This article is about the American spree killer. For the English author, see Dean Vincent Carter. For the American singer also known as Dean Carter, see Arlie Neaville.
Dean Phillip Carter (born August 30, 1955) is an American convicted spree killer and rapist who was sentenced to death for the murders of four women in California in April 1984. Carter has also been implicated in the death of a fifth woman. Carter had met and befriended several of his victims at bars and restaurants prior to attacking them.
Carter was born in Nome in the Territory of Alaska on August 30, 1955, as the illegitimate son of a half-Eskimo woman. He was adopted by his stepfather, who served as police chief, fire chief, and justice of the peace in the community. At the age of 12, Carter was committed to a youth camp, which he attempted to flee from at least three times. He was later placed in a foster home.
Carter served prison terms in Oregon for auto theft and in Alaska for burglary. During his incarceration in Alaska, Carter was trained as a television cameraman and video technician. Following his release in 1979, Carter worked with various television stations in Alaska. Charlie Johnson, who worked with Carter on an award-winning documentary on the Eskimo heritage, recalled that Carter was "just a normal guy, very attractive, very handsome".
Around the same time, Carter met and married a woman who lived in the area; she gave birth to twin sons shortly thereafter. Around three years later, Carter's wife divorced him and received custody of their children. Carter continued working as a cameraman, briefly in Seattle, before flying to Hawaii in December 1983 to work as a deckhand on a yacht headed for San Diego, where he obtained a job as a deckhand on another boat and began dating bartender Susan Loyland.[1]
Background
On February 25, 1984, 28-year-old Carter met Cathleen Tiner and Janette Ann Cullins at a café in Pacific Beach, San Diego; the latter would later become one of Carter's victims. Carter ordered a Harvey Wallbanger for each of the women, and they each gave him their phone number. Tiner and Cullins had dinner on a yacht with Carter and one of his friends on March 2. On March 4, Carter called Tiner and invited her to another outing, which she declined.
On March 24, Carter called Tiner, who declined his invitation to "run off to Mexico and get married". That evening, he called another acquaintance, 18-year-old Polly Haisha, whom he had met at a party in February of that year. Haisha would later testify that she and Carter had spoken several times in the weeks after meeting, and that although Carter "was very nice" during their first phone conversation, he became more aggressive and irritated as she kept giving excuses to reschedule their date. During their last phone call, Carter informed Haisha that he would be arriving in San Diego the following day, and she rejected his offer to "quit school and come sail to France". After Carter began insulting his ex-wife, Haisha told Carter that she was no longer comfortable speaking with or seeing him and asked him not to call her again.[2]
Home invasions
On the evening of March 25, Carter broke into the San Diego residence of Susan Loyland, who had planned to travel to Mexico for a date with Carter earlier that day, though she missed picking him up at a bus station and left without him.[1] Carter, armed with a knife, raped Loyland's roommate/tenant and forced her to perform fellatio on him. Carter also robbed both Loyland and her roommate of tip money and the latter's car keys, as well as hogtying her with her pantyhose before leaving. The woman managed to free herself with a knife, and a neighbor who heard her cries for help called police. This victim would later testify that she had met Carter prior to being attacked by him.[2]
In the early hours of March 29, Carter, wearing a red bandana over his face and armed with a butcher knife, broke into the Ventura apartment of 22-year-old Jennifer Rose Steward, whom he proceeded to sexually assult and rape for around five hours, as well as strangling her into unconsciousness when she attempted to escape twice. Steward pretended to sympathize with her attacker to prevent him from becoming more violent, and convinced him to untie her by asking for a kiss. When Carter finally left at dawn, Steward waited for several minutes before running to a neighbor for help.[3] Steward had met Carter before the attack when he was staying at a neighbor's residence; she avoided him despite Carter attempting to befriend her.[4]
Murders
On April 12, the bodies of Susan Lynn Knoll and Jillette Leonora Mills were found stacked in a closed bedroom closet in the roommates' Culver City apartment by Mills's brother and a friend. Mills had been sexually assaulted, and each victim had died from asphyxia caused by strangulation. Knoll's vehicle was discovered one block from the apartment, though Mills's white Datsun 280 ZX automobile was missing, as were personal items belonging to both victims. Ronald C. Tulio, an employee of the United States Postal Service, the former boyfriend of Knoll, and an acquaintance of both Mills and victim Bonnie Guthrie, was arrested and detained by the Culver City Police Department later that day, and was in police custody at the time Janette Cullins is believed to have been murdered.
Also on April 12, the body of Bonnie Ann Guthrie was discovered on the floor of her apartment in Culver City by her landlord, who had entered her unit the previous day to make repairs, though erroneously believed Guthrie to be asleep and left. Like the previous victims, Guthrie been sexually assaulted, she had died from asphyxia caused by strangulation, and personal items were missing from her apartment. Guthrie's purse was recovered by San Diego police officers on April 14. According to police, Carter had an appointment to see Guthrie, who operated a sweater-knitting business.
According to police, Carter had met Knoll, Mills, and Guthrie at a bar in Santa Monica and likely dated Knoll for some time.
