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- [00:01]
A
Hi, this is Christopher Goffard. I'm at work putting together a new narrative series set to drop in the fall. In the meantime, I wanted to reintroduce you to the Trials of Frank Carson, the story of a criminal defense attorney who was put on trial for murder. Thanks for listening and please rate and subscribe. On the weekend before the marathon courtroom battle was to start, a feeler was extended to the alleged godfather at the heart of the murder plot. It came to Frank Carson through his attorney, Percy Martinez, who had been picking up evidence from the DA's office. When he says, the prosecutor asked if Carson might be willing to cop a plea. He says Carson was given a big incentive that charges would be dropped against his wife Georgia and stepdaughter Christina.
- [00:55]
B
I said, are you crazy? They go, we could come up with something. I went and told Frank, I said, they made you an offer. They want you to cooperate against the Atlas. Chrissy and Georgia will get out immediately.
- [01:08]
A
Carson's response was a profane snarl. No chance. This was characteristic of Carson, irascible and obstinately determined to fight to the end. I asked the DA about the overtures described by the defense, and the prosecutor said no formal plea offers were made. As the preliminary hearing got underway In Modesto in October 2015, Frank Carson sat with his co defendants, his wife and stepdaughter Bobby Atwall, and his brother Dee, who ran the Pop and Cork liquor store, and former CHP officer Walter Wells. Two other accused highway patrolmen would have their cases heard later. Judge Barbara Zuniga would have to decide whether there was enough evidence to hold the defendants for trial. The government just had to convince her that there was probable cause that the defendants had conspired under Carson's influence to murder or cover up the death of a scrap metal thief. The state's bid to find cooperators among the accused was met with stiff refusals. Rather than get on board the witness bus in exchange for leniency, Carson and his family, the Atwell brothers and Welles, chose to fight as a unified front. But this choice came at an enormous cost. As the prelim ground on long beyond the four weeks prosecutors had estimated it would take. And it would be Carson himself, the combative, singularly defiant man at the heart of it, who would rethink the wisdom of continuing the fight. From the Los Angeles Times. This is the trials of Frank Carson. This is your host, Christopher Goffard. Episode 6 Prelim.
- [03:37]
C
This is a case of a missing person named Corey Kaufman, who was last seen on Frank Carson's property, who Went there to steal who? Mr. Carson has a long history of hating people who thieved from him. He would search their cars, he would tell, threaten them and say he was going to kill them. This isn't us. This is a long history of people over a 12 year period, 10 year period.
- [04:03]
A
I'm talking to prosecutor Marlisa Ferreira at the DA's office in downtown Modesto. She's summarizing the government's case against defense attorney Frank Carson. The case she built during a preliminary hearing that began in October 2015 and went on for 18 months.
- [04:22]
C
So to say that we pursued him because we've all had an experience with Mr. Carson that was, you know, not fun, let's put it that way. Or seemed unprofessional. Yes, that's absolutely ridiculous because it would have nothing to do with the facts of this case. And the fact that it was investigated stems solely from his conduct.
- [04:51]
A
Defense attorneys argued there was no believable evidence that Corey Kaufman was ever on Carson's property, a fenced in lot where he kept junk and antiques. Carson had been angry at thieves and he had admitted to asking some former clients to keep an eye on the property. But to the defense, it was a spectacular leap to say he had hired centurions to guard it, much less encourage them to murder trespassers. The government's star witness was Robert Woody, and he finally had the plea deal he had desperately wanted. He had landed in legal trouble by claiming in contradiction riddled statements that he'd participated in Coffman's murder. And the DA's office had threatened him with the death penalty or life in prison if he didn't talk. Now, in exchange for testimony against Carson and others, he would be allowed to plead out to manslaughter. His sentence would be seven years and three months.
- [05:52]
D
The prosecution says that this is a circumstantial evidence case. It absolutely is not. It absolutely is not. It rises or falls on the testimony of this jackass, Robert Woody.
