Pulaski County sheriff's deputies got on their hands and knees in the middle of the night to gingerly dig Beverly Carter's body out of the ground, jurors were told Thursday, the second day of testimony in the capital-murder and kidnapping trial of Arron Lewis.
REALTOR-SLAYING TRIAL
Beverly Carter
Realtor who was reported missing after showing a house in Scott. Her body was found days later buried behind a Cabot concrete plant.Arron Lewis
The man charged with capital murder and kidnapping in Carter's killing. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
John Johnson
Chief deputy prosecuting attorney for the Sixth Judicial District. Johnson will present the state's case.Bill James
Lead defense attorney for Lewis.
Crystal Lowery
Lewis' wife who earlier pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and kidnapping charges. She is expected to testify.Herbert Wright
Pulaski County circuit judge, who will preside over the proceeding.
Carter, a 50-year-old mother of three, was found buried in woods behind an Argos concrete manufacturing plant, investigator JayP Massiet, who helped recover the remains, told the nine women and three men on the jury.
Carter's left elbow and fingers of her right hand could be seen slightly above the ground when searchers found her, he said.
Removing the body "was mostly done by hand, sifting the dirt, moving the dirt," Massiet said.
After two days of testimony, prosecutors rested their case Thursday against the 35-year-old Lewis. Prosecutors called 19 witnesses and submitted 60 pieces of evidence -- most of it photographs.
Lewis' attorney Bill James is to begin his defense case at 8:30 a.m. today. He indicated that Lewis will testify.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Lewis.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright, who is presiding in the case, has already notified Lewis that if he takes the stand, his testimony could be used by prosecutors to persuade Wright to admit incriminating statements and evidence previously barred from being shown to jurors.
Carter's remains were found four days after she vanished while going to show a home in Scott to a client. Authorities say that client turned out to be Lewis, who with his wife's help lured Carter into a trap to kidnap her and hold her for ransom.
Discovery of Carter's body was the result of a painstaking search in the middle of the night for disturbed dirt that would indicate where a hole had been dug, Massiet said. The search area was on a piece of land left to grow wild near a pool of hardened scrap concrete behind the Cabot concrete plant, he told jurors.
A roll of bright-green duct tape was found within "tossing distance" of Carter's body, he said.
Property records show that the concrete plant sits on 7.75 acres along Arkansas 5. Carter's body was found buried just beyond the western tip of the finger-shaped property.
Lewis had worked for the company briefly as a truck driver and had been trained at the plant, which operates only part time, according to testimony.
The first photographs of Carter's body were shown to the jury during Massiet's 38 minutes on the witness stand. In them the color of her body is mottled wine purple and dirt black from decomposition.
Chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson first showed jurors pictures of her elbow and fingers as deputies had seen them that September 2014 night. He then showed jurors nine photos taken from various angles that showed the body in the dirt on the night she was found.
Tears rolled down the face of Carter's oldest son, Carl Carter Jr., as Massiet described how deputies located his mother's body, excavated the hole she had been buried in, then struggled to free her remains without changing the position that her body had been left in.
Carter Jr., his father, for whom he's named, and younger brother sat about 10 feet behind Lewis on Thursday.
The photographs showed Beverly Carter's body almost facedown and twisted at the waist, with her wrists bound with green tape behind her back. A mask of green tape covered her face mummylike, Massiet said.
She was wearing red knee-length shorts, a bra and a white surgical binder across her stomach. Her black blouse was found wadded up and buried next to her.
Lewis was accused of Carter's abduction after sheriff's deputies linked her cellphone to a phone registered to Lewis' wife, Crystal Lowery.
Prosecutors told jurors at the start of the trial that Lewis has tried to blame Lowery for Carter's death, saying that Lewis put a handwritten statement on Facebook late last year claiming that Lowery had accidentally smothered Carter while Carter was willingly performing oral sex on Lowery.
Johnson, the prosecutor, spent 34 minutes reading that statement aloud to jurors Thursday. The 20-page document purports to be Lewis' account of what happened over the four days in September 2014 between the time he met Carter until his first encounter with deputies, the day before he was arrested.
It shows two drawings -- a front and left-side view -- of Carter's tape-wrapped head, and states that the binding was done after she died to keep bugs off her face during the hours it took Lewis to get around to burying her.
The statement also says Carter willingly accompanied Lewis to his Jacksonville home where she had sex with him and his wife in separate instances.
In that version of events, Lewis was not at home when Carter died, but returned to find her dead in the couple's bed.
Lewis wanted to call authorities immediately, but Lowery talked him out of it, and the couple decided to bury her behind the Argos plant instead, the document states.
Last year, the 42-year-old Lowery pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and kidnapping charges in an arrangement with prosecutors in which she received a 30-year prison sentence and promised to testify against Lewis.
On Thursday, ruddy-cheeked and wearing a blue jail uniform, she spent just more than two hours testifying.
Speaking softly, Lowery acknowledged meeting sex partners, Lewis being one of them, through the online advertising sites Craigslist and Backpage.
She sometimes prostituted herself, Lowery said, although she was raising her 14-year-old daughter and studying to be a nurse when Carter was killed.
Lowery answered frankly when deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani asked why she went along with Carter's murder.
"Because I didn't want to get caught," she told jurors.
There is no truth to the claim that Carter willingly went with Lewis or had sex with him, Lowery testified.
She said she never met Carter before the day that Lewis arrived with her at their home. Carter was alive but tied up. He put her in the bathroom after he backed out of a plan to hide her in some offices near the Argos plant, Lowery said.
Lowery said she went along with Lewis' plan only because he promised to keep her participation minimal.
She actively avoided any contact with Carter, although she briefly talked to the real estate agent on the phone about buying a house, she said.
Lowery said she held a Taser to guard Carter while Carter was in the couple's bathroom. Later she used her own cellphone as a flashlight while Lewis dug the hole in which to hide Carter's body. She described how he pulled the remains into the hole and covered them with dirt.
Lowery said she went along with Lewis' plans to try to collect a $100,000 ransom, although she didn't know how much her portion of that would be.
The couple originally planned to abduct someone in the Chenal neighborhood of Little Rock, but Lewis gave up that plan after he staked out a house and found that it had "tons of cameras," Lowery said.
A Section on 01/15/2016