New Kent may not pursue charges against fugitive

New Kent may not seek charges against fugitive

A fugitive captured this week in Alabama after years on the run may never be returned for trial in New Kent County, where authorities say he gunned down a teenager and operated a multimillion-dollar marijuana-growing operation.

New Kent Commonwealth's Attorney Linwood Gregory said yesterday that bringing John Steven Carter back to Virginia might be too costly and unnecessarily duplicative of the charges he's facing first in Florida.

"It's a decision we'll have to make at some point," Gregory said. "There's the cost involved and a question if he would already be serving time on the same sort of charges."

Gregory said it is possible that some of Carter's activities in New Kent could be incorporated in a multistate federal indictment alleging a continuing criminal enterprise. Carter faced federal and state drug charges in Florida in 2005 but fled to Virginia before he went to trial.

New Kent investigators say they discovered the marijuana-growing operation last fall at a home Carter rented in Lanexa.

Carter, 56, was considered an armed and dangerous felon when he was captured in an early morning raid Wednesday by a task force of federal, state and local agents outside Geneva, Ala., a tiny farming community near the Florida border and Fort Rucker.

"A helicopter woke me up, and I just figured it was a training operation," said Donald Wilks, who lives near the abandoned trailer where Carter was caught. "I'd never seen him before, even though he was supposed to have been living here for three months."

Carter fled New Kent on Oct. 14 after a group of Williamsburg-area teenagers drove to his Lanexa home to rob him of guns and drugs, authorities say. New Kent officials believe Carter shot to death 18-year-old Christopher Greene after Greene, armed with a rifle, broke open Carter's rear door. Greene's body was found about 20 yards from the home, covered with a tarp.

Carter was charged with illegally disposing a body; authorities have never stated publicly whether they consider the shooting a justifiable homicide. Greene's family has declined to comment.

Carter has a long history of criminal activity and in 1982 was convicted of conspiring to kill state a state Alcoholic Beverage Control agent when he appeared to testify in New Kent against Carter's then-wife in a drug case.

The agent, now retired from police work, said yesterday that news of Carter's arrest was welcomed.

"I feel relieved more than anything," David Altman said. "I was very concerned. This was a man who was willing to arrange to shoot many people on the courthouse steps. And his actions went far beyond just planning. He's a dangerous person."

Carter and his accomplices had secured an M-16 machine gun from Fort Eustis near Newport News, but investigators, tipped off to the scheme, stopped the effort before any harm was done.

Carter, who fled to Virginia after his July 2005 arrest in Holmes County, Fla., on drug and weapons charges, lived without detection for more than three years in New Kent. He used an alias and dated a local woman.

He used another alias in Alabama and shuffled between two trailer homes, one that was abandoned and one that police described as barely habitable.

Police said tipsters, lured by $1,000 in Crime Stoppers reward money, alerted them Friday to Carter's whereabouts and past.

When the arrest squad, aided by the helicopter, swooped in on Carter, he reacted the way most people do when confronted by armed intruders.

He called 911.

But instead of reporting a crime, Carter blurted out that he didn't want to be harmed and didn't have a gun.

That must have confused the operator. Police had kept the apprehension top-secret.

"The operator wouldn't have known what he was talking about," Geneva police Lt. Ricky Morgan said.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .