# 50: Romantic Hike Ended in Murder

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 5 Oct 2023, 1 h 08 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1517254998.mp3

Today's episode is on Rebecca Wight and Claudia Brenner who in 1988, set off on a romantic hike near the Appalachian trail. As long distance girlfriends, their weekends together were treasured - but neither of them expected this would be their last. When Stephen Roy Carr saw the couple making love in the woods, he was overcome with homophobia-fuelled rage - and launched a devastating attack on them. Trigger warnings: Stalking, sexual assault, homophobia Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:01] In the late 80s, lesbian couple Rebecca Wright and Claudia
[0:05] Brenner were enjoying a hiking and camping trip along the
[0:08] Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately, there were no
[0:11] strangers to homophobia. They'd learned to keep their
[0:14] romantic relationship low key and under wraps in public, since
[0:18] people didn't often react well back then.
[0:20] They'd been victims of verbal abuse for it before, but on this
[0:24] camping trip, they would be stalked and haunted like
[0:28] animals, simply for fun, falling in love with each other.
[0:31] Today we're going to be talking about the horrifying attack on
[0:34] Rebecca and Claudia. Before we get into the case, I
[0:40] just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[0:43] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[0:46] video. This video is for educational
[0:48] purposes, and everything that I'm about to say is publicly
[0:51] available information that myself and my team have found
[0:55] and compiled into one video. This video will cover especially
[0:59] sensitive topics including but not limited to stalking, sexual
[1:03] assault, and homophobia. This case is a hate crime, so if
[1:07] you feel like these topics might be triggering or too intense for
[1:11] you, then I would recommend clicking out of this video now.
[1:14] Hopefully there'll be another video in future that I will get
[1:17] to see you with, but until then, look after yourself.
[1:20] While we make every effort to Fact Check our sources and make
[1:24] sure that all of the information in this video is correct, no
[1:27] action should be taken in reliance upon the information in
[1:31] this video. And I want to take this
[1:32] opportunity to remind you that these are real people's lives
[1:36] that we're talking about South. Please keep things kind and
[1:39] respectful in the comments. All opinions in this video are
[1:42] mine and mine alone. And with that being said, let's
[1:46] get into the case. So today's case takes place in
[1:49] Pennsylvania in 1988, specifically on a stretch of the
[1:53] Appalachian Trail in Meesha State Forest.
[1:56] I hope I'm saying that right, but it's, it's another aux word
[1:59] on the and I was not born to pronounce those Michelle State
[2:03] Forest. Anyway, it's in a forest for a
[2:06] little bit of context on the Appalachian Trail, because
[2:09] you've probably heard of that, but I didn't realise just how
[2:12] big that damn thing is. So it's a public footpath, like
[2:16] a nature path that people go hiking on.
[2:18] And it stretches the entire way from Maine to Georgia, and it
[2:23] goes through forests and mountains and it's freaking
[2:26] huge. It's over 2000 miles long, and
[2:30] it has some of the most stunning views imaginable.
[2:33] It's no wonder that people love hiking up there.
[2:36] There's specific camping areas dotted along the Appalachian
[2:40] Trail. So that, I mean, obviously it's
[2:42] going to take you more than one day to trek 2000 miles.
[2:45] And while a lot of people do try to tackle the whole entire trail
[2:49] on one camping trip, most people do choose to go and do just like
[2:53] a little section of it, you know?
[2:55] And Rebecca Wright and Claudia Brenner fell into that second
[2:58] group when they went for a camping trip on the Appalachian
[3:01] Trail in 1988. The couple had been together for
[3:04] about 3 years at this point. They met when they were at
[3:07] Virginia Tech University together.
[3:10] They were both members of the Womens''s club or the women's
[3:13] group, and both of them were actually on the planning
[3:16] committee for this women's group and they were going to do this
[3:19] whole Women's Week event at the university.
[3:23] And so the two of them were spending a lot of time together
[3:26] helping to set this up. And it was through that that
[3:30] they fell for each other. Rebecca was slightly younger
[3:34] than Claudia. Rebecca was 29 years old at the
[3:37] time of this case. So that will have made a what,
[3:39] like 2526? And Claudia was 32 at the time
[3:42] of this kiss, so she will have been like 2829.
[3:45] Rebecca was a business student, Claudia was an architecture
[3:49] student. And they were both very, very
[3:51] passionate about their studies and about learning and about
[3:55] being the best student, the best worker that they could be.
[3:58] The women just found so much to love about each other, whether
[4:02] it was their their work ethic and their passion for their
[4:05] studies or their passion for beliefs and causes and
[4:11] charities. Rebecca even you to volunteer
[4:13] taking phone calls at a crisis centre and Claudia just loved
[4:17] that about her how selfless she was to volunteer time in her
[4:22] very very busy week like she was a student she was trying to earn
[4:26] her keep and she wanted to help other people.
[4:29] Claudia described this early like honeymoon stage of their
[4:32] relationship as a wonderful falling in love time.
[4:36] There was a stretch of their relationship where the women had
[4:38] to go long distance. Claudia went to go and study in
[4:41] Israel and then after that she went to New York.
[4:44] Meanwhile, Rebecca stayed in Virginia.
[4:47] The period of time where Claudia was in Israel was of course the
[4:50] hardest. That was when she was the
[4:52] furthest away. But when she moved to New York,
[4:54] they were only about a 6-7 hour drive away from each other and
[4:58] they made that work. A lot of the time they would
[5:00] actually try to meet halfway. So then they would both only
[5:03] have to do like a 3 1/2 hour drive each.
[5:06] And This is why they would go hiking and camping, because
[5:09] Rebecca was a very outdoorsy, adventurous person, Claudia a
[5:14] little bit less so. But because she loved Rebecca so
[5:16] much, she was willing to go on these hiking and camping trips
[5:19] with her. So they would meet up on the
[5:21] Appalachian Trail and they would go camping for a few days and
[5:25] just enjoy nature and enjoy each other and catch up.
[5:29] And it's, it's very private being in the woods as well.
[5:33] I mean, you don't see that many other hikers.
[5:35] And when you do, it's, it's very brief.
[5:37] You know, you're passing each other.
[5:38] So they just got to be in their own little world for a few days
[5:41] every now and again. In May 1988, they had a long
[5:44] weekend to spend with each other.
[5:46] And so they decided to go on another camping trip.
[5:49] So they headed out to Michel State Forest on May 12th.
[5:52] It was a Thursday afternoon and they had their whole weekend
[5:56] planned out to a tee. They were going to hike and camp
[6:00] for two days and then they were going to jump back in their cars
[6:03] and drive to Washington to go and see Rebeccas family because
[6:06] it was her sister's birthday that weekend.
[6:08] They were going to stay. They were going to celebrate for
[6:10] the whole day I think, stayed there overnight, and then go
[6:13] back to the forests for one more day of hiking and camping before
[6:17] they both returned to their own homes on Monday.
[6:20] It was a very well thought out plan, but it was very time
[6:24] constricted so they both set off from their houses on Thursday.
[6:29] They were both driving to this particular patch of the forest
[6:32] that they decided to meet at, and Rebecca got there first, but
[6:36] Claudia was nowhere to be seen. She was having some issues with
[6:39] her car. Her engine kept overheating and
[6:43] almost cutting out, so she was trying her best to kind of not
[6:47] let it get to that point. She was driving with all the
[6:49] windows down. She kept driving like really
[6:51] slow just to help her car make it the whole 3 1/2 hours.
[6:56] Of course, because she had to drive slower and she had to keep
[6:58] stopping to let the engine cool down, she ended up getting there
[7:02] a considerable amount of time later than Rebecca did.
[7:06] But in that time, Rebecca had just been kind of chilling in
[7:09] the car park, looking at nature, making friends with other
[7:12] hikers. And actually, she ended up
[7:14] making friends with some hikers that were just leaving.
[7:16] They just finished their camping trip, and Rebecca told them that
[7:19] she was just about to start theirs.
[7:21] And so they gave her this map that they'd been using that they
[7:25] obviously didn't need anymore. And this was a really good
[7:29] quality map. Apparently, Rebecca was really,
[7:31] really excited about this. When Claudia arrived, she was
[7:34] already like looking at it, She had it all big enough folded out
[7:37] and she was like, I've already found the trail that I want us
[7:39] to take. It was known as the Rocky Knob
[7:42] Trail. And it was like a perfect loop.
[7:45] And it would take them pretty much the amount of time that
[7:48] they had, you know, two days plus camping in between, then it
[7:53] was perfect. So they were going to take the
[7:55] Rocky Knob Trail eventually when Claudia got there, they had this
[7:59] little catch up in the car park. They had a little hug, but of
[8:03] course, they kept it quite lucky.
