Laurel Noir is a series focused on historic crimes and the darker underside of our hometown.
Every so often—and especially in a small town like Laurel—someone mentions a name from the past that rings a bell. Maybe it’s someone you vaguely knew, or hadn’t thought about in ages. A few weeks ago, I saw the name “Phillip Clements” in the Washington Post, and had a flashback.
That name had also rang a bell way back in January 1989, when I was in my junior year at Meade Senior High. Friends had asked if I’d heard about Clements in the news. He was a former classmate who’d recently dropped out of Laurel High. When we were both freshmen at Laurel, I had several classes with him. In fact, he’d been assigned the seat beside me in Mr. Flynn’s geography class one semester. While I can’t say that we were friends, I remembered Clements being a friendly enough guy, and certainly not someone capable of doing what they said he’d done that day 35 years ago. And what they said he’d done was as horrific as anything you could imagine—he’d murdered three people and seriously injured two others in Laurel, bludgeoning an entire family with a barbell in order to steal $300 to feed a crack cocaine habit.
It happened in apartment 813, a ground floor unit at 13903 Briarwood Drive in the Fox Rest complex. The apartment was the bustling home of Kathryn Gatlin, a 64-year-old grandmother. Two of her six adult children— 45-year-old John Barowski and Nancy Barowski, 41, also resided there, along with Nancy’s 14-year-old son, Donald Hughes. Neighbors said there was always a steady stream of friends and family coming and going from the Gatlin home. One of them, occasionally, was Clements himself. He had actually even lived with them from time to time while previously dating Gatlin’s granddaughter, Angie.
Nancy was living with her mother temporarily while she raised her young son, and John was developmentally disabled. He had a custodial job at the nearby 7-Eleven. By all accounts, Kathryn Gatlin was the type of person who “wouldn’t hesitate to take somebody in,” according to The Washington Post. Which is what she did when Clements was having trouble at home with his own family—an increasingly common occurence as his drug addiction grew. At 13, Clements had gone to live with his father, who was “largely absent” according to defense attorney Chandler Towns. He was already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, and by the time he’d dropped out of school in 10th grade, the 17-year-old was addicted to crack cocaine.
Clements had spent Friday night, January 20, 1989 getting high on crack, PCP, and other illicit drugs. That Saturday morning, January 21st, he went to the Gatlin apartment hoping to get money for more drugs, one way or another. Police reports stated that he knew there would be cash on hand because the family typically did their grocery shopping over the weekend. Gatlin was home that morning, along with John, Nancy, Donald, and another of Gatlin’s daughters, 36-year-old Toni Adams. Clements, allegedly still intoxicated from the previous night, initially asked Gatlin for money before there were any signs of violence. She made breakfast for Clements, but refused to give him any money.
Clements soon followed Mrs. Gatlin to the back room, where, moments later, Adams heard her mother crying out, “Somebody help me.” Adams then witnessed a horrific scene—Clements had begun bludgeoning everyone, savagely beating the family members in the head with a heavy barbell pole. Only Adams and her nephew survived, despite both being critically injured in the attack. The young boy would later describe in court how he’d been playing a video game when he too heard screams. Moments later, Clements was upon him. “He moved my hands out of the way so he could beat me some more.”
Chillingly, Clements never said a word over the course of the vicious attack. With the entire family incapacitated, he proceeded to steal cash from Gatlin’s bedroom and from the women’s purses before fleeing in Adams’ car. He then drove to purchase the crack cocaine.
Less than three hours later, Clements would be arrested at his father’s house on Holly Street in the Oakcrest neighborhood—a house that no longer stands. The reality of what he’d done had apparently begun to set in, and Clements himself called Prince George’s County Police. A recorded conversation with the dispatcher reveals that Clements thought he had “killed five people.” On the tape, he can be heard admitting that he was addicted to crack and was considering killing himself. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I just did it. I just killed them.”
Police responding to the Fox Rest apartment had to break the door down to enter the crime scene. There they discovered the bodies of John and Nancy, already dead. Mrs. Gatlin was still alive, but succumbed to her injuries nearly two weeks later. Toni and Donald were transported to Prince George’s Hospital Center where they faced a long, difficult recovery.
Clements, charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, opted to be tried by a judge rather than a jury. After a three-day trial, it took judge Robert Woods all of 15 minutes to find him guilty. Woods, almost at a loss for words, spoke to Clements. “As I was going over the testimony and through the evidence in trying to reach a decision, I wanted to be able to say something. But the enormity of the crimes themselves silences me. The only thing I can say is if there ever was an example of what drugs can do to the youth of our country—or to anyone—this is an example.” On September 11th, Clements was sentenced to the maximum five consecutive life terms in prison.
Three Decades Later, Early Release Looms
In 2019, Clements had his sentence reduced to 65 years after the Supreme Court ruled that his original punishment of life for crimes committed as a juvenile was illegal. In 2023, the now 52-year-old Clements requested a hearing for reconsideration of that sentence, as well, in hopes of achieving an even earlier release. Both his public defender and prosecutors supported resentencing him to time served with supervised probation, based on good behavior and his age at the time of the murders. Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Cathy Serrette wasn’t willing to go quite that far, and instead ordered his sentence reduced to 55 years.
Based on Maryland law, Clements, who has now served 35 years in prison, could actually be released by 2029 with continued good behavior. Family members of the victims were understandably upset at the prospect of Clements ever walking free again. Donald Hughes was among those present at the hearing, and recalled the horrific attack he experienced as a child from someone he’d once considered a friend. “This guy had no mercy on me or my family after we had mercy on him.”
Clements has been sober for more than two decades, has had no violent infractions, and received his high school diploma—all of which likely seemed impossible to him while he was growing up in Laurel. He has been seen by a clinical psychologist who deemed him a low risk to public safety.
A joint recommendation from prosecutors and defense counsel to have Clements be released to a notable reentry program in North Carolina—one which would have helped him secure employment and have access to long-term support—was denied by North Carolina officials, who refused to accept Clements on probation because he has no family members in that state. An alternative supervised reentry plan offered in Maryland, which includes mental health and substance abuse treatment services, will instead be a requirement for at least a year upon his release.
In addition to supervised probation for five years, Clements will not be allowed to have any contact with the victims’ family. He’ll also have to pay nearly $15,000 in restitution—for the three funerals, gravestones, and burial sites of the victims. Any violation of those terms, or any new crimes he may commit, could instantly reinstate the life portion of his original sentence.
Clements had written to Judge Serrette, noting that he has taken advantage of every program to improve himself available while he’s been in prison. “My biggest fear is that I get out much older and everyone has passed away,” he wrote. Of the family he once had, only his mother is still alive. Saying “It’s a very daunting reality,” he wrote that she is “all I have left in this world.”
At his resentencing hearing last November, Clements turned to face the victims’ family in court—family members whose emotional and psychological pain is still fresh today. Victims whose bodies still bear the scars from the vicious barbell attack. They undoubtedly still see in Clements the 17-year-old who so profoundly altered their lives—the boy responsible for the closed-casket funerals of three of their innocent loved ones. They remain united in protesting any early release. Mrs. Gatlin’s granddaughter whom Clements had dated was there, too. She asked the judge to keep the man who “destroyed” her family from ever being released. “We’re not the same group of people and we never will be,” she said.
Looking at them, Clements apologized and said, “No words can atone for what happened.” He spoke of the guilt and shame he lives with, but insisted that he has found worth in his life throughout his time in prison, vowing to never stop “trying for redemption.”
Preparing to write this column, I briefly considered writing to or visiting Phillip Clements in person at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown. Not that he would even remember me, I would be interested to interview him and hear his perspective. I thought better of it after reading the words he closed with in his apology to the family that day. “Hopefully after today you’ll never see me or hear my name again.”
Richard Friend is a founding member of The Laurel History Boys, and creator of LostLaurel.com.