Former Defendant Wants Nancy Grace Disbarred
Maggie
Wouldn't it be interesting if he does succeed in getting my friend Nancy
disbarred? From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Cleared in slaying, Carr tells of ordeal
First airing since wife's fire death in 1993
By JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/03/04
For 11 years Weldon Wayne Carr has kept silent about what happened on the night
a fire killed his wife, Patricia.
He did not testify during his nationally televised 1994 murder trial when he
was convicted of setting the blaze in their Sandy Springs home early on the
morning of April 7, 1993. She died four days later from smoke inhalation.
The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that Weldon Wayne Carr cannot be retried
for the death of his wife in a 1993 house fire.
He served almost four years in jail and prison for the crime. The Georgia
Supreme Court threw out the conviction in 1997, ruling that the judge
improperly allowed unreliable evidence that the fire was arson, not accidental.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Carr could not be retried.
Since 1997 Carr and his lawyers have been in and out of court on various
appeals, and he returned to running Hastings Nature & Garden Center in North
Atlanta, which he owns.
He said Friday he kept silent all those years because he never felt free to
speak — "It was like a contract killer was after me and I never knew when he
would strike" — and he had lost all faith in a judicial system he bitterly
describes as a "corrupt cesspool."
The case has cost him about $2 million in legal fees as well as his reputation,
he said: "The public doesn't know these people [prosecutors] are liars. They've
all been told I'm a murderer."
In a seven-hour conversation in the Buckhead office of his attorney, Don
Samuel, Carr described his ordeal in a voice sometimes clogged with emotion. He
often clenched and unclenched his hands as he spoke. His eyes brimmed on
several occasions, but he never cried.
He is a youthful 68, despite four years of incarceration and health problems.
He is tan, and at times was relaxed. He complained about extra pounds, but said
he's slept better since last week's ruling than he has in years.
"I don't wake up in the middle of the night terrorized," he said.
During the trial, prosecutors convinced jurors that Carr had discovered his
wife was having an affair and decided to kill her by using a flammable liquid
to set their downstairs kitchen on fire.
Carr said Friday he had known about his wife's affair for three months, and so
had his daughter — they had talked about it on New Year's Day, 1993, when he
caught Pat — but he had decided not to confront his wife because he believed
if he did "it was over, she would leave, and I wanted to save my marriage."
The day before the fire, Pat had agreed to see a marriage counselor and they
had an appointment to see the counselor the next Friday, Carr said.
Carr had taped conversations between his wife and her lover the week before.
That became damning evidence during his trial, as did revelations that he
checked his home insurance before the fire, removed valuables from his home and
parked his car in the driveway instead of the garage.
"I can sit here for days and explain away every piece of the circumstantial
evidence if you want me to," he said Friday. "But you want to talk about
circumstantial evidence? Here's circumstantial evidence, the biggest proof of
all that I'm innocent:
"I tried to save her! I tried to save her!"
Night of the fire
The night of the fire, according to Carr, his wife stayed up late, sitting at a
table in the kitchen applying a shoe solvent, Neat-Lac, to a pair of sandals
— the solvent prosecutors say he used to start the fire — and that's where
she was when he went upstairs to call his elderly mother to talk about
financial difficulties she was having.
"There was no argument; there was no violent confrontation. I just went
upstairs and went to bed," he said. Sometime after that — he doesn't know
exactly when, because she didn't wake him — Pat came to bed.
Sometime after 3 a.m. something did awaken him; he's not sure what, whether it
was the scent of smoke or the crackling of the fire downstairs.
"I had no idea there was a raging fire. So I did the human thing. I slipped on
my pants, put on my slippers, and I go over to the door to see if something is
wrong. When I opened the door, it was like a physical blow."
At practically the same instant there was a big explosion. "It sounded like a
bomb," he said. "It was the wall in the spare bedroom blowing out. Instantly, I
was engulfed in rolling black clouds of oily smoke, and the heat was enough to
knock you down. I screamed at Pat, I said: 'There's fire, we've got to get out
of here!' "
He said his wife panicked. "She was hysterical. She began to scream. . . .
She screamed, 'We have to run, we have to go out!' And I'm grabbing her around
the waist, yelling at her: 'You can't go down there where the fire is.' "
Three or four times she tried to break away from him and run downstairs and
each time he grabbed her, grappled with her, pulled her back, Carr said.
