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Season Five, Don't Hike Alone, Part One: Before the Murders
424 Plays5 months ago
In today’s episode, we are starting a deep dive into and about a notorious serial killer with a stutter from the late 1970s.
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Transcript
Content Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This podcast may contain disturbing content for some listeners. It's intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Revisiting a True Crime Case 25 Years Later
00:00:39
Speaker
Well, I thought, and so I'm starting off with some true crime news and I realized I'm starting to feel kind of old because I've been looking at this case for a while and it sort of clicked for me that 25 years had passed. And that was very strange. But this is a case, in in all seriousness, where I remember it from is the FBI dot.gov web page, because it had a like a blazing banner. Two people were, I think, they two different ah banners at one point. And I always wondered about this case. And there was this period of time where the obvious answer
00:01:19
Speaker
was like someone in the family did it or a couple of suspects. But there's some resolution coming, it appears. It's unfortunately not good news.
The Disappearance of Natasha and Susan Carter
00:01:30
Speaker
And I figured what I would do is I would start off with kind of the Charlie Project description of this. It's a couple of missing people from August of 2000. Now, this is out of Beckley, West Virginia. Do you remember this case like over time? I don't think I do, honestly. ah This is just from a time period where any time kids went missing in kind of that southern Appalachian region down there, like the short family murders pop into my head. There there are multiple missing kids and and murdered kids. that like I followed their cases very carefully. ah This is one of the the last ones in that area where I i was um ah digging through like every piece of information I could find about it at one point.
00:02:20
Speaker
It's not exactly the ending that I expected, but I guess it's the ending that I knew was was possible. These these missing person cases where it's like multiple people, always confused because someone had to know like what happened and usually I don't think of it as being one person. I certainly don't think of it the way this seems to be turning out. But this case is, i to start off with, this is about a kid, and I know we don't do a lot of those and her mom, but ah she was 10 years old when this happened. Her name is Natasha Alexandra Augusta Carter. Now, if you saw it on the FBI page, it would have said Alex Carter, and Alex would have been in parentheses. It might have had her first name on there when it came out, but it said Natasha Alex Carter. Natasha and her mother, Susan Gale Carter,
00:03:10
Speaker
They were last seen in Beckley, West Virginia on August 8th of 2000.
Custody Battle and Initial Investigations
00:03:16
Speaker
The belief had initially been by the local police that Susan Gail Carter had abducted Natasha because she was in a custody battle with Ricky Lafferty. Ricky Lafferty was Alex Carter's dad. And it had gone to the point that like they were clearly going to have to have a judge meet out what was happening between them. Now, Natasha's paternal grandmother. So Ricky Lafferty's mom said that Alex was afraid of her mom and she didn't want to live with her. And, you know, that gets that way with grandparents. um I've been through one of those situations in terms of like custody, getting contentious.
00:04:04
Speaker
um People say things that may or may not be true and it really does take You know mediators and it takes lawyers and a lot of times family services or family court to work that out but by the time of Alex's disappearance, I guess I should just use one name for Charlie project hazardous Natasha if you pull that out But Alex is what she went by at the time of Alex's disappearance. She had not seen her father in months. They had gone to a court ordered mediation meeting and Susan told Ricky that she was going to take Alex and Ricky was never going to see her again. When the next hearing rolled around in their case, Susan did not show up. So Ricky Lafferty was granted sole custody, but by then Alex was gone.
00:05:04
Speaker
So on November 13th of 2000, a felony warrant for kidnapping and parental abduction was issued for Susan Carter. If you pull her up or have pulled her up in the last couple of years, that case has still been classified, Alex's case has been classified as a family abduction. And if you, I think it was on Nick make it said, that the belief was by authorities was that the mother and an adult male had taken Alex and the adult male was unknown and they had left the state. I'm sure they use lots of words like may have and possibly
00:05:53
Speaker
Well, and that's um interesting because, yes, i I actually do remember this case. And the reason I don't know too much about it is because I skipped over a lot of the child abduction cases. They get put in a pile. And I will say that it there is a ah high likelihood in cases like you just described that that is the case, right? And so here's the exception proving the rule, sort of. Yeah, ah you and I ah have over the years, we've talked about a lot of cases and even here for the audience, we've talked about cases where we wonder a little bit, but realistically, like we come to some conclusions where like car full of people is probably somewhere in a pond or that person left the country, that person left the state and time and time again,
00:06:48
Speaker
We do see cases where situations arise. um There was a case that resolved last year. They didn't want to go public with anything. But the bottom line was a missing girl and her mom were not missing. They had left a situation that was problematic for them. And at the end of the day, authorities did not charge in that case. But year before, there was a case where a mom did get charged for doing that. So it happens, um particularly when there's international origins for parents, like if one parent lives in one country and another lives in another country, um frequently I think to myself that like more than likely where that child is that they are still quote, missing is the other country with the family of origin for that parent.
