Jurors see ATM photos in Wichita slayings trial
Wichita ? Family members cried and held hands in court Tuesday as prosecutors showed jurors surveillance photos from automated teller machines where their loved ones were forced to make withdrawals before they were killed.
Detective Jimmie Merrick, a financial crimes investigator with the Wichita Police Department, outlined for jurors the numerous withdrawals and attempted withdrawals from the accounts of Aaron Sander, Brad Heyka, Jason Befort and a woman who survived the shootings.
Merrick testified that a total of $1,830 was taken from the four. Police found $2,156.15 on brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr when they were arrested just hours after the withdrawals and killings.
The Carrs are being tried in Sedgwick County District Court on a total of 113 charges, most of which stem from the events of Dec. 14-15, 2000, when five friends were abducted from a Wichita home, forced to engage in sexual acts and to withdraw money from ATMs before they all were shot. Four of them Sander, 29; Heyka, 27; Befort, 26; and Heather Muller, 25, died. Befort’s girlfriend, then a 25-year-old teacher, survived a head wound, running naked about a mile in the snow to find help.
The brothers also are being tried in the Dec. 11, 2000, shooting of Ann Walenta, 55, who later died, and the Dec. 7, 2000, robbery in which Andrew Schreiber was abducted and forced to withdraw cash from ATMs.
Jurors viewed ATM surveillance photos of Heyka and Befort withdrawing money from the machines. None of those photos showed anyone else in the car at the time. Prosecutors plan to show the rest of the surveillance photos when the trial resumes today.
Witness: Defendant cried
In testimony earlier Tuesday, a female friend of Jonathan Carr testified he became upset and started crying when she confronted him after she saw a television report of his brother being arrested for the four killings.
Tronda Adams, 22, said she immediately recognized Jonathan’s brother, Reginald, from the news reports as the man who had been at her house with Carr a night earlier and then realized Jonathan was the second man police were seeking.
She had already heard reports that police were looking for a man with an orange and black sweater with the word “FUBU” across the front. Jonathan was wearing a sweater that morning that matched the description when he came to her house, she said.
Adams also testified she had earlier told Jonathan Carr that four people were killed after they were forced to go to automated teller machines to get cash. Jonathan wanted to know how police knew that, and she told him one person survived.
But it was not until after she saw news reports of his brother’s arrest that she confronted him about what he had been doing.
“I said: ‘What’s going on? Did you see that?”‘ Adams testified.
Jonathan Carr then told her he had missed his train and had spent the night at his home drinking, she said.
“That is not going to work,” she said she told him, adding police were looking for him.
Adams said her mother, Toni Greene, then called her to another room. They left for a neighbor’s house, where Greene called police.
Witness IDs gun
In other testimony Tuesday, Adams connected the gun alleged used in the killings to the Carr brothers.
She said Jonathan Carr gave her a silver handgun after a problem she had with a former boyfriend. He later traded her a black semiautomatic for the silver handgun before taking both weapons back before the quadruple killings, she said.
Adams identified in court Tuesday the black gun as the one she had been given giving jurors their first glimpse at the purported murder weapon.




