00:00:04
[Music] This picture of my mom and dad at my cousin's wedding. It looked really happy
00:00:22
here. I'm reminded of how gracious and kind she was. always willing to jump in, help anyone,
00:00:34
and make things happen. We had such a good relationship that you don't always expect to come from your
00:00:43
mother-in-law, but she was truly one of my best friends. The last time that I saw my mom was on
00:00:52
the Sunday and we met at a church service and I remember how happy my mom seemed that we were all
00:01:06
there together as a family. [Music] I received the call about 1:00 in the morning. We had a missing woman, the
00:01:20
realtor that was showing a house. >> When I heard that she had disappeared
00:01:25
and wasn't around, immediately I was concerned. The last text that came through was not her. She was not someone
00:01:34
that stayed out late. We knew that that wasn't her on the other end of the text
00:01:39
message. Over the weekend, crews and volunteers searched for Carter with authorities asking land owners to search
00:01:46
their property. >> Having no idea if she was in pain or if she was out and exposed to the weather,
00:01:55
it was crippling and it was torture. >> Beverly was a true victim. She was
00:02:02
prayed on. I did promise Beverly's husband that I would find her, but it's
00:02:07
not the way that I wanted to. I don't remember saying goodbye what I wouldn't give for just one more time to
00:02:16
give my mom a hug. But I never saw her again. [Music] My mom and dad met each other at a very
00:02:52
young age. My dad was 19 years old. My mom was 16. And they suddenly found themselves with an unplanned pregnancy.
00:03:03
And that was me. I was fortunate when I was growing up because my mom was at home with me and
00:03:13
so I had a wonderful childhood. I had lots of time with her and in some respects we kind of grew up together.
00:03:26
My parents had three sons. I'm the oldest of three boys. my brothers Chris and Chad and we're all
00:03:37
spaced about three and a half years apart. Although she was very sweet and short in
00:03:43
stature, she could get all three of us boys in line very quickly. Carl's relationship with his mom was
00:03:55
they were very close. They probably talked two, if not more times a day. I mean, he called her for
00:04:03
advice. He called her to tell her something funny. He called her just to see how she was doing or how her day
00:04:09
was. They were probably the closest I've seen a mother son be. >> Hey, you. I just got home and got this
00:04:19
beautiful present in the mail. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love it. Love it. Love it.
00:04:25
>> You're so sweet. I love you very much. Thanks. Bye. [Music] Tragically, we lost my middle brother
00:04:43
Chris in an automobile accident in 2003. My mom really, really struggled with the
00:04:53
grief of the loss of my brother. Understandably, she wanted change. She needed something different.
00:04:59
and she had always had the interest in homes and home design. So for her it was a very natural fit to
00:05:09
go into this completely new career path. She just really threw herself into the real estate profession.
00:05:22
>> If there was an award to be won, Beverly won it. I think the top award is diamond
00:05:29
and I'm fairly certain she won that numerous times. >> Beverly was my best friend. When I moved
00:05:37
to the North Lorac office, we just started being buds, you know, it was just automatic. It wasn't anything we
00:05:42
had to work on. As a professional, she was just topnotch. In 2012, we went and did our educator's
00:05:51
license so that we could teach real estate. In 2014, Little Rock was growing. Lots
00:05:58
of construction, lots of new houses being built, and so we were very active working with buyers and sellers. So, we
00:06:04
were really, really busy that year. Little Rock, even though it's the capital city of of our state, it still
00:06:13
very much has a small town feel. It's a tight community. You can't go anywhere
00:06:18
almost without, you know, someone knowing you. >> It's a very safe community. You don't
00:06:23
hear much about like domestic crimes or home breakins or, you know, it's not
00:06:32
typically uh something that happens very often here. >> It's a great place to raise a family.
00:06:40
And of course, my mom working in real estate, she was a part of so much of that excitement and people pursuing the
00:06:46
American dream of moving and buying a home and joining, you know, this this vibrant community,
00:06:53
[Music] Thursday, September 25th. I remember it being an absolutely beautiful day.
