Speaker 1: In Alaska. The big concern is theirs. I always say
Speaker 1: the biggest danger in Alaska is the human animals.
Speaker 2: Less than a week after moving to Anchorage, Bethany Carrera vanished.
Speaker 1: She wasn't aware of what a violent place Anchorage could be.
Speaker 2: And locating Bethany's killer would be just as difficult as
Speaker 2: finding her body.
Speaker 1: We knew where the body was, and this is Alaska,
Speaker 1: and there was three feet of snow on the ground,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't recover a body until some of the
Speaker 1: snow melted.
Speaker 2: Bringing justice would cost another life.
Speaker 1: It was a tragedy for everybody involved.
Speaker 2: Today we're an Anchorage, Alaska for part one of the
Speaker 2: search for Bethany Carrera. I'm Slow Glass and this is
Speaker 2: American Homicide. Just to note that this episode contained some
Speaker 2: graphic content, Please take care while listening. With more than
Speaker 2: six hundred square miles of Arctic coast, untamed wilderness, and
Speaker 2: majestic mountains, Alaska is our nation's largest state, but even
Speaker 2: with all that land, just over half a million people
Speaker 2: live there.
Speaker 1: Half the population of the state is an Anchorage.
Speaker 2: Ron McGee was the public affairs manager for the Anchorage
Speaker 2: Police Department.
Speaker 1: The last I checked, we were like the sixty fourth
Speaker 1: largest city in the nation.
Speaker 2: Historically, people have flocked to Alaska in search of riches.
Speaker 1: The state has always been about oil.
Speaker 2: Along with liquid gold. Alaska was home to the gold
Speaker 2: rush of the late eighteen hundreds that fostered the first
Speaker 2: generation of people who came to the state in search
Speaker 2: of riches. But then there's the other group of people.
Speaker 1: In the thirty two years that I have been here,
Speaker 1: I encountered a lot of people who came to Alaska
Speaker 1: to try and get away from.
Speaker 2: Something, whether it's the law, money issues, or something completely innocent.
Speaker 2: Alaska is a place where a lot of people go
Speaker 2: to escape their past.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of the problems that people in
Speaker 1: the lower forty eight have, but Anchorage has always been
Speaker 1: what I would consider a very violent place. Our rate
Speaker 1: of violence is much higher than the rest of the nation.
Speaker 1: We've led the nation, for example, in rapes since I
Speaker 1: can remember.
Speaker 2: Alaska's violent crime rate is more than double the national average,
Speaker 2: and most of those crimes happen in Anchorage, which is
Speaker 2: scary for the college students who move there.
Speaker 1: The University of Alaska's campus in Anchorage is the largest
Speaker 1: in the university system. They offer the most majors, and
Speaker 1: we try to talk to the students and try and
Speaker 1: make them aware that, especially the students who come from
Speaker 1: rural Alaska, that this can be a very violent place.
Speaker 2: One of those students who came to the University of
Speaker 2: Alaska and Anchorage or UAA was Bethany Carrera.
Speaker 1: Bethany comes from this little small community in Talketina.
Speaker 2: It's about one hundred miles north of Anchorage, a town
Speaker 2: so small that a cat won the race for mayor.
Speaker 2: As a writing candidate. Can you imagine losing to a cat? So,
Speaker 2: Bethany came from a small town, very small. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and three, the population was eight hundred and ten people.
Speaker 2: Bethany was a go getter who loved camping, snowboarding, and sailing.
Speaker 2: Adventure was in her blood. In fact, after graduating high school,
Speaker 2: Bethany embarked on a year long sailing trip through the
Speaker 2: South Pacific. Then she served as a Christian missionary to
Speaker 2: Thailand and Nepal. But then the twenty one year old
Speaker 2: decided it was time to go back to school.
