True Crime Vault: The Sins of the Father

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Speaker 4 You wouldn't stand a chance. I mean, you're gone.

Speaker 2 He started saying, Call 911, Levi is dead.

Speaker 4 Ma'am, what's going on?

Speaker 5 The cops fell on my stepson. Oh my god, this is horrible.

Speaker 7 His 23-year-old son, Levi, dies in his tragedy.

Speaker 8 At first, it didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary.

Speaker 9 It appeared to be an accident.

Speaker 10 You know, this was a story that played out in upstate New York. I'm from upstate New York, and I remember people consumed by this story, and it only got more twisted as the years went on.

Speaker 7 Wherever Carl goes, tragedy takes place.

Speaker 12 It was a deja vu moment for Carl. In 91, he had lost his wife and lost his home and everything they owned.

Speaker 2 How unlucky is this guy? Christina was trapped inside that bathroom with the fire raging just outside that door. It wasn't an accident.

Speaker 2 I heard my mother screaming.

Speaker 2 My father had said, mommy's gone to heaven. Seemed like every couple years, something was burning.

Speaker 10 A lot of people have said when this guy needed money, a family member would die.

Speaker 9 There's definitely a pattern there.

Speaker 7 Cindy's concerned, okay, first wife dies in this tragedy. Levi dies in this tragedy, and my next.

Speaker 10 Was she convinced there was a killer in her own home?

Speaker 10 There's Erin.

Speaker 10 Where's Katie? Katie. Okay, where are you? What's our name? Katie.

Speaker 10 Hi, Katie.

Speaker 2 My name is Aaron DeRoche. My name is Katie Reynolds.
And Carl Carlson is my father.

Speaker 2 It does seem surreal sometimes that this is my life.

Speaker 2 Does this much bad stuff happen to normal people?

Speaker 2 He lies and he's able to manipulate people very easy. That's who he's always been.
So for me, I saw the monster more than the man's.

Speaker 10 This is a story that has really taken years to unfold.

Speaker 10 I began covering it seven years ago in upstate New York, but really no one could have imagined, no one could have predicted how this would end up.

Speaker 7 So we're headed where right now?

Speaker 9 Headed to 885 Yale Farm Road, which is the Carlson residence.

Speaker 5 And the family's quite connected in the community, right? They're a well-known family.

Speaker 15 They've been here for generations.

Speaker 12 My grandfather settled right here. We're a large family.
Carl is my brother.

Speaker 16 Carl had five brothers and a sister, almost all of whom remain in the area. His father was a highway official in that county for almost 50 years.
His brother was a town councilor.

Speaker 16 Definitely a family that has a lot of connections.

Speaker 7 The Carlson family name has always been a very reputable name in Seneca County.

Speaker 7 Seneca County sits between two of the beautiful Finger Lakes, Seneca and Kay.

Speaker 9 Pretty much smacking the dab in the middle of the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. We're between the cities of Rochester and Syracuse.

Speaker 7 The village of Seneca Falls is known for its wonderful life.

Speaker 9 The current belief is that Seneca Falls was the model for the village of Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life. Yay!

Speaker 9 Hello, Bedford Falls!

Speaker 2 When I met Carl in November of 1992, he was a single dad to his three children.

Speaker 2 Carlson's first wife, Christina, was 30 years old when she died in a tragic fire just years before he would meet his second wife, Cindy Carlson.

Speaker 2 He seemed like he was a hands-on dad. The youngest, Katie, adored her father.
Aaron and Levi seemed to, they had a special bond.

Speaker 2 Levi was amazing. He was so creative.
He was very smart, but he had a learning disability, so when it came to bringing home good grades, he couldn't because of the disability.

Speaker 7 Levi had a difficult life growing up. Levi's life was everything that you wouldn't want your kid to grow up with.

Speaker 2 He went through a rebellious time in his teenage years, and

Speaker 2 him and his father seemed to clash.

Speaker 2 As he got older he got into more of the metal music and you know he kind of changed his appearance a little bit but deep down he was always still that same goofy kid.

Speaker 12 He married early, had two young daughters. The marriage didn't pan out.

Speaker 7 Levi kind of Pulled his life together.

Speaker 13 He was a good young man. He wanted to make better of his life.

Speaker 9 On November 20th, 2008, 911 received a frantic call from Cindy Carlson.

Speaker 8 911, what's the location?

Speaker 4 You know, your emergency?

Speaker 5 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 5 I think I need an ambulance.

Speaker 7 Levi had come to the home of Cindy and Carl Carlson at the request of Carl.

Speaker 2 Carl told me that Levi was going to come out to work on an old farm truck that we had that day. Our plan was that we needed to attend my aunt's funeral.

Speaker 2 While Levi is in the garage working under that farm truck, Carl and Cindy are getting ready and dressed to go to a funeral.

Speaker 2 I went and got in the passenger seat of the car, and Carl had told me that I'm just going to go out and let Levi know that we're leaving. It was just a minute or two.

Speaker 2 And then Carl came and got in the car. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Speaker 7 He and Cindy leave to go to a funeral done in Pena, New York.

Speaker 2 We were gone for

Speaker 2 four hours.

Speaker 7 They returned home. Cindy first notices Levi's car still parked in their driveway.
She's kind of concerned.

Speaker 2 I went into the house and Carl came up to the window and the door and started banging and saying, call 911. Levi is dead.

Speaker 4 Ma'am, what's going on?

Speaker 5 The truck's all on my stepson.

Speaker 4 The truck's all on your stepson?

Speaker 5 We just got home and I don't think he's alive.

Speaker 9 You don't think he's alive?

Speaker 5 No, my husband's left enough the truck.

Speaker 7 Cindy's basically taken information she got from her husband Carl and is relaying it to the 911 disposition.

Speaker 5 Oh, they want to start CPR. Do you know, CPR?

Speaker 2 His chest is crushed.

Speaker 5 His chest is crushed? No.

Speaker 5 He's probably been under here for hours.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 Carl had pulled Levi out

Speaker 2 from underneath the truck.

Speaker 2 And you could see the

Speaker 2 indentation on his

Speaker 5 chest.

Speaker 7 The truck was jacked up by a single railroad type jack.

Speaker 10 This is the kind of jack that the police found?

Speaker 8 That's similar.

Speaker 9 Similar. It's a railroad jack.

Speaker 7 And you make for a very weak foundation. And the higher it gets, the weaker it gets.

Speaker 10 I'll never forget that the team, we all went to this local junkyard to try to find a similar old farm truck, the weight of it, just to see what it would be like propped up on a single railroad jack.

Speaker 17 Would you go under this pickup?

Speaker 4 I would never go under a truck.

Speaker 10 I don't like going underneath trucks when they're sitting all four tires on the ground. So, you've got it jacked up here with a railroad jack.

Speaker 17 Look at that thing, Tip.

Speaker 6 Look at that jack going, just wobbling.

Speaker 17 That jack is moving.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's just crazy.

Speaker 5 It really is. I mean, it's

Speaker 4 gonna have time to get clear of that.

Speaker 8 You wouldn't stand a chance.

Speaker 4 You're gone.

Speaker 5 I mean, you're gone.

Speaker 12 The ambulance was there. They were just pulling Levi out of the barn and putting him into the ambulance.

Speaker 10 When police arrived, what were the parents like?

Speaker 6 Very distraught, very upset, crying,

Speaker 5 you know, grief-stricken.

Speaker 2 I remember the sheriffs trying to console Carl because he was so distraught.

Speaker 9 Levi was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Speaker 7 Levi's 23 years old at the time of his death.

Speaker 6 At first, it didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary.

Speaker 9 It appeared to be an accident.

Speaker 2 I get a call from my niece that my nephew has died. I knew as soon as I heard that Levi was gone, that he had done it.
I knew every fiber of my being.

Speaker 2 I said, I have no idea what he stands to gain from this. But it begs the question, could a father kill his own son?

Speaker 2 I first met Carl at a line dancing club.

Speaker 2 Told me that he could line dance.

Speaker 2 I was kind of looking for a line dancing partner.

Speaker 2 Come to find out he really had no clue about line dancing.

