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Thread: Emilia Lily Carr - Florida

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    Emilia Lily Carr - Florida




    Emilia Lily Carr talks with investigator Roger Chilton as jury selection begins in her murder trial at the Marion County Judicial Center in Ocala on Monday November 29, 2010.


    Emilia Lily Carr


    Woman's murder trial under way

    Jury selection is under way in the first-degree murder trial of Emilia Carr, one of two defendants charged with kidnapping Citra resident Heather Strong and manifesting a brutal crime that ended with the burial of the young mother's remains in a shallow grave.

    Carr is the first of two people to appear before a Marion County jury for an alleged crime prosecutors claim was so heinous, it warrants consideration of the death penalty.

    Carr's co-defendant, Joshua Fulgham, will be tried separately under the same charges at a later date.

    Seated beside her attorneys, Candace Hawthorne and Brenda Smith, Carr betrayed little emotion as Circuit Judge Willard Pope addressed a dozens-deep jury pool--14 of whom are expected to be chosen by the end of the day.

    Prosecutors claim Carr and then-boyfriend Fulgham lured Strong into a storage trailer in McIntosh, placed a plastic bag over her head and tried to break her neck, resorting to constricting her airway when that failed. Strong was the estranged wife of Fulgham and the mother of his two children; the couple had a turbulent history.

    Shortly before her death, Strong, 26, had plans to relocate to Mississippi with her kids, according to court depositions.

    Strong's body was uncovered from a makeshift grave several months after she was reported missing.

    Investigators familiar with the case say the trial could take up to a week. In the event of conviction, the trial will move to a penalty phase

    http://www.ocala.com/article/2010112...nder-way&tc=ar

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    Defendant in murder trial refuses life sentence plea deal

    Still little is known about Emilia Carr, the 26-year-old woman standing trial on charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the disappearance and eventual killing of Heather Strong, a young mother from Citra, in the early months of 2009.

    But a decision she was faced with last week, as lawyers convened to discuss procedural matters ahead of trial, may say at least one thing about her: She won't so easily back down.

    http://www.ocala.com/article/2010112...ence-plea-deal

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    Jury selection completed in Emilia Carr murder trial

    Jury selection in the Emilia Carr murder trial continued Tuesday morning with the selection of the final three jurors needed to round out a 12-member panel, plus two alternates.

    By 7:30 p.m. Monday, 11 jurors had been selected with questioning delayed until this morning.

    Opening statements are scheduled to start at 1 p.m.

    http://www.ocala.com/article/2010113...r-murder-trial

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    Carr jury hears chilling words from the accused

    There is no physical evidence linking her to the crime, but in this case, none may have been necessary. In a conversation captured clearly on tape, Emilia Carr confesses to assisting with a brutal crime that took the life of a 26-year-old Citra woman in 2009.

    That hourlong tape was played back for jurors Friday afternoon during Carr’s first-degree murder and kidnapping trial. It is one of many recorded conversations prosecutors have played for the panel this week, and it may be the most convincing one of all.

    “I thought it would be quick and painless,” Carr said to Michele Gustafson, the sister of Joshua Fulgham. Carr was referencing her and Fulgham’s attempts to first break Heather Strong’s neck inside a storage trailer before suffocating her with a black plastic bag placed over her head.

    “Did she fight him?” asked Gustafson, who was wearing a recording device provided by Marion sheriff’s detectives. At the time of the conversation, the women were sitting beside each other in a car.

    “Yeah, she fought him,” Carr responded.

    “Did you help?” Gustafson continued.

    “Yeah, I helped,” Carr said softly. “I helped him.”

    Following this March 24, 2009 conversation, detectives, who were listening nearby, approached the car. They spoke briefly with the pair, then eventually took Carr into custody.

    The echoes of Carr’s vivid and confessionary words to Gustafson, a friend of hers, seemed to linger in the courtroom.

    The jurors have been provided written transcripts of the recorded calls, so their facial expressions and reactions have been difficult to gauge. Their heads were bowed over the stapled papers as the recordings were played.

    The state is almost ready to end its part of the case. The defense will call its first witnesses next week as it attempts to lessen the damaging evidence — mostly confessional statements — that has been introduced by the state thus far.

    Carr, 26, could face the death penalty if found guilty as charged.

    She is accused of helping Fulgham, who fathered her youngest child and was also Strong’s longtime on-again-off-again love interest, with Strong’s murder.

