Southern for a true crime covers cases that are not suitable for young listeners,
and there may also be some explicit language used. Listener discretion is advised.
Jasper, Alabama, is a charming little city nestled in the foothills of the
Appalachian Mountains. Incorporated in eighteen eighty seven, Jasper is the seat of Walker
County, with a population that has hovered around fourteen thousand. The town doesn't
seem to have changed that much in the last thirty or so years. It's
a tight knit community where folks wave at each other at stop signs, bring
baked goods over to new neighbors, and wrap their grieving friends in hugs,
prayers, and casseroles. No small town is complete without tree lined streets and
a picturesque town square, and Jasper's historic square almost looks frozen in time.
Imagine store signs with loopy cursive writing and red brick facades. There's even an
old timmy rotary street clock. Jasper still has a drive in restaurant that opened
in nineteen fifty called the Frosty Mug, where you can get the best cheeseburger
in town, as well as milkshakes and banana splits. You may also have
heard an urban legend that Walker County is the place to go to hire a
hitman in the South. And while that is as silly as it sounds,
there is undoubtedly real world problems caused by the opioid epidemic in the foothills of
Appalachia. And yeah, there might be meth and trailer parks, but there
are also many low key blue bloods who have lived and prospered in Jasper for
generations. Famed actress to Lula Bankhead was from a rich political family with an
a state called Sunset in Jasper in nineteen ninety one. The Lawsons were a
prominent family in Jasper, so even though a kidnapping for ransom seemed like something
straight out of a bad nineties thriller, the family was targeted. Fortunately,
the mystery lingers to this day. Where is Carrie Lawson? Welcome to episode
two eighteen, The Kidnapping of Carrie Lawson. Carolyn Elizabeth Smith Lawson was born
on April twenty second, nineteen sixty six, to David and Harriet Smith in
Cleveland, Tennessee. She went by Carrie. Her little sister, Margaret,
was only eighteen months younger than her, So the girls grew up close,
and, as Carrie later wrote in a letter to her parents, they had
the best time growing up. Carrie's family was very rich. In nineteen fifty
six, her father, David, graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor's degree
in textile engineering. In nineteen sixty one, David Smith married Harriet Hill,
and not long after he founded a company called Permna Color Ink in Cleveland,
Tennessee. While you may not have heard of Permana Color, you've probably seen
their work. They pioneered the process for stone washing blue jeans, and that
process is exactly what it sounds like. They put pumice, stones and blue
jeans in an industrial washing machine and voila. Genes that would normally be a
bright, solid blue now look more worn and faded. Insta vintage, and
people loved them, especially in the nineteen seventies. Carrie's father, David was
instrumental in creating the process for stone washing blue jeans, and as president of
Permana Color, David became a wealthy industrialist. While we don't know his exact
net worth, reporters estimated that it was in the millions. Keep in mind,
even one million back in the seventies and eighties would have been somewhere between
two point five and eight million today, So the Smith family was well off
to say the least, and they were also well respected by the Cleveland community.
Carrie's parents were known for their philanthropy and volunteer work, and they were
both active leaders at Saint Luke's Episcopal Church. Carrie was also well respected and
liked. Her sister, Margaret, explained that everyone was drawn to Carrie.
