BONUS: Wrong Turn (The Real Murders of Orange County)

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Speaker 11 Hi, Snap listeners. We're bringing you a special bonus episode today from Oxygen's hit series, The Real Murders of Orange County, which returned this past weekend.

Speaker 11 Watch the Real Murders of Orange County on Sundays at 8-7 Central on Oxygen. Or you can watch full episodes live or on demand on the free Oxygen app by clicking the link in our description.

Speaker 12 Enjoy.

Speaker 13 It was a beautiful morning when I received the phone call. I did not understand what was going on.

Speaker 2 A shocking murder no one saw coming.

Speaker 14 Execution-style shootings are very unusual in Orange County.

Speaker 15 In Fountain Valley, it was no exaggeration to say this was a turning point. It became a test to the safety of the community.

Speaker 2 A similar crime unearths even more questions.

Speaker 17 What possibly could be the connection?

Speaker 13 It made no sense at all.

Speaker 14 Fountain Valley was unable to identify anything. It was a dead end.

Speaker 18 That person is out there somewhere.

Speaker 2 As two vicious acts of violence threaten this picture-perfect community, any wrong turns could be deadly.

Speaker 14 They got themselves caught up with a guy that was very evil. evil.

Speaker 15 When I first got to Orange County, I felt that there was a certain Stepford quality to it. Fountain Valley is one of those California communities that has a sort of master plan, cookie-cutter feel.

Speaker 15 These communities are planned meticulously and they're laid out on a grid.

Speaker 15 A local joke, the cops say, is that if you go home drunk, make sure that when you walk into the house, you're walking in the right one.

Speaker 2 Fountain Valley, Orange County's best kept secret. A community designed and built around an idealistic vision of OC perfection.

Speaker 2 A place where families rising through the upper middle class can claim their own perfect piece of the California dream.

Speaker 2 Jane and Al Carver found their place here, living out a sun-kissed fairy tale with a big house, happy kids, great friends, all part of the master plan.

Speaker 19 This is my dad and my mom on their wedding day.

Speaker 8 My parents were very much in love and

Speaker 8 also very much opposite. My dad, he was director of operations at a healthcare company.
And my mom became a flight attendant out of Los Angeles.

Speaker 8 My dad was more of a conservative-minded, take-the-the-caution approach. And my mom is a little bit more adventurous.
And I think that that balance in their personalities attract each other.

Speaker 13 Jane Carver was my best friend. We met in Stu School.
in 1969.

Speaker 16 We all started flying together in the same year with United Airlines. Janie just was fun and spunky and easy to work with.
The group of us got nicknamed the Yaya's because we flew together so much.

Speaker 16 We just had a good time.

Speaker 17 People were just drawn to Janie because she had this twinkle in her eye that drew people in.

Speaker 20 And most all of our friends lived in Fountain Valley, so we drove to work together and we made plans with our families.

Speaker 5 She was just an incredible mom.

Speaker 5 Really fun-loving and laughing all the time and joking and like just making the best of life. You could watch from the outside and just be like, wow, she's got it.

Speaker 8 We traveled a lot. I can recall going to Hong Kong.
We went to Europe. She was very spontaneous in her approach to travel.

Speaker 5 We were studying the presidents or the capitals or something like that, and she was working and going on a trip to Washington, D.C.

Speaker 5 She was like, hey, we're going to skip school today, and I'm going to go show you the real thing. So let's go.

Speaker 17 Running was her escape.

Speaker 18 She always wanted to be on the go.

Speaker 17 She didn't sit much.

Speaker 13 Jane just enjoyed life.

Speaker 2 The Carvers couldn't know that their master plan for the good life was about to go horribly wrong.

Speaker 15 On June 10th, 1995, the Carvers wake up. Jane goes for a run, and she runs right into a nightmare.

Speaker 15 Jane is about a block from home, and then suddenly she's confronted.

Speaker 15 A man appears out of nowhere and shoots her in the face.

Speaker 18 There was one shot. She falls down, and this man looks briefly, turns around, gets back to his car, and drives off.
And there are witnesses across the street that can hardly believe what happened.

Speaker 15 The witnesses describe the gunman as being very calm, sort of casual.

Speaker 15 Al Carver hears the sirens coming and he steps outside his home trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 15 Jane Carver was so close to being back at the house from her run that the crime scene is within yards of their front door.

Speaker 13 I received a phone call from Al Carver who was choking up on the phone. It was hard to understand what he was saying that Jane had been shot.

Speaker 17 I ran around the corner. Al was just a mess.
You could read the pain on his face.

Speaker 17 He just looked at me and he said, she's gone. She's really gone.

Speaker 15 I heard it on the police scanner and came to the scene. It was a lot of commotion and I was trying to take it all in.
People were still talking about a gunman on the loose.

Speaker 18 It was hard to fathom the fact that someone would walk up and basically execute this woman in broad daylight, well-traveled street, and all of a sudden that sense of safety in the community is absolutely shattered.

Speaker 18 There wasn't much to go on at the time. Evidence-wise, we had to rely on what the witness statements were.

Speaker 15 There's six witnesses at the scenes who describe the gunman, and their descriptions are fairly consistent. Suspect was wearing a brown or tweed sports coat with a high-neck shirt and dark pants.

Speaker 15 He's between 30 and 40, receding hairline.

Speaker 18 We had a forensic artist that we typically used, and she came in and did the composites with two witnesses. The car was a 1978 to 1984 two-door hatchback.
It was white.

Speaker 18 And at that time, we went and searched, but we didn't find the suspect or the car. We collected one bullet casing at the scene.
There was very little evidence.

Speaker 15 The crime just doesn't add up.

Speaker 15 She wasn't robbed. There was nothing here that explained why this woman had been shot.

Speaker 2 In an instant, this sunny Saturday morning became the worst day in the Carvers' lives and would change this OC enclave forever.

Speaker 17 Justin had been asleep through this whole thing. Eve was 14 at the time.

Speaker 17 And that just broke my heart. I couldn't imagine how Al could possibly tell Justin that about his mother.

Speaker 8 It was like a dream to me. It was really...

Speaker 8 Your life has changed like that.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was a tough day.

Speaker 8 Really tough day.

Speaker 5 I was 20 years old. I was a sophomore at Oregon State University.
I got that phone call and I felt like I was racing to the airport, but I felt like I couldn't drive fast enough.

Speaker 5 Everything was in slow motion.

Speaker 17 Why would that happen? Why would anybody shoot Janie of all people?

Speaker 17 This didn't make any sense at all.

Speaker 2 In a tight-knit haven like Fountain Valley, the best resource could be the friends she held in closest confidence.

Speaker 2 Perhaps there was some secret conflict brewing beneath the perfect Orange County surface presented by the Carvers.

Speaker 18 You can't assume that anybody is excluded initially. And that was my responsibility to interview family and friends because this was a large effort to try to find information.

Speaker 18 I had to ask Al in that initial interview, did he have anything to do with this murder? Did he know anybody who had anything to do with it? He was devastated.

Speaker 18 It was very clear, but we just didn't know. Elle was very open right from the beginning.
There wasn't any question that he didn't answer.

Speaker 18 His friends also corroborated the fact that Elle was in his home when this occurred.

Speaker 13 We were all in a state of shock, not knowing what to do. The police came over and each one of us was interviewed individually.

Speaker 13 They just wanted to get a sense on what we did that morning and who Jane was.

Speaker 17 We tried to think about something she might have said to us.

Speaker 14 Did she she talk about anybody on the plane bothering her?

Speaker 17 You know, any incident where somebody was angry with her, but nothing. Couldn't even wrap your head around the whole scenario.

Speaker 15 They have an idea what the suspect looks like. They don't know what the motive could be.

Speaker 18 They were convinced it was a contract hit.

Speaker 15 Even when you get to the bottom of this mystery, there's another twist.

Speaker 14 A man had called her and he was demanding to be paid.

Speaker 18 There's another shooting that happens. This might have a connection.

Speaker 2 Jane Carver's OC dream was cut short in a senseless execution, leaving everyone in her community chasing the fragments of its now shattered perfection.

Speaker 18 Homicides don't happen in Fountain Valley. Jane's murder was the only one at that time in 1995.

Speaker 2 Could this idyllic place have forever veered from its master plan?

Speaker 15 In the weeks after Jane Carver's murder, it was no exaggeration to say that this was a turning point. It became a test to the reputation and the safety of the community.

Speaker 15 Everybody either knew Jane Carver or knew her name. The one thing nobody knew is why was she dead?

Speaker 2 Fear spread as whispers and speculation were at the tip of every tongue and the top of every news headline. Could it be someone Jane knew? Or if it was random, what or who could be next?

