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Season Six: Holiday Episode Four (2026)
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:58
Speaker
Here we are again. We're now moving into, like, deep December, as far as concerned. Because once you get past, like, Thanksgiving, I'm, like, ready for the end of the year. But I'm also ready to, like, just kind of live in the holiday season for a while. I don't know why i like this time of year. I don't have any particular part of it that I like, but...
00:01:17
Speaker
We celebrate parts of Hanukkah here. We do parts Christmas. I don't even have like a mass that I go to or a church or anything anymore. But like, I really just like the spirit of the season.
00:01:29
Speaker
And I like the fact that like lots of positive things can happen. and I think that juxtaposes like a lot of the negative stuff that we ended end up talking about in these stories for me as well.
00:01:43
Speaker
And we chose this whole hostage thing this year. But one of the things I've always tried to do on True Crime Access is to place things in time in a way that people maybe don't think about it when they just hear a date and a story from
Historical Context of 1998 Florida
00:01:58
Speaker
that date. and But like I like to talk about like what's going on in the country and what's going on in that region and like how those things might have affected the story that we're telling.
Kip Kinkle's Background and Family
00:02:09
Speaker
Today's story takes place May 19th, 1998, and it's down in Florida. So I pulled up a couple of things that would be relevant around the country when this happens. This is two days before Kip Kinkle is going to open fire in Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. And for for those of you don't know what the 1998 Thurston High School shooting was, a young man who's 15 years old, he's a freshman named Kipland Kinkle, he's going to open fire in the cafeteria of Thurston High School um and it's going to be
00:02:49
Speaker
A pretty devastating school shooting. Kipling Philip Kinkle, he was born in August 30th of 1982. Everyone knew him as Kip.
00:03:00
Speaker
He was the second child of William and Faith Kinkle. ah Faith had been known as Zyranski, Faith Zyranski. His parents were both high school Spanish teachers.
00:03:11
Speaker
Faith taught at Springfield High School and William, dad, he taught over at Thurston High School. They also taught at Lane Community College. Three years before the shooting is going to occur, back in 1995, William had actually retired.
00:03:27
Speaker
now This family has a history of very serious mental illnesses. And as Kip is growing up, the parents don't tell anyone about their family's psychological histories.
00:03:44
Speaker
That's going to make for some issues in terms of how Kip growing. retreated after all of this happens. He has an uncle who back in the late 1940s stabbed a state trooper during a traffic stop.
00:04:02
Speaker
And according to the story that was told later on, the uncle believed that the state trooper had killed his brother during World War II.
00:04:14
Speaker
According to all accounts, Kip Kinkle's life is pretty easygoing. His parents are loving, they're supportive. He has an older sister who's academically gifted. The family had even traveled to Spain when Kip was six years old.
00:04:29
Speaker
Kip had started school in a Spanish-speaking kindergarten.
Kip's Education and Interests
00:04:34
Speaker
And this is a word that stood out to me, and I think it shows up in the wiki summary. It says that Kip reportedly attended school in a, quote, unnormal way. But his family said that he struggled with the curriculum. When he gets back to Oregon, he starts attending elementary school right outside of this area where the 1998 story unfolds.
00:04:58
Speaker
His teachers thought that he was immature and potentially a little behind. he was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, which became worse. And unlike his older sister, Kristen, who was academically gifted, Kip ends up in what was known at the time as special education classes.
00:05:16
Speaker
In fact, he's in there by the beginning of the second grade. Kip has an interest in firearms and explosives from a very early age. He was known to make bombs that were primarily gasoline-based.
00:05:27
Speaker
and he would go to a nearby quarry and detonate them. This was known, but it wasn't really stopped because the idea was Kip was dealing with his anger. Dad, William, he initially wanted to discourage his son from violence, but he decided to embrace Kip's interest in the firearms and the explosives.
00:05:49
Speaker
And he enrolls him in gun safety courses. He gets him a 9mm Glock handgun. And by the age of 15, he has also bought him a.22 caliber rifle.
00:06:01
Speaker
One of the things that they did in the family was they passed down a.22 single-shot rifle. And this was a gift that I believe William had gotten at age 12.
00:06:15
Speaker
but he wanted to pass it on to his son as sort of a family legacy kind of thing. Now, mom initially didn't like this, but the psychologist that she was seeing at the time for therapy, quote, gave her the emotional permission to say yes to what was happening here.
00:06:32
Speaker
So William Kinkle and Kip Kinkle, they started using these guns for target shooting near their home. Over time, Hip's behavior started leaning towards being what's described as strange.
00:06:47
Speaker
um And others start to describe him as having psychotic instances. it almost like The way they describe him almost feels a little bit like ninety s version of satanic panic.
00:07:02
Speaker
They're picking on him because of the type of bands that he's listening to. He's definitely talking about committing acts of violence and joining the army after he graduates from high school because he wants to kill someone.
Mental Health Struggles
00:07:16
Speaker
He is basically teaching other kids through his classroom assignments how to do things like build bombs. He's studying ah Shakespeare and in his English class, and he becomes really fascinated with the modernized film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which features a lot of guns.
00:07:42
Speaker
Kip's parents see all these changes in the kid, and they see him talking about acts of violence, and they have him evaluated by a psychologist. So over a period of about six months, he sees this psychologist, he's diagnosed as having depression, and he goes on Prozac, which is fluoxetine. It's like one of the base antidepressants.
00:08:05
Speaker
Eight weeks later, Kip and his mom and this psychologist, they all agree that it seems like Kip Kinkle is doing really well. So they stop him going to these therapy sessions and he doesn't refill his Prozac prescription. So in the end of 1997, that runs out.
