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Get away with friends to the laid-back Maryland coast, where you can catch up while casting off and hang ten while hanging out. Where a day on board is never boring and full throttle is half the fun. Where you can sink a putt, raise a glass, and there's always room for one more round. Ocean City, Maryland. Somewhere to smile about. Book your trip at ococean.com. Boca del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. The story I have for you today is about a couple who wanted what so many of us want when we go for a hike in the woods—quality time and a break from our busy lives. But in May of 1988, that's not what these victims got. Instead, they found themselves face-to-face with true evil lurking in the woods—the
The case takes place in Michaux State Forest, which is in southern Pennsylvania, and is home to a stretch of the famous Appalachian Trail. Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources states the forest is over 85,000 mountainous acres of dense woods with beautiful hills, trails, and streams to explore. It's a great place for hikers who want to go off the beaten path and really immerse themselves in nature. The two victims in this story were aiming to do that—
Except it wasn't just the two of them in the forest for their weekend getaway. There was someone else there who'd been stalking them, waiting for the right moment to strike. And the identity of this elusive human predator might have remained a mystery forever. Except one of the women he gunned down in cold blood survived. This is Park Predators. Park Predators
Around 9 o'clock at night on Friday, May 13, 1988, two young men were driving along Shippensburg Road just outside of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, when something on the side of the road caught their attention. The men saw what looked like a beam of light flashing along the shoulder, and as they got closer, they realized it was a woman with a flashlight, and she looked disheveled. Most alarming of all, she was covered in blood.
The two men immediately pulled over and let her in their car. Now that they were able to see her up close, it became obvious to the Good Samaritans that the helpless woman was bleeding from multiple wounds to her face and neck. The young men weren't sure what to do other than to get this woman to the nearest police station. According to an article by Brian Denson for the York Daily Record, the men brought the woman to Shippensburg Police Department and emergency personnel there tried to treat her wounds.
They realized pretty quickly, though, that they were going to need to send her to a hospital. Even though she was conscious and talking, she had multiple gunshot wounds and had lost a lot of blood. Police knew this woman needed a hospital much more than she needed to give a full statement. But she insisted, before even giving the police her name, that they stop focusing on her and go out into the state forest to help another woman whom she'd been camping with.
Even though she was injured and clearly terrified and exhausted, she was adamant police needed to move quickly. She was able to give them explicit directions to a campsite she was sharing with her friend as well as a description of the woman she said officers would find at their tent.
Just after 11.30, local police, alongside Pennsylvania State Troopers, followed the woman's detailed instructions and trekked their way back into the woods about four miles deep into the forest from where the woman had been picked up at the roadway.
They emerged near a stream just 100 yards off of Rocky Knob Trail, and that's when they saw a campsite, exactly as the woman had described. The site was eerily dark and quiet, and they didn't hear anyone or anything moving or crying for help. But as officers got closer, they noticed a blue sleeping bag scattered on the ground, and not far away from that, a woman's lifeless, bloodied body.
Police could tell from just looking at her body in the tree line that no life-saving measures were going to help. They could tell right away that she'd suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and when they felt her, she had no pulse. In that moment, they realized more than likely they were dealing with a homicide scene. So officers didn't move the body. They left everything undisturbed,
and started searching in the general area for more clues. And they got kind of lucky. According to reporting by the Sentinel, about 80 feet away from the campsite in St. Brush, officers found and seized a blue knit cap, a pair of sunglasses, 25 rounds of live ammo, eight Remington .22 caliber spent shell casings for a rifle, two cigarette lighters, and a black-handled folding knife.
Other than the obvious firearm evidence, there was really no other physical evidence authorities had to go on that explained what exactly had happened. They had to ask themselves, had the woman from the roadway who was now at the hospital done this? Was there another person out there in the forest somewhere who'd shot these two women?