Speaker 18 From witness statements, we were told that this person had been seen parked in the area prior to the incident. So therefore, we considered that it could possibly be a stocking situation.

Speaker 15 Was it some grudge or secret relationship? Every single theory was being thrown around. There was nothing ruled out.

Speaker 15 You really have to feel for Al Carver because, I mean, not only has he lost his wife, he's also not oblivious to the fact that people are looking at him in a different way.

Speaker 15 They say there's a thin line between love and hate, but there's an even thinner line between marriage and murder.

Speaker 18 At one point, I was having lunch in this deli, and there were two women talking about the case, and they were convinced it was a contract hit done by her husband. Al Carver was an open book.

Speaker 18 Anything we needed to do or asked of him, he was more than willing to cooperate. He did take a polygraph and he he passed the polygraph.

Speaker 18 It was straightforward and very uncomfortable, but it was something that had to be done. Even though it's not admissible in court, it did confirm my belief that L was not involved.

Speaker 8 We all knew that my dad had nothing to do with it, but it was a process we were willing to do. I mean, at that point, we wanted answers, and all you can do is provide as much as you can.

Speaker 2 And so the Carver case was becoming a true murder mystery in the eyes of the public. As the pressure mounted, would they ever find justice for Jamie?

Speaker 17 The day of the funeral was packed house, standing room only.

Speaker 23 We were there for support for the family.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 15 it was difficult for all of us.

Speaker 8 You needed to kind of just regroup and think about what the heck just happened and what do we do now?

Speaker 8 What's life going to be like?

Speaker 5 There was a void, but there were so many people there to make sure that we were going to be okay.

Speaker 13 We came back from the funeral and we were trying to figure out what to do. How can we help Fountain Valley Police Department solve this?

Speaker 5 Well, they got a composite drawer, they got a face, and they got the car, but they don't have the guy.

Speaker 5 So everyone like decided, okay, let's print thousands of these flyers and we're gonna blanket Orange County. Maybe we can get some leads this way.

Speaker 18 Because so many people wanted to help, I had to organize them into groups. There were more than were employed by the Fountain Valley Police Department.

Speaker 22 About 100 people met at Miles Square Park to pick up flyers bearing a composite sketch of Carver's alleged killer and distribute them to area businesses.

Speaker 22 They're sure someone out there knows who he is.

Speaker 2 Friends of Jane Jane would stop at nothing to shake out this killer and restore a sense of safety to their sunny streets.

Speaker 13 We would meet every Saturday and pick out certain areas. We would go door to door.

Speaker 12 We went to bars.

Speaker 20 We went to hair salons.

Speaker 12 Every place in the strip mall, laundromats, it didn't matter. Anyone that would let us put up a flyer, we were happy to do it.

Speaker 15 I mean, they got busy and it was an impressive thing to see. They started raising money.
And the airline that Jane Carver had worked for kicked in $10,000 to help catch the killer.

Speaker 15 They wanted to get to the bottom of this.

Speaker 18 The reward fund kept increasing and it went up to $45,000. You're talking $19.95.

Speaker 12 That's a lot of money.

Speaker 5 It was an amazing effort, and it was really cool to see a community come together for a family.

Speaker 15 The support of our friends and the community is really what's giving me the strength to

Speaker 4 keep going here.

Speaker 15 If crimes could be solved by concern, the murder of Jane Carver would have been an open and shut case within a day.

Speaker 15 You could have as much money as you want, but in this case, the police couldn't even buy a clue. They had no leads at all.

Speaker 20 Yes, we were disappointed because we felt that our hard work

Speaker 12 was just not getting us anywhere.

Speaker 19 Time heals in one sense, but until you catch the person, time is worse. The thought crossed our minds is this may be a cold case, this may never get solved.

Speaker 2 10 months crawled by and investigators were no closer to any answers. But a case without answers can often turn cold.

Speaker 18 The case does go cold and it wanes.

Speaker 18 We were very hopeful that we might get that one break to help us.

Speaker 18 On April 10th, 1996, there was another shooting that occurred in San Clemente, which appeared very similar to our case with Jane Carver.

Speaker 10 An individual is going to his business, and as he arrived, he was met by someone who shot him one time in the face and left the scene.

Speaker 18 Another investigator saw a flyer and thought it appeared to have an MO very similar to our case with Jane Carver.

