Posted on 11/10/2002 7:22:27 AM PST by KS Flyover
Guilty... guilty... guilty... guilty.... Ninety-three times the jury answered the charges against Reginald and Jonathan Carr.The verdicts resolved a weeklong crime spree that had turned nastier than anyone could imagine, culminating with four people shot to death Dec. 15, 2000. One woman survived to tell of a night of terror, rape and robbery that made a city cringe.
But the jury couldn't answer a question that still haunted Wichita: What kind of people would do this?
This past week, as the Dodge City brothers pleaded for their lives in the penalty phase of their capital murder trial, family members and friends tried to answer that question as they offered accounts of how the Carrs came to this point.
Reginald Dexter Carr Jr. was born Nov. 14, 1977, in Cleveland, Ohio. He arrived as the second of four babies to his namesake father and Janice Harding, who had her first child when she was 16 and Reginald Carr Sr. was 17.
The couple waited until three days after Janice's 18th birthday to marry because of objections from her mother, who was prone to sudden fits of rage.
Baby Regina arrived 14 months to the day behind Reginald Jr., followed by Jonathan on March 30, 1980. All were born prematurely.
Janice and Reginald Sr. tried to provide a good home. They went to church. Reginald Sr. worked his way up to chemist at a local factory. Janice mostly stayed home with the children. They lived in a neighborhood where people felt safe and could walk the streets at night. The children could play outdoors.
Then 2-year-old Regina got sick. Leukemia was a death sentence to a child then. They had to hold her down to give her the medication that would keep her alive only one more year.
Reginald Jr., then 4, was devastated by the loss of his little sister. But he didn't cry. Nobody in the family would remember ever hearing him cry. Jonathan, on the other hand, screamed and wailed as a baby. Reginald was the tough one. Jonathan was the sensitive one.
Janice blamed her husband for the sudden illness. She couldn't explain it, but she blamed him.
Life changed, some of the changes lost for years in shrouds of finger-pointing, secrecy and family shame. There would be stories of sexual infidelities between the spouses, attacks within the family and tales of incest involving everyone in the house. Reginald Jr. and Jonathan would be active in sexual play when most boys their age hadn't graduated from the sandbox.
The parents fought. They argued. They drank. They fought some more. They smoked pot. Reginald Sr. hit Janice. She fought back.
"You're not going to hit me again," Janice Harding said, armed with the baseball bat.
For years, Janice thought she had sheltered her children from the abuse. But the children, she would learn later, always know. Fighting, hitting, slugging, became the order of the day for Jonathan and Reginald Jr.
Then one day, when Reginald Sr. was at work, Janice moved with the children to her mother's house. She hadn't told the kids she planned to do that.
Reginald Jr. didn't have much contact with his father after that. He was 9 and Jonathan was 6 when their parents officially divorced in September 1986. Reginald Sr. quickly remarried, began a new family and eventually moved to California.
Family members remember Reginald Jr. never got over the feelings of anger, resentment and abandonment.
Within a year, a little girl at Harry Rice Elementary School accused Jonathan and several fellow students of raping her during a fire drill. The accusations spread throughout the community, and little Jonathan became known as one of the Harry Rice rapists. The girl later recanted her story; it turned out she and her sister had been molested by a relative.
Still, Jonathan was taunted at school, and the 7-year-old tried to hang himself. Eventually, Janice sent her youngest son to live with her sister Phyllis, who was beginning a career as a doctor in Brownsville, Texas.
Phyllis Harding had left home in 1973 to attend college and become a pediatrician. She adopted children of her own, but she also occasionally took in Janice's kids.
Jonathan and Reginald stayed with Phyllis for a while in Brownsville. She made sure they went to church every Sunday. They loved getting away from the chill of Cleveland to the warmth of Texas, where they liked to swim and fish. When the brothers were with Phyllis, they seemed like fun-loving boys. Then they'd return to Cleveland.
Jonathan and Reginald and their older sister became accustomed to their mother dropping them off with relatives. Sometimes they didn't see her for days.
The family was constantly on the move in the Cleveland area. Reginald and Jonathan attended eight schools in eight grades, never staying long enough to develop lasting relationships with teachers, friends or other people.
Janice had started another relationship that would last years and eventually turn to marriage. The new man in her life didn't step in as a father figure for the children. Instead, he continued the chain of violence. Years later, he'd even hold a gun to Janice's head.
When Phyllis Harding set up practice in Dodge City, with its close-knit community and small-town values, Janice Harding figured it might be a better place to raise her children. Her boys, Reginald and Jonathan, were nearing the rebellious teenage years.
The brothers picked on each other. They had BB guns, and they would shoot at animals and each other. Jonathan shot Reginald in the head, lodging a BB under his scalp.
Reginald had trouble controlling his adolescent urges. Besides having sex since he was 6 with little girls, Reginald had started drinking with uncles at around age 11 and holding drugs for them. He claimed to give drugs to his mother.
Life didn't change much in Dodge City. Reginald got into fights easily. He began skipping middle school. When he was there, he sexually harassed one teacher and threatened others. After a litany of suspensions, Reginald dropped out before he could be expelled.
Still, the boy seemed of normal intelligence, even bright to some. He quickly got his GED and looked toward attending classes at Dodge City Community College.
