The Wichita Massacre
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The Wichita Massacre, also known as The Wichita Horror, was a murder/assault/rape/robbery spree perpetrated by two brothers in the city of Wichita, Kansas in the winter of 2000. The brutal crimes they committed in just under a week shocked Wichitans. It also gained notoriety among white nationalists and conservatives, as both perpetrators were black and all seven victims were white, while the crimes were neither assumed to be race-related nor did they garner much airtime or space in the national mainstream media, allegedly due to political correctness.
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[edit] The Prelude
"The Carr Brothers", 22-year-old Reginald and 20-year-old Jonathan Carr, already had serious criminal records when they began their reign of terror over Wichita. On December 8, having recently arrived in the city, they committed armed robbery against 23-year-old assistant baseball coach Andrew Schreiber. Three days later, they shot and mortally wounded 55-year-old cellist and librarian Ann Walenta as she tried to escape from them in her car.
[edit] The Ordeal
Their crime spree culminated on December 14 , when they subjected Brad Heyka, Heather Muller, Aaron Sander, Jason Befort and "H.G.", all in their twenties, to a night of torment and death. The brothers invaded the house at which the young men and women were spending the night, and forced them to strip naked. They bound and detained them, and brought them out to subject them to various forms of sexual humiliation, including rape and sodomy, as well as forcing the men to engage in sexual acts with the women, and the women with each other. They also forced the youths to empty their bank accounts, before finally bringing them to a snowy deserted football field and shooting them execution-style in the backs of their heads, leaving them for dead. Only H.G. survived (thanks to her metal hairpin having deflected the bullet), running naked for more than a mile in freezing weather to report the Carrs' crimes and seek medical attention.
[edit] The Aftermath
The Carr brothers were captured by the police the next day, and Reginald was identified by Schreiber and the dying Walenta. The gruesome crimes shocked Wichitans, and purchases of guns, locks, and security systems subsequently skyrocketed in the city.
Law enforcement decided that Carrs' motive was robbery, despite the repeated and prolonged sexual assault, sexual humiliation and execution-style deaths inflicted upon the victims that night. White nationalists highlighted the races of the perpetrators (black) and those of the victims (white) to draw attention to white separatism and black-on-white violent crimes. Critics of political correctness pointed out that had the races of the perpetrators and the victims been reversed, the reactions of the mass media would have been very different, and the hate crime angle would have been assumed outright. Local politicians began playing the case for political gain.
[edit] Trial and Errors
During the trial, the defense tried to argue that the brothers had had a rough childhood, and were therefore deserving of clemency. However, the evidence, the witnesses, the testimonies of the surviving victims, and the testimonies of the Carrs' own women friends and family members weighed heavily against them. The brothers were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death on November 15, 2002. They were also sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 20 years, for the death of Walenta. In addition, Reginald Carr was sentenced to 47 years in prison for his conviction on other crimes, and Jonathan Carr was sentenced to 41 years on other convictions.
In 2004, the state of Kansas paid out a total of $1.7 million to the relatives of the victims, in response to a lawsuit filed by the latter against the state, alleging that Kansas erroneously let Reginald Carr out of prison earlier than he should have been released. A few months later, however, it was determined by the Kansas Supreme Court that the death penalty in Kansas, reinstated in 1994, was unconstitutional. This decision is being appealed.
