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A jury convicted Barbara Lee Pasa of first-degree murder and first-degree arson on September 25, 2019, in the propofol death of her husband, Timothy "Tim" Pasa, and the fire at their Centerville, Iowa, home. She is serving life in prison without parole.

Barbara was 47 and Tim was 50. They had been married eighteen years and lived in south-central Iowa with their two teenage children, who are not named here. Barbara was a surgical circulating nurse at the local hospital. One of her duties was removing operating-room nonnarcotic waste bins containing discarded propofol, sterile needles and syringes. Propofol is a surgical anesthetic that is not a controlled substance and is loosely accounted for.

The marriage was failing. In April 2018, Barbara told friends she hated Tim, did not think the marriage would last the summer, and knew how to get rid of somebody if she wanted to, adding that she could have been joking. A week before Tim's death, she told another friend she wanted the marriage to end but could not afford a divorce. The couple was behind on the mortgage. During open enrollment in October 2017, Barbara increased Tim's life insurance from $50,000 to $200,000, effective February 2018, and made herself the beneficiary.

On the morning of May 5, 2018, the couple's children left early for a soccer tournament. Tim did not go because Barbara told them he was ill and sleeping. Around 7:30 a.m., neighbors saw smoke coming from a bedroom window. Centerville firefighters arrived within minutes and found Tim's badly burned body on the right side of the master bed.

Tim had died before the fire began. There was no soot in his airway and only negligible carbon monoxide in his blood. Medical examiner Dr. Dennis Klein determined that the cause of death was acute propofol intoxication and the manner was homicide. Tim's blood contained 0.18 micrograms per milliliter of propofol. Special Agent David Linkletter of the Iowa State Fire Marshal Division concluded that the fire was intentionally set with an open flame on the right side of the mattress, not by the candle Barbara said she had left on the left bedside table.

Barbara told Centerville Assistant Chief Vern Milburn on the day of the fire that she left home around 6:50 a.m. In a law enforcement interview, she said she had left by 7:00 a.m. She texted her daughter at 7:08 a.m. that she would be late to the tournament. A neighbor saw her car at the house at 7:22 a.m., and bank video showed her at an ATM about 7:25 a.m. Between 7:36 and 7:49 a.m., she missed at least five calls from friends and neighbors. She never tried to contact Tim after learning of the fire. When Special Agent Don Schnitker, who had taken her cellphone, confronted her about that in an interview, she offered no explanation. Investigators established her routine access to propofol, needles and syringes, as well as the financial motive. Family members said Tim had told them he believed his wife was poisoning him, but those statements were not put before the jury. In the recorded questioning, investigators lay out the evidence while Barbara denies killing her husband. The date of the interview and the agency conducting it were not established.

Barbara was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree arson in June 2018. Her trial began September 17, 2019, before a jury seated in Monroe County and lasted about a week. Jurors deliberated for roughly three hours before convicting her on both counts. On November 15, 2019, Judge Sean Showers denied her motion for a new trial and sentenced her to life without parole for murder plus twenty-five years for arson. On May 26, 2021, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed both convictions. It remanded the case for an order eliminating the mandatory minimum requiring her to serve 70 percent of the arson sentence before parole eligibility because that law took effect after the offense, and preserved her ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims for postconviction relief.

The video is a police interview-room recording that runs about 43 minutes. It presents the interview itself and opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved.