Abduction of Realtor admitted, report says

It states phone tracing led to body

Suspect Arron Lewis (left) is escorted from the Pulaski County Sheriff's department by investigators after being interrogated, September 30, 2014 in this file photo.
Suspect Arron Lewis (left) is escorted from the Pulaski County Sheriff's department by investigators after being interrogated, September 30, 2014 in this file photo.

Correction: The next court date for Arron Lewis and Crystal Lowery, who are charged with kidnapping and capital murder in the death of real estate agent Beverly Carter, has not been set. This story incorrectly reported when they were scheduled to appear in court.

Murder suspect Arron Lewis admitted to Pulaski County sheriff's investigators shortly after his Sept. 30 arrest that he kidnapped real estate agent Beverly Carter, according to an arrest report released Tuesday.

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The report, which was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after Lewis' case was bound over to Pulaski County Circuit Court from district court, also included information on how investigators found Carter's body Oct. 1.

Lewis and his estranged wife, Crystal Lowery, are each charged with kidnapping and capital murder in the case. Lewis publicly rebutted the charges in an interview with a Little Rock TV station last month, saying that Carter willingly entered a car with him the night of Sept. 25, when she was reported missing, and that "anything that did occur was an accident."

The arrest report states otherwise, however.

Lewis confessed to kidnapping Carter but "refused to provide us with her location," according to the arrest report. The sheriff's office reported finding Carter's body early the next morning in a shallow grave at a Cabot construction site where Lewis was formerly employed.

"Suspect and victim telephone records were able to be traced" to locate her body, according to the report.

The report also states that Carter had been bound with duct tape.

"If someone willingly goes with you on their own free will, they're not being kidnapped," Lewis told KARK-TV, Channel 4 in October.

The few, spare details in the arrest report are the latest on Carter's disappearance and death since Pulaski County District Judge Wayne Gruber sealed files related to the case Sept. 30 at the request of prosecutors.

No new information was available on Lowery. She was arrested Oct. 30 in the Carter case.

Law enforcement officials and prosecutors Tuesday declined to elaborate on information in the arrest report. As they have in the past, they cited an ongoing investigation and a desire to keep some details of the case unavailable to the public to protect the integrity of a potential jury.

But they did explain why the arrest report was made public when other details of the case have been tightly controlled.

"The information you have there is just basic information to alert the court, the prosecutor of some of the elements of the arrest," Pulaski County Sheriff Doc Holladay said. "We are trying to adhere to the order of the court and not discuss the particulars of the case beyond the basic information that was a part of those arrest reports. ... Clearly the information that's on that [arrest report] is a public record, and it was put there for the benefit of the court and the prosecutor as they move through the initial process to justify or identify the reasons for the charges."

Deputy prosecutor John Johnson said such documents "are sent over as a necessity, as part of the filing process" to transfer cases to circuit court.

Another file made public in that process was a felony count document in which prosecutor Larry Jegley outlines the charges against Lewis and Lowery and their basis under Arkansas law. It did not contain new details on Carter's death.

"We're ethically bound to not comment on cases that are still pending," Johnson said Tuesday. "Things that become part of the public domain -- the news agencies find things out and we're not allowed to comment on those things."

Holladay would not discuss the phone trace mentioned in the arrest report. Holladay declined to describe the process of locating someone through a phone trace.

"I could, but I would rather not in this particular case because those are facts that will come out at trial," he said. "And with the standing orders, the sealing of the file, I just don't believe that it is proper for me to discuss how these suspects were identified and located. We need to keep as much information as possible, pretrial, from being out there because we don't want to taint a jury pool."

Many law enforcement agencies can use cellphone towers and phone records to determine a person's approximate location for investigative or emergency response purposes. Laws on whether the agencies are required to obtain warrants vary across the country. The American Civil Liberties Union has raised privacy concerns over the practice, according to published reports.

Johnson said other documents related to the Carter case -- including arrest affidavits for Lewis and Lowery -- will not be made public in the near future.

Sheriff's office Capt. Simon Haynes, who is leading an investigation into Carter's death along with Maj. Mike Sylvester, said Tuesday that Carter's family was among the few with full details on the case.

"They know it all," he said.

Carter, 50, a real estate agent at Crye-Leike in North Little Rock, was reported missing Sept. 25 after she told her husband that she was going to meet a potential client at a vacant house in Scott. Law enforcement agencies and volunteers began an extensive search for her the next day. The sheriff's office found her body five days after she disappeared.

Lewis and Lowery have pleaded innocent in the case, which was assigned to Circuit Judge Herbert Wright. The pair's next court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

Lowery, 41, was being held in the Pulaski County jail without bail.

Lewis, a felon, faces an additional charge of possession of a firearm by certain persons. He had his parole revoked after being charged in Carter's death. He was being held by the Arkansas Department of Correction at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker.

Department of Correction officials banned Lewis from media contact after his TV interview, which they said was granted to KARK against department policy.

Holladay would not comment Tuesday on the interview, in which Lewis said the case against him was "not as clean-cut as they are wrapping it up to be."

"We believe we know what the facts are," Holladay said. "I don't put much stock in anything that Mr. Lewis may have said to the media. It may have been his way of trying to diminish what had happened. I can't get into his head. But let me say when the case goes to trial, all those questions will be answered."

A section on 11/26/2014

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