The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Debbie Culberson noticed her daughter’s car was not in the driveway at around six o’clock the following morning and began driving around Blanchester looking for her daughter. First she checked out the house of Carrie’s long-term boyfriend, 24-year-old Vincent Doan, but he was not home. Nor was Carrie’s Honda in the driveway where it would normally have been if Carrie had spent the night away from home.

  Debbie found Doan later that morning at the home of his father, Lawrence Baker. She said that Vincent first told her he had not seen Carrie for three days, but later he changed his story. He then said that Carrie had driven by his house at around 12.30 a.m., honking her horn. She had plainly been drunk, so he just closed his door and ignored her. However, Carrie’s companions at the volleyball match said she only had one beer.

  Debbie Culberson maintains that Doan changed his story a second time, when she went to see him again. This time, she said he told her that he had come out of his house wrapped in a towel to talk to her – and when he told her that he did not love her any more, she sped off.

  Far from not loving her any more, Carrie’s friends said that he was obsessed by her. He would call the beauty parlour where she worked as a nail technician at least five times a shift, co-workers said. Relatives, friends and acquaintances said that his obsession manifested itself in physical abuse. Some had witnessed the abuse; others saw injuries. A photograph of her taken in April 1996, showed Carrie with badly bruised, swollen face, allegedly the result of a beating. When challenged by Carrie’s parents, they said that Doan blamed her injuries on a bumpy ride in a Jeep. Later, Debbie Culberson maintained, Doan told her he only slapped Carrie and never hit her with a fist. But Carrie told friends that scratch marks on her face were caused by her frantic efforts to pull Doan’s hands away from her mouth and nose when he tried to smother her.

  Friends said that on 28 July 1996 – one month to the day before she disappeared – he hit her on the back of the head with an electrical heater. The resulting wound needed five stitches, but Doan, they said, had told her to say that she had fallen on his front porch. Debbie Culberson was not having this, though. She took Carrie to the Blanchester police to file misdemeanour assault charges against Vincent Doan. These charges now had to be dropped when Carrie disappeared and there were no other witnesses.

  Even though Carrie was pressing charges against Doan, she continued the relationship with him. Three days before Carrie disappeared, she spent the day with Doan at the beach. The next evening they went out to dinner together. But things did not go well. A friend named Tonya Whitten said that, the next morning, Carrie told her that Doan held her at gunpoint for around five hours out in the countryside. According to Whitten, Doan had said: “You think I’m a big joke. I’ll show you how big a joke I am. I’m not going to jail.”

  He faced a maximum of six months’ imprisonment on the assault charges.

  Whitten said that Carrie eventually persuaded Doan to drive her home, promising to come to his house later. But Carrie reneged. She phoned Doan, telling him she had changed her mind. He got angry, threatening to kill her. She took the threat seriously, locking the windows and doors, and sleeping on the couch.

  On 27 August 1996, Carrie went to the gym as usual. Soon after she got there, Doan phoned and they spoke briefly. Then he showed up in person. An argument ensured and he was verbally abusive. There was a further confrontation in the car park and, when Carrie drove off, Doan sped off after her. Tonya Whitten said that Carrie told her that Doan had tried to assure her there would be no repetition of what had happened the previous evening and he cried when he told Carrie he no longer had the gun and had given it to his brother.

  Carrie went to the gym again on the morning of the 28th. Doan called her three times. Apparently he was appearing in court that evening over a traffic ticket and was angry Carrie was not coming with him for moral support. Instead she was playing volleyball with her friends. Later he turned up at the bar where the volleyball game was being played, offering to drive Carrie home. Her girlfriends said that Carrie did not want to be alone with Doan and claimed that she was the designated driver who had to drive her friends home after they had been drinking. He was insistent and she was seen repeatedly shaking her head and saying “no”. He left the bar, only to come back almost immediately to ask her again. Again she refused to go with him. Eventually the scream of tyres were heard when he sped out of the parking lot.