- [06:07]
A
This is Carson. He told me he had a theory about Woody's macabre methamphetamine fueled confession to his girlfriend in which he bragged about yanking the teeth out of Kaufman's skull and feeding the body to pigs. Carson believed that Woody had made it up, stealing it from a film called Snatch, in which a flamboyant gangster named Bricktop describes the benefits of feeding a victim to the pigs.
- [06:33]
D
And it turns out this movie is kind of like a cult classic among tweakers. It's like word for word what Robert Woody Said he's a low level criminal. I can't get all that mad at him, okay? He's a victim. He's stupid. He's doing time for something that he didn't do. He's just stupid. But what I don't feel sorry for is that to save himself he makes up this story about the outwolves, you know, killing this fucker on our property that I don't forgive.
- [07:20]
A
On days when Robert Woody was expected to testify, the DA's office had investigator Steve Jacobson drive him between the jail and the courthouse. Jacobson recorded their freewheeling conversations which were frequently punctuated by chummy laughter. Better be my cousin, you sick sucker.
- [07:45]
D
All right, ready to rock on again?
- [07:48]
A
Rock on. Woody told raucous scatological stories about his fellow inmates and made endless dirty jokes. Jacobson liked to talk about his ranch and his wife's good cooking. He told Woody that he was proud of him and that he was bound to find a good woman himself when he got out in a few years. You got a good sense of humor. Ladies are going to find that attractive. The right lady, she's gotta have to want sex all the time. Oh, man, that's hilarious. I tried to get in touch with Jacobson, but without success. Woody took the stand and in his mumbling, sometimes hard to understand way, recounted a life on the margins. He said he'd used meth since he was 17, punched a cop, stolen so many cars he lost count. Woody had told many stories about what happened on the night of March 30 and the early morning of March 31, 2012. But now under oath, he said that he had been working at the Poppen Cork that night with Daljeet Atwal and they left about 1am to 1:30am to make the mile and a half drive to Carson's property. They were supposed to be watching the place for thieves at Carson's request. The theory was that they owed a favor to Carson who'd represented them on some charges and gotten them dropped on Carson's lot. Woody testified they found Bobby Atwell brawling with Kaufman. The brothers punched him and kicked him. Then came a gunshot and Kaufman lay dead while Daljeed held a handgun. They hauled the body back to the Poppencork and Woody dug a two foot hole in the fenced in lot next door, removing the fingers and toes with a Sheetrock knife. On the stand, Woody was savaged by defense attorneys who counted up his many admitted lies in the car to and from court. DA investigator Steve Jacobson told Woody that he was doing great.
- [09:54]
D
So, Robert, you need a hug and.
- [09:55]
A
A kiss this morning? Yes, please. A long one. Well, I can give you the hug, but we're gonna have to find somebody else to give you the kiss. Carson's in need of one. Is he in need of one?
- [10:08]
D
Yeah.
- [10:08]
A
Hello. Well, maybe he'll do the right thing one of these days and somebody will give him a hug and a kiss. Seems pretty easy. Woody was on and off the stand for three. Under cross examination, he acknowledged that he would lie to avoid the death penalty or life in prison, both of which he'd been threatened with.
- [10:42]
D
There are so many holes in their investigation in their evidence, and I would say the biggest piece of evidence which was completely and utterly false was Robert Woody.
- [10:57]
A
Hans Jochtensen represented Daljeet Atwal, and he pointed out that the lot where Woody claims the body was first buried would be a ludicrous choice. There's a two story apartment complex overlooking it with good views of the spot.
- [11:12]
B
It's an illuminated area.
- [11:14]
A
And on the other side of the.
- [11:16]
B
Property there is another neighbor who was living there. And it's an absurd location.
- [11:23]
D
And they never covered the body. And then they moved the body supposedly into this and it stayed for about a month.
- [11:32]
A
It's one of the worst places to.
- [11:34]
D
Pick to bury a body.
- [11:37]
B
It makes no sense.