She had an innate kindness that people were just drawn to. Carrie graduated from
Cleveland High School in nineteen eighty four. Then she got her bachelor's degree in
communications from Alabama's Auburn University before graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law
in the spring of nineteen ninety one. By that time, Carrie had been
married for a year to another UA law student named Earl Lawson. Earl Howard
Lawson Junior was born in May nineteen sixty five to Earl and Farah Lawson in
Jasper, Alabama. Earle was a only child. His family, much like
Carrie's, was also well to do. His mother owned a real estate company
and Earl Senior owned an auto parts store. The Lawsons were described as fixtures
of the Jasper community. They were well off, though not ostentatious, and
lived in a nice area of town, and they regularly attended the North Side
Baptist Church. The mayor of Jasper, Penn Woods, told the Birmingham Post,
Harold, everybody knows the family, and everybody likes them. Earl Junior
graduated from Walker High School now known as Jasper High in nineteen eighty three,
before attending college and law school. Then, on March tenth, nineteen ninety,
twenty four year old Earl married twenty two year old Carrie Smith. After
that, Earl began his law career at an esteemed Jasper law firm. Senator
Bob Wilson, who served fourteen terms in the House of Representatives, held from
that Jasper firm. Earl and Carey's marriage looked like something out of a story
book. They were bright, young and in love, both embarking on successful
careers in the law. Great families to support them, not just in wealthy
pedigrees, but loving, supportive parents and siblings. It's no wonder Earl and
Carrie counseled high school students at their chosen church. First United Methodist. They
probably seemed like they were living most people's ideal future. Earl and Carrie built
a two story brick home in North Jasper. The house was located on a
cul de sac in an exclusive subdivision known as Heritage Hills. Two twenty somethings
straight out of law school building their own home is impressive, though I'm sure
they could have had some help from their folks. Carrie had taken the Bar
exam in nineteen ninety one after graduation, and while she was awaiting her Bar
exam results, she secured a job at a Jasper law firm. This firm
was located just a few blocks away from Earl's practice, and later on in
nineteen ninety one, Carrie's results from the Bar exam arrived in the mail.
She had passed after years of hard work. She would have been ready to
become an accredited lawyer in her firm, but by the time that exciting letter
arrived in the mail, Carrie was long gone. I'm going to pause now
for a short commercial break. On Tuesday, September tenth, nineteen ninety one,
Carrie and Earle got ready for bed and drifted off to sleep as usual,
but in the wee hours of the morning. The phone rang Aman was
on the line. She said she was a nurse at the Walker Regional Medical
Center. Her tone was urgent. According to her, Earle's dad was really
sick, so sick that he might not make it through the night. She
said Carrie and Earle needed to get to the Walker hospital right away. Earle's
father had had a few medical scares recently. While the phone call was a
surprise, it wasn't exactly shocking that something serious had happened to Earle Senior.
Frantic, Carrie and Earle leapt out of bed and made themselves decent. Carrie
threw on her glasses, a red T shirt, khaki shorts, white socks,
and rebuck sneakers. Earl and Carrie drove a nineteen ninety one Beijian blue
Eddie Bauer Addition Ford Explorer. It was parked in their carport. They climbed
inside the suv to head to the hospital, but before Earle could turn the
key in the ignition, a man suddenly appeared next to the vehicle. He
was white and was five foot eleven inches tall with a medium build. He
was wearing a mask, He had a gun, and he ordered the couple
out of the explorer. Earle immediately realized that his father wasn't sick. It
had been a ruse to lure him and carry out of the house. In
the moment, Earle was beside himself. It felt surreal, he later told
al dot com. I couldn't believe we felt for this. Earle explained that
he initially thought he and his wife were getting robbed and nothing more. The
assailant forced Earle to the ground, and then he made Carrie bind Earl with
duct tape. Then he forced Carrie back into the suv, and the masked
man drove the Ford Exploer off into the night, with twenty five year old
Carrie Lawson in the passenger seat. Now it was clear this wasn't a robbery.
Carrie had been kidnapped. This shook Earle to his core. Jasper just
wasn't the kind of town where you had to worry about kidnapping or any violent
crime for that matter. Earle later told Ale dot com back in nineteen ninety
one, nobody got kidnapped. I'd never heard of a car jacking. There
weren't a lot of murders in Jasper. Having somebody kidnapped was the last thing
you could ever think of. After Carrie was abducted, Earle managed to escape
his duct tape bindings, but of course his keys were in the ignition of
the explorer, so Earle had to kick in his back door and called his
dad and then called nine one one. Then he called Carrie's parents. I
can't imagine what it was like to have to tell them what happened. They
had just seen Carrie a little over a week before on Labor Day, and
now she was missing. Earle would recall that this phone call to Harriet and
David Smith was one of the hardest things he'd had to do in his life.
After hearing the news, Carrie's parents visited their priest before making the three
hour journey from Cleveland, Tennessee, to Jasper, Alabama. Carrie's father and
other Smith family members notified Carrie's sister, Margaret, of her sister's abduction.
At the time, Margaret was in Cincinnati on a business trip. Upon hearing
the news, she felt like this didn't make any sense, like she was
in a movie, not real life. Her uncle, who lived in Nebraska,
flew his plane to Cincinnati. From there, he took Margaret to Jasper.
Margaret told a journalist, I fully expected when we got down there they
would have found her and it would be over. But sadly she was wrong.
From the jump, the FBI took control of Carrie's case. I imagine
local cops called them in quickly because of the ransom. It was just so
unusual. Nobody had heard about kidnapping for ransom in Jasper, Alabama, or
even in Walker County. The federal agents set up their headquarters at Earl and
Carey's home, and they waited for the inevitable, the kidnapper's phone call demanding
a ransom for Carrie's safe return. According to the Birmingham Post Harold's interviews with
Carrie's family, a man telephoned Earl at around eight pm on the same day
Carrey was abducted. They assumed it had to be the same masked man who
had kidnapped Carrie. The caller demanded that Earl have his father deliver three hundred
thousand dollars to a drop off location. That's almost seven hundred thousand and today's
money. The abductor wanted the money left in Coleman, Alabama. It's about
forty five miles northeast of Jasper. The FBI said it would be best to
comply with the kidnappers demands, and Earl agreed. He later said to reporters,
I was convinced as soon as we got him the money, we were
going to get carried back and nail this bastard. I had every hope in
the world there was going to be a good ending to this. So his
father, Earl Senior, brought three hundred thousand dollars in cash to Coleman.
But when he arrived at the drop off site, five police cars were nearby.
That was completely unplanned. Local law enforcement just happened to be in the
area. The FBI had failed to warn them to stay away. The Coleman
officers didn't know anything about the kidnapping. I hate to go ahead and start
criticizing the FBI, but you might as well get used to it. Their
involvement in this case will be very controversial. But notifying local law enforcement of
a ransom drop seems like it would be in the ABC's of the Kidnapping Handbook,
But in fact, very few parties officially knew about the kidnapping. Newspapers
and TV stations had been asked to keep any mention of it under wraps,
though why or how they would have learned of it is beyond me. Unless
the cops leaked it, the FBI was concerned it would compromise the investigation.
So it makes sense why these Coleman officers were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. They didn't know any better, but the kidnapper didn't know that.
All he saw were police cruisers flooding his drop off location, and upon
seeing the authorities everywhere, the kidnapper called the whole thing off. This is
the first of several unfortunate events surrounding Carrie's kidnapping, events that many believed the
FBI could have taken steps to avoid. Later, when there were so many
what ifs in this case, you had to wonder how might one phone call
from the FBI to the Coleman authorities saying, Hey, make sure y'all aren't
in this area might have changed the outcome of this case. I'm going to
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a free gift with your order today. Between the late hours of Wednesday the
eleventh and the early morning hours of Thursday the twelfth, Earl and Carrie's family
demanded that the kidnapper let them talk to Carrie. They wanted to confirm that
she was still alive and the kidnapper he did allow Carrie to speak briefly with
her husband on the phone, and she also spoke with her mother in law.
During these phone calls, Carrie expressed that she feared for her life.
She told Earle that he needed to go to the home of one of his
law partners to await the kidnapper's next phone call. Before letting Earle go to
his law partner's house, federal agents insisted that he wear a wire. It
then took the FBI thirty minutes to prepare Earl with that wire. In those
thirty minutes, Earle missed six calls from Carrie. Thirty minutes might not sound
like a big deal, but it is when a kidnapper tells you to get
to a certain place right away to expect a call. That was strike two
for the Feds. Later on Thursday, the kidnapper called Earl once more he
wanted to attempt the ransom drop again. This time it was set for three
thirty am on Friday, September thirteenth. Earl was to leave the cash at
a payphone near a gas station on the western edge of Jasper. To prepare,
the FBI put a directional beeper on Earl. They put a second directional
beeper in the bag containing the three hundred thousand. The idea here was that
federal agents could track the beepers to follow both Earl and the bag of money.