Speaker 2 The random murder of Jane Carver had shaken a perfectly planned OC community and left friends, family, and investigators seeking elusive answers.

Speaker 2 But a similar attack in South Orange County was about to rock its foundation to the core.

Speaker 15 Ten months after Jane Carver's murder, something interesting happens. About 30 miles south, investigators are looking into another act of violence.

Speaker 14 On April 10th, 1996, I responded to the city of San Clemente shortly after a subject by the name of James Wingert

Speaker 14 had been shot in the face and surprisingly survived.

Speaker 14 The suspect did not ask for money, in fact said nothing to Wingert, but instead shot him in the face without comment or warning

Speaker 14 and then turned and left.

Speaker 14 Execution-style shooting is very unusual in Orange County.

Speaker 14 My lieutenant made an off-the-cuff remark. The only one he could recall had occurred almost a year earlier, a jogger, Jane Carver, who had been killed in Fountain Valley.

Speaker 14 When we were able to interview him, James Wingert immediately focused our investigation on someone that he had been having contentious business dealings with by the name of Coleman Allen and felt that that person was responsible.

Speaker 14 James Wingert was a businessman and had no criminal record.

Speaker 14 But at the time of James Wingert's shooting, he had borrowed a significant amount of money from Cole Allen to try and keep his business afloat.

Speaker 14 Cole Allen had required Wingert to take out a very large life insurance policy that listed Cole Allen as the beneficiary.

Speaker 14 And the amount of the life insurance policy was almost three times the amount owed.

Speaker 14 In any circumstance, hearing someone is obtaining life insurance policies on people that owe them money, this set off some significant alarm bells for us.

Speaker 14 This is the thing you see on a television show or reading a book, but certainly not a crime in Orange County, California.

Speaker 2 Was it possible that Cole Allen was behind two brutal crimes that tore at the tailored fabric of Orange County? Could Janie Carver's shooting have been a murder for hire?

Speaker 2 And if so, how had she become tangled up in this nefarious plot?

Speaker 14 Two other law enforcement agencies in Southern California had active investigations targeting Cole Allen for fraud and financial crimes in a very sophisticated way.

Speaker 15 Coleman Allen runs a company called Premium Commercial in Huntington Beach, and this company specializes in making loans, often to small business people.

Speaker 14 He did sell them a form of hope. This would be like a bridge loan to get them up on their feet.

Speaker 14 But with the high interest rates that he charged and the payment demands that he made, very quickly, hope turned into a nightmare.

Speaker 15 There's an air of Tony Soprano to all this. It was very clear when the money was due, and it was also made clear that if that money wasn't in, there was going to be consequences.

Speaker 14 Cole Allen would use the repayment of these loans as a means to blackmail his clients in a very elaborate loan sharking scheme.

Speaker 15 So he would take out insurance policies on the people who owed him money and make himself and his company the beneficiaries.

Speaker 15 So now you have a situation where someone is going to spend the rest of their life paying this money.

Speaker 15 And then when they're done paying them, then they're going to die and then they're going to pay him some more.

Speaker 14 That was one of the scams that Signal Hill Police Department as well as the Los Angeles Police Department were looking at is Cole Allen forcing his clients to purchase life insurance and then was he profiting by having those clients murdered?

Speaker 14 When we started making arrangements to go and interview Cole Allen, we learned Cole Allen had died of a massive heart attack a couple of days before Wingert had in fact been shot.

Speaker 14 It was extremely frustrating. It raised more questions and it provided answers.

Speaker 14 We still conducted searches at his business to attempt to locate records that might lead us to who might have shot James Wingert.

Speaker 2 As the investigation uncovered a seedy motive in the cold-blooded attack on Wengert, detectives couldn't help but recognize the overt similarities to the murder of Jane Carver.

Speaker 14 We decided to reach out to Fountain Valley Police Department and ask them to start checking for any connections between the Carver family and Cole Allen or Premium Commercial.

Speaker 15 There's enough on the surface of the two shootings that police are looking into whether or not there's a connection there. In both cases, the attacker shot the victim in the face before walking away.

Speaker 14 This was something that breathed a little air back into the investigation.

Speaker 17 There was talk that perhaps the Carvers had taken out a loan, and that was not true.

Speaker 19 I had never heard of Cole Allen in my entire life.

Speaker 17 What could possibly be the connection there?

Speaker 17 But the police thought it was such an oddity.

Speaker 19 It actually led to more questioning, and truthfully, it led to a lot of disappointment.

