- I think of it as a standard day in real estate.
- She was going to show a property
But they had not heard from her.
- It was like my mom just disappeared.
Who could have taken her and why?
- Everybody's a suspect,
Or everybody's a person of interest.
- They had a code word that would signal
If they were in trouble. It was done via text.
[dramatic music]
- And from there, it's like a nightmare started.
♪ ♪
- What my mom didn't know is,
Everything she was told was a lie.
- Everything started to move.
My brain was like, "wait, wait, wait, what's happening?"
♪ ♪
- Suddenly, the phone lights up
With these text messages from my mom.
We went from this flood of relief and elation
To complete horror in one text.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- A young woman is missing tonight
After leaving a bar with a stranger,
Then texting "help" to a friend.
♪ ♪
- You are watching her terrifying abduction.
♪ ♪
- A missing woman's nude body was discovered in this ravine.
- Miraculously, the young woman survived.
♪ ♪
[camera shutter clicking]
- There is an alarming crisis of violence,
Kidnapping, and murder against innocent women.
- The senseless murder has struck a chord
With thousands of women.
- This has sparked a global movement online
Of women sharing their own fears.
They're united under a hashtag #textmewhenyougethome,
A phrase that women are all too familiar with.
♪ ♪
[soft resonant music]
♪ ♪
- When I think of my mom,
I think of acceptance and love.
♪ ♪
I am beverly carter's son,
And I'm the oldest of three boys.
My mom had me when she was 16,
So in a lot of ways, we kind of grew up together,
And we were extremely close.
By nature, my mom was very sweet,
Very kind, very lovable.
- Hey, you! I just got home
And got this beautiful present in the mail.
I love it. Love it, love it.
And I also got your card.
You're so sweet. I love you very much.
- [chuckling] I also think it's important to--
To really express how tough she was.
As a mom of three boys,
She was not letting us get away with anything.
♪ ♪
Dad was the one out working,
And mom was--was taking care of the household, and she did.
- As a friend, she was one of my best friends,
But as a mother-in-law, she was just an angel.
We would go shopping.
We both had times in our lives
When we struggled with our weight,
So we'd go on diets together,
And we'd challenge each other.
She'd come to the house and we'd have weigh-ins.
Beverly and I texted a lot.
She was a quick responder, for the most part,
Especially with, you know, a family member.
♪ ♪
- I think the beauty of her career in real estate is that,
Although she had lived in that small community
And not being exposed to
So many different facets of diversity,
Serving people throughout, you know,
The real estate process gave her the opportunity
To meet people from all walks of life.
- Beverly and I worked together probably eight to ten years.
She was always upbeat when things weren't going her way.
She always found a silver lining in things.
- She...Just filled the room.
I mean, when you met beverley, you didn't forget her.
She just had this personality
That was kind of bigger than life.
She made you feel like you were her friend.
♪ ♪
- Beverly was very successful.
She worked hard for it.
She was at the office late at night.
She'd come in early.
- There were times in my mom's career
That she was within the top ten agents
In the entire state of arkansas.
And she was one of those-- those salespeople
That just made the whole process look so easy.
- She had a cadillac.
She dressed to the nines all the time.
She always wore jewelry.
Always--her hair was always done.
She always smelled really, really good.
She wore the same perfume all the time
And looked like she had a lot of money.
- I think she was coming into this--this new awakening
As this 50-year-old, bad-a woman
That was a little sassy,
And it was just really fun to watch her.
♪ ♪
I think of it as a standard day in real estate.
My mom had worked in the office that morning.
She had gone to a luncheon
That was hosted by an affiliate.
And she was really excited,
She won 50 bucks in a raffle.
She texted my dad to check in with him and to let my dad know
What the rest of her day looked like.
My mom's plan was to show this property
To these out-of-state buyers at 6:00 p.M.
And at the conclusion of showing that property,
That she would swing by, pick up dinner
From their favorite local mexican restaurant
And that she would be home later.
♪ ♪
You know, a real estate agent,
You're working a little late,
You grab dinner to go,
Meet your spouse at home,
Like so many days that had happened before.
♪ ♪
The process of buying a home, selling a home,
You don't associate dangers,
Even though they seem so obvious
Because it does involve, in certain situations,
Meeting with perfect strangers in vacant homes.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
My mom was a self-professed scaredy-cat.
She took her personal safety very seriously.
She took certain steps.
Letting dad know where she would be,
Keeping her purse locked inside her vehicle
While she showed property
To protect and safeguard her wallet to, you know,
Personal information that was within her purse.