Breakthrough in 2023 and Confession
00:07:38
Speaker
ah Turns out though, that's not what happened here. Literally 22 years went by, there was no sign
00:07:48
Speaker
of Susan Carter and no sign of Alex. Authorities did begin to look into the possibility of foul play in this disappearance. At the time that Alex and Susan went missing, they had been living with a guy named Larry Dell Webb, and this was in the 100 block of Kyle Lane in West Virginia. So in August of 2023, the FBI gets involved and searches Larry Dale Webb's house, looking for evidence that Alex or Susan might still be there or something might've happened to them there. At this point in time, Larry Dale Webb is old. He is under the 80s. The caregiver and Larry himself ah state that he suffers from dementia and memory loss. And he even tells reporters who come to the property in August of 2023
00:08:47
Speaker
that he has no idea why they're there. He said that Alex's name sounded familiar and that he thought once upon a time he and Susan had been married. And his, his statement for a long time was that he had been away on a trip when they disappeared. During this search, the FBI finds a bullet in the wall of the bedroom. Now, That information comes from someone who's a living in caretaker for Larry Del Webb. I don't know when it might've been, I don't know if it's been confirmed by law enforcement, but allegedly Alex's DNA is on this bullet that's found in the wall of the bedroom. I believe it was confirmed in that he was ah indicted for it. Yeah, he does he does end up being charged in October of 2023 with first degree murder and Alex's death.
00:09:47
Speaker
He was not charged in with anything related to Susan at the time. And according to Charlie Project, it says that Webb is awaiting trial and both females remain missing. That has now resolved. And here's what we have. This comes out of WSAZ. I think I also sent you a couple of links maybe ah to... WCBS TV CH s TV comm Alyssa Hannah's Kim Rafferty they had it um they They were writing on one of these articles and then another one was written by Shannon Stowers and Anna Saunders This is a huge deal. Don't you think? Yeah, thank you. Okay, so What happened was that they they end up confirming?
00:10:37
Speaker
that indeed there was a bullet, it comes out at a press conference, and that bullet did have the DNA of Alex Carter on it. So state troopers in West Virginia say that around 4.30 p.m. on Monday, April 22nd of 2024, they did a search of the 100 block of Kyle Lane in Beckley, West Virginia, again, and they found remains that they believe to be those of Susan Carter and Alex Carter. On Tuesday, April 23rd, the West Virginia State Police held a press conference and they report that Larry Webb had confessed to killing Susan and Alex and burying the bodies in their backyard. Now, because of kind of like the breakdown in time here,
00:11:36
Speaker
They actually stated that they had information they were working with as of 2022 that gave them a search warrant for the residents, but they had to do some more work. Members of the FBI's ERT evidence recovery team and the West Virginia State Police Crime Scene Investigative Unit, or CSI, they brought the search warrant in and they did a search of the house and that's when they recovered the bullet. Once they had found that bullet, sent it to the FBI lab, there were DNA tests ah done on blood that was found on the bullet and that blood belonged to Alex. So then they indicted him, but he doesn't get taken into custody until April of 2024. So state police said that the FBI and local law enforcement go went in to talk to him.
00:12:30
Speaker
And they got Larry Webb to confess to the murder of Alex and Susan Carter. He detailed how and why he murdered Alex and Susan. And that was the first week of April, 2024. So the prosecutor come came out for this and said that ah Larry Webb confessed that he had shot Susan during an argument over some cash that he had inside the house that he believed that Susan had spent. And he told the investigators that he knew that shooting Susan would ruin his life forever. So he talked himself into believing that he needed to shoot Alex in order to get away with killing Susan. So he wrapped their bodies in bed linings and he placed them on the floor in the basement of his home and
00:13:29
Speaker
he went out back and dug a pretty shallow grave in the wooded area behind his backyard.
Community Impact and Reflection
00:13:36
Speaker
And it took the teams that were there serving this warrant three days to find the bodies. They had help from someone who lived on um the same street as Larry Webb. Unfortunately,
00:13:57
Speaker
Investigators say that around 10.30 AM, the day before the search, ah Larry Webb, who had finally been taken into custody, he had been at Mount Olive Correctional Complex. um He suffered a medical episode, and he was pronounced dead at Montgomery General Hospital. So that's- He literally died right when they were found. That's what I was about to say. He died sorry the same- Sorry. No, that's fine. This is a deathbed confession. Yeah. um yeah this is This is a wild deathbed confession. and you know Guy was an asshole. yeah it Yeah. That's the other thing about this. so With Larry Del Webb, it seems like this is just a straight up anger killing. Yeah. He was just mad. She took money. It was a classic motive.
00:14:54
Speaker
yeah Granted, the killing of the child, that's a lot, right? um Not to mention it lining up so well with ah the, you know, kidnapping arrest warrants and everything. Yeah. That's really unfortunate. It's unfortunate for Alex and it's unfortunate for her mother, right? Susan ah got drug basically through the mud for 20 years, a long time, right? Yeah. And she hadn't... Well, I don't know if she took the money or not, but even if she took thousands of dollars from this man, it doesn't justify him shooting her and then shooting ah the 10-year-old, right? and um But because of the circumstances that she was in, there was a lot against her indicating she more than likely kidnapped this child.
00:15:46
Speaker
and left. right Now granted, I don't see a whole lot of information on how that would have really worked out. right She was living with you know Larry Webb. like where How did she support herself? right yeah But regardless, at least he confessed. um It's amazing to me how he had dementia but gave like a very thorough confession at the end right before he died. yeah um that always amazes me. Yeah, i it's very interesting. There's a lot to read out there about this case if you go back in time, although I think it's going to be kind of stuffed full through the summer. At one point in time, there was ah a really good law and crime article. It's about a year old now, so I think it's still out there. Ricky Lafferty, I feel so bad for him. He had custody of his kid, and and then his kid was just gone.
00:16:46
Speaker
And it's interesting because it's you know not it's not Susan Carter's fault. And that kind of sticks with me that he's had these kidnapping warrants sitting there all this time. And now, you know, everything very unceremoniously is is just over. Right. And I'm sure that's tough because, of course, her father believed that ah Susan had left with her, right? I mean, she said she was going to. she she made
00:17:18
Speaker
what I feel like are probably empty threats of you're never going to see your child again, but then it panned out, right? And you know, that's why it is an unfortunate situation um to find out much, much later that the reason he was granted custody because she didn't show up for the hearing is because she was dead. right? She'd been murdered and buried in the back of the guy's house that she was living with. I don't know. um You said that he had been on a trip or whatever, so he had an ah alibi. And I'm sure that there was no outward motive, right? Because of what he was saying ah was true that she supposedly had stolen cash from him that he had
Re-evaluation of Susan Carter's Case
00:18:00
Speaker
in his house. Like maybe nobody knew about that, right?
00:18:04
Speaker
And so it wouldn't look on the surface like he would have any reason to kill her, right? They weren't married. He could just ask them to leave, right? As it plays out, he did confess. So, you know, I don't know. I find it really interesting that I personally don't believe that like you should unburden your soul right before you die. I feel like you should live a life that doesn't need to be unburdened, but it almost sounds like in this case, that's what he was doing.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, i I think that's exactly what he was doing. I think he was unburdening his soul because he just knew that he had been... ah he was ah He was caught, basically. For all intents and purposes, he was caught. This part was sort of over. Right, and this illustration here, though so while, you know, killing Susan because he was angry at her for purportedly stealing money or for any other reason that would be like sort of a heat of passion type of murder, you know, that is, ah it's like a second degree murder, right? Yeah. But his intentional killing of Alex
00:19:15
Speaker
to ah in a self-preservation type move, right? yeah um That's first degree all the way, right? That makes him a cold-blooded killer. yeah And there's no getting around that. It is very sad to me that he saw murdering a 10-year-old little girl because he had murdered his her mother as just a collateral type thing, right? and Oh, well, you know, I got to kill her too, I guess. And, you know, again, the guy is an asshole. I don't feel like he's going to have a bunch of other victims. I don't feel like it's going to be anything like that. um He was just not a nice person. And unfortunately, she ended up with not a nice person who killed her, um talking about Susan. I am sure that Alex's father has a lot to ponder on now.
00:20:10
Speaker
yeah And I don't know if he ever suspected this. It sounds like, just like me, he had pretty much decided that somehow or another, she had managed to get away and keep her word that he would never see her again. I feel like those threats were completely empty. I don't think that she had any way of actually doing that, even if she wanted to. And that's kind of demonstrated now with you know the fact that the guy she was staying with killed her. Yeah, it's life has not been all that easy for Larry Webb either. Have you read anything about him? No, not really. um I don't remember him really coming up in the missing persons case. like I don't feel like they were ever super suspicious of him.
00:20:57
Speaker
No, he was he was basically pointing away from. I feel like the kidnapping was the center of it. And so basically you've got Susan Carter as a fugitive, right? Yeah. And that was not the case. She was a murder victim. And I'm guilty of, you know, making this presumption just like anybody else. Like, she took her kid. um Those are the types of cases where I'm like, well, she may have had a good reason to take her kid, right? um I don't know, but I do kind of have a tendency to discard them. Now I'm rethinking that. But I will say I've had a lot of kids that disappeared show up after they come of age exactly where I thought they would be, right?
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I mean, i I, I have found grownups that didn't want to be, you know, and I look, I look at different stories along the way. And it's always like, you and I are very careful with how we highlight certain things. We try to be never moments, but yeah. Yeah, so I was, um, you know, I was looking at this one today is our true crime news. And I just I'll tell you what, Susan Carter really got raked over the coals online for a long time. So it's interesting to me now that this is sort of the way that it all wraps up, for lack of a better word. um well And, you know, part of me wants to be like, well, that's why you don't need to be in a contentious custody battle, right? Because that way something happens, you know, they go, wait, she would never do something like that, right?
00:22:38
Speaker
You can't really live your life that way. But I'm just saying like that would have been a better set of circumstances for her. It's entirely possible this might have happened no matter what her side of the custody battle was like, right? Yeah, I mean, this has nothing to do with the custody battle. Ultimately, the custody battle inadvertently helped cover up the murders. It did. And so without that custody battle, it would have been looked into more seriously. I think so. Because you've got a situation where a 10 year old and her mother just disappear. And so if everything was all good, right? Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
they would have said, well, why did this happen? And instead, everything wasn't all good. And they said, oh, she took her just like she said she was going to, right? Except to me, now that I see it, like, I mean, how did she take her? Well, you never know what an an adult is doing and the reasoning behind it and all the other different stuff. I know that I want to stay out of that kind of thing, right? the domestic part yeah of this type of thing. Now, this is not that, right? This is, I mean, yes, they did live together, but this man killed the lady he was living with and her daughter and got away with it until he died.
00:24:06
Speaker
The only redeeming factor in that situation is he actually gave the information to law enforcement who said, I quote, it was a detailed, undeniable, unconflicted confession. And that's a quote from, I believe, an FBI agent whose last name is Hatfield. And I feel like that's a very strong statement under the circumstances that he had dementia. yeah But regardless, they found their bodies. And anytime ah um a perpetrator or a suspect leads authorities to missing people's or other types of victims' bodies, you know that what they're saying is legit. That was actually the Raleigh County prosecutor saying that. um And it just happened to time out that right when they found them, he was at the medical center dying. Yeah. Well, I, um,
00:25:07
Speaker
um I'm glad that they ah appear to have found their remains. I know that's not an official, like as we're as you're saying this today, there's not an official identification, but ah I don't- I hope it's not another mother and 10-year-old. Right, right. i think I think the tentative identification here is that you know you've got these two. And um i I feel so terrible for the families involved here. And I hope that hope that everyone is able to find some closure from this. Yeah, and it's gonna it's a lot different closure than what they were expecting. that You never know. It might have been the way that Alex's dad was able to cope. I mean, if he had known the whole time she was dead, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, though, that's a very different ending, right? It is. I hesitate to use this word, but this murder is very run of the mill.
00:26:03
Speaker
This is very ordinary. I'm the kid, though. No, I'm saying like these these you've got this couple fighting. Yeah, yeah this is a domestic incident. For some reason, his his anger, his rage took over. He shoots Mom. And then it takes a turn out of the not so ordinary when he kills Alex. Well, and that's what it makes us your sinister. Yeah. Because like, while you should have the self control to not shoot your, I don't know if she was his roommate or partner or what, but you shouldn't shoot them. Even if you are really, really mad at them, even if they stole a whole bunch of money from you, like that's not the remedy there. However, it happens, right?
00:26:50
Speaker
Well, she was in line to be, they'd either been married or were getting married when this all happened. So she was his girlfriend or fiance or whatever. And I'm saying that in situations like that, that is actually the person that's most likely to shoot and kill you because they have, I mean, if it's going to happen, right? it's going to be somebody close to you because you share so many things that are passion filled, right? you And cause these extreme type of emotions. And so, you know, in the event he had called the police and said, we got in an argument and I shot her, you know, he would have done 15 years for second degree murder, yeah or maybe manslaughter. I don't know. He had a gun, he shot her, right? Yeah. um
00:27:38
Speaker
And that is a very, like you said, run-of-the-mill type of murder. ah Shooting the 10-year-old daughter is first-degree cold-blooded murder that makes him need to go, you know, get the death penalty or go to life ah without parole. Correct. So that there's the difference, right? Yeah, that is definitely the difference. I don't have a lot more on this case. I'm just, I'm glad that it's wrapping up. It's one of those that's bothered me for a long time and I'm you know, I saw that I saw they took him into custody. Like it was, it was literally one line Larry Webb taken into custody and I knew they had tied him to it, you know, over a year, a year or two ago, but I didn't know that like it was kind of just suddenly just be done and
00:28:24
Speaker
he was gonna die and they would have found the remains that he died. That was a lot in that case. You hadn't have written that, like you really couldn't have because um it was, that is the most, most deathbed confession I think I've ever heard personally about. yeah Like it was that close. And I'm so glad that whatever prompted him to do it, ah he did it because I don't know how it would have panned out otherwise, right? Maybe they would have went ahead and searched. Maybe there was too much. It sounds to me like they already searched quite a bit and it's odd they didn't find them, but also the details that they were given.
00:29:05
Speaker
were helpful. And so, you know, I don't know. I feel like the a mom and daughter being missing and then having a nugget of information that there was a bullet in this dude's house where they were living before they went missing and that bullet has the little girl's DNA on it. Yeah. um Maybe that would have given the push that was necessary for them to be like, oh, wish she didn't kidnap her daughter. This is something we've actually got to look into. But, you know, from the jump, the non Well, she wasn't a non-custodial parent when she left. She became the non-custodial parent when she didn't show up for the hearing where he got custody, right? Correct. And at that point in time, they were dead, right? Correct. And so that is a non-custodial parent um situation where there's no indication that anybody's really in danger. That is not high on law enforcement's priority list.
00:30:02
Speaker
No, unfortunately it is not.
Transition to Serial Killer Case
00:30:04
Speaker
So I do, if you saw the title of the episode today, ah we do have a serial killer to talk about. I hate to switch out of the closure of this case into that, but it sort of is what it is. I will say we had talked recently about Lamont McIntyre and his POTUS stations this whole time that like he was innocent. And it's interesting that Larry Webb, proclaimed for a period of time that either he was innocent or had nothing to do with it. But what he really did was he misdirected. Like they just left. I don't know what happened. And I feel like he didn't do much of anything at all. Yeah. He just moved on with his life, apparently. And nobody thought the wiser. Yeah. so night Nobody thought that he left with them.
