The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - My Friend, the Serial Killer | 6. Unfinished Business

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Despite promises made by the police, the killer faces the death penalty for his crimes. Donna confesses that she is terrified her father will find a way to avoid the death penalty, get out of prison, and come after her. As time goes on, Donna and Steve reckon with the aftershocks of her father’s crimes, the mistakes Steve made as a young journalist, and the damage the killer inflicted on his victims… both living and dead.   This episode will be released for free on July 8th.   Unlock all episodes of Smoke Screen: My Friend, the Serial Killer, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month  thats all episodes, all at once, all ad-free.  Just click Subscribe on the top of the Smoke Screen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts.   An Orbit Media & Sony Music Entertainment production in association with Rhyme Media.   Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. The Bench.

This show contains descriptions of sexual violence and murder. Listener discretion is advised. And a quick note, we've used an actor to voice what Robert Carr said in court. I felt I needed help. I could no longer control myself. I feared that I was going to kill someone else. Robert Carr has disregarded his attorney's adamant advice to stay quiet.

Instead, he takes the witness stand. And there's a lot at stake. This is a hearing to decide if Carr lives or dies. As the prosecutor says, The state is seeking the ultimate penalty. Meaning the electric chair. Carr wants to live, and he says he wants treatment. At one point, Carr believed he'd come to an understanding to get just those things from

the prosecutor and the cops he led on that trip to discover the bodies. More or less a handshake that everybody talked about. The judge isn't impressed. Handshake deals don't count in court. Carr had already pled guilty, so there was no trial. It's the death penalty phase now. The judge will hear evidence and decide, should Robert Carr's life be spared?

I would like to cover some of my personal feelings. On the stand, Carr openly, and to the dismay of his attorney, describes the monster within. It came to a point that I was going to rape, that I no longer could control it.

It became so important that I would carry it out, regardless of the consequences. It is my request today to receive a life sentence with treatment, and if you exclude the treatment, then administer the death penalty. Robert Carr maintains that he's sick. He's got a mental condition, as he told me. And if he's sick, then maybe he's not fully responsible for his crimes. So his attorney trots out psychiatrists and psychologists who'd evaluated Carr. And they testify that he is indeed a very disturbed person. He's diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive, schizophrenic, borderline, sociopathic, paranoid. One expert brings up Carr's childhood. He never

knew his father. His stepfather beat him. Another talks of his incestuous wishes, his willingness to do it to anyone. One expert characterizes Carr as a disturbed child. And then, judgment day arrives in a Miami courtroom. Carr sits at the defense table, quiet, poised, just as I remember him when I visited him in jail. Next to him sits his defense attorney, who personally believes Carr should be killed. The judge's decision is brief and to the point. Society must be protected from Robert Carr, she begins. But she believes that he is sick

and illness cannot be deterred by an electric chair. She sentences him to many life terms. However, and this is crucial, she recommends he be sent to a state hospital to receive treatment, the treatment he's claimed to so desperately want. Your Honor, I want to thank you for the recommendation of treatment. So why, just a year later, is Robert Carr back in the news? They caught him in possession of a crowbar, wire cutters, pliers, and razor blades,

which he might use to escape. This is My Friend the Serial Killer. I'm Steve Fishman. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what to do with someone like Robert Carr. The judge had to make that call. And in a way, so does his daughter. And so do I. So here we go.

Our final episode, Unfinished Business. For the last year, he's been under treatment at the Florida State Hospital at Chattahoochee. After a year in the hospital, Robert Carr is back in court, back in front of the same judge who'd recommended treatment. Now, the state wants him out of the hospital and into a maximum security prison. Hospital officials testified today that he's more interested in writing a book

than in being rehabilitated. Here's how he ended up back before the judge. The hospital was a minimum security facility. When he wasn't getting therapy, he had access to a typewriter and a telephone. He used the typewriter to work on his book, the one poetically titled Car, Five Years of Rape and Murder. He used the telephone to call the Miami Herald and boast, I can get out of here anytime I want. The Herald tipped off the hospital. The hospital staff searched his room and found the wire cutters and pliers

and other things he could use to escape. And that's how he ended up with the state trying to kick him out of the hospital and into a maximum security prison. Carr says he doesn't want to go, and in an unusual move, handled part of his own defense by

cross-examining a psychologist from his hospital. Nobody had told you, and you had no reason to believe that I was going to escape. We were told that you were one of the individuals that had some sort of contraband that could be used in that sort of thing. Florida officials had had enough of Robert Carr. This is an assistant state attorney addressing the judge. You put him in the hospital. He flunked out of the hospital.

