Deputy discusses murder case from 20 years ago
Published 6:36 pm Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Twenty years ago a 17-year-old girl was shot to death in front of her Selma home on March 25, 1995.
Angela Marshall was allegedly shot several times by her boyfriend, Kevin Lamont Carter, who had just been released from the Dallas County Jail after serving an 18-month sentence for first-degree rape.
“It was just a typical March day. It was clear and sun shining,” said Dallas County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Hamner, who was a sergeant with the Selma Police Department at the time.
To this day, Marshall’s murder still gets to Hamner because he believes Carter had no business being released from jail in the first place.
“An adult co-conspirator is how I was involved in it. I was working adult felonies, and an adult and a juvenile were arrested for a firearm point rape of an adult female,” Hamner said.
Hamner said Carter was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail, but he should have been sentenced to more.
“This is where the state of Alabama falls short. The young lady was distraught and went home, and she happened to live in, I want to say, Colorado. The state of Alabama after the second or third time they flew her back from Colorado and put her up in a hotel here … the state of Alabama would no longer fund her airplane trip,” Hamner said.
Hamner said there wasn’t much the district attorney’s office could do, so they offered Carter a plea deal.
“They offered him a plea to 18 months to serve in the county jail, and then supervised probation after that. That is why he got out after 18 months,” Hamner said. “So he gets out of jail, and the next day Angela Marshall was dead. We immediately developed him as a suspect.”
Carter allegedly drove to Marshall’s house and called her to come to his car. As she approached the vehicle, Carter allegedly fire several shots, killing her in front of her home with their one and a half-year-old child in the car with him.
Hamner said Carter’s car was found in the county, but it was too late. He was already long gone.
“It was just a frustrated feeling when the sheriff’s department finds the car, and I go up there to where the car is,” Hamner said.
“The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department … did a tremendous amount of help for us trying to find him and the car. The car was found out in the county on Deep Woods Road just south of Spring Valley Road. There were woods all over the place. We looked for footprints; we looked for everything we could think of with tracking dogs. We just couldn’t find him.”
Hamner finally got a lead that Carter had family in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“This was obviously a very high priority for me. We developed some information that led to a relative of his in Fort Wayne,” Hamner recalled.
“Fort Wayne wouldn’t do anything. They kept telling me they had to have a certified copy of the warrant. I sent it to them … and then nobody wanted to do anything until we had a grand jury indictment. We didn’t have a grand jury in panel, [so we told them] we’d get one as soon as the next grand jury comes up next month. We did, and we sent that off and they wouldn’t go get him. By the time we were doing all this … he just vanishes.”
Hamner said U.S. Marshals knew where Carter was, but they couldn’t go after him without going through the proper channels.
Carter eventually fled after he found out law enforcement knew his location, according to Hamner.
Twenty years later, Carter is still on the run, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has increased the reward to $50,000 for information that leads to his arrest.
According to FBI Special Agent Jessica Foran, the reward was increased to expedite Carter’s apprehension. Foran said the FBI hopes the increased reward will solicit cooperation from family members, friends and associates.
Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said this case might be submitted to “Cold Cases,” a television show that tries to solve unsolved crimes.
Anyone with information on Carter’s whereabouts is asked to call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or the U.S. Marshals Service at (334) 223-7401.