00:30:55
Speaker
I don't know. ah It has to be based on the story he told. I've read some of the things he said, and it wasn't that he was believable. It was actually that, okay, like they got into this relationship. relationship you know She was still dealing with the last relationship, but now she's gone onto the new relationship. It just sort of sound a little plausible, so why not go with it? Plus she made the comments independently ah that you know you'll never see your daughter again and that kind of stuff to the ex. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that situation definitely led to all of that. I think that it's way worse for somebody to be in jail than to have been free. An innocent person to be in jail than a perpetrator to be free, I think it's much worse. I mean, I still think that the owner needs to go to jail. but I was more coming from it from the perspective of the mindset. like i don't I don't always understand. There's a level of red-handedness. Do you know what I mean by red-handedness?
00:31:55
Speaker
caught red handed. Yeah. Yeah. And when I think of that, um, when someone is caught red handed, Larry Webb was not caught red handed, but the next guy kind of is, um, when you're caught red handed and you just continue to say, I did not do this, I've always thought in my mind, there's a point in there where you just give up. Like you just like, I don't know. Well, Clearly, that's why we're talking about this case. When I first got this case and started reading about it, it's been a number of years ago, and some of the sources here are really old, some of them are more recent.
David Carpenter: Early Life and Crimes
00:32:36
Speaker
Robert Graysmith wrote one of the sources. He's the guy who wrote Zodiac. I've actually briefly mentioned that we might come around to this killer at some point, like way back when, ah because these type killers fascinate me.
00:32:51
Speaker
now Some of the other sources you can find, there are, ah I guess that's HBO Max, or now it's just called Max. They have a couple of documentary episodes on there, and they include um they actually include a couple of podcasters in there. It's pretty cool. The Very Scary People has a an episode or two of those. And our other sources are sort of the San Francisco Examiner, old UPI articles, And we have one of those Radford profiles for this one. I thought I would start with talking about this guy briefly and then kind of jump right into the profile so we can talk about what he what he did and what he didn't do. Now it's interesting because at some point recently it was revealed that
00:33:41
Speaker
ah One of the victims involved in here, and I say recently, but that's sort of a relative term. These are old crimes. these are from um The crimes that we're going to be talking about sort of culminate in May of 1981 and that sort of the end of it. ah There is more to the story, but but everything kind of happens before then. But in 2019, there were multiple articles put out. I think People Magazine had one, Elle had one, ah sort of saying that this guy had an early victim who survived. And that victim, her daughter is famous. And I thought that was interesting. So he's gotten a little bit of coverage. um He doesn't have a real Wikipedia entry, I don't think, or he didn't as of us talking about this, there's not much to it. ah But there is there is a lot of written media that you can go check out. and This guy is born in May of 1930, and ah May 6th specifically.
00:34:41
Speaker
he' So he's a native of San Francisco, California. And by all accounts that I've come across, he was abused at home. um His dad was ah seven levels of of alcoholic and physically abusive and ah his mother was domineering. He had a persistent bedwetting problem when he was a kid, which is always interesting to me because we come back to this Triad of things he had been cruel to animals According to multiple sources, but one of the more interesting things about him is that from a very early age?
00:35:24
Speaker
He is Accused of sex crimes by family members and others and and I say that because It starts when he's 13 years old. Now, it's interesting when someone is 13 years old, it doesn't matter what state you're in or what jurisdiction you're in. um If you're going back 30 years, 40 years to try and find information, all those records are likely destroyed, not just sealed. um They're likely destroyed, particularly if you're looking for something that is medical. So by the time this guy was 14 years old, he had been
00:36:04
Speaker
Committed which is slightly different than Convective, right? Yeah, so it's not convicted He's committed because ah the family courts at the time, you know dealing with juveniles They didn't really they didn't really know what to do with somebody like this kid um and that is disturbing but ah By all accounts, of what's in this profile is mostly accurate. We're going to start with it and we're going to talk about this guy because ah there are aspects of him that seem completely normal. And then there's a couple of things that just never quite fit. His his name is David Joseph Carpenter. ah He was specifically born in San Francisco to Elwood and Francis Carpenter. That's his his mom and his dad. His dad is his mom. He had a stutter.
00:36:53
Speaker
And in school, he was teased because of this severe stutter that he had developed and the way he dressed. His mom made him do things like ballet lessons and violin lessons, and she dressed them up kind of fancy. He was always wearing like a little suit. In addition to his father being abusive and alcoholic, his mother was also abusive. And there are reports. This is the one thing, one of the few things I could not verify easily. There are reports that
00:37:23
Speaker
She was the one who beat him more than his father. So he's born in 1930. By 1944, he's already been committed to Napa State Hospital. This is for sex offenses. He gets out. And in 1947, when he's 17 years old, he is arrested for molesting two of his cousins. um One of them is eight and the other is three. We have no information about what the sex offenses in 1944 were. Correct. And we don't actually have details on the Mueller station. Overall, um we just have that he is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to the California Youth of Authority. ah But he had gotten out and was in the world again by 1955. And in November of 1955, when he was 25 years old, he married a woman named Ellen. She was only 19. There were six years difference.