♪ ♪
- I was lying in bed.
Carl and I, I think, had turned on the tv,
Maybe to watch something.
[phone vibrates]
His dad called.
[unsettling music]
You know, he said, "you know, son,
I haven't heard from your mom."
And my carl was like, "you know, dad,
"I'm sure she's--you know, she's showing a house.
"I'm sure she's just trying to get it under contract.
I'm sure everything's fine."
♪ ♪
- He couldn't get her to respond to his text messages
And his phone calls.
And as he's telling me this,
8:30 didn't seem that late, considering the--
The chaotic nature of real estate.
My immediate internal response was that
This is 100% work-related.
But the more I talked to my dad,
And the more I listened to the worry in his voice,
I knew that I couldn't put him at ease
Without getting involved to help.
And so, the plan that I encouraged was,
You know, "dad, I'll go to mom's office.
You go where she said she'd be showing property that night.
We'll get to our respective locations.
We'll check-in. One of us is gonna find mom,
And all this will be put to rest."
♪ ♪
I arrived at my mom's brokerage
To find a dark building with an empty parking lot,
No one there.
- I reached out to her broker and beverly's assistant.
♪ ♪
They had not heard from her.
- I instantly jumped to scenarios
Where these buyers were bringing in
Friends or family to also tour the home
And perhaps even writing an offer,
But then my dad called.
♪ ♪
My dad arrives at the scene of this home.
The front door is wide open.
Trying to find any evidence of my mom,
There was nothing to be found.
But then there in the driveway is my mom's car.
Something was wrong. Something was off.
It was like my mom just disappeared.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- It was all kind of so surreal.
Was she injured somewhere
And--and couldn't get to a phone?
Did she just not have her phone on her
And, you know, she was working?
- The text communication that I had with mom
Was always a bit hit and miss,
Mainly because of her profession.
So it really wasn't that uncommon for me
To send mom a text,
Her not respond for an hour or two,
But I always knew that the second she saw that text,
That she would be responding.
♪ ♪
That night, after going to my mom's brokerage,
Not finding her there, learning from my dad
That my mom's car had been left at this home,
I encouraged him to immediately contact law enforcement.
♪ ♪
- When I got to the house,
The family was there and the officers were there.
That's when I began looking inside the house.
I notice that the house is vacant.
There's a lot of dust around.
You could tell in the dust
That somebody had been in there.
Disturbances in the dust,
So you could tell somebody had walked through there.
Then we go outside, and I look around outside,
And I notice a tire track that leads up to the door.
And then we have beverly's car there
With her purse and a notebook inside.
At that point, I'm thinking,
"okay, well, you know, something's happened to her,"
'cause I don't know what woman in the world is gonna run off
And leave her purse behind.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
- It was so hard to reconcile
How she could be conducting business somewhere
Without her car, without her purse.
- I don't think my brain wanted to wrap around the fact
That it was something detrimental that was happening.
- Even in the back of my mind,
It just still didn't seem possible
That my sweet mom, this wonderful grandma,
Could have been the target of a crime
Where someone would just take her.
♪ ♪
Trying to use my cell phone, my dad's cell phone
And to engage with my mom's cell phone
To get her to respond.
♪ ♪
- Generally, the abductor is--is somebody they know.
You know, in this particular case,
That's what we looked at first.
- You've seen the shows. You've heard the stories.
And typically, couples that have been married for 34 years,
Someone disappears, you look to the spouse.
- You know, you always look to the person
That's closest to your victim,
Which in this case would have been the husband.
♪ ♪
- Dad went through the home yelling my mom's name,
Even got in the attic just to make sure
That nothing had happened
And--and she'd been left somewhere,
And there was nothing to be found.
- We come to find out carl had been in there.
And, you know, at that point,
It kind of contaminates the crime scene.
♪ ♪
- They had many questions for my dad,
But all the while,
My dad had retreated to his--his truck.
I was trying to convince them that, "dad's a good guy.
Dad doesn't have anything to do with this,"
But they were just doing their job.
And they didn't know him. They didn't know me.
And so they were, you know, leaving no stone unturned.
♪ ♪
- We found somebody across the street that saw
A black car and a white male that was at the house
And saw him backing up to the house.
- The neighbor had told the detectives that night
That they had seen a black car at this home,
But we really had no indication of
Any crime that he had committed.
Where is she?
♪ ♪
So the later it got, the more suspect that it seemed
That my mom would be in trouble
Without responding to everything
That we were sending to her phone.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Inside her vehicle was a notebook,
And you could tell that she had used it for work.
And the notebook was open
And you could see it through the window.
♪ ♪
Everybody's a suspect
Or everybody's a person of interest.
You have to follow the evidence.
- At this point, it's after midnight.
This is six hours after that showing appointment time,
And we're all huddled up, and we're so concerned.
And suddenly,
Dad's phone lights up
With these text messages from my mom.
So as he's yelling that my mom is texting,
We all come running, and there was just
This collective excitement and relief.
There's just this flood of emotion that,
"mom's okay. Mom's communicating with dad."
And of course, the relief that this is all over.
And then we went from this flood of relief and elation
To complete horror in one text.
♪
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
- As these texts came through,
It was what you might expect someone to say.
Apologizing,
Explaining that the phone had, you know, been off.
And then a third text came in.
And the third text explained that
My mom was out having drinks...
And that was so not her.
♪ ♪
It was so uncharacteristic of her.
My mom, early to bed,
Favorite drink was not alcohol.
It was chocolate milk. [chuckles]
- "sorry, out drinking with friends."
My heart dropped 'cause that was not her.
That, 100%, was not her.
- Nobody knew her better than her family.
So if they said there's no way she would be out having drinks,
You gotta take that into consideration.
- We knew instantly when that text message came through
That not only had my mom been taken,
But whoever had taken her
Was bold enough to take her cell phone,
Text someone pretending to be her.
From the moment that that text was received,
The world has never seemed bigger.
The possibilities of where my mom could be,
The possibilities of who could have taken her,
And why seemed indefinite.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- If you're on the internet,
Or make a phone call or a text message,
It's gonna send a signal out to the nearest cell tower.
♪ ♪
I'm in my car following.
Every time we'd get a ping, I would go to that location.
And it became a straight line
To just south little rock.
The phone pinged, I think, three times
In this one location.
So I went there and it ended up being a commuter lot
On the side of the interstate where people park
To maybe carpool or something,
And then the phone just turned off.
♪ ♪
- All we knew that-- is just that she was gone.
♪ ♪
And the very next morning,
I mean, just hours later, Friday morning,
I just remember just sitting so confused.
Like, the sun's back up,
But we don't have my mom.
♪ ♪
- You know, you couldn't believe it.
Nothing like that had ever happened before,
And it just kind of makes you sick at your stomach.
- We all rushed up to the office.
And from there, it's like a nightmare started.
- We interviewed co-workers. We looked around her office.
♪ ♪
- They had a...Communication,
A code word they could give one another
That would signal if they were in trouble.
- If we felt uneasy about a client,
We could call the office and say,
"can you go get the red folder on my desk and bring it to--"
You know, we'd give the address if we could.
- Typically, when the red folder alert
Was passed back and forth, it was done via text.
And so that was the most discreet way.
But also, it wasn't uncommon
For one agent to just call another.
♪ ♪
- The longer it is, you don't get a good feeling.
But there's always hope,
And beverly had so much faith and...
[sighs] you know, you just hope for the best.
[overlapping voices]
- If you have never been part of a search party,
Be thankful.
It is the hardest and worst thing
I've ever been through in my entire life.
[voice breaking] um...
I'm sorry.
[soft emotional music]
♪ ♪
You're looking for a fingernail
Or a shred of a credit card, um,
Or a shred of a piece of clothing
And knowing that this is someone you know and love
And you have memories with,
It's very hard.
And the more time that passes,
The less our chances get,
So the more people that are out here helping, the better.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Carl was still in my mind.
I didn't know that maybe somebody--
He had somebody else involved.
So it was just something
We were gonna have to eliminate.
♪ ♪
Now, there was a life insurance policy,
And we thought maybe he had this done
For the insurance money.
♪ ♪
- With any type of, you know, profession
That you are--
You know, your income is dependent upon
The volume that you produce, it kind of ebbed and flowed.
So she, at times, was absolutely
A rock star top producer,
And then she would step back from it for a little bit
And enjoy the things in her life
That she truly enjoyed, like the grandkids.
- I don't remember ever truly
Pointing my finger at carl sr.
But I didn't have any idea who else it could be.
♪ ♪
- I know beverley kept a notebook
And she had where she was going all the time.
- I saw some names,
An email address, and a phone number on there.
♪ ♪
- The names were fictitious.
♪ ♪
- We figured out the email address
And the phone number were both created
From spoof numbers, which are fake numbers.
- What my mom didn't know is,
As she was getting to know these people
And their background, their interest in buying a home,
What type of home,
Everything she was being told was a lie.
♪
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Carter's car was still in the driveway
On Friday afternoon.
This is where she was last seen in scott.
- The later it got, there became more and more
Kind of fervency to our efforts to try to find her
Because of this known 24 hour rule,
That you have to find a missing person in 24 hours
Or the outlook is so much more grim.
And just counting down to that 24 hours,
Just the desperation grew.
We took an all media and medium approach
Trying to find my mom,
From paper flyers with my mom's photo being handed out
And sent all over central arkansas
Up and through social media posts.
We created "#findbeverly."
[tense music]
♪ ♪
I was even reaching out to media outlets
Just offering to-- to do anything to help.
I know what it's like to lay on the floor and cry
Because you have no energy to do anything else.
It began this process of trying to,
Through social media,
Trying to engage as many people as possible to find my mom.
[messages chiming]
♪ ♪
- There's just a lot of good people
That are trying to help.
And at that point,
That's the best thing that they can do
'cause at that--we don't know where beverly's at.
- [voice breaking] we were holding out hope.
We were hoping we would find her.
♪ ♪
- Well, in order to create a spoof number,
You have to have a real number.
So when we ran paper on those numbers,
We were able to find out that those numbers were created
From a telephone number
That returned to crystal lowery.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
And that's when everything really started
Falling in place.
♪ ♪
We found out where she lived,
So we went over there to surveil her house.
♪ ♪
And it just so happens when we pulled up, he's coming out.
Saw the black car,
The guy coming out matching the description.
He sees us, and he takes off.
So we end up chasing him down the road
And he wrecks.
[metal crunching, glass shattering]
♪ ♪
And before they run their tests,
He jets out, takes off, leaves the hospital.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
And so that's when the-- the manhunt started.
♪ ♪
- Obviously, if you have a kidnapping charge,
I'd consider you extremely dangerous.
And the fact that we don't know where ms. Carter is,
And he's linked to it,
I'd consider him extremely dangerous.
- We knew that they were investigating,
You know, a person of interest.
You know, he's on the run
And, you know, we hear of these things,
But we--we just can't understand how
This person's involved.
♪ ♪
- He took off on foot,
Ended up running to an apartment complex
And jumping off the second story balcony.
And officers were waiting downstairs,
And they took him into custody.
♪ ♪
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
- He wanted to work a deal
Where his charges would go federal.
Everybody thinks that, you know, federal prison
Is so much easier than--than state prison.
He says that, "if you want me to prove that she's alive, everybody thinks that, you know, federal prison
Give me my phone. I'll show you."
So normally, we wouldn't,
But under the circumstance,
We decided to go ahead and give him his phone.
[dramatic music]
- Carl, it's beverly.
I just wanna let you know I'm okay. I haven't been hurt.
Just do what he says and please don't call the police.
If you call the police, it could be bad.
Just to let you know, I love you very much.
- My mom ended by telling my dad
How much she loved him.
I can't imagine all that she had been through,
Of being kidnapped from this home,
And she was still concerned with
My dad knowing how loved he was.
♪ ♪
- We knew right then that he knew where beverly was at.
♪ ♪
- Crystal makes a suggestion of a real estate broker.
So they start looking through the internet
Trying to find one.
So they start looking through well, basically,
Beverly was the first one tryi they foundone.
So th that was a brokerhrough as well as an agent.
So they said, "well, if she's a broker and an agent,
Then she's gonna have a lot of money."
So that's when their plan started.
Then she's gonna have they contacted her
Through the fake email that they created
And then spoke to her over the phone
Through the fake phone number.
And then spoke to her over ♪ ♪phone
- And so, this process of having the spouse come along
Was not standard by any means.
It was a strategy used by these bad people
To introduce a female in hopes to
Make my mom feel more at ease.
♪ ♪
- We just left carl in the dust
'cause we knew that he wasn't involved.
- I'll give you a reward or whatever.
Please, just turn her loose. 'cause we knew that he wasn't involved.
♪ ♪
- Everything started to move. Please, just turn her loose. 'cause we knew that he wasn't involved.
And the--you know, my brain was like,
"wait, wait, wait, what's happening?
Where is she?"
♪ ♪
- He says, "okay, well, if--
"you know, if she's still alive,
This is where I took her."
So we loaded him up in a patrol car,
And we took him where he said that he had her being held at
And she wasn't there.