[8:05] This was 1988 and people were still very homophobic and very
[8:09] vocal about their homophobia. The two of them had faced a lot
[8:12] of verbal abuse in their time, and at this point they decided
[8:16] it was just easier to act friendly in public and be
[8:21] coupling in private. So, you know, they kind of acted
[8:24] like friends reuniting in the car park, but they knew they
[8:28] would be able to kiss and cuddle and do whatever their heart
[8:31] wanted once they were in that tent.
[8:33] So before they set off they left a note in Claudius truck saying
[8:38] that they had gone camping and that they would be back on
[8:40] Sunday. And they left that at the end of
[8:43] the trail. And then they hopped in Rebeccas
[8:45] car and drove to the start of the trail and left her car
[8:48] there. So then they wouldn't have to
[8:50] walk back on themselves to get back to their car.
[8:52] They could do the whole trail and they would have a car at
[8:56] both ends. But actually we found a really
[8:58] morbid fact about the place that they parked Rebecca's car in the
[9:03] end. It was on a road called Dead
[9:05] Woman's Hollow. It was actually named after a
[9:08] woman that had died in the forest in the early 1900s.
[9:12] She'd been bitten by a rattlesnake and no one knew.
[9:16] And so she died in the forest and no one found her for days.
[9:20] So yeah. They parked their car in a car
[9:22] park on Dead Woman's Hollow, and then they began the hike.
[9:27] The weather was absolutely perfect for them on this long
[9:30] weekend. It had been, like, really quite
[9:32] warm during the day. But at this point, when they
[9:34] were starting the hike, it was about 6:00 PM, so it was
[9:38] dropping cooler, and it was just enjoyable.
[9:40] It was that nice kind of weather way.
[9:41] Not too sweaty. It's not too hot.
[9:44] It's just nice. They knew that they only had
[9:45] like a few hours of daylight left, so they were getting a
[9:49] shift on with their hike. They wanted to be able to get to
[9:52] a campsite while it was still a bit light outside so they'd be
[9:54] able to pitch their tent, but they weren't worrying too much.
[9:57] They were just enjoying each other's company for the first
[10:00] time in a long time. They were laughing and joking
[10:03] and holding hands as they walked and catching up.
[10:06] And do you remember I said that Rebecca was an avid camper,
[10:10] whereas Claudia not so much. And there was a part of the
[10:13] trail where they had to hop over a dream using stepping stones,
[10:18] and Rebecca hopped away, straight across.
[10:20] And Claudia was too scared to do it for a while.
[10:23] It took her a long time to get across and Rebecca was teasing
[10:27] her and everything. I just thought that was a really
[10:29] cute little memory, uh, from the start of this trip.
[10:33] But eventually they made their way to the campsite, one that
[10:36] Rebecca had picked out earlier. And it was a really like,
[10:40] obviously quite basic campsite. It was all flat so that people
[10:44] could pitch tents or there were some wooden shelters that people
[10:48] could use. Claudia Rebecca decided against
[10:51] that, of course, because they were a lesbian couple and they
[10:54] wanted to be able to share a bed and cuddle and maybe do other
[10:58] things that they wouldn't want to do in front of other people
[11:02] in a shelter. So they kind of ignored the
[11:04] wooden shelters, pitched their tent up anywhere, and then they
[11:08] set up a little fire. There was a fire pit going.
[11:10] They made themselves dinner. They again just sat and chatted
[11:13] for a while by the fire, just enjoying their time together.
[11:17] And then they went to bed. They'd even bought a double
[11:19] sleeping bag so that they could snuggle up together because
[11:23] sleeping bags are a bit of a cock block, aren't they?
[11:25] Like, like they're in two different socks.
[11:27] So they've got this like, double sleeping bag.
[11:30] They were really excited to use it.
[11:31] And they snuggled up together. And Rebecca mentioned to Claudia
[11:34] that she really wanted to have a look inside those wooden
[11:37] shelters in the morning to see if they had like, a guest log
[11:40] book, you know, like what hotels have.
[11:43] Well, they had them at a lot of camping sites.
[11:46] And that's why she wanted to see if this one had one because a
[11:49] lot of hikers would just leave really interesting tips and
[11:52] tricks and ideas and advice for each other within these books.
[11:56] And she wanted to sign it herself.
[11:58] So they said that in the morning when they woke up, they would go
[12:00] and have a look in these shelters.
[12:02] But for now, bedtime. When they woke up the next
[12:04] morning, the women decided to go about their morning routine.
[12:08] Still naked. I mean, why not?
[12:11] You're out in nature. They didn't think anyone else
[12:14] was around them. There were no other tents
[12:16] pitched or anything, so they thought they had this campsite
[12:19] to themselves, so why not? They just went with it.
[12:22] They were making their breakfast.
[12:23] They walked down to this nearby stream.
[12:26] They washed off their plates from yesterday, gave themselves
[12:29] a little bit of a wash. They got some water to take back
[12:31] to the fire to boil so that they could have a drink.
[12:34] And over the course of the morning, they were acting very
[12:37] couply, I suppose, as any couple would be.
[12:39] They thought that they were alone, of course, to the point
[12:42] where they were naked, so why not act couply as well?
[12:45] Once they were done with breakfast, Rebecca decided to
[12:48] take a walk up to those wooden shelters to see if they had this
[12:51] guest log book that she wanted to look in and sign.
[12:54] But when she made her way inside, she realized that they
[12:57] hadn't actually been alone this whole time.
[13:00] In there was a man, just one man, on his own, naked and with
[13:06] an erection. He had been watching Rebecca and
[13:09] Claudia through the window this whole time and he seemed totally
[13:14] unfazed by Rebecca walking in and catching him.
[13:17] He just said hi and asked her if she had a cigarette and she said
[13:21] no and swiftly got out of there she ran back to Claudia at the
[13:24] tent and started panicking and putting her clothes on.
[13:27] She said we're not alone here Claude, we're not alone we've
[13:30] got to put on our clothes. She described the man to Claudia
[13:33] said that he was gangly and unkempt and just a total creep.
[13:37] She described how she'd found him with an erect penis.
[13:41] He'd clearly been watching them being intimate together that
[13:45] morning, and they just felt so violated and so uncomfortable
[13:49] that they tried to eat and pack up their stuff as quickly as
[13:52] they could so that they could just move on and just start the
[13:55] hike and get away from this guy. And this was annoying as well,
[13:59] because they planned to actually keep their tent there.
[14:01] They wanted to stay camping there.
[14:02] The next night they were going to go out walking and then
[14:04] return to this SIM campsite. Of course the women would quite
[14:08] scared of this man. They didn't want to leave him on
[14:11] bad terms and so as they left the campsite they shouted a
[14:14] polite little see you later to him and he shouted the same
[14:18] back. They tried to leave on as much
[14:20] of a positive note as they could, despite what had just
[14:23] happened, and this interaction obviously left them feeling
[14:26] rocked for a good few hours. You wouldn't feel right for a
[14:30] long time, knowing that someone had been watching you when you
[14:33] thought you were alone, but all it took was a few hours of
[14:37] laughing and joking and walking and holding hands again to lift
[14:42] their spirits. They were following this
[14:44] particular path, this knobby wait, what was it?
[14:47] Rocky Knob Trail? And the way that they could tell
[14:49] which trail they were on was that they were like painted
[14:52] lines on the trees in different colours.
[14:55] So they would be following, for example, the yellow lines on the
[14:58] trees. I don't know what colour it was,
[15:00] but they were spotting out all these coloured lines on the
[15:03] trees and following it. They were having a good time.
[15:05] After about an hour of walking, they came to a fork in the path.
[15:08] There were two different ways that they could go and they
[15:11] couldn't see any of these painted lines on the trees for a
[15:14] little while. So good thing Rebecca had that
[15:17] map now. Hey.
[15:18] So she pulled it out and they're, they're looking at it,
[15:21] they're studying it, trying to figure out where they are and
[15:23] where they want to end up. And that was when they heard a
[15:26] man shouting them. They turned around and there
[15:29] they saw the same man from earlier, the man from the
[15:33] shelter. And he asked them, what are you
[15:34] lost already? It seemed that he had been
[15:37] following them. He'd followed them from the
[15:40] campsite for a whole hour and they hadn't noticed that he'd
[15:44] been very quickly behind them. Of course, now they're even more
[15:48] scared of this man than they were this morning.
[15:50] So Claudia tries to keep things, you know, lighthearted, and she
[15:54] responds to him quite sarcastically, saying no, we're
[15:57] not lost, are you? The man just laughed and
[16:00] continued walking towards them, and it was at this point that
[16:03] the women realized he was balancing a rifle on his
[16:07] shoulder. He had a gun, and I mean, people
[16:10] do take guns into the woods, into the forest for hunting
[16:14] reasons, but he hadn't had this gun on him earlier and he had
[16:18] specifically followed them for an hour with it.