Speaker 1: Bethany came from Talkeita in two thousand and three to
Speaker 1: attend UAA. She was pre mad. She's a good student,
Speaker 1: she's a good daughter. Her parents had wonderful things to
Speaker 1: say about her.
Speaker 2: He found a small apartment a couple miles from campus
Speaker 2: in Bootlegger's Cove. It's a scenic area of anchorage along
Speaker 2: the coastline that got its name in the days of Prohibition.
Speaker 2: That's when barrels of moonshine used to roll off nearby boats.
Speaker 2: In the early two thousands, the area was popular with
Speaker 2: college students.
Speaker 1: Bootlegger's Cove at that time was considered sort of a
Speaker 1: trendy place, a place that was a little more expensive
Speaker 1: than the rest of the town. Because it was close
Speaker 1: to the water.
Speaker 2: Bethany's one bedroom apartment conveniently sat near several trails for hiking, biking,
Speaker 2: and running, all of which Bethany loved to do.
Speaker 1: If you like the outdoors, this is the place to be.
Speaker 2: At the time, many of the older homes and Bootlegger's
Speaker 2: Cove were being torn down to make way for bigger
Speaker 2: and fancier places. In fact, Bethany's modest four unit apartment
Speaker 2: building was scheduled to be torn down later that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always there's a lot of development going on
Speaker 1: around here. You know, it's a place that is recreating
Speaker 1: itself constantly.
Speaker 2: But it worked out for Bethany. She was able to
Speaker 2: sign a three month lease that coincided with her summer
Speaker 2: school schedule, and that final week of April two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, Bethany's boyfriend Joe helped her move into her
Speaker 2: new apartment. But by that Saturday, Bethany went a wall.
Speaker 1: Bethany was supposed to pick up her brother from the
Speaker 1: airport and she didn't do it.
Speaker 2: That was out of character for the reliable and responsible Bethany.
Speaker 2: As you can imagine, her family was concerned.
Speaker 1: And her mother immediately drove about one hundred miles from
Speaker 1: tel Ketna to come to Anchorage and check on her.
Speaker 1: And when she checked on her, she couldn't find her.
Speaker 1: She wasn't at home. She found that Bethany had left
Speaker 1: her cell phone in her wallet in the apartment, and
Speaker 1: that immediately made her suspicious. You know, no young lady
Speaker 1: goes anywhere without her cell phone in her a while.
Speaker 2: Her mom also found Bethany's car, passport, and even her
Speaker 2: favorite backpack at her apartment. But what really added to
Speaker 2: her mother's anxiety was what she saw outside.
Speaker 1: The apartment next door burns. There had been a fire
Speaker 1: in the apartment, and that immediately made her suspicious.
Speaker 2: The upstairs unit of the vacant duplex next door to
Speaker 2: Bethany's apartment was under construction and had caught fire earlier
Speaker 2: that morning. The unsettling smell of smoke still lingered in.
Speaker 1: The air, so immediately she caught her husband and her
Speaker 1: husband drove to Anchorage, and then her mother called the police.
Speaker 2: Bethany's mom told detectives that she last talked with her
Speaker 2: daughter late Friday night. It was now Sunday afternoon. She
Speaker 2: explained that her daughter's boyfriend, Joe, had been in town
Speaker 2: to help Bethany move, but there were no signs of
Speaker 2: Joe or any of his belongings at Bethany's apartment. Her
Speaker 2: mom admitted that she did I didn't know much about Joe.
Speaker 2: She then asked the detectives if they knew anything about
Speaker 2: the apartment next door to Bethany's, the one that had
Speaker 2: recently caught fire.
Speaker 1: Originally, they thought that the fire was from electrical natural causes,
Speaker 1: but this additional investigator determined that the fire had been
Speaker 1: set intentionally. That made us even more suspicious when we
Speaker 1: found that out.
Speaker 2: All right, So we have a missing twenty one year
Speaker 2: old woman who lived next door to a building that
Speaker 2: was intentionally set on fire. Immediately the Anchorage PD got involved.
