Posted on 10/10/2002 9:08:59 AM PDT by GaryMontana
Posted on Wed, Oct. 09, 2002
Survivor's testimony horrifies courtroom The woman who survived the quadruple homicide in 2000 takes the stand in the second day of testimony in the Carr brothers trial.
More photos Dave Williams/The Wichita Eagle Crime Scene Investigator Kevin Brasser displays the keys her collected from a victims car during day two of the Jonathan and Reginald Carr trial in Sedgwick County District Court.
Gruesome crime scene photos and chilling testimony Tuesday from the lone survivor of a quadruple homicide nearly two years ago created a disturbing second day of state's testimony in the capital murder trial of Jonathan and Reginald Carr.
Jurors left the courtroom of Judge Paul Clark staring at the floor as family and friends of the victims waited silently to be dismissed.
Reginald Carr, one of two brothers facing the death penalty if convicted, looked at faces glaring back at him as court guards marched him back to jail. Jonathan, his younger brother, looked straight ahead.
Prosecutors had spent the first day and a half reconstructing events surrounding the shooting of five people, and the killing of four, in a snow-covered soccer field on Dec. 15, 2000.
Seats that had been full during the first day of testimony emptied at midmorning Tuesday as Wichita police crime scene investigator Kevin Brasser took the stand.
Brasser worked alone in the dark that morning collecting evidence and taking pictures at 29th Street North and Greenwich Road, where the bodies were found. The jury sat expressionless as they looked at Brasser's graphic photos, displayed under repeated defense objections.
But Clark's small court filled again after lunch, when the sole survivor of the attack, a one-time schoolteacher, retold her story. The only vacant seats were the ones next to Jonathan and Reginald Carr's mother.
The state's eyewitness, who testified 18 months ago at a preliminary hearing, once again calmly recounted her nightmare.
She told of two black men armed with guns breaking into the home of her boyfriend, Jason Befort, of then being raped and sodomized and of watching her friends beaten.
She said all the men wanted to know when they burst in around 11 p.m. on Dec. 14, 2000 was: Who has money?
"None of us had any cash on us," she said.
Have any ATM cards?
"We all raised our hands."
How much money do you have in the bank? the attackers asked, she said.
Each had between $200 and $1,500, she recollected. "They were not irrational, they were just shouting and very demanding," she said.
District Attorney Nola Foulston asked what she thought would have happened if they didn't comply with those demands.
"We were under the impression they'd probably shoot us," said the woman.
Since the day of the crime, she has not been identified because of an Eagle policy of not printing the names of sexual assault victims.
She told of assaults and sodomy in detail, as everyone -- including the Carrs -- kept their eyes on the witness stand. The jury watched her intently, looking down to occasionally take notes.
Family members and friends of Befort, Aaron Sander, Heather Muller and Brad Heyka sniffled and tried to hold back tears.
"Oh, God, no," one person whispered as the woman told of one horrific sexual attack on another man that had her fearing for her boyfriend's life.
She said the attackers kept some of them in a bedroom closet while taking one or two out at a time to assault them or give orders at gunpoint.
Just before midnight, the stockier of the two men began taking each of them in Befort's Dodge Dakota to automatic teller machines, forcing them to withdraw money, she said. When it was her turn to drive, she said the man kept fiddling with the radio, trying to find a music station he liked.
"Oh, Christ," someone from the gallery sighed in disbelief.
But en route to and from a Commerce ATM at 21st Street and Webb Road, she said the man told her he wouldn't shoot anyone.
"I said, 'Do you promise?' " she remembered.
"He said, 'Yeah, I'm not gonna shoot you.' "
She said she later told her friends.
"As I got back in the closet I said, 'I think we're gonna be OK.' I said, 'He said he's not going to shoot us.' "
During the hours of agony, the woman learned that Befort had bought an engagement ring for her. One of the intruders found the ring in a popcorn tin.
