Posted on 10/20/2002 9:40:37 AM PDT by KS Flyover
Luck, vivid memories helped cops
By Ron Sylvester - The Wichita Eagle - Sun, Oct. 20, 2002
Police say they sometimes rely on dumb luck and dumb mistakes to solve crimes. They had a little of both Dec 15, 2000, when a woman showed up naked on a doorstep and said she and four friends had been terrorized and then shot on a soccer field.
First, she lived to tell.
Then, as television stations broadcast news of a second quadruple homicide in eight days, Wichitans took it personally. They watched for stolen vehicles and suspects they had heard about. And they called police.
Toni Greene called to say, "The guy you're looking for is at my house." Just about every officer within earshot hurried toward the 1500 block of North Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jonathan Carr was leaving by the time Officer Tom Nikkel arrived. Nikkel radioed for backup: black male, out the back door and heading west.
Nikkel made eye contact with Carr, who ran through a back yard, across an alley and past a gate. He bolted across another back yard, where he lost his left Timberland shoe. He darted north through the snow.
"Stop!" yelled Sgt. Rusty Leeds, who had arrived to help in the chase. Police had guns drawn. They knew Carr could be armed. Leeds saw something black in Carr's hand.
Carr ran past a church, bellied over the top of a fence, flipped head first, and landed on his feet. Leeds followed. Nikkel ran around the church, hoping to head Carr off on the other side.
"Police officer, stop!" Leeds yelled again. Carr scrambled over another fence and tore across a field toward Kansas Avenue.
He momentarily vanishedbehind a fourplex. But tracks in the snow led to a porch at 1547 N. Kansas Ave. There, squeezed between a storm door and the main door, was Jonathan Carr, in his cold, wet stocking feet. He clutched only a black cell phone.
Five hours after police arrested older brother Reginald Carr, also on a citizen's tip, they had their second suspect in custody.
Nearly two years later, detectives still marvel over how lucky they were that so many people helped that morning.
First, Christian Taylor saw a truck he'd heard described on television parked in his apartment complex and alerted police. Then Riwa Obel Nsangalufu led police to Reginald Carr. Police say they found the apartment of Carr's girlfriend brimming with property stolen from the people killed little more than five hours earlier.
Then police got a particularly lucky break: Toni Greene called.
Police working out of Wichita's Patrol North substation are used to people being too afraid to talk to them about violence in that neighborhood. Some residents fear retribution.
But Greene didn't hesitate to call 911 to tell police that Jonathan Carr had been sleeping on her couch that morning. Tronda Adams, Greene's daughter, would then start talking to police. She'd provide a valuable timeline of meetings with Jonathan Carr that would help police piece together three different crimes.
Adams first met Jonathan and Reginald Carr outside The Buckle at Towne East Square around 7:30 p.m. Dec 7. When she left the mall at closing time, 9 p.m., the men were still hanging around. Adams directed them toward the Antler Room, a bar and pool hall at 13th and Hillside. She wrote her phone number on the back of a Black & Mild cigar box top and gave it to the brothers.
Between 10:30 and 11 that night, Andrew Schreiber was carjacked from a convenience store at 21st and Woodlawn. He said two men ordered him at gunpoint to withdraw cash from two ATMs. The afternoon of Dec 15, after seeing Reginald Carr's arrest on television, Schreiber called police and pointed to Carr as his possible attacker.
Jonathan Carr began calling Adams nearly every day. He'd given her the name Jonathan Harding, his mother's maiden name. He said he had been staying with his sister, Tamika Harding, over on North Poplar Avenue.
Adams and Carr went out to eat. She knew Jonathan Carr didn't have a job, but he always paid. A few times, he came by her mother's house on North Pennsylvania Avenue. He arrived in a tan Toyota Camry driven by his brother, Reginald.
On Dec. 10, Jonathan Carr gave Adams a "little silver gun" to help her with an abusive boyfriend who continued to confront her. Carr told her, "If you ever need it, you can use it."
The next night, outside an east Wichita home, Ann Walenta was shot after 9:30 p.m. with a black .380 semiautomatic. Walenta described an attacker and said another drove a light-colored sedan.
By 10:30 that night, Jonathan Carr was relaxing and watching television with Adams. He swapped pistols with her, giving her a "big black gun" for the silver one, taking time to wipe the gun and the bullets down, as if he were cleaning off fingerprints.
Adams impressed police. Rarely do they find witnesses with such vivid recollection.
Reginald Carr's girlfriend, Stephanie Donley, wasn't nearly so cooperative. While Adams came to the detective's unit of the sixth floor of City Hall voluntarily that morning, Donley didn't. Police handcuffed her and dragged her out of her apartment and into the cold in short pajamas when Reginald Carr was arrested there.
