Transcript of 1 | Heartache Tonight

Lords of Death is released weekly, every Monday, and brought to you absolutely free. But if you want an exclusive ad-free binge, sign up for Tenderfoot Plus. Check out the show notes for the link to subscribe.

You're listening to Lords of Death, a production of Tenderfoot TV in Association with Odyssey. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone, including themes of murder and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

Wait, wait, mommy's camera's not working. Don't blow them up.

In the 1990s, we recorded everything on VHS tapes, from our favorite TV shows, Diane, 11:30 AM, to special moments of our lives, filmed with camcorders. Happy birthday, With this technology, it felt like we could preserve these moments just like they were in our memories. But VHS tapes weren't made to last forever. If you were to find old VHS tapes buried away in your basement and you still have a VCR, you might find they aren't how you remembered them. All the years in storage may have caused the tape to warp. The picture might be blurry. The audio might be washed out and drenched in a histing analog buzz. Some tapes might be unplayable. And even if you have tapes that have survived all this time, they can be distorted in their own way. Your favorite TV show growing up might be Cheesier than you remember, or maybe a birthday party wasn't as joyous as you thought it was at the time. You might have experienced this while going through old keepsakes. A few years ago, for reasons I'll get into later, I was given a box like this. At first glance, it appeared to just be an assortment of stuff from the 1990s.

Then, I found this unlabeled DHS tape in a Manila envelope.

Seated beside me is James McQuarter. I'd like to conduct an interview with James in regards to a homicide that occurred this past Tuesday.

It was filmed on June ninth, 1995, at a police station in Dayton, Ohio. It's a white-haired interviewing a man with messy hair in a blue inmate's jumpsuit.

That's all right. You can just tell us what happened. I know it's not... Tell us what happened. Well, at that point, That's okay. That's a deep fucking shot her.

As far as I can tell, I'm the only person who's watched this tape in decades. As I dug through the box, I realized it wasn't an ordinary stash of keepsakes. It contained information that would lead me on a year's long investigation into a slew of unsolved murders. My name is Thrasher Banks, and from Tenderfoot TV, this is Lords of Death. To set the scene for this story, first I have to tell you about Kari.

I was a single mom living on Row Avenue in 1994. You could look down the street and see that it was not even a middle-class neighborhood. There were a lot of empty homes. Walking down the street didn't feel very safe.

Kari lived with her two children in Five Oaks, an inner-city neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. By the early '90s, white flight had taken its toll on the neighborhood. She was in her mid-20s on the heels of a divorce when a man close to her age moved in across the street.

He was tall, slender, had long, brownish dark hair, beautiful blue eyes. He had caught my eye. I think I had caught his.

That man was James McCarter, but back then, everyone knew him as Mick.

I'm from Kentucky, so I never really thought I was going to stick around long. Well, I met somebody, as you know. Yeah, I got smitten with her. But every time Carrie would come out, she would just look and smile. I just thought she was being polite and nice. I didn't think about it. This went on for about two or three months. What I'll be getting from there? Little notes on the windshield. And before I know, one thing led to another.

A fun little game started where he left a note on my car, I left a note on his car. He would have the neighborhood kids bring me notes.

I'd like to know about your background, Kerry wrote. At first, I was afraid of you. You could be some psychotic rapist, and I would never know until it was too late. How do I know that I can trust you? Mick responded with a note, letting her know that he'd spent time in prison, and rather than return to his hometown, he left his past buried in the hills above Rappalachia and moved to Dayton for a fresh start.

And then one day, he just came over and sat down on the porch with me, and we began having a conversation, and we hit it off, and it was pretty much nonstop. After that, we talked every day. He seemed like a really good guy. He was definitely not an angel, but he had a really good side to him. He was a very soft person, but I know he had a hard side, too. He was just funny. I've said it before, we just laughed a lot. We joked around with each other. We had water fights. We were just like two kids. We really had a good time. It was nice. We did things with the kids. We took them to the parks. It was The kids were always a big part of everything. They loved Mick, and Mick loved them. I never thought twice about leaving my kids with him or sending him to the school to pick my son up from school or watching my daughter while I was at work. I always knew that they would be safe. And it did feel like family. It felt like I had a family again.

And no, he wasn't the man her parents would have chosen for her to be with, but the relationship seemed effortless. And when Mick moved in a few months later, it felt right.

