by Samuel Roen
“There’s just one more thing, Mr. Larson, and I’m sorry to have to ask you, but did your wife have an illness, either physical or mental? Was she depressed?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not. She is fine, in perfect health.”
“How about your marriage? Were you two having problems?”
“No, oh, no. Nothing like that. We are very happy.”
“Could she have gone off with another man?”
“What?” Larson was shocked. “No!”
“Are all of her clothes and belongings still in your home?”
“Yes, as far as I can tell.”
Everything appeared normal to Woodard on the surface. So it wasn’t logical for a young, healthy, happy mother to leave her family voluntarily and just take off.
“Mr. Larson, would you object to my looking over the house, going through it room by room?”
“Go right ahead. But please don’t disturb Jessica. She’s asleep in her room.”
Woodard nodded. The officer inspected and found nothing amiss.
He returned to Larson, who was sitting quietly at the table and staring blankly at the wall.
“Mr. Larson, I think it would be a good idea if I could talk with Mrs. Larson’s parents.”
Startled by the suggestion, Larson said that he could not see the necessity of involving the Thomases. “They are going through the worst thing that ever happened to them, worrying about where their daughter is, and I don’t know if they are up to talking with someone in your position with the department.”
“Suppose you just call them on the phone, introduce me, and let me have a few words with them.”
Larson reluctantly agreed to make the call, but he cautioned Woodard to be brief and not too intensive about the facts of their daughter’s disappearance.
In his conversation with Phyllis Thomas in Pompano Beach, Woodard asked her if Carla had any problems with her husband, Jim, or if she had any plans to leave him.
Mrs. Thomas told the deputy that she did not know of any problems. She was very upset, but she promised to call him if she thought or learned of anything that might be relevant. Woodard assured her, “I will do the same.”
The deputy also spoke to Ada Larson, Jim’s mother, on the phone. She expressed great concern and told him that she was going to come to Orlando to be with her son and granddaughter.
When he concluded, Woodard turned to Jim Larson. “Do you have a recent picture of your wife that we can have?”
“Sure,” he answered, “let me get one for you.”
In a few moments he returned and handed a photo to Woodard. The deputy studied the picture of the lovely young woman. Carla’s expression, blue eyes, cheerfully smiling face and long blond hair all added up to an appearance of bursting vitality.
“Can you give us a description of your wife?”
“She’s five-eight and weighs one hundred thirty pounds.”
Taking notes, Woodard asked, “About the car. What year, what model is this car of hers?”
“It’s a four-door 1995 Ford Explorer,” Jim answered. “The license number is TGX-99V.”
“All right, sir, I’ll call this in and we’ll get the department started on it right away.”
Woodard briefed the department’s watch commander, Eric Viehman, requesting assistance in the area where Carla Larson was last seen.
After hanging up the phone, Deputy Woodard looked at the despondent Jim Larson and wondered, Is this guy as nice a fellow as he appears to be? Or is he a very good actor?
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department entered Carla Ann Larson’s description into NCIC/FCIC as a missing person. The report listed her as 5’8”, 130 pounds, braided long blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a red sleeveless shirt, Gap blue jeans and brown work boots when last seen. The information on her automobile was also entered into the teletype system.
At 8:30 that night Corporal Ken Glantz drove to the Publix on International Drive, Kissimmee, and met with the store manager. The personable man told the corporal that Centex Rooney coworkers had already contacted him. They described her disappearance to him and asked him to search the store’s daily receipts for any transactions that might be traced to Carla. The manager had complied readily.
“We found a credit card receipt that had Carla Larson’s signature on it,” he told the corporal. The receipt showed that Carla Larson used her Discover credit card on the purchase of $ 8.63 worth of food items at register two, and the operator of the register was listed as Kim Hall. The itemized purchases were cherries, pita bread, grapes and pretzels.
Corporal Glantz asked the Publix manager for a copy of that receipt, and the man gave it over.
Joined by Deputy Ric Voelker, Glantz tracked down cashier Kim Hall and questioned her about Carla Larson.
“Do you remember seeing her? Very pretty young woman with blue eyes and long blond hair in a braid. She came here for some stuff around lunchtime,” Corporal Glantz asked Hall.
The clerk looked blankly at the two officers. She tilted her head trying to match Glantz’s description with an earlier customer. Finally she answered, “I really can’t recall the woman. You know, we have hundreds of customers all day long, so it’s hard to remember individuals.”
Glantz thanked the clerk and turned to leave, but Hall called out, “Just a minute, Corporal, you might check with our manager and ask him if this woman is on our surveillance camera.”
“That’s a good idea, thanks,” Glantz said. He turned to Voelker. “Let’s find the manager again and get him to check the surveillance tape.”
The two officers caught up with the manager, who readily agreed to check the tape. The surveillance camera, though, was trained in the area of the Presto ATM machine and did not show Carla Larson. The manager gave Glantz the videotape anyhow. “I don’t know if it will be of any use, but if it could be important, it’s yours.”
Corporal Glantz thanked him and the officers returned to the Disney construction site.