[16:22] They were scared, so they figured out a way to go very
[16:25] quickly and they just started walking, speed walking down this
[16:29] path. Of course, they didn't want to
[16:30] make it look like they were running away from him.
[16:32] They still wanted to keep the energy polite and positive.
[16:37] So they're walking quickly down this path and they keep checking
[16:40] over their shoulder to see if he's there and he doesn't seem
[16:43] to be following them. They can't see him.
[16:45] After an hour or so of this, like constantly looking behind
[16:48] them, they were confident that they must have lost him.
[16:51] They hadn't seen him for a long, long time.
[16:53] And they'd even had to like slow down at particularly rocky or
[16:57] slippy or steep parts of the path.
[17:00] So if he was following them, he probably would have gained up
[17:03] that distance on them. And he wasn't there.
[17:05] So they were thinking, OK, maybe he just took the other direction
[17:09] at that fork in the road or something.
[17:11] They thought that they were safe.
[17:12] So they keep going for the rest of the day.
[17:14] They are enjoying their hike again.
[17:17] It's a very roller coastery hike, but it is, it's nice on
[17:21] the hall. They're enjoying each other's
[17:23] company. They are hiking a hell of a long
[17:25] way until eventually they reach campsite #2 again, a really nice
[17:30] flat bit that was right next to a stream.
[17:32] It was perfect. But by the time they reached
[17:35] this campsite, the wind women are absolutely knackered after a
[17:39] whole day of walking and a whole day of being on high alert as
[17:43] well. They get to the campsite and
[17:44] they just can't be bothered putting the tent up right away.
[17:47] So instead they just get out the ground sheet and lay it down on
[17:50] the floor so that they can just sprawl out on it and chill out
[17:54] for a little while. The sun was just going down, it
[17:57] was still really warm outside. It was perfect.
[18:00] They were just going to enjoy their evening.
[18:02] They sat there and just enjoyed each other's company, talking,
[18:05] laughing, kissing, cuddling, and then a little bit more than
[18:10] kissing and cuddling. Claudia eventually asked Rebecca
[18:13] if she wanted to put the tent up so that they could, you know,
[18:16] take, take it to the bedroom. Umm, But Rebecca said no, don't
[18:20] bother. Like, it's really nice and warm
[18:22] out here. They were alone.
[18:24] They couldn't see anyone around. No one else was at this
[18:26] campsite. Why bother putting the tent up?
[18:28] Hey, just carry on on the ground sheet.
[18:30] But within minutes of making that decision, it became clear
[18:34] that once again, they weren't actually alone.
[18:37] That man was back. He was hiding 80 feet away in
[18:42] the undergrowth. And now he had his rifle pointed
[18:47] right at Rebecca and Claudia. It's been speculated how he got
[18:52] there because of course the women kept looking behind them
[18:54] and he wasn't there. So some people think he might
[18:57] have followed them, but just been very agile about it.
[19:01] Other people think that he had predicted where the women would
[19:05] be walking and where they would be camping, and he took a
[19:08] shortcut to get there and then just waited.
[19:11] Waited so that he could hunt them like animals.
[19:21] It was all very sudden. One minute they were sitting
[19:24] enjoying each other's company, the next they hear a gunshot
[19:28] ring out and Claudia screaming in pain.
[19:31] She'd been shot in the arm, and as she looked down at her wound
[19:35] and saw the blood leaking all over the ground sheet, another
[19:39] gunshot rang out, this time hitting Claudia in the side of
[19:42] the neck. Then a third bullet was fired
[19:45] that hit her in the other side of the neck, and then a fourth
[19:48] that hit her directly in the face.
[19:51] It completely blew her teeth to pieces.
[19:54] All of this happened in the space of about 20 seconds.
[19:57] They'd just been sitting there in the peace and quiet, and then
[20:00] all of a sudden Claudia is shot 4 times.
[20:04] It all happened so fast that the women just didn't even have any
[20:07] time to react. They didn't know where the
[20:10] gunshots were coming from, but one thing they did know, or one
[20:13] thing that they were pretty sure.
[20:15] Of was that it was that man from before he had come back a third
[20:20] time. He had been stalking them all
[20:22] day and he was specifically targeting them with that gun
[20:27] that they'd seen him carrying. There was no way that this was
[20:30] just a tragic hunting accident where they'd been accidentally
[20:34] hit. Of course not, they were being
[20:36] targeted by whoever was shooting them.
[20:39] At this point, Rebecca snapped into action, realizing that she
[20:42] needed to help save her girlfriend and get both of them
[20:47] out of danger. So she told Claudia to lay down
[20:49] on the ground sheet so that he wouldn't be able to aim at her
[20:52] and target her. Although even that didn't work.
[20:56] A fifth shot very quickly rang out and hit Claudia in the top
[21:00] of the head. The shooter just was not giving
[21:03] up. And now Claudia had been shot
[21:05] five times. They didn't know how they were
[21:08] going to be able to get away from him, especially because now
[21:11] Claudia was so injured. She was bleeding so much.
[21:14] How could they possibly get to safety in the middle of nowhere?
[21:18] And it was at this point that Rebecca spotted a tree close by.
[21:21] And she thought that would be the only shot of safety, of
[21:26] protection. And so she told Claudia to try
[21:28] to make her way over there and hide behind it, which she did.
[21:32] Claudia got all the way over there and she was wasn't shot at
[21:35] again. Once they realized that the
[21:38] shooter couldn't hit them from behind this tree, Claudia starts
[21:42] beckoning to Rebecca to come over as well.
[21:44] But as she got up to run to the tree, Rebecca was shot at twice.
[21:50] She was hit in the back and also in the back of the neck.
[21:53] As she fell to the ground. The man fired one last bullet,
[21:57] an eighth bullet, and this is the only one that actually
[22:00] missed its target. Despite being hit in a critical
[22:04] area, Rebecca managed to shuffle her way behind the tree and back
[22:09] to Claudia. At this point, the gunshots
[22:11] stopped. I think the man thought he
[22:14] probably killed them. He couldn't see them moving
[22:16] anymore. They were hiding behind this
[22:18] tree and he had obviously been shooting to kill.
[22:21] He was hit in neck, head, back kind of area.
[22:25] That's where you shoot to kill. He must have thought that he had
[22:29] been successful. Claudia and Rebecca were just
[22:32] huddled behind this tree, trying to comfort each other, but also
[22:35] trying to stay as silent as they possibly could so that genuinely
[22:41] he would think that he had killed them and so then he would
[22:44] give up. It was clear that they both had
[22:46] life threatening injuries. They were bleeding so much and
[22:49] they knew that their only chance of survival was to try to stem
[22:53] them as much as they could on their own until they could get
[22:56] actual medical help. And actually, although Claudia
[23:00] had been hit with more bullets, she'd been shot five times.
[23:03] It was actually Rebecca, who had only been shot twice, that
[23:07] seemed to be deteriorating quicker.
[23:09] She was very, very weak very quickly.
[23:12] She could didn't hold herself up really.
[23:14] She was turning pale, she was slurring her words, she was in
[23:18] and out of consciousness, just trying to tell Claudia to stop
[23:21] the bleeding, Stop the bleeding. That was the only thing that she
[23:24] could get out. Claudia did everything that she
[23:26] could. She had a little bit more
[23:28] strength in her and she knew that she needed to find
[23:31] something to use as a bandage. But of course they had nothing
[23:35] from behind this tree and so she very bravely got up and ran back
[23:39] over to where all of their stuff was on the ground sheet.
[23:42] She pulled out a bunch of their clothes and ran back to Rebecca
[23:46] and started using these clothes to wrap around her wounds.
[23:49] At this point the shooter must have left or or something or
[23:53] just not seen Claudia running back to the things because no
[23:56] more shots were fired. Claudia pressed one T-shirt up
[23:59] against one of Rebecca's wounds and one to one of her own neck
[24:03] wounds that was bleeding a lot and it seemed to work a bit.
[24:06] The bleeding was slowing a little bit, but of course these
[24:10] injuries were still life threatening and Claudia knew
[24:14] that she needed to do something else to be able to save their
[24:17] lives. Right now the only people that
[24:19] knew that they had been shot were them and their shooter, who
[24:23] obviously wasn't going to be getting them any help.
[24:25] No one was going to come and look for them, no one was on
[24:28] their way to help them. She knew that the only way that
[24:31] they could seek this life saving medical help would be if she
[24:36] went out and got it herself. She knew she was going to have
[24:39] to try to escape the forest. She managed to pull on some
[24:43] clothes and she started throwing some of Rebecca's over to her so
[24:46] that she could put her shoes on and all that, but she realized
[24:50] that Rebecca just couldn't move. She was still so weak that she
[24:55] couldn't. She could barely even see her
[24:57] own shoes on the floor next to her.
