the murder of jane carver
Our story today begins on Saturday June 10, 1995 in Fountain Valley, CA. Located in Orange County, the upper-middle-class community of Fountain Valley is meticulously planned out. Like something out of The Truman Show or Stepford Wives. The welcome sign reads “Fountain Valley- A nice place to live.” So, there you have it.
In 2010, the population of Fountain Valley was 55,313. The crime rate in 2019 was 127, which according to city-data.com is 2.1 times smaller than the US average. Coincidentally, it is reported the crime rate was also approximately 127 in 2005 when this murder takes place. The rates have risen and fallen over the years, but have stayed lower than the US average for the most part. People who live in Fountain Valley would describe it as a very safe place to live.
Al and Jane Carver had found their happily ever after in Fountain Valley. Married (I think) in 1973, Al was the Director of Operations at a healthcare company and Jane had been a flight attendant for United Airlines. The couple had two sons, Cliff and Justin, 20 and 14 respectively at the time of their mother’s murder. Not much is known about the couple’s marriage, but friends and family report that Jane and Al had a loving and happy marriage. Their son Justin said that they balanced each other out- Jane was more adventurous and his dad was more conservative and cautious.
Janie had several close friends who lived in the area and by all accounts had a strong support system of people to “do life with.” They all had kids close in age and did things together as a family. Her boys describe her as a wonderful mother. She was spontaneous- eldest son Cliff told Oxygen in “The Real Murders of Orange County” that if they were studying state capitals and she had a trip for work to Washington, D.C. she’d tell them they were skipping school and she would show them the real thing. They traveled often as a family and youngest son Justin says she was a fly by the seat of your pants kind of person when it came to travel. It was something she was very comfortable with and enjoyed doing, and she didn’t get bogged down by little details.
But on June 10, 1995 the world as the Carvers (and residents of Fountain Valley) knew it was changed forever.
Janie (which is what her friends and family called her) Carver was 46 at the time of her death. She was out for a 4-mile jog that morning which she had done many times before. Her husband Al would normally go jogging with her- he is actually the person that got her into jogging- but on this morning he had decided to stay home and pay some bills that had been on his to-do list. She also left the family dog, a collie at home for this run.
Shortly after 8 AM, Jane was returning home from her morning jog at nearby Mile Square Regional Park. She had just made it to the intersection of Warner Avenue and Mt. Marcus Street- just yards away from her house and directly across the street from Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, when she was approached by a man who tried to get her into his car. When she refused, she was shot in the face.
Witnesses say the man said NOTHING to her. No conversation. No questions. They heard Jane say “no, no please no,” and then the gunshot. They tell police that he fired one shot into Janie’s face and then calmly got into his car and drove away. And remember- this is almost right across the street from the hospital- so you know there are plenty of people who are seeing this happen.
Al Carver, who was still inside his home, said that he heard sirens coming down the street and actually stepped outside to see what the commotion was, having no idea they were coming to aid his wife who was fighting for her life. When he realized it was Janie lying on the sidewalk, he sprinted to her side. In an interview with LA Times THE DAY JANIE WAS KILLED, he said “I’m just devastated . . . falling apart right now… Imagine what it’s like to see your wife lie dying in a flower bed. . . . I just don’t understand anything anymore.”
Detectives said that this was the first homicide of the year in Fountain Valley. As we’ve seen so many times before… these things just don’t happen in Fountain Valley. They had little forensic evidence to go off of- the only thing they collected was one bullet casing. But thankfully with the murder taking place in broad daylight on a busy street, they had six witnesses to speak to who all gave consistent statements and descriptions of the gunman.
They told detectives he was a black male, small in stature, in his 30’s or early 40’s with a receding hairline, wearing a brown or tweed sportscoat with a high-neck shirt and dark pants. They describe the car as a white 1978-1984 two-door hatchback- possibly a Plymouth Champ or a Dodge Colt.
Many of the witnesses also told detectives that right after the shooting, the shooter drove through the neighborhood to flee rather than taking the closest major road, Warner Avenue. Put a pin in that…
Detectives are baffled and find no immediate clues as to why she might have been gunned down that Saturday morning. As they begin to question neighbors, friends and family, nobody is ruled out. They have to consider the very dark possibility that Janie’s husband Al could have had something to do with her murder, especially considering the fact that no motive was clear and she wasn’t robbed. It definitely sounds like #thehusbanddidit, right??? I mean again- no robbery, she was shot in the face and only 1 time, so it’s clear this person wanted her dead, and Al would normally jog with her but on this occasion chose not to for some reason.
As the detectives begin their difficult investigation, Al is faced with the responsibility of telling his children their mother has been murdered. Justin had still been asleep in the family home and Cliff was away at college- a sophomore at Oregon State University- when their mom was shot. Cliff remembers getting the call from his absolutely devastated father and feeling like he couldn’t get to the airport fast enough. Justin recalled the moment he found out just being surreal- like a nightmare that he can’t wake up from. Even 20 years later, he still gets emotional talking about that day.
Cliff told LA Times about three months after his mother’s murder that Janie had recently visited him for a long weekend on campus. He said they had a great weekend together, laughing, talking, and just getting to spend one on one time together which is so rare for kids with siblings. He said he wished he “savored, really savored every second.” He talked about how easy it is to take your mom for granted- and all the things she does to hold a family together and keep things moving smoothly- and “in one second it can be gone.”
Justin said that it made him realize how hard it was to find a ride to friends’ houses without his mom there, and how she did so many things for them without complaining. When he came home after school, it hit him that she had been a companion to him in the afternoons, and now his companion was gone. Cliff’s girlfriend even taught Justin how to put the sheets on his bed- something his mom had always done for him.
All three of them were faced with the reality that things would never be the same for any of them again, and their fun-loving, peacemaking, spontaneous Janie would never be coming back.
Back to the Investigation
Meanwhile, the police are investigating their only homicide for the year thus far… so it’s probably not going great, right?
Detective Kim Brown, who was leading the investigation into Jane’s murder told the LA Times that they had information that the shooter had been seen loitering in the neighborhood several times for days leading up to the murder. She said “we believe it’s a stranger-stalker situation…. That type of situation is very rare,, but it does happen.”
So the police begin to explore the theory that Jane had been stalked- possibly by a stranger or someone who she may have had a secret relationship with. Or could it be that Al was having an affair and the person who killed Jane was trying to get rid of her to have Al all to herself?
While police dive into this lead, the community starts to look at Al as the person who ordered his wife’s murder. Journalist Geoff Boucher in The Real Murders of Orange County episode about this case said “there’s a fine line between love and hate, but there’s an even finer line between marriage and murder.”
It’s kinda true though.
Al was very aware during this time period that people were viewing him as a possible murderer. That’s something we always think about in any case that we cover… many times “the husband did it,” and of course you have to investigate that possibility every time. But if the husband didn’t do it, it must be a living nightmare to lose your wife and then have suspicion cast on you by your whole community. Especially when you need support most.
But police were able to clear Al through questioning, investigation and a polygraph. They said that Al was an open book and was never anything but cooperative.
So that’s a dead end.
Jane’s friends and family are not ones to sit idly by while the police do all the work. The witnesses had given a description of the car and the shooter, and a composite drawing had been made. So they took that information and printed thousands of flyers and plastered them all over Orange County. There was a $25,000 reward offered for information ($10,000 of which was given by United Airlines where Jane had worked before her death) and the volunteers visited every single business in the area to distribute flyers for weeks. It ended up increasing up to $45,000.
Al said in an interview with local news that the support of the community was what was keeping him going. They spent months on their boots-on-the-ground initiative to gather leads and information from anyone who might recognize the car or composite drawing.
But the case went cold.
Then, on April 10, 1996 there was another shooting in San Clemente, a town just south of Fountain Valley, that was incredibly similar to Jane Carver’s murder.
A man named James Wengert was arriving at his business for his work day and was shot once in the face before the shooter fled the scene.
Sound familiar???
An investigator on this case had seen the flyers made by the Carver family and felt that the two shootings could be connected.
Leading this investigation is Captain Christine Murray- also loving that both lead detectives are women- but she’s not investigating a homicide. James Wengert SURVIVED. Being shot in the face.
Again, there was no robbery. No words. The shooter walks up, says nothing and just shoots him in the face and leaves. Straight up executions are probably pretty rare everywhere, but especially in Orange County. These shootings definitely feel like hits.
One thing we will see in this case is that random remarks or as Bob Ross would call them “happy accidents” play a HUGE role in solving these shootings.
But during the investigation one of the police officers at the scene in San Clemente said the only other shooting like this- execution style- had been 10 months earlier in Fountain Valley and a jogger had been shot in the same exact way.
As James Wengert begins his road to recovery, police interview him. He immediately tells them he knows who wanted him dead. This is a man named Coleman Allen.
Who Is Cole Allen?
The short answer is a dirty trash can full of poop, but we will elaborate.
Cole Allen owned a company called Premium Commercial, and he loaned struggling business owners money at very high interest rates to get their businesses back in the black and keep the doors open. He targeted small business owners, but once he loaned them the money, things got scary.
In the case of James Wengert, he had required that Wengert get a life insurance policy for THREE TIMES the amount of the loan and name him (Cole Allen) the sole beneficiary. He also made impossible payment demands and any person that borrowed from him immediately realized what a huge mistake they’d made by getting into business with Premium Commercial. They were painfully aware of the fact that this had quickly become something they could not pay back and were now living at the mercy of Cole Allen.
He was running a large scale loan sharking scheme in which it appeared that he forced clients to take out life insurance policies and name him or his company as the beneficiary. So they’d bust their ass to meet his payment requirements (or else) and then once they die he profits again. But the police needed to know if he was profiting from their death by having them murdered. Which is at the very least frowned upon.
The police need to talk to Cole Allen and get his POV on the whole sitch. The only problem is that he died a few days before James Wengert was shot of a massive heart attack.
Hope he’s enjoying hell.
But they still get search warrants for his home and business to see if they can find records to corroborate James Wengert’s statement and get some answers.
Capt. Murray contacts the Fountain Valley Police Department and asked them to see if Jane Carver or Al Carver might have some connection to Cole Allen or Premium Commercial. But police couldn’t link the Carvers to Cole Allen in any way.
Another dead end. Another source of disappointment. Detective Kim Brown told the Carvers to hang in there- she believed that it would be solved. And you can totally understand that they need some type of closure and find out exactly who to direct their anger at.
Back to the Investigation (Part 2)
10 days after James Wengert is shot, Cole Allen’s widow gets a weird phone call. The person who called says he was the shooter of James Wengert, who he believed had died as a result of the shooting. And since he believed he’d fulfilled his end of the deal, he was requesting payment from Allen’s widow now that Allen has died.
I mean he did the work, right???
So the widow (whose name I could not find) calls the police and tells them about this phone call. The caller even gave his name- Paul Alleyne.
Paul Alleyne owned an auto part store and had borrowed $30,000 from Cole Allen with 36% interest compounded annually. By this point, he is unable to repay this loan and is stretched thin to the point of breaking.
James Wengert is shown a 6 pack/line up and positively identifies Paul Alleyne as his shooter.
So police interview Paul Alleyne. He denies any involvement, of course. At this point he still thinks James Wengert is dead. So Captain Murray tells him that James Wengert survived the shooting and Paul is visibly shaken by this news. So he changes defense tactics.
He then says that he was identified because of his race- specifically that “all black guys look the same to an old white dude.” And Capt. Murray is like “aha!!! Gotcha, bitch!” She told him that she never gave him a description of the victim- so how did he know that James Wengert was an “old white dude” unless he’d seen him or know him somehow? And he has denied ever seeing him at this point.
It’s like that Reno 911 scene where she gets the guy to admit he’s drunk in the roadside sobriety test.
So they take Paul Alleyne’s photo and show it to witnesses of Jane Carver’s murder. But Paul Alleyne was not a match to the description of the suspect and witnesses did not identify him as the shooter.
Another dead end.
So Christine Murray is preparing for the trial of Paul Alleyne in the shooting of James Wengert. As she is doing this, she is reading transcripts of his interviews with police. And then she sees it.
Paul made a remark at the end of the interview that Cole Allen was pissed at a guy named Leonard Mundy because he’d shot the wrong person once.
I am not sure why this officer didn’t then look into Leonard Mundy or follow up on this or tell Christine Murray… but I guess at least she found it when she was going back through things…
So now she dives into Leonard Mundy and his connection to Cole Allen. She finds that he has taken out not one but two loans from Cole Allen for $40,000 each. And we know that Cole Allen makes it impossible for people to pay him back… so we also know that Leonard Mundy must be at a breaking point as well.
Capt. Murray finds a document that lists a residence in Fountain Valley and the owners are James Wengert and his wife Margaret (who went by Peggy). She reaches out to them and finds out that they lived in Fountain Valley at the time of Jane Carver’s murder.
Peggy tells Capt. Murray that as part of the business deal between James and Cole Allen, they’d used that residence as collateral for the loan without her knowledge and her signature had been forged on the documents. So Cole had been trying to seize the property as repayment for James Wengert’s debt that he was not able to keep up with, and Peggy wasn’t having it.
She filed a civil suit for fraudulent business practices and this lawsuit was ongoing in June of 1995 when Jane had been killed.
The audacity of Peggy Wengert (a woman) to sue Cole Allen enraged him. Peggy was due to testify in court for this lawsuit just three or four days after Jane Carver was murdered… curiouser and curiouser.
But there are still NO connections between the Carvers and Cole Allen or his business. Wtf.
So Capt. Murray drives to visit the Wengert house in Fountain Valley, but she accidentally missed the offramp that she needed. She ended up taking a different offramp which took her in the direction of the Carver home. These offramps are very easily confused- it’s literally one exit and the ramps are marked north or south.
She starts looking at the directions to the Wengert home. This would be turn right when you get off the freeway, take the first turn, go past a park, and the next left will take you to the Wengert residence.
But if you take the wrong exit and follow those exact same directions, you end up precisely where Jane Carver was shot.
So Murray calls Fountain Valley again and tells them to show the witnesses another lineup, this time with Leonard Mundy’s photo in it. And he is positively identified by all he witnesses as the shooter of Jane Carver.
When Fountain Valley looked into Cole Allen’s business documents for this case, they found similar documents to the Wengert case and Paul Alleyne. They found that Cole Allen had written off a loan for both Alleyne and Mundy- something he NEVER did.
So these men had been under such immense pressure to get out from under the prospect of financial ruin and had been coerced into murdering for Cole Allen so that he could take ownership of this home and then collect on James Wengert’s life insurance payout.
The thing about Jane Carver’s murder is that she and Peggy Wengert looked nothing alike. They did live a mile away from each other, but Peggy had dark brown hair, Jane had bright blonde hair. Jane was known for jogging, and Peggy did not jog. She walked her dog in the neighborhood, but was never seen jogging. The only photo the police could find of Peggy in Cole Allen’s files with Leonard Mundy was an old driver’s license photo that had been xeroxed, so it wouldn’t have done any good in actual identification anyway.
For whatever reason, Leonard Mundy saw Jane jogging and decided this was his Peggy Wengert. With no regard for her life, and his only concern being his payout and the forgiveness of his debt, he shot Jane Carver- the WRONG person- in the face and fled. And remember, he fled using the neighborhood roads and not the main road- an indicator that he was NOT familiar with the area.
Obviously, Jane’s friends and family are absolutely shocked. It’s unbelievable for anyone you love to be murdered, but the fact that it was a case of mistaken identity???
Leonard Mundy was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Jane Carver.
Paul Alleyne was convicted in the attack of James Wengert and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
But not everyone believes that Leonard Mundy could have killed Jane Carver.
The mother of his children testified that he was with her at the time that Jane Carver was killed, and she told the court that he was “not the monster, the killer, the murderer that they have made him out to be… He is not Jane Carver’s murderer. . . . He’s not some piece of trash who takes money to go and kill someone.”
She also said “I’m not a liar,” she said. “I would not get up and defend a murderer.”
Mundy’s lifelong friend, Louis Hudson, told the judge that eyewitnesses were standing too far away to positively identify Mundy as the killer. He then turned to the Carver family and said, “The satisfaction you have right now is false.”
Al Carver later said he had “no doubt” that Mundy killed his wife but said the reaction of Mundy’s family is understandable. “I believe there was a side of Mundy that they didn’t want to see,” he said.
After the sentencing, he told reporters outside the courthouse that Mundy “was a hit man—a paid hit man who very coldly walked up to Janie, shot her in the head and coolly walked away.”
Jane’s son actually says that he feels for Leonard Mundy- the man who murdered his mother- because he knows that he was in a tough position. What amazing people.
Jane’s family and friends went on to organize the “Run for Janie,” a marathon which raised over $75,000 that was put into a scholarship fund for students who needed financial help to attend college. What a beautiful way to honor her.
sources for this episode
City-Data.com: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Fountain-Valley-California.html
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-01-me-9059-story.html
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-09-10-mn-44240-story.html
Refinery29: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/11/10154977/real-murders-of-the-oc-what-happened-to-jane-carver
Oxygen’s Real Murders of Orange County: https://www.hulu.com/watch/a5ad18ac-ea75-406f-ac0d-d0ffb64b4e0d
