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Source: The Wichita Eagle, Friday, January 5th, 2001

http://web.wichitaeagle.com/content/wichitaeagle/2001/01/05/crimecourts/shooting0105_txt.htm
Brothers Charged in Attacks on Seven
New information released Thursday reveals details of the charges against
Reginald and Jonathan Carr.
By Tim Potter
Prosecutors said Thursday that two brothers randomly attacked seven people last
month in a Wichita crime spree of rapes, robberies and shootings that left five people
dead.
And based on new charges filed Thursday, the crimes now appear even more heinous
than first reported.
The new charges filed in the attack on five
friends at an east-side home accuse
Reginald Carr, 23, and Jonathan Carr, 20,
of raping the two women and sodomizing
one of them.
Prosecutors also accuse the Carrs of forcing
the two female victims to perform sex acts
on each other, and of forcing the three
male victims to perform sex acts with the
women.
Prosecutors also charged the Carrs with murder in the robbery and shooting of a
symphony cellist and with the kidnapping and robbery of a man that started at an east-
side convenience store.
In a news conference before the charges were filed, District Attorney Nola Foulston said
for the first time publicly that the Carrs picked their victims randomly. The apparent
motive in each crime: robbery.
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Although e-mails, letters to the editor and other comments in public forums have
questioned whether the shootings were racially motivated hate crimes, Foulston said
race was not an issue.
The Carrs are African-American. Their victims were white. But the fact that the
defendants and victims happen to be of different races has no bearing, Foulston said.
Lets just look at the underlying crimes.
The Dodge City brothers already stood accused of capital murder in the killing of four of
the friends, meaning the two could face the death penalty.
According to the charges, the crime spree began about 11 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Kum & Go
convenience store at 21st and Woodlawn. The charges say the Carrs took 23-year-old
Andrew Schreiber at gunpoint and made him withdraw money from different ATMs. At
one point, they allegedly assaulted him with a handgun. The ordeal continued into the
early morning of Dec. 8, when the Carrs let Schreiber go, the charges say.
On the night of Dec. 11, the charges say, the Carrs repeatedly shot a 55-year-old
Wichita Symphony Orchestra cellist in a robbery outside her home near Central and
Rock Road. The shooting left Ann Walenta paralyzed from the waist down. She died
Tuesday of complications from her injuries.
And then, late Dec. 14 and early Dec. 15, the crime spree escalated, reaching its most
vicious proportions.
Prosecutors say the Carrs broke into the three male friends home at 12727 Birchwood
Drive and abducted them and the two female friends. All the victims were in their 20s.
At some point, the Carrs allegedly robbed the friends, taking everything from appliances
to bedding and dishware.
The charges do not spell out when the sexual assaults occurred.
Authorities say the Carrs took the five to a soccer field near 29th Street North and
Greenwich Road, shot them and left their bodies in the snow.
Four of the friends died. They were Jason Befort, 26, an Augusta High School science
teacher and coach; Brad Heyka, 27, a director of finance with Koch Financial Services;
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Heather Muller, 25, a St. Thomas Aquinas preschool teacher; and Aaron Sander, 29, a
former Koch employee who wanted to become a priest.
The fifth friend, a 25-year-old woman, survived. To get help, she walked nearly a mile,
naked and bleeding from her wounds, through snow and subfreezing temperatures. Her
identity is being protected because she was the victim of a sex crime.
According to her account, told to a couple at a home where she went for help, the
gunmen first took the friends to ATMs. Then, she said, the men made them kneel in
front of a vehicle before shooting them execution-style in the head.
She and Befort were planning to marry.
Police arrested the Carrs within about 12 hours of the quadruple killings.
With the latest accusations, the charges against the Carrs now total 58 counts. One of
them is cruelty to animals. The misdemeanor charge accuses the Carrs of killing a
terrier.
Foulston and investigators will not comment on how the killers broke into the friends
house or the evidence that allegedly links the three sets of crimes.
Foulston said prosecutors do not expect to accuse the Carrs of any other crimes.
Meanwhile, she said, police are seeking the publics help in finding one or more .380-
caliber, semi-automatic weapons that might have been used in the crimes. Authorities
ask anyone with information about the weapons to call police Lt. Ken Landwehr at 268-
4181 or CrimeStoppers at 267-2111.
Prosecutors on Thursday asked that the Carrs be held without bond, a request that
District Judge Clark Owens granted. They remain in the Sedgwick County Jail, where
they had earlier been held in lieu of $10 million bonds.
The Carrs, who have separate lawyers, face a preliminary hearing in April. Their family
and lawyers have declined to comment.
On Thursday afternoon, the brothers appeared separately from jail on a video screen in
Owens courtroom. They listened to the additional charges against them.
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Several relatives of the Carrs watched them on the monitor and waved to them.
Reginald Carr smiled and waved back.
I love you all, he said.
Someone answered, I love you, baby. Dont worry about it.
Reach Tim Potter at 268-6684 or tpotter@wichitaeagle.com