In August of 1998, a woman calling herself "Deianna Ray" placed an ad in the personals sections of a Louisiana newspaper. Her description said she was a green-eyed blonde, honest and hard-working; however, she was hardly being honest.
In reality, she was a drifter named Hazel Leota Head who hitchhiked around the country looking for her next mark - a lonely man to latch onto until she drained his bank account dry.
Her next mark was a retired trucker named Charles Barker.
Charles had recently suffered the loss of his wife of eleven years, who was killed by a drunk driver. He got a considerable amount of money from an insurance settlement. Lonely and depressed, he went to several riverboat casinos throughout his hometown of Bossier City, Louisiana.
He used the money from the settlement to gamble, which caught the attention of Deianna Ray in the summer of 1998. Within a few days, she had moved in with him.
At first, his adult children were happy that he had found someone to be with. However, when his daughter Jennifer Spoonts traveled from Texas to meet Deianna, she was unimpressed and realized that she just wanted his money.
Eventually, Charles realized this as well. A few weeks later, while talking with his other daughter Cindy Jefferson, Charles said that he was having several problems with Deianna. He did not tell much else but promised to call her in a few days. However, she never heard from him again.
Jennifer tried to arrange to visit her father over Labor Day weekend, but when she didn't hear from him for over a week, she asked her aunt who lived nearby to check on Charles.
On September 2, 1998, Charles's sister June Steinger and her husband went to his house and found that the door was open. They then discovered his body slumped over the bar in his kitchen, with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. He had apparently been dead for five days.
Detectives found no signs of a struggle, and the murder weapon, Charles's own .25 caliber handgun, was found on a table in the master bedroom, wiped clean of fingerprints.
A safe in the bedroom was open and empty, which had about $45,000 in cash in it. Also missing was Charles's Lincoln Town Car, and his girlfriend, Deianna Ray. The vehicle was located the next day near the Shreveport, Louisana airport. Inside, police found Ray's clothes and DNA that identified her as Hazel Head.
The last confirmed sighting of Hazel Leota Head was in December of 1998, in a truck stop near Wheat Ridge, Colorado, where she applied for a job as a waitress.
She was born on December 10, 1949 and would today be 71-years-old. She has blonde hair, green eyes, stands 5'2" and weighs 120-150 pounds.
She has a scar near her right eye and a gap between her front teeth. Head is known to frequent truck stops, often hitching rides from town to town.
If you have any information on the current whereabouts of Hazel Head you are asked to call the Bossier City Police at (318) 741-8611.
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