00:08:28
Speaker
There are some descriptions that say that Kip Kinkle was exhibiting signs of something like schizophrenia. He appeared to, we're going to find out much, much later,
00:08:39
Speaker
gone to really great lengths to hide any symptoms that would get him labeled with
Incident at School and Family Tragedy
00:08:46
Speaker
something. He had learned very early when he was labeled as being dyslexic and he was labeled as being special ed, that he did not want to be described as something that, in his words, would make him socially ah abhorrent,
00:09:05
Speaker
or abnormal and he didn't want to be called, quote, mentally retarded. He was also trying to avoid any instance that would end with him being institutionalized in some way.
00:09:18
Speaker
So on May 20th, 1998, which is a day after the the event that we're actually talking about, this is all for background, what's going on in the country. Kip Kinkle is suspended after he is found in possession of a loaded stolen handgun on school grounds.
00:09:37
Speaker
The way this goes down is one of Kip Kinkle's friends had stolen the pistol from the father of another friend, and they sell this weapon to Kip for $110.
00:09:49
Speaker
So Kip then puts the gun, which is loaded with nine rounds, in a paper bag, but he leaves it in his school locker. But he leaves it in his school locker.
00:10:01
Speaker
When the owner of the gun discovers that it's missing, he reports it to police, and he makes a list of the names of students who possibly could have been involved in stealing this firearm.
00:10:14
Speaker
It should be noted Kip Kinkle is not on this list. But the school connects him to this possible involvement, and when he's checked for weapons, he says to the people who are sort of interrogating him about this gun, look, I'm going to be square with you guys.
00:10:34
Speaker
The gun is in my locker. So Kip is suspended pending an expulsion hearing, and he and the friend end up being arrested. But Kip is released from police custody, and his dad drives him home.
00:10:50
Speaker
But his dad, William, says to him, if you don't shape him, we are shipping you out to military school. So according to Kip, his father lecturing him on this drive home from the police station after this incident,
00:11:06
Speaker
sparks the loudest voices in his head that he's ever heard. and And they're so loud, in fact, that they drown out what his dad is saying. So William has confided in some friends that he's having trouble with this kid.
00:11:27
Speaker
To one of them, he has said, i have no idea how to help this kid. I feel like I've done everything possible and I am terrified of him. According to the story Kip Kinkle tells later, which is recorded, at about 3 p.m. that day, he goes to his bedroom, he retrieves his.22 caliber so semi-automatic rifle, and then he goes to his parents' bedroom and retrieves the ammunition for this gun because they were separate in the house.
00:11:58
Speaker
He then goes downstairs into the kitchen. He then goes into the kitchen and he shoots his father once in the back of the head. He drags his body into the bathroom and he covers it over with a sheet.
00:12:11
Speaker
His mom does not arrive home for a couple more hours. And around 6.30 p.m., he meets her in the garage. He tells her that he loves her. And then he shoots her six times.
00:12:23
Speaker
Twice in the back of the head, three times in the face, and once in the heart. He then drags her body across the floor, and he covers it with a sheet.
00:12:34
Speaker
Throughout the following morning, Kip is pumping music through the house. The police are eventually going to arrive, and they found what they describe as, quote, opera music playing set to continuous play or repeat play.
00:12:48
Speaker
Kip had left a note on a coffee table in the living room. He described his motive for killing his parents. I just got two felonies on my record. My parents can't take that. It would destroy them.
00:13:01
Speaker
The embarrassment would be too much for them, and they couldn't live with themselves. But as the note continues, he tries to describe the mental state that he's in. He said, my head doesn't work right.
00:13:13
Speaker
God damn these voices inside my head. I have to kill people, and I don't know why. I have no other
Thurston High School Shooting
00:13:20
Speaker
choice. So May 21st, Kip gets in his mom's Ford Explorer and he drives to school.
00:13:26
Speaker
He puts on a trench coat, which is mainly to hide that he is carrying two hunting knives, this rifle, a.22 caliber Ruger MK2 pistol, which are incredibly accurate, by the way, and a 9mm Glock pistol.
00:13:43
Speaker
On his person, he has 1,100 plus rounds of ammunition. He parks two blocks from the school and then sort of jogs the campus. He enters into a patio area, fires two shots, and he fatally wounds a 16 year old named Ben Walker and another classmate.
00:14:03
Speaker
He goes to the cafeteria By turning down the hallway, he walks across and he fires the remaining 48 rounds from his rifle and wounds 24 students along the way.
00:14:17
Speaker
And he kills 17-year-old Michael Nicholson. All total, Kip fires a total of 51 rounds and 37 of these rounds strike students.
00:14:27
Speaker
He's killed two of them. There were 300 students present during the event. When Kip's rifle ran out of ammunition and he began to reload it a wounded student named Jacob Riker tackled him.
00:14:41
Speaker
Several other students jumped in on it and Kip drew the Glock from his belt, and he fired one shot before he was disarmed and the pistol was taken away. He managed to injure Jacob Riker again, and he injured another student. He yelled at them to just kill me.
00:15:00
Speaker
The students restrained Kip Kinkle until the police arrived and arrested him. A total of seven students were involved in subduing and disarming him. And in custody, Kip Kinkle retrieved a knife that was secured to his leg and attacked a police officer, begging him to fatally shoot him.
00:15:19
Speaker
The officer subdued him with pepper spray. Now, Michael Nicholson died at the scene, The other student, Ben Walker, died after being transported to the hospital and kept on um life support.