Speaker 7 When Cindy met Carl, she sees this physically strong, good-looking, successful in her mind guy that unfortunately he's dealt with a tragedy of the death of his wife and a house fire in 1991.

Speaker 2 What he had told me about the fire was that he was able to pull the children out. By then, the house was engulfed.
It had been almost two years. He was heartbroken.

Speaker 5 He loved her.

Speaker 2 I felt extremely sorry for him.

Speaker 12 I think she was yearning for the family package. He came with a package.

Speaker 2 It was pretty quick. He brought her over to the house and introduced us.
And initially, it was a nice change of pace.

Speaker 2 For me, it was, I'm going to have a mom like all the other little kids my age have.

Speaker 2 She did initially fill that void.

Speaker 7 Cindy now is kind of the instant mother or the mother figure in their life.

Speaker 2 We were married in 1993. It turns out it wasn't so happily ever after for the Carlson kids.
Their life with Carl, as they describe it, was filled with work, chores, discipline.

Speaker 2 We did the sweeping and the mopping, dusting everyday, vacuuming. We cooked.

Speaker 2 Dad would get home and

Speaker 2 Cindy would go right to him right away and, you know, Aaron did this or Levi did this and you need to take care of it right now.

Speaker 5 And he did.

Speaker 2 There were times when if the kids really misbehaved, I would tell him he needed to talk to them. And sometimes I felt like he was

Speaker 2 overly strict with them.

Speaker 12 Carl, who was ruling them, was such a tight fist, they couldn't be kids. He always had chores to do.
There was always work to do.

Speaker 2 He used physical labor as a form of punishment pretty consistently.

Speaker 2 One time I don't even know what I'd done, but he wanted me to carry 10 gallon buckets full to the brim with water back and forth from the house to the barn, and he would just watch and wait for my body to physically give out.

Speaker 2 When it was Levi,

Speaker 2 he would take him outside.

Speaker 2 My father told me that Levi was a man, so he could take it. As far as physical abuse, I did not see that.
He hid it well.

Speaker 2 Levi moved out when he was 16.

Speaker 5 It became an escape for him.

Speaker 2 He needed to get out of the house. Pretty soon thereafter, he had met Cassie.
Levi was 18 when he had his first daughter. And then the second one came two years later.

Speaker 7 He got married at a young age, and their marriage did not work out.

Speaker 2 She was really one of the only people in his entire life that had loved him and accepted him for who he was. And losing that was traumatic for him.

Speaker 2 Prior to Levi's death, his life was on an upswing.

Speaker 2 He was coming back to the farm more often. He was able to get a job with one of the factories that was in Geneva.

Speaker 2 They had insurance and stuff that he needed as a father trying to support his children.

Speaker 9 After Levi's death, the investigation was very cursory. General reports were filed.
The doctor signed off on it. There was no autopsy.
It gave every appearance of being an unfortunate accident.

Speaker 2 It was shortly after Levi died that Carl had told me that Levi had had a life insurance policy.

Speaker 7 The life insurance policy that's taken out on Levi, it's beyond bizarre.

Speaker 7 Carl drives Levi, his 23-year-old son, to an insurance office and introduces Levi to an insurance agent.

Speaker 16 They wanted to get an insurance policy on Levi, who had two young girls, worked in a glass factory and felt felt there were job hazards and accidental death was a possibility.

Speaker 7 Carl convinces Levi to take out a life insurance policy worth $700,000.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize that Carl actually paid the first premium. I did not know that and he paid cash.

Speaker 9 When this life insurance policy is taken out and the first payment is made, there's provisional coverage, but it's providing that the subject pass a medical exam.

Speaker 16 Carl and Levi did not tell the agent that Levi had a serious swallowing disorder that made it difficult to ingest food and that he had been treated for that disorder several years before.

Speaker 7 The likelihood is that New York Life would have suspended or dropped the policy or had to rewrite it once Levi's medical conditions were brought to their attention.

Speaker 9 Levi Carlson's medical exam was scheduled for the day after he died.

Speaker 2 Even though Levi didn't make it to that medical exam, the insurance company still paid out to Carl. Dad also made a point to tell me was that Levi had left a will.

Speaker 10 This was a handwritten note? Yes.

Speaker 6 Saying what?

Speaker 9 That his father was going to be the sole executor of his estate and basically dispersed the money to his kids.

Speaker 2 He said that it was barely enough to cover the funeral expenses for Levi. $700,000? That would be paying for a heck of a funeral.

Speaker 2 It turns out nobody in Carl's life knew about that life insurance money other than his wife, Cindy.

Speaker 2 When I questioned Carl, why were you beneficiary? He had told me that because Levi was going through this nasty divorce.

Speaker 7 Carl made it out to be that Levi didn't trust his ex-wife, that Levi wanted his daughters taken care of, and he trusted his dad.

Speaker 2 I didn't think it was odd because Levi had worked his way back into the house a little bit more and him and dad seemed to be getting along pretty good. I just trusted my husband.

Speaker 2 There was no reason for me to question anything.

Speaker 10 The note says all of the assets go to the father to be handed out.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 10 And when was the letter notarized?

Speaker 9 The day of his death.

Speaker 2 At the time, law enforcement didn't know about any of this. So once it was ruled an accident, it seemed like it was case closed.

Speaker 7 It wasn't until four years later that the investigation was reopened.

Speaker 10 With everything that you discovered here, what then did you make of what happened to his first wife?

Speaker 2 Suspicious.

Speaker 2 I went to the house the next day and could not not for the life of me understand why somebody didn't try to get her out.

Speaker 2 It wasn't an accident.

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Speaker 10 Years before Levi Carlson would die underneath that truck, Carl Carlson had experienced loss before.

Speaker 12 When Levi died, I assume it was some sort of a deja vu moment for Carl. That he'd been there before.
In 91, he had lost his wife and lost his home and everything they owned.

Speaker 2 There's beautiful mommy over there.

Speaker 2 My mom's name was Christina, but everybody who was really close to her called her Chris.

Speaker 5 I had two daughters.

Speaker 7 One was Susie Homemaker, that was Chris.

Speaker 5 The other one was a little sports jock, and that was Colette.

Speaker 2 She was three years older than me. Everybody knew I was her little sister.
She didn't see bad in anyone.

Speaker 2 Even though somebody could have done something horrific, she would find a way to find something positive about them.

Speaker 7 Carl met his first wife, Christina, when he was in the Air Force.

Speaker 2 She had told me she'd met a nice guy, and so I asked questions about him. She seemed very, very excited about this particular person.

Speaker 2 And then when she told me they were getting married, you know, I wished her the best. And as soon as I could get out there to see her, I got out there.

Speaker 7 Carl worked at a stone quarry in Seneca County, and ultimately Carl moved to California to take a job. He got laid off.
I said, come out here to California.

Speaker 5 You always have a job out here. I made him a partner in my company.

Speaker 12 So Carl out of the blue just packed everybody up and he took off for California to strike it rich and famous.

Speaker 17 And that was a typical Carl adventure.

Speaker 2 And of course, I'm excited because that means my sister and her kids are coming home, so I'm very excited.

Speaker 18 The Carlson family lived in the town of Murphy's. Murphys is a gold rush era town that was settled by pioneers, miners, and it's existed here since the mid to early, late 1800s.

Speaker 7 It's Northern California.

Speaker 7 It's quite a hike from Sacramento, an hour or two.

Speaker 7 Quiet backcountry roads.

Speaker 2 We loved Murphy's. My mom would actually take us walks and we would collect leaves and acorns and we would go on picnics.

Speaker 18 Pennsylvania Gulch Road where the Carlson family settled was off the highway down a rural road.

Speaker 7 Where Carl and Christina and their three children lived was an old mining shack.

Speaker 13 It was converted into a house.

Speaker 7 But it was It was a difficult environment.

Speaker 2 It was very dilapidated, but I remember when we moved in, gosh, my mom put in a lot of effort to get the house clean. She painted it, she decorated it, she sewed curtains.

Speaker 2 She was a phenomenal seamstress.

Speaker 2 It was amazing when my father wasn't home, but when he was home, it was very tense. He just had a very aggressive personality.

Speaker 2 Kind of that personality that either my way or the highway,

Speaker 2 and the highway isn't an option, so it's my way. For her 30th birthday, I bought her a glamour shot.

