March 1, 2022 • 28 mins
Joining us is true crime expert Leah Lamar. Leah is a writer, actress, producer, director, standup comedian, and clubhouse app influencer. She also hosts the iHeart media podcast real time crime with Teddy Mellencamp. In conversation with Leah, are true crime producers, Jeff Shane & Cris Graves.
At 27, Avis Banks was well on her way to having everything she dreamed of in her life. She loved her job working at a day care center, loved her fiancé, 31 year-old Keyon Pitman and she was excited for the baby they had on the way. Avis & Keyon were both smart, good looking and educators, their future seemed bright. Sadly, for Avis, Keyon had many secrets and one of those secrets would rear up and change Avis’ life forever.
To connect with Leah, check out her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahlamarr/?hl=en
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests are crime producers Jeff Shane and Chris Graves,
joined by true crime expert Lea Lamar. Leah is a writer, actress, producer, director,
stand up comedian, and clubhouse app influencer. She also hosts
the I Heart Media podcast Real Time Crime with Teddy Mellencamp,
available now. You can find her on Instagram at Lea Lamar.
(00:48):
Episode sixteen, The Case of the Love Triangle, The Ladies Man,
and the Deadly Loan. In the mid two thousands in
Mississippi lived Avis Banks and Carla Hughes, with so many
similarities in any other circumstance that two women could have
been friends. Avis Banks was the middle of three sisters.
(01:12):
Despite coming from humble beginnings, Avis had dreams of being
a teacher and owning her own daycare. She was the
first in her family to go to College, where she
graduated kum laude. People who knew Avis described her as
smart and beautiful. Like Avis, Carlo was an incredibly driven
and gifted student. She was on the Honorable Student Council,
(01:34):
the cheerleading squad. She played in the school band, and
participated in beauty pageants where she won multiple crowns. Friends
described her as happy and bubbly and eternal cheerleader. She
too had aspirations of becoming a teacher. So how did
these two women with such bright futures and so much
in common end up intersecting and tragedy? Enter Kian Pittman.
(01:58):
Kian was Avis's fiance and Carla's closest friend. Here's Chris
in two thousand and six, Avis and Kian. You know,
they're dating and they find out that they're pregnant. Because
Avis came from strict parents, she was nervous to tell
them that she was having a baby out of wedlock.
So the couple got engaged. They were planning to get
(02:21):
married in January two thou seven, right before the baby
was due in February. As is seven years old, so
you know, she's still in her twenties. Keian moved them
from their small apartment to a house in the suburbs
because of gout, the expecting family, Yeah, and Chris. While
all that was happening, in the spring of two thousand
and six, when she was twenty five, Carla took a
job at Chestate Middle School as a language artist teacher,
(02:43):
and this was really her dream job. It was a
good town, a good position, and she was really excited
about the job so much though, that she scrambled to
make the move, wing to an apartment in a bad
part of town, which she told her family was just
temporary until she could get a better place, which really
just speaks to how excited she was to make this move.
When school started, she did really well, which is a
(03:03):
surprise to know when she was everyone's favorite teacher. Even
students who weren't hers loved her the most. And Leah,
do you know how Carla and Kian ended up intersecting
Because Carla was new in town and she didn't know
anyone naturally, she started to form friendships at school, where
she met cam So at thirty one. Can was a
math and science teacher. He was also a basketball coach
(03:25):
at school, and he was super popular amongst the teachers
as well they spent a lot of time together at school,
and she would also sometimes visit him at a Text
Mex restaurant where he tended bar at night. So at
one point they became so close that Carla brought Can
home to meet her parents. But by all accounts, it
(03:47):
was honestly, very strictly platonic, and Carla told people that
Kalen's fiance Avis, knew all about her and absolutely supported
their friendship. So this is kind of an interesting start.
There are a lot of similarities between Carla and Avis,
Kian's fiancee. Yeah, definitely seems like maybe Kian has a type.
(04:09):
You know, he likes a driven woman who also works
in education. It seems to me that, like the idea
that they were platonic is hard to believe. What do
you guys think he has a type? Clearly? I think
that if you're spending that much time with someone and
you're introducing them to your parents, you're obsessed with them,
you're in love, but you're hoping this is the one.
That's just my opin right. I've never introduced someone who's
(04:31):
not someone I'm romantically interested into my family certainly, and
I wouldn't drive them home to meet my parents. If
I'm introducing my family, I'm in love with you. That
being said, Carla was new in town and was maybe
desperate to make any sort of connection, whether it be
male or female, and she just so happened to become
friends with Kian, and because she didn't know anyone else,
(04:52):
she really put a lot of weight into that friendship
or relationship. I think feelings naturally grow if you were
the opposite sex and you're spending a lot of time together.
And if it's not feelings that you've had the thought,
you had the thought of should I date this person,
should I kiss this person? Should I marry this person
and spend the rest of my life making them miserable?
You know, at least I've had those thoughts. It would
(05:14):
be hard not to. Yeah. On November twenty and six,
Davis went to her job at the daycare. It was
an especially busy day with more kids than usual, so
she had to work two hours late. At five pm,
she was exhausted. She called Kian on her way home
and told him she didn't feel like dealing with dinner,
(05:35):
so he said he would handle it. After teaching at school,
Kian went to the grocery store and picked up supplies
for dinner. He had to go back to school for
basketball practice that evening, so he brought the food to
Carlos to store it in the fridge. She lived much
closer to school than Keion did, so it made sense
to leave it there as opposed to letting it spoil
(05:56):
in his car. After practice, Kion went back to Carla's
and they chatted for about forty five minutes. Then he
headed home at PM. When he pulled into the driveway,
he opened the garage and as he walked into the house,
he made an alarming discovery. Laying by the door, covered
(06:17):
in blood, was his fiancee Avis. Panicked, he tried to
shake her awake, even kissing her on the mouth, but
it was all for not. She appeared lifeless. Kian ran
to his neighbor's house for help. The neighbor called nine.