    Strong, a mother of two, was first reported missing by her cousin in mid-February 2009. A month later, on March 19, 2009, her body was uncovered from a shallow grave a couple miles north of McIntosh. It was Fulgham who initially led detectives to the site, which was located on the wooded property behind Carr’s mother’s home.

    Fulgham, who remains behind bars awaiting his own trial, was already in police custody on a related charge when the body was unearthed.

    Carr wasn’t arrested in the case until March 24, 2009, managing to elude arrest for almost a week as she negotiated and engaged in verbal gymnastics with sheriff’s detectives Donald Buie and Brian Spivey, seeking to distance herself from the gruesome crime.

    It’s Carr herself whom jurors learned this week initiated much of the contact with law enforcement after they initially brought her in for questioning. She was read her Miranda rights during these interviews. Spivey testified Friday morning she placed several calls to his work mobile phone in order to wrangle a deal.

    “I can put the nail in the coffin as long as I don’t go to jail or prison,” she tells Spivey during a phone call several days before her arrest. She continuously asks for “immunity” if she divulges additional information about Strong’s death.

    “I need to know I’m protected,” she says in this recorded phone conversation, played for jurors Friday morning. “I’m not going to say anything without immunity, because I’m going to go down with him [without it]. I didn’t kill the girl,” she says.

    Although court-appointed defense attorney Candace Hawthorne attempted to suppress Carr’s statements ahead of trial, Circuit Judge Willard Pope ordered redactions only.

    Hawthorne emphasized in her opening statement Carr’s high-risk pregnancy at the time of her arrest, and the fear and concern she felt over the welfare of her three other children, who had been taken from her by then by the state Department of Children and Families.

    Such concern for her children is expressed by Carr to Gustafson during their taped conversation. So is her spoken intent to pin Strong’s death on Jamie Acome and Jason Lotshaw, two convicted felons and mutual friends whom she tells Gustafson have already been identified as persons of interest by the authorities.

    “I’m not saying it’s OK, not in the least,” she says of her so-called plans to lead law enforcement to these two men. “[But] the only way he [Fulgham] is gonna get out there and be with his kids, is if he keeps his mouth shut,” she says, in attempts to send a message to Fulgham.

    What Carr does not let on is her previous statements to detectives, in which she’s already pinned Strong’s death on Fulgham; yet across the Sheriff’s Office hallway, in separate interrogations, Fulgham was doing the same to her.

    Both were arrested for Strong’s disappearance and murder on March 24, 2009; they were indicted by a grand jury less than a month later. Although Carr was offered a life sentence plea deal by prosecutors shortly before trial, she refused to accept the offer.

    The defendant, who has closely followed along with written transcripts of her statements during the course of trial, comes across as calm in these recordings, if shaken by past events.

    To Gustafson, she speaks of how Fulgham hit Strong in the head with a flashlight every time “he heard something he didn’t want to hear.” Strong was lured to the trailer by the promise of cash, she said, and Fulgham was upset she had plans to flee the state with their two kids.

    “He said, ‘You’ve cost me a lot of money, you’ve cost me my kids, you cost me just about everything I’ve ever had, and I’m tired of it.’ ” Carr recollects.

    After she goes over the details of how he duct-taped Strong to the chair after she tried to bolt by breaking a window, and the pair’s hasty attempts to end Strong’s life, Carr’s voice grows quiet.

    “He wasn’t Josh that night,” she tells his sister. “He was emotionally in another place. It wasn’t Josh. He wasn’t there. He was just somebody else.”

    http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...ment?p=4&tc=pg

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    Defense puts Carr on stand in murder trial

    With the prosecution having rested its case Monday morning in the Emilia Carr first-degree murder trial, the defense took the unconventional move of putting the defendant herself on stand later in the afternoon.

    Through tear-streaked testimony, Carr, 26, told jurors she had "repeatedly" lied in her audiotaped and videotaped statements to law enforcement in order to reclaim her children, who had been removed from her custody by state Department of Children and Families.

    "I wanted immunity, I wanted my children. DCF would not give them back to me as long as I was a suspect," she said on direct examination to her attorney, Candace Hawthorne.

    Carr is standing trial on charges she kidnapped then helped murder 26-year-old Citra woman Heather Strong in early 2009. Last week, jurors heard Carr, in an intercepted phone conversation, tell the sister of her co-defendant, Joshua Fulgham, how the pair lured Strong into a storage trailer and suffocate her to death.

