Bizarre Tale Told in Pair’s Murder Trial

It was a scene so bizarre, prosecutors say, that it could have come straight from a horror-movie script: With her husband’s dead body in the back of a van being driven by her boyfriend, 44-year-old Janet Marie Carter remarked casually to an acquaintance: “This is so strange that my ex-husband and my new husband are in the same car.”

That, according to witnesses at her trial, was just part of a strange scenario in which the body of Lynn William Carter, beaten with a baseball bat and shot three times in the head, was taken from his home in Westminster to Palm Springs then back to Orange County as his wife, her boyfriend and another accomplice tried for days to decide what to do with him.

Along the way, they pulled into a McDonald’s to have lunch and also went shopping at a Harley Davidson store for rings that they showed off as they hugged and kissed, the prosecution said Wednesday. Finally, they dumped Carter’s remains into a trash bin behind a market in Garden Grove and set it on fire.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Claudia Silbar asked a jury in Orange County Superior Court to convict Janet Carter and her boyfriend, Kenneth Boone, of first-degree murder, which would result in their being sent to prison for life.

“They are so guilty,” Silbar told the jury. “They beat the heck out of him, they shot him in the head three times. They had the body for two days and didn’t know what to do with it, so they finally decided to burn it.”

“The evidence is overwhelming circumstantially that they were both involved in a premeditated and deliberated murder,” Silbar said.

But defense attorneys told the jury that, if anything, their clients should be convicted of less severe charges than first-degree murder. They maintain that there was no preconceived plan between the pair to kill 54-year-old Lynn Carter, who had been married to his wife for 17 years.

Boone’s attorney, Jerry Goldfein, said his client was too strung out on drugs to be able to think rationally.

“How can you have that clear state of mind if you are on a methamphetamine run that has been going on for two days?” he asked.

Boone, 35, took the witness stand on Monday and accepted some of the blame for the murder, which occurred in the Carter’s Westminster home in July 1997. He testified that the murder was the result of a botched plan that involved drugging the victim to steal a credit card. But he denied that Janet Carter had anything to do with the murder.

Authorities are still seeking another man, known only as Frank, who they say could have been the one who actually struck the victim with a baseball bat and pulled the trigger of the gun.

Janet Carter’s attorney, Robert Viefhaus, maintained that his client slept through the attack in the next room and said there is “substantial evidence” that the killing occurred inside the van. Viefhaus said the prosecution’s case is built on circumstantial evidence and unreliable witnesses who have drug problems or are hoping to get a break from the legal system in exchange for their testimony.

“The prosecutor is stuck on building her case on thieves, liars and drug addicts,” he said. “There’s no one else that tells us what happened except Kenny Boone, and he says Janet isn’t involved.”

A key witness in the prosecution’s case was Tina Chamberlain, a transient and an acquaintance of Boone’s who has admitted to being an accessory after the murder by agreeing to drive the van around.

Prosecutor Silbar characterized Chamberlain as a “lowlife” and said she admitted that “she drove around with a dead body.” But she said the 34-year-old woman had no reason to lie to jurors.

She said that, in the end, it is the defendants who must bear responsibility.

“Janet Carter and Mr. Boone are responsible for every single bullet that was put into Lynn [Carter’s] head,” Silbar said.

Garden Grove firefighters found the victim inside a blazing trash bin behind a market on Harbor Boulevard during the early morning hours of July 26, 1997. The body was so badly burned that it took two weeks and the use of dental records to identify it.

Meanwhile, five days after that grim discovery, the victim’s van was discovered engulfed in flames near an intersection in the city of Orange. Witnesses told police they saw Janet Carter and Boone in the area of the burning van.

Two months afterward, Janet Carter was arrested in Mesa, Ariz., where she had moved. She and Boone, who was already in custody on unrelated charges, were both charged then with first-degree murder.

Members of the jury began deliberating Wednesday and will continue today. They can find the pair guilty of first- or second-degree murder or of voluntary manslaughter. Janet Carter also can be convicted on the lesser charge of accessory to murder.