"Is this the only one?" she remembered the intruder asking, wanting to know if there was any more jewelry.
That's all, Befort told him. She said the bigger man then said something that made her think he had taken back his earlier promise.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you yet," she remembered him saying before he raped her. It was the second time she had been raped that night.
"Were you able to see or look at this individual?" Foulston asked.
"I did," the witness answered.
During the preliminary hearing, the woman positively identified Jonathan Carr, but not Reginald Carr.
On Tuesday, she said she saw both men, but was not asked to identify them.
She saw the second man in the bathroom, as he attacked one of her friends.
"And were you able to get a good look at him?" Foulston asked.
"Yes," she said, "I was."
Her testimony continues this morning.
For your information, I have been closely following this story for 2 years now, I did not just learn about it like you did.
You are the one talking about "blaming the victims", I never mentioned any such words.
Each one of us makes a decision on how to live, and whether or not we will ever protect ourselves if and when these kinds of situations come up. Those that willingly and freely choose to decide to not defend themselves, who choose to not own or carry a gun, do so deliberately.
To say that at the very last minute of your life, just after you were forced to commit sodomy and just before you were about to be murdered, you wish you had a gun, and that you now would like the opportunity to stop what is about to be done to you, is foolish, stupid, and pitiful. To live in a world populated by these types of criminals, to live in a world full of Ted Bundys and to consiously and deliberately take no measures at all to prevent the same kind of thing from happening to you, is your choice, but dont come crying to me.
You are free to decide to not defend yourself, but dont complain when I dont sit and whine with you about the terrible things that bad people do to others.
Grow up, and live with YOUR the personal life decisions that YOU make.
If you dont want to carry insurance, if you dont save money, if you dont keep a loaded gun handy, if you dont wear your seatbelt, that is up to you, but quit trying to cry on my shoulder and get my sympathy for YOUR poor and stupid decisions.
You yourself have to take responsiblity for yourself and for the defense of yourself,or accept whatever happens to you without crying to others for sympathy, and pity because you were so defenseless and could not do anything to stop it. You were too terrified and afraid to rush these murderers and have a fighting chance to live.
I got news for you, there are more bad people out there, and these kinds of things will happen again, and they may happen to you, they will happen to someone. If you continue to live defenseless, go ahead, but dont plead for us to cry with you.
You just lost your last dollar, I carry a gun, and also keep them handy in my home. I believe I would fare quite well. My kinds of people would not be taken to a deserted park to be sodomized. We would fight. My kinds of people shoot those kinds of scum.
You truely live in a fairy tale land if you think these evil criminals were going to be "nicer" to the vicitms once they got them in a deserted isolated place. Anybody else that agrees with you, remains unarmed, and goes with people like these murderers to be sodomized, should not expect to be treated any better than these young people were.
Yes,I have heard of Dodge City, and Witchita, parts of my family settled Kansas in the 1860's, Newton, Ellsworth, etc . and I also had family relatives that lived down the road next to the Earp brothers parents homestead between Newton and Witchita. My great grandaddy was personal friends and neighbors with the Earp and Masterson families.
Wasnt Dodge City one of the very first cities in the United States where law abiding citizens allowed themselves to be willingly disarmed by gun control?
You need to learn more about the history of Kansas, and the early history of gun control and the first citizens who gave up their rights of self defense.
These animals need to be skinned alive........slowly.
Then, after we're done with Jackson and Sharpton.......these perps need to be skinned alive.......and then peeled apart, muscle by muscle.
They also could have all run away screaming in different directions when they were walking in the lot going to the car. They could have driven the car into another car and crashed on the highway, etc. etc.
One of them could have jumped thru and into the window of their neighbors apartment as they were walking outside to the car,
There were other opportunities also to either escape, or refuse to be taken away from the apartment complex.
These young people were completely trusting of the murderers and had no intention, nor inclination , of fighting back, of running away, or of just in general of being prepared to live in this world.
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