Just like any other couple, Mick and I, we had arguments. It wasn't perfect. But when all of the arguments were over, I still felt very much in love and very safe with Mick. I didn't want him around just because he made me feel safe. I was happy again. I was living again. I was alive again.

While living in Dayton, Mick stayed in touch with a man he met in prison named Tim Tarroll.

Tim was maybe 5'7, maybe not quite that tall. Very skinny, blonde hair, glasses, a sunken-in face. Most of the friends in my circle at that time didn't really like Tim. He was just tolerated because everyone did like Mick, and he was Mick's friend. I always thought Tim looked very hollow in his eyes like there's nothing there, like a very cold person.

In the Polaroids I've seen of Tim, he's in his late 20s, wears aviator-style glasses, a leather jacket. He's either smoking a cigarette or holding a gun. Sure, Mick was a little rough around the edges, but Tim looked like an outlaw, and he lived like one as well. He met Mick while serving a prison sentence for robbing a gun store.

Mick and Tim, in my eyes, they were opposites. Tim was real quiet, reserved, just somebody that was just in the background of every situation he was in, where Mick was the center of attention. Everybody really enjoyed being around Mick. He was very happy, very positive, very friendly, had tons of friends.

Since Tim lived two hours away, his visits were infrequent enough that Kerry tolerated him being around. But that changed at some point in 1994, when Tim his marriage fell apart.

Yeah, he said that he didn't know if he was going to hang out up there much longer, but he knew he was going to get in trouble if he stayed around. That's what he kept saying. And Cary whispered to me. She goes, We got this extra room out there. Jim, come on down. Stay a while until he gets on his feet. That's what we did. We invited him. He came. I mean, he was doing real good there for a minute. No problems. I didn't see anything alarming or nothing. Somebody different in a house, a little extra company.

That's what Mick says happened, but Kerry offered a different account of this interaction.

I was very hesitant. Mick and I, we were just starting our life together. I really didn't want another person, another adult under the roof. We were building a family life together. But after a while, I finally said yes, and Tim came down from Guernsey County and moved in.

Tim showed up in Dayton with very few belongings, a duffle bag, a shotgun, and a box full of letters. Even though the situation made Carrie uncomfortable, she loved Mick and wanted to do what she could to help his friend.

So living with Tim, actually, the kids liked him. My children liked Tim, and he liked them. He cooked for them, made cookies for them, helped make sure they had a good Christmas. He helped take care of them. He taught them how to tie their shoes. He wasn't active part of the family. But there was always a part of me that was standoffish about Tim. It was like he had this side that I didn't know. That was just under the surface. You could sense that it was there, but you never actually saw it.

It wasn't just his demeanor and flat effect that bothered Kerry. There was another concerning detail about Tim.

So Tim had a tattoo on his arm that was just letters. It said L-O-D. And I asked Mick what L-O-D stood for, and I was told it stood for lords of Death. So I asked for the meaning behind it. And only a couple of people had the tattoo, apparently. And in order to get the tattoo, you had to take someone's soul, as in murder someone, is what I was told. But it never really clicked with me that it was like, they were really the lords of death. I could just see them being like, Yeah, cool. We're the lords of death. And it really meaning nothing is how I looked at it. But I was wrong. It meant a lot.

Guns weren't a part of Carrie's life before Mick and Tim moved in, but now they had a visible presence in her home. Mick owned a shotgun and a P-32 handgun that he kept around for protection. Since violent crime was on the rise in Five Oaks, he even convinced Carrie to purchase her own 25 millimeter pistol. So she didn't have any reservations when one day Tim asked her to drive him to pick up a Taurus Blue Steel 357 Magnum.

Tim was very much obsessed with this 357. It was like his baby. He had it with him quite regularly.

This 357 became Tim's most prized possession. He'd often have it out to clean or show it off, even when Carrie's kids were around. And although this bothered Carrie, she stayed quiet because Mick didn't seem to care. And that's just how Mick and Tim were about almost everything. They weren't motivated. They rarely worked. Neither of them owned a vehicle or had a place to call home. So they didn't just rely on Carrie for a roof over their heads. They relied on her for transportation, too. That's why in September of 1994, Mick and Carrie drove Tim to his hometown to attend a divorce hearing. Cambridge is about two hours east of Dayton, in a rural part of Ohio.