00:07:14
I went for a run in my neighborhood and running past two homes that my mom had listed for sale just thinking that I
00:07:24
needed to just call her and check on her. It's around 4:30 and Beverly and I was
00:07:30
in my office. We were sitting there talking, making plans for Saturday and Sunday. When we both stood up to leave
00:07:36
to go to our appointment, we said goodbye, but we didn't give each other a hug. And if I'd known, it was the last
00:07:43
time. Sorry. Sorry. My mom called my dad and told him that she would be showing a property to a
00:08:04
couple from out of town, a couple that she had talked to him about prior to even that day.
00:08:12
Nothing was out of the ordinary. I got home probably around 6. Around 8:00, Carl and I got into bed to like turn on
00:08:21
TV and watch a show or something. Around 8:30, my father-in-law called Carl, which is not normal. They didn't
00:08:31
talk on the phone often, so there was a little concern. Carl answered the phone and just like, "Hey, Dad, what's going
00:08:39
on?" >> He explained that he had been trying to call and to text my mom and she wasn't
00:08:47
replying. and he just kept going on about this being weird and that he was worried
00:08:55
about her. And he really wasn't letting it go. I didn't think anything else of it cuz I
00:09:03
really did think I guarantee you she is at a house sitting at a kitchen table signing a contract. Her phone is
00:09:14
probably in her car. But when he called back, that's when I think it shifted a
00:09:19
little bit. >> I told my dad that I would go to her office and I encouraged my dad to go to
00:09:28
the house that she would be showing that afternoon and that we would find her at
00:09:36
one of those places. Upon arriving to my mom's real estate office, it was immediately evident that
00:09:43
no one was there. The building was just completely dark, not a single light on in the parking lot. It was just empty.
00:09:54
>> I remember at that moment something felt wrong. I could I could just feel it.
00:09:59
And as we're sitting there, my dad calls me and he said that he had arrived to
00:10:05
that house on Old River Drive and that my mom's car was parked in front of it
00:10:12
and the front door was open, but that my mom was gone. I told my dad that we needed to contact
00:10:21
law enforcement. And so we made the call to report my mom missing and started making my way out to that home to be
00:10:29
with my dad. >> Once the police arrived, everyone was looking around the property. A few of
00:10:37
the sheriff's deputies started going door to door to see if anybody had any information.
00:10:44
The later it got, the more concerned I became because even with all of the ideas that we had come up with for
00:10:53
reasons why we might not be hearing from her, they just didn't fly anymore. And we really had to begin facing the
00:11:04
fact that something truly may have happened to her. [Music] I enjoy helping people.
00:11:20
Being a homicide detective, you get closure for people. I was actually off on call uh when I found out about
00:11:26
Beverly. Initially, I was just told that she went to show a house and the husband
00:11:32
found her vehicle and was not able to find her. When I went inside the house, you could tell that the house had been
00:11:38
vacant. There was a lot of dust and you could tell there were disturbances in that dust where somebody had walked
00:11:44
outside of the house. I saw tire tracks that looked like they had backed all the
00:11:48
way to the front door. I noticed that her car was locked, but her purse was inside. When I realized the purse was in
00:11:55
Beverly's car, it's about the same time that a cell phone text came through from
00:11:59
Beverly's phone. >> I just remember being out there huddled and watching our phones
00:12:08
And then suddenly just after midnight, my dad begins just yelling out to all of us. Beverly has text me back
00:12:21
and we all just start running toward his truck. And in that moment, it was so like,
00:12:30
okay, okay, there we there she is. You know, she's fine. And it is crazy how you can go from it
00:12:41
is fine to it is not fine. Right after that, the next message came in. It said, "Sorry, phone dead." And we
00:12:52
were like, "Okay, that's still that's okay. That makes sense. I mean, that's
00:12:56
fine." >> Not long after the second text, we received a third text from my mom.