Speaker 2 I thought this would just be the perfect 30th birthday for her because she really didn't want to turn 30. Walk into my house, he sees her, tells her, take the makeup off, you look like a whore.

Speaker 2 And she went to the bathroom and took it off. When things would get

Speaker 2 to the point where she felt she didn't want us to witness the arguments or the fights, she would request that they go back to the bedroom. But we heard.

Speaker 5 I heard.

Speaker 2 There were some glaring things to me that I didn't like that I talked to her about

Speaker 5 multiple times.

Speaker 9 According to Colette, Christina was getting ready to move out, take the kids with her, and move in with her. Just wanted to wait, get through the holidays.

Speaker 5 Christmas morning, 1990.

Speaker 5 Levi, look at me, please. Let me get your face in this.
Thank you, darling.

Speaker 2 It was the last Christmas we all had together at my mom's house. You know, opening presents, it's her being goofy.

Speaker 2 On January 1st, 1991,

Speaker 2 it was a day kind of like any other. We were just playing around the house.

Speaker 18 Carl's daughter, Erin, recalled him taking a Christmas tree out of the house and dousing it in kerosene.

Speaker 2 He was gonna burn the Christmas tree, and he wanted us to watch, so he lined us up and said that he wanted us to see how quickly a house could burn.

Speaker 2 And I was just shy of seven, but I assumed it was kind of a lesson like don't play with matches, don't play with fire. And then we went back inside.
Our mom got us ready to go down for our nap.

Speaker 18 Levi was sleeping in his room. Katie and Aaron were sleeping in their room.
And Christina went into the bathroom to take a bath.

Speaker 10 So while Carl's wife is taking a bath, he says that he was upstairs in the attic working on a fan before then going out to the garage.

Speaker 7 He walks out into the garage, which the garage is probably 50 feet.

Speaker 18 He's working in the shop and it's at that point he hears his wife screaming his name.

Speaker 7 He comes out, looks, and that's when he sees the smoke.

Speaker 18 He sees flames.

Speaker 12 He sees the house is on fire.

Speaker 18 He hears Christina say, Carl, get the kids.

Speaker 20 She loved those kids and she would have done anything for them.

Speaker 2 I heard my mother screaming and I went to the door. It was slightly jar, so I kind of, you know, peeked out the door.
And at four years old, I don't think I really understood

Speaker 2 what was happening, but I saw it down the hallway. It was engulfed in flames.

Speaker 8 Carl says, you know, the smoke's pouring out of the house, flames.

Speaker 7 He goes up on the porch and to Levi's bedroom window. and breaks the window.

Speaker 18 Carl claims he sees his son there unharmed. So he reaches in, grabs his son by the hair, and throws his five-year-old son out of the house into safety.

Speaker 7 He then goes to the other side of the house, breaks the window to the girl's bedroom.

Speaker 2 He was just there and he pulled us out.

Speaker 18 After saving Aaron and Katie, he said he returned to the house and tried to enter into the door, but there were too many flames.

Speaker 9 It's 1991. Not everybody has a cell phone, So

Speaker 9 he leaves this fire scene.

Speaker 18 We decided his best next course of action would be to go seek out help.

Speaker 20 I had two different people come to my door and said they had heard on the scanner there was a fire at the end of Pingoth Road.

Speaker 5 Just walked out here in the street. I could see the smoke and I knew, I knew where it was coming from.

Speaker 7 My first thought is, get out there.

Speaker 9 Emergency services fire department, the first responders responded the same.

Speaker 18 The people that were close to Christina had a lot of questions about what happened that day.

Speaker 6 It's obvious that they're suspicious.

Speaker 2 Why he didn't knock this out?

Speaker 12 There was a $200,000 policy on Christina.

Speaker 7 It's just, it's all red flags.

Speaker 2 It makes you wonder just how unlucky is this guy?

Speaker 5 And these are all from the fire.

Speaker 5 From the house it burned.

Speaker 18 Christina Carlson perished in the house fire. They found her doubled over outside of the tub with a rag covering her face.

Speaker 7 That day, I got out there and I started looking around and somebody directed me over to the ambulance.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 when I got in the back of the ambulance, I see the whole family except for my daughter, Chris.

Speaker 3 So that's when I realized what had happened.

Speaker 2 Everybody was rushing around with a purpose and my dad wasn't. And he was just standing there casually like

Speaker 2 it was any other day.

Speaker 16 There were people in California who right from the beginning of 1991 believed that Christina's death was not accidental.

Speaker 18 Christina Carlson's cousins went to the burnt out home and created a video.

Speaker 7 She took extensive video footage to the inside and outside of the house. The area where Christina's body was discovered in the bathroom.

Speaker 5 This here is the bathroom where Christina was found. The bathroom door is here.

Speaker 18 Both of them evaluate the house, look through the ruins. It's obvious that they're suspicious.

Speaker 2 Why he didn't knock this out.

Speaker 18 In front of the bathroom window is a board nailed into the wall.

Speaker 9 Most Most of the bathroom area is still intact. You can clearly see the boarded up window to the bathroom.

Speaker 7 Carl's story is that a few days prior to the fire, his wife was trying to open the bathroom window and she was using a toilet plunger and broke the window.

Speaker 18 Carl's solution, he said, was to take a warped wooden board that he had in his shop and use 17 nails to hammer it into the wall.

Speaker 2 There's no way she could have got that off. Isn't there anything she could have used to get that off?

Speaker 2 I went to the house the next day. I asked somebody to drive me out there and they said, Colette, you don't want to go out there? And I said, yes, I do.

Speaker 2 I stood in the bathroom and could not, for the life of me, understand why somebody didn't try to get her out.

Speaker 2 Between the boarded-up window and the fire raging just outside the bathroom door, she was trapped. There was no getting out.

Speaker 12 I asked him, why didn't you get the board off yourself?

Speaker 12 And he said by the time he got around and got the kids out of the windows, that it was too late.

Speaker 15 He couldn't get near them.

Speaker 10 So after the fire, Carl talks to investigators and he tells them how he thinks the fire might have started.

Speaker 7 Carl goes on with a very elaborate story. told back in 1991 that days prior to this fire, his wife brought in a five-gallon jug that was filled with kerosene.

Speaker 18 They used kerosene heaters inside of the house. They have a cat and a dog and those animals are rough housing which knocks over the container of kerosene.

Speaker 2 I do remember there being a spill on the floor. Mom had towels and blankets piled up and we were having fun climbing over the top of them.

Speaker 12 He had been working that day of the fire.

Speaker 15 He was working in the attic area.

Speaker 2 Carl says he was using a trouble light up in the attic for light just before he went out to the garage.

Speaker 18 Carl's claimed that the trouble light, which either fell from the attic or which he left on the kerosene spill, likely caused the fire.

Speaker 10 And according to Carl, he says that once the fire began, he did what anyone would try to do to try to save their family.

Speaker 2 There are a few things that are a little fuzzy, but there are some things that I remember just like it was yesterday. He pulled us out through the window.
He took Katie and I to the truck.

Speaker 2 He told us to get down and not to look. We were kids.
Curiosity got the better of us, so we turned around, all of us, and just kind of watched.

Speaker 18 She watched Carl walk slowly to the house and not make any real attempt to break into the house and save Christina, her mother.

Speaker 2 My father had said, mommy's gone to heaven. Even before the ambulances got there, the firefighters, like while we're sitting in the truck.

Speaker 2 We didn't understand, of course, the gravity or what it really meant, but we knew, so we were all really quiet.

Speaker 7 Christina's death is ruled an accidental death.

Speaker 9 The actual physical cause of death of Christina Carlson was smoke inhalation which indicates that the fire was not on top of her.

Speaker 12 We just flew to California as soon as we could get there.

Speaker 12 He was very stoic,

Speaker 12 emotionless, and he just said, I want to go home.

Speaker 15 meaning New York.

Speaker 12 And at the time it made sense.

Speaker 7 In four days,

Speaker 7 they had everything taken care of and they were off to New York.

Speaker 2 They were gone before she was even laid to rest.