Speaker 3: My name is Walt Monnigan. That was the chief of
Speaker 3: police and the Anchorage Police Department at that time when
Speaker 3: we did get a report that she was missing. Normally
Speaker 3: we don't take those kind of reports. Most police departments
Speaker 3: don't for a couple of days because nine out of
Speaker 3: ten they showed back up. But because of the urgency
Speaker 3: in this one, we did.
Speaker 1: Look at it.
Speaker 2: The urgency stemmed from the fact that Bethany hadn't even
Speaker 2: lived in Anchorage for a week.
Speaker 3: Coming from a smaller town where you pretty much know
Speaker 3: everybody and going into a larger place, you're not going
Speaker 3: to be as cognizant or aware of some of the
Speaker 3: dangers that are around you. If there's a person that
Speaker 3: you should stay away from. In tel Keita, everybody knows
Speaker 3: about it. In Anchorage not so so. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of folks when they first come to Anchorage or
Speaker 3: Fairbanks or some of the larger places, they're a little
Speaker 3: more trusting than most people who live in the cities.
Speaker 2: As the police began their investigation. Nearly one hundred volunteers
Speaker 2: from Bethany's hometown arrived in Anchorage to search for her.
Speaker 3: The family started putting out flyers. They basically papered downtown.
Speaker 3: You could hardly go buy a restaurant or a power
Speaker 3: pool that didn't have Bethany's picture on it. The first
Speaker 3: time I saw one of those, I just thought she
Speaker 3: had such an innocent smile, just a happy, genuine, likable person,
Speaker 3: and I had hopes that, you know, she'd be okay,
Speaker 3: like everybody else did.
Speaker 2: It had been less than a week since Bethany moved
Speaker 2: into her apartment, which had no sign of forced entry.
Speaker 2: If anything, it looked like Bethany had simply left to
Speaker 2: go run an errand but never returned. And she was
Speaker 2: twenty one and knew in town. Did she go to
Speaker 2: the bar to not come home? Well, her mother said,
Speaker 2: Bethany wasn't much of a drinker or partier.
Speaker 3: We found her person, her keys, and her phone. Everything
Speaker 3: was there. That kind of added to the evidence aspect
Speaker 3: that she didn't just scramble and take off someplace.
Speaker 2: A look through Bethany's cell phone gave detectives their first clue.
Speaker 3: I believe her boyfriend had just been talking to her.
Speaker 2: Bethany's phone showed that one of the last phone calls
Speaker 2: came from her boyfriend, Joe, so the police got in
Speaker 2: touch with Joe, who confirmed that yes, he did talk
Speaker 2: with Bethany that Saturday morning, and that began a long
Speaker 2: conversation between Joe and the detectives. Because they learned Joe
Speaker 2: was married.
Speaker 3: Everyone's a suspect, initially everyone.
Speaker 2: Bethany Carrero was a twenty one year old student who
Speaker 2: was starting life on her own. On Monday, she moved
Speaker 2: into her new apartment in Anchorage. By Saturday, she was
Speaker 2: nowhere to be found. Ron McGee worked for the Anchorage PD.
Speaker 1: This young lady was completely harmless. She was a kind
Speaker 1: of young lady that everyone would like to have as
Speaker 1: a daughter. She comes from this little small community in Talketna.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people who were raised in rural Alaska,
Speaker 1: Anchorage can be a little bit of a rude awakening.
Speaker 1: I always say the biggest danger in Alaska is the
Speaker 1: human animals.
Speaker 2: And of course that was the fear that someone had
Speaker 2: done something to Bethany. The normally reliable Bethany was supposed
Speaker 2: to pick up her brother from the airport that weekend,
Speaker 2: but she never showed up. It left her family wondering
Speaker 2: where's Bethany.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to disappear. I think everybody was on edge.