00:13:05
It was letting my dad know that she was out drinking with friends and knowing my
00:13:12
mom, knowing that her favorite beverage was chocolate milk, not alcohol. We went
00:13:20
from relief to just complete horror because we knew just with those few words that my mom had been taken and
00:13:31
that she was in a very dangerous situation. [Music] >> At that point, I felt that Beverly had
00:13:39
been kidnapped. >> And I got the phone call about 2:00 that morning from the police department. It
00:13:45
scared me to death cuz I knew that Beverly would be at home. There was no question that something had happened to
00:13:51
her. >> We decided to ping the cell phone since the cell phone was turned on and sending
00:13:57
messages. Try to figure out a GPS location of that phone. When the cell phone pings come in, it gives us a GPS
00:14:04
coordinate. So, I pull that up and I go to those locations and I look for any kind of evidence that
00:14:11
may lead me to Beverly. [Music] Old River Drive and Scott is is a very remote area. It's a lot of farmland out
00:14:28
here. There's not a high crime volume. The fact that Beverly's phone was moving
00:14:35
around and we had three different pings showed me that that phone was actually moving.
00:14:40
So, we had a direction of travel that her phone was moving in. We got the pings where the house is at
00:14:48
on Old River. We got a ping at Faulner in Interstate 440. We got a phone ping at Dixon Road. And that phone ping was
00:14:57
about 20 minute ping. So that phone stayed there in one spot for about 20 minutes.
00:15:03
I kept thinking I'm going to get there and she's going to be sitting there
00:15:06
waiting for somebody to pick her up. But I didn't find anything that I felt was
00:15:10
involved in the in the crime. After this, we received zero further pings. When that happens, we know that
00:15:18
more than likely the SIM card has been removed. It puts a freeze on it because we can't
00:15:22
track the phone anymore. I knew that someone had turned her phone off. While I was looking into the paintings,
00:15:31
one of the neighbors across the street reported seeing a small black car backed up to the driveway with a white male
00:15:38
standing beside the car. She didn't think anything of it. Well, that's the last person that we
00:15:45
could put Beverly with. So, that was significant. That was a first lead that we had had.
00:15:51
That first night that I was involved, I did realize that Beverly was in serious danger. I think that she was somewhere
00:15:57
against her will. That night when the detectives returned back to the scene and advised that they
00:16:12
weren't able to track or find the phone, they asked that we go home and rest and
00:16:17
start the search again at daylight. I remember just feeling so much guilt for leaving that spot, thinking that
00:16:27
wherever she may be, that if she were to come back to the spot where she had been
00:16:31
taken, that we wouldn't be there. It was a very quiet ride home. We laid in bed and I just started crying
00:16:45
and then he started to crying. I think the last time I looked at the clock it may have been like 3:00 3:30 in
00:16:52
the morning and obviously we fell asleep just from exhaustion but also maybe a hopeful we'd wake up
00:17:01
and it was this was all not real. The next night, as we went past the 24-hour time frame, we knew the
00:17:23
importance about finding her within that span of time. >> The longer somebody is missing, the more
00:17:33
likely it is that they will not be found alive. So, the police were extremely concerned.
00:17:38
The chances they would find her in a safe state were decreasing by the minute. I can remember every minute of those 5
00:17:46
days. The police department said that they would set up a search party. It was very well organized. The community was
00:17:52
involved. Churches were involved. It was really a lot of people. [Music] Safety was always at the foremost for
00:18:06
Beverly. I knew from the beginning that something bad had happened. I did not want to
00:18:13
think that it was the end of Beverly. She would not have left her husband, her family without telling them what she was
00:18:19
doing. >> Speaking with her family, I did feel like Beverly was a safety conscious
00:18:24
person. She seemed to be very smart. She had shown thousands of houses and have never had an issue before.
00:18:34
>> There had to be some other explanation for why her car was there, but she
00:18:39
wasn't there. We were all trying to come up with scenarios. I mean, honestly, we
00:18:43
were even like, maybe she left, maybe she has a boyfriend, maybe they maybe they've run off together, maybe they're
00:18:50
on a plane somewhere, you know, like we had we were going far trying to find something that would make more sense
00:18:56
than something bad had happened. Every time she went to a showing, Beverly would convey to her husband who
00:19:04
she was going to show the house to, she kept a list of it. She made sure she left her purse in her car. She tried to
00:19:10
take affirmative steps to protect herself and she thought that that was more than enough to keep her safe.