"You're in big trouble," police told Donley, although she wasn't charged in the case.
Still, her fresh memories of the night of Dec 14 and the next morning closely matched Adams' and showed police that the Carr brothers had had a chilling window of opportunity.
Reginald Carr had borrowed Donley's tan Toyota around 5:30 the evening of Dec. 14. He told her he was going to take Jonathan to get some boxes for moving. Donley thought he'd be back soon. After all, how long did it take to get boxes?
Adams remembered the brothers arriving in the Camry at her house sometime after 5:30. Her mother, Toni Greene, was in the kitchen cooking. Jonathan Carr told Adams he needed to get boxes. She said they could buy them at U-Haul. They'd have to hurry. It closed at 6.
Reginald Carr asked Toni Greene if she knew anyone who could braid his hair. He wore his hair in French braids, what some people refer to as cornrows. It was starting to look shaggy. Greene said she knew a lady who could do it.
The brothers left Adams' house together around 9:30. Adams expected never to see Jonathan Carr again. He said he planned to use the U-Haul box to pack his possessions, then leave town on the 2 a.m. train to Cleveland, where he had family. She took one last look at Jonathan Carr in his orange and black FUBU sweater.
At 10:30, Donley was wondering what happened to Reginald Carr when he called to say he was going to get his hair braided.
Minutes later, Jean Beck would notice a tan Toyota following her home to a triplex where she lived on Birchwood Drive. But she paused in her 2000 BMW in front of the mailbox and let the car pass. She went inside, took a bath and went to sleep.
Around 11 p.m., Beck's three next-door neighbors and two of their friends found themselves at the mercy of two gunmen. The hoodlums raped the two women. The strangers then took four of the victims, one by one, to ATMs and robbed them at gunpoint.
Financial crimes specialist Detective Jimmie Merrick would help match up bank records and videotapes at the ATMs, tracking the transactions from just before midnight to just after 1 a.m. In all, the robbers made off with $1,830.
The surviving woman would soon be telling police that she and her friends were shot in the back of the head at a soccer complex under construction off 29th Street North and Greenwich Road. One man wore an orange-and-black FUBU sweater. She remembered the clock in her boyfriend's truck saying 2:07 a.m.
By 3:30 a.m., Jonathan Carr was calling Adams to say he'd missed his train. Could he come over and crash on her couch? She asked her mom, who was trying to sleep but said yes. Adams remembered Jonathan Carr as quite agitated. He had a wad of cash.
"Where'd you get all that money?" she asked.
Took it out of the bank.
Adams had known Jonathan Carr only a week, and he had said he was new in town.
"You've only been in town this long, and you opened a bank account?"
That's right, he said.
Reginald Carr nonchalantly returned after 4 a.m. to Donley's apartment at 5400 E. 21st St. She was awake and mad. Long time to braid hair? No, he hadn't gotten his hair done after all. Where had he been? They argued. He left. He returned 45 minutes later, hauling clothes, electronic equipment, even a big-screen television.
What's all this stuff? Donley asked.
It had been over at his sister's house, Carr claimed. He had fought with his sister, too. She told him to get it all out of her garage.
Donley held the door for him. Then he lay down and she nuzzled up to his shoulder. They made up. She considered fooling around a little. But Reginald Carr said he felt dirty and needed to take a shower. Then police began banging on the door.
Despite all the help, detectives still had to put together the puzzle. And they did it quickly, fanning out inside Wesley Medical Center with photo arrays containing the Carr brothers.
The surviving victim picked out Jonathan and Reginald Carr. Ann Walenta picked out Reginald Carr, she thought, as the man who had shot her. She thought another man also looked familiar, but he turned out to already be in prison.
By the end of the day, police had secured a judge's signature on a search warrant for hairs and bodily fluids for DNA testing.
Detectives James Hosty and Kelly Otis arranged for the testing in a private room at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Joseph Campus.
A nurse pulled out Reginald Carr's hair by the roots, drew blood and rubbed his mouth and other areas with a foam swab to collect cells.
Jonathan Carr waited his turn.
He could see one uniformed police officer. But he looked quizzically at a man in a suit.
"Who are you?"
Homicide detective, Kelly Otis said.
Jonathan Carr then remembered another quadruple homicide the week before. On Dec 7, police found four teenagers shot to death in a house on North Erie Avenue. Two men were arrested.
"What happened to those boys who shot those kids?" Carr wondered.
They've been charged with capital murder, Otis explained.
"What's capital murder?"
Well, anyone convicted of capital murder, Otis told him, could get the death penalty.
"How's that done?"
Lethal injection.
Jonathan Carr pondered Otis' answer. Then, just before the nurse called him into the exam room, he asked:
When you're executed, "do you feel anything?"
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