- [11:39]
A
Investigators had looked for evidence to prove Woody's claim that a body had been in this temporary grave beside the poppin cork. But the soil had held no trace of any corpse. No DNA, no blood, no fluids characteristic of a decomposing body, no dead insects that would have fed on it, and not even a remnant flake from the blue tarp Woody said he'd put the body in. There were other problems with the state's case, not least of them the official timeline of the crime. Michael Big Mike Cooley, the thief and heroin junkie who lived next door to Carson's lot, said Kaufman had left his place to steal pipes from Carson's property around 10 or 11pm But Woody said the confrontation there didn't take place till hours later.
- [12:34]
D
Woody puts it at 1:30. The times are inconsistent. So their deal is that we won't make a choice. We'll just try to push both.
- [12:49]
A
I asked prosecutors about their view of this discrepancy, but did not get a response. Much of the preliminary hearing was devoted to Carson's supposed hatred of the people who had been pillaging his Turlock property for antiques and metal. Some, like Michael Cooley, had accused him of confronting him and making threats Many who knew Carson were quick to acknowledge his savagery with courthouse opponents, his snarling antipathy to authority, his profane tongue, his occasional bad temper. But they could not envision him as a vigilante killer, as someone who would be tempted to risk his livelihood and freedom to punish a thief. A defense attorney of his experience would know if anyone did how easy it is to get caught at murder. He would know if anyone did, that your chances of getting caught grew exponentially with every co conspirator you involved. Prosecutors portrayed Carson as a criminal mastermind when it suited their theory to explain, for example, why no physical evidence ever linked him to the crime. But the murder plot he supposedly oversaw was a haphazard, harebrained scheme involving enough people to field a baseball team.
- [14:10]
B
Frank Carson is widely known as the greatest criminal attorney in the history of this county.
- [14:15]
A
It was no secret that Carson had dangerous acquaintances among people he'd represented, that some felt themselves in his debt. Micah Disney was a former outlaw gangster who had relied on Carson for years to get him out of trouble. He says he and other ex clients laughed at the allegations against Carson. If Carson had a problem, why would he have turned to respectable business owners and men with badges?
- [14:41]
B
There's a number of us that he represented over the years that, you know, he found value in us when nobody else did, and we didn't even probably find value in ourselves. So he, we were talking about it one day and I was, we just were laughing about it, that the idea that Frank would go and involve all of these straight shooters, straight edge people, when he had a huge group of straight hitters at his disposal, guys that, you know, that were tried and tested in the trenches, he could have depended on them for sure.
- [15:16]
A
A note of clarification about Disney's colorful lexicon. By straight shooters, he means Carson's family, the Atwalls and the highway patrolman. By straight hitters, he means the opposite. A stable of authentic outlaws.
- [15:31]
B
A stable, an impressive stable that he could have just tapped into any of that and, and we would have done whatever he asked without hesitation and without remorse and without mercy. Just. That's the truth of it. But yet he goes and drags all of these, all these squares, for lack of a better term. You know, police officers, you know, his, his, his wife and her daughter. Please. It doesn't even make any sense. It defies logic. But he had a natural distrust of law enforcement. I just find it, it's, it's an impossibility that he involved three police officers. He wouldn't conspire with the police officer to jaywalk. He just. Look, he. He got even with people or he settled scores in the courtroom. Like he truly believed in the system. You know, that's where. That's where he fought.
- [16:28]
A
In the early 2000s, long before the death of Corey Kaufman, Carson believed that an acquaintance had been stealing valuable books from him.
- [16:37]
B
I offered to just beat the guy to a pulp, you know, I was like, hey, Frank, why don't you just let me handle him? And, like, he reached out and, like, got me just with the tips of his fingers by the shirt and pulled me real close to him. And he said, buddy, we don't do stuff like that. That's why you're always in trouble.
- [16:55]
A
He just shut you down?
- [16:56]
B
He shut me down. I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't up for debate, you know, it was. It was unequivocal. There was no ambiguity to it. He. That was it.
- [17:06]
A
How far would you have gone for Frank?
- [17:10]
B
You know what? Just. Just for all on and just in all transparency, if Frank asked me to kill somebody, I would have done it, you know, but this just knowing him the way I do. This whole thing is absurd.
- [17:29]
A
The preliminary hearing punished everyone, mostly those who remained in custody, like Carson, the Atwell brothers, and Walter Wells.