No one knew, and authorities' only hope of getting some of their questions answered was the survivor. Without her, police knew they would be facing an uphill battle. They needed her to pull through. Despite a total of four gunshot wounds to the face, neck, head, and arm, miraculously, the woman from the roadway did pull through.
The very next day, May 14th, she was able to speak with detectives, and she explained that she was 31-year-old Claudia Brenner. Her girlfriend, 29-year-old Rebecca White, was the woman she'd begged investigators to go into the woods and help.
Sadly, police had to break the bad news to Claudia that Rebecca had not survived. Some source material states that a close friend of Claudia's told her Rebecca had died, so I'm not sure which is true, but either way, Claudia found out within a matter of hours of the attack that Rebecca had made it. Heartbroken, Claudia explained to the authorities that she and Rebecca were dating and they'd reunited days earlier after being long distance for some time.
They decided that the best way to rekindle their romance was to go on a hiking trip, since they were both avid backpackers and loved being outdoors. According to the York Daily Record, Claudia was from Ithaca, New York, and Rebecca was from Blacksburg, Virginia. Michaud State Forest was a natural halfway point for both of them to meet up and spend some time together, just the two of them.
At the time, Claudia and Rebecca were both graduate students at Virginia Polytech Institute, and during the six months before this, Claudia had been away on a fellowship in Israel. After she'd returned to New York, the couple was excited to make plans to relax and spend time together before heading back to school for their final exams. Another reason they chose Michaux State Forest was because it wasn't as heavily trafficked as other recreation spaces in the region, and they could get more privacy.
Claudia told investigators that on Thursday, May 12th, the women had parked Rebecca's vehicle near a ranger station in a neighboring forest called Pine Grove Furnace State Park. They'd left the truck near a trailhead, ironically named Dead Woman's Hollow. Together, the women rode in Claudia's car toward a pull-off for the Appalachian Trail. After that, the women parked, Claudia said they grabbed their gear and headed to their first campsite at Birch Run Shelter.
That location was a designated camping area that had a fire pit, a couple of lean-to shelters, and an outhouse. For those of you who don't know what lean-tos are, they're basically open-air log or wooden structures that are literally just meant to cover your stuff and you. They have slanted roofs so water can run off them.
All of Thursday night, Claudia said she and Rebecca talked, laughed, and enjoyed finally being reunited again. Then, early the next morning, Friday, May 13th, Claudia said Rebecca had woken up and gone to use the outhouse. She'd walked out partially clothed, which wasn't a big deal because the two of them were in the middle of the woods, alone, far away from any other people. Or, at least that's what they thought.
But it wasn't just the two of them. According to BBC Outlook's reporting, Claudia told police that Rebecca had run into a strange man lounging in one of the other shelters right next to them. To the women, it seemed like this guy had just materialized out of nowhere, and they knew he'd definitely not been there the night before. The man asked Rebecca if she had any cigarettes, but she said she didn't and hurried back to meet Claudia in their tent.
Because of this uncomfortable encounter, the women decided it would be best to pack up fast and they could just move on. The guy had given them the creeps, but more than that, the entire point of Claudia and Rebecca being all the way out in the woods was for them to be alone, just the two of them. So moving on served both of those purposes. When they left, they decided to head towards Rocky Knob Trailhead, which according to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, was about one and a half miles from Bert's Run Shelter.
The trail was a loop trail that had several lookouts and you could see streams running along the vistas. But most important to the women was the fact that it was secluded. Claudia told investigators that she and Rebecca didn't think about the strange man from Bert's Run Shelter after that, until they bumped into him again later that morning.
She said during this second encounter, she and Rebecca were walking slowly, reading their map, looking for where they wanted to set up their camp. Just like the first time, the man had seemingly come out of nowhere and walked up to them. Claudia said this time, though, the guy had a rifle casually thrown across his shoulders. He asked them if they were lost, to which Claudia said she and Rebecca replied that they weren't.