Speaker 2 If you really were that concerned about everything that happened, you would stay around and you wouldn't be avoiding talking with detectives or the fire marshal.

Speaker 7 Carl Kent, who was the investigator for California Department of Forestry, had a lot of questions about the cause and who started this fire.

Speaker 15 And I was requested to come to a fire scene. I thought the circumstances of the fire were suspicious.
There was

Speaker 15 concern that something wasn't right.

Speaker 2 And it didn't help that Carl had taken out an insurance policy on Christina just weeks before that deadly fire.

Speaker 16 Carlson went to an insurance agent and bought a $200,000 policy on his wife.

Speaker 18 The fact that the policy was purchased 19 days before Christina's death, I think, rang the alarm bells in the head of State Farm Insurance.

Speaker 8 State Farm brought in Ken Busky.

Speaker 21 Typically, I'm hired by an insurance company to answer what the cause of the fire is.

Speaker 21 The story they related to me at least initially made sense as a story that the hot bulb from the trouble light could ignite the kerosene soaked into the carpet.

Speaker 10 But you know, when that investigator looked at that severely burned light, he was able to determine that the filament had not been energized at the the time of the fire, meaning the light wasn't on.

Speaker 21 If a bulb is off, of course, it's not apt to be the cause of the fire. Mr.
Carlson's story simply couldn't have been true.

Speaker 10 So Ken Buskie turns his report into the insurance company, telling them he's convinced that this was no accident.

Speaker 7 This was a set fire by a human being.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 7 we clearly know there was only one human being capable of starting that fire.

Speaker 2 But for whatever reason, that report didn't stop the insurance company company from paying out the claim.

Speaker 18 Carl was paid $215,000,

Speaker 18 and it was not explained why their recommendation to not have him be paid out was overlooked.

Speaker 2 The insurance company did a very good investigation. Law enforcement, it didn't seem, was doing anything.

Speaker 15 I never saw Mr. Buskie's report.

Speaker 15 I didn't know who Mr. Buskie was.

Speaker 9 It just seemed like when

Speaker 9 Carl moved to New York a few days after the fire, it's like everything stopped. And there wasn't much follow-up.

Speaker 15 I asked if they would front the monies for me to travel back there and interview him.

Speaker 2 Carl Kent wanted to go to New York to interview Carlson in person, but his superiors turned him down, saying that there just wasn't enough money for that kind of trip.

Speaker 15 The DA's office said it was a good circumstantial case, but there wasn't enough to prosecute at that time.

Speaker 21 I was hoping something would happen, but somewhere after maybe the 15th year, I was beginning to think somebody got away with murder.

Speaker 2 All these years later, with his 23-year-old son, Levi, dead, there are people who start to wonder, did he get away with murder not once, but twice?

Speaker 8 Maybe the phone call.

Speaker 9 I was asked if we'd investigated an accident robbing Levi Carlson's death.

Speaker 10 Do you remember the call to this day?

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 Cindy's concerned now that the first wife dies in this tragedy, Levi dies in this tragedy, am I next?

Speaker 7 The drunk's all on my stepson. I don't think he's alive.

Speaker 12 After Levi died,

Speaker 12 life moved forward.

Speaker 12 Everyone went about their business.

Speaker 7 The time marks down, Carl collected a large insurance policy on Levi.

Speaker 2 If I had known that there was an insurance policy, I would have gone straight to the Sheriff's Department.

Speaker 18 Carl received approximately $700,000. He claimed that this money was going to be used

Speaker 18 for Levi's children, his grandchildren.

Speaker 5 Levi's insurance money is being spent by Carl and Cindy, not Levi's children.

Speaker 10 What were they spending money on?

Speaker 9 Well, it looks like a lot of money went to a duck business, a gourmet duck business.

Speaker 12 It was just another one of Carl's daydreaming ideas, get rich quick schemes.

Speaker 9 The idea was he was going to raise gourmet ducks to sell to restaurants.

Speaker 2 But what happened is Carl started right away ordering more and more ducks. We went from raising 10, 20 gourmet ducks to thousands.

Speaker 14 I mean, duck feed.

Speaker 2 for thousands of ducks costs a lot of money.

Speaker 7 He doesn't know really what he's doing. He's just bailing water.
It's losing money left and right.

Speaker 2 Dad and Cindy,

Speaker 2 their finances weren't making sense to me.

Speaker 2 There was also

Speaker 2 new vehicles quite frequently. They would constantly be going on vacation.
I finally confronted her and I, you know, I said, what is going on here?

Speaker 2 This doesn't make sense. But she just denied everything.
Carl is the person responsible for spending the bulk of that money and he kept Cindy in the dark. At this time, he's keeping me blind.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want me to know anything. Because he knows I questioned everything, he's just going to do what he wants to do.
That's just how it was with Carl.

Speaker 10 Cindy Carlson told us that it was about two years after Levi's death that she actually started to grow suspicious of the man she was married to.

Speaker 2 There is not one thing that I just said, oh my god, he did it. It happened over time.
I would have these panic attacks.

Speaker 2 I would be in my living room and say, oh my gosh, did he have something to do with Levi's death? Christina's family said he had something to do with her death.

Speaker 10 Was she convinced there was a killer in her own home?

Speaker 9 I think that she suspected it.

Speaker 2 Cindy Carlson says that during this time, she was so terrified of her husband, she started sleeping with a knife under her bed. And finally, she just had to move out.

Speaker 2 At the end, when there was very little money left and Carl kept spending and spending and spending, spending.

Speaker 2 Yes, I took some money because I needed to keep myself alive. I had nothing left and I'm scared.

Speaker 9 She is concerned enough that she hires a private detective to look into it.

Speaker 2 It was self-preservation. She probably was concerned for her life when she realized that there was a policy on her.

Speaker 2 The private investigator started digging in and finding out I would be worth $1.2 million to Carl if I was dead. One night, I had called my cousin and told her my fears.

Speaker 2 I think Carl might have killed Levi.

Speaker 2 She said, why would Carl kill Levi? There's nothing for him to gain from that. And I said, yes, there was.
He gained $700,000.

Speaker 2 Cindy's cousin, Jackie Himmel,

Speaker 2 called in a concern that she had to the police.

Speaker 10 And you get a phone call.

Speaker 8 And what are you told?

Speaker 9 I was asked if we'd investigated an accident involving Levi Carlson's death and I looked it up.

Speaker 7 This family member has got some suspicions, concerned that things just aren't ending up. You know, wherever Carl goes, tragedy takes place and financial payoffs follow suit.

Speaker 9 Once we started looking into

Speaker 9 prior incidents, that was the first indication that something wasn't right here.

Speaker 10 And so as investigators start to look into Carl Carlson's past, you know, it doesn't take them long to see what is a frightening pattern that dates back decades.

Speaker 9 The first thing that came up was a car fire from 1986. It was a brand new Mustang purchased by Carl Carlson, had $10,000 insurance on it, and it burned up in his driveway.

Speaker 15 According to the report, we heard

Speaker 12 nothing in the trunk, nothing in the glove box. The car just burned up.

Speaker 15 And the insurance took care of the payment, and he got out from under it.

Speaker 7 The Barn Fire is another one of those Wincidental tragedies.

Speaker 2 One evening in 2002, I was asleep and Carl sat upright in bed and looked out the window and said, oh my gosh, the barn's on fire.

Speaker 2 I knew there were horses in there. There was our prize Belgian mare

Speaker 2 and two babies.

Speaker 2 So it was devastating to see the barn burning down, which is part of our family's history, and then also to see the loss of these horses that were conveniently just put in the barn.

Speaker 7 It's somewhere around $115,000 Carl's paid out on this barn and the horses.

Speaker 15 Here we go one more time.

Speaker 12 A tragedy and a payout.

Speaker 5 I call it blood money. He got an insurance policy from my daughter.
He got another insurance policy when he had a barn burned down with expensive horses in it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it seemed like every couple years something was burning, you know, so I mean, I feel like we kind of knew and just expected it.

Speaker 7 We choose to reach out to Cindy Carlson. To further the investigation, first thing she said was, thank God you called.

Speaker 10 When you asked her to help you out,

Speaker 10 she said yes. She agreed.

Speaker 18 And put a wire on.