00:19:18
>> The investigators found a notebook in my mom's car. And in this book, my mom
00:19:24
would put in details, you know, around names and phone numbers or types of properties that people were interested
00:19:32
in seeing just anything and everything that she wanted to, you know, remember um about about who she was working with
00:19:41
at that time. >> The police looked in Beverly's notebook and saw that the most recent entry was
00:19:47
for a couple that essentially didn't exist. They were fake names and numbers.
00:19:52
Why would prospective buyers give a fake name and number if they were intending to actually buy this house?
00:20:12
We looked into the details of the notebook that Beverly had in her vehicle. We had the address of the old
00:20:18
river road and underneath that was an email address and then a telephone number. The phone
00:20:25
number we found out was a fake and figured out that it was a text app that was downloaded. You have to have a real
00:20:31
number in that application. So, we were able to send a search warrant and find out who it actually was registered to.
00:20:37
The real phone number that the fake number was created from was owned by Crystal Lowry.
00:20:44
Crystal Lowry's husband was Aaron Lewis. >> When police had found out the last
00:20:50
people that Beverly was with were Crystal and Aaron Lewis, they became very concerned. While Crystal did not
00:20:56
have any criminal record, Aaron Lewis had an extensive criminal history, including for violent offenses.
00:21:03
When we got Aaron's physical description, it matched the description that the neighbor saw of the white male
00:21:09
standing beside the small black car at the house on River Road. Crystal Lowry and Aaron Lewis lived in
00:21:16
Sherwood, which is about 10 to 15 miles from the scene where Beverly was kidnapped.
00:21:23
So, we sent vehicles and marked units to that area to get an eye on the house. [Music]
00:21:40
[Applause] When we were going over to put surveillance on the house, they actually
00:21:47
saw Aaron Lewis walk out of the door. He saw them and he fled. We took off on a car chase and he was
00:21:56
driving so erratically he actually got into an accident crashing his vehicle and sustained injuries himself.
00:22:02
>> Aaron suffered a cut on his head and a broken nose and he was taken to the
00:22:09
hospital by ambulance. When we ran the search warrant on Aaron Lewis's vehicle, we were able to find
00:22:16
duct tape. We found a cell phone and we found hair fibers. We had a officer that went to the
00:22:25
hospital when Aaron Lewis went for a CT scan. He flees the hospital. There's no reason for Aaron to run from
00:22:33
the hospital unless he committed a crime. He's trying to get away. I wrote a search warrant for Crystal
00:22:40
Lowry and Aaron Lewis's house. When we executed the search, we were able to locate Beverly's cell phone with the
00:22:46
missing SIM card. At that point, I knew that Aaron Lewis was involved with the kidnapping of Beverly Carter. We
00:22:53
immediately put out a bolo for Aaron Lewis. A bolo is a be on the lookout for. It's
00:22:59
a notification of other law enforcement agencies and the community that they are
00:23:04
looking for somebody because they feel either the public is in imminent danger or this person could escape very serious
00:23:11
criminal charges. We included a photograph of him from the car crash. We stated that we were
00:23:19
looking for him as a person of interest in the kidnapping of Beverly Carter and asked that anyone have any information
00:23:26
contact us. [Music] >> 911. Hey, uh they're looking for a guy here uh that was involved in the realtor
00:23:46
being kidnapped. And this guy looks like him and he is nervous and he's out here
00:23:52
at the bus stop. >> Okay, but don't tip them off or anything. Get someone out there.
00:23:59
>> When officers arrived, Aaron fled on foot into an apartment complex and then
00:24:04
jumped off the second story floor right into the bottom of the feet of an officer standing there. So they took him
00:24:10
into custody. >> My mom had been missing for 4 days and I was with my dad at his house and we
00:24:23
got the call from the investigators to let us know that Aaron Lewis had been taken into custody.
00:24:35
>> The family had never heard of Aaron Lewis before. They were in hopes that
00:24:39
Beverly would be found alive and that we were on the right track to find her. >> There was a part of me that was relieved
00:24:47
because I felt like he would do the right thing and tell us where where my mom was.
00:24:55
>> Where is she? >> Who? >> I'm asking you a question. Did you do
00:24:58
anything? >> No. Did you? >> Why did they have you arrested? >> I have no idea. They haven't told me.