When police arrived, they saw the house had been ransacked.
Police also confirmed what Kian had feared. Avis and her
(06:41):
unborn child were dead. Someone had shot, stabbed and slashed
her throat. Here's Chris, that's pretty brutal scene they're describing. There.
One thing that investigators do I know from covering a
lot of these cases is especially when a place looks ransacked,
they look for clues of weather still was actually gone,
where their valuables are gone, because that's the true marker
(07:03):
of a robbery. And one thing that caught their attention
was that it looked ransacked, but nothing of value was
really gone. The burglars, if they had been ones, left
a DVD player, TV, the stereo, you know, So that's
always a clue to them that something else might be
going on. So they start kind of looking at the
scene and it looks like a crime of passion. Those
(07:24):
are usually ones that you know, where it's the person
has been killed in a very violent manner. Based on
the evidence at the scene, the police thought that the
weapon that was used might have been a five shot revolver,
and then the police were able to find one piece
of evidence, which was a shoe print on a kicked
in door. As the fiance and the person to find
(07:44):
the body, he was immediately brought in for questioning, and
then during the questioning he actually didn't seem that upset
the way that you would expect someone who just lost
their fiance and baby to be to be. He seemed
apparently emotionless, and he was even angry that he was
(08:06):
being suspected by the police despite no one even accusing him.
He was super defensive and he denied having any involvement
in the murder whatsoever. And that wasn't the only thing
that made detectives look at Kian. As it turns out,
the same neighbor who called nm on one told detectives
that Kian always came home and walked to the front
(08:26):
door and he never used the garage, but on the
night of the murder, he did go through the garage,
which led police to believe that maybe he might have
known there was a body there and he had to
go find it in that way. Another thing that struck
police as weird was that when he found Davis, instead
of calling m one on his cell phone, he called Carla.
(08:47):
He told police this was because he was scared and
panicked and asked her to come over to help him.
And even if that were true, why not then called
nm on one After making this called Carla, the police asked,
He told them that he was worried the call to
get rerouted, which would slow down police response, so instead
he ran to a neighbor's banged on the door and
had them call then one one. If you believe what
Kiana is saying, he just found his fiance murdered in
(09:09):
the garage, so he might be in shock. But I
don't think if I were in shock that my first
response would be to think about cell phone calls getting
rerouted to various towers and think that would slow down police.
I think my first reaction would just be to like
call no one immediately. I don't know what do you
guys think? Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think
if I find a dead body, I'm not calling a friend.
(09:34):
I'm pretty sure my friends can't help me. If there's
a dead body that the people I should be calling
are the hospital, the police, anyone who can come and
take care of an obvious crime scene. And I think
the thing that's so interesting is that the staged crime scene,
the faked break in. You know, I know you guys
(09:58):
are also true crime experts, So there are so many
cases where there they find the body and there is
some sort of stage break in, which is just like, yeah,
the calls coming from inside the house, we know what's
going on. This is an inside job. This isn't a
random person coming in to steal something, and then it
going sideways and they're like, you know what, I'm actually
(10:20):
just going to commit murder and not take anything. You know,
that doesn't even add up. So I don't know why
they would even bother with faking the burglary, because it
doesn't unless they steal something. There was one thing that
struck me odd about the story itself. He said that
it was easier to put groceries in her apartment. I
(10:41):
don't know what schools you guys have been in, but
almost every teacher's lounge, and I'm assuming wherever he coached
basketball from there's generally refrigerators there, Like, wouldn't it make
more sense to put it in the refrigerator at school?
I mean, I don't know, I don't know if the
school has it or not, but that to me, I
was like, when I read that out, Mike, why are
(11:01):
you putting it into friends house unless you went there
to have part of your illicit affair. Well, the other
thing is that he apparently never went through the garage store.
He would always be through the front door, so it's
almost as if he knew he was going to find
the body. He just went straight forward. And I think
that that makes him even guiltier in some respect. Is
(11:25):
it always the boyfriend? Is it always the significant other,
you know, in the in the case of Scott Peterson
and Lacy Peterson, yes, in the case of Gabby Patito
Brian Laundry, yes, is it always the case? No, However,
they are the first person suspected, right, And if we
look at it with that lens, I mean, he finds
(11:47):
her and he claims he's not sure what happened, so
much so that he kisses her. He tries to wake
her up, so he thinks she might still be alive.
He wastes valuable time then calling Carla and not using
his cellphone to call them on one himself instead of
running over the neighbor. So at this point he thinks
she might still be alive, and his first reaction is
to call Carla. But also, I mean the fact that
he's kissing a body that is obviously in a pool
(12:10):
of blood. I mean, if there was stab wounds, if
it wasn't just gunshot, if there was more going on there,
you know, like if he had said CPR, that's one thing.
But yeah, you don't revive someone with a kiss. I
honestly think the kiss on the lips is more indicative
of guilts. It's almost like I'm so sorry, you know,
and it's like just the last time I'll get kissed
(12:31):
this person sort of thing. Well, I would he even
tell police that he did that, because it's not like
they were testing her lips for his d n A.
I don't even think they could do that. It's just
a weird detail to even include. Yeah, if he'd gotten
her blood on his lips or somewhere and he thought
they'd be testing he maybe he was telling him that
so they knew why. Right, But he as a teacher,
and generally, if it's a public school and whatever, I think,
(12:52):
especially a coach would probably have CPR training. Why because
students have accidents and if the nerve she's too far away,
you want the teacher to be able to do something
about it. Right, So his first instinct is a kiss
and not Cprso the next day police showed up at
Chastain Middle School to speak with Carla herself. At school,
(13:15):
she told detectives about her close friendship with Kian, but
adamantly denied anything romantic was going on. Wanting more information,
she was asked to come to the station, which she
agreed to. It was there that Carla's story changed. While
she still corroborated Keian's story about the groceries and denied
(13:35):
having anything to do with Davis's murder, Carla admitted that
things were in fact physical with Kian. Take a listen
to some of her interview, being a passionate towards each other.
But in the most maybe it's just a little kisses.
But as far as she's life is full of al
(13:56):
balone romantic lover and said, that's not what it was
in mind. It wasn't we're going to take a quick break.
We'll be back in just a moment. It seems to
(14:20):
me like Kean and Carl are really having an affair.
And it also seemed to be the worst kept secret.
At the middle school they worked at, they were using
the students as messengers, you know, like we used to
back in the day with notes and passing them. I mean,
that's pretty terrible to include their students in that. And
witnesses from school said that they've been seeing canoodling and
(14:40):
cuddling around campus. People from the bar he on work
that said they'd witnessed them full on making out. I
mean Jeff, I don't know what you make of that,
but it sounds to me like there was probably more
going on than even she told the police. Yeah. I mean,
first off, changing your story is an immediate issue, and
that always points to guilt. That she automatically was happy forthcoming.
It's a major red flag, I would say, for the investigation.
(15:04):
But as it turns out, Kian was actually fooling around
with a lot of different woman. He was known as
a ladies man who had multiple girlfriends, one of which
was a thirty year old woman named Brendan, who was
the mother of a student on the basketball team that
Kion coached. While all this should point to his guilt,
it actually ended up helping him because Brenda would serve
as an alibi for Kian. He was allegedly texting her
(15:24):
during the entire basketball practice the night of the murder.
It just appears that he got so lucky by being
a ladies man that he was able to have an
appropriate alibi for not being a murderer, right, I mean,
I think, well we've seen that though, where just because
he's a cheating, lying jerk doesn't necessarily make him a killer. No,
but there should be a separate jail for people like that.
(15:46):
I mean, it's crazy that they were so brazen about
it that it was like this worst kept secret at
a middle school. It's not even high school where these are,
you know, closer to young adults. I mean, these are
young kids who they were using and their affair, which
is really uncool. I also wonder if the kid whose
mom was having an affair with him knew that his
mom was having an affair with his coach. I mean,
(16:08):
that's pretty terrible too. Yeah, that's an awful way to
find out that's why you're benched on varsity. I also
watching that interview felt really sick to my stomach watching
Harla just take random cell phone calls during her interrogation
by the police, and she was so relaxed about it.
You know, she was like, yeah, I told him, like,
(16:29):
this isn't what this is like. We're not like, we're
not love basically, it's just, you know, it's not like that.
We kind of know that she's lying because while she's
telling police that they're not that serious, but we know
that she took him home to her family, so it
was at least serious enough that she wanted her parents
to meet this guy, yes, and that they had students
(16:50):
corroborating in their rooms, so inappropriate. Yeah. But once again,
at this point in the investigation, all of this just
points to that they're all kind of jars, not that
anyone is potentially a killer. Days after the murder, police
got a break in the case when a man came
to them with a gun that he thought may have
been involved with the murder. The man was Patrick Hughes,
(17:12):
Carlo's cousin. The gun was a five shot revolver, the
same type police suspected was used to killed Adas. Patrick
told police that three days prior to the murder, Carla
came to him in fear. She said she was afraid
of crime in her neighborhood and wanted a gun for
her own protection. Her cousin Patrick tried instead to give
her mace, but Carla insisted on a gun, so he
(17:36):
loaned her the revolver. He also gave Carla a hunting
knife just in case. Four days later, Carla returned the
gun to her cousin, but a few things were missing.
That hunting knife he loaned her was gone, and also
missing from the gun where it's five bullets? Patrick asked
Carlo what happened to the bullets, and Carla responded that
(17:58):
she had gone target today. Yeah, it was not lost
on police that Carla had previously told them that she
never carried or had access to a gun. Following this revelation,
Carlo was arrested and charged with two capital murder charges,
one for Avis and the other for her unborn child,
Here's Leah. Friends and family were shocked that sweet and
(18:22):
driven Carla could have done this. Yeah, they were chocked
that the so were the police, and the police were
talking enough that they served Carlo with a warrant for
her apartment. When they searched and followed through with that
search warrant found a pair of shoes that matched the
shoe print that they had found at Avis's house that
had kicked in the door. The police were hoping Carlo
would turn on Kian once they confronted her with this evidence,
(18:46):
because they thought he was the real killer, but she
never did. This is just one of those moments where
part of me is thinking what she manipulated into committing
the murder by him because he wanted to get out
of the potential marriage and fatherhood and didn't want to
have her baby and wanted to keep living this wild
(19:07):
multiple girlfriend lie for and he maybe he saw an
opportunity because Carlo was so in love with him, or
it just odd now having this information, knowing that she
was so cool, calm and collected in the interrogation office
and just taking cell phone calls, it just points to
so much guilt. The ease of which she was lying
(19:29):
is striking. She lied about the affair, she lied about
having access to a gun. I wouldn't know she was
lying had I not known she was lying, I think
Keian maybe maybe he manipulated her, or maybe he knew
that she wanted to be his only girlfriend. I don't know,
but I do think he knew more than than was
being said. Well, he was with her before and after
(19:52):
basketball practice, and so I think we can surmise that
she gave us was probably killed during the basketball practice
if Carlo was the one to pull the trigger, so
what his basketball partners an hour and a half, So
that gives her a pretty small window to go do that.
