Carr Brothers Trial (Reaction)
Wild Monkshood
Posted on Thu, Nov. 07, 2002
Carr brothers not monsters, women insist
BY RON SYLVESTER
The Wichita Eagle
Juanita Culver found it hard to believe that the Jonathan Carr she
knew could be facing the death penalty for a crime
rampage that included multiple rapes, robberies and murders.
But District Attorney Nola Foulston wanted to clarify the crimes for
the 73-year-old woman from Dodge City, who
testified Wednesday in the penalty phase of Jonathan and Reginald
Carr's capital murder trial.
Foulston showed Culver color crime-scene photos from a soccer field
where four people were shot to death on Dec.
15, 2000, and asked: Did that change her mind?
"No, it doesn't.... I see that stuff, but it's very, very hard for me
to believe it," Culver said.
Everyone the defense called Wednesday agreed the acts were brutal, but
they didn't waver in their support of the
brothers who have become two of Wichita's most infamous killers.
In challenging people who said they have seen the Carrs' humanity,
Foulston made sure they also saw photos of the
crime scene that have her now seeking the death penalty against the
brothers.
But she couldn't budge them.
"My brain says, 'Juanita, just face the facts,' but my heart says 'I
still love him,' " Juanita Culver said of Jonathan Carr,
who as a teenager worked for her and her husband doing carpentry work.
"I found him to be one of the nicest, polite, kind, warm, giving -- he
was the epitome of the finest young man," Juanita
Culver told Jonathan Carr's lawyer, Ron Evans.
Foulston pressed on cross-examination: Did the picture of the murder
scene look like the work of a warm person?
"I have to accept it, because you said it, but deep down, I can't
believe it," Juanita Culver said.
She later added: "I feel so sorry for those people who lost those
children."
But neither Juanita nor Leroy Culver wavered in their opinion of the
Jonathan Carr they knew.
"He just was a child who wanted love," Juanita Culvert said.
Reginald Carr, meanwhile, seems to have inspired a host of faithful
women who have not abandoned him.
Richele Kossmen spoke through tears as she talked about the 7-year-old
son she had with Reginald Carr.
The boy "sees no evil; he just sees his dad," she said.
Kossmen cried when Foulston showed the crime pictures. Foulston then
stood over the 26-year-old woman's shoulder
and peered at Reginald Carr.
"I'm sorry you have tears in your eyes," Foulston said. "You see any
tears in that man's eyes?"
Answered Kossmen: "I've never seen any tears in that man's eyes --
even when he was hurting."
As Foulston asked pointed questions between Kossmen's sobs, some
jurors looked away from the witness stand.
"I don't know the person who could do this," Kossmen said.
Kossmen said she knew a Reginald Carr who provided no financial
support, but regularly played with his boy -- when
dad wasn't serving time.
"I think there's a boundary between the way he acts with children and
the way he acts with other people," Kossmen
said.
That's the Reginald Carr who Kossmen's son writes letters to in jail.
She read one letter, "For Daddy..."
"I wish you would come back," the letter read. "I love you very, very
much. I love when you play games with me...
"I'm a good boy like you tell me to," the boy wrote.
Reginald Carr hung his head, as Kossmen read aloud.
Foulston pointed out that Reginald Carr had been put in diversion as a
teen on a charge of indecent solicitation of a
child. When he robbed a Dodge City bookstore, the court in Ford County
certified him as an adult. When he continued
to get into the trouble, he went to prison.
"If Mr. Carr would walk out of here today, would you resume that
relationship?" Foulston asked.
"I sure would," Kossmen said.
Kossmen also cried for the families of the dead and the woman who
survived the shooting in the soccer field. She
lived, despite a gunshot wound to the back of her head, and her
testimony helped convict the Carr brothers of capital
murder.
"I have every bit of remorse for those families," Kossmen said.
But she doesn't fear Reginald Carr: "He's the man who was good to my
son."
Mandy Carr, Reginald's estranged wife, was pregnant with his second
child on the night five people were raped,
robbed and shot in the back of the head.
"You wouldn't want to tell your son about that, would you?" Chief
Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker asked.
"No," Mandy Carr said.
But Mandy Carr has stood by Reginald through his troubles.
She married him after he went to prison for possession of
methamphetamine, a year after they met. He was 16; she
was 21.
Reginald Carr wrote poems to her. He drew cartoons and portraits from
photographs.
Mandy Carr knows about the other women. She knows Reginald Carr came
to Wichita, stayed with Stephanie Donley,
and then went on a weeklong crime spree that ended with his arrest in
Donley's apartment.
Wednesday, Jay Greeno, one of Reginald Carr's lawyers, asked Mandy
Carr: "Do you feel he misled you... lied to
you?" "Yes," she said.
"Has that affected your relationship?"
"No," Mandy Carr said.