margaret Moran said McCormack would appeal his conviction and sentence.

Fairchild's death from a bullet to the head came amid a three-week Kenai Peninsula crime spree that prosecutors years later linked to McCormack. Before the shooting, a Sterling shop owner was robbed and shot, and after that, a Kenai grocery store employee was beaten with a tire iron or wrench during a robbery. Not until 2000, though, did authorities tie the crimes to McCormack, a former Soldotna resident who had left the state and was working as a truck driver.

Investigators found fingerprints on papers in Fairchild's home and under her body but did not find a match when they first ran them through a computer database.

In 2000 they tried again, this time with an expanded national database. They got a hit on prints taken from McCormack in 1997, 12 years after the murder, when he applied for a job as a school bus driver.

McCormack is also charged with murder in the death of Bill Womack, a Moline, Kan., salvage dealer known to carry cash. Kansas authorities were awaiting McCormack's sentencing in Alaska before deciding whether to proceed to trial.

After staring at the floor and quietly listening to Fairchild's family and friends call him "vile" and "garbage," McCormack stood and protested his conviction. He said he did not begrudge the family its feelings but considered the court corrupt and in need of a scapegoat for the crimes that had bedeviled the community. Heavyset with gray hair and a goatee, wearing shackles and a red short-sleeved prison suit, McCormack read slowly from a written statement.

Acknowledging the session's "drama, which is all fine and sad," he said he had been convicted with no physical evidence.

"In the end it was injustice that fell on an innocent person. That was me," he said.

When Huguelet announced the sentence, McCormack said in a nonchalant tone, "That's fine," and then began a brief argument, interrupting the judge and prompting Huguelet to tell him to be silent.

"I will not," McCormack said, again citing "the corruptness of the court."

Assistant District Attorney Scot Leaders argued for the maximum sentence, saying McCormack had a history of violence and a willingness to kill witnesses in small-stakes robberies. The circumstances -- entering a widow's home when she clearly was there, with a vehicle in the garage and the garage door open -- indicated that McCormack meant to kill, Leaders said. He entered the home, hit Fairchild on the head and then shot her, the prosecutor said.

Like her client, defense attorney Moran questioned the strength of evidence. "There is nothing that says Mr. McCormack pulled a trigger and killed Opal Fairchild," she said.

She argued for the legal minimum sentence of 20 years and said McCormack likely would not be a danger if released at age 76.

Family members said Fairchild moved to Alaska with her husband in 1962 after buying a Kenai Peninsula lot sight-unseen through an Alaska Magazine advertisement. Driving the family Volkswagen van to Alaska meant borrowing the $300 needed to get through Canada. The Fairchilds eventually opened a television repair shop and then a minimart. Fairchild ran the minimart and then Opal's Deli on Kalifornsky Beach Road. After her husband's death, she retired to live on Social Security and state longevity payments.

Fairchild loved moose hunting and kept a .38-caliber handgun on her table, according to daughter-in-law Alice Fairchild, who told the judge that it was too bad her mother-in-law had not retrieved the gun after putting it in a closet during a visit by her grandchildren the day before her killing.

"If she had, we wouldn't be here, and neither would Mr. McCormack, as she hit what she shot," Alice Fairchild said.
 

Copyright © 2007, Anchorage Daily News, AK