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The bench.

A quick warning before we start. This show contains descriptions of sexual violence and murder. Listener discretion is advised.

It was very hard for me to believe that he was the serial killer, that he was. He was just a regular guy.

Do you remember the first time you met Carr?

I was on this trip.

This is Doctor Ronald Wright. Back in 1976, he was the chief deputy medical examiner in Dade County, Florida. The trip he's talking about was a strange one. Five men heading to New Orleans to try to find some bodies. Five men united by an obsession, murder. And the one leading the way, Robert Carr, whose confession to murder led to this trip.

He was a delightful guy. He had a great sense of humor, and he was a great conversationalist. He's just kind of the guy that, you know, you'd like to be around.

Joining doctor Wright and Carr were the prosecutor and the two homicide detectives who'd taken the confession. Remember, Carr had confessed to committing murders in three states, but there were no bodies. Without bodies, there were no provable crimes. So now they'd set out to see if Carr was telling the truth, and if so, if he could remember where he'd put the bodies. That meant doctor Wright was going to be spending a lot of time with Robert Carr.

I really enjoyed his company.

Somehow Carr seems to have this effect on people. So he's the guy you could imagine having dinner with.

Yeah.

Did you ever have dinner with him, by the way?

Yeah, sure. It's where I first ate, at a Popeyes restaurant. I loved it.

It was actually lunch.

We generally started out at about 09:00 in the morning. We took I ten back into Mississippi, and that was, you know, you had to cross the Mississippi, and then you had to drive a long way. As I recall, it was around noon or 01:00 that we had Popeyes, and we sat there and had Popeyes fried chicken dinner. Spicy. He had spicy, too. Wasn't handcuffed or anything. I mean, he was just there, and probably a lot of people saw us, but I don't think anybody knew at the table.

Are you talking about what he did?

No, we just talked, you know, regular talking about, well, politics is something that came up, certainly, and other current affairs. At that particular point in time, this was, you know, it's like being at the pub or something. That's what it was.

So he was just one of the guys?

Yeah, he's a pretty good guy and a nice one. I mean, I've had a lot of friends in my life and he, I would consider to be a friend of mine.

This is my friend, the serial killer. I'm Steve Fishman. Episode three take us to the bodies.

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All right, let me just say Doctor Ronald Wright's outlook comes across as a little unsettling. He's got a professional interest in death. There's that.

You know, I've autopsied about 12,000 people.

But also, Doctor Wright seems tickled by his work cutting up bodies. Delighted.

When you're doing a decomposed body, it stinks, it's greasy, it's terrible. It was the sweet smell of job security.

And that job was also an identity. He chose his accessories accordingly.

My pipe was kind of my trademark at that point in time. It was a skull pipe. Hard to be a skull seeing that I deal with skulls all the time. It seemed kind of reasonable to have a pipe that was made into a skull.

Apparently back then, Doctor Wright never went anywhere without that pipe. On long drives out to the remote sites where Carr said he'd buried bodies, it'll be Doctor Wright who grabs the seat next to his new friend Robert Carr.

I talked to him. It was the drive to the sites would be two to 3 hours. So I was with him that entire time in the backseat of Dade County's Ford and I was very interested in how he selected his victims.

Everybody on this trip was interested in the mind of a serial killer. Doctor Wright was also interested in Carr's methods.

He would pick up children and he'd talk with them. He's loquacious, you know, he talks easily with everybody. He wasn't, to me at least, able to tell me exactly what. What he thought would be a good victim from the standpoint of control. But it was. Control was one of the most important things that he told me that they would put up with and not, you know, basically run away to what he was doing to them.

What was his affect like as he was telling you any of this?

Wasn't depressed, he wasn't apologetic, he wasn't. It was just matter of fact. He was like me talking to you right now. He was not any different than that.

I guess we'd call that chilling.

I didn't consider it that, but probably most people would.

This road trip had come together quickly. Carr had confessed and then immediately offered to show where he claimed the victims were buried. But Carr could change his mind at any time or his public defender might change it for him. And remember, without bodies theres no case. Before they left on the trip, prosecutor O'Donnell says that they had to buy Carr some clothes he was still wearing, the ones he'd been arrested in days earlier.