And then she saw him right after that, so you
would think he might notice that she was maybe upset
or nervous or something like. If he knows her that well,
(20:12):
that he's having an affair with her, he might notice
that she just killed someone, don't you think, because we
know that he went to the garage door instead of
the front door, Wally walks in. Is there a possibility
that exists that he was told the information by Carla
after and they made the plan, and he was like, Okay,
now that this is done, like, don't worry, no one
(20:33):
will figure it out. Maybe after they took her in
and and charged her with two capital murder charges, maybe
he even said don't worry, like I got your back
sort of thing or whatever it is, so that she
would take off the heat. You know. I don't know
if Carla and Kon corroborated on this or if she
(20:56):
acted alone, but I feel like he definitely knew. Yeah,
I think he knew. I don't know to what extent
his involvement actually is, but I think he knew somehow.
I mean, guilty is charged. They found the pair of
shoes in her house that matched to the footprint on
the door. I mean, the gun is missing five rounds
(21:18):
of fire and the knife is gone. Oh, she was
stabbed and shot. On October five and nine, the trial started,
and immediately prosecutors made it clear they would be seeking
the death penalty for Carla. It's important to note that
Kian was never charged with anything in connection to the murder.
(21:39):
Throughout the trial, the courtroom was described as incredibly tense,
with people either staunchly believing in Carla's guilt or her innocence.
The judge even had sheriff deputies sitting at the end
of each courtroom road to control emotional outbursts from both
Avis and Carla's families. Despite having once been close friends lovers,
(22:00):
Kian became a star witness for the prosecution, and perhaps
the most tense moment of the trial, Keian said his
affair with Carlo was just physical and meant nothing to
him all with Carlo watching. Take a listen to some
of Kian's testimony. Did you kill as planks? No? No?
(22:22):
Do you feel a responsibility for her days? Yes? Damn
my head. If I wouldn't have staying faithful to who
I watched, women h fine and thinking poorly, making bad choices,
(22:43):
what made a bad choice to sleep around and flare
with other women's sham levins would have never taken place
from oh Man, I don't know if I would be
able to just sit there and watch that as the
person who is probably an actual love of them, you know,
the prosecution between a Carlo as a jealous and scheming mistress.
(23:08):
He said that they were able to show her cell
phone records placing her within quaite five miles of Avis's
home the night of the murder between five thirty to six.
The cellphone records show that Fund was where he said
he had been that night, between the school, the grocery store,
of basketball practice, and Carlo's perfect On the other side,
the defense pointed the finger at Kian, calling him a
(23:29):
womanizer who didn't want to have the baby that APIs
was having. He had the motive they were saying the
prosecution was saying, and the opportunity to kill his fiancee.
The defense pointed out that his house was close enough
to the school he could have killed Avis before practice
and still made it back without raising any concern. He
(23:50):
also had been at Carlo's house. He had access to
that gun and those shoes because he'd been at Carlo's house.
He wore the same size as Carlo, which is a
woman's tin, and could have taken her shoes to Framer.
The defense also brought up that it was well known
that Kean had borrowed Carlo's shoes before in the past.
(24:12):
Let's stop here for another quick break. So there were
some things that neither the defense nor the prosecution could
really explain. One of them was that Carla never had
(24:34):
any gunpowder on her hands, but Kean did. So that
is weird and it definitely points the finger at Keion.
But the prosecution had an expert testified that the gun
from Carlo's cousin was the murder weapon. We seemingly know
for sure that the gun Carla got from her cousin
was used to kill a Vis. The question is who
was the one who fired it. I think the other
(24:55):
thing that's interesting is is it possible he loaded the guy?
Is it Paul Stable that he actually is? Yeah, I
mean it seems to me, you know, now, in our culture,
look at how you know, woman were kind of realizing
how women are treated. This idea that she's painted as
like kind of like the jealous, scheming mitch stress who
would do anything to get her man like that seems
(25:17):
to me a little unfair to paint her in that way. Obviously,
she was involved potentially in some way in this murder.
Could have been him, could have been he could have
been the one to ask her to get the weapons,
because it does frame her complete. And I think it's
so interesting that he had gunpowder on his hands she
never did, and that it's something no one could explain.
(25:41):
Why didn't they figure out how to explain it? Why
is that something that was just somehow overlooked. If you
look at Kian and he has a history of being
having several girlfriends, which to me says he knows how
to manipulate people. He also knows how to we've a
worry or a lie around where he's been, or who
(26:03):
he's been with, or who that other person is if
somebody runs into them, or how to keep things separate.
And he knows how to figure out an alibi because
cheaters need alibis for the people that are accusing them
of cheating. Right, not the cops. I'm talking about all
the other women they're they're messing around with. Right. It's
interesting because if you really like someone and they're going
(26:25):
away or bread coming you, or not going enough attention,
you might do whatever they say just so that they stay,
or that you like them, or you get desperate or
whatever it is, and maybe this is a point of desperation.
But on the other hand, it also seems clear that
this could have been a complete set up and it
was his way of getting out of all of the relationships. Actually,
(26:47):
both Avis and Carla seemed very bright young women, as
we learned, and you know, for Carla to get herself
into that situation and she's guilty of at least knowing
about it and helping, if not committing, it's just so tragic.
You know, no one deserves this kind of death. I
really can't decide in my mind what I think actually happened.
(27:12):
After just eight hours of deliberation, the jury found Carla
guilty on accounts. Instead of the death penalty, Carlo was
handed to life sentences. When the verdict was read, she collapsed,
crying hysterically. Following the trial, Keian left Mississippi and later married.