00:25:10
[Music] From a detective point of view, when you make the arrest, that's when the work is
00:25:16
really just starting. We've got to be able to find Beverly, and the only person that knows that answer is going
00:25:21
to be Aaron Lewis. When I interviewed Aaron Lewis, Aaron was the narcissist. He thinks that he's
00:25:29
the smartest person in the room. This is more of a game to him than anything else.
00:25:35
Where's my phone? Cuz you can't unlock it. Oh, >> we can. >> Yeah.
00:25:42
What you going to show me on the phone? >> Well, actually, I'll let you listen to
00:25:45
something. Then you'll know that I'm serious. And I said that you're running out of
00:25:52
time. >> Normally, we wouldn't give a suspect their evidence like that, but we needed
00:26:00
to try to find Beverly. So, we allowed him to have his phone. He played a audio note and it was Beverly Carter's voice.
00:26:11
>> Carl, Beverly, I just want to let you know I'm okay. I think they hurt. Just
00:26:16
do what he says and please don't call the police. If you call the police, it
00:26:20
could be bad. Just want you to know I love you very much. >> Aaron told me that he had this message
00:26:26
on his phone in the event that he got caught, he can prove that Beverly was alive. We knew that we had to hurry. My
00:26:32
concern was that that she was not actually alive. He he was still playing games with us.
00:26:38
>> Are you guaranteeing me this woman's alive? Depends on how long it takes.
00:26:46
How long do we have? How long can a person without food and water? Aaron Lewis essentially said that if
00:27:01
police don't find her in time, it's their fault if she dies. He was trying
00:27:06
to set the foundation for him being found not guilty for her death. The investigators did tell us that he
00:27:14
was not being cooperative. And so any hope, relief that we had that he might tell us where she was was really
00:27:24
fleeting. [Music] So, we started looking at his phone records, figuring out where he had been,
00:27:36
and we're able to figure out that he had been to a place called Argos, which is a
00:27:40
concrete facility. We found out through his background that he had been recently fired from Argos.
00:27:47
So, I asked him why he would be there if he had been fired and just threw it out. You take Beverly
00:27:53
to Argos. And that was the only time that I ever had any kind of reaction from him. I
00:27:59
knew right then that's probably where she was going to be at. We immediately sent a search team to
00:28:06
Argos plant. It was late in the evening. One of the detectives searching the woodline saw some fresh dirt and walked
00:28:14
over. And as that detective was walking through that dirt, she actually tripped on something and she looked back to see
00:28:22
and it was Beverly's elbow that was protruding out of the ground. When we uncovered Beverly from the
00:28:28
grave, we found out that she was duct taped from the eyes to the chin that covered her mouth and her nose.
00:28:35
Obviously, she suffocated. The location where they buried her is actually a cement runoff.
00:28:42
Had we not found her when we did, she would have been completely covered with concrete in another matter of days.
00:28:49
When Beverly's body was found, obviously we were hoping to find her alive. So
00:28:53
when we found her deceased, it was probably the worst, best feeling I've ever had.
00:29:01
>> When police found Beverly's body, they immediately questioned Aaron and
00:29:05
Crystal. They charged them with multiple crimes, including capital murder. Once Beverly's body is located, we have
00:29:14
to tell the family that she's been found. It's a very hard job to do. I've had to
00:29:19
do it a lot. And it's never never easy to have to tell a family member that their loved ones is is deceased.
00:29:28
Division captain went and told the husband, Carl, that we had located Beverly and she was deceased. And then
00:29:35
Beverly's friends actually got together and went and told her sons that she had
00:29:40
been found. I was awakened at 4:00 a.m. with people at my doorstep. And standing there at the door were some
00:30:02
of my mom's real estate colleagues, all with very solemn expression. And I let them in my home and
00:30:12
they immediately said that my mom had been found. And I was so excited. [Music] And my response was, "Well, where is
00:30:29
she?" And one of her friends said to me, [Music] "Oh, sweetie, [Music]
00:30:43
your mom wasn't found alive." We weren't there yet. We weren't to a place where we were
00:30:54
talking about her not being alive. >> And it didn't seem real. It didn't seem
00:31:03
possible. It just seemed like a bad movie. Probably the most confused person in the
00:31:10
whole situation was and still is my dad. My dad lost his wife of 34 years. His whole world just
00:31:21
is taken from him in a moment. [Music] The autopsy report showed that Aaron wrapped her entire head in duct tape and
00:31:46
basically created a mask which she couldn't breathe. She laid there and suffocated. She was unable to rip it off
00:31:54
because her hands were duct taped behind her back. She just laid there on the ground out there and died.