They can't free him in the hospital. He is unfreedable. The day he dies, he's going to be like this. Watching all this was the mother of Mark Wilson, one of Carr's 11-year-old victims. He's had how many chances in a hospital already? I think he's just playing games. I think they should put him away without anything,

no visitors, no nothing, no book. It's not right. He's going to get out someday and kill somebody else. He didn't give the kids a chance. Why should they give them any more chances? The judge agreed with Mark's mother. There's nothing more they can do for him,

the judge said of the hospital. The judge had believed Carr's pleas for some kind of treatment were genuine. She'd given him a chance. Now it seems she believes he is irredeemable. Carr's daughter Donna had just become a teenager when her father entered the maximum security prison. She sent him those letters about her life, boys, drugs, school,

and that Valentine's Day card with the owl. And it's while he's in prison that his letters to her turned ugly and sexual, and she stopped writing back. He wrote something like 20 letters over the next few years, threatening and taunting her. How did that feel when you read them? Disgusting. Frightening.

I knew what my father was capable of. Those letters are one reason Donna moved around so much in her life. Colorado, Wyoming, West Virginia. She's always been on the move, hoping to stay a step ahead of him. She knew he'd tried to escape from prison in Connecticut. And Donna knew he could qualify for parole in Florida after just 25 years, believe it or not. Once the internet came about, you could log in and check on the status of a prisoner. So I would log in every couple of months and just make sure he was where he was supposed to be. Then, one day... I was living in Wyoming. It was in the evening when I checked the internet to find out what his status, his prisoner status was. And it said released. Don is staring at her computer screen.

It's 30 years after Robert Carr was sent to prison. She's in her mid-40s. Her computer says her father has just been released. I honestly, when I saw release splashed across the screen, I initially about had a heart attack because I was terrified of him. You know, your head starts swimming, you get a little dizzy, you start shaking. Donna's trying to make sense of what she's looking at. Had her father made parole?

She called the prison to see what happened. It turned out Donna hadn't understood what the prison meant by released. Apparently that's what they put on there when they die. Instead of putting deceased across the screen they put released Robert Carr had not gotten parole he had not escaped after 30 years in prison Carr died of cancer I was relieved he was dead. But on the other side of that coin, he was still my father, which there's still some emotional reaction there. I cried a little.

Oh. And what were you feeling when you were crying? So part of the reason I was crying was the relief that I felt when I did find out that it was deceased and not released. And then also for all of what we lost in our lives as his children, you know, not having a real father, not having a good, stable environment. And then having to live through what he put us through. After his death, Donna asked the prison to send her everything from his cell. That's how she ended up with that box full of stuff I dug out of her storage unit. The contents of that box are now spread out on the floor.

We're back in her living room in West Virginia. We've been here going on five hours, sifting through the remains of her father's life. I'm pulling things out of that box, showing each of them to Donna. Those are his shower slippers with his prisoner number stamped on them. It's what every girl dreams of. It looks like these are his glasses. Glasses. Over the years, Donna has tried to find answers in this box of things.

Some clue to the reasons her father did what he did. Some explanations. Which is what he did, some explanations, which is what I've been looking for too. At one point, her husband pokes his head into the living room, but Donna sends him back downstairs with the dog. For Donna, sifting through all that remains of her father has been part of a lonely quest. None of her husbands had dug in with her, but Donna and I are digging in together.

In the box, there's toilet paper. Robert Carr wrote a religious book on toilet paper. A book claiming he was a prophet. I also find a letter from a publisher saying, we're not in the market for prophecy books at the moment. And then in the box, prophecy books at the moment. And then in the box, I find something Donna had missed. Transcripted those, damn.

Yeah. Oh my god, you didn't see any pictures, huh? Maybe there were some in there. I empty an envelope. Photos tumble out. All right, so that is me with our dog, Rusty. That's you and your mom? Mm-hmm. That is his grandmother, and that is my cousin. That was a Christmas in Miami. That's my brother.

Oh, my God. That Todd or Mark? Todd and Mark. The two 11-year-old boys he'd murdered. That's Mark. Pretty sure that's Mark. Carr kept pictures of his victims. The photos that we ran in the Norwich Bulletin.

There's Rhonda. And there's Rhonda. There's Todd. There's Rhonda. And there's Rhonda. There's Todd. There's Todd. There's Tammy. And he had these in his collection of photos? Kind of sick. Why would he keep these?