Carla has since been denied a new trial. Shameless plug.
(27:38):
If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review
to view our recent documentary Murdered Missing in Montana. You'll
find it streaming now on Peacock. Follow us on Instagram
at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy and Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Grieves and me Courtney Armstrong.
(27:58):
Editing and sound designed by Jeff ba. Crazy in Love
is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests are crime producers Jeff Shane and Chris Graves,
joined by true crime expert Lea Lamar. Leah is a writer, actress, producer, director,
stand up comedian, and clubhouse app influencer. She also hosts
the I Heart Media podcast Real Time Crime with Teddy Mellencamp,
available now. You can find her on Instagram at Lea Lamar.
(00:48):
Episode sixteen, The Case of the Love Triangle, The Ladies Man,
and the Deadly Loan. In the mid two thousands in
Mississippi lived Avis Banks and Carla Hughes, with so many
similarities in any other circumstance that two women could have
been friends. Avis Banks was the middle of three sisters.
(01:12):
Despite coming from humble beginnings, Avis had dreams of being
a teacher and owning her own daycare. She was the
first in her family to go to College, where she
graduated kum laude. People who knew Avis described her as
smart and beautiful. Like Avis, Carlo was an incredibly driven
and gifted student. She was on the Honorable Student Council,
(01:34):
the cheerleading squad. She played in the school band, and
participated in beauty pageants where she won multiple crowns. Friends
described her as happy and bubbly and eternal cheerleader. She
too had aspirations of becoming a teacher. So how did
these two women with such bright futures and so much
in common end up intersecting and tragedy? Enter Kian Pittman.
(01:58):
Kian was Avis's fiance and Carla's closest friend. Here's Chris
in two thousand and six, Avis and Kian. You know,
they're dating and they find out that they're pregnant. Because
Avis came from strict parents, she was nervous to tell
them that she was having a baby out of wedlock.
So the couple got engaged. They were planning to get
(02:21):
married in January two thou seven, right before the baby
was due in February. As is seven years old, so
you know, she's still in her twenties. Keian moved them
from their small apartment to a house in the suburbs
because of gout, the expecting family, Yeah, and Chris. While
all that was happening, in the spring of two thousand
and six, when she was twenty five, Carla took a
job at Chestate Middle School as a language artist teacher,
(02:43):
and this was really her dream job. It was a
good town, a good position, and she was really excited
about the job so much though, that she scrambled to
make the move, wing to an apartment in a bad
part of town, which she told her family was just
temporary until she could get a better place, which really
just speaks to how excited she was to make this move.
When school started, she did really well, which is a
(03:03):
surprise to know when she was everyone's favorite teacher. Even
students who weren't hers loved her the most. And Leah,
do you know how Carla and Kian ended up intersecting
Because Carla was new in town and she didn't know
anyone naturally, she started to form friendships at school, where
she met cam So at thirty one. Can was a
math and science teacher. He was also a basketball coach
(03:25):
at school, and he was super popular amongst the teachers
as well they spent a lot of time together at school,
and she would also sometimes visit him at a Text
Mex restaurant where he tended bar at night. So at
one point they became so close that Carla brought Can
home to meet her parents. But by all accounts, it
(03:47):
was honestly, very strictly platonic, and Carla told people that
Kalen's fiance Avis, knew all about her and absolutely supported
their friendship. So this is kind of an interesting start.
There are a lot of similarities between Carla and Avis,
Kian's fiancee. Yeah, definitely seems like maybe Kian has a type.
(04:09):
You know, he likes a driven woman who also works
in education. It seems to me that, like the idea
that they were platonic is hard to believe. What do
you guys think he has a type? Clearly? I think
that if you're spending that much time with someone and
you're introducing them to your parents, you're obsessed with them,
you're in love, but you're hoping this is the one.
That's just my opin right. I've never introduced someone who's
(04:31):
not someone I'm romantically interested into my family certainly, and
I wouldn't drive them home to meet my parents. If
I'm introducing my family, I'm in love with you. That
being said, Carla was new in town and was maybe
desperate to make any sort of connection, whether it be
male or female, and she just so happened to become
friends with Kian, and because she didn't know anyone else,
(04:52):
she really put a lot of weight into that friendship
or relationship. I think feelings naturally grow if you were
the opposite sex and you're spending a lot of time together.
And if it's not feelings that you've had the thought,
you had the thought of should I date this person,
should I kiss this person? Should I marry this person
and spend the rest of my life making them miserable?
You know, at least I've had those thoughts. It would
(05:14):
be hard not to. Yeah. On November twenty and six,
Davis went to her job at the daycare. It was
an especially busy day with more kids than usual, so
she had to work two hours late. At five pm,
she was exhausted. She called Kian on her way home
and told him she didn't feel like dealing with dinner,
(05:35):
so he said he would handle it. After teaching at school,
Kian went to the grocery store and picked up supplies
for dinner. He had to go back to school for
basketball practice that evening, so he brought the food to
Carlos to store it in the fridge. She lived much
closer to school than Keion did, so it made sense
to leave it there as opposed to letting it spoil
(05:56):
in his car. After practice, Kion went back to Carla's
and they chatted for about forty five minutes. Then he
headed home at PM. When he pulled into the driveway,
he opened the garage and as he walked into the house,
he made an alarming discovery. Laying by the door, covered
(06:17):
in blood, was his fiancee Avis. Panicked, he tried to
shake her awake, even kissing her on the mouth, but
it was all for not. She appeared lifeless. Kian ran
to his neighbor's house for help. The neighbor called nine.
When police arrived, they saw the house had been ransacked.
