Wichita Massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wichita Massacre, also known as The Wichita Horror,^[1] was a murder/assault/rape/robbery spree perpetrated by brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr in the city of Wichita, Kansas in the winter of 2000. The crimes shocked Wichitans, and purchases of guns, locks, and home security systems subsequently skyrocketed in the city.^[2] The brothers were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in October 2002. ^[3] 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 back to death row.^[4]

Contents 1 Crime spree 2 Controversy 3 References in popular culture 4 Aftermath 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Crime spree

The Carr brothers, 22-year-old Reginald and 20-year-old Jonathan, already had serious criminal records when they began their spree. 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.

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 a young woman identified as 'H.G.', all in their twenties, were spending the night. Initially scouring the house for valuables, they forced their hostages to strip naked, bound and detained them, and subjected them to various forms of sexual humiliation, including rape and sodomy. 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 bringing 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. It was then they claimed their final victim, Nikki, H.G.'s muzzled dog who was beaten and stabbed to death.

H.G. survived (her plastic hairpin having deflected the bullet), after running naked for more than a mile in freezing weather to report the attack and seek medical attention. In a much-remarked point of tragedy, she had seen her boyfriend Befort shot, after having learned of his intention to propose marriage when the Carrs, by chance, discovered the engagement ring hidden in a can of popcorn.

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. Law enforcement officials ultimately decided that the Carrs' motive was robbery, despite the other aspects of the crime.

[edit] Controversy

Since there was no evidence of racial motivation, only that the victims were Caucasian and the Carr brothers are African-American, Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston decided not to treat the incident as a hate crime. 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.^[5][6] Thomas Sowell went on to claim that the media has a double standard regarding inter-racial offenses, tending to play up "vicious crimes by whites against blacks" but play down equally "vicious crimes by blacks against whites."^[2]

[edit] References in popular culture

In an episode of Criminal Minds titled "Children of the Dark" aired on October 17, 2007, in reference to a suspected pair of brothers engaged in serial murder, Dr. Spencer Reid refers to the Carr brothers as having perpetrated the Wichita Massacre.

The episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit "Dominance" is based on this case. Brothers Charlie and Billy Baker terrorize, sexually humiliate, sexually assault, and murder a group of strangers during a dinner party. In the episode, the Baker brothers are played by white actors.

In 2005, Dimension Films purchased a horror script titled "Wichita" from first-time screenwriter Scott Milam. Darren Lynn Bousman was hired to direct.^[7] Though fiction, the events of the film are based closely on the Wichita Massacre incident. However, in the script the perpetrators are portrayed as white men in their 20s and 30s, and their victims are a racially mixed group of African-Americans, Native Americans and whites. The film remains unproduced.

[edit] 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 Mary Award.

In March 2009, a Texas man stirred considerable controversy when he offered to deposit one hundred dollars into the "commissary accounts" of every inmate at the El Dorado Correctional Facility (where the Carr brothers are serving their sentences) upon the death of either of the Carr brothers, no matter the cause (i.e., natural death or not). Some considered this offer "solicitation" of murder.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom murder

[edit] External links

• Extensive account of the crimes by Court TV's Crime Library
• 'Wichita Massacre' Brothers Sentenced to Death
• Kansas v. Marsh decision by United States Supreme Court
• KAKE-TV news story on Wichita Horror survivors engagement to be married
• Was this Kansas killing spree a brotherly affair?, CNN and CourtTV