TOPEKA, Kan. — Three carnival workers have been charged with capital murder in the fatal shooting of a couple whose bodies were found in Arkansas days after they disappeared from a fair in Kansas.
The Kansas Attorney General says 52-year-old Kimberly Younger, of McIntosh, Florida; 54-year-old Michael Fowler Jr., of Sarasota, Florida; and 35-year-old Rusty Frasier, of Aransas Pass, Texas, are jailed on $1 million bond in Arkansas, where they also face charges. They are awaiting extradition to Kansas.
Capital murder carries a sentence of execution or life imprisonment.
Two others are charged with obstructing apprehension. Four of the suspects previously faced Arkansas charges including abuse of a corpse, theft by receiving and tampering with physical evidence.
The charges stem from the deaths of Alfred "Sonny" Carpenter and Pauline Carpenter. The Wichita couple was killed in July at the Barton County Fair, where they were selling crafts, jewelry, purses and other handmade items, police have said. Their bodies were later found buried in shallow graves next to a creek bed outside the small community of Natural Dam, Arkansas, in the Ozark National Forest.
Reports from an investigation by Van Buren police detectives say Younger posed as a member of the "carnival mafia" named Frank Zaitchik and ordered others by text messages to kill the couple.
Under questioning by detectives, Fowler said he was ordered through text messages from Zaitchik to kill the Carpenters as an initiation into the carnival mafia, according to the reports. Zaitchik also told Fowler and others by text messages to clean the inside of the trailer where Pauline Carpenter had been killed and to dispose of the bodies.
Fowler told detectives that while Younger, who initially was known to the detectives as Myrna Kahn, distracted Alfred Carpenter, Fowler grabbed Carpenter in a headlock and tried to cut his throat. When Carpenter fought back, Fowler said, Frasier stepped in and stabbed Carpenter in the chest.
Fowler then shot Carpenter twice in the head with a 9mm pistol, which police have found, and went into the couple's camper trailer and shot Pauline Carpenter twice in the head as she slept, according to the report.
Before the interview with Fowler, detectives had discovered from examining Younger's cellphone that she had a Facebook page in the name of Frank Zaitchik, according to reports.
Asked whether a carnival mafia even exists, Van Buren police spokesman Jonathan Wear said in an email that this was something Younger "definitely made up."
When detectives informed Fowler that the orders to kill the Carpenters had come from Younger posing as Zaitchik, Fowler responded that Younger had "suckered" him in and that "I just threw my whole life away," the report said.
Fowler is also charged in Kansas with theft, while Younger faces charges in that state of conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation and theft.
A spokeswoman in the Kansas Attorney General's office didn't immediately respond to questions about whether the suspects have attorneys who can speak on their behalf.
The four loaded the Carpenters' bodies into a camper and drove it and the trailer the Carpenters used for selling merchandise to Van Buren where Fowler's daughter lived, according to the report.
They got rid of the Carpenters' bodies by placing them in a creek bed off Star Road north of Cedarville in Crawford County and piling rocks and wood on top of them, the report said.
Democrat-Gazette reporter Dave Hughes contributed to this story.