00:38:23
Speaker
but In 1956, in September, their first child was born. And in 1958, their second child was born in July. They have a third child child in June of 1960. And there are reports at this time that David was demanding sex with his wife in a pretty voracious manner, like three or four times a night. In 1960, we have the first incident that's not really like kind of sealed up as a, either from the perspective of being a juvenile record or the perspective of like, it's part of a hospital record. And
00:39:17
Speaker
Okay, we probably need to check around that time too. 1959 and 1960, I'm making a note here. Well, a couple of things about that though. Like it happens, right? And he gets caught. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. And he like also immediately goes away for it. So it seems like if something else had happened, he would have been caught for that. yeah But or maybe. we're We're pretty sure this is his first attack. He's 30 years old when it happens. He is involved in an attack on Lois DeAndre.
Violent Attacks and Legal Consequences
00:39:53
Speaker
And Lois is Lisa Renner's mom. And Lisa Renner is an actress from Desperate Housewives. Wow.
00:40:06
Speaker
Melrose plays, yes, thank you. um So this attack is a weird one. And they have a really good accounting of this in very scary people, if you want to see like a pretty cool reenactment that is just disturbing. It's one of the strangest things I've seen in terms of how to get caught during a sexual assault. The idea is he knew Lois. They're taking a drive and they find themselves on ah a military base near their home. Right. um He goes to pick her up. um Well, he goes he's out driving and he sees her and he tells her that they're going to go see the new baby. Right. If she will get in the vehicle with him and she doesn't really want to because she's on her way to work. But he says that they'll stop by and see the new baby and his wife and then he'll take her to work. And she reluctantly agrees. But she's in the vehicle willingly.
00:41:05
Speaker
Correct. It's my point. yeah Until she's not. Until she's not, right. But she thinks that he's going to give her a ride. She's going to do like ah a you know the common courtesy of going by to see his wife that has just had this baby, right? Right. He's not taking her to see the baby. um He pulls off into a remote area and he attacks her.
00:41:32
Speaker
According to some reports, and this is like something I'm not gonna get super deep into, he loses his stutter when he is attacking her. Now, this assault, he brings a knife and he has a hammer. And when she rolls out to get out of the car, he has stabbed her in the hand and he begins to chase her and he hits her in the head with a hammer, ah documented at least six times. There's at least six wounds to her head. He so clearly injures her. Yeah, it's it's a very, very severe, um it's ah it's a skull-crushing injury. Now, a military police officer sees some of this happening. He actually saw him driving erratically. Is that what it was? Is it the driving? Again, we're back to can't drive. Because initially he didn't he went to pull the car over and he didn't realize there was an attack happening.
00:42:30
Speaker
Right, but he hears Lois, and when he hears her, he realizes that something that's going on is just trying to intervene in whatever is happening. When Carpenter pulls out this really strange, I don't know if you saw this, it's like a single shot, hidden gun. Like a pen? Did you see this? Well, i've seen I haven't seen the actual thing, but i I saw what they were talking about. So he attempts to shoot the military police officer, a guy named Wayne Hicks, with this silly little weapon, and he misses him.
00:43:07
Speaker
But then Hicks has a big boy gun. I was going to say Hicks didn't the way that that thing fired. He had no idea that it he thought he had been shot at. So he returned fire, right? Yeah, he didn't know what it was. He just heard the sound and he fires and hits David Carpenter twice. He hits him once in the stomach and he hits him once in the leg. right So this is a chaotic situation happening. And if he hadn't been driving erratically, I don't know for certain that the military police officer would have been ah aware to stop the vehicle, right? And so it's kind of a situation where he was at the right place at the right time and taking into account the right kind of stuff, right? Yeah.
00:43:53
Speaker
Yeah, so ah this creates a mess. so And when I say that, it's because this is happening on a military base. This is a kidnapping and an assault. itc It has become an attempted murder at this point. Carpenter is arrested. He's charged with a one count of assault to it ah commit murder. which is, you know, it's the long way. It's AI assault with intent, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. It's inflicting serious injury. It's all of that. Like if you ever see it, it's A-W-D-K-I-I-S-I. So that's what he's charged with. He gets two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and he ends up being sentenced to federal court.
00:44:46
Speaker
So he gets five years on- And that's because he's on a military base. Correct. Yeah, this all goes through the federal courts because he this is a military base and he's shot by an assaulting a military police officer. I feel like he may not have been entirely aware of where he was driving. That doesn't seem like a very secure place to attack someone. No, it it it it wasn't smart. And I think this is one of those things that he that it kind of explains some of his later behaviors Like he does get a little smarter in the crimes that he's committing There's a number of things that happen to him over the next few years that are weird So the first thing is he gets sentenced to five years for two of the charges in four years They give him a total of 14 years in ah The Bureau of Prisons because these offenses are on federal property
00:45:46
Speaker
They diagnose them as having a decently high IQ, 125 or so, but with some kind of personality disorder. They sort of tag him as being potentially antisocial or sociopathic. So this is all in March of 1961.