Speaker 1: The Talkatina community really responded to it, and the people
Speaker 1: here at Anchorage got involved in it too, particularly the
Speaker 1: students out of the university. We had a lot of
Speaker 1: students in the university that were distributing flyers and posting
Speaker 1: them all over the campus.
Speaker 2: Flyers with Bethany's smiling face next to the ominous word
Speaker 2: missing went up all over town. It was a scary
Speaker 2: time for Bethany's parents, who struggled to stay positive.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times families blamed themselves, and
Speaker 1: in this situation, the family was doing it. They raised
Speaker 1: a wonderful daughter, they were sending her off to college
Speaker 1: like so many other families do. They were trying to
Speaker 1: do what was right for their daughter, and she ends
Speaker 1: up missing.
Speaker 2: It was early May and Bethany was about to begin
Speaker 2: summer school. That's also when tourism season was about to begin,
Speaker 2: which meant the snow was melting and the ground was thawing.
Speaker 2: That turned Anchorage into a muddy mess for Bethany's search party, and.
Speaker 1: They were going all around the town, putting up posters
Speaker 1: and looking in places trying to find her, and it's
Speaker 1: very hard work.
Speaker 2: Detectives began tracing Bethany's last known whereabouts and got some
Speaker 2: help from her cell phone, which was found inside her apartment.
Speaker 2: It was two thousand and three, but even then, no
Speaker 2: twenty one year old would leave her house without their
Speaker 2: cell phone, which concerned everyone involved. At the time, Bethany
Speaker 2: owned a flip phone. A scroll through her phone long
Speaker 2: showed several calls from that Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: I believe she talked to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was
Speaker 1: a pilot and they had a conversation.
Speaker 2: Just before nine am that Saturday morning, Bethany had a
Speaker 2: short phone call with her boyfriend Joe, and.
Speaker 1: I made a suspicious right from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Joe lived in No Malaska, which is famous for being
Speaker 2: the endpoint of the Iditarod Dog Race, and the only
Speaker 2: way to get between Anchorage and Nome was by plane.
Speaker 2: Good thing Joe was a pilot at the time. Bethany
Speaker 2: was twenty one years old, Joe was well into his thirties.
Speaker 2: The two used to work together and had been dating
Speaker 2: for about six months. One important thing to note, Joe
Speaker 2: was married.
Speaker 1: That made us even more suspicious when we found that out.
Speaker 2: Bethany's parents told investigators they didn't know much about Joe,
Speaker 2: so detectives question Joe, who explained that his marriage was
Speaker 2: long over by the time he met Bethany. He said
Speaker 2: the reason his divorce had dragged out for so long
Speaker 2: was because he and his soon to be x were
Speaker 2: trying to do what was best for their child. Joe
Speaker 2: had been with Bethany before she disappeared. He was helping
Speaker 2: her move into her new apartment. He said the two
Speaker 2: had a nice visit. He even gave her a Puka
Speaker 2: Shehell necklace from Hawaii as a gift. But Joe said
Speaker 2: he flew back to Nome on Friday morning because he
Speaker 2: had to work. Then things got uncomfortable. The detectives asked
Speaker 2: about joe soon to be ex wife. Did she know
Speaker 2: about Bethany. Joe said she did, and the two didn't
Speaker 2: exactly have a happy meeting.
Speaker 1: That immediately drew some concern from the mother and immediately
Speaker 1: from the detectives that responded to it.
Speaker 2: Just a few weeks earlier, Joe's wife found Bethany at
Speaker 2: his apartment in Nome and was furious, even threw a
Speaker 2: glass at her, and later called Bethany's parents and told
Speaker 2: them their daughter was a home wrecker.
Speaker 1: I'm a parent too, I have three kids and about
Speaker 1: the same age as she was, and so I just
Speaker 1: felt for the parents.