After that, she said they kept walking and the man passed by them, headed in the opposite direction. As they moved past each other, Claudia said she heard the man say something under his breath, like, quote, see you later, end quote. The women just tried to shake it off, and they took a turn towards their campsite destination, trying not to think about the stranger anymore. But something about bumping into him twice in a matter of just a few hours unnerved both women.
Claudia recalled that she and Rebecca had consciously looked over their shoulders after that to ensure the man wasn't following them. Eventually, they convinced themselves they were just being paranoid and carried on with their hike. According to Brian Denson's reporting, around 4 o'clock on Friday is when Claudia said she and Rebecca set up their campsite just off of Rocky Knob Trail. They cooled off in the water, boiled some tea, and laid out on a blanket enjoying each other's company until about 5 o'clock.
Shortly after that, they started to become intimate, but were interrupted by a loud bang. The ear-splitting sound had rung out from behind the tree line where neither women could see anything. Claudia said immediately after hearing that first bang, she felt a searing pain pierce her right arm, and then she saw a bloom of bright red blood spread across her skin. After that, several more loud bangs rang out.
Everything seemed to turn sideways, and Claudia said that's when she realized what was happening. She and Rebecca were being shot at repeatedly. Get away with friends to the laid-back Maryland coast, where you can catch up while casting off and hang ten while hanging out, where a day on board is never boring and full throttle is half the fun.
where you can sink a putt, raise a glass, and there's always room for one more round. Ocean City, Maryland. Somewhere to smile about. Book your trip at ococean.com. Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Depending on the source material you read for this story, several publications peg the time of the shooting incident to be anywhere from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. But based on Claudia's own account of events published by Carmen Anderson for the Sentinel, it seems like the most accurate time frame for the attack was sometime shortly after 5 p.m. So that's what I'll go with.
Also, if you do the math, Claudia was picked up by the Good Samaritans at 9 o'clock after she said she walked close to four miles bleeding. So I have to think the attack happened at least a few hours before that. I think it's safe to assume that her wandering the woods and eventually finding the roadway probably took her longer than the average person simply because she was in such bad shape.
Either way, according to what Claudia told police, she'd been shot four times. The first shot had hit her in her right arm. Then she'd been struck three more times in the face, head and neck.
Rebecca had not been hit at the start of the attack, so she told Claudia to get down and start moving towards tree cover. Claudia said that as she and Rebecca were turning to run to safety, that's when Rebecca was hit three times, once in the head, once in the neck, and once in the back. Somehow, despite both of them being shot multiple times, Claudia said they eventually made it behind a big tree and were conscious and alert enough to talk about what to do next. With
Within a matter of seconds, though, Claudia said it became apparent that Rebecca was losing blood at an alarming rate. And Rebecca told Claudia they needed to stop it before she passed out.
Claudia told police in that moment she'd not thought twice about maybe being shot again and reemerged from the tree line into the open space to make a dash for their backpacks. Claudia said she wanted to grab items she could use to tie around her and Rebecca's wounds. She said she'd even thought to grab shoes so they could make a run for it when they had the chance.
According to Brian Denson's reporting, despite Claudia's best efforts to stop Rebecca's bleeding, the 29-year-old deteriorated quickly. She began to complain that she could no longer see and that everything was going dark. Claudia said she'd tried several times to get Rebecca on her feet, but it was useless. Any attempt she made to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation also was no help because Claudia was bleeding from her own facial injuries as well.
Claudia said as she watched her own blood drip onto Rebecca's face, she realized she was probably going to bleed out too if she didn't get help. So she said she was forced to make the tough decision to leave Rebecca at the campsite and try and make her way to the nearest road. But the problem was, Claudia said she wasn't sure how far she was from anything but woods and trees. She also had no idea if whoever had shot them was still out there and would follow her to finish her off.
She pushed those fears aside, though, and gathered some warm clothing, shoes, a map, and a flashlight, and painstakingly began walking out of the woods in search for help. After walking almost four miles through hills and uncleared trails, Claudia said she finally reached the road where the young man had picked her up.