Police also confirmed what Kian had feared. Avis and her
(06:41):
unborn child were dead. Someone had shot, stabbed and slashed
her throat. Here's Chris, that's pretty brutal scene they're describing. There.
One thing that investigators do I know from covering a
lot of these cases is especially when a place looks ransacked,
they look for clues of weather still was actually gone,
where their valuables are gone, because that's the true marker
(07:03):
of a robbery. And one thing that caught their attention
was that it looked ransacked, but nothing of value was
really gone. The burglars, if they had been ones, left
a DVD player, TV, the stereo, you know, So that's
always a clue to them that something else might be
going on. So they start kind of looking at the
scene and it looks like a crime of passion. Those
(07:24):
are usually ones that you know, where it's the person
has been killed in a very violent manner. Based on
the evidence at the scene, the police thought that the
weapon that was used might have been a five shot revolver,
and then the police were able to find one piece
of evidence, which was a shoe print on a kicked
in door. As the fiance and the person to find
(07:44):
the body, he was immediately brought in for questioning, and
then during the questioning he actually didn't seem that upset
the way that you would expect someone who just lost
their fiance and baby to be to be. He seemed
apparently emotionless, and he was even angry that he was
(08:06):
being suspected by the police despite no one even accusing him.
He was super defensive and he denied having any involvement
in the murder whatsoever. And that wasn't the only thing
that made detectives look at Kian. As it turns out,
the same neighbor who called nm on one told detectives
that Kian always came home and walked to the front
(08:26):
door and he never used the garage, but on the
night of the murder, he did go through the garage,
which led police to believe that maybe he might have
known there was a body there and he had to
go find it in that way. Another thing that struck
police as weird was that when he found Davis, instead
of calling m one on his cell phone, he called Carla.
(08:47):
He told police this was because he was scared and
panicked and asked her to come over to help him.
And even if that were true, why not then called
nm on one After making this called Carla, the police asked,
He told them that he was worried the call to
get rerouted, which would slow down police response, so instead
he ran to a neighbor's banged on the door and
had them call then one one. If you believe what
Kiana is saying, he just found his fiance murdered in
(09:09):
the garage, so he might be in shock. But I
don't think if I were in shock that my first
response would be to think about cell phone calls getting
rerouted to various towers and think that would slow down police.
I think my first reaction would just be to like
call no one immediately. I don't know what do you
guys think? Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think
if I find a dead body, I'm not calling a friend.
(09:34):
I'm pretty sure my friends can't help me. If there's
a dead body that the people I should be calling
are the hospital, the police, anyone who can come and
take care of an obvious crime scene. And I think
the thing that's so interesting is that the staged crime scene,
the faked break in. You know, I know you guys
(09:58):
are also true crime experts, So there are so many
cases where there they find the body and there is
some sort of stage break in, which is just like, yeah,
the calls coming from inside the house, we know what's
going on. This is an inside job. This isn't a
random person coming in to steal something, and then it
going sideways and they're like, you know what, I'm actually
(10:20):
just going to commit murder and not take anything. You know,
that doesn't even add up. So I don't know why
they would even bother with faking the burglary, because it
doesn't unless they steal something. There was one thing that
struck me odd about the story itself. He said that
it was easier to put groceries in her apartment. I
(10:41):
don't know what schools you guys have been in, but
almost every teacher's lounge, and I'm assuming wherever he coached
basketball from there's generally refrigerators there, Like, wouldn't it make
more sense to put it in the refrigerator at school?
I mean, I don't know, I don't know if the
school has it or not, but that to me, I
was like, when I read that out, Mike, why are
(11:01):
you putting it into friends house unless you went there
to have part of your illicit affair. Well, the other
thing is that he apparently never went through the garage store.
He would always be through the front door, so it's
almost as if he knew he was going to find
the body. He just went straight forward. And I think
that that makes him even guiltier in some respect. Is
(11:25):
it always the boyfriend? Is it always the significant other,
you know, in the in the case of Scott Peterson
and Lacy Peterson, yes, in the case of Gabby Patito
Brian Laundry, yes, is it always the case? No, However,
they are the first person suspected, right, And if we
look at it with that lens, I mean, he finds
(11:47):
her and he claims he's not sure what happened, so
much so that he kisses her. He tries to wake
her up, so he thinks she might still be alive.
He wastes valuable time then calling Carla and not using
his cellphone to call them on one himself instead of
running over the neighbor. So at this point he thinks
she might still be alive, and his first reaction is
to call Carla. But also, I mean the fact that
he's kissing a body that is obviously in a pool
(12:10):
of blood. I mean, if there was stab wounds, if
it wasn't just gunshot, if there was more going on there,
you know, like if he had said CPR, that's one thing.
But yeah, you don't revive someone with a kiss. I
honestly think the kiss on the lips is more indicative
of guilts. It's almost like I'm so sorry, you know,
and it's like just the last time I'll get kissed
(12:31):
this person sort of thing. Well, I would he even
tell police that he did that, because it's not like
they were testing her lips for his d n A.
I don't even think they could do that. It's just
a weird detail to even include. Yeah, if he'd gotten
her blood on his lips or somewhere and he thought
they'd be testing he maybe he was telling him that
so they knew why. Right, But he as a teacher,
and generally, if it's a public school and whatever, I think,
(12:52):
especially a coach would probably have CPR training. Why because
students have accidents and if the nerve she's too far away,
you want the teacher to be able to do something
about it. Right, So his first instinct is a kiss
and not Cprso the next day police showed up at
Chastain Middle School to speak with Carla herself. At school,
(13:15):
she told detectives about her close friendship with Kian, but
adamantly denied anything romantic was going on. Wanting more information,
she was asked to come to the station, which she
agreed to. It was there that Carla's story changed. While
she still corroborated Keian's story about the groceries and denied
(13:35):
having anything to do with Davis's murder, Carla admitted that
things were in fact physical with Kian. Take a listen
to some of her interview, being a passionate towards each other.