Speaker 2: Detectives checked Joe's alibi and confirmed he was flying that
Speaker 2: entire weekend. As for the pilot soon to be ex wife,
Speaker 2: there are no roads between Noman Anchorage. If she were
Speaker 2: to come to Anchorage, she'd have to fly in, and
Speaker 2: there was no record of that happening. They cleared both
Speaker 2: the pilot and his wife and again left everyone asking
Speaker 2: where is Bethany.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people that disappear for a
Speaker 1: lot of different reasons, and so they wanted to know
Speaker 1: what happened to this young lady.
Speaker 2: Do their conversation with Joe, detectives got a clear picture
Speaker 2: of what was happening in Bethany's life. Joe said Bethany
Speaker 2: had taken a new job cleaning and showing apartments for
Speaker 2: her landlord, a man named Mike Lawson, and that Saturday,
Speaker 2: Bethany planned to meet with Mike so he could train her.
Speaker 1: The detective he questioned Mike immediately.
Speaker 2: Mike Lawson said, yes, he and Bethany spoke early that
Speaker 2: Saturday morning, but it was to resolve an issue with
Speaker 2: Bethany's keys. But Mike said he never met up with
Speaker 2: Bethany that Saturday. In fact, he said he's the one
Speaker 2: who shows the apartments to prospective tenants, so he wasn't
Speaker 2: sure what Bethany was talking about.
Speaker 1: Mike Lawson said that he was at home with his
Speaker 1: brother all day watching NASCAR.
Speaker 2: After hitting several dead ends, investigators shifted their focus to
Speaker 2: the Dupleaux next door to Bethany's apartment.
Speaker 1: There was a fire in the apartment, and in this case,
Speaker 1: there was something to that fire.
Speaker 2: Early that Sunday morning, a newspaper delivery person noticed the
Speaker 2: fire and called nine one one. Originally ruled an accident,
Speaker 2: investigators later discovered it was no accident at all.
Speaker 1: Well, the apartment was set on fire.
Speaker 3: When we went to go look at the fire afterwards,
Speaker 3: we found some evidence.
Speaker 2: Won't Want again was the chief of police for the
Speaker 2: Anchorage PD, and.
Speaker 3: The fire basically was meant to destroy whatever evidence might.
Speaker 2: Be inside Inside the apartment, the detectives noticed a suspicious
Speaker 2: patch of drywall, almost like the job was rushed to
Speaker 2: get done just before the fire.
Speaker 3: The material that they used to you know, that coulking
Speaker 3: kind of drywall stuff, wasn't completely dry and actually kind
Speaker 3: of depressed because of the heat the moisture there. It
Speaker 3: actually shrank back and made us look at it. And
Speaker 3: as we examined that repair, we found some hair inside.
Speaker 2: It was almost incredible that investigators located those hairs and
Speaker 2: fibers within the poorly patched drywall. They were sent off
Speaker 2: to the lab for testing, and while they waited for answers,
Speaker 2: they were left to wonder whose hair was in the
Speaker 2: wall and how did it get there because the apartment
Speaker 2: it was found in was vacant. Franco Beznis was a
Speaker 2: contractor who worked on that building.
Speaker 4: Mike Lawson and I worked for a construction company and
Speaker 4: the guy calls me up and he says, hey, Franco,
Speaker 4: the building caught on fire. The duplex, the one that
Speaker 4: I was in the work. It's a two story burnt
Speaker 4: through the first floor. The flames went up and even
Speaker 4: the ceiling was burnt, but it didn't actually break the
Speaker 4: shell of the whole building, and it was ruled as
Speaker 4: electrical fire, which really obsessed me because I'm the one
Speaker 4: that does the work and I don't want to be
Speaker 4: blamed for, you know, touching two wires together. But after
Speaker 4: examining the fire, I knew that it wasn't me. ATF
Speaker 4: came in and ruled it as arson. When that changed everything,
Speaker 4: that drew attention to the whole disappearance next door.
