Man in killing lived on the lam
A ponytailed man who lived a hermit's life in New Kent County and who authorities say shot to death a teenaged intruder there this month was on the run from multiple drug charges in Florida, arrest records and law-enforcement officers say.
In Westville, Fla., a tiny panhandle town and former county seat of Holmes County, John Steven Carter stood out for his flashes of temper and flashy vintage Cadillacs.
"I told the sheriff I was gonna have to move, 'cause if I lived [around Carter] much longer I was gonna have to kill him," said Luther Curry, 72, who moved away after a run-in with Carter in 1991.
Carter's pack of vicious Labradors would attack Curry's son every morning on the way to the school bus, and Curry went to the sheriff, he said in a telephone interview.
That prompted a gunshot that tore through the side of Curry's home and through three of his now-deceased wife's Sunday church dresses, Curry said. Police arrested Carter on multiple firearms charges.
Now he's wanted by federal and state authorities in Florida on drug charges stemming from a large marijuana-growing operation that Carter allegedly nurtured inside a 12-by12-foot hidden room of a metal outbuilding on his 3-acre property. State police said there were more than 100 plants, some of them waist high.
"We consider him armed and dangerous," Florida State Police Investigator Renee Hatton said. "He's facing prison time down here and now in Virginia. He's got nothing left to lose."
Carter apparently fled back home to Virginia from Florida in August 2005, shortly after being indicted in connection with the alleged marijuana-growing operation.
He left behind his wife; a daughter, Faith; and now a grandchild. But he managed to take with him two Cadillacs.
Living alone beside four-lane U.S. 60 in Lanexa, a man known as William J. Benton Jr., 56, barely raised suspicion beyond the two flashy orange-colored Cadillacs in front of the frame, slightly askew home he rented.
"I'm not sure we ever even spoke," said Amanda Hollingsworth, a next-door neighbor who is the wife of the minister at nearby Liberty Baptist Church. A light always seemed to be on in the rear of the house but nowhere else.
But on the night of Oct. 14, the church couple heard two shots.
And the next morning, the body of Christopher Greene, 18, turned up in the backyard of Benton's home, hidden beneath a car cover. Benton was nowhere to be found.
"We think he was doing anything he could think of to delay being found out," New Kent County Commonwealth's Attorney C. Linwood Gregory said.
In the days after the discovery of Greene's body, Benton would be revealed by New Kent investigators to be John Carter, who had assumed the name of a long-dead Williamsburg-area man he knew about.
Greene, a Bruton High School athlete with no criminal record, apparently died of a gunshot wound to the chest, according to New Kent Sheriff's Office investigators. He and three accomplices who have cooperated with police traveled some 20 miles from their York County homes on the edge of the Williamsburg city limits, targeting Carter for drugs and guns, according to court documents.
The three are charged with attempted robbery and conspiracy to rob.
Two other Bruton High School students were arrested this week on charges of conspiring with the other three students.
A detailed search warrant affidavit describes how sheriff's deputies think the shooting occurred as Greene attempted to kick through the rear door of Carter's home.
It also described how investigators found an array of drug-related material. So now Carter is wanted in New Kent on a charges of drug possession, possession of a firearm by a felon, and illegally disposing of a corpse.
But Carter likely will not face a murder charge, Gregory said.
"Based on the information we have now, it appears we are talking about a justifiable homicide," he said.
As Greene's grandmother and mother prepared to grieve with other relatives and friends Wednesday at Greene's home, they absorbed with faith-anchored solemnity the fate of the young athlete and of Carter.
"We are letting the Lord take his course," said Luberta Powell, Greene's grandmother.
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