By the time he was 15, police were searching his mother's house, looking for drugs he supposedly sold. They didn't find anything.
His mother kicked him out of the house at age 16. The next year, he became a father when Richele Kossman gave birth to a boy two weeks after Reginald's 17th birthday.
The following year, Reginald Carr robbed the bookstore at Dodge City Community College wearing a mask resembling the killer Michael Myers in the movie "Halloween," threatening a woman and stealing about $500.
He was convicted of aggravated assault and theft and given probation.
But he kept violating the terms of his supervision. He sold drugs. Urine tests showed drug use. By Sept. 1, 1996, he had been convicted of possessing methamphetamine. That landed him in the Norton Correctional Facility on Oct. 23.
Reginald's second son was born exactly two months after he began his prison sentence. He married the boy's mother, Mandy, the next May.
Jonathan Carr was crushed when his older brother went to prison. Reginald was the only father figure he had known. Around the time Reginald went to prison, Jonathan's girlfriend dumped him and his dog died. Jonathan, 16, tried to commit suicide by drinking antifreeze.
But Jonathan also showed his older brother's propensity for getting into trouble. They had shared the experiences with childhood sex. Jonathan began having run-ins with juvenile authorities. Family members recalled one time he stole a truck with a friend to go joyriding. He threatened a probation officer by saying he would stab a pencil through her neck.
Jonathan Carr would appear vastly different, depending on where he was and whom he was around. He got a summer job doing carpentry work for an elderly couple. He impressed Leroy and Juanita Culver with his politeness and warm sense of humor.
By age 20, Jonathan had moved back to Cleveland, looking for another life. He found a girlfriend, Ebony Harris. Her father, Jesse, helped Jonathan get a job at Federal Steel. As long as Harris and Jonathan worked the same morning-to-afternoon shift, the young man did a good job. But when Jonathan was moved to the second shift, he started showing up late and Federal Steel fired him.
While in Cleveland, he was arrested but not charged in a convenience store robbery.
Harris offered to help find the young man another job. Jonathan declined.
He wanted to return to Dodge City, where his brother Reginald was getting out of prison.
The man who went into prison known as "Reggie" came out on March 28, 2000, wanting to be called "Smoke." He had been a discipline problem behind bars, fighting and hurting people, flashing female guards.
Janice Harding told her elder son to stay away from Jonathan.
"He doesn't need to be getting into trouble," she said.
Reginald moved in with Mandy Carr. But he didn't have a job. She supported him and their son. She got pregnant again. They fought. In August, they split.
In October, Reginald met Stephanie Donley at a Dodge City nightclub. She was a nurse and made good money, and she was moving to Wichita, where Reginald Carr's older sister lived.
Reginald remained on parole. He had to regularly report to supervisors until summer 2001. Even so, he couldn't stay out of trouble. He was arrested for driving while intoxicated and bonded out of the Ford County jail on Nov. 19. Nine days later, he was back in jail, charged with forgery and facing a parole violation.
But he got a break. A new law cutting parole for nonviolent offenders, coupled with a clerical error that gave him extra good-time credit, ended his parole Dec. 1. Reginald posted bond on the forgery charge and once again became a free man.
It was Dec. 4, 2000. Reginald Carr and his brother Jonathan decided to take a trip to Wichita.
Reach Ron Sylvester at 268-6514 or rsylvester@wichitaeagle.com.
No you are not the only one.
Too many good, decent people have had horrindous childhoods, you don't see them slaughtering innocent people.
The childhood whine is a cop-out thanks to our liberal psychoanalysts, those very same people who say that it isn't their fault, society made them that way.
Horsehockey. They made themselves that way. They could have chosen to become more than what they were born or raised in, but they didn't. They chose to become animals, in fact they are lower than animals. They have no redeeming qualities or traits.
They are beyond "NDG", they are a waste of air and space.
Perhaps the good Lord will be merciful and forgiving, but as for me and mine, I hope they burn in the hottest rings of hell.
. . .would tell this writer that my heart does bleed, but for the victims; not the perpetrators. . .
There are many people who have grown into 'throw-away' adults; and despite whatever nourished their psyches; they deserve the rewards of Justice for their choices.
Well, he certainly outgrew that, now, didn't he?
I'm sick and tired of excuses for crime. When will a person ever take responsibility for their own actions???? It's always someone or something else's fault. Sickening. As an abused child myself, I, nor any of my siblings has ever even thought of anything like this!
:^)
Still, I can't support the death penalty, but they should certainly be locked up for life somewhere and given plenty of shoelaces, Drano, and a shiv.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
I would give odds, two to one, maybe even three to one that the little girl who recanted her accusation of rape was in fact telling the truth the first time. It fits their later actions so perfectly.
It was the black-on-white factor. Had whites committed such a crime, the media would not have doubted the public's ability to handle the facts.
No can do -- only Moslems are permitted to stone people to death.
We have been getting a fair share of this trial and my wife was alarmed that the rest of the country wasnt aware of it.
Wow, sounds familiar. I think it has to do with low self-esteem. As you, we were highly emotionally abused, along with alcohol and some physical thrown into the mix. I know that we're not alone, either. Every time I read something about this case, I just shake my head. I just find it so very hard to believe, I guess, that such evil things are thought of, and how, or why.
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