00:15:33
Speaker
ah These other students were taken to the hospital with a variety of wounds. For Jacob Riker, he had a perforated lung, but would he eventually but he eventually made a full recovery.
00:15:46
Speaker
He also receivedd received the Honor Medal with Crossed Palms from the Boy Scouts of America for his heroism that day. So, They go through and interrogate him, and finally, in September of 1999, Kip Kinkle, three days before jury selection, is set to begin in his trial. He pleads guilty to murder and attempted murder, and at this point, all of his mental health issues are off the table. He is no longer eligible for acquittance.
00:16:18
Speaker
or an ngri In November of 1999, Kip Kinkle is sentenced to more than 111 years in prison without the possibility of parole. At the sentencing, he apologizes to the court for the murder of his parents and for the shooting spree.
00:16:36
Speaker
He is later going to be caught up in the Miller v. Alabama rulings. um He does have some appeals along the way. But ultimately, he is still in prison. So that's taking place. This this whole story is taking place in May of 1998. Are you familiar with Kip Kinkle? Just from talking about it here. Okay. That's an interesting school shooting in a time of interesting school shooting. It's also sort of framing part of our story. We're going to go back in time a little further in May. And this is taking place in sort of a long span. We've talked about this before, but this is kind of the finality of that case, and I'm placing it in time because I think it's important. On May 13th of 1998, an Asian female is found on the side of the road parallel to Interstate 85 in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
00:17:31
Speaker
So it's like a service road off of Interstate 85, which is a major highway. The victim has been bound at the wrist She has ligature marks that are present on discovery.
00:17:44
Speaker
And an autopsy will later determine her cause of death to be asphyxiation or homicide by suffocation. A little later on, 1998, on September on september twenty fifth a landscaping crew cutting the grass under a billboard along another little service road off Industrial Drive along Interstate 8540 in a town called Mebane, North Carolina.
00:18:12
Speaker
They're going to discover the skeletal remains of a young boy. Now, there's no sign of trauma at the scene, but they felt like this kid had been killed somewhere else. The child was wearing khaki shorts, white socks with matching underwear, and black and white shoes that appeared to be new or a to have been purchased recently.
00:18:33
Speaker
In his shorts pockets, they found $50. The child had straight, dark brown hair about three to four inches in length, likely had a light brown to fair complexion, and probably had brown eyes.
00:18:46
Speaker
The boy was initially thought to have been Hispanic and possibly a migrant worker or family member. He had no fillings, but he had preventative dental ceilings and multiple teeth, as well as a slight overbite with erupting canines, which probably would have been notice noticeable when he smiled or spoke.
00:19:06
Speaker
The boy was believed to have died during the spring or summer of 1998.
00:19:13
Speaker
In December 2018, Barbara Reventer, who was one of the people involved in helping to identify the Golden Skate Killer, she reviewed the boy's latest DNA test.
00:19:24
Speaker
They have been looking for this child this whole time. He was on billboards all over the southeast. He was in NamUs early. He was in NCMEC. There were multiple reconstructions made of his face, including a clay reconstruction done by the forensic artist Frank Bender.
00:19:45
Speaker
And finally, they get a hit. When Barbara Ray Venter uploads this um to the GEDmatch database, she was able to match his DNA to the DNA of a relative who had submitted their information there.
00:20:02
Speaker
She contacts the relative, who's a first cousin from Hawaii. That relative confirms the boy's identity as that of Robert Adam Bobby Witt.
00:20:13
Speaker
Now, Witt's extended family had been living in Ohio. They did not report Witt missing because they were under the assumption that he had been sent to live with his mother in her native South Korea.
00:20:25
Speaker
Based on this information, investigators suspected that Witt's mother had also possibly been killed. Shortly thereafter, NCMEC helped investigators find a case of an unidentified woman found in Spartanburg, South Carolina, who matched the description of Bobby Wood's mother.
00:20:43
Speaker
After a DNA comparison, the unidentified woman was identified as Myung Wao Cho. Shortly after Bobby Witt and Myung Cho's identifications, Witt's father, a man named John Russell Witt, who was serving a prison sentence for armed robbery in the FCI Ashland, so he's got a federal sentence, who was not scheduled for release until 2037, confessed to the murders of both of them.
00:21:13
Speaker
It was believed that John Russell Witt had killed Cho in Concord, North Carolina on May 12, 1998, and dumped her body in Spartanburg.
00:21:24
Speaker
According to the indictment, it alleges that Bobby Witt was killed on July 29, 1998 in Concord, North Carolina as well. He was dumped in Mebane, North Carolina. Police were determining whether the jurisdiction would lie in North Carolina or South Carolina for these two murders.
00:21:44
Speaker
So in May of 2019, a grand jury in Orange County, North Carolina, indicted John Russell Witt on first-degree murder charges in Bobby's murder, as well as charges for the concealment of the crime and the way that he treated the corpse.
00:21:59
Speaker
At the time, they had not charged him formally with Cho's murder. Both Bobby Witt and his mother's remains were cremated and sent to living relatives in Ohio. They held a formal funeral for the mother and son on May 18th of 2019, and they were laid to rest together.
00:22:16
Speaker
In January 2020, John Russell Witt pleads guilty to two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of concealment of death in this case.
00:22:27
Speaker
He is going to be sentenced to 26 to 32 years in prison for each of these murders, and it's to be served consecutively, not just to each other, but also at the end of his federal prison sentence for robbery in 2037.
Significant Events of 1998
00:22:43
Speaker
During his sentencing hearing, he begged for forgiveness. He said that he had been haunted by the murderers for years and that he had tried to kill himself in prison out of guilt in 2001. He is now in federal correctional complex, Butner.
