HELP SOUGHT ON COLD CASE
On July 2, 2007, Kimberly Compton Whitton was reported missing by a coworker who had last seen and heard from her on June 21, 2007. Law enforcement did not find either of them at the Whitton property in Section, Ala., and were told that they left June 22, 2007, and had not returned. Anyone with information on their disappearance is urged to contact the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, Cold Case Unit toll free tip line at 866-419-1236 or email ColdCaseTips@ago.state.al.us. Tipsters could be eligible for a reward.Source: Alabama Attorney General’s Office, Cold Case Unit
Barry Van Whitton, 46, formerly of Section, Ala., was convicted of murder in the slaying of his first wife, Michelle Townson Whitton, in 1997.
Kimberly Compton Whitton
Haleigh Brean CulwellA former Section, Ala., man sentenced to life in prison in the 1997 death of his first wife has been denied a rehearing on his first-degree murder conviction by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
A Jackson County jury on Sept. 24, 2015, convicted Barry Van Whitton of first-degree murder in the slaying of Michelle Whitton, whose body was found in January 1998 just inside neighboring DeKalb County.
Twenty-eight-year-old Michelle Whitton was bludgeoned with the butt of a shotgun, cut on the face and throat, and stabbed in the chest. She was buried in a shallow grave at a location Barry Whitton called his “favorite spot,” a shady hillside on property he had been run off of a number of times over the years, according to 2015 trial testimony.
Whitton went 17 years before being charged with Michelle Whitton’s murder in December 2014. He was sentenced in October 2015 to life in prison and has been active in appeals in the last couple of months.