But in the most maybe it's just a little kisses.
But as far as she's life is full of al
(13:56):
balone romantic lover and said, that's not what it was
in mind. It wasn't we're going to take a quick break.
We'll be back in just a moment. It seems to
(14:20):
me like Kean and Carl are really having an affair.
And it also seemed to be the worst kept secret.
At the middle school they worked at, they were using
the students as messengers, you know, like we used to
back in the day with notes and passing them. I mean,
that's pretty terrible to include their students in that. And
witnesses from school said that they've been seeing canoodling and
(14:40):
cuddling around campus. People from the bar he on work
that said they'd witnessed them full on making out. I
mean Jeff, I don't know what you make of that,
but it sounds to me like there was probably more
going on than even she told the police. Yeah. I mean,
first off, changing your story is an immediate issue, and
that always points to guilt. That she automatically was happy forthcoming.
It's a major red flag, I would say, for the investigation.
(15:04):
But as it turns out, Kian was actually fooling around
with a lot of different woman. He was known as
a ladies man who had multiple girlfriends, one of which
was a thirty year old woman named Brendan, who was
the mother of a student on the basketball team that
Kion coached. While all this should point to his guilt,
it actually ended up helping him because Brenda would serve
as an alibi for Kian. He was allegedly texting her
(15:24):
during the entire basketball practice the night of the murder.
It just appears that he got so lucky by being
a ladies man that he was able to have an
appropriate alibi for not being a murderer, right, I mean,
I think, well we've seen that though, where just because
he's a cheating, lying jerk doesn't necessarily make him a killer. No,
but there should be a separate jail for people like that.
(15:46):
I mean, it's crazy that they were so brazen about
it that it was like this worst kept secret at
a middle school. It's not even high school where these are,
you know, closer to young adults. I mean, these are
young kids who they were using and their affair, which
is really uncool. I also wonder if the kid whose
mom was having an affair with him knew that his
mom was having an affair with his coach. I mean,
(16:08):
that's pretty terrible too. Yeah, that's an awful way to
find out that's why you're benched on varsity. I also
watching that interview felt really sick to my stomach watching
Harla just take random cell phone calls during her interrogation
by the police, and she was so relaxed about it.
You know, she was like, yeah, I told him, like,
(16:29):
this isn't what this is like. We're not like, we're
not love basically, it's just, you know, it's not like that.
We kind of know that she's lying because while she's
telling police that they're not that serious, but we know
that she took him home to her family, so it
was at least serious enough that she wanted her parents
to meet this guy, yes, and that they had students
(16:50):
corroborating in their rooms, so inappropriate. Yeah. But once again,
at this point in the investigation, all of this just
points to that they're all kind of jars, not that
anyone is potentially a killer. Days after the murder, police
got a break in the case when a man came
to them with a gun that he thought may have
been involved with the murder. The man was Patrick Hughes,
(17:12):
Carlo's cousin. The gun was a five shot revolver, the
same type police suspected was used to killed Adas. Patrick
told police that three days prior to the murder, Carla
came to him in fear. She said she was afraid
of crime in her neighborhood and wanted a gun for
her own protection. Her cousin Patrick tried instead to give
her mace, but Carla insisted on a gun, so he
(17:36):
loaned her the revolver. He also gave Carla a hunting
knife just in case. Four days later, Carla returned the
gun to her cousin, but a few things were missing.
That hunting knife he loaned her was gone, and also
missing from the gun where it's five bullets? Patrick asked
Carlo what happened to the bullets, and Carla responded that
(17:58):
she had gone target today. Yeah, it was not lost
on police that Carla had previously told them that she
never carried or had access to a gun. Following this revelation,
Carlo was arrested and charged with two capital murder charges,
one for Avis and the other for her unborn child,
Here's Leah. Friends and family were shocked that sweet and
(18:22):
driven Carla could have done this. Yeah, they were chocked
that the so were the police, and the police were
talking enough that they served Carlo with a warrant for
her apartment. When they searched and followed through with that
search warrant found a pair of shoes that matched the
shoe print that they had found at Avis's house that
had kicked in the door. The police were hoping Carlo
would turn on Kian once they confronted her with this evidence,
(18:46):
because they thought he was the real killer, but she
never did. This is just one of those moments where
part of me is thinking what she manipulated into committing
the murder by him because he wanted to get out
of the potential marriage and fatherhood and didn't want to
have her baby and wanted to keep living this wild
(19:07):
multiple girlfriend lie for and he maybe he saw an
opportunity because Carlo was so in love with him, or
it just odd now having this information, knowing that she
was so cool, calm and collected in the interrogation office
and just taking cell phone calls, it just points to
so much guilt. The ease of which she was lying
(19:29):
is striking. She lied about the affair, she lied about
having access to a gun. I wouldn't know she was
lying had I not known she was lying, I think
Keian maybe maybe he manipulated her, or maybe he knew
that she wanted to be his only girlfriend. I don't know,
but I do think he knew more than than was
being said. Well, he was with her before and after
(19:52):
basketball practice, and so I think we can surmise that
she gave us was probably killed during the basketball practice
if Carlo was the one to pull the trigger, so
what his basketball partners an hour and a half, So
that gives her a pretty small window to go do that.