BBC Outlook reported that at one point before flagging down the Good Samaritans, Claudia had stumbled across an unpaved State Forest road and a vehicle had passed right by her and didn't stop. After that, she said she thought about breaking into one of the few small homes that she'd seen tucked along the woods to try and use a phone. But she said she'd been too frightened, thinking that maybe her shooter would be inside one of those residences. Which I don't blame her. I mean, that's a pretty scary thought.
Thanks to Claudia's articulate and detailed statements, police were in a much better place to be able to launch a homicide investigation. They'd already bagged everything they found at the women's campsite and sent it off to the state police crime lab for testing. Once those results came in, they'd be even closer to catching whoever had done this. Shortly after Claudia's first interview with detectives, news broke about what happened and police notified both women's families and friends.
According to several news publications, including the Ithaca Journal, the Adams County deputy coroner performed Rebecca's autopsy just 10 hours after the attack. He determined that she died from two gunshot wounds, the one to her back and the one to her head. Those had been the fatal injuries that caused her to bleed out.
By the looks of it, police felt everything about the crime scene and Claudia's story pointed to a random shooter roaming the woods. Which didn't make sense because who would want to just outright murder two women in the forest for no reason? The answer to that question was unclear, but authorities did begin to suspect that whoever had attacked the women was skilled enough with a firearm and familiar enough with the forest to keep themselves hidden.
A few days after the crime, on May 17th, a trooper with the state police told the Ithaca Journal and reporter David Goodwin, quote, I'm not sure that they could have even been aware that he was there. The woods are so thick in there, and they would have never been able to spot him, end quote.
I noticed that the trooper used the pronoun he in that quote to refer to the shooter. So I think it's safe to assume that early on in the investigation, authorities firmly believed a man had been the person who'd shot Claudia and Rebecca, even though they had no way of proving that. All they had was Claudia's story about the creepy guy her and Rebecca had run into twice.
As an extra precaution, authorities transported Claudia, who was still recovering, to a different hospital than the one she'd initially been treated at. News reports that were published on May 14th, the day after the crime, said that she was originally sent to Hershey Medical Center. But Claudia's family had gotten upset that her location was out there for the world to know, and especially for her shooter to know. So police decided they had messed up and that it was best for them to send Claudia to an unnamed facility.
A state police investigator told the Ithaca Journal, quote, you know with all these movies coming out and people going into hospitals and killing witnesses, we are more concerned about her safety, end quote.
The next thing police needed to focus on was identifying the shooter or at least coming up with a description they could push out to the public. But unfortunately, in the chaos of the shooting, Claudia had not been able to get a good look at the guy. However, she did express that she felt sure she knew who he was.
She told police that in her gut, she thought it was the same strange man that she and Rebecca had encountered twice on Friday, before they'd been attacked. She told detectives that something about the gaunt young man just seemed off. She said the way the guy had looked at them, the fact that they'd seen him carrying a long rifle, and the way he'd been undetectable in the woods really freaked them out.
Pennsylvania State Police brought in an expert forensic artist to create a composite sketch of the man, based on Claudia's description of him. According to Jeffrey Roth's reporting for the Gettysburg Times, Claudia said the guy was a thin white man around six feet tall with reddish hair, who was wearing gray sweatpants that had a maroon stripe down the pant leg. She said he looked unbathed and kind of scrubby.
The sketch went out to media outlets just a few hours after it was drawn up, and that's when public hysteria hit a fever pitch. Everyone who lived locally was terrified that a rogue shooter was still on the loose. Police felt tremendous pressure to find some traction in their investigation and get a suspect into custody fast.
Crime Stoppers offered up a $1,000 reward for information, hoping that someone would come forward with a tip that would point homicide investigators in the right direction. But nothing surfaced. Authorities spent all day Wednesday, May 18th, back out at the crime scene looking around for clues, but they didn't find anything. They felt certain that the person they were looking for had been to Rocky Knob Trail before, though, and he was definitely familiar with the state forest in general.