That way, if Earl was abducted to they could find him. Unfortunately,
both beepers were transmitting on the same radio frequency, which means that when
Earle delivered the cash and left the scene, the federal agents were only able
to track Earle, not the bag of money, and consequently not the kidnapper.
This would be mistake number three for the FBI. Okay, well,
you might be thinking that surely the FBI planted a few agents to watch the
kidnapper pick up the money. Right THEBI I knew exactly where the kidnapper was
going to be and approximately when he would be there. Surely they could do
something with that information. Well, heard the Birmingham Post Harold. The FBI
did assign several agents to watch the ransom money get picked up, but these
agents were actually late to the drop, and the money was already gone when
they arrived. Late to a mother truck and ransom drop. The Feds are
now zero to four and we're not done yet. Despite these blunders, Earle
was optimistic that Carrie would be home safe and sound soon enough. He told
al dot Com. I guess that I was overly hopeful that the minute I
got back to my house, the word was going to be that he released
her and we'd find her. But that call just never came. Earle,
his family, and Carrie's family waited patiently at Earl's kitchen table, but the
phone never rang, and Carrie's family wasn't able to listen to Carrie's previous phone
calls she had made to Earle and her mother in law. The SBI was
supposed to be recording them, but there was an unexpected malfunction. Somehow the
audio tapes were corrupted. The Smiths would never hear Carrie's last words, which
seemed to be the last straw for the family. Because the morning after the
money drop off, at about nine thirty am, Carrie's family held a news
conference. They held nothing back explaining their daughter's abduction. They insisted that they
followed all the kidnappers' demands, and they made a public plea for the kidnapper
to release Carrie. This press conference was the catalyst that allowed newspapers and other
media outlets to begin reporting on Carrie's case. The cat was out of the
bag, but Jasper, being a small town, news travel fast. The
news about Carrie Lawson had spread like wildfire. By the time the papers hit
the printers, nearly every Jasper resident was aware that Carrie Lawson had been kidnapped
for ransom. Folks even knew that the ransom amount was between three hundred and
four hundred thousand dollars. A pharmacist named Sharon at since Discount Pharmacy, with
no known connection to the Lawsons or Smith's or reason to have insider knowledge on
this case, told the Birmingham Post Harold when it was finally reported in the
news, they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. It's not much
of an exaggeration to say that every single person in Jasper was following Carrie's kidnapping.
The mayor of Jasper pen Woods told the Birmingham Post Harold, I don't
go anywhere now, the store or restaurant anywhere that this isn't the first thing
that people mention, and al dot com described Carrie Lawson as the most talked
about missing person in Alabama history. Sharon at the pharmacy also said they had
a television set on the counter. She told the Birmingham Post Harold that all
the customers would gather around the TV when anything about Carrie came on. Even
local broadcasts were interrupted for live updates and press conferences. Anything and everything about
Carrie was breaking news, but no media outlet would report the one sentence that
everyone wanted to hear that Carrie Lawson had been found. Instead, the kidnapper
had the money he had Carrie, and there were no more communications, nothing
to say that she would be released. So the search for Carrie and her
kidnapper continued. Carrie's family and friends flocked to Jasper to help look for her.
Her parents set up shop and a local Best Western motel. Her sister,
Margaret, stayed in the guest room at Earl and Carey's home for a
while. Margaret told a reporter that she would watch Carrie's driveway from her bedroom
window. She expected that eventually Carrie would walk up that driveway, but days
passed and Carrie never came home. I'm going to pause now to hear a
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five day returns Quins dot com slash sftc. Carrie's kidnapping was a top priority
for the FBI and other investigating authorities. Detectives worked around the clock trying to
find her. A local police chief told the Birmingham Post Herald that officers were
on the phones twenty four hours a day to collect leads from the public.