Speaker 2: That's when the police started looking at everyone who had
Speaker 2: been working on the apartment.
Speaker 4: The lead investigator starts telling us about Bethany Krarraz missing,
Speaker 4: and they knew the connection that we had already, that
Speaker 4: our company is the same company that rent it tour,
Speaker 4: so they're questioning.
Speaker 3: All of us.
Speaker 4: Little I realized that they ran it background track and
Speaker 4: literally everybody right there on the spot.
Speaker 2: And wait until you hear what they found.
Speaker 4: Out of the seven guys that I worked with, five
Speaker 4: of them come back as rester sex offenders, which blew
Speaker 4: me away.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there are five registered sex offenders working on
Speaker 2: an apartment building where a twenty one year old girl
Speaker 2: went missing and the neighboring building was set on fire.
Speaker 4: There's one gal that just ended the apartment there who's alone.
Speaker 4: So that really drew a lot of attention to our
Speaker 4: company for investigators.
Speaker 2: The hope was that one of these five registered sex
Speaker 2: offenders might lead them to Bethany, and with any luck,
Speaker 2: they'd find Bethany alive.
Speaker 4: I believe that somebody knows something.
Speaker 2: As the Anchorage PD pieced together a timeline of Bethany
Speaker 2: Carrera's disappearance, they were focused not only on her apartment,
Speaker 2: but the building next door. Right around the same time
Speaker 2: Bethany disappeared that Saturday, her next door apartment caught on fire.
Speaker 4: The timing of the fire was back to back.
Speaker 2: Francobznai's was a contractor who worked with Bethany's landlord.
Speaker 4: Saturday night. The fire broke out same Bill and I
Speaker 4: had all the work at so Initially it was ruled
Speaker 4: electrical fire. Then after more investigation, it was ruled as arson.
Speaker 4: That changed everything.
Speaker 2: Detectives got even more suspicious when they did a background
Speaker 2: check on a construction crew.
Speaker 4: Five out of the seven were roster sex offenders. I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there going what am I working with?
Speaker 2: The police looked into all of their alibis, including Bethany's landlord,
Speaker 2: Mike Lawson. At the time, Mike Lawson was forty five
Speaker 2: years old. He was tall, and husky with jet black hair.
Speaker 2: He slipped back and yes, Mike did have some well
Speaker 2: documented problems with women.
Speaker 4: The lead investigator actually asked him right in front of me,
Speaker 4: is it okay if I do a visual search on
Speaker 4: your vehicle? Mike said yes. So they walked over to
Speaker 4: Mike's vehicle. Mike opened every door, including the hatchback to
Speaker 4: his SUV Mercedes. They walked around, did a bit look,
Speaker 4: and then they drove off. I go back to work.
Speaker 4: An hour and a half goes by and I look
Speaker 4: back over there. Mike never left. All he's doing is
Speaker 4: walking in circles around his car, looking sort of like
Speaker 4: what the investigators did.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine seeing one of your coworkers doing that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Franco found it a little suspicious, And then
Speaker 2: things got even more strange.
Speaker 4: He walked up to me and said, Franco, can you
Speaker 4: cover for me? And I'm like, yeah, I'll cover for you.
Speaker 4: He said that he needs to go get an attorney.
Speaker 4: I looked at Mike and I said, Mike, we don't
Speaker 4: all need attorneys. I know for fact that I didn't
Speaker 4: do anything, and I don't think any of these guys did,
Speaker 4: But why worry about it Mike, and he said, well,
Speaker 4: they're looking at me.
Speaker 2: The next day, Mike showed up to work with his
Speaker 2: car completely cleaned and detailed.
Speaker 4: This car is the cleanest I've ever seen it. But
Speaker 4: you got to understand about Mike this car. I've known
Speaker 4: him for several months. One time I could ever get
Speaker 4: in the car.
Speaker 1: It was so.
Speaker 4: Dirty, papers and boxes. There was never no room except
Speaker 4: for just him.