One I remember was kind of funny. I don't. A cartoon character, maybe Mickey Mouse, I don't remember in pants, just regular really, you know, stuff you'd get off the rack at Kmart. Make the guy feel comfortable, let him know we're gonna treat him like a human being. And we did without any promises.

Then they get on planes. Carr sits towards the back with the cops in that funny shirt. No handcuffs. As the plane descends into New Orleans, Car points out the window at a desolate Mississippi swamp. That's where I buried one of the victims, he says. That night the cops go out to dinner in New Orleans and they bring along Robert Carr. Carr orders a steak. The cops give each other a look when they see a steak knife. In front of him, don't do anything stupid, says one of the cops. Carr chuckles. He's so comfortable, he goes, you're gonna.

Take me to jail?

Of course we're gonna take you to jail. I said, what do you think? You go getting in a hotel room? He goes, yeah, why not?

The next morning, they set out from New Orleans to Mississippi. Charlie Zatropelek is one of the detectives who'd taken Carr's confession. He's driving that day. He drives so fast that Carr tells him to slow down. Apparently, Robert Carr is worried about breaking the speeding laws. Carr is leading this little gang. Everyone depends on him, on his word and his memory, which they are all amazed by.

Doctor Wright, we'd be on secondary roads in southern Mississippi, and there's no landmarks, okay? This is all basically swamp land. There's nothing, nothing, zero, zip. We'd park the car, we'd walk not very far, you know, 50, 60ft. And he'd say, it's here.

They reach the spot. That car has in mind time to dig. But there's a problem. No one in the group of homicide professionals wants to get his hands dirty. Not the prosecutor.

I don't want to dig. Right sake, give me a break. I had some shitty jobs in my life. Now I'm a lawyer.

I didn't sign on for this, not the detectives.

I know. I was not digging a hole.

This is Charlie, believe me, I work hard, okay?

But I'm not gonna go out and dig a hole. I think I did most of the work.

That's right. Leave it to the medical examiner to dig up the body.

I like to do the digging.

With that settled, they now just have to follow Carr's instructions.

If Robert Carr says to dig there, dig there.

The prosecutor remembers the scene.

Robert is pretty much directing everything and watching Doctor Wright's there. And they're digging and cutting through tall grass.

At one point, Carr takes a ladder, places it across a drainage ditch near where they're digging. He stretches out on the ladder, lowers his arm and starts fishing around in a pool of water, collecting evidence of his own crime. He's about to stop when someone shines a light into the water. Car spots a ring. It's a ring with an imitation sapphire stone.

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The final immunomus being videotaped at the Dade county public Safety department, Miami Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Robert F. Carr III.

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make.

Arriving in Miami, I proceeded to do certain things that I consider to be necessary in the crime that I plan to commit. I was looking for a hitchhiker, potential victim.

But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From orbit media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to my friend, the serial killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

Fireman. She said, you're going to kill me, aren't you? And I said, tammy, to help me, God, I'm going to put you on a plane.

After Carr and Tammy were pulled out of the mud by a passing hunter, Tammy would spend eight more days in captivity. During that time, Carr drove them around, or maybe she did sometimes. At least that's what Carr tells the detectives. For Carr, it was fun. This was a relationship. That's what Carr said he sought with his victims, someone he could hurt, who'd still tell him he was a great guy. At night, they returned to the same patch of woods.

She said, I want to know when. And I said, okay, tammy, wait just a minute. Let me figure out something. I thought, that's Tammy. Tomorrow night, after dark, we'll go to New Orleans. I'll get you on the first plane out of New Orleans back to Miami, so help me God. And she said, okay, we'll do it. Tammy drove all the way down. I let her drive again just to fill up her confidence as she was going home.

As they get closer to New Orleans, she drives up to a phone booth and Carr calls Eastern Airlines. A ticket agent gets on the line.

I said, what's the next plane you have leaving New Orleans for Miami? You don't have anything going out of here now. Within the next hour. He says, yes, we do. He says, I've got one in 30 minutes on another airline. I said, I can't make the airport in 30 minutes. There was no way I could make it to the airport in 30 minutes. Tammy says, we can fly if we have to. And I said, Tammy, we can't make it.

Tammy's convinced she can make it, but Carr has a different idea.

I said, no, Tammy, we're going back to Mississippi.

Tammy has played along. She's spunky, she's self possessed. Shed let Carr hurt her and still she let him think he was a great guy. Maybe she believes she can stay the course. Shes managed to keep it together for more than a week, living on alcohol, olives, small amounts of tinned foods. Shes lied on Carrs behalf, addressed him affectionately. But I know, and you know, Tammy is desperate to get home alive. And now, having missed the flight, she can sense that her captor is having second thoughts.

As she slid over by the door and I drove off, I stopped down just a little ways further because I could tell she was in depression. When I stopped, hit her window down and had her arm out like this. She hit that door handle on the outside and out of that car. She went running down the sidewalk screaming to the top of her lungs and every other thing, and she's screaming, he's going to kill me and everything else. And I run down and grabbed her and I just took my arms around her because there was nobody around, nobody to hear it. And she started breaking down and crying and everything, but she walked back to the car with me. She got in the car. She went completely, totally wrecked, out of her mind. She couldn't operate her tongue. She was foaming a little bit at the mouth. Her eyes were as if there was nothing left in her head at all.

According to Carr, Tammy falls into a catatonic state. She's broken. There are limits. She put her hope in that plane. And now the brutality of the past week, psychological, physical, overwhelms her.

I started trying to talk to her. I tried to give her a drink out of the bottle. She just let it run down her back. She wasn't there.

One of the detectives interrupts with a question.

She wasn't injured, no. Anyway, that she hadn't heard.

As if kidnapping and rape didn't cause enormous suffering. He tells the detectives this back in the interrogation room, she just went into.

A nervous breakdown, all right. That's the only explanation I can give. And finally I couldn't. I thought, gee, I think we're going to drop her out at the airport like that. I'm going to put her out. You know, there's no way that she's going to make it. She might, you know, and I just didn't know what to do with it. And finally I decided that I was going to have to kill her. You said your father decided you had to kill her. What? Why? Decided you had to kill her as opposed to let her go. I didn't. I couldn't see any way to let her go like that. Cause she couldn't even walk by this time. What am I gonna do with her? Where am I going to put her? Lay her on the sidewalk someplace.

Carr makes it sound like his thinking is logical, defensible, as if he imagines that these two detectives see his point.

Well, after she's dead, what are you doing? Set it up. Well, I pulled her out of the car and lay her beside the car. And I walked around and I was sweating.

Carr says he spots an owl that had been living in the tree above their campsite.

He was screaming his lungs out. I was trying to throw rocks at him to get him to leave. He wouldn't.

He says Tammy would talk to it sometimes, feed it.

He'd never screamed before. He always lived up there, but he never screamed, you know? And he was screaming to the top of his lungs, and he screamed all night long. I couldn't bring myself to dig the hole at first. Then I went around, I looked at her, you know, and I come back and I just lay on the hood, sick of stomach. What did you do after your buried here? I stood outside of the car. After everything was over with, I stood outside of the car most of the night. That owl was up there screaming.

Carr says that once Tammy was completely covered in earth, only then did the owl fly away, as if that screaming bird was supposed to be a stand in for his conscience. Then Robert Carr looks through her few possessions. He finds her composition book inside. He says she'd written, God, please let it soon be over. I can't stand it much longer. Please let my mom and dad know I'm all right. Don't let them worry too much about me. God, I love them so much. I hope they know that. And now Carr is back in that same place. It's been less than two months since he kidnapped a hitchhiker heading to a drive in in Miami, stuck the point of a knife in her thigh and drove her, Tammy Ruth Huntley, to this deserted spot in the Mississippi woods. Doctor Wright digs a hole. It's deep. He carefully clears away more dirt. And then he sees a shoulder.