The spot where the attack happened was several hundred feet off the designated trail. It was secluded. Most people wouldn't even know it was there. One week after the shooting, friends and family of Rebecca White held her memorial service in Virginia. It's unclear from the source material if Claudia was physically well enough to attend, but if she wasn't, that's super sad. I can't imagine losing someone so close to you and not being able to go to their funeral to say your final goodbyes.
On May 23rd, 10 days after the attack and shortly after that composite sketch was released, investigators caught a huge break. The authorities announced they had a suspect. According to Bill Cowan's reporting for The Public Opinion, ever since police had released the composite sketch, they'd been fielding hundreds of calls from the public.
Many of those tips kept referring to a man from the area who looked a lot like the sketch. The callers all said the guy in the picture often went by the name Mountain Man, but his real name was Stephen Roy Carr.
Stephen was 28 years old and lived in the mountains just outside of Shippensburg. People who knew him told investigators that he lived in caves, lean-tos, and even literal holes in the ground, basically wherever he could find shelter. Some source material says Stephen was 29, but most articles cite him as being 28.
Residents said Stephen was a loner who called the woods of Michaux State Forest his home. He liked to live off the grid and would reportedly only come into town to collect cans that he turned in for cash. The only things people saw him use that money for were meal supplies and cigarettes. Witnesses said he almost always carried a long rifle with him and used it to shoot and kill small game.
One of the last known locations someone said they'd seen him was at a migrant camp about four and a half miles from the crime scene near the town of Cleaversburg. That witness said they believed Stephen was living in a rundown camper there. By nightfall on May 23rd, Pennsylvania State Police sent 50 troopers and scent-tracking dogs to that area, and they found the camper.
The dogs' handlers had used items from inside the RV to follow Stephen's scent through the woods. Officers in a helicopter flying overhead, just a few miles from where the camper was abandoned, radioed in that they'd spotted a man matching Stephen's description take off into the woods. Teams on the ground continued to pursue him, but unfortunately, the dogs lost his scent trail and the manhunt had to come to an end. Stephen had taken off into a part of the forest that had thick tree cover, so even the helicopter couldn't spot him again.
The York Daily Record reported that one of the main reasons the dogs had been unable to follow Stephen's trail deeper into the woods was because Stephen himself, at least according to witnesses, had an extremely pungent smell. He was someone who rarely bathed and constantly reeked of body odor and the outdoors.
Even with strong odors from his belongings to go off of, the further and further the tracking dogs had gone into the forest, the less and less they'd been able to differentiate between Stephen's smell and the surrounding environment. Another factor that didn't help was that while search teams had been chasing Stephen, weather conditions in the forest had gotten bad. Heavy rains and winds swept through overnight, and that also presented a lot of challenges to the scent dogs.
The next day, authorities released a statement recapping their efforts and said, quote, We just want to talk to Mr. Carr. He is considered a suspect and may be armed and dangerous. We know that he has no fixed place of abode and that he does wander the mountain area, end quote. Stephen continued to evade law enforcement at every turn because of just how well he knew the area. Police surmised that Stephen used backwoods trails that were not on designated maps to stay off their radar.
In press releases, they said Stephen was like a wild animal in the forest. He had the ability to blend in with his surroundings and disappear through the dense treeline with ease. Thankfully, his luck ran out, though, after police were able to successfully locate him at a dairy farm in West Pennsboro Township. That farm was several miles away from where his dilapidated camper had been found.
What's interesting, though, about this part of the story is that by the time police caught up to him, they discovered Stephen was wanted in another state for another brutal crime. But probably even more alarming was the fact that the people at the farm he was reported to be at were completely unaware they were housing a violent fugitive. Get away with friends to the laid-back Maryland coast, where you can catch up while casting off
and hang ten while hanging out. Where a day on board is never boring and full throttle is half the fun. Where you can sink a putt, raise a glass, and there's always room for one more round. Ocean City, Maryland. Somewhere to smile about. Book your trip at ococean.com. Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
According to Dan Miller's reporting for the Sentinel, while authorities had been doggedly pursuing Stephen through the woods, he'd found a small metal tub somewhere and used it to float down the Conaduinic Creek to make his escape. Eventually, the creek had narrowed and Stephen found himself running ashore on a private farm. A husband and wife named Chester and Esther Weaver owned that farm and came across Stephen just as he was getting out of his makeshift boat.
Stephen told the couple that his name was Mike Smith, and he had not eaten in days. The Weavers, a devout Mennonite family, took Stephen in, no questions asked. They allowed him to sleep in their cellar and do chores around their farm. Chester told the Sentinel that at first he'd kind of been suspicious of Stephen, mostly because he smelled and was disheveled, but Chester said he tried to keep an open mind.
He told the newspaper, quote, he's a human being too, you know. I talked to him about God and his responsibility to God, end quote. At one point, Chester said he felt so bad for Stephen that he'd gone into town to buy new shoes for him and spent $54. On the morning of May 24th, though, everything changed. Chester and one of his sons had left their farm to transport some livestock, and on their way into town, they were stopped by a Pennsylvania State Police roadblock.
The troopers at the barricade asked Chester if anyone matching Stephen's description was living on his farm, to which Chester replied, yes, but said the man he knew called himself Mike Smith, not Stephen Carr. Authorities explained that they'd set up the roadblock near Chester's farm after one of the Weaver's neighbors had called in to report that they thought a guy who looked like Stephen was working on the dairy farm.
Police eventually convinced Chester that the man he was harboring was lying to him and, in fact, was not named Mike Smith, but instead was a violent fugitive. Shortly after stopping at the roadblock, Chester allowed troopers to hide out in one of his milk houses. One of the farmer's sons brought Stephen to that building and asked him to get out and open a gate. When Stephen did, the troopers that were hiding jumped out and arrested him.
Chester told news reporters afterwards that he had no idea Stephen was a fugitive. He said he and his wife had never listened to the radio or watched television, so they'd been completely unaware Stephen was wanted for Rebecca White's murder. He did, however, mention that during Stephen's brief stay at the farm, Stephen had told Esther he'd come to Pennsylvania from Florida, and while he'd been down there, he'd killed three people he said killed his best friend.
From my research, it doesn't appear that Stephen's claim about being a murderer was true. At least I can't find any source material that explicitly states he was arrested or served time for triple murder in Florida.
The York Record reported that he did live in Florida from 1979 until the summer of 1986, but no sources list him as being a suspect in a homicide investigation while down there. What Stephen did have was a long rap sheet in Florida for committing dozens of burglaries and robberies in the late 1970s and early 80s. He'd spent four years in prison for one brutal robbery in which he'd stabbed an elderly woman. Thankfully, that victim had survived.
According to the York Daily Record, when Pennsylvania police arrested Stephen, they discovered he had an outstanding warrant from 1987 from Florida. The crime that warrant was for though was minor compared to what he was facing in Pennsylvania.
On May 25, 1988, Stephen was officially charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, attempted murder, and two counts of aggravated assault for the death of Rebecca White and the shooting of Claudia Brenner. At the time, the charge of first-degree murder meant that Stephen could face the death penalty. The Sentinel reported that after his arrest, Stephen led homicide detectives back to the crime scene and showed them where he'd stashed the murder weapon, a .22-caliber Winchester rifle.
The group found the gun wrapped in plastic and half buried under some leaves. By that point, investigators had been able to tie the blue cap, cigarette lighters, folding knife, and rifle ammunition they'd found earlier at the crime scene back to Stephen. To add to the mountain of evidence piling up against him was the fact that the dilapidated camper authorities had searched near the migrant camp came back as registered to one of Stephen's uncles who lived not far from Shippensburg.