Speaker 14 Fountain Valley was unable to identify anything that remotely linked Jane Carver with Cole Allen. It was a dead end.

Speaker 15 It seemed as if this lead really had been snuffed out before it could even go anywhere.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's a little bit of panic there. We just didn't know if it was ever going to be solved.

Speaker 8 There's all these different phases that you go through, and anger was one of them.

Speaker 8 Why us?

Speaker 15 Why her?

Speaker 8 Why us as a family?

Speaker 8 It was difficult, though, because who are you angry with besides, I guess, God?

Speaker 8 These feelings that we went through, my dad and brother, and I, it lasted weeks, months. It was drawn out.

Speaker 12 Kim Brown, I remember her giving us hope, saying, we will find this person.

Speaker 12 You just have to be patient. We believed Kim, but our patience was really dwindling and we needed closure.

Speaker 2 Fountain Valley residents wondered if their perfection could ever return. But the lack of leads in two horrific crimes seemed to hold little promise.

Speaker 15 The Jane Carver case has gone cold and then the Wangert attack, especially with the death of Cole Allen, that's gone cold. It doesn't look promising but then something happens.

Speaker 15 10 days after the shooting of James Wingert, Cole Allen's widow gets a phone call

Speaker 15 and the person that's on the phone identifies himself as the trigger man.

Speaker 14 The shooter believed Wingert had in fact died on that garage floor and he was seeking payment as Cole was dead.

Speaker 14 Everything indicated that Cole Allen likely hired someone to kill James Wingert for the life insurance payout. I needed to ascertain who this person was.

Speaker 14 Who did Cole Allen hire to shoot James Wingert?

Speaker 18 Let's go!

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Speaker 2 I don't like it.

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You know, you're not.

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Speaker 14 No one sues the bottom.

Speaker 16 They all go for the top.

Speaker 2 Can I have the crazy pill that y'all took?

Speaker 20 Apparently, you're already taking it.

Speaker 7 The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, September 16th, I'm Bravo. And streaming, I'm Peacock.

Speaker 6 How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

Speaker 6 When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Speaker 25 Are we really safe?

Speaker 21 Is our water safe?

Speaker 2 You destroyed our top.

Speaker 6 And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

Speaker 1 We call things accidents. There is no accident.
This was 100%

Speaker 8 preventable. They're the result of choices by people.

Speaker 6 Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Speaker 6 Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the earth or destroy it.

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Speaker 2 The surprise death of Orange County's most dangerous loan shark, Cole Allen, left detectives at a dead end.

Speaker 2 Jane Carver's brutal execution and the near-fatal attempt on James Wingert's life were like eerie mirrors of each other.

Speaker 2 Was this a random reflection, or did the surface match reveal a deeper connection?

Speaker 14 About 10 days after James Wingert had been shot, Cole Allen's widow contacted law enforcement.

Speaker 14 to report that a man had called her, indicated he shot someone at the direction of Cole Allen, and he was demanding to be paid. The caller was identified as Paul Aileen.

Speaker 14 We were able to find business records from Premium Commercial that tied Paul Aline directly to Cole Allen.

Speaker 15 Paul Aline is a man who is in desperate straits. Paul Aline owns an auto parts store and he also owes money to Coleman Allen.
He's borrowed $30,000 with 36% interest compounded annually.

Speaker 15 This is a man who is under the gun.

Speaker 2 Could Paul Aline's insurmountable obligation to Cole Allen have forced his hand to commit murder?

Speaker 2 A debt forgiven in exchange for an unforgivable act?

Speaker 14 Who showed a photographic lineup to James Wingert,

Speaker 14 and he positively identified Paul Eline as the person who shot him in the face?

Speaker 15 Suddenly, things are starting to make sense. Dots are being connected.
They pick him up and they bring bring him in. They hope that Paula Leene is the key that's going to unlock the door to this case.

Speaker 14 During the interview of Paula Leene, he continued to deny any involvement in the shooting of James Wingert.

Speaker 14 So I challenged him on that and in fact told him that James Wingert had not died on that garage floor. This got a visible reaction from Aline, who seemed to be surprised.

Speaker 14 He composed himself rather quickly and then said, well, it's a racial thing. Us black guys must all look alike to an old white dude.

Speaker 14 It was then that I reminded him I had never described James Wingert to him. The only reason he knew he was an old white dude was because he was the shooter.

Speaker 14 I concluded the interview while I went out into the office and asked Fountain Valley to use Paul Aline's photograph. in a lineup with their witnesses.

Speaker 14 I was hopeful that if Aline was the person shooting James Wingert for Cole Allen, maybe he had been involved in shooting Jane Carver as well. It was a long shot.

Speaker 14 But you have to just touch every base in hopes that you find the right answers.

Speaker 15 News gets back to Fountain Valley about the arrest of Paula Leene and the hope surges. This is what people have been waiting for.
This feels like a break in the case.

Speaker 18 We were very hopeful that this was our suspect, too. Unfortunately, Paula Paula Leene's picture and description did not match our suspect.

Speaker 18 It was disappointing.

Speaker 14 He was not picked out by the eyewitnesses as the shooter of Jane Carver.

Speaker 14 Back to square one for Fountain Valley and I had to prepare for the prosecution of Paula Leene for shooting Wingert.

Speaker 18 The case consumes you. I'm thinking innocent victim, mother of two children, loved by everybody with absolutely no reason to be killed.
This guy has to be out there. He just has to be out there.

Speaker 19 We as a family, we're also concerned that we never find this person.

Speaker 17 Here's the angel pin that we got from one of our friends that she brought them to everybody.

Speaker 13 And then we all started wearing the angel pins because Jane was our angel looking over us.

Speaker 23 We wore them to work on our uniform.

Speaker 12 We wore them every day on our little lapels.

Speaker 12 We hoped for something good to happen, but we were so afraid that this was going to just be a cold case.

Speaker 19 We were confident in the people that were investigating and sticking with it. We really were.
We knew they were adamant about catching this person.

Speaker 19 But at the same time, without any leads, it was tough. We knew it was tough for them.

Speaker 2 Hope, however fleeting, would not be lost, thanks to the relentless determination of one of OC's finest.

Speaker 15 Christine Murray was going through the transcripts of the interrogation, Paula Leene. And there on that page, when she reads this piece of information, it hits her like a thunderbolt.

Speaker 14 I found this little nugget of information, maybe a little piece of hope for Fountain Valley and Jane Carver.

Speaker 14 Near the end of the tape, tape, Paul Eline made an offhanded remark to my partner that Cole Allen was mad at a guy named Leonard Mundy because Leonard shot the wrong person once.

Speaker 15 It turns out that Coleman Allen had sent another person to do a job and it didn't go well. Could that have been the shooting of Jane Carver?

Speaker 14 There was some inquiry by my partner as who was this? What do you mean he shot the wrong person? Elene did not have any details.

Speaker 14 Hearing this on the tape, what other murder happened that I didn't know about?

Speaker 14 Who was the wrong person that got shot?

Speaker 14 And who is Leonard Mundy?

Speaker 2 Would one last lead help detectives find justice for Jane? Or would her murder be left unsolved?

Speaker 14 Who is Leonard Monday and who did Leonard shoot?

Speaker 2 A twisted piece of the puzzle in the James Wangert attack revealed that there may be another shooter out there doing the dirty work of Cole Allen.

Speaker 14 I started going through all of the documents we had seized from Premium Commercial, but now instead of looking for a needle in a haystack, we needed to find Leonard Mundy's connection to Cole Allen and the business, and could it have anything to do with Fountain Valley?

Speaker 15 Leonard Mundy is another small businessman, and he's taken out a loan from Coleman Allen. In fact, he's taken out two.
There's a $40,000 loan, and then a month later, another one.

Speaker 15 These are not numbers that he can handle. He is in a race to the bottom.
There's nothing about Leonard Mundy's background that suggests that he's a violent man or a criminal.

Speaker 15 But, you know, things change, especially when people are desperate.

Speaker 2 But beyond the now clear connection between Cole Allen and Leonard Mundy, a more tenuous link was about to reveal itself as investigators tore through the filing cabinets at Cole Allen's business, Premium Commercial.

Speaker 14 I came across a file.

Speaker 14 That listed a residential location in Fountain Valley and the owners of that property were Margaret and James Wingert. At the time Wingert was shot, they resided in the city of San Clemente.

Speaker 14 So that led me to reach out to the Wingerts, and what I learned was at the time of Jane Carver's murder, the Wingerts did in fact live in Fountain Valley.

Speaker 2 If the Wingerts and the Carvers both lived amidst the planned perfection of Fountain Valley, could there be a more elusive connection?