I think I grabbed her around her middle and just pulled her out. She didn't weigh very much, and you lose weight as you decompose. I doubt if she was 100 pounds at the time. I removed it and I just put her right next to the graveside.

As Tammy's body is exhumed, Carr stands to the side and cries, Charlie, the detective later testified to that. But when Doctor Wright examines her, he suddenly thinks Carr's confession is wrong. Carr said he strangled her, but there are no signs of strangulation. And without the correct cause of death, the case against Carr won't be straightforward. Doctor Wright does his autopsy on Tammy, right there in the woods, on the edge of the grave, on a white sheet laid on top of the soft mud.

The body, as I recall, was I just laid on the ground and I was on my knees doing the examination. I mean, why transport her to a regular autopsy facility? That would be kind of like stupid.

Doctor Wright is nothing if not practical. He starts making incisions, but the scalpel.

Is dull, not very sharp at all.

So he improvises. He pulls out a pocketknife that he keeps especially sharp from moments like this. Now he has to figure out the cause of death. Remember, Carr had said he strangled her, but Doctor Wright can't find evidence of strangulation. Strangulation produces hemorrhaging in the neck, and it's just not there.

She didn't have any hemorrhage in her neck, and that really flabbergasted me.

So Doctor Wright turns to Carr with a question. I imagine this is something like a professional conversation. Wright has a question about technique.

So I said, how the hell are you strangling them? And he said, like this.

The serial killer marches over to Doctor Wright, puts his hand on the doctor's neck.

He took his hand and rotated my trachea underneath the larynx. And you just rotate it and it cuts the air off. And he did and I did. I couldn't breathe.

Wow. So Carr walks over and says, like this, and just puts his hands around your neck?

No, just his. Just one hand. He used his right. He's right handed. And he just used his right hand. And he was pretty strong. So he could rotate my trachea and cut off the air supply. But be that as it may, I didn't lose consciousness.

Doctor Wright claims he wasn't worried, even though he couldn't breathe.

I had two guys with guns, okay? You don't worry about that sort of thing.

Doctor Wright determined the cause of death, asphyxiation. Now the serial killer can be prosecuted. After they unearthed Tammy, Carr led the police to find other bodies he'd buried in the south. One of the two boys was buried near where they found Tammy. The other in Louisiana. The boys had been killed years earlier and had decomposed down to the bones. Doctor Wright placed the bones in a bag and brought them to the airport. According to him, he was being considerate of the families. He wanted to save them the cost of having the remains shipped home. At the airport, a security guard asked the team, what's in the bag? A body, someone said. Everyone laughed and walked on through. That was the last time doctor Wright remembers seeing Robert Carr.

I didn't give him a hug. I'm not much of a hugger person. I did shake his hand.

You remember what your parting words were?

It wasn't anything meritorious, I don't think. I told him good luck, because I think at that time I wanted the state to kill it.

Meanwhile, I'm in Connecticut, and it's another day in the newsroom. The police scanner is on. You can hear the sound of fire engines go by. Occasionally people are shouting. There's excitement, deadlines. Phones are ringing in the office. Someone answers one, and suddenly he's yelling across the desks, Fishman, you have a collect call from a prison. Everyone takes notice. I pick up the phone, I accept the charges, and I hear a familiar drawl, one I remember from my hitchhiking ride. Robert Carr that's next time. Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to unlock all episodes of Smokescreen, my friend the serial killer ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge podcast channel. Just click subscribe at the top of the Smokescreen show page on Apple podcasts or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge Channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. My friend the serial Killer is a production of Orbit Media in association with wrong creator and host. That's me, Steve Fishman. Our senior producer is Dan Babkoff.

Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Editorial consulting by Annie Aviles fact check Catherine Newhan our mixer and sound designer is Scott Somerville from Sony Music Entertainment. Our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. Additional reporting by Daniel Bates, Ben Furhard, Andy T. Bow, and Francisco Alvarado. Special thanks to Cassie Epps at Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut.