Two days before Beverly Carter's body was discovered, the real estate agent's cellphone was found in the Jacksonville home of the husband and wife accused of killing her, court records show.
A description of some of the evidence against Arron Michael Lewis, 34, and Crystal Hope Lowery, 42, is contained in Lewis' mental-evaluation report filed Thursday by state doctors. The two are charged with capital murder and kidnapping.
A hearing on the findings scheduled for Thursday was postponed until next week because Lewis was not brought to court from prison, where he is serving time for unrelated theft convictions.
Doctors reported that Lewis is fit to stand trial, a finding that must first be accepted by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright before the case can be set for trial.
Lewis' attorney asked for state doctors to assess Lewis' mental health but said he never intended to use an insanity defense.
The 16-page report includes a description of the evidence that led sheriff's deputies investigating Carter's September disappearance to Lowery and Lewis. Carter, a married mother of three, drove to a house on Old River Drive in Scott to show the property but never returned home. Her husband reported her missing when he went to the house and found her Cadillac, with her purse inside, parked outside the home.
According to the information in the mental examination, Carter's cellphone showed she had made a 16-minute call to a phone owned by Lowery the night she disappeared, about 30 minutes after Carter had called her husband to tell him about her plans to show the home. Carter's phone also exchanged several text messages with the Lowery phone, but the messages had been deleted from Carter's phone, so investigators don't know what they said, according to the report.
Investigators also were able to ping Carter's cellphone and determine that the phone was in the area of the Old River Drive home about an hour after Carter's husband had last spoken to her, according to the report.
Neighbors reported seeing Carter at the house with a man driving a black car. Lewis and Lowery own a 2014 black Ford Fusion.
Investigators put the couple's Randall Drive home under surveillance and followed Lewis when he left the home driving the Fusion. He crashed the car, and officers found Lowery's phone in the vehicle, according to the report.
A search of the vehicle also turned up duct tape, a baseball bat and rope, but the report doesn't describe the significance of that discovery, although Lewis' body was found bound with duct tape.
A subsequent search of the couple's home turned up Carter's iPhone, with the SIM card removed so it couldn't be traced.
Lewis was arrested in Little Rock the day after the searches of the car and house. When he was arrested, police also found a truck that had been taken from the concrete company where he worked. The day after his arrest, Carter's body was found buried behind the company, Argos Southern Star Concrete Co. on Arkansas 5 in Cabot.
An arrest report says Lewis admitted upon arrest to abducting Carter but would not tell investigators where she was. Telephone records helped lead deputies to Carter's remains, according to the report.
No further details have been released about how Carter's body was found or how she was killed. Lowery was arrested a month after her husband, but no details of the allegations against her have been released.
Lewis has a criminal history that dates back to when he was 17 and convicted of bank robbery. He was on parole for theft when Carter was killed, and he also acknowledged a childhood history of conduct problems.
According to the mental-evaluation report, Lewis' diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder based on his "history of pervasive criminality and ... disregard for social norms and rules." A previous psychiatrist described him as "demanding, manipulative and narcissistic," according to the report.
Metro on 02/27/2015