Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed Them All // The Karl Karlsen Murder Story

Episode Date: June 6, 2026

Karl Karlsen is an American murderer convicted of killing his first wife, Christina Karlsen, in a staged 1991 California house fire and his 23-year-old son, Levi Karlsen, by crushing him under a truck in New York in 2008. Motivated entirely by financial gain.

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kill people over it. Now the story starts with this guy, Carl. Carl's around 30 when all this begins and he's living in California. Here's the thing about Carl. He really wants to have a big farm where he can raise a bunch of horses and whatnot. But the problem with that is he works at a local sheet metal shop, so he doesn't get paid enough to afford a whole ass farm. So how's he going to get enough money to pay for a farm? Well, one day in 1990, he comes up with a diabolical idea. What if he murders his wife and collects the life insurance money? So Carl gets to work on this plan. He goes behind his wife's back and he secretly takes out a $200,000 life insurance policy on her.

After that, he plans out how he's going to kill her. He's going to stage a house fire and make sure that she dies in it. So some time passes and it's now 1991. And one day his wife is at home taking a bath. And his wife is this woman, Christina. And so Christina is taking a bath, and while she's paying attention to that, Carl quietly moves a dresser in front of the bathroom door to block it shut. Then he grabs some kerosene, and he pours it across the hallway right in front of the bathroom, and he sets it on fire. And very quickly, the flames spread across the whole house.

And Carl, he pretends to be shocked by the fire, and he gets his three kids and he escorts them outside to safety. After that, he pretends he's going back in the house to save Christina, but of course, he doesn't actually try to save her. So he comes back outside and he stays there with the kids while the house keeps burning. Meanwhile, Christina is trapped inside the bathroom. She can't get out. She tries to escape through the window, but days earlier, Carl had sealed the bathroom window shut by covering it with a piece of plywood.

So she, unfortunately, dies. Now, after an investigation, the sheriff's department rules the fire to be an accident. So it looks like Carl got away with murder. And soon after, he receives around $200,000 from the life insurance payout. And within four days, he takes his three kids and he moves all the way over to New York State. He doesn't even wait for Christina to be buried. He just, like, leaves California immediately. So anyway, years pass.

and it's now 2001. And Carl uses some of that life insurance money and he finally buys the farm that he's always wanted. And of course, he buys the horses. He buys several Belgian draft horses and he starts breeding them. And by this point, he's remarried. So he's got a new wife, this woman, Cindy. But then, by 2002, Carl finds himself broke again.

I guess he burned through all that insurance money. And his Belgian draft horse business, isn't really making the income that he's wanted it to. So he decides it's time to perform yet another insurance scam. Only this time, instead of targeting a single person, this asshole decides that he's going to target his own horses. He plans to take out insurance policies on these horses, burn down the barn with them in it, and pretend it was an accident, and then collect the payout. So he goes and he takes out the insurance policies. Then he lets us. a little time pass so as not to draw suspicion, and then he sets the barn on fire with the horses

in it. And sadly, about three horses die from this fire. But Carl doesn't seem to care about all that. All he cares about is this plan working. And it does work. The fire investigators rule the fire to be an accident, and Carl receives yet another insurance payout, this time around $115,000. But more years pass, and it's now 2008. And around this time, all that insurance money starts running out again, and Carl has to come up with yet another insurance scam. And here's where the story gets really dark. Carl realizes he can't burn his own barn down again.

That would look really suspicious. So he decides that this time, the best way to get insurance money is to sacrifice his own son. Now his son is this guy, Levi. Levi was a little kid during the first fire back in California, but now he's all grown up. He's about 23. And one day, Carl calls up Levi and he gives him some seemingly random fatherly advice. He tells Levi that he should set up insurance for his daughters.

That way, they'll be protected if Levi ever dies. Levi has two young daughters, by the way. Then, to really push him into it, Carl even takes Levi to an insurance agent who helps him set up the policy, and Carl convinces him to make him the sole beneficiary. And Levi, he's never done this before, so he listens to him, and he sets up a policy worth $700,000. So now that the insurance is in place, Carl is ready to commit the murder. So one day, he invites Levi over to help work on his truck. So Levi comes over to his place, and at one point, he's underneath the truck while it's propped up on a jack.

And that is when boom, Carl jumps into the truck, and this causes it to slip off the jack and fall on Levi. And unfortunately, poor Levi doesn't survive. And of course, police come out and they investigate all this, and Carl tells them this whole bullshit story about how the truck accidentally fell and that he's so devastated. And police, I guess, they believe him and the whole thing is ruled an accident. And so once again, Carl has gotten away. with murder. And shortly after, he collects a huge $700,000 life insurance payout, and he uses the money to buy himself all sorts of new farm shit, like some tractors, a new truck. He also uses the money to start a little duck farm, like he buys a bunch of ducks to raise and breed so that he can

sell the meat to local restaurants. So it seems like Carl's got this insurance scam thing figured out. And I don't know if he's ever going to get caught. Until Here's the thing about all this While Levi's death was officially ruled an accident Not everyone believes that it was actually an accident In fact, his first wife, Christina, her family has always suspected that Carl was involved in her death Carl's own kids who are now adults also start believing that he had something to do with it

Even Cindy, Carl's current wife, starts to wonder if Levi and Christina's deaths were really an accident or if Carl had something to do with it. And so that is when Cindy decides to hire a private investigator to see if he can find anything suspicious about her own husband Carl. So this PI looks into all of this and he finds something pretty horrifying. Carl had secretly taken out around $1.2 million worth of life insurance policies on Cindy, suggesting that she's next. So she eventually talks to the police and she tells them everything. Here's the thing though. Police, they can't just arrest Carl for taking out life insurance policies.

That's not illegal, not by itself. So they get together with Cindy and they set up a whole sting operation. And she wears a wire so that she can secretly record him and she meets up with Carl at a local restaurant and she gets him to talk about Levi's death. And he admits to setting up the whole unstable truck on a jack situation. and he also admits to taking advantage of the life insurance policy. Shortly after that, police go out to his duck farm and bam, they arrest Carl. Here's his mugshot.

And ultimately, he takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 15 years to life for the death of his son Levi. A few years later, the investigation into Christina's death is reopened, and Carl is eventually found guilty for that, and for that, he gets sentenced to life in prison.