Carr Brothers Trial (More Family Background)
Wild Monkshood
Posted on Sun, Nov. 10, 2002
Carrs knew violence and instability as children
BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle
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 rsylv...@wichitaeagle.com.
crosem
1982...he was not careful to supply the type of leukemia...
thank you for posting these articles. now, please pardon me, while I cry
myself to sleep over the Carr family problems...all of which (w/ the
exception of the little girl dying) seem to be of their own making!
"Wild Monkshood" <wild_mo...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3DCEB3EB...@bellsouth.net...
Wild Monkshood
crosem wrote:
> the author is incorrect: leukemia was NOT a death sentence to children in
> 1982...he was not careful to supply the type of leukemia...
>
> thank you for posting these articles. now, please pardon me, while I cry
> myself to sleep over the Carr family problems...all of which (w/ the
> exception of the little girl dying) seem to be of their own making!
I am posting the articles as they appear serially on their newsgroup. I
don't think of them as Pro or Con, just info. Since I am unable to view the
trial, I'm reading at this website, at least until a sentence is handed down. I
will endeavour to pick up and post each article as it appears.
Wild Monkshood