"The best I can explain it was like she was a drowning person," said Carr.
"They will climb on top of you. She was fighting me like that."
He said he never saw the flames. "It's not like in the movies when there's a
fire and you can see things. There was no light, just black smoke."
He said he struggled with his wife for "five or six minutes" in their bedroom,
which "I think was the difference between life and death." Then she grew
"calmer" and weaker: "She started making these terrible, low, moaning sounds."
With one arm around her waist, Carr said, he pulled her across the bed and to
the bureau, then placed his hand on the bureau and guided them to the window,
which they could not see.
They normally kept a fire escape ladder under their bed, and he said he bent
over and felt for it, but it wasn't there. "I don't know why." He told Pat: "I
have to open the window, honey."
When he let go of her to open the window, he said, he could feel her move her
hands to the small of his back. Because the window was stuck, he struggled,
then muscled it open.
"When I turned around, she wasn't there. I screamed for her and there was no
response. I got down on the floor and I'm feeling around for her, and I
couldn't find her. I didn't know if she had gone out the door, or if she had
hidden somewhere."
He said the smoke was overcoming him, and he made the "toughest decision of my
whole life. I knew if I went back in, all you would find is two dead people; I
had to go out the window to get help."
He climbed through the window and jumped to the ground, about 18 feet. "Somehow
I twisted and landed on my back. I felt a lightning bolt of pain, and then I
went out."
When he awoke, he's not sure how many minutes later, he crawled across his yard
and across the street, a vertebra broken in his back, and pounded on a
neighbor's door and screamed for help.
When fire crews arrived, they found Patricia Carr, breathing but unconscious,
in the upstairs bedroom. Brain-damaged, she died four days later when removed
from life support.
"If I'm a murderer," said Wayne Carr, "why would I do all I did to save her?
Why would I pound on the door and scream for help? Why would I take the risk of
her surviving?"
Carr said he'll never regain the life he had before his wife's death. He's been
forced to live a "reclusive" life, in a condominium in the suburbs, dating
occasionally, but never anything long term.
"It's hard because you will always eventually have this conversation: 'Oh, by
the way, I'm a convicted murderer.' They say: 'Who'd you murder?' I'll say: 'My
wife.' "
He hopes the Supreme Court decision will repair his reputation and said he
plans to write a book about his ordeal.
In overturning the conviction and refusing to allow Carr to be tried again, the
Supreme Court sharply rebuked the prosecutor in his case, Nancy Grace, who is
now host of Court TV's "Closing Arguments." Grace, the court stated, engaged in
"inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial."
Grace could not be reached for comment.
Carr is still angry at Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard for pursuing
the case after his conviction was thrown out in 1997.
The day he was released from Valdosta State Prison after the 1997 ruling, Carr
was met outside the gate and arrested by Fulton County and charged again,
throwing the matter back in the courts for another seven years.
Howard said this week: "I continue to believe Wayne Carr should stand trial for
the murder of his wife."
Carr believes Grace and Howard should be held accountable.
"I am considering filing an action against them with the Georgia Bar
Association and asking them to disbar them for their violations in this case,"
he said.
Maggie
"Nancy, if you were 8 1/2 months pregnant and I was married to you, I'd be
going fishing Christmas Eve." -- Mark Geragos, to Nancy Grace on LKL
Kris Baker
"Maggie" <maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC> wrote in message
news:20040704204339...@mb-m20.aol.com...
> I sure thought the guy did it, but since he didn't get a fair trial, who
knows?
> Wouldn't it be interesting if he does succeed in getting my friend Nancy
> disbarred? From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
>
> Cleared in slaying, Carr tells of ordeal
> First airing since wife's fire death in 1993
>
>
> In overturning the conviction and refusing to allow Carr to be tried
again, the
> Supreme Court sharply rebuked the prosecutor in his case, Nancy Grace, who
is
> now host of Court TV's "Closing Arguments." Grace, the court stated,
engaged in
> "inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the
trial."
>
> Grace could not be reached for comment.
All of that, and it doesn't say specifically what Grace and the
DA's office did.
His story has always been fantastically detailed.