00:22:59
Speaker
Okay, so that's a lot going on in 1998. It is, yeah. There's some bombings taking place up in Vermillion, Illinois, the Vermillion County area in the The towns of Danville and Oakwood. They had had a bombing just before the new year.
00:23:15
Speaker
Now they've had two more, May 24th and May 30th. And down in Florida, we have this wild Florida firestorm going on. So...
00:23:27
Speaker
Because of the way winter weather had gone with El Nino bringing an above average rainfall, it had enabled extensive growth of underbrush and vegetation in the state's forests. But in early April... The rain stopped and Florida went into a drought that was going to last until almost August. It's like the very end of July. So they're going to have months of being like in a wildfire potential that's similar to states like California, which is very unusual for the soggy, humid place that is Florida.
00:24:03
Speaker
They end up in mid-May, what appears to be have o having started from lightning strikes, with these massive fires igniting in Brevard, Osceola, Orange, Seminole, St. John's, Flagler, and Volusia counties.
00:24:24
Speaker
This area has no capacity to deal with this type of fire. Now, the rain that's coming with the thunderstorms that are rolling through is not enough to close them off. And by June 7th, these fires have been burning so long and so hot that the governor is going to declare Florida in a state of emergency.
00:24:49
Speaker
And by mid-June, fires forced closure I-95. I think you've been on I-95 quite a bit traveling, right? Yeah. I have, yep. It is a huge, needed thoroughfare that runs from the furthest parts of Florida all the way to the northeast region of the United States.
00:25:11
Speaker
Right, and so that was probably mayhem, right? yeah this creates absolute mayhem. And the story that we're bringing in our hostage series does not bring us any less
Hank Earl Carr's Crime Spree Begins
00:25:22
Speaker
mayhem.
00:25:22
Speaker
On the morning of 19th, around 1030... A guy named Hank Earl Carr carried the young son of his girlfriend, Bernice Bowen, into ah fire station.
00:25:35
Speaker
The boy had a gunshot wound to his head, but the circumstances of how the injury had occurred were unclear. The first story that Hank Carr gives is that the boy had been dragging a rifle along, and he walked around it, and it accidentally discharged.
00:25:55
Speaker
But then he changed his story and he said that he himself had been holding this gun when it discharged. Now, for his part, Hank Carr doesn't tell anyone involved at the fire station or the police who he is.
00:26:10
Speaker
He claims his name is Joseph Bennett, who would have been the father of this kid. He runs back to the site of the shooting and the police are pursuing him. He threatens an officer with a rifle.
00:26:24
Speaker
But then he drops it again and he ran away. The second time he runs away, he's caught and he's handcuffed. Now, Tampa police detectives, Randy Bell and Ricky Childers, they come and get him.
00:26:39
Speaker
They take him back to the apartment where this young boy has been shot. And they want to continue to interview him. They want him to walk them through what's happened.
00:26:52
Speaker
On the trip back to the police station with Bell and Childers in the front seats of the car, so Hank Carr is in the back in the middle, handcuffed in front, he is able to unlock his handcuffs with a key that he carried on his person.
00:27:11
Speaker
He then disarms Ricky Childers by snatching his Glock from his shoulder holster, and in the struggle that ensues, Hank Carr shoots both officers in the face, killing Okay, this is less a hostage situation at this point and just the bizarre way that this has all gone down. And I think it's all in less than an hour from the time he drops the boy off at the fire station to now he has shot and killed two police detectives.
00:27:42
Speaker
Talk about your life turning out a way you did not think it was going to when you woke up that morning, right? you Okay, so I don't know where he had the keys stashed, but that's, I assume, every law enforcement officer's worst nightmare and probably why they put people's hands behind their back.
00:27:59
Speaker
It is. It's probably, um if he's in the front, I'm guessing the key is in his wallet. That's the one place I've noticed that officers don't check initially. And usually, say somebody like has stashed drugs in like the little cup of their wallet, like behind the cards and stuff. Frequently, they'll get the charge of ah controlled substance on the premises of ah a prison or jail facility because nobody thought to check in there. And honestly, I think half the time the guy,
00:28:30
Speaker
that has it in his wallet like that, or a girl who has it in like ah you know the big folding wallets that sometimes are in purses, I think they don't remember that they had it. like It's such a small amount of drugs, but they end up with an additional felony.
00:28:44
Speaker
Wait, what? So, okay, let me just get this straight. This is something I've never thought about. So if you get searched right and the law enforcement person that searches you doesn't find the illegal thing and then you show up in jail to be booked and they find it, you get charged for it? Yeah, you get charged. like if so Say they pull you over for like a DWI and you're going to jail because it's a DWI and it's an arrestable offense and they already have you.
00:29:11
Speaker
Depending on the officer, This happens way more frequently than they will ever care to admit. They'll pull out the ID and look at it. And then they'll look in like the money compartment of the wallet.
00:29:23
Speaker
They don't like thoroughly go through every little compartment or whatever. Right. They don't go through everything. But when you get to the jail, typically the jailer will go through like the, like whoever is checking you in for detention, they will go through your stuff. Right.
00:29:41
Speaker
So you get a charge, an additional felony. So you're just there for DWI, but you happen to have some illicit substance. I don't think they do it with marijuana, like but I don't think people would carry marijuana around in their wallet. We're thinking cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine in a small amount and a little tiny jeweler bag tucked away in your wallet.
00:30:03
Speaker
That charge happens way more frequently than you realize. That's crazy. But the tip-off for me was they typically don't check like behind the license and card part of ah of a wallet.