And then she saw him right after that, so you
would think he might notice that she was maybe upset
or nervous or something like. If he knows her that well,
(20:12):
that he's having an affair with her, he might notice
that she just killed someone, don't you think, because we
know that he went to the garage door instead of
the front door, Wally walks in. Is there a possibility
that exists that he was told the information by Carla
after and they made the plan, and he was like, Okay,
now that this is done, like, don't worry, no one
(20:33):
will figure it out. Maybe after they took her in
and and charged her with two capital murder charges, maybe
he even said don't worry, like I got your back
sort of thing or whatever it is, so that she
would take off the heat. You know. I don't know
if Carla and Kon corroborated on this or if she
(20:56):
acted alone, but I feel like he definitely knew. Yeah,
I think he knew. I don't know to what extent
his involvement actually is, but I think he knew somehow.
I mean, guilty is charged. They found the pair of
shoes in her house that matched to the footprint on
the door. I mean, the gun is missing five rounds
(21:18):
of fire and the knife is gone. Oh, she was
stabbed and shot. On October five and nine, the trial started,
and immediately prosecutors made it clear they would be seeking
the death penalty for Carla. It's important to note that
Kian was never charged with anything in connection to the murder.
(21:39):
Throughout the trial, the courtroom was described as incredibly tense,
with people either staunchly believing in Carla's guilt or her innocence.
The judge even had sheriff deputies sitting at the end
of each courtroom road to control emotional outbursts from both
Avis and Carla's families. Despite having once been close friends lovers,
(22:00):
Kian became a star witness for the prosecution, and perhaps
the most tense moment of the trial, Keian said his
affair with Carlo was just physical and meant nothing to
him all with Carlo watching. Take a listen to some
of Kian's testimony. Did you kill as planks? No? No?
(22:22):
Do you feel a responsibility for her days? Yes? Damn
my head. If I wouldn't have staying faithful to who
I watched, women h fine and thinking poorly, making bad choices,
(22:43):
what made a bad choice to sleep around and flare
with other women's sham levins would have never taken place
from oh Man, I don't know if I would be
able to just sit there and watch that as the
person who is probably an actual love of them, you know,
the prosecution between a Carlo as a jealous and scheming mistress.
(23:08):
He said that they were able to show her cell
phone records placing her within quaite five miles of Avis's
home the night of the murder between five thirty to six.
The cellphone records show that Fund was where he said
he had been that night, between the school, the grocery store,
of basketball practice, and Carlo's perfect On the other side,
the defense pointed the finger at Kian, calling him a
(23:29):
womanizer who didn't want to have the baby that APIs
was having. He had the motive they were saying the
prosecution was saying, and the opportunity to kill his fiancee.
The defense pointed out that his house was close enough
to the school he could have killed Avis before practice
and still made it back without raising any concern. He
(23:50):
also had been at Carlo's house. He had access to
that gun and those shoes because he'd been at Carlo's house.
He wore the same size as Carlo, which is a
woman's tin, and could have taken her shoes to Framer.
The defense also brought up that it was well known
that Kean had borrowed Carlo's shoes before in the past.
(24:12):
Let's stop here for another quick break. So there were
some things that neither the defense nor the prosecution could
really explain. One of them was that Carla never had
(24:34):
any gunpowder on her hands, but Kean did. So that
is weird and it definitely points the finger at Keion.
But the prosecution had an expert testified that the gun
from Carlo's cousin was the murder weapon. We seemingly know
for sure that the gun Carla got from her cousin
was used to kill a Vis. The question is who
was the one who fired it. I think the other
(24:55):
thing that's interesting is is it possible he loaded the guy?
Is it Paul Stable that he actually is? Yeah, I
mean it seems to me, you know, now, in our culture,
look at how you know, woman were kind of realizing
how women are treated. This idea that she's painted as
like kind of like the jealous, scheming mitch stress who
would do anything to get her man like that seems
(25:17):
to me a little unfair to paint her in that way. Obviously,
she was involved potentially in some way in this murder.
Could have been him, could have been he could have
been the one to ask her to get the weapons,
because it does frame her complete. And I think it's
so interesting that he had gunpowder on his hands she
never did, and that it's something no one could explain.
(25:41):
Why didn't they figure out how to explain it? Why
is that something that was just somehow overlooked. If you
look at Kian and he has a history of being
having several girlfriends, which to me says he knows how
to manipulate people. He also knows how to we've a
worry or a lie around where he's been, or who
(26:03):
he's been with, or who that other person is if
somebody runs into them, or how to keep things separate.
And he knows how to figure out an alibi because
cheaters need alibis for the people that are accusing them
of cheating. Right, not the cops. I'm talking about all
the other women they're they're messing around with. Right. It's
interesting because if you really like someone and they're going
(26:25):
away or bread coming you, or not going enough attention,
you might do whatever they say just so that they stay,
or that you like them, or you get desperate or
whatever it is, and maybe this is a point of desperation.
But on the other hand, it also seems clear that
this could have been a complete set up and it
was his way of getting out of all of the relationships. Actually,
(26:47):
both Avis and Carla seemed very bright young women, as
we learned, and you know, for Carla to get herself
into that situation and she's guilty of at least knowing
about it and helping, if not committing, it's just so tragic.
You know, no one deserves this kind of death. I
really can't decide in my mind what I think actually happened.
(27:12):
After just eight hours of deliberation, the jury found Carla
guilty on accounts. Instead of the death penalty, Carlo was
handed to life sentences. When the verdict was read, she collapsed,
crying hysterically. Following the trial, Keian left Mississippi and later married.
Carla has since been denied a new trial. Shameless plug.
(27:38):
If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review
to view our recent documentary Murdered Missing in Montana. You'll
find it streaming now on Peacock. Follow us on Instagram
at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy and Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Grieves and me Courtney Armstrong.
(27:58):
Editing and sound designed by Jeff ba. Crazy in Love
is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
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