[24:59] At this point her vision was graying.
[25:01] She was really, she was really falling out of consciousness.
[25:04] She wasn't going to be able to put her clothes on and run to
[25:07] safety with her girlfriend. And Claudia tried to put
[25:10] Rebecca's shoes on for her and tried to lift her up and tried
[25:13] to, you know, get her over her shoulder so that she might be
[25:15] able to pull her to safety, but none of it was working.
[25:19] Rebecca just kept slumping down. She just had no energy left in
[25:24] her, and Claudia knew that she didn't have enough energy to
[25:27] barely even take herself to safety, never mind carry her
[25:31] girlfriend to safety. And that was when Claudia had to
[25:34] make the very difficult decision to leave her girlfriend in the
[25:39] middle of the forest on her own, because she knew that she was
[25:43] their only chance at survival. She needed to use whatever
[25:47] energy she had left to go and seek help and send that help
[25:52] back to Rebecca in the woods. By now, night had fallen.
[25:56] It was pretty dark in the woods, and it was getting a little bit
[26:00] chilly. And so before Claudia left, she
[26:03] grabbed that big double sleeping bag and she wrapped Rebecca up
[26:06] in it. This sleeping bag that they had
[26:08] been so excited to share together that they thought they
[26:11] were going to have so many great memories in.
[26:13] She was now wrapping her up in it to try to save her life.
[26:17] Claudia then pulled on a jumper herself.
[26:20] She grabbed that big map and their torch and she set off into
[26:25] the forest. She just ran and ran and ran.
[26:28] She wasn't even taking any particular trail because, well,
[26:32] she just wanted to get to the nearest Rd.
[26:35] So she was running through like just bushes and branches and
[26:39] there was no path that she was taking.
[26:41] Which a side note, the national parks in the US are freaking
[26:45] huge. As we said, the trail itself was
[26:48] 2000 miles long. Imagine how much forest there is
[26:52] surrounding that. Even the most experienced hikers
[26:56] in the world can get lost in these forests.
[27:00] You hear all kinds of horrifying stories of people that go
[27:03] missing and then turn up a couple of months later because
[27:05] they got lost. Or people that never turn up
[27:08] again. They get lost and they die in
[27:11] those forests because they can't find a way out.
[27:14] But right now, that wasn't even in Claudia's mind.
[27:17] She was just trying to save her girlfriend.
[27:20] Even more than herself, it was saving Becca that was powering
[27:25] her through this forest. Remember, she'd been shot five
[27:28] times. That's absolutely insane.
[27:31] Bleeding from 5 places, one of which was her face, her neck in
[27:36] two places, the top of her head. Like how she had this kind of
[27:40] energy. It must have been sheer
[27:43] adrenaline that she was racing on at this point.
[27:46] As she ran, she said that she could hear the wounds in her
[27:49] neck gurgling blood as she was breathing, and she felt like her
[27:53] whole arm was on fire. But somehow she managed to run
[27:57] for three miles. Despite all these circumstances,
[28:02] despite the fear, the darkness, the pain that she was in, the
[28:06] lack of energy, the growing weakness taking over her body,
[28:10] she ran for three miles to the nearest Rd.
[28:14] But when she got there, of course it was night time and
[28:17] this road was completely empty. There was no one on it, there
[28:21] were no cars and she feared how long it might take for one to
[28:25] appear. She was there for a little
[28:27] while, to the point where she started thinking, shit, I'm
[28:30] going to have to do something else.
[28:31] She was trying to look on the map to see where the nearest
[28:33] houses might be. She might have to go and knock
[28:36] and try and get someone that way, but it was at this point
[28:39] that she saw some headlights in the distance.
[28:42] And this gave her hope. So she stood on the side of the
[28:45] road. She got her torch out, and she
[28:47] started waving it to try to flag this car down, but it just drove
[28:51] straight past her. When I read that in my research,
[28:54] it was such a gut punch because of course, we know how
[28:57] desperately Claudia and Rebecca needed help.
[29:00] But you can also kind of put yourself in the position of the
[29:04] person in that car driving possibly alone at night on a
[29:08] dark road, and suddenly you see someone on the side covered in
[29:12] blood. I know a a lot of people
[29:13] wouldn't pull over. As much as you would like to
[29:15] think that you would, as much as you would like to think that you
[29:18] would help someone in need, you never know if it is actually
[29:21] someone in need. Because sadly, a lot of
[29:24] situations like this are fabricated as a trap by robbing
[29:30] robbery gangs or kidnappers or at worst, human traffickers.
[29:35] They will set up these fake situations hoping that someone
[29:39] with a good heart will pull over and want to help.
[29:42] And that's when they get you to. I mean, of course, I'm not
[29:44] saying that that's what this driver was thinking.
[29:46] But as I was researching this part, like, I don't know, as
[29:51] much as you really wish that that driver would have pulled
[29:54] over, you can understand, stand to a degree why they might not
[29:58] have. But Claudia was once again left
[30:00] on the side of the road with no help.
[30:02] And she knew that when the next car came, she was going to have
[30:05] to step it up to really show them how much she needed their
[30:08] help. So when she saw the next set of
[30:10] headlights approaching, she walked into the middle of the
[30:13] road this time and started waving her torch in giant
[30:17] circles to signal that she wasn't frantic and she wasn't,
[30:21] you know, unhinged. She wasn't a danger.
[30:24] She was just a person that really needed the attention of
[30:28] this car and luckily for her, this car did stop inside.
[30:32] There were two teenage boys, aged 16 and 17.
[30:36] They were just on a bit of a joyride that night going, going
[30:39] through the forests, which I imagine this situation was very
[30:42] scary for them as well. Imagine being a kid and you're
[30:46] out with your friend in the dead of night and suddenly there's a
[30:49] woman covered in blood in the middle of the road that you have
[30:53] to stop for. You can't really go around her.
[30:55] And luckily, the boys did stop. They rolled down the window and
[30:58] Claudia tried to get as much out as she could immediately.
[31:02] She said, I'm Claudia Brenner. I've been shot five times.
[31:05] I need help. So the boys helped her into the
[31:07] car and started driving her to the Sheriff's Office.
[31:10] Actually, the Sheriff's Office was even closer than the
[31:13] hospital. And they thought that if they
[31:14] could just get her there, then she would be able to talk to the
[31:17] police and be transported to the hospital by police who could do
[31:22] it quicker. And now that she was in the car,
[31:24] she was able to tell the boys, you know, the full story.
[31:26] She didn't want to give them the full story on the side of the
[31:28] road. They had places they needed to
[31:30] be. So now that she was inside the
[31:32] car, she was telling them that she'd been on a hiking trip with
[31:35] her girlfriend. Her girlfriend had also been
[31:37] shot and she was in worse condition.
[31:39] She'd had to leave her in the forest.
[31:41] She was telling them about this man that had been stalking them
[31:44] all day and he had a gun and and he was weird and he'd been
[31:47] creepy in the morning. She was trying to tell them
[31:50] absolutely every detail that she could because she thought that
[31:55] she could die. She thought that she actually
[31:57] was going to die from her injuries.
[32:00] After all, she'd been shot five times, and she knew that just
[32:03] repeating the details over and over to these boys was the only
[32:08] way that if she did die, it would be the only way that this
[32:11] information would ever be heard by police.
[32:14] When Claudia arrived at the Sheriff's Office, she of course
[32:18] still had that map on her, so she was able to give it to the
[32:21] police and circle the exact part of the trail where they'd been
[32:24] camping where Rebecca still was. Immediately, a search team was
[32:29] sent out to scour the forest to try to find and rescue Rebecca
[32:34] while they still could. In the meantime, they tried to
[32:37] take Claudia to hospital, of course, but she was actually
[32:41] quite reluctant to go. She said that she didn't want to
[32:44] be put in surgery or anything until she knew that Rebecca was
[32:48] rescued. The police tried to comfort her
[32:50] and said, you know, we're going to do the absolute best that we
[32:53] can. We're going to put our all into
[32:55] finding her and saving her. But right now you need to focus
[32:58] on you. You need to save your own life.
[33:01] You need to go to the hospital. You need these emergency
[33:04] surgeries. And so eventually she did.
[33:06] She was taken in an ambulance to the nearest hospital, but it was
[33:10] quite a small rural hospital. And as soon as she got there and
[33:14] they evaluated her injuries, they realized that they were
[33:19] severely under qualified to be able to deal with a case like
[33:22] this. So Claudia actually had to be
[33:24] airlifted to the nearest specialist trauma centre.