00:30:14
Speaker
And if you've got a bifold or trifold wallet, my thinking is that would be the place where you might stash a handcuff. I do not know why. It seems like they would have noticed him monkeying around, right?
00:30:26
Speaker
Maybe, yeah. But obviously they didn't, or it just happened so fast that It matter. And yeah. ah So their day started out with obviously a child being shot is very serious. Right. Yes. And he's, I mean, he did take the child to the fire station, but he was being uncooperative otherwise. Right. yeah And so, you know, there's two elements there. He's trying to get help for the child, but like, they can't just let this guy walk away.
00:30:55
Speaker
I would say a a lot of times ah when children are shot, i would say I would go so far as to say most of the time. It's some sort of stupid accident, right? Yeah. i think it's I think it's pretty rare that a child is like murdered by shooting by somebody who's not an immediate family member. I have seen like moms, boyfriends and stuff do it, but it's rare.
00:31:16
Speaker
Right. and Well, I guess you're right. I guess it could be. But like you know guns and kids... Especially if they don't understand. They pull triggers, bullets go off. I mean, that kind of thing happens, right? And ah there might be some culpability, but might not be. But he just wasn't dealing with any of it. Now, i do give him props for taking him to the fire station, right? Well, I also wonder why did he do that part?
00:31:42
Speaker
To get him away from the scene? I don't know. i honestly think it was an accident. Yeah. And I think that he was, he didn't know what to do. And I think he just was like, I'll take him to the fire department, which by the way, you can, if you can do that. Yeah. You know, if you don't want to call 911, now granted the situation didn't allow him to just drop the boy off. Right. Yeah. But you take somebody who's having a medical emergency to the fire department, they will Treat them and take them to the hospital, right? Yeah.
00:32:11
Speaker
yeah I don't know how much they like that happening, but they will do it. And I think that... it was very overwhelming because he would have realized like I shouldn't have had the gun out or there, you know, there's culpability here regardless of, did did you say how old that he was? The child? Uh, they said he was young and he was carryable. So I was picturing like under six. Yeah. i I think I saw somewhere that he was like five or six, but I don't know for certain, but yeah, he was little though is the point.
00:32:45
Speaker
And i think that, The whole reason he didn't, like, call the police to come out was because he knew he would had culpability. And see, this just...
00:32:58
Speaker
He was starting to get really irritated. If you go back to the beginning of like the story, this is his girlfriend's child, not his child, right? for i'm Sorry, it's in the top of the appeal appellate documents. He's four years old.
00:33:13
Speaker
Four, okay. Yeah. That seems, so exactly. So more than likely, this is an accident. I think so, yeah. Yeah. I don't think that he shot the kid in the face on purpose, but he was probably watching him and he knew he was going to get shit from everybody. Cause anybody who allows a four year old to shoot themselves or, you know, whatever you're going to get shit for it. Cause that's not a good thing. Right.
00:33:37
Speaker
Right. And she, so for, c for clarification, she is 23 years old. The she that we're talking about here, Bernice Bowen, she is 23 years old when all this is going down. um,
00:33:48
Speaker
Hank Earl Carr is 30. So there's a slight difference in the ages. But 23 years old, i don't know that you're fully developed in all the ways that you would be thinking if you've been raising kids for the past couple of years. So that takes us back, if this is her oldest kid, which I don't know that for sure. know she has multiple kids.
00:34:06
Speaker
She's at least 19 when she has a kid, right? Right, which is very young in my opinion, but it happens. And... I don't know the i mean, we're going to find out some of the other circumstances here, right? Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
But pretty much when that event occurred, like they were woke, a lot of people woke up to a bad day and they didn't even know it yet, right? Right. So he's just killed these two police officers, which is... It's insanity. Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
I don't know if anyone's experienced this. Yeah, like killing two police, like sets off a absolute hell storm. We're in Florida. Florida is already not having the best ah time with all these fires and all this chaos that's erupted in May 1998. He gets out of their car and he carjacks a pickup truck and he flees. So
High-Speed Chase and Standoff
00:35:02
Speaker
he's got a gun. He's armed with the officer's Glock.
00:35:07
Speaker
So he's got a handgun. He carjacks a pickup truck. And now he's bolted from the scene and left these two officers dead on the highway. He goes by and sees his mother.
00:35:18
Speaker
And he stops at a local service station to get gas. And then he gets on Interstate 75 heading north.
00:35:26
Speaker
A Florida State trooper sees him And he starts to pursue Hank Carr. As he pulls his car up, Hank Carr veers off onto an exit ramp located in Pasco County, Florida.
00:35:42
Speaker
He stops the truck and gets out. So the trooper stops and Hank Carr just walks up to him. And as he's approaching him, Carr manages to pull out this clock and shoots James Crooks in the head twice.
00:36:01
Speaker
And it kills him instantly. That is our third police officer. That is insane, right? It is absolutely unheard of. and So he seems pretty determined that, like, he's not going to be held responsible for the child's issue. or i mean, at this point, he has multiple other homicides that he has to deal with. Well, I realize that, but, like, I think, so I was going to say, what was he thinking? But I feel like it's better to say, like, he just wasn't thinking. I think his brain just went completely numb.
00:36:34
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure at this point, the number of hormones and adrenaline roses this guy has gone through because your body is reacting to like, you know, whether he's doing it on purpose or not, he's now reacting to pure panic mode.