- [17:39]
E
It was probably up until about 10 months into the prelim that I was never even mentioned. And day after day, I would sit there and just wait for them to talk about me.
- [17:52]
A
Wells was the former California Highway Patrol officer accused of carrying around the dead Kaufman's cell phone to confuse investigators. He was accused of murder and could not make his $10 million bail.
- [18:04]
E
Each morning, you know, four to five days a week, I was chained up, you know, with a black box over your handcuffs. You're limited in your movement, but each and every day, just being chained up, transported. My daughter was 10 years old when I was arrested on these allegations. I missed out on her entire fourth grade year of school, half of her fifth grade year. I missed school functions. I missed dance practices.
- [18:44]
A
Wells was financially wrecked. Day after day, month after month. A high dollar defense attorney represented him at the prelim. His sister Natalie had scrambled to keep the lawyer on the case. They pulled all the money out of Wells's account. They depleted her own retirement account. They emptied their mother's retirement account. They sold his car. They sold his house. The lawyer needed to get paid. From the start, courtroom observers had wondered who would flip. The defendants had started as a unified front. But as the proceeding approached, the one year mark, the excruciating pace and the financial toll magnified the incentive for defendants to climb aboard the so called witness bus who would buckle under the pressure and cooperate as a prosecution witness.
- [19:40]
E
I mean, we had lawyers calling in sick, we had judges calling in sick. We had holidays, we had, you know, three day, four day weekends. It just never seemed to end.
- [19:52]
A
Carson refused to show fear or weakness to the government, but his health was collapsing and he was close to despair. One day, sitting with the Atwell brothers and Walter Wells at the courthouse, he suggested that there might be a way out for everyone. Hi, my name is Mary Knoff and I'm a producer for Crimes of the Times. We are here with Joanne o', Neill, director of Customer programs at Clean Power Alliance. Hi Joanne.
- [20:32]
D
Hello.
- [20:32]
A
Can you tell us a little bit about Clean Power Alliance? Yeah. So Clean Power alliance is the not for profit electricity provider for 3 million residents and businesses across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. What renewable energy options does CPA offer its customers? So Clean Power alliance offers customers a series of choices between lean Power, clean power or 100% green power to ensure that people have the option to choose a rate that's right for them and maximize their renewable energy. Well, thank you so much for speaking with us, Joanne. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take the next step in building a more resilient and clean energy future for Southern California. To learn more, please visit CleanPowerAlliance.org PowerResponse Again, that's CleanPowerAlliance.org Powerresponse.
- [21:22]
F
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- [22:23]
E
There was a holding room that they would Keep us in. Before court started or during a lunch period, we would all be together in the same room, all four of us. Everything had been going on for so.
- [22:34]
G
Long.
- [22:37]
E
That he was just mentally and physically just couldn't do it anymore.
- [22:43]
A
Frank Carson had been turning it over in his mind, and now he told his co defendants that he was willing to give himself up so they could go free. He was the one prosecutors really wanted.
- [22:56]
E
He said, again, up until that point, I never even knew. Frank Carson never knew who he really was.
- [23:02]
H
He said, I should take the blame. They want me. He said, I'm their worst enemy.
- [23:07]
E
He was very genuine, I mean, very adamant that. That he was willing to sacrifice himself for all of us for something that we all knew that wasn't the truth.
- [23:21]
H
He said, you know what, boys? You have long life to live. I should take the blame, and you guys can be free. And I told Mr. Carson, no, sir, if you do that. If people in India, they find out in my village, I can't go back to my village. We told him, no, Mr. Carson, we don't want you to do that. We will go through it. He was serious, and we were serious, too, when we told him to don't do it.
- [23:47]
E
We were all pretty adamant that there's no way that this is going to happen and that one way or the other, we'll get through all this. It's just one day at a time.
- [23:57]
A
The Modesto Bee sent reporters to the courtroom now and then, but to get a feel for what was happening in the courtroom day after day, it was useful to consult the work of Marty Carlson.
- [24:08]
G
It didn't take me long to figure out there's an agenda here. The way they choreographed the interviews, the way they acted in court, and it was personal. It was also a very personal thing with these people. On the prosecution site. It was obvious it was personal.
