Your only source for the
shocking eyewitness testimony of the
lone survivor of America's most suppressed massacre
Heather Muller Brad Heyka Aaron Sander Jason Befort
Reginald Carr Jonathan Carr
Carr brothers convicted of brutal murders and sentenced to death
At about 11 p.m. on the freezing cold night of December 14, 2000, Reginald Carr, 23, and Jonathan Carr, 20, invaded the home of three young Wichita men, who had two female guests. The Carr brothers forced all of them to strip naked. They beat the men and raped the women.
In addition to repeatedly raping the women, the Carr brothers have been found guilty of forcing them to perform sexual acts on each other, sodomizing one of them, and forcing the three male victims to perform sex acts with each of the women. Then the Carr brothers robbed them and brutally murdered four of them.
According to a lone survivor's horrifying pre-trial testimony, after sexually tormenting them, the Carr brothers took the friends individually to an ATM machine and forced them to withdraw as much cash as possible. Then, the Carr brothers transported their naked victims to a remote soccer field and forced them to kneel in the snow before shooting them execution-style in the head, and then running them over with a truck. After leaving their victims for dead, the Carr brothers returned to the men's apartment and stole appliances, bedding, and china.
The four friends who died were: Jason Befort, 26, an Augusta High School science teacher and football coach; Brad Heyka, 27, a director of finance with Koch Financial Services; Heather Muller, 25, a St. Thomas Aquinas pre-school teacher, who planned to become a nun; and Aaron Sander, 29, a former Koch employee, who had decided to become a priest.
The fifth friend, a 25-year-old woman, miraculously survived. To get help, she walked nearly a mile, naked and bleeding from her wounds, through snow and subfreezing temperatures. Her identity is being protected because she was the victim of a sex crime.
The surviving victim and Jason Befort were planning to marry soon. But Jason never had the opportunity of placing the engagement ring he had just purchased on her finger. It was discovered and stolen by the intruders.
A Preliminary Hearing for the Carr brothers was held in April 2001 at which the survivor testified using her initials, H.G. However, since a gag order had previously been issued to the witnesses, Judge Rebecca Pilshaw warned them, and everyone else in the courtroom, that "the less that is said about these things, the better it will be for all parties involved."
Judge Pilshaw continued, threateningly: "I don't have the ability to order a lot of other people to do or not to do certain things, but I am going to make a very, very strong suggestion that people not talk about this." However, many news reporters and Wichita residents were opposed to these efforts to suppress the facts of this case. Outside of Kansas, there has been a virtual media blackout.
The Carr brothers are African-Americans. All of their victims, including Ann Walenta, 56, a cellist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, who was shot and died from her wounds a month later, were White. However, according to District Attorney Nola Foulston, " the fact that the defendants and victims happen to be of different races has no bearing."
Although e-mails, letters to the editor and other comments in public forums have questioned whether the degradation, torture, and murders were racially motivated, Foulston strongly maintains that race was not an issue. During the preliminary hearing Foulston appears to have studiously avoided questions to the survivor which may have yielded evidence to the contrary.
Jury selection for the Carr brothers trial began on September 9th 2002 at the Sedgwick County Courthouse and was completed on Wednesday, October 2nd. The trial began on Monday, October 7th. On Monday, November 4th, the jury returned verdicts of guilty for most charges against the Carr brothers. Finally, on Friday, November 15, the Carr brothers were sentenced to death. However, various appeals processes may delay their execution for more than ten years. [Update as of December, 2005: Due to a bizarre turn of events, the State of Kansas death-penalty statute has been overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court and is currently being argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, the Carr brothers sentence has temporarily been commuted to life imprisonment!]
Court TV originally said they would broadcast the entire trial. Then they "changed their mind" and said they would only broadcast the opening statements of the prosecuting and defense attorneys and the testimony of the survivor--but then they mysteriously "changed their mind" again and only provided a few brief news reports about the trial.
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Cover of the 80 Page Wichita Massacre Survivor's Testimony
A sample page (page 14) from the Survivor's Testimony.
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