When we first got to Cambridge, we went to Tim's mom's house. And I remember it was like a big farm, and there was a big farmhouse and a trailer on the property. Tim went and got some shotguns and asked if we all wanted to just target practice. Right in front of me, Tim shot a rabbit and ran and picked it up and said, Look, Carrie, it's still twitching. It was the most excited I had ever seen him.

Although seeing Tim's behavior around the rabbit alarmed Carrie, she had to shake it off to take him to his divorce hearing. After that, they spent a few hours drinking with Tim's friends and eventually ended up at a local bar.

We ended up at this bar called The Highly. So we get a table, ordered drinks. Typical bar scene, really crowded, smoky. Music was loud. Weren't really interacting with any of the patrons there. And there was a man in there that every time I would walk past him, he would swath me on the butt. I warned him. I said, You see those two guys over there? That's who I'm You need to stop. He just kept doing it. So I told Mick and Tim what was going on. Tim got very, very irate to the point that him and this man ended up in a fight. In that moment, I wish that I had never said anything to them about it, but I had no idea that Tim was going to take it to that level. I don't even remember how we ended up outside. Somehow he got that guy's hand into the car door and kept slamming the car door on his hand. Tim for as small as he was, was like a giant in that moment. He was just like a different person. It wasn't the reserved, quiet, in the background Tim anymore. I'm seeing the side of him that I always felt was there but had never seen.

Could not tell you what Mick was doing in that moment because I was so focused on the evil that was spewing from Tim.

It wasn't just the assault that bothered Carrie. Tim had told her a story before the chaos ensued that she didn't know whether or not to believe.

I don't remember at what point at the high lie Tim told me that he had been a hired hitman in the past.

While Carrie was still in shock from what she just witnessed. Tim urged them to get into the car in case someone had called the police.

After we left the bar, it was raining, and Tim is going extremely fast. I'm sitting in middle of the front seat between him and Mick. I looked down at the speedometer, and Tim is going probably almost 70 miles an hour in the rain. I tell him he needs to slow down. He said, Oh, I would never hurt you, and grabbed my leg, my thigh area. I swear, instead of slowing down, he sped up. It seemed like he did it on purpose. Instead of hitting the brakes, he hit the gas, and we were going faster. I see a sign up ahead, like the arrow for a 90-degrees turn.

Tim was just exceedingly going fast. I mean, way too fast. I think 70 plus mile an hour. I said, Dude, you slow down. He said, Oh, we could take it.

The next thing I know, we're sliding around that curve. I remember seeing the arrow sign getting closer and closer to the passenger side window.

It wasn't until maybe when it was too late that he decided to slow the car down. And I knew the car wasn't going to make it, so I just grabbed Carrie, held her as tight as I could and grabbed a pillar of a windshield like that to hold us in place. And I knew we was going to go over. The car starts sliding, and we went off the road just like that and went upside down.

I remember seeing the glass shatter, and I just grabbed hold of Mick's arm. It was like slow motion. I could see every little fragment of glass. And then the car began to roll. We ended up upside down in the ditch. I could smell gasoline, and literally, my life was flashing in front of my eyes. All I could think about was my kids back home in Dayton and how we were going to get out in the car. I can still remember the sound of the windchill wipes because they were still on with the car upside down and didn't know how we were going to get out of the car because the way the car was in the ditch, most of the passenger side windows were blocked. Tim crawled out first, and between Mick and Tim, they were able to get me out the driver's side window.

We all climbed out of the car. Of course, we cussed Tim out. We could tell he felt bad. He did. He was ready to cry. I was like, maybe I shouldn't have jumped on him that hard. But we got lucky. We walked away.

Despite totaling the car, other than scrapes and bruises, they escaped the accident without major injuries. But that night was a turning point for Kari and her feelings about Tim.

After that, things changed. Not necessarily that you could see it, but you could feel it. I really, at that point, didn't even want Tim to come back to Dayton with us. But I'm also very afraid to even confront him to tell him that I want him to leave because I don't know what's going to set him off at this point. I was a lot more cautious with how I acted and the things that I said. But at the same time, he's still being very good with my children, and my children are still liking him. It's like two different people. Sometimes you had the good Tim, and then other times we had this scary person that I couldn't even stand to look at because just like this pure evil look in his eyes. All right, everybody, happy birthday, Cara. So she can have a very handy day. Wait, Cara. Everybody, it's your birthday.

Somebody start.