Speaker 2: And look, this could be one giant coincidence that Mike
Speaker 2: had his car cleaned a day after the police searched it.
Speaker 2: But it's what Franco learned about Mike that concerned him.
Speaker 4: Mike Lawson is a restler sexpender. He was a restler
Speaker 4: sexpender that did not reregister himself here in Anchorage. And
Speaker 4: so I started having this gut feeling about Michael and
Speaker 4: called crime Stoppers. They connected me with the lead investigator.
Speaker 1: As soon as the investigation began, we started talking to
Speaker 1: people and they said that Mike Lawson was a very
Speaker 1: angry man.
Speaker 2: Ron McGee worked for the Anchorage PD.
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of problems with women, very violent.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, Mike was living in Illinois. That's
Speaker 2: when he was arrested for tying up, beating, and repeatedly
Speaker 2: sexually assaulting his then girlfriend. A year later, a jury
Speaker 2: convicted Mike Lawson of aggravated criminal sexual assault. He was
Speaker 2: sentenced to seven years in prison. After serving only three
Speaker 2: years in prison, Mike Lawson was released. That's when he
Speaker 2: relocated to Alaska. He and his brother Bob, then started
Speaker 2: a roofing company. Right around the time Bethany Carrera vanished,
Speaker 2: Mike was getting divorced for the fourth time.
Speaker 1: Clearly he's got some anger issues. His wife had just
Speaker 1: left him. He indicated that he wanted to do violence
Speaker 1: to women, and I made a suspicious right from the
Speaker 1: beginning that made him a suspect right away.
Speaker 2: If you remember, Mike had an alibi for the day
Speaker 2: Bethany went missing.
Speaker 1: Mike and his brother had said that they were home
Speaker 1: all day watching TV, watching race car driving. We were
Speaker 1: able to get their phone records and a turn in
Speaker 1: from their phone records that they were lying to us.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about those phone records. On the Saturday
Speaker 2: morning Bethany went missing, Mike called his brother Bob seven times,
Speaker 2: and all seven calls happened within three minutes. Why was
Speaker 2: Mike so desperately trying to get a hold of Bob. Well,
Speaker 2: a closer look at these phone calls might tell us
Speaker 2: Mike's cell phone had pinged the cell tower near Bethany's apartment.
Speaker 2: So Mike may have said he and Bob were at
Speaker 2: home all day Saturday, but their phone records said otherwise.
Speaker 1: They were not telling the truth that he had not
Speaker 1: been at home. So you know, obviously something was amiss there,
Speaker 1: and of course that raises more suspicions when you find
Speaker 1: out that people were lying to you.
Speaker 2: That Saturday morning, Mike's brother Bob finally took his brother's
Speaker 2: call just before eleven am. Afterwards, records showed Mike's cell
Speaker 2: phone returning to his home before travel lame some forty
Speaker 2: five miles north, which is close to Tolkita. Mike's phone
Speaker 2: then went silent for hours.
Speaker 1: First of all, we didn't have enough evidence to charge him,
Speaker 1: but we had a suspect, so we had to find
Speaker 1: other ways to prove that Lawson had been involved in this.
Speaker 2: Mike Lawson had lied to investigators, and that's when the
Speaker 2: police leaned on Mike's brother Bob. Here's the audio of
Speaker 2: Bob being questioned by detectives. Do you believe that your
Speaker 2: brother's involved in the arson or Bethany's disappeared.
Speaker 1: I really don't. I just got deep down, true blue
Speaker 1: from my heart. I really don't think Mike's involved. If
Speaker 1: my brother came home and told me he did something
Speaker 1: like that, I'd tell.
Speaker 4: You I'm not going to jail for anybody. I'll tell
Speaker 4: you that's flat out.
Speaker 2: So investigators went to Plan B and played hardball. They
Speaker 2: showed Bob alone application he and his brother, Mike Lawson,
Speaker 2: filled out for their roofing company.