Deputy Voelker spoke to two Centex Rooney employees who told him that they saw Carla Larson entering the Publix market parking lot shortly past noon.
Other Centex Rooney men, traveling west on Osceola Parkway in the early afternoon, saw a vehicle resembling Carla’s Ford Explorer coming out of a wooded area. They pinpointed the location south of the Caribbean Beach Resort, north of Osceola Parkway and a quarter of a mile west of Route I-4.
“Did you get a look at the driver?” Deputy Voelker asked.
One of the witnesses answered, “Yes, it was a man, a white man. I got a good look at him and saw him looking down at the floorboard on the passenger side of the vehicle as he sped out of the woods.”
Voelker said, “Describe the guy as best you can.”
“I’d say that he was in his mid or late thirties and he had dark hair. I can’t do much better than that.”
A deputy was posted near the area where the vehicle was seen, treating it as a crime scene in preparation for the more intense search, which would begin shortly.
CHAPTER 2
Fourteen-year veteran investigator Detective Cameron “Cam” Weir of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department shifted his medium-size body, a solid 175 pounds in a 5’ 9” frame, trying to get comfortable in his chair in the family room of his home. He focused his sharp chestnut brown eyes on the television set, hoping to luck upon a program that would hold his interest, take his mind off crime and his daily serious pursuits. The ringing telephone interrupted his channel surfing.
“Would you take that, honey?” his wife called from the next room. “It’s probably for you anyway at this time of night.”
The detective picked up the phone and heard the voice of the dispatcher from the sheriff’s department. “There’s a report of a missing woman, an engineer who works on a project at Disney World.”
The dispatcher continued briefing the detective with the basics that Deputy Tom Woodard had reported. “Woodard’s waiting for you at the Larson house.”
“I’m on my way.”<
br />
Behind the wheel of his official OCSD vehicle, the detective called his partner, Detective John Linnert, and advised him of the situation. They both hoped it was something simple like a flat tire or a dead battery or a late meeting. They arranged to meet at the Larson home.
Weir and Linnert had worked together on many investigations over the years and were members of the Sheriff’s Offices Dive Team (SODT). They also developed a close friendship outside of work, and their families socialized together in their off-hours. The men worked well together, brainstorming ideas and techniques. In interview situations they sensed each other’s direction and played off it. Each had great respect for the other’s opinions and ability. They were a successful team.
Weir glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that it was 10:11 P.M. By 10:37, he arrived at the Larson house. In a quick scan of the residence and its surrounds, the detective judged it to be a comfortable upper-middle-class home that fit in nicely with this well-kept neighborhood in Orlando.
Deputy Tom Woodard greeted him at the door and apologized. “Sorry to get you out at this hour of the night. Here’s what I found out so far.” He proceeded to fill in the details surrounding the disappearance of Carla Ann Larson.
Following the briefing, Woodard introduced Weir to Jim Larson, and Weir appraised him with a polite but scrutinizing look.
With his many years’ experience, it became almost second nature for Weir automatically to observe and to be aware of any indications or hints of anything that might be important to an investigation. In this case he kept an alert eye on James Larson.
Detective Weir addressed the distraught husband. “Mr. Larson, I would like you to give me your account of what transpired. I know that you went through this with Deputy Woodard, but I’d like very much to hear it directly from you.”
“Sure, sure, I understand,” Larson said.
Before he could start, they were joined by Weir’s partner, Detective John Linnert, a fourteen-year veteran with the sheriff’s department. He was thirty-nine years old, 6’1”, 155 pounds, medium build, with brown hair and brown eyes.
“Sorry it took so long. I got here as quick as I could,” the detective apologized.
“You’re right on time, John.” Weir welcomed Linnert and introduced him to Jim Larson. “Okay, Mr. Larson, please proceed.”
“I hope you understand that I’m very upset, but I’ll try to tell you as simply as possible from the time I got that phone call while I was at work.”
It was clear to the investigating detectives that Jim Larson was distressed, but he seemed to be overly cautious. Weir studied the man and his emotional demeanor just as attentively as the words he spoke. He silently wondered, What is there about this man? There’s something not quite right. I have an uneasy feeling about him. I think he’ll bear checking.
“We understand, just start at the beginning,” Linnert encouraged.
Larson recounted briefly the information he had previously given to Deputy Tom Woodard.
Continuing with his story, Larson said that while he was trying to figure out something else that he could do, someone rang the doorbell at his home. “It was one of the women workers at Centex Rooney. I was surprised to see her, and I thought that she might be bringing me some good news about my wife. I invited her in, but she said that she was on her way home and only came by to drop off Carla’s briefcase that she left at her desk at work.”
Larson recalled for the officers, “I sat with the briefcase lying on my knees and stared at it, wondering, just wondering. And that’s when I called the sheriff’s department.”
He said that he couldn’t understand her disappearance, that Carla Ann was supercautious and careful. As he continued to speak, the detectives perceived something that was not apparent initially. The tone of his voice changed as he spoke hesitatingly. “We—my whole family—have all become extremely watchful, but especially Carla ever since—well, let me explain.”