    By Monday, however, Carr told State Attorney Brad King on cross-examination her admissions to participating in the crime, were all lies.

    "You don't actually know who killed her [Heather Strong]; that is your testimony here today," King leveled Monday.

    "No, I don't," Carr whispered.

    If the jury chooses to find Carr guilty as charged, she could be eligible for the death penalty.

    http://www.ocala.com/article/2010120...n-murder-trial

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    Carr jury is deliberating

    Jurors in the Emilia Carr trial began deliberating about 2:45 p.m. Tuesday after nearly half a day of closing arguments from lawyers.

    Since Wednesday of last week, they have sat through testimony where the state attempted to prove Carr’s role in a brutal murder that claimed the life of 26-year-old Citra resident Heather Strong early last year.

    Carr, 26, is charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. The panel of jurors, consisting of seven men and five women, can find her guilty as charged; guilty of the lesser-included offenses of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, manslaughter and false imprisonment; or find her not guiltyl.

    In the case of the first option, the trial would next move to a penalty phase, during which the same jury would weigh either a life sentence or the death penalty for Carr. By law, Circuit Judge Willard Pope must give that recommendation great weight when he imposes his sentence.

    Unlike other first-degree murder trials, Carr’s has stood out for the sheer frequency with which the defendant had provided statements to law enforcement in the lead-up to her arrest.

    Those statements, freely and voluntarily given, albeit outside the presence of an attorney, were seized by state prosecutors over the last week as they mounted their case against Carr.

    Totaling ten statements altogether, those words would ultimately land Carr in a predicament she attempted to wriggle free from when she took the stand in her own defense Monday afternoon and claimed those statements had been spun from lies.

    “What is her history of telling the truth?” prosecutor Rock Hooker asked the jury during his closing argument Tuesday morning. “Her history of telling the truth is not good…are you going to believe her now?”

    Hooker pointed out that Carr’s statements to detectives prior to her March 24, 2009 arrest had each been different from her previous ones, each slightly amended to reflect Carr knew more than she initially let on.

    Carr is accused of assisting co-defendant Joshua Fulgham, her then-boyfriend, with detaining Strong – his estranged wife – inside a storage trailer behind Carr’s mother’s home sometime in mid-February 2009.

    The state claims Carr then tried to break Strong’s neck. When that failed, the pair allegedly placed a black plastic bag over Strong’s head and suffocated her, all while the victim was duct-taped to a computer chair, her hands and feet bound.

    In his closing, Hooker advised the jury the state had no duty to prove a motive in the brutal crime – only that it proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Carr had the intent to either kill herself or assist her co-defendant in killing Strong.

    Even if the jury does not find Carr committed the actual act of murder herself, it could still find she served as a principal to the crime, which would result in the same guilty outcome.

    As jurors heard testimony from multiple witnesses over the past week, however, several possible motives bubbled to the surface: Carr’s possible jealousy over a brief reunification between Fulgham and Strong in December 2008; her spite toward Strong for having put Fulgham in jail in January 2009 following a domestic dispute; or a woman’s loyalty to her boyfriend (Carr was seven months pregnant with Fulgham’s child when the crime occurred.)

    “Emilia Lily Carr, in this case, blocked Heather Strong from leaving,” Hooker said of her role in the storage trailer. “That’s all in the statements she gave.”

    During her nearly two-hour closing argument, Carr’s attorney, Candace Hawthorne, painted her client’s statements to detectives as lies meant to “get her children back.”

    “Stupid? Maybe. Desperate? Maybe. Duress? Maybe. Was she afraid of Josh? Maybe,” Hawthorne told jurors to consider in weighing such motivation to lie.

    But Hooker, who has co-tried this case with State Attorney Brad King, pointed out in his rebuttal argument early Tuesday afternoon that Carr simply knew too many details of what the victim had been wearing before she died, and the specific manner in which she died, before such facts had been released, to be merely passed over as a scared, witless suspect.

    “Those are some pretty direct, simple statements,” he said to jurors.

    http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...orts?p=3&tc=pg

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    Jury finds Carr guilty as charged

    A jury found Emilia Carr guilty as charged this evening.

    The panel deliberated for two and a half hours before returning its verdict.

    This same jury will now hear arguments about her punishment. The state seeks the death penalty; the only other option for first-degree murder and kidnapping is life in prison.

