An apparent case of conscience pangs led a man to drive cross country from his home in North Carolina to confess to the 1997 murder of a Bullhead City woman.
Matthew Gibson, 54, turned himself in at the Winslow Police Department on June 5, claiming that he had killed a woman in Bullhead City between 1994 and 1997. When investigators from Bullhead City interviewed Gibson, the details he provided coincided with the murder of 38-year-old Barbara Leone Brown, whose body was found July 1, 1997, in a thicket of bushes in an undeveloped area near a park in Bullhead City.
According to Emily Fromelt, a spokeswoman for the Bullhead City Police Department, Gibson originally intended to turn himself in at Bullhead City, but for unknown reasons decided to stop in Winslow.
Fromelt stated that during the police interview with Gibson, he said that he and Brown had gotten into an argument at his residence in Bullhead City. Brown refused to leave and a physical altercation ensued. Brown’s body was discovered a week after she was reported missing from her Kingman home. At the time the body was discovered, an autopsy concluded that Brown suffered injuries from blunt-force trauma, including multiple skull fractures.
Gibson had not been a suspect in the case.
This has been one of Bullhead City’s longest unsolved cases, with no hard evidence leading to a suspect. Gibson was booked into the Navajo County and was extradited to Mohave County last week on suspicion of first-degree murder.