  Afterwards Carrie was reluctant to go home, so she and her friends drove around town for a while. She was particularly concerned about Doan’s whereabouts and they drove past Doan’s house several times. Finally, her friends dropped her home at about 11.30 pm. It was the last time they would ever see her.

  Small-town America turned out for Carrie Culberson once news of her disappearance spread. The following weekend over 300 volunteers combed the surrounding counties, but found nothing. Debbie Culberson then took to the TV, appearing on Inside Edition, The Montel Williams Show and Oprah Winfrey.

  Police sniffer dogs trained to find human remains showed a great deal of interest in a raised section of earth in the scrapyard belonging to Vincent Doan’s father, Lawrence Baker. But when it was excavated all that was found was an old freezer filled with rotting meat that Baker had formerly used to feed a pet lion. The naked body of a woman was found in an abandoned farm cistern some counties away. But it was not Carrie. And a red Honda car dragged from the Ohio River turned out to be a 1985 model rather than a 1989.

  Posters carrying Carrie’s picture went up all over the state and a $10,000 reward brought in more reports. Some even claimed to have seen her alive. None panned out.

  As months passed the missing person’s case turned into a criminal investigation with Vincent Doan as the chief suspect. On 27 March 1997, a Clinton County grand jury indicted Doan on four counts of kidnapping. Doan turned himself in and, after a few days behind bars, he was released on bail set at $100,000.

  The trial was scheduled for 9 June 1997, but on 4 June two murder charges were added. One alleged that Down had killed Carrie Culberson while effecting the kidnapping. The other accused him of deliberately killing her to stop her testifying against him on the assault charges. There would be no more bail. Doan was returned to a county jail and the trial postponed until 14 July 1997.

  When the trial opened, the prosecution conceded that the case against Doan was circumstantial, but nevertheless it was solid and conclusive. They had witnesses to prove that Doan was not only controlling and physically abusive towards Carrie Culberson, he was caught up in an escalating spiral of violence that ultimately ended, they contended, with her death. They also conceded they could not prove that she was dead. However, there was no evidence that she was alive, even though witnesses claimed that they had seen her. There were regular sightings of Elvis, but that did not mean he was alive.

  They contended that Vincent Doan murdered Carrie Culberson in the early hours of 29 August 1996. Doan’s neighbour, Billie Jo Brown, said she had seen Doan chasing Culberson through her yard, cursing and threatening her. Then he had grabbed her, punched her in the face and shoved her into her car.

  Another key witness was Lori Baker, the ex-wife of Doan’s half-brother, Tracey, who still cohabited with him. She said that Vincent Doan had knocked on her door at about 3.15 a.m., asking for Tracey. This was corroborated by Vicki Watkins, Lori’s twin sister, who was staying the night. Doan was dishevelled and covered in blood. He took a shower and changed into some of his brother’s clothes. The two men left in Tracey’s truck at around 4.30 a.m., carrying some garbage bags and a gun. When they came back at around six, Lori said both men had blood on them.

  A few days later, Doan was at his brother’s house when a report on Carrie’s disappearance came on TV. He began rocking back and forth. He pulled his shirt over his head and told Lori she could not imagine “hurting someone and holding them until they died”.

  The prosecution then produced Mitchell Epperson, Doan’s cellmate in the county jail. He said Do
an had told him, that before he had murdered Carrie, he would “lie awake at night and think of a hundred different ways to kill her before he did it”. Doan thought that Carrie was cheating on him.

  “When they do that, you can’t let ’em walk on you,” Doan had said, Epperson testified, “you’ve got to make them pay.”

  Prosecutors said the circumstantial evidence was clear: whether motivated by obsession or a desire to keep Carrie quiet in the criminal case against him, Vincent Doan kidnapped and murdered Carrie Culberson on or about 29 August 1996.