00:36:48
Speaker
And like, I don't, I, he's in control of his choices, but like, if he's already been making terrible choices, it's not going to get better. You know, that's an interesting concept because I guess it's for fight or flight possibly, but... Yeah. yeah Oh, yeah. yeah this is This is pure flight. We're going to find out a little bit why, but this is pure flight at this point. The gumption of walking up to law enforcement and shooting them dead is kind of not fathomable. Not three times in a row. like he did Well, he didn't walk up to the guys. He was actually in their custody.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's so these are two very different kinds of crimes, but like the wherewithal to basically dupe. two police officers in an unmarked car and shoot them dead, get out of the car, carjack another vehicle so that you can exit the scene. and when you realize you're being pursued to get off the highway, pause, and then shoot another police officer in the face when they approach you.
00:37:49
Speaker
That is like, that is wild. But didn't he want, he said he walked up to them. He walked up to the car guy. Right. So basically it was going to be officer pulls up and he stops behind this truck.
00:38:04
Speaker
This guy's already out of the truck. And as the officer is about to get out, car walks up to him. And he shoots him twice in the head and kills him. But the idea was, like, James Crooks is pursuing him and is like he's going through like the standards for a traffic stop in his head. so he doesn't even know, like, why he's... he I don't think we've had enough time at this point.
00:38:26
Speaker
Like, he may know that, like, there's officers down and there's a shot kid and this truck has been stolen and it's wanted, and but he may not be connecting at all yet if he's just hearing it over the radio.
00:38:36
Speaker
but He didn't kill the person that he stole the pick pickup from, right? No, he did not. okay No, he did not kill him. okay He gets back in his truck at this point after shooting James Trucks, the Florida State Trooper, and he flees.
00:38:50
Speaker
But by this point, multiple police cars are coming to the scene because the trooper is at least radioed it in before he's killed. A police helicopter begins to pursue him, and he gets into not only a high-speed chase, but also a gunfight. It is going to last for the next 22 miles.
00:39:10
Speaker
During this, Hank Carr is going to be shot and injured. it said like They say this in every article. I don't know where it comes from, but they say that he was shot in the buttocks. Over the course of this... While he was driving? While he's driving. How does that happen? I do not know.
00:39:26
Speaker
That's interesting interesting. A bullet coming through the side of the car and through the seat or the back of the car and then the seat or the... It's a pickup truck. So through the bed of the truck, depending on who shot from where. That's very interesting. yeah This high speed chase and this rolling gun fight is going to end up damaging two more squad cars because we have the two cars that are sort of out of commission because they've just had a death in them. And we're damaging two squad cars in the chase. And somehow he damages ah a police helicopter.
00:39:56
Speaker
We also have two more injured officers. Now, as he's rolling, or he hits a truck and he injures two truck drivers. It is thought that one of them had their arm shattered by a bullet and the tires blow out on his vehicle.
00:40:15
Speaker
And he's getting low on ammunition because I can't imagine that he had more than 22 rounds and maybe a second magazine. That he took from the officers he killed initially. He exits the interstate and he goes into a convenience store.
00:40:29
Speaker
Behind the counter in this convenience store is a pregnant store clerk named Stephanie Kramer. And he takes her hostage. That's how we get back into our hostage for the holidays situation here.
00:40:43
Speaker
For the rest of this afternoon, he's going to stay in the store. 200 officers will eventually surround him. There's some criticism for one of the local radio stations who, in the middle of all this, conduct phone interviews with Carr and Stephanie Kramer. I disagree with that criticism.
00:41:01
Speaker
You think that's the right move to keep them talking? if If it happens, I mean, i feel like we can learn a lot from hostage takers. The hostage, I mean, she, I assume, wasn't being made to speak. No, I mean... I don't know. I feel like hostage takers want someone to listen to them.
00:41:23
Speaker
i think that's one of the things that just about every hostage situation would have in common. Right, right.
Media's Role in Carr's Standoff
00:41:30
Speaker
There's someone who is trying to get something out there and they feel like the only way they can do it is by taking someone who's more vulnerable than them, that people care about more than them, and holding them hostage until they're heard.
00:41:49
Speaker
I pulled this old AP blip that went out, but is I don't think it's available in the direct internet anymore. I think you'd have to go and find it from the way back machine yeah the Wayback Machine or one of the archives. It's from May 20th, 1998.
00:42:06
Speaker
H-E-O-L-E-W-A, she's the writer of it. And it says, media criticized for calling gunmen. Gives us the location of Tampa, Florida, and says, a gunman is holed up in a gas station after killing three officers, hostage negotiators, police, and bulletproof vests, and SWAT team members with rifles that surrounded the building.
00:42:26
Speaker
Inside, the phone rings. It's a reporter looking for an interview. Police and media experts Wednesday criticized the St. Petersburg Times and a radio station, WFLA, for calling during the crisis and interviewing Hank Earl Carr, who ultimately released his hostage after a four-hour standoff Tuesday.
00:42:46
Speaker
To call the gunman at the gas station at the height of the crisis is totally unjustified and unethical. This according to Bob Steele, who is a director of media ethics at the Poytner Institute, a non-profit journalism research center that happens to own the St. Petersburg Times.
00:43:04
Speaker
a stupid thing to do. There are lives at stake. It was clear that the gunman was irrational. It would be very easy to ask the wrong question or say something that would trigger the gunman to harm the hostage himself or law enforcement officers.
00:43:14
Speaker
I disagree with everything Bob Steele is saying. um I think one of the other examples that we have is I think what you do in this situation is you react with empathy and compassion and caution.
00:43:25
Speaker
Exactly. that That would be a key there, right? Which, I mean, that was my presumption. You know, obviously, it it's an outside person who they have they're coming at it from a different perspective. Any journalist would be coming at it from a different perspective than law enforcement.
