Thread: Wichita Massacre

The Wichita Massacre, also known as The Wichita Horror, was a murder, assault, rape, and robbery spree perpetrated by brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr against several people in the city of Wichita, Kansas in December 2000. The Carrs killed five people and a dog. A sixth victim, a woman known as HG, survived a gunshot wound to the head. The crimes shocked Wichitans, and purchases of guns, locks, and home security systems subsequently skyrocketed in the city. The brothers were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in October 2002. Although it appeared that a 2004 decision by the Kansas Supreme Court overturning the state death penalty law was going to spare the Carrs, the decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the death penalty law and returned the Carrs and other condemned killers to death row.

Crime spree

The Carr brothers, 22-year-old Reginald and 20-year-old Jonathan, already had lengthy criminal records when they began their spree.[4] On December 8, 2000, having recently arrived in Wichita, they committed armed robbery against 23-year-old assistant baseball coach, Andrew Schreiber. Three days later, they shot and mortally wounded 55-year-old cellist and librarian, Ann Walenta, as she tried to escape from them in her car; she died three days later.

Their crime spree culminated on December 14, when they invaded a home and subjected five young men and women to robbery, sexual abuse, and murder. The brothers broke into a house chosen nearly at random where Brad Heyka, Heather Muller, Aaron Sander, Jason Befort and his girlfriend, a young woman identified as 'H.G.', all in their twenties, were spending the night. They initially scoured the house for valuables. In a much-remarked point of tragedy, H.G. learned of Befort's intent to propose marriage when the Carrs, by chance, discovered the engagement ring hidden in a can of popcorn. After the search, the Carrs forced their hostages to strip naked, bound and detained them, and subjected them to various forms of sexual humiliation, including rape and oral sex.[4] They also forced the men to engage in sexual acts with the women, and the women with each other. They then drove the victims to ATMs to empty their bank accounts, before finally taking them to a snowy deserted soccer complex on the outskirts of town and shooting them execution-style in the backs of their heads, leaving them for dead. The Carr brothers then drove Befort's truck over the bodies.

They returned to the house to ransack it for more valuables, and in the process killed Nikki, H.G.'s muzzled dog. H.G. survived because her metal barrette deflected the bullet, and ran naked for more than a mile in freezing weather to report the attack and seek medical attention.

The Carr brothers, who took few precautions, were captured by the police the next day, and Reginald was identified by Schreiber and the dying Walenta. The District Attorney stated that the Carrs' motive was robbery.[5]
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Controversy[I]

Since there was reportedly no prima facie evidence of racial motivation, only that the victims were white and the Carr brothers are black, Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston decided not to treat the incident as a hate crime. Media commentators David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, and Thomas Sowell all stated that the crime did not garner much airtime or space in the national mainstream media due to political correctness.[6][7] Sowell went on to claim that the media has a double standard regarding interracial offenses, tending to play up "vicious crimes by whites against blacks" but play down equally "vicious crimes by blacks against whites".[2]

Despite the accusations of limited news coverage of the incident, The Wichita Eagle commented that four young black people who were murdered only eight days before the "Wichita Massacre" by another young black man, received even less media coverage. Speculation has been raised that this may have been due to the race of the victims. One relative questioned "How could one be any worse than the other, if the results were the same?"[8]

Aftermath

Muller was a pre-school teacher at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School. Every year the school awards a deserving 8th grade student the Heather Muller Love of Faith Award in her memory.[9]

With the help of HG's testimony, the brothers were convicted of nearly all 113 counts against them and were both given the death penalty.

