'Could I have saved him?': Pain still deep 5 years after Levi Ellerbe's horrific murder

NATCHITOCHES — Once, during better times, Hanna Barker slipped a Sonic peanut butter milkshake into the hospital while bringing her baby son, Levi Cole Ellerbe, to visit his paternal grandfather.

It was a favorite treat of Billy Ellerbe Sr., one he really shouldn't have been enjoying because of health issues but did anyway. So when he was hospitalized again, this time after collapsing during Levi's burial, he asked for another one.

His wife of 31 years, Kathy Ellerbe, obliged him even after teasing him that she'd get caught. But when she handed it to him, he just stared at it wistfully.

"And he said, 'I guess Levi and Hanna will never bring me another one,' and he just broke out crying," remembered Kathy. "Five hours later, he was gone.

"I can honestly say, the 17 days that he did live, there was not one night that he didn't cry out for Levi. Every night, he cried out for him."

Ellerbe says her 52-year-old husband died of a broken heart. It was another loss for a family still grappling with Levi's horrific death on July 18, 2018.

Five years later, in late July, Ellerbe spoke publicly for the first time about Levi, his death, the cases against Barker and her then-girlfriend, Felicia Marie-Nicole Smith, their prison sentences and her life since.

July 17 marked five years since Levi was found by firefighters face down in a ditch alongside a railroad track off Breda Avenue in Natchitoches. Still alive, he smelled like gasoline and had suffered second and third-degree burns over most of his body, according to a report from the Natchitoches Regional Medical Center emergency department.

He died just hours later, early on July 18, at a Shreveport hospital.

Word of Levi's death caused a frenzy in Natchitoches Parish and well beyond, but officials soon clamped down on information. A gag order was issued not long after, but the public continued to demand answers.

A reported kidnapping, then doubts

On the night Levi went missing, Barker called 911 to report her son had been kidnapped from the La. Highway 1 travel trailer park where they lived.

Ellerbe was at home when Barker called her, then hung up. Barker didn't answer several return calls, leaving the grandmother with a feeling that something was wrong with 6-month-old Levi.

She told her husband she was going to go check. As she walked out, Barker called again and told her Levi had been kidnapped.

"There was no way I could tell him," she said about her husband.

Barker was in an ambulance when Ellerbe arrived at the scene, "steady on her phone" and repeatedly screaming that "they" were going to kill Levi, that he was going to die, said Ellerbe.

And Ellerbe said Barker said something else that, looking back, makes her wonder. Barker said nobody had looked "over there," and she pointed in the direction of Breda Avenue, she said.

“Does that haunt me? Yes, ma'am, many nights. If I would have walked over there, could I have saved him? Could I have saved him? I don’t know, but it’ll always go with me.”

Ellerbe says her family soon suspected Barker was involved in Levi's death, but she didn't want to believe it could be possible.

At the hospital after Levi died, Barker's reaction was "flat," she said. Her son wanted Levi to be buried in an Ellerbe family plot in Winn Parish, and Barker said they could do what they wished with their son's body.

He was buried on the day he would have turned 7 months old.

Some people thought Barker wasn't broken enough after losing the boy — one of Ellerbe's daughters overheard someone tell her outside a local store to act like a grieving mother — but Ellerbe said she couldn't suspect the young woman who had been accepted into her family.

"Well, in my heart, she was just grieving," she said. "She didn’t know she was grieving.”

Fire official testifies: Woman burns baby boy to death because mom asked her to, he says

'The day that ripped my family apart': Hanna Barker gets 30 years in 2018 fire death of baby son, Levi Cole Ellerbe

That changed on July 25, a week after Levi's death. Investigators with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal's Office and Natchitoches Parish District Attorney Billy Harrington gathered the family to brief them before the arrests.

Ellerbe was late to arrive because she had been watching her son's three other children, all girls. Her son and husband met her when she arrived, and her son told her Barker was involved.

“And I don’t remember too much after that. I went down, screaming no, no," she said. "I guess that’s when I had to stop and realize, Hanna did it.”

Smith was arrested on July 21, 2018. Barker was arrested four days later.

'She took my son'

Billy Ellerbe Jr. and Barker met and began a relationship while both were going through drug court in Natchitoches Parish, something that went against the rules. Soon, Barker was pregnant.

Ellerbe says Barker became a member of the family, going to ball games and out to eat with them, shopping at Goodwill. Her grandchildren embraced her as an aunt, she said.

But the couple split before Levi was born, and some of Ellerbe's family were suspicious of Barker after her son tested positive for a drug to which she says he is "highly allergic."

Nothing developed beyond those family members' suspicions, though.

Levi was born on Dec. 20, 2017, three weeks after another of Ellerbe's granddaughters was welcomed into the family. She was with Barker when Levi was born and remembers the honor of carrying him from the delivery room to the hospital nursery.

Ellerbe says her husband soon called Levi "Paw-Paw's chunky monkey," and the nickname stuck.

She says he was a happy baby and "very much loved." She thumbed through pictures in a photo album that showed him playing on blankets with his cousin, smiling, and one with him trying to put his foot into his mouth.

"Oh yeah," Ellerbe laughs. "He kept that thing there constantly."

She doesn't update the albums anymore because she "just had to let it go." Barker took Levi from them, she said, but she believes the grief took her husband and threatens to take her son.

"She took my son," said Ellerbe. "My son is ... I love my son with all my heart and soul, but his mind is bad. He's got to get it straight."

Levi's first word was dada, she said.

That torments her son. He's continued to struggle, she said, and he often asks himself if Levi called out for him as Smith poured gasoline on him and set him on fire.

“The main thing that haunts him is Levi said Daddy first," said Ellerbe. "And it haunts the boy, day and night, because he says 'when he was burning was he calling me? I can hear him calling me.' And I know that’s true, probably.

"But, like I told him, we have to live for the living and keep the dead in our hearts. He just can’t get past it.”

She reminds him often of his other children, but thinks he feels responsible in some way for Levi's death.

He couldn't bring himself to present his victim impact statement at the sentencings of Barker and Smith on May 4, 2022. He broke down and walked out, sobbing, as Harrington read it for him.

The sentences for Barker, Smith

Barker is serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of a child younger than 12. She received concurrent sentences of 30 years for manslaughter and 10 years for the conspiracy charge.

She was sentenced after pleading through an Alford plea, which means she maintained her innocence but pleaded guilty because it was in her best interest. She had faced a charge of first-degree murder, in addition to the conspiracy charge.

Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty against her.

Smith reached a plea deal months before Barker, agreeing to testify against her former girlfriend. She was sentenced to 80 years after pleading to the same charges as Barker, as well as a cruelty to juveniles felony.

But, unlike Barker, Smith will serve her sentences back to back to back — 40 years for manslaughter, 30 years for conspiracy and 10 years for cruelty to a juvenile.

Barker's attorney released a statement after both were sentenced that placed all the blame for Levi's death on Smith. It called Levi's death "an absolute tragedy on so many levels," one of which was what Barker had to endure.

Barker agreed to plead guilty because of the resources of the state, the emotions jurors undoubtedly would feel and the risk of spending the rest of her life in prison, it continued. The plea allows her "to get out of jail in a few years while also maintaining her innocence," it reads.

Now 27, she reportedly is serving time at the Louisiana Transition Center for Women, a facility in Tallulah.

Questions for Hanna

Ellerbe doesn't believe Barker is innocent in Levi's death. She said Smith had enough common sense to know killing Levi was wrong, but believes she was taken advantage of by Barker.

"I think that Hanna found somebody and just used her up."

She reiterated what she said at Smith's sentencing, that she forgives her. She says she believes Smith told investigators the truth about the plan to kill Levi and how he died.

She believes Smith was looking for someone to love and care for her, but ended up being a pawn.

"To me, it falls back on Hanna's lap because it's a mother's job to protect their child," said Ellerbe. "You turned your back on your child. There were thousands of different options, thousands."

She really would like to sit down with Barker, something her family doesn't support. But Ellerbe wants answers, even though she knows nothing ever will be enough.

"She can't ever answer why, no matter what," she said. "Nothing will ever be the right answer. Nothing will bring him back, but I guess I need answers.

"I loved the kid," she said of Barker. "I really did."

The family hadn't been aware of Barker's new relationship with Smith, which could have revoked her drug conviction probation and left Levi with his father. The two worked together at IHOP, said Ellerbe.

"Is that why? I don't know. I would love her to tell me."

She said the family learned details of the case during some of the hearings held before 10th Judicial District Court Judge Desiree Duhon Dyess, especially a September 2018 hearing in which Lt. Jeremy Swisher with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal's Office testified extensively.

Despite everything, Ellerbe says she is satisfied with the sentences both women received. She said Harrington and Special Assistant District Attorney Cliff Strider briefed the family on the plea deal and told them they didn't have enough physical evidence to be assured of a conviction against Barker.

Ellerbe said she has nothing bad to say about either man.

"I know in my heart that they did the best that they could," she said. "Both of them wanted it as bad as we wanted it, but the physical evidence just wasn't there."

She knows Barker could have walked free if not for the plea deal.

"I wasn't willing to take that. None of us were," she said. "We weren't willing to take that."

The only thing that bothers her is that Barker is serving sentences for unrelated offenses at the same time. In December 2018, her probation on a 2016 drug conviction was revoked. She was sentenced to five years in prison.

Ellerbe said she wanted to see Barker serve that five years and then start serving her sentence in Levi's death. She knows Barker won't serve the entire 30-year sentence.

Although the criminal case didn't turn out exactly how they wanted, Ellerbe said it's in God's hands in the end.

"I'm a firm believer and, in the end, he'll make the call."

'You find peace, and you lose it'

The years since Levi's death have not been easy. Tensions between Barker's family and hers were "horrible" immediately after he died, she said.

She said the family initially had no idea how far the story of Levi's death had spread. It wasn't until a coworker told her people everywhere were praying for the family that she began searching on YouTube and found videos, some of which she called "horrible."

Her father in Houston told her it was on the news there, as did relatives in Oklahoma and Minnesota. National publications and tabloids in the United Kingdom also picked up the story.

She recalled meeting some of Barker's family at her baby shower and said they were nice. Barker's cousin, in her victim impact statement at Smith's sentencing, said she hoped both sides of Levi's family could heal in time.

Ellerbe said she doesn't know if that's possible. Levi's death has changed who she is. She panics when strangers talk to her grandchildren and automatically wants to rush to a child if an adult raises their voice to them.

"That's not who I want to be," she said. She needs to go outside, take a breath and calm down in those moments.

She does express appreciation for people who helped her and her family through the investigation and court cases.

She's "grateful" to the mother of her son's three daughters for freely sharing them with her. She calls the girls "her reason."

She has "nothing but praise" for Jeff Townson, now a lieutenant with the Natchitoches Police Department, because he constantly checked on the family. She also appreciates Swisher's work, she said.

After Levi's death, Ellerbe started volunteering at Provencal Elementary and Junior High School just to get out of her house. She now employed there and calls her coworkers a second family that stuck with her.

The children are a blessing, too. They love to hug, she said.

"Sometimes, that's all you need, is a hug to make it through the day."

Ellerbe called Alice Hardison, Harrington's victims assistance coordinator, a "saint from heaven."

"I couldn't have made it without her," she said.

But trusting in anyone is almost impossible. She said she's trying to improve, going to church again. She has found solace with another worshipper who has lost children, a woman who has told her that "as long as there's a breath, there's hope," she said.

Ellerbe knows she's not the only one in the world suffering and said she's praying to be better.

Watching her granddaughter, the one born right before Levi, inevitably leads her to wondering what Levi would have been like if he'd lived. She played T-ball this summer, and a boy on her team was named Levi.

That was a "little thorn," she said.

"There's nothing you can do when you lose a little one buy try to go on," she said. "Mourning's not gonna do it. Like I say, I don't understand why. I think that's the main thing. Why? You had other options. You weren't alone."

The family is in the process of building a playground at her church, Old Union Church in Joyce in Winn Parish, to honor both Levi and a woman who taught Sunday school.

Even though the church is in an isolated area, it'll be right outside the back door. And there are security plans for it, too.

"I want it where I can see the kids," she said. "I don't ever want to be where I can't see them."

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: 'Can't ever answer why': Levi Cole Ellerbe's grandmother remembers boy