00:32:01
I think Beverly went through hell in her final hours when she died. They made her
00:32:06
walk to the grave site. I can't imagine going through what she went through.
00:32:15
>> She literally laid in her grave, taking her last breath. Ultimately, Crystal Lowry did confess to
00:32:27
being involved and agreed to tell us everything in agreeance to a lighter sentence because
00:32:34
in the state of Arkansas, kidnapping and capital murder brings either the death penalty or life in prison without
00:32:40
parole. So, instead of taking that, she decided to take a 30-year plea deal in exchange
00:32:48
for testimony in court explaining how and why this happened. Crystal Larry was a nursing student and
00:33:05
the night that Beverly went missing, Aaron had spoken about doing a kidnapping for ransom. She suggested
00:33:12
kidnapping a realtor broker because brokers usually had a lot of money. Uh, so they conducted an online search for a
00:33:21
realtor broker in area and Beverly was the first name that popped up. >> Crystal had recently married Aaron and
00:33:28
it seemed at first like Aaron was acting alone until police came to know Crystal
00:33:33
a little bit better. She maybe wasn't the ring leader, but she was feeding him
00:33:38
ideas on how to commit his intended crime even better. Aaron Lewis made contact with my mom
00:33:47
requesting to see the property that day and my mom apologized and told him that she didn't show property alone.
00:34:00
And so Crystal Lowry spoke to my mom and told my mom that she would be there, giving my mom this false sense of
00:34:10
comfort that there would be another person there and and make it a safer environment to show the house.
00:34:18
My mom arrived to that appointment prior to anyone getting there. You know, she opened the home. Aaron Lewis showed up
00:34:28
with an apology and an excuse that Crystal had gotten caught up at work and she was going to be unable to make it to
00:34:36
that showing that day. >> Aaron duct taped her, put her in a trunk of his car, and then he's going to take
00:34:41
her someplace, take photograph of her, and send that photograph to Beverly's
00:34:46
husband for ransom. He ended up taking Beverly home and realized that he forgot to get the debit
00:34:53
card out of her purse in the car. So he left Beverly at their house for Crystal to stand guard over and he went back to
00:35:00
the scene to try to collect her debit card. >> The purse was an important part of their
00:35:05
plan because they would have my dad move money to accounts that were accessible with the cards in my mom's purse. And so
00:35:16
no purse, no ransom. >> When he got there, police were on scene. He panicked. So he left, went back to
00:35:25
Crystal, told her what was going on. So they had to come up with a new plan. It was Crystal's idea to kill Beverly.
00:35:34
She told Aaron, "You've got no choice. You're you're going to have to kill her,
00:35:38
so go do what you've got to do." She knew too much already. So he went and bought a shovel and put her back in
00:35:50
his car, drove her to the site of his former employer. There was video surveillance at Walmart
00:36:00
where he bought the shovel and Crystal was in the car with him. There was enough evidence to show that she aided
00:36:08
him in it. When asked why Beverly, here's what he told reporters. >> She was a rich broker.
00:36:19
>> Do you have anything to say to the family? >> Sorry. [Music] Beverly was such a good friend. She was
00:36:40
my best friend. And this is a reminder of how much I miss the things that we could be doing together
00:36:48
and how much fun we had doing those things together, but we can't do them anymore because she's not here.
00:36:57
This is actually the dress that they buried her in because they knew that she loved that dress and they wanted her to
00:37:02
have that to be buried in. That's what they did. It wasn't long after we laid Beverly to
00:37:11
rest that we learned that Aaron was a sixtime felon and he married Crystal and then he ran out of money.