Speaker 5 Part of me feels like I'm walking into a booby trap.

Speaker 2 Do you want to go tell my parents?

Speaker 2 I thought maybe I can get him to confess that was my goal.

Speaker 7 If Carl did this, she wanted to give him.

Speaker 2 I'm terrified. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my husband is a murderer.

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Speaker 10 You know, this was a story that played out in upstate New York. I'm from upstate New York and I remember people consumed by this story and it only got more twisted as the years went on.

Speaker 5 What kind of parent parent or father would push a truck over

Speaker 2 on their own child and let them suffer and die? It was the most terrifying time in my life.

Speaker 2 And it becomes a huge story. They asked him, you know what this is about?

Speaker 9 And he said, oh, you want to talk about my dead wife and dead son.

Speaker 5 I know.

Speaker 5 I know.

Speaker 9 So when he says, who could do that? Who could kill their wife that way? Well, we already know that you killed your son that way.

Speaker 2 I told him that I wanted to see my sister. And he said, you can't.
She's a crispy critter. That was his term.
A crispy critter. And he smiled like a Cheshire cat.
And he said, it's been 22 years.

Speaker 2 They haven't caught me yet. And they're not going to.

Speaker 10 But before Carl would walk away for good, there would be one more unbelievable twist in this case that it's almost impossible to believe.

Speaker 5 There's Carl

Speaker 5 getting the turkey ready.

Speaker 2 Levi, boy, don't you look handsome today.

Speaker 7 This wasn't about a job. This was a passion.
This was a passion to bring justice.

Speaker 2 Look at those two lovely people over there.

Speaker 7 For Christina, Levi, and their family.

Speaker 2 My pride and joy sitting over in the rocker.

Speaker 18 Investigators in Seneca County get a tip, and that tip is looking to Carl Carlson.

Speaker 5 Look at that big son-in-law, Mike.

Speaker 18 That's when the tide starts to shift.

Speaker 10 So the year was 2012. It was about three years after Levi Carlson had died.

Speaker 10 And as investigators begin to take a much closer look at this case, they learned that Levi Carlson had a life insurance policy and that his father, Carl, was the beneficiary to this $700,000 life insurance policy.

Speaker 10 That seems very odd when Levi had children of his own to leave money to.

Speaker 9 Yeah, for me that was enough to reopen the investigation right there.

Speaker 2 It was the most terrifying

Speaker 2 time in my life.

Speaker 2 I decided that I just could not do it anymore. I couldn't live with Carl anymore.
I needed to get out of the house. Shortly after I left is when law enforcement called me.

Speaker 9 First thing she said was, thank God you called. And that she said, and she said that she also had suspicions.

Speaker 2 They said they had a tip from a family member that maybe there was something more to Levi's death.

Speaker 2 That's when we started working together to law enforcement.

Speaker 7 Cindy was coming in on a regular basis. It was an ongoing process for months.
I think she was almost kind of like, almost wanting to be part of the police investigation investigation team.

Speaker 2 I was watching a show where a woman was taping her

Speaker 2 mother

Speaker 2 secretly and trying to get her to confess to killing her father. And I remember just thinking, I'm going to do that.
I'm going to get a recorder.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start recording my conversations with Carl.

Speaker 2 I met Carl in a busy restaurant and Carl had actually picked the place, I think, because he was worried that I was recording.

Speaker 2 And I just told him that I'd consider getting back together with him if he came clean or confessed about every single thing he did during our marriage.

Speaker 2 Every lie he told, you come clean and I'll consider it. He actually confessed.

Speaker 9 When she came to my office, she was all excited and she said, he just told me he killed Levi.

Speaker 9 And she goes, and I recorded it.

Speaker 7 I think she pretty much thought that this was the home run.

Speaker 2 But what happened was it was inaudible.

Speaker 7 It was a pretty poor recording at best and surely one that didn't capture all that Cindy thought it captured.

Speaker 10 But now it's the detectives who have an idea and they ask Cindy if she's willing to wear a wire to try to get Carl Carlson to confess to this again.

Speaker 9 We're going to pick a restaurant, we're going to put undercover officers in there, and we're going to wire her up professionally and see if they can recreate this conversation.

Speaker 2 And I said yes.

Speaker 8 She's got the wire on where?

Speaker 9 Underneath her clothing.

Speaker 10 And what does he think he's walking into?

Speaker 9 He thinks he's coming to talk to his wife about getting back together.

Speaker 8 About reconciliation.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 8 But she has no plan to get back together. No.

Speaker 5 She's here for you.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 7 So the two of them were sitting together in the corner.

Speaker 10 And you had private investigators all through the room?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 7 Several of us sat in the immediate area with other investigators in plain clothes sitting inside the restaurant, nearby.

Speaker 5 Type two. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Sit down by the

Speaker 2 Um over by the fireplace is good I think.

Speaker 5 Is that all right?

Speaker 2 Okay, thank you. This time now he's very suspicious that I want to hear the same things that he said before.

Speaker 5 Did I purposely get up? No, not at all. That's not what you told me, Carl.

Speaker 2 Noah hadn't.

Speaker 5 Part of me feels like I'm walking into a

Speaker 2 booby trap. He even said, I feel like you're setting me up.
How am I gonna set a trap? Do you wanna go through my curse?

Speaker 7 Carl's denying that he ever made any such admission. So we're kind of like taking back, like, well, what did he really tell Cindy? What, you know, what's going on here?

Speaker 2 I couldn't get him to confess to the same exact thing that he had confessed two days before.

Speaker 10 You can hear Cindy Carlson pressing her husband Carl over and over again.

Speaker 18 She doesn't give up. As the questions become more aggressive, Carl appears to make a halfway admission.

Speaker 5 I asked you if you pushed the truck and you said yes.

Speaker 5 I didn't push the truck. I said I said I had nothing to do, but I said I took advantage of the situation once it happened.

Speaker 5 And that is exactly what it says.

Speaker 5 Carl, you told me that you didn't set it up that way, but when you were in there, you saw the opportunity.

Speaker 5 After it had happened, then I panicked. I saw the opportunity.

Speaker 18 Opportunity.

Speaker 8 A very strange word for a father to use about a son's death.

Speaker 9 I would find it very unusual that a parent would refer to the death of their child as an opportunity.

Speaker 5 For right now, I mean,

Speaker 5 I mean, did it fall hard or

Speaker 5 I mean, you just

Speaker 5 had to contact it?

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 it's so wobbly, you know,

Speaker 5 because the only thing that was touching the ground is just the back

Speaker 5 two wheels on it. Any dessert? Oh, no.

Speaker 2 No, but I'll have more coffee, thanks.

Speaker 5 Sure.

Speaker 5 So, then,

Speaker 5 and then

Speaker 5 I mean what did he make a noise

Speaker 5 at the moment?

Speaker 5 I mean you think

Speaker 18 it's not clear-cut and it's not definitive.

Speaker 7 By no means did we think this was a slam dump.

Speaker 2 All right

Speaker 2 I'll be in touch with you.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. Bye.

Speaker 9 So at that point We knew we were going to be bringing him in for an interview.

Speaker 2 And they asked him to come in for questioning. They said, do you know what this is about?

Speaker 9 And he said, oh, you want to talk about my dead wife and dead son.

Speaker 7 This isn't going to be a simple interview and a simple confession. And we all kind of know that going into this.

Speaker 18 Carl's very comfortable with them until they start asking him very pointed questions. That's when the interview turns into an interrogation.

Speaker 5 You killed him. What killed him? The truck.
How did the truck kill him? Man, landed up.

Speaker 21 Just fell over.

Speaker 9 I felt like I was getting close. He was close to telling me what really happened that day.
Get that

Speaker 5 You're close.

Speaker 7 It was November 23rd, 2012.

Speaker 7 Carl is picked up by two investigators. He's brought to the Senate County Sheriff's Office into an interview room.

Speaker 18 And you can see in that interview that Carl's very comfortable with them.

Speaker 5 I think it's the 23rd, but you know what? Let me check. We want to be sure about that.

Speaker 18 The investigators are very reasonable with how they initially approach it. They mirandize them.

Speaker 5 We're obligated to read you your rights. I don't want you to get nervous about it.

Speaker 17 We're going to do it because we do what we do by the book, okay?

Speaker 5 So you have the right to remain silent.

Speaker 7 Most of the questions we asked, we already knew the answers to. It was just going to be how Carl was going to answer them.

Speaker 4 You haul him in and you begin asking questions.

Speaker 8 How many different stories did he have?

Speaker 9 Three.

Speaker 5 What was version one?

Speaker 9 Version one was essentially the same story that was in the original report.

Speaker 10 So Carl would tell detectives that after he returned home from that funeral with Cindy, that he walked out into the garage and discovered his son Levi crushed underneath that truck.

Speaker 5 Went out there, then found him.

Speaker 5 You know, then we went to the hospital. What do you mean you found him? I found him dead.

Speaker 18 Carl knows that they know something. He doesn't know the extent of what they know.

Speaker 5 Here's the thing. You confessed to your wife.
I lied to my wife. Wouldn't that scare her?

Speaker 5 You have her wired?

Speaker 5 Yes, we do. I thought you did.

Speaker 23 One thing became very clear is that he liked to talk.

Speaker 9 And he liked to talk about his favorite subject, which was him.

Speaker 5 Do you mind if I stand up? No.

Speaker 18 Carl is talking about his his history in the Air Force. We knew that you were in the Air Force.
His personal injuries.

Speaker 5 And it tore three of them.

Speaker 18 He's going through basically a complete narrative of his life.

Speaker 5 So, anyways. We should have back down again.
I have to.

Speaker 5 Because I'm 100% disabled.

Speaker 7 He wants to keep reverting and talking about the pain in his back and how his back's bothering him. And woe me.
And forget about that. His son's died, his wife's died.

Speaker 7 Let's worry about Carl and his back problem here.

Speaker 5 My bad.

Speaker 5 He has no help.

Speaker 2 It was typical of him trying to get sympathy throughout the whole interrogation.

Speaker 9 There's one thing that stuck in my mind that came from Cindy Carlson. Her exact words were, he's a sympathy junkie.

Speaker 9 And as we got into the latter part of the interview, I gave him a lot of sympathy and a lot of hands-on contact and that did work.

Speaker 7 Roughly three hours into the interview, his version two starts.

Speaker 10 Version number two was what?

Speaker 9 When he went back into the garage to see Levi, he was already dead.

Speaker 5 The truck had already been fallen over, and I found him dead. You went out there and the truck was rolled over on him? Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I...

Speaker 5 Panicked. I don't know.
So you panicked from what you got?

Speaker 5 Just... I left.

Speaker 5 So, until you saw him, did you run over to call medical help and call 911 to get a call?

Speaker 5 Now, was there a phone in the garage or a cell phone or you mounted back the house and called 911 to this? I went to the funeral.

Speaker 10 So he saw his son trapped and dead under the truck and still left for the funeral?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 7 Version 2 is far more ridiculous than version 1. And instead of screaming for help, go and get help, he simply goes, well, okay,

Speaker 7 my son's dead.

Speaker 5 I mean, it was an accident.

Speaker 7 But now when he returns and he finds his son dead underneath the truck is when he flips and goes crazy and starts screaming for help.

Speaker 5 I love that kid more than

Speaker 5 because I knew he was struggling. I knew he went through what I went through as a kid.
You know, I would give my life for that kid.

Speaker 9 I think throughout the interview he was convinced that he was going to convince us. I mean,

Speaker 9 he had reason to think that way. He had gotten away with it for a long time.

Speaker 18 The interview ultimately lasts for nine hours.

Speaker 10 Well, they put on the pressure harder.

Speaker 18 Carlson asks to move his chair, right? He moves his chair, he puts it in the corner of the room. Both the investigators have literally backed him into a corner.

Speaker 5 Did you tell Cindy that you, when she asked you

Speaker 5 if you pushed the car or leave that? And she asked you, did it push hard? Do you remember telling her no, it pushed easy?

Speaker 5 I don't remember. Could have you said that? I could.
If it's on the audio story. If it is, then I'll probably.
If I said it, yeah, I heard it.

Speaker 10 You keep pushing, and yet a third story emerges. Come on.

Speaker 5 Let it out.

Speaker 5 Let it out.

Speaker 5 Let it out.

Speaker 5 I'll walk with you, and I'll walk with you.

Speaker 5 Was it just a second thing?

Speaker 9 I felt like I was getting close with him.

Speaker 23 It's almost like a physical thing.

Speaker 9 You can almost feel it. I thought he was close to telling me something more about what really happened that day.

Speaker 10 And it would turn out Carl Carlson would have one more version of this story. He said that when he went out into that garage, that his son Levi was still alive, was actually working on the truck.

Speaker 5 I can never urge him.

Speaker 5 I opened the truck door.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 I opened the truck door because I had to get inside to move the linkage for the fing truck.

Speaker 5 And when I did, it tipped. And it just

Speaker 5 fall over.

Speaker 5 I see Car was watching. We've gone from, he was dabbing walk in there.
And now that fellow, you opened the door.

Speaker 4 So take the final step.

Speaker 4 There is no more. I stepped into the truck and the finger night fell.

Speaker 4 And I was just fing scared.

Speaker 4 I don't know why.

Speaker 9 I can't imagine walking away and leaving your your child dying on the floor.

Speaker 8 They were going to a funeral, guess.

Speaker 10 And yet many would argue he had just created one right here in his own garage.

Speaker 7 We know that there's the real version of version 4, the untold version, where Carl jacked it up on a single post, got Levi to get underneath there, and with all his force pushes the truck over on him, causes this truck to crash down onto Levi.

Speaker 2 What kind of parent or father

Speaker 17 would

Speaker 5 push a truck over

Speaker 2 on their own child and let them suffer and die underneath a truck?

Speaker 7 That evening after the interview of Carl, we arrested Carl for the murder, murder in second degree, and for the insurance fraud.

Speaker 9 I remember thinking, no, that one in California certainly needs to be looked at a lot harder than it was.

Speaker 2 I went to go visit him and I was like, I know that you killed my mother. And he smiled like a Cheshire Cheshire cat.
And he said, it's been 22 years.

Speaker 2 They haven't caught me yet, and they're not going to.

Speaker 2 Once Carl was charged in New York, it gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe we could finally get some traction in Calaveras County.

Speaker 5 Look at me, please. Please.

Speaker 2 Chris, thank you.

Speaker 10 Two decades after Christina died in that house fire, her sister Colette never gave up. She believed that this was not an accident.

Speaker 2 It turns out the investigators in New York had been digging into this case as well.

Speaker 5 Watch Carl, I don't trust that man.

Speaker 7 We're interviewing Carl about Levi, obviously, because we're investigators with New York State, but we're going to further this investigation in California.

Speaker 9 Well, about halfway through the interview, he does make a real off-the-wall remark. He comes out and says, what kind of person does that? What kind of person kills

Speaker 9 his own son or his wife?

Speaker 5 There's nothing that can justify killing your wife, your kids, your uncles, your parents, your...

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 it'd be different if you killed the... I didn't say you killed your wife, Carl.
No, I don't, but I'm just saying,

Speaker 5 you know, that's why I'm saying wife, kids, whatever. Carl, did you? No.
No, I've already been through that. No, hell, no, and no way in hell.

Speaker 9 I thought it was a strange thing for him to bring up. California was on his mind, even if it wasn't necessarily on ours at the moment.

Speaker 7 Does he stick to his story about what he told in 1991?

Speaker 13 To some degree, yes, and to some degree, no.

Speaker 5 So was there a window in the bathroom? There was one that was like

Speaker 5 extremely, extremely, extremely small.

Speaker 2 But of course there was that video that Christina's cousin made showing us exactly how big that window was.

Speaker 2 This here is the bathroom where Christina was found.

Speaker 5 Here.

Speaker 2 I want a picture of this window.

Speaker 5 Was it like an old window? No, the window was like that big and it was boarded up.

Speaker 5 Wait, did you board it up? what's that did you board it up no we had to because it was no good

Speaker 5 but you couldn't fit out of anyway you couldn't put you might be able to put a baby out of it a baby you and i are a 80 pound woman

Speaker 5 there's no way

Speaker 2 that video zoomed in on that bathroom window and you could see it was large enough for a person to get out of Why don't you give Carl a big kiss?