00:43:42
Speaker
a different perspective than just the normal person or one of the family members of either the hostage taker or the hostage, right? Right. So no it's an outside person. Yeah, I think Bob Steele is nuts. I disagree with him.
00:43:56
Speaker
But police spokesman Steve Cole comments for this article. He's a little more subdued in his criticism, and he says, it's not a good idea to do that. I was disturbed that the radio station made a call, got him on the line, when the police were trying to get on the phone with him.
00:44:13
Speaker
So during the FLA radio interview, live on the air, police were not able to get through to the gunman, and they were forced to call the station tell the station that they needed it to get off the phone. You had the whole thing air. Put it all on the air, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you have an opportunity there. You should have taken it. But Steve Cole said the radio news director doing this interview handled it professionally. The police spokesman instead emphasized he was upset by the fact that station called it all during a hostage situation.
00:44:42
Speaker
Well, whatever. i mean, i get why they're doing it. I get why they're saying this. I disagree with some of it. The Times defended his actions on Wednesday. WFLA's news director said he was still thinking it over and and thinking about what had happened.
00:44:57
Speaker
um and They talk a little bit about like what was happening here and Don Richards, who was on the air with Hank Carr for six and a half minutes.
00:45:08
Speaker
um He had some interesting things to say. One of the things that Hank Carr says during this WFLA interview, which has been repeatedly broadcast on TV and radio stations, he says, I can't see giving myself up to fry in an electric chair.
00:45:23
Speaker
um And the news director, John Richards, said, i was in the studio and i was told we got him let's do it we didn't tread on any areas which we thought could possibly endanger anyone this man wanted to tell his story so we let him tell it and we let them know that there was a way the whole situation could end peacefully The Times published excerpts from its own interview that Wednesday, quoting Carr as saying that he had shot his son, quote, accidentally.
00:45:52
Speaker
And Times assistant managing editor Rob Hooker said, a reporter from the paper's Pasco County Bureau made the phone call. You're always in an ongoing sensitive story, but it was also a very big story.
00:46:04
Speaker
And the information we got from the brief conversation told our readers a lot about this man, a lot more about this man and what had happened. ah That's according to Rob Hooker. He said, we were comfortable with our decision.
00:46:17
Speaker
But Don Richards said, it's been a hectic 24 hours. He said, a crew from Inside Edition left his studio after interviewing about the call. Probably this weekend I'm going to be mulling it through in my head. I'll never run into anything like this.
00:46:30
Speaker
I've never run into anything like this before, and I hope I never will again. And I think that's the key to all of this. This is once-in-a-lifetime moment. You're making decisions that you can't take back.
00:46:42
Speaker
Right, and you have no guidance, right? that's my but My thought, though, is based on exactly that. If you have the opportunity to possibly... Now, I wouldn't be like yelling at him or anything, but... I don't know. I don't think they made a mistake. I think they saw it on their feet.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah.
Resolution of Carr's Violent Spree
00:47:02
Speaker
So ah Hank Carr releases Stephanie Kramer, that pregnant store clerk who's involved here. And that's at 7.20 p.m. And as the SWAT team forcibly enters the building shortly after, he kills himself.
00:47:17
Speaker
Now, Bernice Bowen's son ultimately died from her injuries. So the number killed by Hank Carr is officially four in this situation. Like, spree.
00:47:29
Speaker
Later testimony, it's going to be revealed that he was very abusive to Bernice Bowen and her children. He was found to be a convicted felon with a history of violent crime, including having already assaulted other police officers.
00:47:41
Speaker
According to court records, he was wanted in several states at the time this happened.
Legal Consequences for Bowen
00:47:48
Speaker
In 1999, Bernice Bowen is going to end up being convicted of child neglect for allowing Hank Carr to be around her children.
00:47:54
Speaker
This a 23-year-old girl. that has had a boyfriend around her children. Well, they're having to do something for the three law enforcement officers, right? Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker
so I don't think that that was the right thing. No, it's it's not. um They contend that since Bowen knew about the violent history, she should never allowed him to be around her children. She ends up being sentenced at 15 years in prison.
00:48:20
Speaker
Later in 1999, she ends up being charged with aiding and abetting Hank Carr's escape, as well as for being an accessory to the murders of her son and the three police officers.
00:48:31
Speaker
Even after one officer broke down and begged her to tell them Carr's real name, Bernice Bowen did not do so. Now remember, when they first start dealing with him, they think they're dealing with Joseph Bennett, who is the father of the kid, not Hank Carr.
00:48:48
Speaker
Well, let's say that it's true that he was very violent and abusive. Well, she's his victim too. Correct. There's a reason she wouldn't. She wasn't. You don't necessarily have I don't think she was covering for the man who shot her child. No. Now, if he really shot him, I mean, it sounds to me like my whole accident theory was wrong.
00:49:07
Speaker
I don't know. But if she's not going to cover for the man that shot her child, I don't think. I don't think we ever get there on all of this, to be honest with you. The way that this unfolds, it doesn't seem like... does not seem like they really close out that part of this in a way that makes any sense. Right, but the fact that they're charging her with, like, accessory to her son's murder, to me, it sounds like it was, like, inadvertently um closed out as, like, he...
00:49:36
Speaker
murdered him, right? Yeah. And so i think that they're they're talking out of both sides of their mouth because they're talking about how abusive he was, but then they're charging one of his victims with all these crimes.
00:49:51
Speaker
100%. They are. What does that mean? like Well, it means they doesn't know they don't know what to do in this situation, and like they're just wanting justice for a public that's wanting to know how this happened in the first place. So prosecutors claim that if Bernice Bowen had told everybody, Hank Earl Carr's name, they would have known that he was a wanted man and a dangerous convicted felon.