These young, mostly happy faces. Like out of a school yearbook. When I'd listen to my old tapes, I heard him say that he'd look at the photos to remind him of the loss they suffered. But really, it seems to me more likely they were trophies, maybe even happy memories of his reign of terror. Then I find a photo of a headstone, a flat marker of shiny granite. Engraved on it is the name Tammy Ruth Huntley, his favorite. Remember,

Carr believed they'd had a relationship before he killed her. Then I find a fiery letter from someone I don't recognize. It reads, I am not the judge and jury to say what your penalty should be. I can only share what God's word says. Maybe these are his Christian friends, who knows? Carr has a bunch of letters from Christian well-wishers, but this one has a different tone.

Fortunately for you, they did not choose the death penalty, and maybe it was within God's will to bring me to the point where I can truly forgive you. I stop reading and put it aside, not sure what to make of it. Who is this person? And then a few days later, Donna reaches out to me. She's read that letter all the way through. She directs me to a section I'd missed.

Let me fill you in on a little history, says the letter. Tammy's mom married my father. That made Tammy my stepsister. But we didn't look at it like that. In our eyes, we were sisters. It's a letter from Candy Sweet Lovett. I knew I had to talk to her. I reached her by phone.

Everybody in the family got mad at me because I, you know, I was religious. And I decided to write Carr and let him know that I forgave him. Carr and Candy had written quite a bit. For a time, the correspondence apparently made both of them feel better. Then, predictably, Carr's switch flipped. Just like he'd turned on the social worker, Chloe Carl, and just like he'd on the social worker, Chloe Carl, and just like he turned on his daughter, he starts writing explicit letters to Candy.

His letters got sicker and sicker. He wrote to her about what he'd done to her stepsister, Tammy. I called the prison up and I said, look, I don't want to hear from this guy. What can I do to stop the letters? And they said, we'll notify him and you'll never hear from him again. And he told me, he said, he's sick. This guy can never, never be let out of society again. He's very sick.

Donna was excited by the discovery of Candy's letter. She was drawn to Candy. Both Candy's life and her own were shaped by Carr's crimes. All of my life, I've thought that I wanted to apologize to the victim's families. Really? I just, I felt guilty all of my life for what he had done to those families. Yeah, I blamed myself. That is how I felt most of my life, is that if we had been a happier family, a better family,

a less dysfunctional family, that maybe, maybe he wouldn't have done it. Turns out, Candy was eager to connect too. It happened quickly. Donna called Candy. By the time I got on the line, they'd already been talking. Hey, is that Candy? Yeah, let me call you back because I'm on the phone with Donna right now. Oh my God. Wait, I want to hear you guys talk.

Can you conference me in? Okay, I'll ask her that. Okay. Hey. Hey, is everybody here now? Donna. Yes, I'm here. What are you guys laughing about?

No, we just... Just tickled that this all happened so quickly. Oh, my God, I'm recording. I asked them to catch me up. No, I'm just kidding. Donna, Donna, what did you say to her? I just, I told her I'm so sorry for what my father did. I am so sorry for the harm he has created.

I am so sorry for taking your sister from you, taking your mother's daughter from her, taking the family unit away. And that's how you see kids as a child. But can you understand the concept that as a child, you are not responsible for your parents' actions? I do feel a little bit to blame. I do, because it was my father, the man that I loved to.

I felt like I was still responsible because when I went to school after all this happened, and yes, there were a few good stories about people who stood up for me, but for the most part, I had my ass kicked all the time for what my father did. And I mean that, high school kids, I mean, middle school, elementary, whatever, they're mean. I honestly took all of that in and internalized it and felt like it was my fault. I am so sorry that you had to go through that. It kind of breaks my heart because I know that's how you think as a child, you know, and kids can be so cruel at times. But the bottom line is, and the reality, the reality is, you didn't create your father as the monster he is. It's not your fault.

And I hope at some point you eventually get all this. You know, I'm, not that you blame yourself, that's not the word, but in a way

you blame yourself because the bullies blamed you and treated you differently and that all affects your mental well-being growing up. I'm a big believer in fucking personal responsibility.

There's not enough of that shit going on in this world now. But by no means do you have any personal responsibility for your dad and his actions. None. Candy, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that from you I cannot you have lifted away from me to be honest you have

I at least in this one situation with Tammy you have lifted away from me and I appreciate that and I hope conversations have also lifted away from me. And I appreciate that. And I hope conversations have also lifted away from you. Candy said she hoped to drive from her home in Florida to see Donna in West Virginia.