Kris
njs
"Kris Baker" <kris....@prodigyy.net> wrote in message
news:EO1Gc.627$m%7....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
Exactly. That always cracks me up, the murderers and their intricate
details. They might as well just put a big red flag on their heads. He needs
to just shut up and be glad he's not in prison anymore, and go live his
life.
circe
I don't now, Supreme Courts don't rebuke prosecutors lightly. It may
be that all of the details are not being released while all the
legalities play out.
circe
Hoono
wrote:
>
>Exactly. That always cracks me up, the murderers and their intricate
>details. They might as well just put a big red flag on their heads. He needs
>to just shut up and be glad he's not in prison anymore, and go live his
>life.
"inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of
the trial."
Say brainiac, what part of the above Supreme Court statement
is too difficult for the contents inside your cranium to process?
Madelin McKinnon
protection:
Like pornographer Ken Starr and CNN, who thrived on the opportunity to
introduce the words "oral sex" into everyday usage the way the
initials, H.B. (Horny Bastard) are currently being magnified, the
media is having another salacious field day. I think the real initials
that merit widespread circulation are S.M. (Stupid Morons) because
they apply to the media and to all the authorities who still think
that this is all about sex. This is about the murder of Laci Peterson
and about all the unindicted whores (feel free to be vulgar now that
the media has lowered expectations) who blame an innocent man to cover
up their own incompetence or involvement. At the very least, these
S.M.'s are obstructing justice by distorting the truth about the
murder of Laci Peterson. If it wasn't for the investigative reports of
David Sween, who has been one step ahead of the effort to frame an
innocent man, Scott Peterson would have been dead and buried by now,
just like Richard Albert Ricci was. The fact that David Sween is
responsible for saving Scott Peterson became graphically plain
recently, when the disgraced prosecution tried to save the reputation
of the incompetent, Detective Allen Brocchini. The detective had
gotten a call about how Scott dumped Laci in the ocean on April 19,
2003, a day after Scott Peterson was arrested, but Detective Allen
Brocchini did not follow up because, in his words,
"I just couldn't corroborate it, and I just didn't put a lot of stock
in it."
In retrospect, such a call is consistent with the persistent effort to
frame Scott Peterson, and investigator, David Sween, had virually made
that crystal clear when he wrote the following report:
http://www.geocities.com/botenth/scott.htm
So you see, if David Sween did not methodically and systematically
expose every absurd plot to frame Scott Peterson, the prosecution
might have fraudulently "cemented" the case against Scott early on,
and he may have died in prison, just like Richard Albert Ricci did.
The April 19 telephone call tip that Brochini dismissed is the very
same one that the prosecution has currently embraced, and that is a
clear indication of the fact that earlier efforts to frame Scott
Peterson were discarded because David Sween exposed every fraudulent
effort to "cement" the case against Scott Peterson.
If Scott has a guardian angel looking over his shoulder, his name is
David Sween, and I seriously believe that in the absence of his
brilliant reporting, Scott Peterson would be dead.
How long is the prison torture of innocent people going to be
tolerated? Why are we not charging Ken Starr for torture? With Susan
McDougal and her husband, did Starr not use cruel and unusual
punishment, did Starr not obstruct justice, did Starr not tamper with
witnesses, did Starr not violate the racketeering statutes with the
far right wing, did Star not...??? If Starr's look-a-like, Distaso,
manages to turn Scott Peterson into another Jim McDougall, are we
going to applaud this license to murder an innocent man? Jim McDougal
was convicted on May 28, 1996 of 18 charges against him. Facing up to
84 years in prison and $4.5 million in fines, McDougal agreed to
cooperate with Starr's office. His cooperation netted a reduced
sentence, and in April 1997 he was sentenced to three years in prison
and a year of house arrest, three years of probation and a $10,000
fine. Jim McDougal conveniently died in jail in March 1998. His
cooperation produced the allegation that Susan McDougal and Bill
Clinton had been lovers. Was that statement, (true or not), worth 81
years in jail and almost 4.5 million dollars? Pornographer, Ken Starr
evidently thought so. McDougall's death denied the opportunity to
prove that his original indictment was a consequence of his refusal to
lie. Perhaps, if somebody paid a hefty price for the torture of Jim
McDougal, the murders of Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson would have at
least been investigated in a competent manner, because as long as
justice is about harrassing innocent people, it doesn't exist.