- [24:27]
A
Carlson was a retired sheriff's deputy from San Joaquin County. He had been coming religiously from the start and chronicled his impressions on a blog and podcast called Dog. On it, he quickly developed deep misgivings about the state's case. It just didn't seem to hang together. At one point during the preliminary hearing, he said three of the key investigators, DA Investigators Kirk Bunch and Steve Jacobson, and Modesto Detective John Evers came to the door of his home. They claimed he knew something about confidential information leaking out of Frank Carson's office. He said he vehemently denied this and came to believe this was just a pretext to scare him away from the case.
- [25:12]
G
They were trying to Intimidate me. That's what they do. These guys are very aggressive. They didn't like what I was doing. Normally these cases are done in a vacuum and very little is actually put out in the media or on the Internet. Daily reports were being done by myself and other people and they didn't like that information being put out because it wasn't favorable to them because they did not have a case. They were always saying things into me in the hallways, too. John Everest told me one day, yes, driving by your house the other day, I saw you out front of your house. You know, what do you think he's trying to tell me? And I told him, I said, well, I appreciate you being so concerned about my safety, checking on me.
- [26:05]
A
I tried to reach Evers for his response, but he did not reply. As the prelim moved to its conclusion, the DA seemed to lose confidence that it would be able to prove the murder charge against Walter Wells. The defense had a straightforward explanation for the claim that Wells cell phone had been pinging in the city of Turlock near Coffman's phone after he vanished. It was a small town with few cell towers and Wells lived there. The DA had also claimed that phone tower records put Wells at the Poppin Cork just after Robert Woody said he buried Kaufman in the side lot. The DA maintained that this meant Wells had been lying when he said he'd been home. The defense portrayed this as a grievous misreading of the data. Star witness Robert Woody claimed at one point that Wells was at the murder scene, but he had abandoned that story. Woody's mother, Beverly, testified that her son had seen Wells outside the scene in his highway patrol car. The defense attacked this story as absurd. Wells wasn't working that day and would not have taken his patrol car home in any case. The judge struck the Beverly Woody testimony that implicated Wells. So the case against Wells was disintegrating. The state dropped the murder charge, though he still faced lesser charges of accessory and obstruction. His bail was reduced from $10 million to $50,000. This his family could afford. His family was there to meet him in the jail lobby when he walked out after 16 months behind bars. His mother, who calls him Wally, was the first to run up and embrace him.
- [28:14]
B
Oh, baby.
- [28:17]
A
Oh, whoa. Carson and the Atwell brothers remained in lockup. Under the law, the defense is allowed to examine what evidence the prosecution has gathered. And the prosecution is required to turn it over ahead of time so the defense can prepare. In this case, there were four and a half years of tape Recordings and written reports, mountains of evidence, terabytes worth. This material is called discovery. And there is a long standing U.S. supreme Court case called Brady v. Maryland, which says a prosecutor who fails to turn over evidence that's potentially favorable to defendants is depriving them of their right to a fair trial. Defense attorneys often complain that prosecutors violate this rule, and in the Carson case, the complaints were frequent and bitter.
- [29:08]
D
For 17 months, we fought this constant battle of discovery, and they wouldn't provide it. They had every excuse and we had to keep going back to the judge.
- [29:21]
A
The judge did not allow cameras or recorders in the prelims, so you won't be able to hear any of it. As it dragged on, in late September 2016, the California governor signed a law intended to crack down on prosecutorial misconduct. The new law would make it a felony for prosecutors to alter or intentionally withhold evidence that defendants might use to exonerate themselves. Previously, such violations were considered misdemeanors, but now prosecutors could get up to three years in prison. Carson did not believe it was coincidence that three months later, just before closing arguments in the prelim were supposed to start, prosecutor Marlisa Ferreira announced that she was going to turn over a big cache of evidence. Scores of audio recordings, some of them featuring the defendants and key witnesses. Ferreira said the failure to turn over the evidence was not intentional and told the court she had just discovered the extra material. Last night, she apologized, saying, quote, I realize that this is completely unacceptable to the court as well as to defense counsel. The defense was unappeased.