Speaker 2 Something that tied back to the same slice of Orange County both claimed as their own?

Speaker 14 So I conducted a follow-up interview with the Wingerts and spoke with Margaret Wingert, who went by the name Peggy.

Speaker 14 And Peggy told me that her husband and Cole Allen had used their home in Fountain Valley as collateral to secure the business loan James Wingert obtained from Cole Allen without her knowledge.

Speaker 14 And in fact, had forged her signature. Cole Allen had been attempting to seize that house against the debt Wingert had accrued.

Speaker 14 And as a result, Peggy filed a civil lawsuit against Cole Allen for fraudulent business practices. And that suit was underway in June of 1995.

Speaker 14 By all accounts, Cole Allen was livid and incensed that Peggy Wingert had the audacity to sue him.

Speaker 14 I looked at a calendar and realized Peggy Wingert was due in court to testify against Cole Allen three to four days after Jane Carver's death.

Speaker 14 Could that have in any way contributed to the murder of Jane Carver?

Speaker 2 This new discovery was soaked in mystery. What had actually connected the dots on June 10th, 1995, in the pockets of this perfectly planned community?

Speaker 14 I decided to go look at the Wingert House in Fountain Valley.

Speaker 14 I had driven by using the northbound 405 freeway and I inadvertently missed the first Brookhurst off-ramp which is what I needed to get to the Wingert home and instead took a cloverleaf or looping off-ramp that pointed me in the direction of the Carver home and that made me start to wonder could someone else have made that same mistake.

Speaker 14 Fountain Valley is a master plan community and many of the residential communities tend to look a little bit alike.

Speaker 14 And I realized if someone told you to turn right when you got off the freeway, take the first turn, pass a park, and the next left takes you into the Wingert residence, those same directions get you to where Jane Carver was shot if you made that mistake on the off-ramp.

Speaker 15 The two houses were almost a mirror image pattern away from the freeway.

Speaker 15 If a driver wasn't a tentative and didn't know whether they were taking the north exit or the south exit, they could have ended up in front of the wrong house.

Speaker 14 And at the time of Jane Carver's murder, Peggy Wingert was Cole Allen's biggest threat.

Speaker 15 What if Jane Carver were killed because the master plan of Fountain Valley had undermined the master plan of Coleman Allen?

Speaker 14 I couldn't get past the gut feeling that led me to call Fountain Valley back and say, I need you to do one more photo lineup for me, and I want you to put in a guy by the name of Leonard Munday.

Speaker 18 When that photo came out there was no doubt that that was our suspect.

Speaker 14 Their witness identified the shooter of Jane Carver as Leonard Mundy.

Speaker 18 I was just so pleased that finally we had found him.

Speaker 14 Fountain Valley was able to get a search warrant of their own for Premium Commercial, looking for documents to tie Leonard Munday to Cole Allen and Peggy Wingert.

Speaker 14 And they found those documents. They very much mirrored the types of documents that Paul Alleen had completed for having shot James Wingert.

Speaker 18 Cole Allen was found to have written off two uncollectable loans and Cole Allen didn't write off loans. Cole Allen got his money back.
He was all about money.

Speaker 2 The paper trail unveiled Cole Allen's insidious greed. Those fueled by desperation would serve as reluctant hitmen to eradicate anyone who dared stand between him and his big payoff.

Speaker 18 It was determined that the SWAT team would serve the warrant for Leonard Mundy up in South LA.

Speaker 18 There was a lot of anticipation. I wanted to see this person responsible for this horrible crime.

Speaker 18 When they brought him out, it was just a culmination of all the time, energy, and effort put into it and being able to give the Carver family some closure.

Speaker 15 The arrest of Leonard Mundy brought to a finish line much of the mystery that surrounded the death of Jane Carver. That's when you really start to see all the moving pieces and how they fit together.

Speaker 18 After his arrest, we needed to talk to him and find out the truth.

Speaker 15 It's even harder to believe now than it was then.

Speaker 2 Nearing the one-year anniversary of Jane Carver's execution, a hidden truth still lingered in the seemingly safe streets of this perfectly planned place.

Speaker 15 Even when you get to the bottom of the mystery, there's another mystery waiting for you, which led to the entire unraveling of this complex riddle.

Speaker 15 What presents itself is that Leonard Mundy was sent to kill somebody, but he ended up killing Jane Carver. What put her in the crosshairs that day? The answer that they find is a tragic one.

Speaker 15 It turns out she's a victim of mistaken identity.

Speaker 14 The actual target on that June day in 1995 was Peggy Wingert.

Speaker 15 Peggy Wingert enraged Coleman Allen. She had brought attention to his criminal enterprises through a lawsuit, and he was furious.
It's not a guy that you want to make angry.

Speaker 15 So he launched an attack and that attack was Leonard Mundy with a gun.

Speaker 14 Leonard Mundy made a wrong turn and shot the wrong person.

Speaker 14 We did go through all the records to see what Cole Allen had identifying Peggy Winger. The only picture we were able to find in the files was an old driver's license photo that had been Xeroxed.

Speaker 18 They may have somewhat size-wise looked alike, but obviously he decided that Jane was his target and whatever amount of money he got was worth taking her life.

Speaker 14 Paula Lean and Leonard Munday weren't sophisticated criminals, but they got caught up with pure evil.

Speaker 27 When he gave you those $40,000 checks, was that like after or before this other incident? Oh, he scared me after.

Speaker 27 He's like a godfather to me. That's what meant you want to have a freak.
An interesting choice of words in the godfather. What did he ask you to do him?

Speaker 27 Being honest, I can't answer. But he did ask you to...
But see, why can't I ask for?

Speaker 14 I would speculate that Cole Allen used these men, commit these assaults, because he could. They were blackmailed into taking actions of an extremely violent nature.

Speaker 14 He could intimidate them, manipulate them, order them around, and he didn't have to pay them.

Speaker 19 The truth came out and it was nothing short of shocking, something that I never would have guessed.

Speaker 13 It was relief, but at the same time, it was the worst kind of scenario because we had nothing to do with his business. Somebody killed Jane thinking that she was somebody else.

Speaker 14 Are you kidding?

Speaker 13 This is what actually happened.

Speaker 19 That at least gives you some sort of, I guess, closure and

Speaker 19 you cross your fingers and hope that justice is served.

Speaker 10 Leonard Monday was convicted of the brutal killing of Jane Carver and then was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 10 Paul Eileen was convicted of shooting James Wingert and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Speaker 19 It was pretty frustrating for us that Alan wasn't alive to see his day in court. I feel from Monday to this day.

Speaker 19 He was in a tough spot and had to make a stupid decision that cost him his life and cost us our mom.

Speaker 15 I'm very relieved with this verdict today. It's a day that we've long awaited.
It

Speaker 15 kind of signals

Speaker 15 the end of a horrible chapter in the life of our family.

Speaker 2 At long last, investigators had delivered some measure of justice for Janie, and the community of Fountain Valley rallied once more around the memory of one of their own.

Speaker 16 After something, you know, so horrible,

Speaker 16 you kind of want it to stand for something, and you don't want people to forget.

Speaker 17 We all thought we would do something that Janie would really appreciate.

Speaker 13 The marathon came together as a way to honor Jane. Jane loved to run.
and she believed in education.

Speaker 13 It was a huge success and the donations that were made for the run were going to be given to some students that needed a scholarship so that they could go on to college.

Speaker 21 The race for Janie raised $75,000 and we had an entry of 1,200 people.

Speaker 14 I think the key to solving this case was the community. The citizens of Fountain Valley, they kept Jane's memory alive.
And because of that, led us to think, is there a relation

Speaker 14 between a San Clemeni shooting and Jane's murder?

Speaker 17 It's painful, but I want her to be remembered so that people know how she was.

Speaker 17 I miss her so much.

Speaker 5 It's never 100% better, but it's just a little bit easier as time goes on.

Speaker 19 We've put our best foot forward and we try and stay positive as a family. And one thing that was important with all this is it brought my dad and my brother and I very close together.

Speaker 19 If my mom were around today, I would like to think she'd be still traveling, hanging out with the grandchildren,

Speaker 2 hopefully

Speaker 19 keeping my dad good company and living life to the fullest. She was good at that.
I'd like to think that would carry on to this day.

Speaker 2 For more information on real murders of Orange County, go to oxygen.com.

Speaker 25 It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

Speaker 2 We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

Speaker 26 And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well researched.

Speaker 28 Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

Speaker 26 With a touch of humor.

Speaker 28 Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapists out there.

Speaker 22 There's been like eight of them.

Speaker 26 A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That motherfuck is not real.

Speaker 26 And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast.

Speaker 25 Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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