Happy birthday to you.

When Carrie's daughter turned five in June of 1995, Tim had been living with them for over a year. And that year, there was a dark cloud hanging over the festivities. One of Maken Carey's close friends drowned in a canoeing accident, and his funeral was the next day on June fifth. After the funeral, Maken Carey decided to fire up the grill and spent the evening outside with the kids.

It was a good night. It really was. We had a big cookout, and Who was drinking? Me and Tim. When it was all said and done, Tim wanted another six-pack, just one more little six-pack. And I said, Well, okay. Turned out to be a bad night after that. A real bad night.

The only way they could go would be if I gave them my keys. I kept telling them no, they had been drinking, they didn't need to be driving, but they just kept on and kept on and kept on. So I gave them the keys to the escort, and they left to get beer, which should have taken them maybe 20 minutes tops, but they never came back for hours. I called all of our friends to see if they had gone over there. Nobody had seen them or heard from them. I called the police Department to see if They had been arrested. They had not. I called all the area hospitals to see if they'd been in an accident. They had not.

When she heard the car pull up well after midnight, she was ready to confront Mick and Tim about why they had been gone for so long.

They came in the house, and of course, I immediately started asking questions where they'd been and why it had taken so long, and didn't they know I'd be worried, and Tim wouldn't even look at me. He came in the house and went straight upstairs without making any eye contact at all without saying a word. I I kept asking Mick, Where were you? Where were you? I'm a woman, so I'm thinking, Are you cheating on me? Kind of thing. I was getting very angry telling him that I wanted the truth. So I don't know why, but I went to the car, and the first thing I noticed was they had left the front passenger window down. So I go to roll the window up, and there's no window there. The window's shattered. I turned the light on inside the car, and I see a hole through the door. I know it's a bullet hole because there's no window. So now I'm freaking out. And then I get into the front of the car and I'm sitting in the passenger seat and I put my hand under the front seat and I feel some cloth, so I pull it out.

It was a pair of shorts, women's shorts, and they were covered in blood and brain matter. Mick was sitting on the front porch, so I held them up and my exact words were, What the fuck happened?

That's when it all came out. That's when I told her a woman died that night, and she should be quiet because Tim was getting all agitated. The thing was his gun. He didn't flat out make a threat, but he insinuated him. He kept the gun out, kept pulling the hammer back, then releasing it down. Just kept doing that. And that scared me. I was worried about Kerry.

I just went ballistic. I wanted to know what happened. And Mick is telling me, You need to just be quiet. If you know it's good for you, you'll stop. And I was literally just I was out of control trying to find out what had happened. Tim was upstairs. I went up, and I was yelling and screaming like, How did someone end up dead tonight? And what happened? And we have to call the police. And Mick said, Again, If you know what's good for you, you will stop. And later, Mick told me that the reason he said that was because Tim was standing on the other side of the wall with a gun pointed through the wall at me where I was standing. So I went and got my gun because I was scared and I was trying to get the truth. And I made them both go downstairs and sit on the love seat. And I sat on the couch, and I had put her shorts in a plastic bag, and I had them on one side of me, the phone was on my lap, and I held them both at gunpoint, trying to get the truth.

Once, Carrie had Mick and Tim at gunpoint, Tim stayed silent while Mick explained that they picked up a sex worker named Cindy.

The first story that Mick told me was that him and Cindy were in the back seat of the car, and they were going to rob her or something, and that the gun accidentally went off. And Cindy was shot. And then they took her to the park, and she was shot two more times. When I was told that story, I immediately said I knew that wasn't true because there was no blood in my vehicle.

This account of the murder was at odds with what Carrie observed when Mick and Tim came home. Yes, there was a bullet hole in the car door, but the lack of blood inside the vehicle meant that Cindy couldn't have been in the car when she was shot.

And Mick just kept saying, Carrie, if you know what's good for you, you'll stop. Don't call the police if you know what's good for you. So I started thinking that Mick was threatening me, but I didn't know that Tim still had the 357 Magnum in the back of his pants at the time. But later, Mick told me that he was actually trying to protect me from Tim. So I ended up not calling the police that night because I was terrified.

While all this was going down, the kids were fast asleep in their bedroom upstairs. After promising to not call the police, Mick and Carrie moved the kids into their bedroom away from Tim.