Meanwhile, the FBI was in close contact with Earl and the rest of Carrey's
family. Federal agents made sure that Carrie's family had realistic expectations. Earle later
told al dot com, They're pretty direct on what you can expect. On
day one, they told us the statistical probabilities of someone being found alive and
well, and then on day two they told you again. You didn't want
to hear it, but you appreciated it. A few days after Carrie's kidnapping,
investigators searched an abandoned house. It was near the location where Earle had
dropped off the ransom money. Inside this house, authorities found feminine hygiene products.
Those were sent to the FBI headquarters in Washington, d C. For
forensic testing. FBI Agent in charge Alan P. Whittaker told the Birmingham Post
Old that determining if Carrie had been in that house would be important to narrow
down the investigation. He said that gives us a point to focus some of
our energy and thought processes. Right now. We have literally a million places
to go. By September fifteenth, nineteen ninety one, five days after Carrie's
kidnapping, few clues had been found. It appears that the feminine hygiene products
from the abandoned house hadn't panned out. No one knew where Carrie was,
No one knew where her kidnapper was. Even carl and Carrey stolen Ford Explorer,
had seemingly vanished into thin air. That Sunday, the Smith family gave
another press conference at Jasper City Hall. Carrie's father, David told the crowds,
pardon my appearance, I've kicked through half of the buildings that are vacant
and Jasper. I'd like for all of you to start kicking a few looking
for Carrie. Also, David asked anyone within information about Kerrie's location to call
the Jasper Police or the FBI Birmingham office to help incentivize the search for Carrie.
The Smith family also announced a one hundred thousand dollars reward that's about two
hundred and twenty seven thousand today. But even before David's call to action,
hundreds of Jasper residents were already searching for Carrie. They had scoured empty buildings,
farms, and stripmonds. In fact, so many people had been looking
for Carrie that the FBI had to rein them in. At this press conference,
FBI agent Whittaker reminded the public that they weren't allowed to trespass, even
in the name of finding Carrie. Following this, searchers began wearing yellow ribbons
to help identify themselves for law enforcement. But the issues with over zealous searchers
must have persisted, because within the week, FBI agent Roy Long was but
in charge of advising the volunteers. His job was to make sure that they
operated within the law Mayor Penwoods said Jasper citizens prided themselves on their helping nature.
He told the Birmingham Post, Harold, I think it could be a
clerk in a store that nobody's heard of, and folks around here would be
just as concerned. Were just used to doing for ourselves, and when folks
are in trouble, we all help. That's just the way we were brought
up. Many Jasper residents held on to the hope that Carrie would be found
safe and well. Some told the papers that they thought she was tied up
somewhere, that the kidnapper had merely abandoned her After the successful money exchange,
it was simply a matter of finding her. But Monday passed with no notable
progress in the investigation, then Tuesday still nothing. At this point, Agent
Whittaker told the Birmingham Post Harold realistic. Time is not our ally. Whittaker
knew that with every passing day the chances of finding Carrie alive were dwindling quickly.
As you know from any given TV crime show or podcast, the first
forty eight hours are crucial. The odds of finding someone alive dropped seriously each
passing day. On Wednesday, September eighteenth. It was one week after Carrie
had been taken. On that day, Alabama Governor Guy Hunt offered the National
Guard services to help search for Carrie. His office said that they could furnish
the FBI with needed resources, but FBI agent Whittaker turned them down. Whittaker
told the Birmingham Post Harold that he hadn't identified a mission for the National Guard,
but he would consider the offer as the investigation continued. In my head,
find Carrie Lawson is a pretty damn good mission. I understand in that
coordinating multiple agencies is probably complicated, but once you're a week in and have
had a failed ransom drop, why not use every resource? And to be
blunt, it's not like the National Guard, or for that matter, so
many local agencies usually jump to help with missing persons. There are thousands of
missing persons in this country with only one sheriff's department or police agency looking for
them, while their families are begging for help. And don't get me started
on the media. To be fair, a kidnapping for ransom is much more
dramatic than usual missing persons cases. But to be blunt, again, the
carry loss and investigation benefited from missing white woman syndrome. It's why newspapers,
radio stations in the local TV news were breathlessly reporting every move. It's why
the governor was publicly pledged assistance. Don't get me wrong, it is wonderful
so many people outside of her small community cared, and a radio station wound
up being very crucial in this case. I just feel sad for the families
of missing people who beg for attention from the media and don't get it anyway.
In Carrie's case, the authorities were obviously fairly certain that she had only
been kidnapped for financial reasons. She came from money, married into money,
and was on her way to being wealthy herself, so she had been targeted.
According to Earle, the kidnapper basically said as much in one of their
conversations. However, investigators covered their bases by checking out people who may have
wanted revenge on Carrie or her family, namely business people who had disputes with
Carrie's textile tycoon father, or anyone who may have had an issue with her
lawyer husband. It was generally accepted that Carrie didn't have any enemies herself.
Her father told the papers. I don't suppose she ever met a soul she
didn't like or have compassion for. I'm going to pause now for a final
commercial break. On Thursday, September nineteenth, the Birmingham Post Harold reported that
officers found evidence pertinent to Carrie's investigation. However, the FBI would not disclose
what the evidence was. They just said it was valuable and located near a
road in the vicinity of the ransom drop off location. That same day,
the FBI also announced a ten thousand dollars reward for information leading to the location
of Carrie and Darl's vehicle. They told the public essentially, when you find
it, don't touch it, because they wanted to preserve as much evidence as
possible. In the state of Alabama, there were nearly two hundred Beige and
Blue nineteen ninety one Ford explorers with University of Alabama tags, and honestly,
the authorities might have received false leads on nearly all of them, but they
encouraged people to keep calling, even though they might not have seen the correct
SUV. Investigators were particularly interested in tips from hunters. Dove hunting season had
just begun, so hundreds of outdoorsmen were coming to the area. The FBI
knew that the dense Alabama woods where all the hunters were headed, would be
an ideal place to dump an unwanted Ford Explorer. Within three days of the
ten thousand dollars reward being announced, Carrie and Earl's Fort Explorer was found.
On Saturday, September twenty first. Two people discovered it in the Bankhead National
Forest. The suv was near the Black Pond in Winston County. Authorities examined
the vehicle thoroughly for evidence, but there were no reports that anything significant was
discovered. On Tuesday, the reward for information leading to Carrie's whereabouts was raised
from one hundred thousand to four hundred thousand that's close to a million dollars today.
This massive reward was made possible due to donations from Carrie's friends and family
in Alabama and Tennessee. All the while, thousands of missing persons flywers with
Carrie's photo continued to be passed out. Carrie and Earl's church organized and fed
countless search parties, as did both Earl and Carrie's alma mater, the University
of Alabama School of Law. Earl's parents' Church North Side Baptists also contributed.
So far, Carrie had been missing for ten days, but many staunchly believed
that she would be found. She had to be somewhere, and it seemed
like the entire state of Alabama was on the lookout for her. On Wednesday,
September twenty fifth, Carrie had been missing for two weeks. It was
at this point that a gas station employee came forward. His name was Chris
Weldon, and he spoke to the Birmingham Post Herald. Chris explained to journalists
that two FBI agents had recently visited his workplace at the Northwood Lake Chevron near
Tuscaloosa. It's approximately seventy five minutes or about sixty miles south of Jasper.
According to Chris, the officers were looking into the paythone outside the chevron.
Apparently, Carrie had used that paythone to call someone at three fifteen am on
September twelfth, That was almost twenty four hours after her abduction. This was
probably one of those calls where Carrie was allowed to briefly speak to Earle and
her mother in law. When the FBI agents came to Chris's chevron, they
wanted to know if Carrie had been recorded on an outdoor surveillance camera. When
Chris spoke to the paper, he wasn't sure if she had been. In
the same article detailing Chris's interview, the paper reported that Carrie made a phone
call from a payphone at the Northwood Shopping Center on US Highway eighty two.
She supposedly made a third phone call somewhere near there as well. The FBI
did not confirm any of this information publicly, but I imagine the Birmingham Post
Harold was pretty confident Chris and the other sources were credible or else It's doubtful
they would have published the information. But considering the appetite for any news on
Carrie Lawson, you never know. Side note Andrea scoured the Internet and YouTube
for the audio recordings but could not find them. All descriptions of the we
have end quote from came from the Birmingham Post Herald. As a result of
these payphone locations, volunteers began searching the Newport area near Tuscaloosa extensively. These
searches were not sanctioned by law enforcement, but law enforcement was still in the
case. FBI Director William Sessions said his agency was putting forth tremendous effort and
using considerable resources to find Carrie. Finally, on Saturday, September twenty eighth,
there was a break in the investigation. Law enforcement had recovered three audio
recordings. These recordings were of the kidnapper using payphones to call Earl on September
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. In them, you can hear a man
with the North Alabama accent speak. According to the FBI dialect experts, this
accident was common for the area near Jasper. They believed the man and was
likely a local. He had probably been born and raised in Jasper's Walker County
or an adjacent one. In the first recorded phone call, the kidnapper said,
Earle, you got the money, all right? Go up to sixty
nine Highway to Coleman. You listening. Go to exit three oho eight on
the Interstate Highway, take the Interstate North. Check into the Day's Inn and
I'll call you there. You should be there in an hour and fifteen minutes.
I'll call you then bye. This is when that critical mistake happened.
When local Caleman police happened to be in the area during the money drop off
and the next audio snippet, the kidnapper was clearly upset. He said,
listen, Earle, you screwed me around tonight. If you want to see
this woman alive again, you're going to get your acts straight. You jacked
me around all night. I'm going to jack you around for a while.
Understand. You got the police with you, and you got everybody else with
you. Tomorrow today you get rid of everybody. Your mother, the police,
everybody. Your wife is about to have a nervous breakdown. The kidnapper
also up to the ransom amount by one hundred thousand because he was so angry
about being ran around all night long, as he put it. Then,
early in the morning on September thirteenth, the kidnapper called Earl to give the
directions to the final drop off location. He said, in clear terms,
if there's any problems and I don't show back up to get your wife released,
they're going to leave her and she'll die. While the kidnapper is clearly
referring to one or more accomplices, to this day, it is unclear who
exactly he is talking about, or, of course, this could have just
been a ruse to imply more people were involved. He did have at least
one accomplice that will get to in just a bit, but they would prove
to be no help in finding Carrie. That Saturday, law enforcement gave the
general public access to all of these audios. They were played on TV news
channels and radio stations repeatedly. The FBI was hoping someone, anyone, would
be able to identify the kidnapper by his voice. After the audios were released,
more than one hundred people called authorities with suggestions of who it might be,
and someone called who was certain they knew who it was. That's how
the FBI began looking into a forty nine year old man from right there in
Jasper. A random caller to a radio station recognized his voice. Southern Fried
True Crime is hosted and produced by me Erica Kelly Folks. The rest of
Carrey's story will be out this weekend. I am sorry. I hadn't planned
on making it a two parter, but this episode was ballooning into well over
an hour and a half, but please tune into part two. Not only
is the rest of Carrie's story unbelievable, but you know me, I've got
so much to say about it. This case was researched and written by me
and Andrea Marshbank. As usual, any editorial comments and opinions are my own.
Southern Fred's original music is by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio and the original
graphic art is by Cooley Horner. Today's episode was edited and mixed by Brendan
schock Snyder of Southern Gothic and Erica Kelly. If you have any case suggestions,
please go to my website, Southernfredruecrime dot com and click on the listener
suggestion tap, or email SFTC Research at gmail dot com. This is the
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