The last day of Beverly Carter‘s life was pretty good, until it wasn’t. The 50-year-old realtor, married for more than 30 years to her husband Carl Carter, had a great day. She was busy at work and even won $50 in an office competition. She didn’t know that her cheerful mood would turn into horror after a couple murdered her in an extremely grisly way.
Before her kidnapping, she called her husband to say that she just had one more showing before calling it a day. She’d do the showing, and then she’d bring dinner home. Her husband didn’t know that was the last time they would ever speak.
The couple, convicted criminal Arron Lewis and his wife Crystal Lowery, posed as a married couple who just moved to the area. The plan all along was to kidnap and demand a ransom for Beverly, because she was “a woman that worked alone – a rich broker.” That plan fell apart quickly due to poor planning and general stupidity.
What happened to Beverly Carter?
It was around 6 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2014 when Beverly Carter pulled up to 14202 Old River Drive in the town of Scott, Arkansas. The 50-year-old was a high-volume realtor, with sales of around $12 million the previous year.
She parked her brown Cadillac SUV in the driveway and waited. When her husband didn’t hear from her for a few hours, he went to the property himself, around 9 p.m. There was the SUV in the driveway, with Beverly’s purse inside. Weirdly, nothing was missing. The door to the residence was ajar, but there was no one around, although he searched the house thoroughly. He contacted police who quickly got to work.
By the next morning, the house was a full on crime scene, cordoned off with police tape with a forensics vehicle in the driveway. Real estate agencies closed offices for the day and agents prowled the area handing out fliers, hoping for some sort of sign that Beverly was OK. It never came.
On Sept. 28, three days after Beverly’s disappearance, authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of the 33-year-old Arron Lewis. He was charged with capital murder, robbery and kidnapping. Beverly’s body was found in a shallow grave at a nearby concrete plant. Police said they used cell phone data between Beverly’s phone and her kidnappers to solve the case.
The line about Beverly being a “just a woman that worked alone?” Arron told that to reporters as he was transported from jail to the sheriff’s office. Details of the case were kept under wraps for months, until Arron’s wife Crystal was arrested.
She sang like a canary to save her own feathers and agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping in exchange for testifying against her husband. It was Crystal’s testimony that revealed just how harrowing Beverly’s final days turned out to be.
In court, Crystal revealed that Arron wanted to do the kidnapping because he was unemployed, and the couple had broken up and needed to get out of the house. They planned the kidnapping for two weeks, staking out houses that were remote and lacked security.
Arron’s plan was doomed from the start. He was in possession of a credit card machine, and he would transfer the ransom money to a credit card he’d make with the machine. If you think that plan sounds really dumb, you are right.
They couple targeted jobs that people did alone – salesperson, mail carrier or, of course, real estate agent. They went with the latter because they thought that’s who would have the most money. They needed someone married. Arron found Beverly online.
After Lowery bound and gagged Beverly, he put her in the trunk of his car. The plan was to hold her at a nearby concrete plant, but when Arron got to the plant he realized that would be impossible, even though he had staked it out before.
With nowhere to go, he brought her back to his house and put her in the bathroom. They made Beverly record a voice message, pleading with her husband do what Arron said and not contact police. They never sent the message, opting instead to simply kill her. Beverly’s husband heard the message after his wife’s death.
The couple wanted money but Beverly didn’t have any, so Arron drove back to the crime scene to get her ATM card. It was impossible though, because there were already authorities everywhere. When asked why she didn’t let Beverly go when Arron left, she said she was more “worried about getting caught.”
When Arron came back and relayed the situation at the crime scene, he told Crystal that he had to “take [Beverly] out of the house and take care of things.” (This is per Crystal’s testimony, by the way.)
Arron said Beverly may have seen his face, and Crystal was worried that Beverly saw some medicine bottles in the bathroom with her name on them. She hid while Arron removed a terrified Beverly and put her back in the car.
How was Realtor Beverly Carter killed?
At around 3 a.m., Arron texted Crystal and said “you sure you want me to do this?” She texted back “do whatever you want. Good night.”
“I’m asking you,” he replied. She answered angrily: “such a f*****g waste of time. Why don’t you f**k her too?”
“You need to chill,” he said.
“Whatever,” she said back. “It don’t take that long to do what you need to do. I’m not helping anymore.”
The details of the murder are courtesy of deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani during Arron’s trial. Barbara went through “Unspeakable, terrifying, suffering.”
“She died a horrible, terrifying death that no one deserves,” the prosecutor said. “Beverly loved her life. The last thing Beverly experienced was unspeakable terror at that man’s hands.”
Arron drove her to the concrete plant and wrapped Beverly’s face in six layers of green duct tape.
The prosecutor said Beverly took about five minutes to die. She went unconscious after 90 seconds of desperately trying to breathe. It was incredibly painful, and her body convulsed for an additional three minutes, until she was “finally released from that emotional and physical terror by death.”
When Arron returned home, he told Crystal “Look, I’m not f****d up about it. I don’t have a conscience. I can turn it of and on like a switch.” He said he walked Beverly to the edge of the grass, and watched her die.
The couple went to Walmart to buy a shovel and topsoil. They drove back to the body and buried it in a hasty, shallow grave. Then they went to Waffle House.
At the end of the trial, a jury deliberated for less than an hour and brought back a guilty verdict. Arron was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Crystal pleaded to the lesser charges and got 30 years. She recently applied for clemency to shorten her sentence, but it was denied.
The murder sparked changes to the real estate agency as a whole. The Arkansas Realtors Association now trains realtors on safety practices. It recommends using a buddy system when showing houses, and meeting clients at a neutral location first.