There was also damning testimony from a teenage boy and his mom from Shippensburg who said they'd run into Stephen the day after the shooting. These witnesses were 17-year-old John Golden and his mother, Alice. John told police that he and Stephen were loose acquaintances, and on May 14th, Stephen had visited him at his mom's house and said, quote, I did something wrong, end quote.
Alice told police that she normally knew Stephen to carry a .22 caliber rifle, but on the day he'd arrived to visit with her son, he didn't have it on him. When she'd asked him where it was, Stephen had replied that someone had stolen it from him the day prior. Around this time as the case was coming together, Claudia had made a full recovery and was released from the hospital. She returned home to Ithaca, New York and was expected to testify against Stephen.
The one question headed into trial that no one could answer, though, was why Stephen had shot at Claudia and Rebecca. To authorities, that piece of the puzzle was still unclear. There appeared to be no personal motive whatsoever because prior to following them in the woods the day of the shooting, Stephen had never met Claudia and Rebecca.
To make things even more confusing, Stephen's statements to police after his arrest wavered a lot. At first, he seemed cooperative and led those investigators to the murder weapon. But then, according to Carmen Anderson's reporting, he did a complete 180 and denied any involvement in the attack.
When authorities revealed to him that Claudia had survived the shooting, Stephen reportedly began to cry and said, quote, If I tell you the truth, you'll put me away for a long time. I should have run. End quote.
Shortly after saying that, he told detectives that the shooting was an accident and claimed he'd been shooting at a deer and hit the women instead. Of course, no one believed that version of Stephen's story, mostly because both of his victims had been shot a total of eight times. To police, that many shots just did not add up with an accidental hunting incident scenario.
It's not clear from the research material that's out there, but I have to think that maybe one of the reasons Stephen went back and forth so much was because on May 26, 1988, the Adams County District Attorney announced that he was going to seek the death penalty against Stephen. That more than likely ramped up Stephen's fear of not just going to prison for the rest of his life, but his own life being at stake.
Because Stephen had no money, means, or family to help pay for lawyers, he was represented by a public defender named Michael George in June of 1988. Michael filed several motions to get preliminary hearings continued. He said he wanted to make sure that his client was in fact the man Claudia Brenner reported seeing. So to be fair to his defense, the government allowed Stephen to be put into a police lineup, and Claudia was asked to pick out who she believed had attacked her and Rebecca.
The defense also requested that Claudia hear Stephen speak so that she could identify his voice and verify he was the man she and Rebecca had bumped into twice on Friday, May 13th. Claudia went through with these requests and ultimately Stephen's case continued through the criminal justice system.
But more delays came in July and August of 88 when a series of psychiatric evaluations were done on Stephen to determine if he was competent enough to stand trial. Psychiatrists found that he was sane enough to understand the charges against him. They also noted that during their examinations, they learned that Stephen had a deep-seated hatred for homosexuals.
To add to the confusion of his conflicting statements and behavior, during a pretrial hearing in late July of 88, Stephen entered what's called a mute plea.
According to legal dictionary, to stand mute means a defendant refuses to plead either guilty or not guilty. The presiding judge told the Ithaca Journal, quote, End quote.
By default, the court had to enter a plea of not guilty for Stephen, just to keep the proceedings moving. During the subsequent preliminary hearings, Stephen's attorney, Michael George, openly told the media that his client had been provoked after seeing two women teasing one another and having sexual intercourse.
Michael told the Gettysburg Times, "...we are prepared to present evidence that what happened on the afternoon of May 13, 1988 affected Stephen's ability to reason and pushed him over the edge and provoked him, in effect, doing the act in which he is alleged of doing."
This defense strategy is what's called a provocation defense. Basically, what Michael was saying was that because Stephen had witnessed two lesbians being intimate, some sort of prior trauma he'd experienced had been triggered by that, and he'd flown into a blind rage and become homicidal. The York Record reported that Stephen had a history of being roughed up by gay men inside the Florida prisons he'd been incarcerated at during the late 70s.