- [30:40]
D
So she comes in that morning and tosses off that, oh, and by the way, we're providing 53 new discs of.
- [30:49]
A
Discovery in the new evidence. There was an interview of the prosecution star witness, Robert Woody, that the defense had not heard before.
- [30:58]
D
It turns out that we transcribed it, and it was a devastating impeachment against Woody.
- [31:05]
A
The recording captured investigator Kirk Bunch and Detective John Evers visiting Woody in jail days after his arrest. At least three times, Bunch told him the authorities were, quote, bending over backwards to accommodate him, provided he cooperate as a witness. The da, I'm telling you, wants to work with you, and I just want to see if you want to add to your story. Woody seemed clearly to believe that the investigators did not care whether the additional details he might provide were true or false. When Bunch asked him if he cared to add to his story, Woody said, this ain't true. It's hard to hear, but Woody is saying, add stuff to it if it ain't true. The investigators said they meant true stuff. But when Woody insisted he had nothing to do with Coffman's killing or burial, they shut him down fast. Defense attorneys seethed at the revelation that so much evidence had been held back. The atmosphere was just kind of like, this is outrageous. For more than a year, defense attorneys had viewed Judge Zuniga as markedly pro prosecution, excessively credulous to the state's claims, and willing to nudge them toward victory in the prelim. She had been a prosecutor herself at Contra Costa County. I reached out to Zuninga, but she declined to talk to me. In a transcript of the preliminary hearing, I found her telling Ferreira, remember the DA Motto, thin to win. She was telling the prosecutor, in other words, that she needed only to present the skeleton of a case to get past the probable cause burden of a prelim. But now the judge was clearly irate at Ferreira. Ma', am, what you need to explain to me is how does this happen that it's not discovered till last night. The judge called it totally unacceptable, just wrong. As ever. The elected district attorney Ferreira's boss, Birgit Fladegger, was nowhere to be seen. Who should be sitting in the audience is the D.A. the judge said. It is her reputation that is on the line. But Carson felt he knew the judge by now. Her tough talk was just drapery, he maintained for what he saw as pro prosecution bias.
- [33:33]
D
We never dreamed in our wildest dream that the judge would do anything.
- [33:43]
A
After 17 months in jail, Carson had reached rock bottom. Bobby Atwell remembered his despair.
- [33:52]
H
He said, I don't want to go to prison. I never did anything wrong. Boys, I feel like, take me. I'm so tired. I feel like just hang my.
- [34:11]
F
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- [35:28]
A
Apply.
- [35:31]
B
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- [36:32]
A
Defense attorneys were outraged that the DA had withheld so much evidence, and they demanded that Frank Carson and the two co defendants who remained in custody with him be allowed to go home. Judge Zuniga said the law did not allow it, but she was angry. If she ultimately decided to send the defendants to trial, she said the appeals court was certain to reverse the case as a result of the DA's major discovery failure.
- [37:00]
D
None of us believed that she would actually do it, and she did stun us by saying the following I've thought of it and I'm going to. And she was trying to labor through this thing. So we were like on we were wondering if we had heard this right.
- [37:17]
A
And so in a case that had already seen no shortage of bizarre twists, here was another Zuniga let Carson and the Atwell brothers go home. She did not drop the charges, but at least they would not be in jail while the case was decided, and for Carson, it meant he could continue to practice the law. Zuniga would explain her decision to the prosecutor this I felt I was compelled to release them to save the case for your office. The defense applauded the outcome, but complained that her remarks reflected that she had a rooting interest in keeping the DA's case alive. On December 22, 2016, after 17 months in custody, Frank Carson and the Atwell brothers returned to their families. To the da, it was a colossal embarrassment. Cameras swarmed the courthouse to capture the defendant's exit. Here's Carson's attorney, Percy Martinez, that people.
- [38:22]
B
Charged with murder with special circumstances would be released on their own recognizance. It just doesn't happen, Chris. It just doesn't happen. But everything that is abnormal happens in our case.
- [38:36]
A
So this is a big win for you guys?
