The Wichita Massacre
On December 14–15, 2000, brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr carried out a series of robberies and murders in Wichita, Kansas that left five people dead and traumatized the city. After several earlier crimes, the brothers invaded a home where five young adults were present, forced the victims to withdraw money from ATMs, subjected them to extended sexual assault, and then drove them to a baseball field where they were made to kneel and were each shot in the head execution-style. One victim, nineteen-year-old Holly Glover, survived after the bullet was deflected by a hair clip. She ran barefoot through the snow to a neighboring house to call 911. A fifth victim, Jason Befort, had been killed separately earlier in the attack sequence.
The Carr brothers were arrested within days based on Holly Glover's testimony and physical evidence linking them to the crimes and the victims' property. The investigation was swift and the evidence overwhelming. Both brothers were convicted of capital murder in 2002 and sentenced to death. The trial itself was unusually conducted with both defendants tried simultaneously before the same jury, an arrangement later challenged on appeal.
The Kansas Supreme Court overturned the death sentences in 2014, finding that the simultaneous trial had been prejudicial and that the judge's refusal to provide separate juries had violated constitutional rights. The case went to the United States Supreme Court, which in 2022 reversed the Kansas Supreme Court and reinstated the death sentences, finding no constitutional violation in the trial procedure. Both Reginald and Jonathan Carr remained on Kansas death row as of 2025.
The Wichita Massacre was one of the most brutal crime events in Kansas history and generated significant political discussion about capital punishment, criminal justice, and media coverage of race — the Carr brothers are Black, their victims were white, and the case attracted attention from commentators arguing it received insufficient national coverage relative to other high-profile interracial crimes. Holly Glover's survival and her courage in summoning help remained one of the most remarkable individual acts in the case.