One of Stephen's friends, a man named James Cleaver, told the newspaper that Stephen despised homosexuality, and on one occasion while watching the Oprah Winfrey show together, in which she'd been interviewing a gay man, Stephen had said, quote, I think somebody ought to kill the whole bunch of them, end quote.
The Commonwealth versus Carr case law that's publicly available states that the defense's provocation argument doesn't constitute true grounds for a legitimate legal argument, but there are cases where provocation is weighed heavily when it comes to some charges.
The main situations where this kind of defense is used is in cases that deal with adultery, mutual combat, and assault. These are instances where the court has said in prior case law it's almost understandable to fly into blind rage and kill someone. However, when it came to Stephen's case, it wasn't any of those above situations, at least not in the eyes of the court.
Michael George's argument that Stephen's previous experiences in prison with homosexual men had somehow prompted him into shooting Rebecca and Claudia was not a convincing one. And honestly, it caused a lot of emotional damage to the one surviving victim, Claudia. She was still on the road to recovery and had to learn that a defense attorney was trying to claim she and her girlfriend were gunned down like they were less than human because of who they chose to love. I can only imagine the mental trauma that caused her.
In the end, the judge denied Stephen's attorney's provocation theory. He ordered that when the case went to trial, no mention of Stephen's homophobia or the victim's sexual orientation would be allowed. The Evening Sun reported that jury selection for Stephen's trial got underway on October 25th, with opening arguments expected to start on Halloween Day. But the case never got that far.
According to Ted Haas's reporting for the Ithaca Journal, three days after potential jurors were brought in to go through selection, Stephen voluntarily waived his right to a jury trial. That put Stephen's fate in the judge's hands, and after less than an hour, the judge came back with his verdict and declared Stephen guilty on all charges.
Prior to that ruling, the Adams County DA and Stephen's defense attorney had agreed that in exchange for Stephen waiving his right to a jury trial, the state would drop the death penalty and throw out the two charges for aggravated assault and one charge of attempted murder. Stephen was only going to be convicted and sentenced for first-degree murder and third-degree murder. The maximum penalty he would get was life in prison without parole.
Despite getting that good deal, Stephen's attorney filed post-conviction appeals and said that if he got a higher court to overturn the trial court's decision, he would agree to let the government bring the attempted murder and assault charges back onto the table. A month later, in November 1988, Stephen's lawyer announced he planned to get Stephen a new trial, but within a few months, all of those efforts failed.
On May 17th, 1989, close to the one-year anniversary of the crime, Stephen was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Associated Press reported that Claudia attended the sentencing and read a two-page statement. It said in part, quote,
End quote.
Claudia went on to tell BBC Outlook that she credits her survival to Rebecca. She said that when she was lost in the chaos of the shooting, Rebecca had been the one who told her to take cover, and it was Rebecca who had the presence of mind to realize that in order for either of them to get out alive, they needed to stop their wounds from bleeding and get help. Claudia wholeheartedly believes she wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for Rebecca.
She told the Star Gazette, "I think the motivation of believing if I only got help for her she might live propelled me just as much as realizing I needed help for my own injuries. I really feel that Rebecca saved my life before she died."
In 1995, Claudia wrote a book about the attack and the aftermath, entitled it, Eight Bullets, One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence. In it, she talked about how the impact of what she'd been through had made her more willing to share her story. She said she hoped it would inspire many more people in the LGBTQ community to speak out against the violence they'd endured because of their sexual orientation.
She went on to earn her degree and become an architect, as well as become involved in anti-gay violence activism. Stephen Roy Carr is still alive today. He's in his early 60s and is a lifelong inmate at a state prison in Pennsylvania.
He will never see freedom again, and the woods he once called home and lived in as the mountain man don't miss him. He'll never hear the rustling sound of wind in the trees or the gentle splash of a babbling creek again. And that's exactly what the families of the victims, and everyone impacted by his crimes, want. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No.
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Survive. I'm Candice DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts.