Posted on 11/07/2002 4:33:26 AM PST by KS Flyover
Juanita Culver found it hard to believe that the Jonathan Carr she knew could be facing the death penalty for a crime rampage that included multiple rapes, robberies and murders.But District Attorney Nola Foulston wanted to clarify the crimes for the 73-year-old woman from Dodge City, who testified Wednesday in the penalty phase of Jonathan and Reginald Carr's capital murder trial.
Foulston showed Culver color crime-scene photos from a soccer field where four people were shot to death on Dec. 15, 2000, and asked: Did that change her mind?
"No, it doesn't.... I see that stuff, but it's very, very hard for me to believe it," Culver said.
Everyone the defense called Wednesday agreed the acts were brutal, but they didn't waver in their support of the brothers who have become two of Wichita's most infamous killers.
In challenging people who said they have seen the Carrs' humanity, Foulston made sure they also saw photos of the crime scene that have her now seeking the death penalty against the brothers.
But she couldn't budge them.
"My brain says, 'Juanita, just face the facts,' but my heart says 'I still love him,' " Juanita Culver said of Jonathan Carr, who as a teenager worked for her and her husband doing carpentry work.
"I found him to be one of the nicest, polite, kind, warm, giving -- he was the epitome of the finest young man," Juanita Culver told Jonathan Carr's lawyer, Ron Evans.
Foulston pressed on cross-examination: Did the picture of the murder scene look like the work of a warm person?
"I have to accept it, because you said it, but deep down, I can't believe it," Juanita Culver said.
She later added: "I feel so sorry for those people who lost those children."
But neither Juanita nor Leroy Culver wavered in their opinion of the Jonathan Carr they knew.
"He just was a child who wanted love," Juanita Culvert said.
Reginald Carr, meanwhile, seems to have inspired a host of faithful women who have not abandoned him.
Richele Kossmen spoke through tears as she talked about the 7-year-old son she had with Reginald Carr.
The boy "sees no evil; he just sees his dad," she said.
Kossmen cried when Foulston showed the crime pictures. Foulston then stood over the 26-year-old woman's shoulder and peered at Reginald Carr.
"I'm sorry you have tears in your eyes," Foulston said. "You see any tears in that man's eyes?"
Answered Kossmen: "I've never seen any tears in that man's eyes -- even when he was hurting."
As Foulston asked pointed questions between Kossmen's sobs, some jurors looked away from the witness stand.
"I don't know the person who could do this," Kossmen said.
Kossmen said she knew a Reginald Carr who provided no financial support, but regularly played with his boy -- when dad wasn't serving time.
"I think there's a boundary between the way he acts with children and the way he acts with other people," Kossmen said.
That's the Reginald Carr who Kossmen's son writes letters to in jail. She read one letter, "For Daddy..."
"I wish you would come back," the letter read. "I love you very, very much. I love when you play games with me...
"I'm a good boy like you tell me to," the boy wrote.
Reginald Carr hung his head, as Kossmen read aloud.
Foulston pointed out that Reginald Carr had been put in diversion as a teen on a charge of indecent solicitation of a child. When he robbed a Dodge City bookstore, the court in Ford County certified him as an adult. When he continued to get into the trouble, he went to prison.
"If Mr. Carr would walk out of here today, would you resume that relationship?" Foulston asked.
"I sure would," Kossmen said.
Kossmen also cried for the families of the dead and the woman who survived the shooting in the soccer field. She lived, despite a gunshot wound to the back of her head, and her testimony helped convict the Carr brothers of capital murder.
"I have every bit of remorse for those families," Kossmen said.
But she doesn't fear Reginald Carr: "He's the man who was good to my son."
Mandy Carr, Reginald's estranged wife, was pregnant with his second child on the night five people were raped, robbed and shot in the back of the head.
"You wouldn't want to tell your son about that, would you?" Chief Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker asked.
"No," Mandy Carr said.
But Mandy Carr has stood by Reginald through his troubles.
She married him after he went to prison for possession of methamphetamine, a year after they met. He was 16; she was 21.
Reginald Carr wrote poems to her. He drew cartoons and portraits from photographs.
Mandy Carr knows about the other women. She knows Reginald Carr came to Wichita, stayed with Stephanie Donley, and then went on a weeklong crime spree that ended with his arrest in Donley's apartment.
Wednesday, Jay Greeno, one of Reginald Carr's lawyers, asked Mandy Carr: "Do you feel he misled you... lied to you?" "Yes," she said.
"Has that affected your relationship?"
"No," Mandy Carr said.
Reach Ron Sylvester at 268-6514 or rsylvester@wichitaeagle.com.
Why would these people want to visit the sins of the fathers upon their children?
My mother, who has been watching the trial, says that they actually beat the dog to death with a golf club while it was leashed and muzzled.
Sounds to me like they haven't had a father in a while. Besides, no father would be much better than these wastes of skin and organs as fathers.
Look, I'm not a lawyer and so there might be subleties that would prevent this, but in terms of punishing Carr, couldn't the state just kill all his children?
God and God alone reserves the right to curse a lineage to the 3rd and 4th generations; He specifically commands us NOT to do this: "The son shall not die for the sin of the father, neither shall the father die for the sin of the son, but let every man die for his OWN sin."
Besides, if we punish the kids for the father's crime, we lose all moral high ground in the fight against reparations.
Still, though, it's a d@#% shame that those victims all died without children, and Carr has already spawned. There's a basic genetic unfairness there. Maybe the survivor, H.G., will compensate by marrying a homeschooling patriarch and having 14 kids in revenge for her friends' extinction.
Blame the SOBs that wrote and printed this piece, 'cause their motives are far, far more devious.
Mr. Carr probably cares very little about his progeny (no doubt they were "accidents"). I'd imagine he'd think you were doing him a favor.
Execute this filth.
It has been my observation that many marginal or disenfranchised white women are attracted to black men because the latter constitute a way of thumbing their nose at convention, of joining forces with another historically disenfranchised group and finding their lacking identity therein. These are not people who can be counted on to make elevated moral judgments.
Of course, this isn't close to true in every case, but here, where the depravity of the crimes is so obvious, any defense offered smacks of either duty, denial, or defiance. Something like the OJ jury, only non-binding.
See "denial."
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