- [38:39]
D
It was huge.
- [38:41]
A
This is Carson's mother, Valli. He would have died if she hadn't released him. Prank would have. I don't know if she knew it. I don't know if she understood it.
- [38:53]
D
I'll put it this way. Had I not been released, I couldn't have survived it to this point. I couldn't have done it.
- [39:07]
A
You mean that literally?
- [39:08]
D
I mean that literally.
- [39:11]
A
I was sitting in Carson's living room with him and his wife, Georgia. They were trading memories of incarceration. I was trying to figure out how to kill myself. It was just so awful, you know? And I thought, well, maybe I could just like leap down the stairs, you know?
- [39:28]
D
I had figured out how to kill myself.
- [39:30]
A
How?
- [39:31]
D
Huh?
- [39:32]
A
How?
- [39:33]
D
I had a sheet.
- [39:35]
A
No. Were you going to hang yourself? Is this Frank? I have a sheet, too. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't have any.
- [39:42]
D
No, I had it down.
- [39:43]
A
Dang.
- [39:44]
D
I figured about how much time I needed, but the day they let me out, it was under my pillow. I had kept it there because I'm not going to get on some bus to go to prison. I can't survive.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah, I didn't care for jail.
- [40:09]
D
But I wasn't going to do anything until it was just too late. I didn't want to give them the satisfaction because they would get satisfaction in that, you know?
- [40:21]
A
Even as he was telling me this, Carson remained in the shadow of the charges and the possibility he'd still go to prison. But he was practicing law again.
- [40:31]
D
Good afternoon, law officers. Yeah, this is Frank.
- [40:36]
A
After he and his brother were released from jail, Bobby Atwall went back to work at their liquor store while they awaited the resolution of their case. But word of their arrests was everywhere. At Walmart, he saw a longtime friend in the company of her young son.
- [40:52]
H
She grabbed her 3 year old kid and she just like turned back on me. She used to come to the store every day. It was a terrible feeling.
- [41:02]
A
The ordeal cost them customers and friends and standing in the community. The Pop and Cork had sponsored local sports teams. Now one coach told him parents were uneasy about their kids being associated with the Atwalls and their business.
- [41:18]
H
I lost my lot of friends. I lost my friends and a lot of my friends, they stopped coming and I lose as a good customer then I lose a lot of good customers.
- [41:29]
A
Judge Zuniga would soon have to decide whether there was enough evidence to send Carson and his co defendants to trial. The defense had been building an argument that the wrong people had been arrested, that in their tunnel vision obsession with destroying Frank Carson, authorities had failed to pursue more plausible suspects. The defense would argue there was strong evidence for this conclusion. In the investigators own interviews, detectives had taken an interest in a local man named Jason Armstrong, who had known Corey Kaufman and disliked him and had been known to visit the area where Kaufman's bones were found. Armstrong vehemently denied any involvement in Kaufman's death, but at one point he was on detectives radar. I think bare minimum, bare minimum, Jason knows exactly what happened. And bare minimum, if you were in a gun and a badge right now in our position where we never disclosed where the body was found, where no one could see from the road and he was there.
- [42:36]
G
There.
- [42:36]
A
He was there. The Trials of Frank Carson is written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffard for the Los Angeles Times. Our producers are Lori Gallaretta and Sabrina Fangirl. Alex McGinnis is our composer and sound designer. Misha Stanton is our mix engineer. Our editor is Steve Clow. Our executive producers are Ben Adair at Western Sound and Abby Fentress Swanson at the LA Times. Special thanks to Shelby Grad, Julia Turner and Kimi Yoshino. If you like what you're hearing, become a Los Angeles Times subscriber. You'll get special bonus episodes of this podcast. Hi, it's your host Christopher Goffard again. Here's a reminder that LA Times subscriber support makes podcasts like this one possible. Subscribe now to get exclusive bonus episodes that will give you the story behind this show. We will share interviews with experts who will weigh in on the case. And we will play extra tape that sheds light on on important parts of our story. Subscribe today. To listen, go to latimes.com exclusive podcasts. Thanks.