On April 14, the body of Janette Anne Cullins was found in the bedroom closet of her San Diego apartment. Her cause of death was the same as that of the other victims, and the presence of woodchips on the floor near the front door indicated that someone had pried it open. Friends and family of Cullins stated that she had met Carter two months earlier at a bar in the Pacific Beach area and rejected his subsequent repeated attempts to contact her. Cheri Phinney, who had moved into Cullins's apartment in the second week of April, would later testify that they had been unexpectedly visited by Carter on April 12, who stayed for around an hour. That night, Cullins attended a San Diego Symphony concert and returned to her apartment around 11:00 p.m, after which she was not seen alive again.
Video surveillance captured Carter withdrawing $60 from Cullins's bank account at an ATM in Point Loma, San Diego, wearing a sweater knitted by Bonnie Guthrie. On the day her body was discovered, Cullins's father noticed her vehicle parked more than a block away from her apartment. On the morning of that same day, Cullins's wallet was discovered in bushes in Point Loma; it contained driver's licenses and identification cards belonging to both Cullins and Guthrie.
Carter is believed to also be responsible for the death of a fifth woman, Tok Chum Kim, a hairdresser he met at a bar in Lafayette on April 1, 1984. Kim's decomposed body was found by police on the bedroom floor of her apartment on April 13, she had been strangled with a curtain tie, and her vehicle and some of her personal items were missing. Kim's vehicle was discovered parked in front of the apartment where the bodies of Knoll and Mills were found.
The names of Susan Loyland, Janette Cullins, Cathleen Tiner, Susan Knoll, and Polly Haisha were all later discovered in Carter's address book.[2]
Additionally, Carter was suspected in at least thirty murders and four rapes committed on the West Coast of the United States, and was initially suspected in the Green River murders in Washington.[5] Although Carter was ultimately never charged in relation to any of these cases, he has been identified as a "strong" suspect in rapes in the Seattle area, and police intended to question Carter in connection with sexual assaults in Honolulu.[1]
Arrest
On April 17, Carter was pulled over by an Arizonahighway patrol officer who observed him driving Mills's vehicle erratically near Ash Fork, Arizona, and performed a traffic stop, which ended with Carter being arrested without incident. Inside the vehicle, police found various personal items belonging to Carter's victims.[2] Carter was booked for driving under the influence, making unsafe lane changes, and driving without a license.[5]
Trials
On July 16, 1989, during a trial in Los Angeles, Carter was convicted of the murders of Knoll, Mills, and Guthrie, as well as two rapes. He was sentenced to death via gas chamber three weeks later.[1]
At a subsequent trial in Ventura, Carter was convicted of Cullins's murder and received an additional death sentence, in addition to being found guilty of burglary and robbery of Cullins. Carter was also found guilty of rape, burglary, and robbery in connection with his attack on Susan Loyland's roommate, for which he received a 56-year sentence. Additionally, Carter received a consecutive sentence of twenty-one years and eight months for his attack on Jennifer Rose Steward.[2][3]
Imprisonment
During his time on death row, Carter wrote and published an Internetblog, "Deadman Talking", with the help of a friend outside of prison. Although Carter avoided discussing his case in the blog and largely focused on his life on death row and thoughts on current events, he maintained his innocence.[4] According to Carter, he began writing the columns to provide "a reasonably coherent account of what it is like from where I sit".[6]
Carter claimed ineffective assistance of counsel, citing multiple disagreements with his attorneys, though his sentence was upheld in a ruling on December 26, 2019.[7]
Diane Alexis Whipple was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios belonging to Paul Schneider, a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood serving three life sentences in state prison. The dogs were looked after by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, a husband and wife who lived in the same apartment building as Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.
Leonard Thomas Lake, also known as Leonard Hill and a variety of other aliases, was an American survivalist and serial killer. During the mid-1980s, Lake and his accomplice, Hong Kong-born Charles Ng, raped, tortured and murdered an estimated eleven to twenty-five victims at a remote cabin near Wilseyville, California, 150 miles east of San Francisco. Upon being arrested on unrelated charges in 1985, Lake swallowed cyanide pills that he had sewn into his clothing and died four days later. Human remains, videotapes and journals found at his cabin later confirmed Ng's involvement, and were used to convict Ng on eleven counts of capital murder.
Phillip Carl Jablonski was an American serial killer and rapist convicted of killing five women in California and Utah between 1978 and 1991.
Wayne Clifford Boden was a Canadian serial killer and rapist active between 1969 and 1971. Boden killed four women, three in Montreal and one in Calgary, earning the nickname The Vampire Rapist for biting the breasts of his victims, and received four life sentences. Boden's was the first murder conviction in North America due to forensic odontological evidence.
William Richard Bradford was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer and serial rapist who was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison for the 1984 murders of his 15-year-old neighbor Tracey Campbell and barmaid Shari Miller. In July 2006, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released a compilation of photos found in Bradford's apartment in the 1980s, depicting 54 different women in modelling poses. As Bradford had used the promise of a modelling career to lure his known victims, and taken pictures of Miller before murdering her, police believe many of the photos depict Bradford's other victims in the moments before their deaths. Bradford died at the Vacaville prison medical facility on March 10, 2008, of natural causes.
Henry Louis Wallace, also known as the "Taco Bell Strangler", is an American serial killer who killed eleven black women in South Carolina and North Carolina from March 1990 to March 1994. He is currently awaiting execution at Central Prison in Raleigh.
Cleophus Prince Jr. is an American serial killer who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 for the rape and murder of six women in San Diego County, California. The killings occurred between January and September 1990 and became known as the Clairemont serial killings as most of the murders took place there. Before these crimes and while serving in the United States Navy, Prince was court-martialed in 1989 due to larceny. Upon being convicted, he was recommended to be discharged after serving his sentence. Multiple books have been written on Prince and his crimes.
Valery Georgievich Asratyan was a Soviet suspected serial killer, convicted for the killing of two women in Moscow between 1988 and 1990. Asratyan, a previously convicted serial rapist and child molester, committed over 20 rapes of girls and young women during the 1980s. Later posing as a film director, Asratyan used anaesthesia to render victims unconscious, killing several out of fear of being sent to prison before being apprehended in 1990.
Paul Durousseau is an American serial killer who murdered seven young women in the southeastern United States between 1997 and 2003. German authorities suspect he may have also killed several local women when he was stationed there with the United States Army during the early 1990s.
Gerald Parker is an American serial killer who raped and murdered five women in Orange County, California. A sixth victim, who was pregnant at the time of the attack, survived, but her child was delivered stillborn. The crimes took place in 1978 and 1979, but Parker was not identified as the killer until 1996. Parker confessed to the murders, and was sentenced to death on January 21, 1999. Following his conviction, another man, Kevin Lee Green, who had been charged with the attack of the pregnant woman who survived and who was his wife at the time, had served 16 years in prison; he was subsequently exonerated and released.
John Albert Gardner III is an American convicted double murderer, rapist, and child molester. He confessed to the February 2009 rape and murder of 14-year-old Amber Dubois from Escondido, California, and the February 2010 rape and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway, California, after he entered a plea agreement that spared him from execution. Additionally, Gardner attempted to rape 22-year-old Candice Moncayo of San Diego County, and had been previously incarcerated for the molestation of a 13-year-old girl.
Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and convicted sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for seven murders committed between 1977 and 1979. He also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 25 years to life for two further murders committed in New York. He was also indicted for a murder in Wyoming, although the charges filed there were dropped. While Alcala has been conclusively linked to eight murders, the true number of victims remains unknown and could be as high as 130.
Ondrej Rigo was a Slovak serial killer and necrophile who targeted women in Bratislava, Munich and Amsterdam from 1990 to 1992. He served a life sentence until his death for nine murders and one attempted murder in Leopoldov Prison in Slovakia. Rigo was diagnosed with a schizoid personality disorder and an antisocial personality disorder as well as necrophilia, finding pleasure in having intercourse with women with mutilated heads. Rigo remains the Slovak murderer with the highest number of victims and he is also the most prolific serial killer in modern Slovak history.
Alfredo Rolando Prieto was a Salvadoran-American serial killer. After being initially convicted for a single murder, he was later connected to eight other murders committed in Virginia and California between May 1988 and September 1990 via DNA profiling. Sentenced to death in both states, Prieto was executed by lethal injection in Virginia in 2015.
Fernando Velazco Cota was an American murderer, rapist and kidnapper who was the prime suspect in the murders of six women in San Jose, California from August to October 1984. He committed suicide on October 14, 1984, after he was arrested for a botched kidnapping that resulted in the death of one victim.
Robert Lee Walden Jr. is an American murderer, serial rapist and suspected serial killer who attacked several women in Tucson, Arizona from 1989 to 1992, raping four and killing two of them. Sentenced to death on one count and to several life terms for his other crimes, Walden confessed to a third murder after his trial, for which he has never been tried.
Norman Keith Flowers is an American serial killer who killed three women by beating and strangling them in their Las Vegas apartments from March to May 2005. DNA left at each crime scene eventually linked him to the killings and he was arrested. Flowers was tried in 2008 and convicted, receiving a life sentence without parole. He entered an alford plea for the remaining charges in 2011 and received two more life sentences.
Billy Lee Chadd is an American serial killer and rapist. Raised by two alcoholics, he began committing crimes at a young age, first getting into trouble with the law for a rape he committed when he was 15. Between 1974 and 1978, he raped and fatally stabbed two women in California. After being arrested for those crimes, he confessed to murdering a man at an apartment in Nevada and a male hitchhiker in Kansas, the latter claim never being verified. Initially sentenced to death for one of his murders, his sentence was appealed, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment at his retrial. He is now serving his sentences at a California state prison.
The San Diego serial murders were a series of murders of women that, according to the official investigation's version, occurred between 1985 and 1990 within San Diego, California, and the surrounding area. At least 28 victims were sex workers and were known to use drugs, with four remaining unidentified.
Bryan Maurice Jones, known as The Dumpster Killer, is an American murderer, rapist and suspected serial killer who murdered between two and four women in San Diego, California, from 1985 to 1986. After killing them, he would discard their bodies in dumpsters.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