00:46:04
Speaker
That's a July 1960 attack. He goes to prison pretty quickly, is my point. Yeah, because he was dating her into custody immediately, right? He was shot by the cops. Yeah, he he was taken to the hospital, is what he was taken to. Right, but he was in custody. Within a year, Ellen divorces him. which is ah what should have happened, right? Yes. He's then paroled on the federal charges in 1969. So he does about seven years, give or take, based on not the time from the actual attack, but the time from like sentencing and going through. He gets out, he gets married to a woman named Helen, not Ellen, Helen.
00:46:47
Speaker
That's in August of 1969. He's 39 years old. In January of 1970, David Carpenter goes on the hunt again, and he attacks a woman named Cheryl Lynn Smith. He stabs her, he rips her clothes off, but she manages to get away from him. However, she got his license plate number. The same day, January 27th, 1970, He breaks into a home and they kick he kidnaps a woman who is unnamed because she survives. And he rapes her. Then he steals her car. Two days later, so this is just January 29th, he holds a woman named Sharon O'Donnell at, like he's gonna take her somewhere with a shotgun.
00:47:39
Speaker
He gets out to change the license plates on his car, and she escapes. A couple of days later, in February, on the 3rd, still in 1970, he steals a car from a woman named Lucille Davis.
00:47:57
Speaker
And then, same day after he's stolen his car, he kidnaps and rapes a woman who's unidentified, whose infant child is sitting there, Later on, this woman is going to say that he was nice to the baby. um But he ends up getting arrested the same day. And this is now a mess that is going to be complex to explain. So we're in 1970. This is 10 years after the attack where the military policeman shot him. He's held in jail.
00:48:35
Speaker
And he ends up escaping on April 27th of 1970. He cuts some bars, gets into a back area and goes out through a skylight. He's
Jail Escape and Legal Oversights
00:48:49
Speaker
not out for long. He's recaptured very shortly. On May 1st of 1970, David Carpenter is convicted of armed robbery and he gets a sentence called five years to life. But he's also convicted of kidnapping. And that sentence comes with a one to 25 years. I mean, that conviction comes with a one to 25 year sentence. He's convicted of the auto theft. And they also convict him of the escape. And they give him six months to five years on each count. There's a plea bargain made in one of the other cases. This is the woman with the infant.
00:49:33
Speaker
where he's convicted of kidnapping and robbery, but ultimately all of this is packaged up and they let him serve these sentences all concurrently, but he has to go back and deal with his original sentence from the federal convictions. He still had time left on that because he had violated his parole. Yes. When you're convicted of these other crimes, uh, that is definitely a parole violation. So he stays in prison for a little while this time. Um, he does not really get out until May 21st of 1979. And then it's, he's technically not out.
00:50:24
Speaker
He is just paroled out into a federal halfway house. and I think they said in here that he was at Ready House. I'm not 100% sure of that. but Essentially, he sent back to his community to prepare for reentry. right and um i feel I don't know if you were going to say this or not, but I feel like it's important to point out that because he was in state prison and then sent back to the federal system, they failed to put him on the sex offender registry. Actually, though, he wasn't convicted for anything, was he? That would have been a sex offender registry. Well, the idea was it should have been included with the kidnapping cow um either. So he gets
00:51:07
Speaker
two kidnapping charges with uh the women the woman with a child and the woman whose car he stole he should have whether or not he was convicted of rape in that situation or any kind of sexual assault he still because it was a sexually motivated crime he at least should have gone on the list at that time of sex offenders for the police, and he did not at the state level. Now, sex offenders registries get kind of strange, because over time, they have changed and become more available to the public. But when you're talking about this time period, this would have been 1970.
00:51:48
Speaker
i think that what he really gets left off of is the local police's system for like sharing information between jurisdictions so that they can keep up with sex offenders. That would be an interesting look to go back and see when Like those lists were first, you know what I mean? Kind of a history of there was an off-kilter comment made that at the time there were 50,000 sex offenders in California and David Carpenter was not on the list and he clearly should have been right yeah, what's interesting about California is they have the first sex offender registration program in the US that comes out of a 1947 case it actually comes out of a 1947 action where
00:52:36
Speaker
Sidon Field was so upset about the Black Dahlia case. So he was a state assemblyman for California. He introduced a bill that called for the formation of a sex offender registry. They made it mandatory. And it's been like a long time since like anybody's had to make it mandatory because all the states have happened. So 1947 is where that starts. And it's in California. So they should have known. And like you said, there's 50,000 people on this list. and David Carpenter is not one of them. And he is clearly a violent sexual offender at this point.
Carpenter's Release and Future Concerns
00:53:10
Speaker
Yes, in fact, it's it's unfathomable that he was able to commit this many crimes and still get out of prison. Yeah, he's just paroled right out. he gets He does his nine years and he gets paroled right out. And honestly, that collection of crimes today, I think that person's never going to see the light of day. With that kidnapping and and rape charge where he steals a car at the end of it, that's it.
