Wichita Massacre: Part 2

Reginald and Jonathan Carr were brothers with a shared evil streak. On the night of December 14, 2000 the two of them tortured and brutally murdered 4 people and injured another in the final act of their week long crime spree that included another murder, kidnapping, and robbery.

For Part one, click here!

The Arrest

When the description of the silver Dodge Dakota hit the Wichita stations, a man called the police to report that that truck was in the parking lot at his apartment complex. Police ran out immediately to the complex. By 7:30 am, the police confirmed that the truck was, in fact, Jason Befort’s truck. While they were there, another resident came out and told the officers that he had actually helped a man carry a large TV up to a 3rd floor apartment and could direct them to it. The police rallied the troops (86 officers and patrol cars had come to the complex), and there were a number of officers that stayed on the ground while another crew of officers silently crept up on the apartment. When they knocked on the apartment, a woman answered, but the door was still partly closed by a chain lock.

The officers could see inside enough to see that there was a lot of stuff around the apartment so it almost looked like someone had just moved in. Then they heard the sliding porch door open and the officers below were yelling that someone was trying to get out of the apartment. The officers in the hallway burst in and took the man to the ground. It was Reginald Carr and he just said, “Shit. I’m going to need a lawyer.”

However, Jonathan wasn’t with him. There are a few stories about how Jonathan was located:

Jonathan had met a girl about a week earlier and was at her house asleep. The girlfriend’s mother had come home early from work and saw him. She “got an eerie feeling” about him and he seemed to match the description of the men on the news. She picked up his leather jacket and found the engagement ring. She knew it couldn’t be for her daughter as they had only known each other for a week. The woman remembered that the police were looking for a Plymouth, and the man had a Plymouth sitting in her driveway. She quietly approached her daughter and told her to get her niece and they were leaving. The three women crossed the street to a neighbor’s house and the mother called 911 while they walked. She told the police that the guy they wanted was at their house. Then she saw him on her porch, and he ran from the house.
Jonathan was at his girlfriend’s house and the news was on. They saw Reginald getting arrested and the girlfriend was like, hey…isn’t that your brother? Then her mom worried that the man in her house was packing a weapon so she checked his coat pockets. She found the engagement ring and excused herself to go to the neighbor’s. There, she called the police. Jonathan bolted when he heard sirens.

Either way, the police came to this girlfriend’s house and Jonathan ran from the police, but was caught 2 blocks away and arrested. He had over $1,000 in cash on him and had lost a shoe while he was running. By noon on the 15th, both men were in custody. With their faces on the news, Andy Schreiber saw them and identified Reginald as one of the men that kidnapped and robbed him. Reginald was also identified from a picture line up by Ann Walenta after his arrest. Unfortunately, she would die a few days later of a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in her lung(s)) as a complication after being shot.

With the Carr brothers being identified in Andy Schreiber’s robbery and Ann Walenta’s shooting, as well as having the property from the triplex in their possession, AND H.G.’s identification…the case against them was already pretty solid. A warrant was issued for DNA testing and a nurse took samples of both brothers’ hair, blood and saliva.

Jonathan Carr asked detective Kelly Otis what happened to the people who were caught in another quadruple homicide in Wichita just days before the Carrs on December 7th. Otis told Jonathan that they got death by lethal injection. Rich Thames of the Wichita Eagle said, “It was a shocking crime because of the apparent randomness of it.” But others didn’t think it was as random.

Jason Befort’s service was on December 21st, 2000. The day before he had planned to propose to H.G. and just days before Christmas. The reverend said of Jason’s killers, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” He asked that there be a “victory of love over hate…a victory of mercy over justice.”

At Heather Muller’s funeral the reverend said, “We must be like Christ, who forgave his enemies.” He told the mourners that in talking to Heather’s mom, she had felt the same way and had told him, “Heather would want us to pray for her murderers, and Heather was probably praying for them at the moment of her death.”

The Trial, Verdict, and Sentencing

Before the trial was supposed to start in September of 2001, there were also some issues with why Reginald Carr had been out and about in the first place. State representative, Tony Powell accused the current Attorney General, David Adkins, of “contributing” to these murders because Adkins had supported a bill that shortened the amount of time a convict stayed on parole and supervised. Since that law was instituted while Reginald was on parole for aggravated assault and drug charges, his parole term went from 2 years to one year and then due to a paperwork error, his parole was sliced in half again and Reginald Carr was released from supervised parole 6 months earlier than the one year mark.

Adkins replied by saying, “This is more of a despicable reflection on his [Powell’s] character and doesn’t take into account an understanding of the law or the facts of the case.”

Despite the outrage over the fact that the brothers weren’t being charged with hate crimes and Adkins and Powell’s bitchfest, the Carrs were charged with 113 different crimes and were going on trial together. Judge Paul Clark presided over the trial and there were a slew of lawyers for the defense and prosecution.

The prosecution was Chief Deputy District Attorney, Kim Parker who assisted Nola Foulston. Then there was Reginald’s team of Jay Greene and Val Wachtel. Jonathan’s team was Mark Manna and Ron Evans. Judge Clark had rejected a motion to move the trial out of Sedgwick County.

The defense had a poll that showed that 74% of the county thought they were “definitely guilty” or “probably guilty.” They argued that they couldn’t have a fair trial there, but no trial had been moved out of the county in over 40 years.

The defense had also wanted to separate the trials, but the prosecutor said that many people accused of committing crimes together stood trial together. The prosecution also made the point that this was probably not going to be a long case and yet it involved at least 70 witnesses. Moving the trial out of Sedgwick County would be inconvenient for the witnesses and expensive for everyone. In another attempt to delay the trial, Jonathan’s attorneys tried to get him declared incompetent to stand trial, but Judge Clark ruled that he was competent after he reviewed Jonathan’s mental health reports from 2 experts. This has been sealed so we don’t know what the reports say about his mental health.

When the crew of lawyers was selecting the jurors, they would end up having to dismiss 3 people because they were friends with 1 or more of the victims. They finally decided on a jury of 7 men and 5 women (2 black and 10 white) and the trial was ready to begin. H.G. testified early in the trial and went through her entire ordeal again over the course of 2 days. She described Reginald as the taller man in her statement. H.G. had to relive in excruciating detail the most horrific night of her life.

A crime scene investigator testified to the state of Nikki the mini-schnauzer’s body. She explained that the dog had been beaten and stabbed with an ice pick. The Sedgwick County Coroner, Mary Dudley was called to testify to the injuries that had been inflicted on the 4 friends on December 14th-15th.

Dudley testified that heather Muller and Aaron Sander had contact wounds on their heads meaning that the gun barrel was pressed up against their heads when the Carrs pulled the trigger. Jonathan’s attorney asked Dudley on cross-examination if the distance between the shooter and the victim could show that there had only been 1 shooter. Dudley, probably confused at the fairly stupid question told him that…no…no you cannot tell if there was only one shooter from the distance of a shooter to a victim…

A forensic nurse who specializes in examining for sexual assault tesitified to the lacerations and bruising on Heather Muller’s body that were consistent with rape. They had injuries on their heads, necks, legs, buttocks, toes, faces, everywhere.

Andrew Schreiber testified to his kidnapping and robbery and identified Reginald as one of the 2 men, but he wasn’t able to definitively identify Jonathan as the other man. When he was pressed under cross-examination, Andy admitted that originally, he had not been able to identify either Carr brother as his attacker from a photo line-up. But the identification of the Carrs was only a small piece of the prosecution’s puzzle. They were able to forensically link the Carrs to all the crimes.

They brought in all the items that were in the Carrs’ possession that had belonged to the victims. All the things that were found in Reginald’s apartment filled the courtroom.

2 big screen TVs
A VCR
A CD Player
A 120 piece tool set still in its packaging
3 remote controls
A cordless phone
Power cords
Drinking glasses
Shoes
Jackets
Coats

All the items had been identified by the friends and families of the victims. On top of that, a forensic investigator named Gary Miller matched shoe prints recovered from the triplex’s garage floor to the shoe that Jonathan lost during his run from the police. The bullets from Andrew Schreiber’s tires, Ann Walenta, and the triplex were all linked to being from one gun. The only downside to this piece of evidence was that the gun had been found near the off ramp a few blocks from the soccer field, so they couldn’t link it directly to the Carrs.

A DNA expert from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was called to the stand and testified that Jonathan’s DNA had been found in a semen spot on the carpet from the house and swabs that were taken from H.G. She also testified that Heather Muller’s blood was found on Reginald’s clothing. Reginald’s lawyers tried to say that these drops of blood could have gotten there when he bumped against someone else. Someone like…I don’t know…Johnathan.

The prosecution also called the women in Reginald and Jonathan’s lives to testify against the brothers. Tronda Adams was the girlfriend of Jonathan (for a week), and she testified that she had met the brothers on December 7th of 2000 and had been seeing Jonathan ever since. He’d even come to her house 1 hour after their attack on Ann Walenta. Jonathan had given her a handgun to hold onto for him which he retrieved from her before the 14th. She also testified that Jonathan had called her around 3:31 am on December 15th. Tronda’s mother, Toni Greene testified about how she found out that Jonathan was one of the wanted men by finding the engagement ring in his coat pocket.

Reginald’s current girlfriend also testified. Stephanie Donley was described as “pretty,” “white,” and “dark-haired” and she testified that neither of the brothers had been employed at the time, but that she often saw Reginald carrying around large amounts of cash. She testified that he told her it was from his pitbull winning fights. Stephanie also testified that she had lent them her car around 5:30 pm on the 14th and they brought it back to her about 12 hours later. She testified that he had moved all the stuff into her apartment. Stephanie also testified that she had noticed an STD on Reginald’s privates. Genital warts. And, unfortunately, a medical expert would testify later that H.G. had developed the same STD.

Beyond just having their girlfriends testify, their mother and sister also testified, but they spoke to Reginald and Jonathan’s childhoods. Janice Harding (their mom) admitted that her sons didn’t have a warm and loving family. “I’m not a huggy person.” She testified that there were no holidays that they celebrated and “their dad hit me…once I picked up a bat up [sic] and beat him with it. I told him he wasn’t going to hit me again.”

Janice also brought up that Reginald and Jonathan had had another sister named Regina. However, she died of leukemia when she was just 3-years-old. The mother testified that when she and their dad divorced, he immediately vanished from their lives. And the time the boys spent with their grandmother wasn’t much better than their time at home. Janice testified that her mother “flips out. One minute, she’s normal, the next she’s yelling and screaming.”

While Janice was testifying that her boys hadn’t had much of a chance to grow up to be productive members of society, she wasn’t defending their actions. She stated, “I feel for the other families. Everybody’s hurting right now.” She then spoke to her sons directly saying, “I don’t know what went wrong, but I love you. I’m sorry if I did something wrong. I’m sorry.”

Their older sister was called to testify to the sexual abuse they had all 3 faced. Her at the hands of their father and all 3 at the hands of their mother’s boyfriends. She told the court about Reginald’s history of getting in fights in school, and Jonathan’s attempts to commit suicide. Then she told the court that Reginald had confessed to her that he had shot all 4. However, when she was questioned under cross-examination she admitted that Reginald had a history of taking the blame for Jonathan to protect him. She also tried to backpedal and say that she couldn’t remember who was shot by whom.

A forensic psychologist, Thomas Reidy, testified to Reginald’s early childhood exposure to sex and drugs. He stated that Reginald was still very young when he was sexually abused and when he found “pornographic pictures” of their mom! Reidy testified that by 11-years-old Reginald was introduced to liquor and drugs by his older relatives. The Wichita Eagle reported, “Reidy found that Reginald Carr attended 8 schools from kindergarten to 8th grade. By then, he had sexually harassed a teacher on one of the days he bothered showing up. He was absent 32 days that year. During his freshman year in high school at Dodge City, Reginald earned 21 detentions and suspensions. After beating up a student, he dropped out of 9th grade, Reidy testified, before the school could kick him out.”

A different forensic psychologist, Mark Cunningham testified to Jonathan’s childhood. He referred to the “5 Hs: hopeless, helpless, homeless, hungry, and hug-less.” One source said that their “childhood left them both so void of empathy and attachment that they could do this to other young people.” But prosecutor Parker made sure to drive home that Cunningham had admitted that Jonathan knows the difference between right and wrong.

Cunningham: “There is no question he has awareness or wrongful behavior.”

Parker: “He doesn’t care.”

Cunningham: “That’s correct.”

Dr. David Preston, a peer reviewer of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine was called to testify and told the court that both Carr brothers also had a “physical factor in the mens’ criminality.” He testified that both men had brain damage to their temporal lobes which is responsible for risk evaluation and short term memory. However, this is literally the only information on this claim.

Also called to testify as character witnesses were the mothers of Reginald’s children/ex-wives. His ex wife, Mandy Carr said that his relationship with his kids is weak at best.

Richelle Kossman is the mother of Reginald’s other son who was 7 at the time. Kossman testified that Reginald did not provide child support, but that he did visit the child and had a caring relationship with him. She then read a letter to the court that their son wrote to Reginald: “I wish you would come back. I love you very much. I love when you play games with me…I’m a good boy like you tell me.” This would be the only time when Reginald would demonstrate the appropriate emotions. He bowed his head hearing his son’s words.

A character witness for Jonathan was a woman who had hired him to do some carpentry work for them. She said, “I found him to be one ot the nicest, polite, kind, warm, giving…he was the epitome of the finest young man.”

Over the course of the 3-week trial, the prosecution entered almost 900 exhibits into evidence and on October 25th, 2002, they rested their case.

Jonathan’s attorney would try to claim in his opening statements that Jonathan couldn’t have done this because he had a ticket to catch a train on the night of the murders. But he’d gotten lost leaving Wichita and that train ticket had never been used. The attorney entered the unused AmTrack ticket into evidence and then….rested…his…fucking…case. That was it. An unused train ticket…

Reginald had wanted to take the stand and blame Jonathan. He wanted to testify that Jonathan had told him he’d been with another guy who was “tripping” and
“shooting people.” He wanted to claim that he had moved the possessions from the victims to his girlfriend’s house to help Jonathan. The judge ruled it inadmissible as hearsay. His lawyers also wanted to enter medical records that suggested that Ann Walenta had actually died because of medical malpractice. This was also rejected.

Then Reginald’s attorneys replayed the police interview with H.G. with no explanation as to why. It could only be assumed that the reason they did this was because they wanted to reiterate that H.G.’s description of Reginald was vague. However, all it really did was upset the jurors and H.G.

They called a DNA expert of their own to the stand and got them to testify that since they are brothers, they couldn’t determine which specific Carr brother had raped the women. However, on cross-examination the expert couldn’t deny that the blood on Reginald’s clothing was Heather Muller’s. In her closing argument, Kim Parker said, “This is a crime driven by greed and lust, by selfishness and by twisted sexual gratification.” Meanwhile, the defendants’ attorneys just point fingers at each other.

Reginald’s attorneys focused on the fact that only Jonathan’s DNA was found at the scene and that the witnesses had difficulty accurately identifying the Carrs.

Jonathan’s attorneys reminded the jury that both Andrew Schreiber and Ann Walenta only identified Reginald and that Reginald was found with most of the victims’ property. Jonathan’s attorney Mark Manna stated, “Reginald Carr was not alone, but the evidence will show who was playing the lead role that night – directing things…Don’t just go back there and check the box guilty on all counts, please consider Jonathan’s guilt and innocence separately from damning evidence against his brother, Reginald.”

On November 14th, 2002, the jury returned with their verdicts. While Jonathan was acquitted on all the counts related to Andrew Schreiber’s kidnapping and robbery, both men were convicted on all the other counts.

They were each charged and convicted with 1st degree capital murder of Ann Walenta as well as:

4 counts of capital murder (Jason, Heather, Aaron, and Brad)
1 count of attempted 1st degree murder (H.G.)
5 counts of aggravated kidnapping
9 counts aggravated robbery
20 counts of rape and attempted rape
3 counts of aggravated criminal sodomy
1 count aggravated burglary
1 count burglary
1 count of theft
1 count of cruelty to animals

Reginald was also convicted of 3 counts of unlawful possession of a firearm,

The Carr brothers didn’t react to the verdicts, but the families did. They hugged and celebrated. The court went directly into the sentencing phase of the trial upon hearing the verdict.

During victim impact statements, Andrew Schreiber said that “there are constant reminders everyday…I still live in Wichita.” He still drives past the places involved in his crime and the quadruple murder and he knows it irrational, but he suffers from “survivor’s guilt.”

H.G. also spoke to the men saying,

“I speak on behalf of Brad, Aaron, Heather, Ann, Andy, Jason, and myself. One of my favorite 7-year-olds lost her uncle on the 15th. This year, when her mom asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she replied that she had wings, and if they were real that she could fly to heaven and she could see her Uncle Jason and her papa. I wish life were that simple. I wish that I could put on a pair of wings and that I could go see Jason – But we all know that these are wishes, and they are wishes that we have to wish because of 2 soulless monsters…Everyday there is a memory or a scar that reminds me of that night. I wake up in sweats from my nightmares. I pace at night because of noises that I think are somebody breaking into my house. And every morning I carefully blowdry my hair to cover up the spot that can no longer grow hair. I look at my knees and see the scars from the carpet burns that I got from the rape and in the back of [my] mind I wonder will it happen again…I had no choice in what Reginald and Jonathan Carr did that night and I wasn’t given a choice to save Brad, or Aaron, or Heather, or Jason. I had a choice to lie there and die or to get up and live. I chose to live and I will still choose to live.” She also told the court that “the sentence imposed on them will be a much kinder sentence than they imposed on me, my friends, and family.”

Reginald Carr’s attorney asked the jury – “I ask you to extend mercy to Reginald Carr that he did not extend to these four individuals.” Despite his lawyers’ pleas for mercy, Reginald had shown no feelings of remorse. In fact, throughout the trial, Reginald had been smirking and blowing kisses to people. He’d been removed from the trial multiple times due to these antics. DA Nola Foulston however, drove home the point that “there is no excuse for an individual’s conduct – you can’t blame your family for what went wrong in your life.”

The jury deliberated for about 7 hours before coming back with a sentence of death for each of the Carr brothers.

It was also reported that the brothers were also sentenced to life with the opportunity for parole in 20 years for the murder of Ann Walenta.

Then Reginald was also sentenced to 47 years in prison for his convictions on different crimes while Jonathan received another 41 years for other crimes.

The judge offered for the brothers to exercise their right for “allocution” – to ask for mercy or apologize. Neither did. They had been advised, probably rightly, by their attorneys not to say anything.

They were formally sentenced to execution.

It was Reginald’s 25th birthday and as he left the courtroom, Mark Befort, Jason’s brother said, “Happy birthday, ****.” Reginald just cursed at him.

The Appeals

The Carr brothers were not going to just sit back and accept their death sentences plus in Kansas, death sentences automatically start the appeals process.

Both claimed they were prejudiced to the jury for things like – Reginald was in handcuffs throughout the trial (which he requested remain visible) and Jonathan claimed that this prejudiced the jury to him making him look dangerous too and Reginald felt that he had been prejudiced by Jonathan’s defense that painted him as this bad influence of an older brother who “corrupted” Jonathan.

The death penalty had previously been reinstated in Kansas in 1994 and since then, no one had been executed. The Carrs appealed their case and in December of 2004 the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional. The Carrs’ death sentences were commuted to life without parole.

The Kansas Supreme Court claimed that the judge’s sentencing instructions to the jury “violated the 8th amendment rights by failing to affirmatively inform the jury that mitigating circumstances need only be proved to the satisfaction of the individual juror in that juror’s sentencing decision and not beyond a reasonable doubt” and “to an individual capital sentencing determination was violated by the trial court’s failure to sever their sentencing proceedings.”

This decision was appealed to the US Supreme Court who upheld the original death penalty law and reinstated the Carrs’ death sentence in January of 2016.

The decision was an 8-1 victory where it was noted by Antonin Scalia, “What these defendants did — act of almost inconceivable cruelty and depravity — was described in excruciating detail by [H.G.], who re-lived with the jury, for 2 days, the Wichita Massacre. The joint sentencing proceedings did not render the sentencing proceedings fundamentally unfair.”

The US supreme court held that “the 8th amendment does not require capital sentencing courts to instruct a jury that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt” and that it is not constitutionally necessary to instruct the jury of mitigating circumstances. Furthermore, they found that the constitution doesn’t require that the Carrs’ sentencing proceedings be severed. The only justice to dissent was Sonia Sotomayor who only said that the”court had no reason to review the Kansas court’s decision and should have left the ruling in place.”

Bright Lights in the Darkness

The families of the victims have tried to move forward and simultaneously create something good out of the evil. The families did file a wrongful death lawsuit against the state of Kansas claiming that the “state was negligent because paperwork error allowed Reginald Carr to get out of prison early.” Brad Heyka’s dad expressed that he was “appalled a mistake like this could lead to such severe consequences for so many people.”

Whereas Aaron’s dad with his Roman Catholic faith said, “It is unfortunate this happened, but we have to learn to get past that and let those things go and get on with our life. We can’t deal with how things should have been or could have been. We can only deal with today.”

In March of 2004, the court ruled in the families’ favor when the judge agreed that the state basically failed the victims and didn’t do enough to protect them. It was believed that the families could receive a total of about $1.5 million that would be split among the families. After 6 months, the families reached a settlement for $1.7 million. In October 2004, the Associated Press spoke with a representative that said 3 of the families received $500,000 each and the 4th family received $450,000.

None of the sources said who was part of the suit and who got the amounts OR why one family got $450K. The families also created different fundraisers, scholarships, and grants to honor their loved ones.

Heather Muller’s school, St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School annually awards an 8th grade student the Heather Muller Love of Faith Award as a scholarship. Heather’s family also had a fundraiser at her favorite restaurant, Barn’rds. During that day, 15% of the sales for the day would go to Heather’s Camp. This was a camp they started for children who are blind or visually impaired.

Brad Heyka’s family created a memorial golf tournament and his father, Larry proudly proclaimed that he thinks “we had people from 20 states.” A few of the families joined the Wichita Community Foundation and founded the Forget Me Not Memorial Scholarship. In June of 2003, the first awards were grants from this scholarship. Mercedes Crawford and Jennifer Nguyen were the 1st awardees. Mercedes Crawford had just graduated from Augusta High School where Jason Befort taught. She had known Jason and had applied for the scholarship because she said she wanted to honor him. Jennifer Nguyen graduated from Kapaun Mount Carmel High School and said, “I try my best in everything I do and from everything I read about these four people, they were the same way. It feels good that something positive is coming out of what happened.”

The most (and only) precious thing that came out of all of this is the relationship of Andrew Schreiber and H.G.

During the trial, they had struck up a friendship and found that they could connect to each other in a way no one else could. The two became closer after the trial and went on to get married in 2004 and have 2 children together. Their friend told the Killer Siblings episode that Andy even switched his career after all of this and became a police officer.

One of the officers who worked on this case said that to this day, at Christmas time he leaves his outside lights on at night because that was what guided H.G. to safety and to help.