[33:28] As soon as her helicopter landed.
[33:30] She was rushed into emergency surgery to try to remove the
[33:34] bullets from her body and to patch up all of her bleeding.
[33:37] She even had internal bleeding. By some kind of miracle, Claudia
[33:41] Brenner was treated and would survive being shot five times.
[33:47] Twice in the neck, once in the head, once in the face.
[33:51] She survived that. One of the shots to her neck had
[33:53] literally torn a hole in her esophagus, which is horrific
[33:58] enough, but it was literally millimetres away from hitting
[34:01] her carotid artery, her vocal cords and even the top of her
[34:06] spinal cord which could have paralysed her from the neck
[34:10] down. To be fair, if it would have hit
[34:11] her carotid artery, that would have just straight up killed
[34:14] her. She was millimetres off of
[34:17] dying. Or imagine she was hitting the
[34:19] vocal cords and then she couldn't communicate to anyone
[34:22] that any of this had happened. She wouldn't be able to
[34:25] communicate that Rebecca was still in the forest and needed
[34:28] saving. And not only that, remember the
[34:30] bullet that hit her in the face and completely smashed up her
[34:33] teeth? Well, she was actually really
[34:35] lucky that it had hit her teeth and her jaw because they
[34:39] actually helped to barrier the bullet from hitting her spinal
[34:43] cord at the back. There were a lot of tiny little
[34:46] circumstances that meant that Claudia Brenner's injuries
[34:49] weren't fatal. She was incredibly lucky to have
[34:54] survived and made such a good recovery as well.
[34:57] She did require hours and hours and hours of surgeries.
[35:02] And by the time that she was out of her operations and she was in
[35:06] that recovery period, it had been a full day since the
[35:10] attack, since she'd last seen Rebecca.
[35:13] When she was brought back to her hospital room, all of her
[35:15] friends and family were waiting there for her, and that was when
[35:19] they broke the horrible news to her that Rebecca hadn't made it.
[35:24] She'd passed away in the forest before police had even found
[35:27] her. It hadn't taken them that long
[35:29] to find her, honestly, because they had the exact spot that
[35:33] Claudia had drawn on the map, so they went straight there.
[35:36] But her injuries were just so severe that, I mean, she was
[35:40] already dying when Claudia left. When they found her, she was
[35:43] still huddled up against that tree in the sleeping bag, just
[35:48] waiting for her girlfriend to return.
[35:50] When they found Rebecca's body, it was about midnight, and
[35:54] obviously it was so dark outside that they couldn't take like
[35:57] crime scene photos and stuff like that, yet they couldn't do
[36:01] evidence collecting and so they couldn't move her body.
[36:04] So throughout the night until the sun came back up, different
[36:08] police officers would take it in turns to sit by Rebecca's body
[36:13] so that she wouldn't be left alone.
[36:15] When the sun did come up, a murder investigation was
[36:17] launched. Forensic teams were brought in,
[36:20] all the photographs were taken. Searches were done in the
[36:23] immediate area and they very quickly found where the shooter
[36:28] had been based as this attack was going on.
[36:30] Because of course Claudia by now could talk to the police and she
[36:34] was saying I have no idea where those shots were coming from.
[36:37] They tried to look around, but of course they were more focused
[36:40] on saving their lives. They didn't see a shooter.
[36:43] But by now police had found the spot where the shooter had been.
[36:47] It was a little flat patch of land that was completely
[36:50] surrounded by bushes, apart from one tiny little window gap in
[36:55] between the bushes that looked directly onto the campsite where
[37:00] Rebecca and Claudia were. And it seemed that the shooter
[37:03] had left a few things behind. There were about 20 rounds of
[37:07] ammunition just laying on the floor.
[37:09] And also saw a knitted cap. Once the scene had been searched
[37:13] and photographed, Rebecca Wright's body was airlifted to a
[37:17] morgue. They carried out an autopsy just
[37:19] so that they could have, you know, that information for the
[37:22] criminal case. You know how many times she was
[37:24] shot, where she was shot? They found that the first shot
[37:27] that had hit her just underneath the neck hadn't been fatal.
[37:32] It would have been very painful, but it only made a bit of a mess
[37:35] of her soft tissue. She would have survived had it
[37:38] just been that one shot. But the second shot sliced
[37:41] through her liver, caused a lot of internal bleeding, and the
[37:45] bullet actually lodged itself in her sternum.
[37:48] She would have been losing a lot of blood from this one bullet
[37:52] wound. And police think that even if
[37:54] Claudia ran as fast as she could and tried to get this help, she
[37:59] wouldn't have been able to rescue Rebecca.
[38:01] No one would. She was already dying as Claudia
[38:05] left. Of course, Claudia Brenner was
[38:07] in pieces hearing this news, hearing that she hadn't managed
[38:12] to rescue her girlfriend. It was going to take her a very
[38:15] long time to be able to process and to to grieve for the very
[38:20] sudden loss of the woman that she loved.
[38:23] But for that exact reason, Claudia was very eager to talk
[38:26] to police and give them every detail that she possibly could,
[38:30] because if she couldn't save Rebecca's life, then she was
[38:33] going to make sure that she got justice for her.
[38:35] She immediately recounted everything that she could
[38:38] remember about the day leading up to the shooting, about the
[38:41] man that they'd seen. And then even over the coming
[38:44] days, she would get these random flashes and flashbacks of
[38:47] memories, and she would tell all of those to the police as well.
[38:51] They brought in a sketch artist to help make up an E fit sketch
[38:55] of their suspect and they went through multiple rounds of edits
[38:59] and corrections until finally they had this sketch that
[39:03] Claudia was pretty confident looked exactly like that man
[39:07] that had been stalking them through the forest.
[39:09] This sketch was sent out to every newspaper, every magazine,
[39:13] every news channel, it was printed on posters, it was
[39:16] everywhere. And they very quickly saw
[39:18] results from releasing this sketch when they got a call from
[39:21] a woman who said she thought she recognised the man and could
[39:25] potentially identify him. This woman's name was Alice
[39:28] Golden and she believed that the man in the picture was a family
[39:32] friend of theirs, 22 year old Steven Roy Carr.
[39:36] He was a relatively close family friend of theirs who would come
[39:39] over to their house and play with her son.
[39:42] In fact, he would actually teach her son how to shoot at bottles
[39:47] and birds. He had his own guns that he
[39:50] would bring round and teach her son to shoot.
[39:53] She said that Stephen Carr had a huge interest in guns.
[39:56] He had a bunch of his own. He was quite a gun fanatic and
[39:59] actually he literally lived in the forest.
[40:03] I don't know if he even had an address or if he was literally
[40:08] just. Living off the land in the
[40:10] forest, he would use the wooden shelters out there.
[40:13] Sometimes he would even set himself up in a cave.
[40:16] And Alice said that he would return to her family home like
[40:19] once or twice a week so that he could use their bathroom,
[40:22] freshen up, shave, sometimes enjoy dinner with them.
[40:27] And then he would wander back out into the forest and continue
[40:30] living like a literal caveman. A very interesting sounding
[40:34] fella and actually the exact kind of fella they imagined
[40:38] would commit a crime like this. Stephen Carr was born in 1959,
[40:49] originally in New York, but when he was still a baby his family
[40:53] moved to rural Pennsylvania. He was said to be quite a loner
[40:57] in school. He found it very difficult to
[40:59] make and keep friends, so he eventually just went about life
[41:03] solo. He eventually dropped out of
[41:06] school at 15 years old. He had no qualification.
[41:09] And I think one of the reasons for him dropping out of school
[41:12] was because his mother moved them to Florida, although he
[41:15] didn't rejoin a school in Florida.
[41:18] He was just a 15 year old, just kind of on the streets at that
[41:21] point. And he started getting into some
[41:24] kind of bad groups. He was making friends with
[41:27] criminals who would teach him how to rob shops and how to mug
[41:32] people. And, you know, he was in really,
[41:35] really bad circles. Now in Florida, at the age of
[41:37] 19, Stephen and one of his friends were actually arrested
[41:41] for stealing people's checks out of their mail.
[41:44] They would steal big batches of mail that were coming to, I
[41:47] think, this one particular motorhome.
[41:49] So they were targeting only this one person.
[41:51] Of course they're going to realise that their mail's going
[41:54] missing. But anyway, they would steal
[41:56] these batches of mail from him and open it all up.
[41:59] And if he had any physical checks in there, they would just
[42:03] pocket them. And actually when the boys were
[42:05] found out for this, because it didn't take very long for this
[42:08] person to report it and police to figure out who did it.
[42:11] And they turned up at the boys homes to arrest them.
[42:14] And so they grabbed all these checks and tried to flush them
[42:17] down the toilet to get rid of evidence, and it didn't work.