    Stay tuned to Ocala.com for more details

    http://www.ocala.com/article/2010120...s-deliberating

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    Jurors in death penalty case face 'formidable task'

    State Attorney Brad King told a panel of jurors Wednesday afternoon that it has a formidable task ahead now that it has found Emilia Carr guilty of 1st-degree murder. That task: recommend a death sentence, which the state is seeking, or life in prison, the only other alternative.

    The state, on the 1st day of the defendant’s penalty phase of trial, argued that 3 aggravating circumstances apply in Carr's case.

    Carr is the 1st woman against whom Marion County prosecutors have sought the state's maximum penalty since the case of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the early 1990s.

    Those aggravators include: that the murder of Citra resident Heather Strong occurred during the commission of the separate felony offense of kidnapping; that the crime was cold, calculated and premeditated; and that it was heinous, atrocious and cruel.

    Carr, 26, was found guilty late Tuesday in the February 2009 death of Strong.

    Strong, a mother of 2, was bound and taped to a chair in a Boardman storage trailer and suffocated. Her remains were discovered in late March 2009, a month after she was murdered.

    In her opening remarks to the jury, court-appointed defense attorney Candace Hawthorne said she will present several mitigating factors, including Carr's lack of criminal history, that the crime was an isolated incident, the fact she is a mother to four young children, and that her personal family background includes a history of sexual abuse.

    Carr's father, an émigré from Cuba, was once arrested, said the lawyer, for soliciting another person to murder his family members after Carr and her sisters reported they were victims of his sexual abuse.

    The defendant later recanted her statements to authorities. Carr's father has since died.

    Hawthorne added she will ask the jury to return a recommendation of life in prison, without the possibility of parole.

    "I believe that is the appropriate sentence in this case," she said.

    By law, Circuit Judge Willard Pope must give the jury's recommendation great weight when he eventually imposes his sentence.

    The state reminded jurors to carefully consider what they had heard during the guilt phase of trial in reaching a conclusion about the aggravators.

    Carolyn Spence, Strong's mother, spoke on stand about the loss of her daughter.

    "I miss her every day. She's gone; we don't have her anymore; her children don't have her anymore," Spence said. "We all miss her. She was a loving, caring, kind person."

    The defense will present testimony from mitigation witnesses Thursday.

    (Source: ocala.com)

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    Jury recommends death for woman in murder case

    A jury voted to recommend that a central Florida woman convicted of kidnapping and brutally killing her lover's wife get the death penalty.

    A jury voted 7-5 to recommend Emilia Carr be put to death for Heather Strong's murder. The judge will make the final decision.

    Jurors deliberated about two hours. The jury convicted Carr of first-degree murder and kidnapping on Tuesday.

    Marion County Sheriff's deputies say Carr and Joshua Damien Fulgham kidnapped his wife, bound her to a chair and suffocated her with a plastic bag inside a storage trailer in 2009.

    Fulgham is awaiting trial on the same charges. He and his wife have two children and were in a custody battle.

    http://www.ocala.com/article/20101210/APN/1012103143

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    Emilia Carr Breaks Silence

    She is convicted of kidnapping and first degree murder, possible facing the death penalty.

    Breaking her silence, Emilia Carr spoke from inside the Marion County Jail.

    The 26 year-old claims she did not kill Heather Strong.

    "I thought that when people saw the trial that they would know that I have nothing to do with this," Carr said.

    On February 15th, 2009, Heather Strong, a mother of 2, was murdered in Boardman. Her body was found a month later buried in a shallow grave in the backyard of Carr's mother's house.

    Strong's husband, Joshua Folgham and his then-pregnant girlfreind, Emilia Carr were arrested in connection to the murder.

    During Carr's recent 2-week-long trail, prosecutors told a story of a love triangle turned deadly, placing Carr inside the trailer where Strong was suffocated to death.

    But Carr claims that she was unaware Fulgham and Strong were in her mother's storage trailer the night Strong was killed.

    "I was never there, and then the police questioning me, first thing they started doing was threatening me with my kids."

    Unbeknown to Carr, Marion County Sheriff's Detectives were listening in on a conversation between Carr and Folgham's sister in which Carr places herself inside the trailer and makes herself out to be a participant in the murder.

    "I was trying to get all these details 'cuz they kept wanting details before they would go to the State Attorney's with immunity," Carr said. "Details, details, so I made up stories."

    Now possibly facing death row, Carr said she feels confused about the grounds on which she was convicted.

    Marion County Judge Willard Pope will decide whether Carr will receive life in prison or the death penalty on February 22nd.

    (Source: WCJB News)

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