The detectives exchanged glances, silently wondering what Larson was about to disclose. “My sister, Sonja, was one of the students at the University of Florida who was assaulted and murdered in August 1990, along with four others. Do you remember that case? A crazy man, a serial killer, named Danny Rolling killed them. I’m sure you remember that. The whole country was shocked by this horrible crime.”
The two detectives and the deputy sat stunned, speechless as Larson stopped and looked at them questioningly.
Do we remember the case? Weir thought. The whole country remembers the case.
“Yes, Mr. Larson, we do remember the case. Please go on,” he encouraged.
“We were all devastated by my sister’s death. Especially Carla. Ever since, she has been supercautious about everything, the meeting of strangers or unknowns. Just about everything in daily life. We all realized that we could not be too careful.”
The lawmen remained silent, astounded by his story.
Jim Larson loosened his tie, allowing him to breathe more easily while he recalled the devastation he suffered seven years ago. His younger sister, Sonja, a freshman at the University of Florida (UF), was brutally assaulted and murdered along with four other students in the fading days of August 1990.
The calm and poetic setting of the university and the city of Gainesville exploded into a resounding shock wave that shook the city, the state and the nation. Dread struck his whole family, especially him and Carla.
Christina Powell’s parents repeatedly phoned the apartment shared by Christina, seventeen, and Sonja Larson, eighteen, but their calls were not answered.
Fearful, Christina’s father called the Gainesville Police Department and requested that his daughter’s apartment be checked.
Jim Larson remembered all too well what the Gainesville police discovered when they opened the door of Christina and Sonja’s apartment.
It was one of the most horrific murder scenes ever witnessed anywhere.
At 4:00 P.M. Sunday, August 26, 1990, Christina’s nude body was discovered lying on the living-room floor, mutilated, stabbed repeatedly, her breasts carved with the nipples excised. The walls were splattered with her blood.
In an upstairs bedroom lay the naked, beaten and murdered body of Sonja Larson, the second victim of a crazed killer.
The news of the murder spread wildly across the campus; then it rocked the city even more as another coed who had suffered an even more brutal slaying was discovered.
Christa Hoyt, nineteen, a chemistry major at the nearby Santa Fe Community College, met her death in what had to be a frenzied killing. Her torso was gashed open from her pelvis to her chest, then sexually posed. In a final hideous degradation, her head was hacked off and mounted on a bookshelf in a ghoulish display.
These three deaths stunned the Gainesville Police Department and the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department. Ironically, victim Hoyt had been a well-liked member of the sheriff’s department, working there as a clerk before enrolling at the college.
Soon thereafter, another shocking murder struck the Gainesville student population. Two more bodies were discovered in an apartment complex. University of Florida undergraduates Tracy Inez Paules, twenty-three, and her friend Manuel R. Taboada, twenty-three, both from Miami, were found stabbed to death in their adjacent off-campus Gatewood apartments.
At a staff campus meeting, university president John Lombardi told the gathering, “It is clear that this part of the country has some maniac on the loose.”
These five murders evoked the memory of serial killer Ted Bundy, who had killed, among a number of others, two female students at Florida State University in Tallahassee in January 1978.
With five students mysteriously dead in forty hours, the question was, “Who’s next?”
Fear overshadowed the university and the entire community. Hundreds of panicked students left the city to return to the safety of their parents’ homes.
In droves, the remaining students flocked to local hardware stores purchasing new secure locks, bolts and do
or bars. Others bought guns, rifles and knives of all descriptions for protection.
On the two campuses, most of the activities usually taking place at the beginning of a new term were canceled.
At the Gainesville headquarters Chief of Police Wayland Clifton Jr. led round-the-clock work with his detectives, crime scene technicians and other specialists executing one of the most comprehensive criminal investigations in the history of the department.
The chief declared, “The murders are the most horrific I’ve seen in thirty years of law enforcement.”
Clifton, pulling out all stops, called for assistance from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department (ACSD), the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) and certain high-tech specialists from the FBI.
To crack this horrible, bizarre case, the chief incorporated more than one hundred investigators, analysts, specialist technicians and prosecutors from city, state and federal government to create one of the most qualified forces ever organized in the state.
Despite the trauma that engulfed the campus and the entire Gainesville community, President John Lombardi announced that classes would not be canceled, but he also said that students would not be penalized if they went home.
At the same time the investigation turned up an odd UF student as a possible suspect. Reports stated that he was seen in the vicinity of the crime scenes. While several possible suspects were being questioned, this man seemed to be the prime suspect.
On Thursday, August 30, the probe shifted to Brevard County, where this student was arrested for beating his grandmother. An assistant public defender told the press, “The gentleman seems to be a suspect in some pretty serious crimes” in Alachua County (Gainesville area). The investigation reported that he entered his grandmother’s home about 12:00 A.M. on Thursday, found his grandmother sitting in a chair and allegedly began beating her. By the time the police arrived, the victim was covered with blood. The suspect was taken into custody.
Reports disclosed that the suspect was not a stable person, that he had emotional problems, but there was nothing solid linking him to the campus murders.