00:37:19
[Music] Supposedly the two were trying to get a divorce and couldn't afford it. So that
00:37:24
was the reason that they were going to try to kidnap somebody and get some ransom money so they could afford to get
00:37:29
a divorce. >> He saw my mom as an easy way to get money. [Music] My mom was not fantastically wealthy. He
00:37:42
just ruined her beautiful family because he only cared about getting rich. [Music]
00:38:07
Aaron Lewis went on trial January of 2016 at Plaskki County Circuit Court. Aaron Lewis was at times within an arms
00:38:17
length from us. There was a part of me that wanted to just shake him and ask why.
00:38:25
And then there were other moments of just sheer rage as they were showing the jury pictures
00:38:34
of my mom being unearthed from that shallow grave. >> The most standout moment in the trial
00:38:45
for me is when the prosecutor during closing arguments took a roll of duct tape and she grabbed it and just opened
00:38:53
it real fast. And you know, duct tape makes a distinct sound when you open it. And she said, "That's the last sound
00:38:58
that Beverly Carter ever heard." And I I'll never forget that. [Music] While we were waiting for the verdict,
00:39:15
Carl and I actually went into a side room and I heard heels like running down a hallway. and one of our prosecuting
00:39:24
attorneys came in and said, "The verdict's in." >> The verdict the jury came up with is
00:39:32
that Aaron Lewis was guilty of capital murder and kidnapping. When that guilty verdict came in, it was
00:39:39
like a,000 lbs was lifted off my chest. tears just began to flow and just I don't know that there was happiness from
00:39:52
the sense of the fact that we had gotten justice for my mom but also there was just relief that this part of this
00:40:03
journey was over for capital murder. Aaron Lewis was sentenced to life in prison without the
00:40:15
possibility of parole and kidnapping. He was also sentenced to a life sentence. So basically, he got two life sentences.
00:40:24
>> There's a part of me that thinks that if you take a life, you shouldn't be given the luxury
00:40:34
of keeping your own. But they were given fair trials and justice at least when defined like that
00:40:44
was served. >> He's never going to be able to get out. He'll never see the light of day again.
00:40:50
And now Aaron gets to sit in prison the rest of his life and remember what he did.
00:41:02
[Music] I do think about this case. I think about Beverly a lot and the stuff that
00:41:10
she actually went through. And I always think back to the voicemail that she left.
00:41:17
>> Carl Beverly, I just want to let you know I'm okay. I haven't been hurt. Just
00:41:22
want you to know I love you very much. The calmness in her voice, it just I don't know how somebody could be so calm
00:41:30
going through that kind of thing. >> The details are always kind of hard to
00:41:36
hear because she was such a scaredy-cat. She was always afraid of the littlest things. That's what hurts the most.
00:41:46
I do pretty good until I think about her final moments on Earth, and those break
00:41:51
me. They're really hard. >> Carl Jr., her son, created the Beverly Carter Foundation to help realtors try
00:42:03
to educate them on better ways to stay safe and doing their job and come up with ways to make their job safer.
00:42:14
Carl felt this pressure to like take just the worst thing in his life and make it better for somebody else. And it
00:42:25
was his therapy. He needed to speak about it. The foundation for him was a way to uh
00:42:36
process his grief. We do work alongside Carl Jr. with his foundation and make sure safety is first
00:42:44
and foremost with every agent. I'm really proud of Carl doing that and I think that his mother would be very
00:42:50
proud of him because I think that this foundation uh carries on Beverly's legacy of trying to help people.
00:42:58
[Music] Looking back, having Beverly as my mother-in-law was truly one of the greatest gifts I will always choose to
00:43:17
remember her in the fact that she had a weakness for sweets and she hated exercise
00:43:23
and just wanted to live out her days at the beach, which is basically me in a nutshell now. But I think that uh
00:43:32
remembering her will always be that she was truly one of the greatest friends that I'll ever have. I hit the
00:43:41
jackpot with her. My mom was the matriarch of our family. She was the center. She made everyone
00:43:52
feel welcome. She was the first hello you heard when you came through the door and she was
00:44:00
always out greeting you, you know, goodbye. She took care of all of us. Navigating life without her has been a
00:44:09
challenge for our family. We're all trying to step up and uh trying to make her proud.
00:44:20
[Music] [Music] [Music]