Speaker 10 Oh, geez. The investigators asked Carlson about the insurance policy that he had on his wife, Christina, and how long before her death that he actually took that policy out on her.

Speaker 5 So about how long before do you think?

Speaker 5 Was it like in other people's minds, like relatively soon?

Speaker 5 It's gotta be.

Speaker 5 It's gotta be.

Speaker 5 It's gotta be like three, four months or something.

Speaker 2 But detectives already know, and Carl certainly should have known, that he had taken out that life insurance policy just 19 days before Christina died.

Speaker 7 It's very simple. The truth is the truth.
But when you start telling lies, it's hard to remember the lies and retell the lies.

Speaker 7 And for every lie, you tell two lies, and for the two lies, you tell four lies, and it keeps getting compounded.

Speaker 5 It's interesting.

Speaker 5 The situations you've had occur in your life. Tell me about it.

Speaker 5 I look back at it and I look at it. The state lightning doesn't strike twice.
No, it strikes, well, I'll tell you what. When friends get around and we talk about that and it's like, there's no way.

Speaker 5 How can one person have this much happen?

Speaker 18 There were so many people that harbored suspicions in 1991. There was documentation from state farm insurance, from fire investigators.

Speaker 10 Fire investigators like Ken Buskie, who was hired by that insurance company all those years ago back in 1991, turns out he had even more damning evidence that this fire wasn't an accident, that this fire was intentionally set.

Speaker 21 It appeared that the fire had started on the carpet outside the bathroom door, so I was very interested in the carpet for that reason.

Speaker 2 Buskie examined that carpet closely and he discovered something that was surprising. His report noted that there was was evidence of a second kerosene pour

Speaker 2 right before the fire.

Speaker 2 Not the spill that happened from the dog and cat roughhousing around. This pour happened right before the fire.

Speaker 21 The second spill appeared to be a deliberate pour, anywhere from a few seconds to a matter of just a few minutes prior to the fire.

Speaker 21 And so at that point in time, I was thinking that the state of California would proceed to treat this as if it were a murder. I kept my files and still have my files.

Speaker 10 And there would be another person who never gave up the evidence that he collected, state investigator Carl Kent.

Speaker 18 Carl Kent harbored suspicions for so long that when he retired, he took documents, two boxes of them, with an audio recording, with papers, and kept them.

Speaker 15 That's the only one that I've ever done that with. I would have loved to have gone to New York.

Speaker 15 I think I could have talked to Carl, and it may have taken, you know, five, six, seven, eight, ten hours, who knows, of talking to him. I think we might have been able to get a confession.

Speaker 2 After Carlson is arrested in New York for the murder of his son, the media catches wind of it, and it becomes a huge story. A man accused of killing his wife and son for the insurance money.

Speaker 5 Do you have anything to say, sir?

Speaker 10 Tonight, it's the explosive case. But was the accident really a surprise to everyone?

Speaker 10 Because when investigators start digging, a shocking discovery: was there a deadly pattern in this family after all?

Speaker 7 The media brought so much attention to this case. It was relentless.
The pressure that was continued to put on Calaveras County.

Speaker 9 That's what really got things going.

Speaker 2 But before he could get to trial, Carlson did something that no one saw coming.

Speaker 12 I was thrilled and I was pissed

Speaker 12 because it was him in control again.

Speaker 24 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 5 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 24 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker. He's fallen asleep.

Speaker 24 So she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 22 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know without waking him. I'm scared.

Speaker 24 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 22 We've got something big going on here. The first thing to hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 24 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Speaker 22 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is now streaming on Hulu. 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd Bezos now, ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep

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Speaker 22 Watch Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundled subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 2 We were never allowed to talk about our mother.

Speaker 2 But Levi and I would talk about it a lot, about what he remembered, about what I remembered, and about how things just didn't add up.

Speaker 2 A year or two before Levi moved out, Levi and I told our father that we knew that he had murdered our mother.

Speaker 2 Levi was around 17 years old, and Carl had heard that Levi was telling people that he Carl had killed his mother. He was arguing with our father and just blurted it out.

Speaker 2 What I remember is Carl just saying, why would you say that I killed your mother? What are the people going to think? Levi, God love him.

Speaker 2 He had a steel spine, so he did not back down. And that only infuriated my father further.
And it resulted in a fist fight in the kitchen.

Speaker 2 After he was jailed, I went to go visit him.

Speaker 2 He wanted to be able to give me a hug or something, and he was very pissed off that he was in this box. And he was trying to convince me that he never would have killed her brother.

Speaker 2 He never would have killed her mom. And I just listened to it for a little bit, and I stopped him.
And I looked at him and I was like, I

Speaker 2 know that you did this, and I know that you killed my mother.

Speaker 2 And he paused, and it was like he completely calmed down. And he looked at me, he smiled like a Cheshire cat.
And he said, It's been 22 years. They haven't caught me yet.

Speaker 2 And they're not going to.

Speaker 12 After he was arrested,

Speaker 12 I was involved as much as I could. I followed every news article

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 12 I was excited. I wanted that thing to go to trial because there was no way he was going to walk off that thing.

Speaker 18 There was no trial in Levi's case.

Speaker 6 After insurance fraud was dropped as a charge, Carlson pleaded guilty.

Speaker 10 Carlson admitted to killing his son.

Speaker 2 It was a huge relief to know that we weren't going to have to go through trial.

Speaker 5 Carl ultimately pleaded to second-degree murder.

Speaker 9 Carl's image is super important.

Speaker 9 I felt that in the New York case, when he saw the witness list, including his own children testifying against him, I think he thought he was going to look bad.

Speaker 12 That was his cowardly way out of not doing that trial.

Speaker 12 That was him in control again.

Speaker 2 As a part of his plea deal, Carlson had to stand up in court and tell the judge exactly what he had done to his son.

Speaker 2 And in this version of the story, he tells the court something more horrifying than we ever thought before.

Speaker 9 He admits that he pushed the truck onto his son.

Speaker 9 He had jacked it up on a wobbly jack, knowing that it was life-threatening for someone to be underneath it, and that Levi was still alive when he left.

Speaker 2 He left his son Levi alive, crushed under that truck,

Speaker 16 and walked away.

Speaker 2 It was devastating for me

Speaker 2 to have my dad admit that. It wasn't just the loss of my brother

Speaker 2 with that one statement. It was the loss of my father too.

Speaker 18 He was sentenced to 15 years to life in the New York State prison system.

Speaker 12 He showed no remorse today. It's like it was a game and

Speaker 10 it wasn't a game. It was people's lives.

Speaker 12 I didn't like the sentence at all. Was my nephew only worth 15 years?

Speaker 10 Some of the Carlson family say there's more work to be done.

Speaker 8 Not here, but in California.

Speaker 10 Then there'd be a turn. Authorities had decided to reopen the investigation into Christina Carlson's death in California back in 1991.

Speaker 5 For all these years,

Speaker 13 I literally thought the man got away with murder

Speaker 20 and there was nothing I could do.

Speaker 6 And the hard part is you never forget.

Speaker 2 I think it really was the media exposure in combination with the New York State Police pushing California. And

Speaker 2 of course the family, my aunt, God love her, my aunt Colette was on them like white on rice to make sure that this happened.

Speaker 2 I definitely ramped up my activities to try and get their attention that, you know, we're still out here, we're still waiting for justice.

Speaker 2 The authorities in California start digging into the case and they unearth evidence that had long been forgotten.

Speaker 18 You start to hear about all these former figures that were at the forefront in 1991 getting contacted again.

Speaker 21 So I pick up the phone and I'm totally surprised to hear about this case has come

Speaker 15 The DA's office in Calaveras County, they contacted me and says, do you know anything about the fire that happened in 1991? And I go, yes.

Speaker 15 And they said, do you know where the records are?

Speaker 10 All these years later, that California fire investigator still had those two boxes of evidence sitting in his basement. and he turned them over to the DA.

Speaker 10 This evening, a brand new development for the 2020 exclusive you saw here first.

Speaker 10 The DA there suddenly announces that they're charging Carl Carlson in the death of his first wife, Christina.

Speaker 9 I was very surprised when California's case went forward.

Speaker 23 That case is 29 years old.

Speaker 9 I knew that those witnesses and that evidence were going to be scrutinized.

Speaker 12 I was very eager to see California's trial play out. We as a family needed to see it play out.

Speaker 2 I submit to you that the Bennett built Christina a coffin and trapped her in there. Christina took her last breath trapped in this coffin.

Speaker 10 It just becomes more unbelievable with every development. No one could have seen where this was going.

Speaker 2 Everybody in the courtroom just kind of sucked in their breath. They were so surprised.

Speaker 5 This was not an accident.

Speaker 2 It was intentional.

Speaker 10 We want to go to trial.

Speaker 2 My mom never stopped believing. She believed from the very beginning that the trial would actually occur, and she's got a very strong faith, you know, and ultimately she was right.

Speaker 18 The trial took place in Calaveras County Superior Court approximately 29 years, almost to the date after Christina Carlson died. died.

Speaker 2 It was heartbreaking to see my dad in the courtroom. He turns and looks at me and smiles.

Speaker 2 Just a normal dad looking and smiling at his daughter and it brought back all of these emotions.

Speaker 2 Christina Alexander Carlson was so many things to so many people.

Speaker 2 The defendant, through cold and calculated measures, extinguished the light that was Christina.

Speaker 2 And he did it on purpose. The prosecution scores an early victory by convincing the judge to allow them to tell jurors about the previous incidents and all the insurance payouts to Carlson.

Speaker 18 I'd say it was absolutely foundational to the setup of their case that the jury know not just about the death of Christina, but about the barn fire, about the car fire, about the death of Levi.

Speaker 9 So when he says, who could do that, who could kill their wife that way? Well, we already know that you killed your son that way.

Speaker 8 Carl has a conviction in New York for the murder of his son.

Speaker 9 I can't argue against that, and I wouldn't try. You're not here to determine whether he's a good and pious man.
That's not your job.

Speaker 10 Your job is to determine if the people have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Carl killed his wife and that he did it for money.

Speaker 18 The first person on the stand was Erin DeRoche.

Speaker 2 She knows what happened. She knows what her father did to her mother.

Speaker 18 She could speak so clearly about the moment that everyone was evaluating.

Speaker 2 I testified about his behavior after getting us out of the house. And of course for the few days following the fire.

Speaker 18 She brought memories of her confronting Carl after his arrest and the death of Levi.

Speaker 18 It doesn't get much more damning than someone who's supposed to love you unconditionally says, I believe he killed my mother. I know he killed my brother.

Speaker 2 I was very nervous to testify. I've never participated in

Speaker 2 anything like this before.

Speaker 10 And it was on the stand that Colette tells jurors this chilling story about the very first conversation she had with Carl Carlson after learning that her sister had died in that fire.

Speaker 2 I went

Speaker 2 into the house and I told him that I wanted to see my sister. And he said, you can't.
She's a crispy critter.

Speaker 2 That was his turn. A crispy critter.
Everybody in the courtroom just kind of sucked in their breath.

Speaker 2 I think he truly believed that my sister had burned up in the house and that there would be no evidence. And he was wrong.

Speaker 2 But some of the most critical testimony came from that fire investigator hired by the insurance company, Ken Buskie.

Speaker 21 The trouble light didn't ignite this. None of the appliances in the home ignited this.
It had to be a person applying a flame to the kerosene.

Speaker 18 Though Carl Carlson barely spoke in person during the trial, the jury heard him a lot.

Speaker 18 They heard recordings that were made over the course of his lifetime regarding the investigation into Christina's death.

Speaker 25 You're not proud of getting money from someone's death. Not proud? Well, I'll tell you where pride comes into it.
You break the wall down, you pull your

Speaker 25 hammer.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen,

Speaker 2 the defendant had a motive. His motive in this case was greed.

Speaker 2 Greed.

Speaker 18 The defense was

Speaker 18 questioning the validity of what happened.

Speaker 7 We all know that that evidence

Speaker 9 is 29 years old.

Speaker 2 The defense's argument seemed to be that if the case wasn't strong enough back in 1991,

Speaker 2 what would make anything different now?

Speaker 9 This case was ignored 29 years ago.

Speaker 10 It was brought to them.

Speaker 17 They looked at it.

Speaker 9 They said, nope, pass, there's nothing here.

Speaker 2 I was looking forward to it being done with, and it was the end of week three

Speaker 2 when the jurors were finally able to go and deliberate.

Speaker 12 I really thought this would drag out much longer than it did.

Speaker 12 Jury came out and said they had a verdict.

Speaker 5 We, the jury, find the defendant, Carl Holger Carlson guilty of murder in the first degree.

Speaker 2 Carlson had no reaction at all. Stone cold.

Speaker 2 In fact, it looked like he almost expected that verdict.

Speaker 2 I've never been more humbled by or grateful to 12 strangers in my entire life.

Speaker 2 It was everything I wanted.

Speaker 12 He very stoically stood up and he walked away. I really wanted wanted to see him look over his shoulder, make eye contact with those two girls, sit

Speaker 12 just by eye, tell them something,

Speaker 12 say something to him.

Speaker 12 Never looked back. He walked away on their mother, walked away on their brother, and he just walked away on them

Speaker 15 again.

Speaker 10 But before Carl would walk away for good, there would be one more unbelievable twist in this case that it's almost impossible to believe.

Speaker 2 I mean, who would take out a life insurance policy on little girls?

Speaker 5 We, the jury, find the defendant Carl Holger Carlson guilty of murder in the first degree of killing Christina A. Carlson.

Speaker 2 The Monday that the jurors came to a verdict was actually Levi's birthday.

Speaker 2 He would have been 35 the day that the guilty verdict came in, my mother's death.

Speaker 2 It was surreal.

Speaker 10 So after all of these years, that fire back in 1991, it was just weeks ago that Carl Carlson finds himself in the Calaveras County Courthouse to hear his sentence.

Speaker 14 In this case, the defendant would be sentenced to state prison for a term of life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 7 I just want to seem

Speaker 20 rotten jail.

Speaker 7 I'm not a vindictive person normally, but in this case I am.

Speaker 20 I can't help it.

Speaker 7 We should have never been investigating the death of Levi. This family went through enough in 1991.
It should have ended then.

Speaker 2 But it turns out that there are people in Carlson's life who think had he not been arrested, he may have been trying to get away with murder yet again.

Speaker 9 After Carl collected on Levi's death, additional policies are taken out on the two granddaughters.

Speaker 2 Dad had life insurance policies out on both of my brother's daughters.

Speaker 9 Levi's widow said that she had recently got a visit from Carl after many, many months of no contact at all, wanting to renew his contacts with his granddaughters and get them out to the farm.

Speaker 2 Most people don't even realize that you could take out life insurance policies on your grandchildren.

Speaker 2 I was scared half to death an accident was going to happen with one of them.

Speaker 2 Eventually, Cindy cashed out those policies to make sure that there was nothing hanging over the heads of her granddaughters.

Speaker 2 It's a relief to know that we don't have to worry for ourselves, for our children, for our nieces, for our nephews.

Speaker 9 It felt really good that some justice was finally done for this family.

Speaker 17 It's way overdue.

Speaker 2 I found these. This is the first time Erin and Aunt Colette have seen them in a long time.

Speaker 2 But they are her rings.

Speaker 2 This is her class ring.

Speaker 2 She's teeny tiny little fingers. My sister was real small.
I mean I don't think anything

Speaker 2 you know of any value, real monetary value, but it's got obviously the sentimental value for us.

Speaker 10 There were so many twists and turns in this case and one of the things that I think brings real comfort to the family is that Levi is now buried right next to his mother Christina in Murphys, California.

Speaker 2 They are actually together in Murphy's. I'm very happy that he got to be buried next to mom.

Speaker 2 I go and I sit and just wonder if I've done enough for her kids. I tried to make sure that they knew their mother through me.

Speaker 2 And now, you know, with Levi there,

Speaker 2 they're there together.

Speaker 1 And you can find all all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday Nights at 9 on ABC.