[42:21] So they just had a blocked toilet that police then fished
[42:24] the cheques out of. And they were like, OK, explain
[42:27] this. The two of them were charged
[42:28] with Grand Theft because up until this point, when they got
[42:32] caught, they'd actually managed to successfully pocket over
[42:35] $1000 doing this. He went to prison for a little
[42:38] while, but I couldn't find any information on like what his
[42:42] time was like there. In fact, we will mention one
[42:46] thing a little bit later on in the case, but it seemed that he
[42:49] was in and out of prison. A few years later, he was in
[42:52] trouble with the police once again, again for theft, but this
[42:55] time for also stabbing someone while he was robbing them.
[43:00] He was part of a robbery ring at this point.
[43:03] Sorry, that sounds like rubber ring.
[43:05] He he, no, he was part of a robbery ring.
[43:08] There were about 8 of them, eight or nine of them, and they
[43:11] were successfully carrying out these like home invasion
[43:14] robberies for a while. That was until they robbed an
[43:18] elderly lady who lived alone and Stephen stabbed her.
[43:23] Luckily, she survived the attack and she was able to give
[43:26] descriptions to the police, and eventually this robbery ring
[43:30] that he was part of was caught. And at this point, they'd
[43:33] managed to connect them with a bunch of other home invasion
[43:36] robberies that they'd been looking into but had no idea who
[43:39] had done them. Police started making arrests
[43:42] from this robbery ring. They'd arrested a few of them,
[43:45] and obviously they were looking at huge, huge charges.
[43:48] They had committed so many home invasion robberies at this point
[43:52] that police knew they were responsible for.
[43:54] And Stephen kind of had it the worst out of all of them because
[43:57] he'd also stabbed an old lady. What the fuck?
[44:00] I genuinely couldn't believe that when I read it.
[44:03] This is a 20 something year old man.
[44:06] What is this elderly lady actually going to do to you?
[44:09] That is a threat. She isn't a threat to you
[44:11] whatsoever. That he, there was no need for
[44:14] him to stab her. But obviously because he had, he
[44:18] would be getting the worst charges, the worst sentencing
[44:21] out of all of them. He knew that his life would be
[44:24] over if he was caught by the police.
[44:26] So Stephen Carr decided to flee the stick it to escape
[44:32] prosecution. And I guess it makes sense now
[44:35] why he lives in caves and in the forest and doesn't have an
[44:38] address because he was running from the law.
[44:40] Yeah. He ran away from Florida back to
[44:42] Pennsylvania, where he grew up. And from that point on, he was
[44:46] just a forest dweller. He would mostly hunt and fish
[44:51] and gather for his own food. He was really living off the
[44:54] land in that forest like a genuine caveman.
[44:57] I know I keep saying it, but you'd never hear of like actual
[45:00] real Cavemen in the modern day. I'm not entirely sure how he met
[45:05] Alice and her family. I don't know if he already knew
[45:07] them from when he lived in Pennsylvania before.
[45:10] I really don't know what the situation was there.
[45:12] But like I say, he would join them a couple of days a week.
[45:15] They would feed him, he would use their bathroom, their
[45:18] facilities. So he had an all right deal, but
[45:22] outside of Alice's family, we were not aware of any other
[45:26] social connections that he had. He really was just just another
[45:31] creature in the forest. Alice told police that the last
[45:34] time she had seen Stephen Carr was on May 14th, which was the
[45:38] day after the shooting. She said that he'd come to their
[45:41] house and he didn't seem like himself.
[45:44] He was very disturbed, and he kept talking about how he'd done
[45:47] something wrong. And at one point, as he was
[45:49] talking about it, he was getting tears in his eyes.
[45:52] And that was the last time that he'd come to visit them, which
[45:55] was weird enough on its own, when it had been like a week or
[45:58] two weeks or whatever, and they realized that he wasn't coming.
[46:02] They knew that something must be wrong because they were his only
[46:05] friends. They were his only bathroom.
[46:09] They were his only warm meals, you know?
[46:11] And then Alice sees this news report about this man that shot
[46:15] at two women on the Appalachian Trail, and she sees this sketch,
[46:20] and it is Stephen Roy Carr. The sketch looked exactly like
[46:24] him. All of the circumstances were
[46:26] spot on. And she hadn't seen him in ages.
[46:29] And the last time she saw him, he was talking about how he'd
[46:31] done something wrong. She knew it had to be Stephen.
[46:34] The police did believe Alice when she was telling them this.
[46:37] But of course, being the police, they have to get evidence of
[46:41] things. They can't just go off on
[46:43] something hoping it's true. So they figured out a way to
[46:45] confirm Stephen Carr's identity. They took that hat that had been
[46:50] left at the crime scene and they sent it for forensic testing
[46:53] where they found a bunch of tiny little white cat hairs on it
[46:57] Turns out that Alice had a white cat and it they, it was a match.
[47:03] The hairs on the hat were from the cat.
[47:05] So that proved that she was telling the truth, that she knew
[47:08] Stephen Carr, that Stephen had been at her house, and that
[47:11] Stephen had been at the murder scene.
[47:14] Police asked Alice if they could search her house and her garden
[47:17] for any other evidence that he might have left there.
[47:20] And in the garden, they found a bunch of bullet casings from
[47:24] when he would teach her son to shoot at birds.
[47:27] And these bullet casings were the exact same bullet casings
[47:30] that they found at the murder scene.
[47:32] So now a search for Stephen Roy Carr was underway.
[47:36] It was going to be a hard one, but it was underway.
[47:39] Meanwhile, Claudia was still recovered in hospital.
[47:42] She was in hospital for about 11 days after all of her surgeries.
[47:46] Actually, she was in hospital that long that she missed
[47:50] Rebecca's funeral, which absolutely broke my heart to
[47:53] hear she only just missed it as well.
[47:55] Like if she'd have been discharged just a couple of days
[47:58] sooner, she would have been able to go and lay her girlfriend to
[48:02] rest, but she couldn't. And so actually this is this is
[48:06] a really sweet part. Her mother brought her a Shiva
[48:09] candle to the hospital, which is something that Jewish people do
[48:13] when a very close loved one dies.
[48:16] After they've laid them to rest, they will light this Shiva
[48:19] candle. And for seven days it burns.
[48:22] And for those seven days, you're supposed to mourn and grieve
[48:25] this person and remember them. And the candle, the flickering
[48:29] flame, is supposed to be a symbol of the light that they
[48:32] brought into your life. And even just this act of
[48:35] Claudia's mother bringing her the Shiva candle to be able to,
[48:40] to honor and remember her girl girlfriend was really, really
[48:43] sentimental for Claudia because it had been hard for her coming
[48:48] out as a lesbian. I, I'm not entirely sure how her
[48:51] family took it, so I'm not going to comment on that.
[48:53] But because her mother brought this candle for her to remember
[48:58] her girlfriend, this was a very validating moment for Claudia
[49:03] that her mother recognized Rebecca as a very, very
[49:06] important part of her life. And her mother wanted her to be
[49:11] able to lay her to rest properly.
[49:14] I don't know. I thought that was also just a
[49:16] really nice part of it. Claudia felt just very accepted
[49:20] and very understood in that moment.
[49:23] I think a big part of that is that when Claudia originally
[49:26] came out, she actually distanced herself from her, her Jewish
[49:30] practices. She, she didn't really partake
[49:33] in much of it anymore. So again, it was it was a really
[49:36] big moment that her mother kind of invited her to to practice
[49:40] this tradition. From this point forward, Claudia
[49:42] found a lot of comfort in her faith.
[49:45] She started reconnecting with her practices and it really,
[49:49] really helped her on on her healing journey.
[49:52] So back to the police investigation.
[49:54] Of course, at this point, they've identified who their
[49:57] killer is, but they have no idea where the hell he is.
[50:00] I mean, there's a good chance he had run back off into the forest
[50:04] and, you know, they were just going to have to scour the whole
[50:07] fucking thousands and thousands of miles of forest for him.
[50:10] But there was also an equally good chance that he ran away
[50:13] from the forest because obviously that's where they're
[50:15] going to try to find him. So I don't know.
[50:18] They didn't really know where to look.
[50:19] Do you look in the forest? Do you look away from the
[50:22] forest? Luckily the the case ended up
[50:25] solving itself pretty much after a few days of hunting for
[50:29] Stephen Carr. It turned out that he hadn't
[50:31] gone back into the forest, he'd actually run off and joined a
[50:35] Mennonite community. Mennonites are a group of
[50:39] strictly Protestant Christians and they're very similar to like
[50:44] Amish communities in that they don't do technology, they don't
[50:48] do TV's, phones, they don't even do like motorised vehicles,
[50:52] which I guess is ideal for a murderer on the run.