Maybe they'd do a road trip together. I checked in with Donna by phone later. I believe that Candy's forgiveness is a turning point. I certainly feel a lot better about having these conversations now. I mean, as I'm sitting here now, I'm still tearing up, but it's not what I used to do, is just internalize it all and just keep it all in me. Talking to Candy might have helped Donna close a chapter. Now I had something I wanted to talk to Donna about, an open chapter for me.

I traveled to Donna's house in West Virginia to try to find answers about her father and to learn what had happened to that scared 12-year-old I took to play pinball. As I spoke to Donna, those articles I'd written in the Norwich Bulletin, the ones about her father, were always in the back of my mind. When I'd re-read them, I couldn't help but think that I'd sanitized a killer, helped make him famous. And now, sitting with Donna, I'm embarrassed. The horror of what he did had escaped me back then. A horror that Donna has lived. There's one part of the newspaper series in particular that feels to me almost unbearable now.

Donna's never seen it. It's a letter the newspaper published to accompany my articles, a letter from her father. He wrote a letter to his living victims, as he called them, and we published it in the Norwich Bulletin. A letter from Robert Carr to his living victims, and the paper published it in full.

I know what my boss must have thought, a scoop, the killer in his own words. The letter begins. I know when you read of the deaths of Mark, Todd, Rhonda, and Tammy, you must have thought to yourself, wow, I could have been killed as well. Well, you're right. And it's nothing short of the pure grace of God that you are living today. You are no different than those I killed. When I first read that, I thought he was speaking to me, a hitchhiker who'd sat in his victim's seat.

In this letter, Carr urges his living victims to join the fight, as if he's leading a movement. By fight, he means his supposed crusade to get sex offenders' treatment in prison. I suppose back then I'd unwittingly enlisted in that movement. To his living victims, he signed the letter, You're Rapist. And to Mark, Todd, Rhonda, and Tammy,

he signed off, You're Killer. It's difficult for me to find the words to describe to Donna how offensive I find this letter now. As far as I'm concerned, any apologies that my father made to his living victims was crap. He didn't mean it. He never felt remorse. He actually didn't say he was sorry.

I believe that. And then I asked her what maybe I'd wanted to ask her all along. So you think he might have manipulated me? Yes. Shouldn't feel responsible at all. My father was very good at that. I look back at those articles, and I think of myself, you know, 20, I was sitting there talking to him in prison,

like you and I are talking a few feet away. And so my articles make this argument that the system failed him. Right. And I look back on that and I think, you know, I have kids now. I'm older. And I feel like, how come I just didn't think of the horror? How come I didn't think of the absolute depravity of this? Right.

Well, he was very good at convincing people to hear what he wanted to tell them. Well, you know, it was a scoop. Absolutely. Just as Candy comforted Donna, now Donna's comforting me. She's not offended by what the paper published. She's not offended by my approach. She doesn't blame me.

And that's a relief. Back when I was a reporter at the Norwich Bulletin, I'd search for a rational explanation among the experts for how this local man could be such a hideous monster. But Donna, who knew him far better than I did, had come to her own conclusion. Some people honestly are just born horrible people. Born bad. Born bad. I do believe he was born that way. I honestly do. I think my father should have gotten the death penalty.

I'm sure it would have been disturbing for me to see that, to know that, but in the end, it is what I believe should have happened. Donna says this with a bloodless finality. She's found the answer to her why. Why did he do it? Because he was born bad. And you know what?

Looking back now, I agree. Maybe Carr had once seemed like a kind of pal to me, calling every day, becoming familiar with my personal life, or at times a kind of colleague on this interesting research project. I no longer have to sympathize with the killer or explain away his crimes. If I could do my stories over again now, I would say Robert Carr was born bad. Donna has her explanation, but that doesn't end anything for her. And it probably never will.

She still hears his voice in her head, saying the horrible things he wrote to her in those letters. I'd like the voice in my head to stop. I'd like the wheels constantly spinning in my head to stop. I would like to just be able to rest and enjoy my life. I've been at Donna's house for hours. It's time to go. She's given me a tote bag full of documents from her father's cell. It's my turn now.

I guess it really is a lonely thing. It's just you thinking about it. Yeah, it really is. Feel less alone because we're in this together? It did make me feel less alone today. Now as we walk out together, it's dark. The West Virginia sky is filled with stars. Donna gives me a warm hug.

Safe travels. Thanks for coming to see it. Safe travels. Oh, thank you. Thanks for coming. Welcome home. Country road. Country road. Thank you. is Dan Bobcoff. Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Editorial consulting by Annie Aviles. Fact check,

Catherine Newhan. Our mixer and sound designer is Scott Somerville. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. Our voice actor

is Andy Manjock. Thanks for listening. See you next time.