We decided that we would sleep in shifts so that one of us could guard the door with a shotgun all night long. I always felt safe with Mick. I didn't feel safe anymore. Because I could see and feel his fear. I don't know how to describe. You know Mick. I felt safe with him in that neighborhood. I felt safe with him because I knew that if something went down, he would do what he could to protect me, you and your sister.

So here's the thing. Carrie is my mother. I was six years old the night this happened. The Mick I remember isn't someone capable of murder.

I was floored by you all. Just so I know you're so innocent, smart. Your sister is so damn cute. She's just like a little bitty thing. And your mom, I don't know, she's a special person, man. She is. She's an awesome woman. And we had little disagreements, a lot of little fights like everybody else. But for the most part, I really love her. She's a good girl, man. I fell in love with you guys. I thought you all like my In fact, I tell her about it. It's my boy, it's my girl. So it was the real deal? Yeah, I was head over heels. Yeah, I was committed.

Mick was great with you and your sister. I mean, we didn't always get along. We had our little arguments. You know that you were there. But for the most part, I was happy when it was me, you, your sister, and Mick. We didn't have much. I mean, there were times when I couldn't even buy you guys French fries for McDonald's, but I kept a roof over our heads. And I tried to do what I could for you guys, but I was happy, and he was happy. So I don't understand why he would throw that away to protect him. My biggest concern was protecting you and your sister, no matter what, the two most innocent people in the house. I can just remember sitting on the waterbed with you and your sister, just looking out that big window, trying to figure out what the hell to do.

What did you do?

At that point, nothing. Sat there in that bedroom with you and your sister until I could get you out of the house.

And then when did that happen?

Early the next morning. Took you two doors down to Chris's house.

Chris is my aunt who lived on the same street. This stands out in my mind because it was unusual that nick was carrying me over there that early in the morning before the sun was even up. And now, reflecting on that moment, almost 30 years later, it's the last memory I have of Mick being in our lives.

There was never a question in my mind that Mick had anything to do with any of it other than being the person who was driving my car that night. It never even entered my mind that it was a possibility that Mick could have done that. I saw them when they came home. Tim had blood splatter on his white Tim had blood splatter on his shoes. There was no blood splatter on Mick. Tim wouldn't look me in the eye. Mick talked to me. He may not have told me the truth about exactly how everything went down, but he could look me in the eye. Had he done something like that, there's no way he could have looked me in the eye.

This is what my mom told me when I was a kid. She was always adamant that Mick was not responsible for the murder. But as I got older, I questioned that version of the story. Maybe she portrayed the situation that way to protect me and my sister rather than tell us that a man we loved was capable of murdering an innocent woman. When I started asking questions, she told me about a box she left in my grandparents' basement where she kept everything from that period of our lives, not just photo albums and keepsakes. She kept hundreds of documents about the murder. The box led me on a 10-year investigation to find the truth about what happened that night. Instead, I learned that Cindy's murder is only one part of the story, and that the Lords of Death could be responsible for several unsolved murders dating back to the 1980s.

I noticed that everything they had a Lords of Death symbol that says together group, like a cult.

People like that, you know, are capable of doing anything, and that's where the fear comes in.

My courier seemed a lot more driven by fear.

I notice he has this huge knife stuck down the back of his pants. I'm like, I'm not going in the house. This isn't going to happen. How do we know he's not a serial killer? How do we know he's not murdered other people?

Tim was laughing as he was torturing this lady.

Nobody wanted something like that unsolved in the area they live.

That's coming up this season of Lords of Death. Episode 2 is available now. If you want an exclusive ad-free bench, sign up for Tenderfoot Plus. Check out the show notes for the link to subscribe.

Lords of Death is a production of Tenderfoot TV in Association with Odyssey.

Your host is Thrasher Banks. The show is written, produced, and edited by Thrasher Banks with additional writing by Meredith Studman and Dennis Cooper. Produced by Meredith Studman and Dennis Cooper. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Consulting producer and video production by George Miller. Supervising producer is Tracey Kaplan. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional music by Thrasher Banks. Mixed by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media & Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to Tori Ross, Kaitlyn Kibosky, and Thrasher's mom, Kari. For more podcasts like Lords of Death, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit us at tenderfoot. Tv. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Lord of Death. This series is released weekly, absolutely free. But if you want an exclusive ad-free binge, sign up for Tenderfoot Plus. Check out the show notes for the link to subscribe.