  In his own defence, Vincent Doan insisted that he knew nothing about Carrie’s disappearance and denied kidnapping or murdering her. His attorney maintained that Doan could not have killed Carrie Culberson, because the evidence suggested that she was still alive. Dozens of reports had come in that Carrie or her car had been sighted since her supposed disappearance. The prosecution dismissed these as unreliable, saying that people were confused after seeing her picture on posters or on the television. The defence countered by showing that some of those who had claimed to have seen her had known her before she went missing. But even if Carrie Culberson was dead, the defence argued there was nothing concrete to indicate that Vincent Doan killed her. The prosecution had nothing – no body, no murder weapon nor any other scientific proof. Hundreds of samples taken from Doan’s home and car, his brother’s home and his father’s scrap-yard had yielded not a single shred of evidence.

  The defence also maintained that Doan’s neighbour, Billie Jo Brown, was an ex-convict with a record of writing bad cheques and, thus, an unreliable witness. Doan’s cellmate Mitchell Epperson had a long criminal history, with arrests for assault, theft, breaking and entering and violating probation. Lori Baker, they maintained, had a history of drug abuse and was a Satanist who repeatedly changed her account of what had happened on the morning of 29 August 1996. Her twin sister was a fantasist and a habitual liar who was not even there that night. Besides Doan had an alibi. Lawrence Baker and Doan’s stepmother Betty Baker testified that they had visited Doan’s home some time between 1.30 a.m. and two that morning. Lawrence Baker said he had found his son asleep on his living room couch. He then turned off the TV and lights without waking Doan and left the house.

  The authorities had been frustrated that they had not been able to locate Carrie Culberson. They had failed to follow up on the sightings of her properly in a rush to pin unprovable charges on the defendant. During the trial itself, a woman claiming to be Carrie Culberson placed a 911 phone call in Cincinnati saying that an innocent man was on trial. A tape of the call was played to Debbie Culberson, who said the voice was not her daughter’s. In fact, the report of another sighting came in while the jury was out. A woman who looked like Culberson ran out of a convenience store after seeing newspaper headlines on the trial.

  The defence conceded that Carrie and the defendant had had what they called “spats” in their three-year relationship. But lovers’ tiffs were far from evidence for murder. And it was ridiculous to imagine that Doan had killed Carrie to keep her from testifying against him. Although the assault charges carried a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, if found guilty he would probably have been given probation. Besides, he denied the charges.

  On 7 August 1997, after four days of deliberation, the jury found Vincent Doan guilty of three of the four counts of kidnapping and one of two counts of aggravated murder. They determined that Doan had killed Culberson while effecting the kidnapping.

  On his way from the courthouse, Doan protested his innocence and when asked if he would reveal what had happened to her body in exchange for a reduced sentence, he said: “If you don’t know where anything is, how can you explain where it is?”

  In mitigation of sentence the defence called 20 witnesses including peers, family friends and his grade school teachers who all testified that he was generous, helpful and polite. Former girlfriends said that he was never jealous nor abusive. Even the guards at the county jail testified that he was a model prisoner. However, several witnesses said that he had suffered both physical and mental injuries in 1992 during an accident involving a collapsing crane.

  Doan’s mother, Priscilla, begged the jury not to recommend the death sentence, saying: “He doesn’t deserve it. He’s innocent, and I would miss him.” Then Doan himself made an impassioned plea for his life in a 20-minute unsworn statement.

  “As her friend, and somebody who still loves her, I’m not going to give up hope that she’s safe somewhere,” he said. “I would still like to do anything that I could do to help out the Culbersons, and help out Carrie as much as I could . . . I miss her tremendously, even though we couldn’t have a relationship . . . when she comes home, I still would not turn my back on her as a friend.”

  In response Debbie Culberson told the court: “By not knowing the truth of what really happened that night, we will be forever tormented.” And she pleaded with Doan to tell the authorities where her daughter’s body was so that she could have the “humane and Christian burial that she deserves”. All Doan could do was protest his innocence once again.

  After a further two days of deliberation, the jury agreed to spare his life, recommending instead that he served a life sentence without possibility of parole. The judge added another nine years for kidnapping.

  Afterwards Tracey Baker was charged with the obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and the gross abuse of a corpse. At his trial two strands of hair found in his truck and said to match Carrie Culberson’s were introduced in evidence. Red paint was also found on his vehicle, said to have came from Carrie’s Honda. His ex-wife Lori also testified against him. Tracey Baker himself took the stand and denied involvement. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on two counts of obstructing justice and one of tampering with evidence, but he was acquitted of the gross abuse of a corpse.

  For fabricating his son’s alibi, Lawrence Baker was charged with the obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. In his trial, Lori Baker said that she had given her father-in-law incriminating items the police missed during an initial search. They were never seen again. She also testified Lawrence Baker encouraged her to lie to police, but the jury did not believe her and he was acquitted.

  Blanchester police chief Richard Payton was also charged with obstructing justice and dereliction of duty – the allegation was that he had warned Doan and the Bakers that the pond next to Lawrence Baker’s scrap-yard was about to be dredged. Payton pleaded no contest to two lesser misdemeanour charges of dereliction of duty. He received a suspended 90-day sentence, a $750 fine and one year of unsupervised probation.

  On 24 October 1997, Carrie Culberson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in US District Court in Cincinnati against Vincent Doan, Tracey Baker, Lawrence Baker and Richard Payton, asking for punitive damages and demanding to be told where Carrie’s remains were. The suit also alleged that the Blanchester authorities were also negligent for not securing the area around the pond next to Lawrence Baker’s scrap-yard. They were awarded $3.5 million. As part of the settlement the village agreed to hang a photograph of Carrie Culberson in the Blanchester Police Department’s lobby until her remains are discovered.

  However, while Vincent Doan served life at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison located in Titusville, Ohio for the murder of Carrie Culberson, something strange happened. Twenty-three-year-old Alana “Laney” Gwinner from West Chester, just 22 miles from Blanchester, went missing in remarkably similar circumstances.

  At about 1 a.m. on 10 December 1997, she was seen leaving Gilmore Bowling Lanes on Dixie Highway-Ohio 4 in nearby Fairfield in her 1993 black Honda Civic Del Sol. Her friends reported that she had scars on her arms from being abused by a former boyfriend. The police have interviewed several of her ex-boyfriends, as well as new friends she made playing pool at the bowling alley the night she vanished, but no arrests were made.

  The Fairfield Police were struck by the similarities between t
he Gwinner and Culberson disappearances and checked for any possible connection. They found none.

  Laney had gone to Gilmore Bowling Lanes the night of 9 December expressly to play pool. It was a game she excelled at and she took it seriously, said a friend. She came into the bowling alley with a male companion – not a boyfriend, just a good friend. They arrived in separate cars, though they had dined together at the BW–3 restaurant in Forest Fair Mall.

  People remembered her. She was a beautiful woman and her arrival caused a stir, though no one remembered seeing her there before. At around 12.30 a.m. she called a boyfriend in Fairfield, saying she was coming over. Half-an-hour later she left alone, leaving the friend she had came with at the alley. What happened to her after she left is not known. The boyfriend she called said she never showed up.

  Her whereabouts remained a mystery until 11 January 1998, when her body was spotted floating down the swiftly flowing Ohio River by a helicopter searching for a missing Covington police officer. Thirty minutes later and nearly three miles downstream, rescuers were able to pull the body ashore at Sugar Bay in Warsaw, Kentucky, some 65 miles from Fairfield. The Kentucky State Police said that she was not put in the water in the state. It is thought that she was dropped in the Great Miami River, a tributary of the Ohio River, some 40 miles upstream in Ohio.

  She was easily identified as – clad in a blouse and jeans – she had her driver’s licence in her pocket. There were no visible wounds on her body and the authorities had not revealed the cause of her death, except to say that the autopsy showed that her death was a homicide. But the condition of the body showed that she was in the river for a considerable time. Her car was not found.