00:53:32
Speaker
i Yeah, totally, but the reason I think that is is because of guys like this. Yeah Yeah, so Keep in mind at this point. We have no murders yet that we know of Well, I feel like he's doing an awfully good job of getting caught without murdering anybody Yeah, but this does seem to be a turning point for him. So he gets involved in Sierra Club at this point He's out. He's about to get a job. It's gonna be a month or two and his parole officer's gonna wanna know what's going on with him. Very scary people actually has his parole officer on there. he's's He's an interesting guy. He talks about some of the failures in the situation. He is about to move in with his elderly parents. And from everything we can tell, knowing that move is coming up and he's gonna be moving in with these people that abused him, David's gonna have some trouble with that. And what we're gonna see here
00:54:30
Speaker
shortly is David's going to decide he does not want to go back to prison. And there's only one way to do that. Well, he thinks that. Right. Thank you so much for listening today. We'll see you next time.
00:55:14
Speaker
All right, so I'm gonna tell you guys a a few things about some of the folks who are helping sponsor our show. Now, Labrati Creations sponsors our show, and you can always use the the crime excess code there. um You can also just message them at Labrati Creations, and they will generally do something for the people who come from true crime excess. They were our very first sponsor, they've done a lot for the show, and that code is crime excess at labraticreations.com.
00:55:47
Speaker
The first new advertisers that we have, and i've I've selected all of these guys, I've selected all of these advertisers. So the very first one is Cure. Now, I'm gonna tell you guys about this about Cure as being one of our sponsors.
00:56:04
Speaker
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00:56:59
Speaker
Cure hydration is an oral rehydration solution that contains the perfect balance of electrolytes and glucose to help your body absorb water and rehydrate quickly. Whether I'm building things or putting the podcast together or chasing these dogs that you sometimes hear in my studio up and down the trails to get them worn out. Cure hydration is the way that I choose to go. Cure hydration is an oral rehydration solution or an ORS that contains the perfect balance of electrolytes and glucose to help your body absorb water and to rehydrate quickly.
00:57:34
Speaker
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00:58:29
Speaker
Our second sponsor for the show today is Laird. Now, Laird has a list of things that they want me to tell you about. They have better ingredients with amazing taste and functional benefits. They have a superfood creamer crafted from the highest quality, all natural, real food ingredients. All Laird products are sustainably sourced and thoroughly tested to ensure that you're incorporating the cleanest, finest fuel into your routine. They have all natural whole food ingredients, and they contain naturally occurring MCTs made from coconut oil. There's no artificial flavors, there's no colors or additives, and there's no sugar from highly refined corn syrup. They want me to talk about my love of coffee, but the truth is I don't do much with coffee. But let me tell you someone who does. My wife has to have a cup of coffee every day.
00:59:19
Speaker
Now, I've fallen off recently, but one of the big things that I've done since the beginning of our relationship is she used to go and get a Starbucks every morning. I have substituted that out by always trying to make her coffee. It's not going to be every single day of time from when I met her, but for the most part, almost every day, I make her coffee. I put her creamers together and I make sure that she has a good way to start her day. So with Laird, he started experimenting with his morning ritual almost two decades ago. He found that when he started adding fats to his morning cup, like coconut oil, he had amazing energy throughout the rest of his day. He gradually perfected this recipe for an epic cup of fuel. And he began sharing it with his friends in the surf community. I'm an ocean guy, so I saw this item and I was like, okay, we're gonna try this one out.
01:00:16
Speaker
Are you ready to feel more energized? more focused and supported. Go to layeredsuperfood.com and add nourishing plant-based foods to fuel you from sunrise to sunset. And you can use our promo code at checkout to save 15% off your purchase today. Our offer code for this for Laird is going to be truecrimexs. Pretty much everywhere except for Liberty Creations. If you use truecrimexs,
01:00:46
Speaker
That will get you, at Laird, it'll get you 15% off. At some of the other places, it'll get you 20%. And the last sponsor I want to tell you about is Zencaster. We're part of Zencaster's creative network. We've been using Zencaster since about midway into our first season. Meg and I experimented with a lot of different ways to put the podcast together. And the truth is, Zencaster is an integral ingredient to us being able to bring you this show.
01:01:19
Speaker
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01:01:52
Speaker
It automatically removes those ums and ahs in your recordings. It removes those awkward pauses and conversation too. You can set the right podcast loudness and levels while reducing background noise with a click of a button. That's how you don't hear my dogs every ah second of every episode. ZenCaster is all in one. If you've thought about podcasting before and realized that you need a lot of different tools and services, those days are now over. With ZenCaster's all in one podcasting platform.
01:02:24
Speaker
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01:03:09
Speaker
ah We are also adding New Era as a sponsor for the show. New Era Cap is a headwear and apparel brand founded in 1920 in Buffalo, New York. Now, I actually have some experience with New Era caps. My dad and I have been through multiple iterations of baseball caps through the years. We collect different styles, different eras, and then my teenager has started his own cap collection and has several new eras as the centerpieces. Our favorite teams may not be the same, but our outfits are all topped with the same new era ball caps. We love the quality and the ability to wear what the players are wearing, not to mention new era is the leading headwear manufacturer with quality licensed products. You can support your favorite college or pro team in style from
01:03:57
Speaker
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