On July 25, 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court announced it has overturned the death sentences. In overturning their death sentences, the six justice-majority said they did so because the trial judge failed to separate the penalty proceedings against them. According to a release from the Kansas Supreme Court public information officer, the court unanimously reversed three of each defendant’s four capital convictions because jury instructions on sex-crime-based capital murder were “fatally erroneous and three of the multiple-homicide capital murder charges duplicated the first.”[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita_Massacre

Please share Mark's letter for Kansans For Justice:
"My name is Mark Befort. Jason Befort was my brother. Jason was one of the 4 victims who were brutally murdered on December 15, 2000 at the hands of Jonathan and Reginald Carr. This letter is to share with you my family’s disgust for the Kansas Supreme Court judge’s recent decision to overturn the sentences in the Carr brother’s case. Their interpretation of the law was not right at so many levels. We do not pretend to know the law inside and out but what we DO know is how this decision has affected our family. Until a person has lived this nightmare, there is no way to explain the hurt and the pain this decision has caused my family.
Back in 2002, a decision was made to try and sentence these two animals together in Sedgwick County. This decision was not made hastily. The decision was based on the undeniable evidence that these two were, without a doubt, responsible for killing 5 innocent, productive, law abiding citizens. Twelve of our peers were picked as jurors and asked to give up weeks of their lives with minimal pay to hear mountains of evidence. These jurors made a decision, based on that evidence, to find the Carr Brothers GUILTY of multiple charges. The State appointed Judge Clark to preside over this case and make decisions that he knew to be following the law. He made his decisions based on the law that he upheld. Not some random decision to decide their fate. The Kansas Supreme Court judges decided Judge Clark failed to separate the penalty proceedings against the Carr Brothers which, according to them, was not following the law. The decisions to try and sentence them together did not change the insurmountable evidence that helped the jury make the decision to find them GUILTY. The consequence for their actions, according to the law, was to sentence them to death. The mountains of evidence and an informed judge and jury made that decision crystal clear. Reversing their sentences will not change that evidence or the outcome. Reversing their sentences has only caused more pain for the victims’ families and the survivor, HG.
That day was life changing for our family. At the time, our children were ages 8 and 12. There were horrific things that happened that night that a parent should NEVER have to explain to a child at that age or any age for that matter. My wife and I tried very hard to protect our children from learning details about that night and what happened to their Uncle Jason, HG and the others. Now, we are faced with having to open a wound we have so desperately tried to heal for 14 years. We have tried very hard to forget the evil and remember Jason for the amazing person we knew and loved. We have tried to move on and not let that define our family. We cannot even begin to imagine what HG must feel as she is faced with this. She has worked hard to forget and move on as well. She is a loving mother and wife and would love nothing more than to be done with this dark memory and move forward with her life. We never dreamed that 14 years later we would be facing a reversal of their death sentences thanks to a decision made by a hand full of liberal judges’ and their interpretations of the law. Their decision will not change the evidence or the outcome of what happened or where these two animals will end up. Their decision rocked the very foundation of our family’s belief that our judicial system was successful in doing its job 14 years ago.
We are completely disgusted by Justice Johnson’s and Justice Rosen’s decision to reverse the capital murder convictions. Our family wants justice now more than ever. In our opinion, justice would best be served by removing these judges. We strongly urge the public to be aware of the ludicrous decisions made by the Kansas Supreme Court judges and vote NO for the retention of Justice Johnson and Justice Rosen. Remove them now before other families are forced by their decisions to suffer through the pain of dragging up painful memories after years of trying to heal. This seems to be a never ending battle."
Mark Befort

CHICAGO, July 25 (Reuters) - The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday overturned death sentences for two brothers convicted in the 2000 execution-style murder of four people on a snowy soccer field in Wichita, ruling that the trial judge erred in refusing to conduct separate penalty phases for the two men.

Jonathan and Reginald Carr were sentenced to death in 2002. Their December 2000 crime spree, known as the Wichita Massacre, included the kidnapping of three men and two women in a home invasion that included rape and sexual humiliation.

The five victims were shot in the head; one survived.

The court affirmed some of the convictions against the two brothers, including murder, but vacated the death penalty for both of them, sending the case back to district court for new sentencing.

"The Eighth Amendment was violated in this capital case when the district judge refused to sever the penalty phase of the proceedings," the court wrote in the ruling.

The Supreme Court said the mitigation cases of the two men were at least partially antagonistic, so they should have been treated separately, and said the joint treatment allowed evidence against both of them that might have been excluded in separate proceedings.

Six judges on the seven-member court joined the majority opinion on overturning the death penalty, while one dissented. (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Leslie Adler)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5621405.html