00:50:11
Speaker
She ends up being found guilty on these charges and sentenced to 21 and a half years in prison. But it's all going to run concurrently with her 15-year sentence for child neglect.
00:50:22
Speaker
Those convictions are mostly thrown out on appeal in 2001. state appeals court found that prosecutors focused too much on what Moen should have done to prevent Hank Carr's rampage rather than what she did do after the crimes were actually committed.
00:50:35
Speaker
The court ended up acquitting her of aiding and abetting the deaths of her son and of Trooper Crooks, who's the last guy there. But she ends up being convicted again 2002 on the remaining charges, which are the charges related to the two detectives. Like, she had an opportunity there when they're contacting her. And once the detectives are on the scene, you've had some time pass, they've contacted the mom, the kid's getting medical care.
00:51:00
Speaker
They felt like she did have a duty at that point to say, that's not Jonathan Bennett, that is Hank Earl Carr. So she's convicted of those charges. She's sentenced to 20 years in prison. Sentencing guidelines called for her to only get six to 11 years, but the judge said that her lies to the police were egregious and they ended up endangering a big swath of the public. So they departed from the recommend recommended sentences and the sentencing guidelines upwards, and that was the justification in doing so.
00:51:29
Speaker
But they still ran the sentence concurrently with her child abuse sentence. She ends up getting out of prison in October 2016. which is wild to me because it means all our kids would have been grown by that.
00:51:40
Speaker
Well, not to mention, like, you know, she was a victim here. She lost a child. I don't know if she's being, i don't know what her mindset was was, like, when she wasn't telling them who it was or whatever, all the things that led to her facing these criminal charges later. But I will say that I think what happened to her was sort of wrong. it was completely wrong. this was Like, judicially speaking, it was incorrect. Like, I don't care what the Florida courts justified about it. It was wrong. They were taking out, they were punishing her for what he did. They really were. And they wouldn't have done that if three of the victims weren't law enforcement, I don't think. I don't think they would have either. Like, we see that happen all the time where, like, people who are found to have been additional victims are not charged for, like, what seemed like they could be, maybe not be, like, it's more question for a jury kind of crime. Exactly. Railroading this through and then, you know, having her seem like this modern-day Bonnie.
00:52:39
Speaker
is like ridiculous that they did that to her. Right, because she lost a child. Yeah. one of the things that popped up during the trial that I found was interesting was the the detectives that are dead get a lot of flack for not handcuffing Hank Carr behind his back.
00:52:56
Speaker
that's exact That's the first thing I thought of. I wasn't giving him flack, but I thought, why? Well, so the the ultimate reason for that is they believed at the time they were dealing with a bereaved father who had accidentally had a shooting that involved his kid.
00:53:10
Speaker
They did not think they were dealing with this violent wanted felon. And they sort of, like, even the experts who talk about that sort of lay this back on Bernice Bauer. So, like, they put it back on her. Yeah.
00:53:22
Speaker
Because she was the one that they were in contact with who could have said, that's not my kid's father. That's my boyfriend, Hank. You know, what would have been interesting, like, I realize that ah supposedly they begged her and everything, but, like, how did they know that he wasn't Joseph?
00:53:40
Speaker
Bennett or whatever the guy's name was. Um, like even now? Well, I'm just saying like, what if they were saying like she didn't tell anybody, but what if she had no idea what he had told the police?
00:53:53
Speaker
Oh, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Like what if they didn't really say like, Hey, who is this guy? Cause if he gave his information, yeah why would they even be asking? That's a good point.
00:54:06
Speaker
i And so that's how I see that possibly going down is that, he she didn't even know, right? Yeah. Well, i I thought this was one of the most interesting stories I'd read about. um the The place that I came across this and like started to dig into it and and that time and place was Hank Earl Carr's, his police chase, his 22-mile police chase, was caught on video.
00:54:30
Speaker
And you can see yeah i think YouTube has it under like World's Wildest Police Videos, just search for his name, that's Hank Earl, E-A-R-L, car, C-A-R-R.
00:54:42
Speaker
um And it it's it's out there where people can check it out. And what this ended, this was actually, it seems sort of like several sort of hostage situations, right? um But ending at the convenience store and he let her go, right? Yeah. um Which is interesting.
00:55:00
Speaker
But this was a really long way around suicide. and I feel like if he had known what was going to pan out, he would have just gone ahead and killed himself.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think. Like before he killed the three cops. Yeah, I think stealing that gun ultimately would, that if he would have known this direction it was heading in, that I think he would have gotten in the gumption to kill himself there.
00:55:30
Speaker
Right. And he he was afraid to go back to prison or he didn't want to go back to prison or whatever, right? Yeah. That's why he did that. And that's why like you know he killed the... um Was it a highway patrol or a state police officer? State trooper, yeah. Okay, the state trooper. He killed the state trooper because he it was another law enforcement officer. Well, the convenience store lady didn't have the power to put him in jail, right? Yep. So he let her go. And so that's... He was just afraid. and are
00:56:01
Speaker
you know He may not have copped to being afraid, but like he just didn't want to go back to jail for whatever reason. And it's it's really sad, right? It is sad.
00:56:12
Speaker
That's all got on this one. But I thought it was an interesting hostage-taking story or adjacent to hostage-taking. I know that's the smallest part of this particular story, but the rest of the story is so wild. It is was wild. And it's not as old as you think it is. you know It's only 27 years ago that this happened. 1998 was 27 years ago.
00:56:34
Speaker
right
00:56:42
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:59:16
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.