[50:55] Because no one in this community knew that he was a wanted man.
[50:59] None of them had seen the news reports or the police sketch or
[51:03] anything. But the way that this all came
[51:05] about, right. And I found this a little bit
[51:07] funny. He had fashioned A makeshift
[51:11] raft and was just going down a river.
[51:14] I don't know, I don't know how or why, but whatever.
[51:16] He was going down this river when he eventually stumbled
[51:19] across a woman named Esther from this Mennonite community who was
[51:24] like clearing up the the riverbank.
[51:27] She spots this man on this very tatty raft that he'd clearly
[51:30] made himself and he was, you know, unkempt, dishevelled.
[51:34] And she called out to him and asked if he, if she could help
[51:37] him. Stephen said yes, actually, he
[51:39] could do with some help. He, he actually really needed
[51:42] food. He was very hungry.
[51:44] And so Esther, like, tried to help him bring his raft in.
[51:47] They tied it to the side of the river and she brought him to
[51:51] come and meet her whole community.
[51:52] He introduced himself as Mike Smith.
[51:55] He said that he'd been hiking in the in the National parks and
[51:59] he'd been hit by some really dreadful weather to the point
[52:03] where he had to fashion himself a raft to try to survive.
[52:07] I don't really know. I don't really know.
[52:09] But I mean, he clearly looked in a bad way.
[52:12] He was very dishevelled. He was very hungry.
[52:14] And the community took pity on him.
[52:17] They did want to help him, but of course they didn't quite know
[52:20] if they could trust him. And so they asked him.
[52:23] They quite quite obviously asked him, look, can we trust you to
[52:27] bring you into this community like do you do?
[52:30] What are your intentions here? And Stephen responded to Esther
[52:33] saying, lady, I'd rather do you good than harm.
[52:36] So with that, they trusted Mike Smith and they brought him into
[52:39] the community. They gave him a bed to sleep in
[52:42] for a little while. They they fed him all his meals.
[52:45] And then after a couple of days, he starts earning his keep.
[52:49] He starts working the farms and tending the animals and and
[52:53] cooking and cleaning with the community.
[52:55] He became a part of their little civilization.
[52:59] And of course at this point Stephen is thinking he has hit
[53:02] the jackpot. He has found a group of people
[53:05] that actively want to provide him with everything that he
[53:08] needs. Community food, clothes, warmth,
[53:11] shelter, everything. And they don't watch the news.
[53:15] They don't know that he's a murderer.
[53:17] They don't know that he's wanted and they're not gonna because
[53:20] they don't have TV's. So he's thinking at this point,
[53:23] wow, I could actually get away with this for he could just make
[53:28] a new life in this community and, and just live forever like
[53:33] this. And it's really scary how easily
[53:35] that could have worked for him. But luckily it didn't.
[53:39] So the family that he was staying with, I don't know if it
[53:41] was Esther's family that he was staying with or if it was a
[53:44] different family within the community, but he'd been staying
[53:47] with this family and they would take him to church with them.
[53:50] And it was when he arrived at this church, a young man saw
[53:54] him, a young man that had secretly been watching the TV
[53:58] and not telling his community. This young man saw him,
[54:03] recognised him from the news reports as a murderer.
[54:06] And it was him that raised the alarm.
[54:08] I think he went and told one of the higher ups in the church,
[54:11] like he had to kind of confess to his sin of watching TV.
[54:15] And he said, but this man is a murderer and we need to contact
[54:19] the police. And so they did.
[54:22] The police came down to where this community was based, but
[54:26] they didn't go like, into their, like, village or town.
[54:30] They kind of stayed on the outskirts because they didn't
[54:33] want to make it apparent to anyone there that the police
[54:36] were here. Because of course, as soon as
[54:38] Stephen Carr hears that the police are here, he's going to
[54:41] make a run for it. So instead, police start setting
[54:44] up roadblocks all around the town so that he wouldn't be able
[54:48] to get out using a road anywhere.
[54:51] And it was actually at this point, before they'd even
[54:53] managed to block off all the roads and make their way in,
[54:56] that the family that Stephen was staying with, the family start
[55:01] driving out of the town in their car.
[55:03] And obviously, they reach a police roadblock and they're
[55:05] like, hey, what's going on? And so the police tell them,
[55:09] look, there is a wanted man within your community.
[55:13] We're here to finally arrest him.
[55:15] And they ask if they can check their car and everything and
[55:17] talk to them about this investigation.
[55:20] And they hand the family a flyer with the police sketch on.
[55:24] And that was when they realized that Mike Smith that had been
[55:27] living in their family home, helping them tend the animals
[55:31] and the crops. Mike Smith was a murderer.
[55:34] Imagine finding out that you had done this, this really good
[55:38] deed, you know, invited someone in need into your home, you've
[55:42] clothed them, fed them, given them shelter, given them a job.
[55:46] They've lived under a roof with your children.
[55:49] And then you find out that they're a murderer.
[55:52] And this whole time you have been unknowingly helping them
[55:56] get away with their crimes. So the family told the police
[55:59] that at this moment in time, so it was very early on in the
[56:02] morning and work hadn't started yet on the farm.
[56:06] They said at this moment in time, he will be getting ready
[56:09] to do the work day. And his first task of the day is
[56:12] to move the cows from, I don't know, from the field to the barn
[56:16] or from the barn to the field, moving the cows.
[56:18] Anyway, that was his first task and he was due to do it with
[56:21] their children. So they said to police, look,
[56:23] he's going to start doing this like within the next half an
[56:26] hour or so. So if you want to try and ambush
[56:28] him while he's out in the open, just in a field where he's not
[56:31] going to be able to run away from you, get down to the field.
[56:34] Now, they had a bunch of different outhouses and sheds
[56:37] that the police could hide in, so it didn't look suspicious.
[56:40] And of course, when Mike Smith, Stephen Carr came out to deal
[56:45] with the cows, police arrested him.
[56:48] Quite surprisingly, when the police did pop out of their
[56:50] hiding places and arrest him, Stephen went quite easy.
[56:54] He didn't put up a fight. He just let them arrest him.
[56:56] But I think a big factor in that was that he wasn't told that he
[57:01] was being arrested on suspicion of murder.
[57:03] He was told that they were here to arrest him on those
[57:06] outstanding charges of the burglary ring from back in
[57:11] Florida. You know, the ones that he
[57:12] escaped from. And that's why he's been living
[57:14] in the forest. They were just acting as if
[57:16] they'd finally found him for those charges.
[57:19] The main reason they did this was because they wanted to see
[57:22] what kind of information he would volunteer up on his own
[57:25] when he doesn't know that they're suspecting him of having
[57:28] anything to do with these women. What's he, what's he going to
[57:31] say? They started by asking him what
[57:33] he'd been doing since he fled from Florida.
[57:35] Like, where's he been? How's he been living?
[57:38] And he told them that he had been living on the Appalachian
[57:41] Trail. He had been hunting for his
[57:43] food. So already he'd given up
[57:45] location where the murder happened and the fact that he
[57:48] had guns and regularly shot them in the forest.
[57:52] But actually he then told them this other little piece of
[57:55] information. He said that he had been robbed
[57:58] in the forest on May 13th, the day of the murder.
[58:02] He said that he had been robbed while he slept.
[58:05] Someone had stolen his gun. Of course, as soon as police
[58:08] hear this, they know that this is his first attempt at trying
[58:12] to cover up the murder before they've even gotten to it.
[58:16] Because now if they did connect his gun to the murder, he'd be
[58:20] able to say, well, oh, it must have been the person that stole
[58:22] it. The person must have stole it so
[58:24] that they could murder someone. Promise it wasn't me.
[58:27] Police knew it was all bullshit but they kept humouring him and
[58:30] they kept asking him, you know, about this stolen gun.
[58:33] They were acting as if they were taking it seriously and they
[58:35] were going to look into this for him.
[58:37] So they asked if he'd seen anyone in the area at the time
[58:39] that his gun was stolen and he said there wasn't really anyone
[58:43] about, just two young women that spoke to him whilst buck naked.
[58:47] Police eventually told Stephen some good news, that they had
[58:51] found some of the ammunition that had been stolen along with
[58:54] his gun, and his face lit up. But then they told him it had
[58:58] been found at a murder scene, and his face dropped again.
[59:02] As they talked about it, Stephen actually burst into tears and
[59:06] started saying things like, why does this always happen to me?
[59:09] Why does this keep happening? Police just confronted him at
[59:12] this point and said, look, we know that you shot at two women.
[59:16] And that was when they broke the news that one of those women had
[59:20] died, he had murdered one of them, and one of them had
[59:24] survived and managed to give over all of this information to
[59:27] police. That now means that he is being
[59:30] arrested and he will be in prison forever.
[59:33] He's still crying at this point. And he says to them, if I tell
[59:36] you the truth, you'll put me away for a long time.
[59:39] I should have run. And then in a last ditch attempt
[59:42] to try to get away with the murder, he said that he thought
[59:45] he was shooting at a deer. So you kept shooting 8 times.
[59:50] What about when the women were getting up and running behind
[59:53] this tree? At that point, of course, you
[59:55] will have seen that you're not shooting at a deer, you are
[59:57] shooting at 2 humans. And he kept going.
[1:00:00] I don't believe that for one second.
[1:00:02] Police were starting to lose their patience with him at this
[1:00:04] point. And they were like, look, we
[1:00:06] know you're the killer. You might as well confess.
[1:00:08] We have so much evidence against you and we literally have a
[1:00:12] surviving victim that if need be, she will be able to identify
[1:00:16] you in a police lineup. So you might as well just
[1:00:18] confess. And confess he did.
[1:00:21] He told them that the gun wasn't actually stolen.
[1:00:24] We already knew that. But anyway, he confessed that
[1:00:27] his gun wasn't actually stolen and that he'd hidden it.
[1:00:30] He'd wrapped it in plastic and then buried it out in the
[1:00:32] forest. So of course, police go and
[1:00:34] recover this buried gun, and when they test it against the
[1:00:38] bullets that were recovered from Rebecca and Claudia's bodies,
[1:00:42] they found that the bullets came from this exact gun.
[1:00:45] With that, Stephen Roy Carr was charged with first degree
[1:00:48] murder, third degree murder, attempted murder and two counts
[1:00:52] of aggravated assault among a month later he had his
[1:00:56] preliminary court hearing, which is where he's supposed to plead
[1:01:00] guilty or not guilty. And that's where they decide if
[1:01:03] it's going to go for trial. But I mean, this one was kind of
[1:01:07] like a mini trial within itself. They had the defence and the
[1:01:10] prosecution given their arguments and in this
[1:01:14] preliminary court hearing it became very clear what the
[1:01:19] motive for the shooting was. And I'm sure you can guess it.
[1:01:23] His defence stood up there and said that when he saw the women
[1:01:28] naked in the forest being so sexual and intimate with each
[1:01:32] other, they said that that triggered him.
[1:01:35] And that's for a few reasons. The first being just general
[1:01:39] homophobia. He did not like to see two women
[1:01:43] being together as a man and a woman should, you know, like he
[1:01:47] said that it disgusted him, but it also made him very jealous
[1:01:51] and he was a very, he was an insult, of course.
[1:01:55] I mean, you live out in the forest, He doesn't have a social
[1:01:57] life, He doesn't have a sex life or a romantic life.
[1:02:00] And he said it was just very triggering, first of all, to see
[1:02:04] two people having sex. But the fact that those two
[1:02:06] people were women drove him over the edge.
[1:02:09] He said that he felt taunted by it, seeing it multiple times in
[1:02:13] one day. He'd seen it that morning and
[1:02:15] seemed to enjoy it. Dirty pervert.
[1:02:18] But then he'd also stalked them through this whole trail and
[1:02:22] then saw them getting intimate again.
[1:02:24] And he said that they essentially provoked him to kill
[1:02:28] them. As I was researching this case,
[1:02:31] I've, I've genuinely, I don't think I've ever come across this
[1:02:33] in a case where they are so blatantly just trying to use
[1:02:38] homophobia as an excuse for murder.
[1:02:41] Like, that is his defence that they were gay and I didn't like
[1:02:45] it. And they were trying to use some
[1:02:47] kind of like, gay panic defense. Of course not.
[1:02:51] Shut up. What do you mean shut up?
[1:02:53] I just got really, really mad. What do you mean you're going to
[1:02:55] stand up there in court and and say, yeah, it was my homophobia
[1:02:59] and my hatred, but I should be let off for that?
[1:03:02] Like what? Like I want to know how the
[1:03:04] conversations went between him and his lawyer, where they were
[1:03:06] like, OK, cool, yeah, homophobia, that's going to
[1:03:09] work. There was one argument that his
[1:03:11] defence tried to use, which, remember I said earlier, he had
[1:03:16] a little stint in prison when he was about 1819.
[1:03:19] And apparently he was raped whilst in prison, of course, by
[1:03:23] another man. And he tried to say in court
[1:03:27] that seeing these two women in a homosexual relationship brought
[1:03:32] back a lot of trauma from the time that he was raped by
[1:03:36] another man and so he kill tried to kill them.
[1:03:40] I just think that is such a reach to explain why you stalked
[1:03:45] them for a whole entire day and then shot 8 rounds at 2
[1:03:50] terrified women as well. They're trying to run away from
[1:03:53] you and you are still trying to aim at them.
[1:03:56] I just can't understand that reasoning whatsoever.
[1:03:58] That doesn't explain why you stopped them the whole day.
[1:04:01] It wasn't a case of trauma coming back and flashbacks and
[1:04:06] you know, like a whole spur of the moment episode type thing.
[1:04:10] This was a prolonged planned attack.
[1:04:13] By the way, the whole time that his lawyer is saying all of this
[1:04:16] in court, Steven is sat there with the most stone cold,
[1:04:21] emotionless demeanour you've ever seen.
[1:04:24] And I especially think that if this attack had been provoked by
[1:04:28] trauma in him, then surely talking about it all would bring
[1:04:32] something up. But no, he was so emotionless.
[1:04:36] Stephen eventually opted to take a plea deal where he would plead
[1:04:41] guilty to the first degree murder of Rebecca Wright.
[1:04:44] And if he did that, all of his other charges would be dropped.
[1:04:48] So attempted murder, aggravated assault, which is a bit of a
[1:04:52] punch in the face for Claudia. I mean, those are all the
[1:04:55] charges relating to her and what she'd been through.
[1:04:59] But also at the same time, she didn't really care that much
[1:05:02] about her own justice, just as long as she got justice for her
[1:05:06] girlfriend, just as long as he was put behind bars for what he
[1:05:10] had done to Rebecca, she was happy.
[1:05:13] And so when he decided to take this plea deal, that's all she
[1:05:17] could really ask. The main reason that he took
[1:05:19] this plea deal was because the death penalty would have been on
[1:05:22] the table if he tried to plead not guilty to it all.
[1:05:25] So that way he was only going to get life in prison and he did.
[1:05:29] He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
[1:05:32] of parole. He is going to die behind bars.
[1:05:35] He has since tried to appeal this a few times, but it's never
[1:05:38] actually gone anywhere. And I hope it never does if he
[1:05:42] does try to appeal it in the future.
[1:05:44] Since her recovery, Claudia Brenner has very bravely gone
[1:05:48] full steam ahead with her life. She hasn't let this hold her
[1:05:51] back in any way. She went and finished her
[1:05:54] master's degree in architecture and now she she has her own
[1:05:57] architecture company called Claudia Brenner Design.
[1:06:00] She also went on to write a whole book about her ordeal
[1:06:04] named 8 Bullets, One woman's story of surviving anti-gay
[1:06:08] violence. In the book she talks of course
[1:06:11] all about the shooting itself and that her recovery, the
[1:06:14] aftermath, the police investigation.
[1:06:17] But she also just goes into what it was like to be a gay woman in
[1:06:21] the 1980s, how people would treat her and Rebecca when they
[1:06:25] would go out into the street or the verbal abuse that they'd
[1:06:28] faced before. And then of course, it LED up to
[1:06:31] this, her literal murder. Claudia talks about how she
[1:06:35] really, really struggled with PTSD after the attack.
[1:06:38] And actually, a lot of other survivors of horrific attacks
[1:06:43] have read Claudia's book. And it's been very, very helpful
[1:06:46] to a lot of people. And I think that's lovely when
[1:06:50] when things like this can come out of such a tragic, awful
[1:06:54] case, but can help others. I think I think that's
[1:06:58] wonderful. Claudia didn't have to sit down
[1:07:01] and relive all of that and get it all out into a book.
[1:07:04] She could have just put it all behind her and continued on
[1:07:07] with, you know, her architecture company.
[1:07:10] But I think it's it's very, very sweet that she wanted to help
[1:07:14] other people in a similar situation to herself, whether it
[1:07:17] be people with PTSD, people that have been through anti-gay
[1:07:21] violence and homophobia like her and her girlfriend.
[1:07:25] I just said, I think that's wonderful.
[1:07:30] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[1:07:33] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[1:07:36] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[1:07:38] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[1:07:42] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
[1:07:44] follow Usual Disclaimer on your podcast app so that you get
[1:07:48] notifications when we post new episodes.
[1:07:50] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[1:07:53] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[1:07:56] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[1:07:59] See you next time.

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