Speaker 1: Lawson had applied for a loan and had falsified some
Speaker 1: informations on documents during this loan process.
Speaker 2: The application had this question, are any of the applicants
Speaker 2: a convicted felon? Mike was a convicted felon, but he
Speaker 2: lied he had checked off the box for no, and
Speaker 2: by doing that, Mike and Bob had committed fraud, which
Speaker 2: is a federal offense. Police charged both brothers, but offered
Speaker 2: Bob a deal if he would cooperate in their investigation
Speaker 2: into Bethany Carrera, he'd avoid punishment for the fraud case.
Speaker 1: We kept emphasizing to him that this is a young
Speaker 1: lady and her family wants to know where she's at.
Speaker 2: Bob could either join Mike and jail or take the deal.
Speaker 2: It took some serious thought, but Bob finally came around.
Speaker 2: He accepted the plea deal and agreed to flip on
Speaker 2: his brother.
Speaker 1: That's what I got to do. Somebody's got to tell
Speaker 1: the story. If that has to be me, I will
Speaker 1: someday when I'm eulogized. All I want somebody to say
Speaker 1: is I stood up and did the right I always
Speaker 1: dried to the right. I think eventually it got to
Speaker 1: his conscience and he decided to help us. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was a very difficult decision that he had to make,
Speaker 1: but he eventually did the right thing.
Speaker 2: Some nine months after Bethany Carrera went missing, Bob told
Speaker 2: the detectives his brother Mike shot and killed Bethany, and
Speaker 2: he said he knew where to find her body.
Speaker 3: I think that basically they just wanted it to be
Speaker 3: far away from town.
Speaker 2: Well't Monagan was the Anchorage chief of police.
Speaker 3: It's about four hundred miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks. That
Speaker 3: mine is a big gravel pit.
Speaker 2: That's where Bob told the caravan of police and search
Speaker 2: crews to pull off the road.
Speaker 3: The crew went out there where we believed that she
Speaker 3: was disposed at. It's airly large gravel pit and you're
Speaker 3: surrounded by mountains. By that time it was wintertime. I
Speaker 3: think at one point it was like four feet of snow.
Speaker 2: Bob Lawson led investigators through the deep snow to where
Speaker 2: he claimed he and his brother Mike dumb Bethany's body
Speaker 2: nine months earlier. After four hours of searching the gravel pit,
Speaker 2: which was the length of two football fields, they called
Speaker 2: off their search.
Speaker 3: We knew that she was there, but we had to
Speaker 3: wait until the snow melted.
Speaker 2: With the search on hold, something unexpected happened. Mike Lawson
Speaker 2: told investigators he was ready to talk and get this.
Speaker 2: Mike told detectives that it was his brother Bob who
Speaker 2: was responsible for Bethany's death, not the other way around,
Speaker 2: and Mike volunteered to wear a wire to prove it.
Speaker 3: If there's anything that could help us find a clue,
Speaker 3: lead a person who might give us more insight, that's
Speaker 3: always what we try to do.
Speaker 2: So now you had two brothers blaming one another for
Speaker 2: the death of Bethany Carrera, would you be willing to
Speaker 2: talk to your brother, and if so, would you be
Speaker 2: willing to let us take record that conversation?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Join us next week for part two of the search
Speaker 2: for Bethany Carrera. I'm slung Glass. That's next time on
Speaker 2: American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by
Speaker 2: emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide
Speaker 2: is hosted and written by by me Sloane Glass and
Speaker 2: is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass
Speaker 2: Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is
Speaker 2: executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series
Speaker 2: is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional
Speaker 2: writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Kristin Melcurie. Our Ihearty is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimechack.
Speaker 2: Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Aarruka. American Homicide's
Speaker 2: theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Neiser Music Library,
Speaker 2: provided by My Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts,
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