♪ ♪
So he ended up leading us on a--on a wild chase.
♪ ♪
And that's when his demeanor changed.
He raised up, looked at me,
And you could tell we--we had hit something.
♪ ♪
- I want to say it was about 4:00 in the morning.
[banging on door]
I heard pounding on the door, just banging.
A lot of banging. And so, we woke up.
- We were able to get to him before he found out,
But we just--we did not want him finding out
From anybody else.
- And I remember carl saying,
"did they find her? Did they find her?"
- They had come to-- to let me know that--
That my mom had been found.
♪ ♪
- I remember thinking, "this isn't happening.
"this isn't real life.
This--this is not real life."
"this isn't real life.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- I got a phone call in the middle of the night
From one of the detectives,
And he let me know
That they had found beverly.
We did not want carl to find out
From the media or anyone else,
So we rushed over to his house
And knocked on the door.
And as soon as he opened the door,
His dad pulled up too.
- I remember one of those agents
Telling me that mom had been found.
[soft emotional music]
And I remember replying, "that's great. Where is she?"
And I expected her to tell me, "the hospital,
Just getting checked out. She's okay.
Just to make sure she's all right."
♪ ♪
And she apologized, and she said, "oh, honey.
Your mom's not alive."
♪ ♪
- Police found carter buried in a shallow grave
Behind a concrete business.
Lewis has been charged with capital murder and kidnapping.
- These investigators were able to look at the towers
That had been utilized by this bad guy.
And they matched that with
Companies that he had previously worked for
And found this very random concrete plant.
♪ ♪
They searched that property
And found that on the backside of it,
This shallow grave that had been dug
By these bad people.
And truly, to see that spot,
It would've been so easy for my mom to never be found.
♪ ♪
- After she was kidnapped, she was placed in the--
In the trunk of arron's little black car
And ultimately ended up at their house.
He took a photograph of her in the trunk
And then messaged his--his wife, crystal,
And said that he had done it.
And she was supposed to send carl
A message with the picture
And demand ransom money,
But it never-- it never went that far.
♪ ♪
- Because the purse
Had been left, locked in that car,
It was out of sight, and therefore, out of mind
For the bad guy.
How he would get all of my mom's perceived wealth
Involved having access to her accounts
That he had planned to do so
With the cards that were within my mom's purse.
So as he drove away that day, his plan was already foiled.
♪ ♪
- According to crystal,
Since she was in the bathroom and she saw their face
And she saw their names on medication bottles,
Then they felt like they needed to kill her.
So arron takes beverly, loads her back up,
And they end up taking her back out there.
And that's when he ended up taking her life.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
- He obviously didn't know her.
She was not wealthy. She wasn't a rich broker.
She wasn't any of the things that he wanted her to be
To help get him out of his lifestyle.
♪ ♪
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- My mom's funeral was...
Full of things that she loved.
It was a beautiful service for a very lovely lady.
I think it spoke more to her loveliness
And the life that she lived rather than the tragedy.
- I don't think she realized how much people loved her
And how respected she was and how...
Sorry people were that that happened to her.
♪ ♪
- While I would certainly concede
That real estate is a safe industry, by and large,
Every single agent you meet
Can at least identify with the vulnerability
That you feel when you're alone in a vacant house.
So what we do through the beverly carter foundation
Is to encourage people to be safe,
Raise awareness to those issues that exist,
And provide tools and methods and best practices
Related to how to conduct your business
In a way that is efficient and safe
And gets these precious agents
Home to their families safe every night.
- You know, all women, and I'm sure men too, at times,
Feel uncomfortable or afraid.
- My mom and I do real estate together.
And sometimes, when she does showings
With people she doesn't know,
I would love her to text me and go,
"I'm done. I'm back at the office."
It's just a peace of mind in knowing that
The person you love is back and safe and everything's okay.
♪ ♪
She was full of grace
And I wish I would've told her
How much I appreciated her.
♪ ♪
- I know she knows that I loved her,
But I really would want to make sure
She knew how much I loved her
And how much I appreciated every second I had with her.
- We know that she fought
When she was in the trunk of that car.
And we know from the testimony of the wife
That while she stood guard that night
To keep my mom from escaping, that she had to hear
The sounds of my mother's prayers.
And so, as I think about
The incredible woman that she was
When put in a situation
That I pray no one else ever has to live through,
To know that your legacy, your last moments were of love,
And a little bit of fight, and your faith,
What a lovely lady.