Producer and His Daughter, 9, Found Dead

Hollywood producer Terry M. Carr hadn’t had a movie credit in six years. But friends and acquaintances said he seemed to relish his role as doting father.

While noticeably older than the young moms who shuttled their children to and from Warner Avenue School in Westwood each day, the 62-year-old Carr was so close to his 9-year-old daughter, Arieka, that he proudly took up Suzuki violin lessons alongside her.

So it was with a sense of shock and confusion Thursday that friends learned that Terry and Arieka Carr were dead.

On Monday, authorities discovered their bodies lying in the backseat of Carr’s Jeep Cherokee, which had been parked overnight at a Northern California convenience store. The bodies revealed no traces of foul play, and investigators said they were awaiting the results of toxicology tests to indicate a possible cause of death.

Lake County Sheriff’s Det. Tom Andrews, the lead investigator, called the case “too bizarre.”

The discovery of their bodies followed a series of events that friends said were inconsistent with what was known of Carr’s life with his daughter and wife, authorities said.

Their deaths occurred just one day after Carr suddenly abandoned his wife, Chikako, 50, in an Oregon grocery store and sped away with his daughter, authorities said.

Before that, a witness told police that he watched someone in a Jeep dump bags and boxes of clothes, photographs and other personal items into his pasture days earlier.

The items, police said, belonged to Terry Carr.

Although he was not known as an A-list producer, Carr was involved in a number of well-known projects in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Among those films he produced or co-produced were “Coast to Coast,” “Predator 2” and “The Boost,” according to the Internet Movie Database. Carr also worked as a production supervisor on the Henry Fonda-Katharine Hepburn film “On Golden Pond” and as a production manager on the 1976 version of “King Kong.”

Director Gregory Marquette, who collaborated with Carr on the 1999 thriller “Dark Summer,” also called “Innocence,” told the Associated Press that he was shocked by the deaths.

Carr’s wife and daughter moved to Canada with him during filming, Marquette said.

“He was just the kind of guy you wanted by your side,” Marquette said.

The last time Marquette heard from Carr was two months ago, and he did not know his friend had left Los Angeles.

“He was a great guy,” Marquette said. “One can never imagine in 10 trillion years anything like this ever, ever. It’s not in character with the reality I knew.”

The Carrs lived for a number of years in a high-rise Wilshire Boulevard condominium in Westwood and sent their daughter to Warner Avenue School. They began searching for properties in southern Oregon after school ended in June. Acquaintances in Westwood said Thursday they were surprised to learn that Carr and his daughter had moved away, noting that she was doing well at her music.

Authorities said they had rented an apartment in Ashland, Ore., on July 29.

It was also on that day, police said, that somebody dumped possessions belonging to Terry Carr in a pasture.

“It’s not stuff you would throw away -- 60-year-old photos, files -- and the way they were disposed of suggests some sort of closure or starting a new chapter in life,” Ashland Police Det. Brent Jensen told the Associated Press.

It was two days later, on Sunday afternoon, that Terry Carr suddenly abandoned his wife at an Ashland market. Police said store security cameras showed him leaving with his daughter while his wife was in a restroom.

Investigators told the Ashland Daily Tidings that the pair had not been fighting and that Carr did not have a history of mental illness.

“There was no explanation whatsoever as to why he would have abruptly departed,” Jensen told the paper. “He was up in Ashland with his wife and she turned around and him and the daughter had left.”

Chikako Carr filed a missing person’s report the next day, shortly before 11 a.m.

At roughly the same time, almost 300 miles away in Clearlake Oaks, Calif., employees at a convenience store grew suspicious of a Jeep Cherokee parked in their lot overnight. Employees told police that the Jeep had been parked there since 4 a.m. and that they had seen a man moving in the back of the vehicle between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.

When employees went to confront the occupants at 1 p.m., they found them “unresponsive” and called authorities, police said. Firefighters arrived to find the pair dead in the backseat, which had been folded back, as if they were sleeping.

It wasn’t until two days later that police connected Chikako Carr’s abandonment in Oregon and the bodies in Clearlake Oaks. When police told Chikako Carr of the discovery, she said she was still stunned by her husband’s actions.

“She said it was totally out of character, totally out of the blue,” Andrews told the Associated Press. “She was stunned again when they delivered the news.”