May 8, 1981 Mug shot:
Aaron Walter Foster, Sr. aka "Bubbie"
DOB 1/23/1952
Shortly after midnight on May 8, 1981, Barbara (Bobbi) L. Winn died in front of her three children from a gunshot wound to her chest. Bobbi had been dating, Aaron Walter Foster, Sr., for about one year. Foster was mentally abusive and physically violent toward Bobbi. When she tried to end the relationship with Foster, Bobbi paid with her life.
Bobbi's three children; Randy, Tammi, and Tyrone knew that Foster physically abused their mother, and Bobbi's neighbors told Maplewood police officers that they knew that Foster beat Bobbi, "often". Bobbi's co-workers, also, knew that she was being abused by her boyfriend. One of Bobbi's co-workers remembers one day, shortly before Bobbi's death, when Bobbi came to work wearing sunglasses. The co-worker said that Bobbi wore the sunglasses to hide the black eye that Foster gave her during one of his violent outbursts.
Both Tammi and Bobbi's sister, Jean, saw the black eye, as well. Tammi asked her mother about it, and Bobbi told her that Foster gave her the black eye by throwing a can of beer at her face. One week before her death, Bobbi went to a hospital emergency room to seek medical treatment for an injured hand and wrist.
Many things that happened on the evening of May 7, 1981 were not allowed into evidence during Foster's murder trial. Aaron Foster was on a violent rampage. And, as you will see, below, Foster was going to kill someone that night...
Bobbi had gone to the Martin Luther King center (St. Paul, MN) on the evening of May 7th. Bobbi had a long conversation with a woman named Linda Shelton, the mother of Foster's son. Bobbi and Linda told each other about the physical violence they each endured at the hands of Foster. Linda told Bobbi that Foster would often "beat me out of my sleep". Both Bobbi and Linda vowed that they were through with Foster and they agreed that neither of them deserved Foster's abuse.
When Foster learned that Bobbi and Linda had spent time talking about him and exposing to each other the lies he told each of them about each other, he was enraged! Foster drove to Linda's home and tried to kick her door in. After Linda warned Foster that she had called the police and that they were on their way, Foster left and went to the Elks' Club.
Taurus Brasil .38 Special. Serial # 708379 If found, please contact us: contact@justiceforbarbara.com
At 10:30 PM, in the mens' bathroom at the Elks' Club, Foster pointed his .38 Special at the head of a man named James Ross. Somehow, Ross managed to escape from Foster. As Mr. Ross ran out of the mens' bathroom, he pleaded for someone to "call the police". Foster ran out of the Elks' Club and two men saw Foster standing in the parking lot by the open trunk of his car. Foster closed the trunk of his car and he told one of the men that someone had accused him of threatening him with a gun and that he had to get out of there because the police were on the way.
When Foster left the Elks' Club, he went to the Tipsy Tiger Bar, where he assaulted Bobbi in front of two men. One of the men, Grady Meadows, owned the bar. The other man was Donnie Jones, a man whom Bobbi dated before she met Foster. Meadows and Jones protected Bobbi by stepping in between her and Foster. Meadows instructed Foster to leave the bar. Foster did not threaten Meadows. But, he was very angry at Jones for interfering. In fact, Foster was so angry with Donnie, for interfering, that he told Donnie Jones that he would go to his car and get his gun and shoot him!
Bobbi told Foster to remove his personal items from her home. Foster told Bobbi, "Bitch, if I can't have you, nobody can!" Foster left the Tipsy Tiger and drove to Bobbi's home in Maplewood. Foster parked his car in Bobbi's garage, and before he entered Bobbi's house, he removed the .38 Special (that he had threatened at least two other people with that evening) from the trunk of his car (police reports show that Foster left the holster for the .38 Special in the trunk of his car). Foster brought his gun in the house with him, where he sat...and, he waited...for Bobbi.
When Bobbi returned to her home where Foster was waiting for her, Foster began to beat Bobbi and throw things, violently, around Bobbi's bedroom.
A fight occurred in this corner of Bobbi's bedroom.
Then, it moved to this corner...
Pennies that landed on the floor when penny jar was thrown on opposite side of room.
The fight moved to, yet, another corner of the room. The clock radio was sitting on the nightstand, prior to the struggle in Bobbi's room. Someone threw the clock during the struggle, and it landed on the floor (still running) on the opposite side of the bed. The penny jar was thrown, as well.
There was a brand new curling iron on Bobbi's dresser. Foster picked up the curing iron and beat Bobbi in her face with it.
When Foster assaulted Bobbi with the curling iron, he broke the curling iron into two pieces and the electrical cord was ripped from the end of it (below). At some point, Foster hit Bobbi in her nose. Her nose began to bleed. Finally, Foster went in to the closet and got his duffle bag, threw it on the bed, and removed his gun from it. Foster had Bobbi trapped in a corner between the end of her dresser and a wall...
And, he jammed the end of his .38 Special in to the center of her chest...the first time. The sight on the end of the pistol broke Bobbi's skin...
As shown in the center of Bobbi's bra, below, the injury bled (inside view).
Bobbi tried to fight Foster off of her, and she grabbed his hair with her right hand, while she tried to push the gun away from her chest with her left hand. When Bobbi pulled Foster's hair, she pulled the hairnet that he was wearing off of his head. When Foster jammed his gun in to Bobbi's chest again...he pulled the trigger.
You can see where Bobbi's sweater melted (in between blue arrows) from the gunfire. Based on where the hole is located, the end of the gun stretched Bobbi's sweater several inches (the distance between the hole and the melted portion of the sweater) upward, before it made contact with her body. Notice the location of the hole in the sweater, then go back up to see where the hole is located on Bobbi's bra.
The trajectory of the bullet wound is from: left to right, up to down, front to back.
When Bobbi tried to push the gun away from her chest, her left hand was over the cylinder of the gun. When the gun discharged, the outer edge of the palm side of Bobbi's left hand was pinched by the firing pin. The firing pin left bloodblisters where it pinched Bobbi's hand. The gunshot left gunpowder residue in the center of Bobbi's palm and directly to the left side of the bloodblisters. Another injury, never noted by the medical examiner, is the severe swelling on the outer left edge of Bobbi wrist, as seen below. In fact, when the photo is enhanced, you can see linear marks on the swollen area which are almost identicle to the linear wounds on Bobbi's swollen left eye. Foster left the marks on Bobbi's eye when he, brutally, beat her with the curling iron. It is quite obvious that the injury on Bobbi's wrist is a defensive wound.
Bobbi's children heard a loud fight and a gunshot. Immediately following the gunshot, Tyrone heard Bobbi say, "Oh Bubbie (Foster's nickname) that hurts". Randy and Tyrone ran in to Bobbi's room, as Aaron Foster was running out of it. As Foster ran from around the end of Bobbi's bed, he passed the boys and yelled, "Look out, she shot herself!"
Tammi was awakened by the sound of the gunshot, and as she ran to her mother's room, she saw Foster running down the stairs. The children, ages 12, 14, and 15, found their mother bent at the waist and leaning on a wall in a corner with a gunshot wound in her chest.
When Randy, Tammi, and Tyrone went to their mother's aid, they found Foster's .38 Special laying on the floor, approximately, twelve inches in front of Bobbi's left foot. Bobbi was right handed, and so is Foster. Randy picked up the gun and took it out in to the hallway, where he sat at the top of the stairs. Randy waited for Foster to come back up the stairs...so he could shoot him.
Tammi talked Randy out of shooting Foster. So, Randy brought the gun back in to Bobbi's bedroom and laid the gun on the corner of Bobbi's bed. The children tried to help their mother, but there was nothing that they could do to save Bobbi's life.
Even though there was a phone sitting on the nightstand next to Bobbi's bed, Foster ran downstairs and used the telephone that was located on the wall in Bobbi's kitchen to call the police. And, even though Bobbi's home was located in the City of Maplewood, Foster called the City of St. Paul Police Department, where his best friend Bill Finney served as a police sergeant. When the Saint Paul Police dispatcher asked Foster what the emergency was, he told the dispatcher, "She got shot". Bobbi's children tried to call paramedics from Bobbi's bedroom phone. But, Foster prevented them from doing so, because he had the telephone line tied up when he made at least one more phone call to someone other than paramedics/police from the downstairs phone.
Prior to the violent fight that took place in Bobbi's bedroom, the plant laying on the nightstand, above, was growing in the white cup. The dirt that was in the cup was splattered on the walls near the ceiling, below, when the plant was thrown.
While talking to a St. Paul Police dispatcher on the phone, Foster removed a decorative wooden spoon (per Maplewood Police reports, the spoon was broken and was no longer hanging on the wall) from Bobbi's kitchen wall, and he used it to break the kitchen windows that were located to the left of the telephone. After breaking each of the two windows, Foster picked up some of the broken glass and carried it over to the counter/stove area which was located to the right of the telephone. Foster used the broken glass to cut his right hand, in an attempt to get rid of the gunshot residue that was deposited on his right hand when he fired a fatal gunshot with his .38 Special in to Bobbi's chest.
Notice that the windows that Foster broke were dressed with white curtains, and that they are located to the left of the telephone that Foster used. Most likely, Foster would have used his left hand to break the window, not his right. Note, also, that there is not one drop of blood on the white curtain nor is there any blood on the floor directly underneath the window.
Notice the five drops of blood directly underneath the telephone Foster was using at the time he broke the windows. There is, also, one drop of blood on the floor in front of the stove.
If you look carefully at the photo, below, you can see small fragments of glass on the stove top, and in the drops of Foster's blood.
When Foster finished talking on the telephone, he ran back upstairs to Bobbi's bedroom. The next two photos show bloody finger prints that Foster left on the wall near the handrail and on the wall at the top of the stairway, as he ran back upstairs.
In the photo, below, there are five bloody fingerprints on the wall.
Foster returned to Bobbi's bedroom to retrieve his gun. But, when he went to the place where he had dropped the gun in front of Bobbi's left foot, he realized that it was no longer there. As Foster tried to lay Bobbi on her bed, he discovered that the gun was laying on the corner of the bed. After learning the gun's whereabouts, Foster, immediately, laid Bobbi down on her face. He, then, jumped over the bed, picked up the gun, and went back downstairs and made another phone call.
Bobbi was having trouble breathing and she made "choking noises". The children tried to talk with their mother. But, Bobbi could not speak. Tammi sat on the floor and cradled her mother's head in her lap, and then...Bobbi died.
Foster left Bobbi's house and drove away in her car. As he drove to a nearby 7-11 Store, he threw the gun he used to kill Bobbi in to a nearby field. Foster returned to Bobbi's home. Police arrived at about the same time Foster returned. Per the 1981 Maplewood Police reports, Foster was seen by Maplewood Police officers "banging his hands on the car in the garage and also on the garage walls".
Maplewood Police photograph of Foster outside of Bobbi's garage...the car inside was his.
Per Maplewood Police reports, officers noticed that Foster "had some cuts on his hands - mainly on his right hand". Officers noted that "the largest cut was on the finger closest to his thumb" and "a second cut was on the smallest finger". The officer "noted some discoloration on the small finger not unlike a powder mark".
When asked how he cut his right hand, Foster stated that he broke the kitchen windows with his hand. Foster gave police two separate versions of how he cut his hands:
Version #1. He broke the windows by accident, with his hand.
Version #2. He broke the windows with his hand, because he was frustrated that the police were
taking so long to answer the phone.
Per Maplewood Police reports, when officers first saw Bobbi laying face down on her bedroom floor, officers reported that "her right hand did have blood on it. Checking further the fingernails on the first two fingers were broken and there was a large amount of shorter black very curly hair (like she had pulled somebody's hair) in her hand".
The police officers rolled Bobbi on to her back, so that they could give her any necessary medical attention...but, by this time, Bobbi had already died. Crime scene photographs lack any images of the hair officers reported seeing in Bobbi's hand. Police never photographed, collected, or logged any hair in to the police property room. Instead, what police photographed, collected, and logged in to the property room was the hairnet that Bobbi pulled off of Foster's head at the moment he killed her. The hairnet could easily have been mistaken for hair while it was seen in Bobbi's right hand...
Below, is a photograph taken by Maplewood Police Officers. The photo shows the handle of the broken curling iron that Foster hit Bobbi in her face with, and the hairnet that Bobbi pulled off of Foster's head (according to many people who know Foster, he was embarrassed because he was going bald. So, he wore hairnets to cover up the bald spots on his head).
Within the four hours immediately following Bobbi's murder, Foster gave police at least twelve different versions of what happened. When questioned by the police, Foster told them that he was downstairs packing his belongings in to his car when he "heard a gunshot". Foster claims he then ran upstairs to see what had happened and that Bobbi stated to him, "I just shot myself...get rid of the gun". So, Foster said, he did...
Foster told officers where he threw the gun...
When questioned by the police about what happened, Foster denied that there was a physical fight, and he said that he never hit Bobbi that night. But, from what is exhibited in all of these photos, it is apparent that there was one hell of a physical fight in Bobbi's room, immediately, before she died. Moreover, the autopsy photographs show that Bobbi was viciously beaten, immediately, before she died. In addition to the injuries caused by Foster's gun, Bobbi sustained many other injuries. The numerous injuries found on Bobbi's body were all located on the left side of her face and body...Foster is right handed.
Notice the curtain that was pulled from the window that the Maplewood Police officer is standing next to.
The duffle bag sitting on the bed contains all of the belongings that Foster was moving out of Bobbi's home. Foster told police that he was placing his personal items in his car when he "heard a gunshot". He said that he left those items on the hood of his car.
When police checked Foster's car, there was no evidence that he had taken any personal items to his car. When police asked where the personal items he claimed to have placed on the hood of his car were, Foster told officers that he brought them back inside and placed them in a closet before he left to get rid of the gun, and to go to the 7-11 Store to get help (even though he had already talked to the police on Bobbi's kitchen phone).
Police observed that there was blood on the jacket Foster was wearing, but there was none observed on his shirt. Officers did note, however, that there were two buttons missing from the shirt Foster was wearing. They reported that it appeared that the buttons had been ripped off of the shirt. Foster stated that he ripped the buttons off of the shirt after he was placed in a police squad car. The buttons were not found in the squad car. In fact, after a thorough search of the squad car and Bobbi's home, the buttons were never found.
Our family was not told that Bobbi had died until late on the morning of May 8th. At about the same time we learned that Bobbi had died, the Ramsey County Medical Examiner was performing an autopsy on Bobbi. Foster's best friend; ex-police chief, Bill Finney (who was a St. Paul Police sergeant, at the time), knew that Bobbi was dead before we did. He attended her autopsy. During Foster's murder trial, the prosecutor asked Finney how he learned of Bobbi's death. Finney testified that he "heard it through the grapevine".
Map shows the route from Bobbi's home to Finney's home. Total driving time: 3 Minutes
This case was reinvestigated by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office in 2006. Foster was indicted for Third Degree Murder on November 1, 2007, and his trial began on July 14, 2008. Although all of the jurors believe that Foster is guilty of murdering Bobbi, they acquitted him.
Aaron Foster's permit to carry a firearm was revoked, late in the fall of 2006. However, now that he has been acquitted, Foster will probably reapply for a gun permit. According to Foster, he owned the following firearms, in 1999:
1. .40 Baretta pistol
2. .357 Smith & Wesson pistol
3. .45 Colt pistol
4. 12 gauge shotgun
Not only can Foster apply for a gun permit, but he will be able to resume his job at the Saint Paul Police Department.
Be sure to visit all of the pages on this website to view police reports and other legal documents, regarding Bobbi's murder.
