Mysteries of Murder Locked Inside 2 Year Old Lorenzo Grave
There is a lonely grave in the Lorenzo cemetery, identified only by a small metal marker that says "John Thomas Carter, 1944-1979."Carter died March 7th two years ago, in a Crosby County jail cell, the night of the second day of his capital murder trial.
Carter had been arrested and indicted for the bloody murders of two of Lorenzo community´s most beloved citizens, V.V. Gandy and his wife Cora.
Not only Carter´s death in the Crosby County jail, but his arrest and trial on the murder charge, has been and continues to be quite a mystery.
Officers and prosecutors apparently thought they had a good case against Carter in the October 1978 murder of the Gandys. They had taken the evidence to the grand jury and he had been indicted on the charge and trial was set and in progress.
Under United States law there is a presumption of being innocent until tried and found guilty in court and upheld by the appeals courts.
Since Carter died without being found guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction, the assumption under the law is that he died innocent.
And, under the strange circumstances of his death, there is also another assumption of his innocence.
One Lorenzo merchant told this newspaper editor on two occasions, "I have known Tommy Carter all his life and I just can´t see him committing murder -- maybe some petty thief, or maybe he was a boozer but not a killer."
And all the circumstances surrounding his death tend to support that idea.
We don´t know anything about the evidence held against Carter. We have no way of knowing--officers refused to make this information available to us. But here is the basis of the feeling that he did not, in fact, murder the Gandy´s.
The general assumption by officers is that Carter came in possession of the death gun while in the Lubbock County jail and that he used the gun to take his own life. Granting this assumption is true, then look at these facts.
Besides the death weapon found at the body in the jail at the time of his death, there was found on Carter´s body after death, twenty-eight rounds of ammunition for the weapon and more than one hundred dollars in cash.
Also in his jail cell were marked maps of the State of Texas.
This would indicate that Carter planned to use the gun to make his escape and get out of jail.
Yet, if the general assumptions be true, Carter spent two full nights in jail and two full days in the courtroom and made at least two trips from the jail to the courthouse and two trips back to the jail. If he, in fact, was a killer, why did he not use this gun on one of the jailers while traveling to or from the jail to the courthouse? Or why did he not use the gun in the courtroom, where he could use the crowded courtroom to help him get away?
If the assumptions be true, Carter had the gun in his groin area, just under his clothing all the time he sat in the courtroom during the two days of the trial. He could have used it to shoot either of the two prosecutors, the district judge, or one of the officers in the courtroom. The first shot could have been his--that is sure.
District Attorney Billy Marley, who sat in touching distance of Carter during the two days of the trial told this newspaper, "All during the trial I had this gut feeling of danger--I could not identify it, or I didn´t know what it was, but I had this strange feeling. Then when I heard he had killed himself in jail I said to myself ´My God, he had that gun right there under the table just inches from me all during the trial´.
Why, then, did Carter not shoot an officer and try to escape? There is this strong feeling, as stated by the Lorenzo merchant -- he was not a killer.
And then, carrying the thought further, it was only after some way, some how, he gained possession of these two depressant drugs and mixed them inside his body -- that he turned the gun not on the officers and try an escape, but on himself.
Of course, all of this is just supposition--but it fits together.
Carter´s death still remains a mystery. There are still those who do not accept the idea that he killed himself.
Shortly after Carter´s death was discovered, the State´s top officers, its elite crime investigative group, the Texas Rangers, investigated the case. It seems strange they came up with nothing at all to report, at least so they tell this newspaper.
There has been one bloody murder, that of a Lorenzo banker, gone down into the records of history as a complete mystery. Will the Gandy-Carter deaths go on the images of history the same way?
It seems so indeed.
One Lorenzo person told this newspaper about the time of the Gandy murder, "Don´t kid yourself, there are people in Lorenzo who know all about the bank murder."
Also, we are sure there are people around who know the truth about the Gandy-Carter deaths. But that, like the other, seems to be sealed forever from the public.
Published in Lorenzo Leader, Tuesday, March 3, 1981
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