
DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711230028

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  279 lines

TEEN'S KILLING OF HIS HALF-SISTER LEAVES RELATIVES BITTERLY DIVIDED

When 35-year-old Zachery Carter imagines the future, he hopes that his memory of the room will fade away, blurred by newer, happier memories of a family restored, a family at peace.

But Carter worries that it won't happen. He worries that it can't happen. For Carter and his 34-year-old wife, Traci, the memory of the room is just too horrible.

``You don't know what it is really like unless you walked inside that room,'' said Carter, sitting at the dining room table in his new residence, a townhouse in the Chimney Hill section of Virginia Beach.

That room, upstairs in the house that Carter shared with his family on Ringfield Road in Virginia Beach's Ocean Lakes subdivision, is where his daughter, 8-year-old Cierra Rose Carter, was shotgunned to death Sept. 10, 1996. The person who fired the gun was Carter's son, Zackary Anthony Carter, who was 14 at the time.

The shotgun blast ripped apart a life that had scarcely begun. That was the ultimate tragedy. But it also shattered the Carter family, cleaving it along lines of loyalty to a little girl who was dead and a teen-age boy who, though alive, faced a bleak future in an adult prison.

Half of the family stood on one side, wanting the maximum sentence of 43 years for Anthony, convicted as an adult of second-degree murder. The other half believed the shooting was an accident. They wanted Anthony to get a juvenile sentence with no prison time.

Neither side is happy with the outcome. To Zachery and Traci Carter, Anthony's sentence of 18 years in prison, handed down Monday by Circuit Judge Frederick B. Lowe, means the boy, now 15, will likely be released sometime in his early 30s. Most of his life will still be ahead of him.

But to Anthony's natural mother and maternal grandparents, the sentence will steal the best part of the boy's life for what they believe was an accidental shooting.

The families are living an American tragedy for the '90s, a tale of blended families, sibling rivalry, a shotgun in the closet, two murder trials, a daughter dead and her half-brother sent to prison before he was old enough to drive.

It is also a story of the American justice system struggling to deal rationally with an increase in violence among society's juveniles.

And hovering in the minds of Cierra's parents, like some feverish symbol of evil, is the room.

``It was terrible,'' remembered Traci Carter, Cierra's mother. ``Absolutely terrible.''

``Let me tell you, I walked into that room and got sick,'' said Zachery Carter.

What Zachery Carter saw that day in his son's room could have been a set from the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's movie ``The Shining.''

On the bed was a 20-gauge shotgun, a family heirloom given to him by his grandfather. Next to the gun were pairs of shotgun shells, lined up on the bed as if ready for loading.

Along the floor and on the door was brain matter, mixed with pieces of skull. Blood in bright red spots was sprayed along the wall.

The room held other horrors, but they were at first obscured from Carter's sight. On the ceiling hidden behind a poster of a rock group was a hole from another shotgun blast. It would later be discovered that the mattress had also been pierced by a shotgun blast.

Spent shotgun shells were scattered throughout the room.

A picture of Cierra, autographed by NASCAR race driver Richard Petty, was found squirreled away in the clothes closet. Also found there was a hospital certificate with prints of the baby feet of Anthony's younger half-sister, Casey.

Somehow Cierra's glasses had survived the shotgun blast that killed her. No one will ever know if they were ripped from her head before she was shot or flew off at the time of the blast.

The swirls of blood on the wall and nearby cleaning materials eventually made it clear that somebody had tried to clean up the murder scene, and then stopped.

After the investigation into the shooting was complete, authorities determined that as many as eight shotgun blasts had been fired in the room.

And in a chilling revelation, one of Anthony's teachers came forward with a drawing he had made a few days before the shooting that showed him holding a knife over Cierra's head.

On the day of the shooting, before Zachery arrived, Cierra's body had been found in the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom by a neighbor summoned to the house by Traci.

Cierra was naked from the waist down. She had been shot in the head one time at close range.

Zachery, in shock, immediately suspected his son, but was too numb to formulate any rhyme or reason for the tragedy. ``All I knew was that I had a dead daughter and a son who wasn't anywhere around,'' remembered Carter.

Zachery Carter always knew his son was an extremely jealous boy. Not just of his half-sister Cierra, but also of his half-sister Casey and his full sister, Timara, who lives with Zachery's first wife (Anthony's biological mother) in the western part of the state. ``That was just his nature,'' Zachery said of his son. ``He was extremely jealous of anybody who got more attention or more material things than he did. He felt like he needed to be the center of attention, and if he wasn't the center of attention, then whoever was was the bad guy.''

Anthony came to live with Zachery, an operations specialist in the Navy, in May 1996. The boy told friends and relatives that he was happy to leave Western Virginia and start over with his father's new family in Virginia Beach.

He was leaving a lot behind, including loving family members on both sides. His maternal grandparents, Roger and Arlene Austin, had always been there to help raise him. His paternal grandparents, David and Marilyn Ramey, also lived nearby.

But there had been problems living at home with his mother, Rebecca Kearns, and her husband, according to testimony at Anthony's trial. Anthony fought with his stepfather and ran away from home at least twice.

And there were other signs of trouble. His sister, Timara, recalled her brother torturing a pet cat. And occasionally, the two siblings fought bitterly. ``They knew he needed help a long time ago,'' said Traci Carter. ``But they never did anything to get him help.''

Instead, Anthony's family in Western Virginia sent him to live with his father.

Traci and Zachery Carter knew they were getting a handful. But Anthony was family, and they opened the door to their Ocean Lakes home without thinking twice.

It was a decision that will haunt them for the rest of their days.

Within hours of Anthony's arrest - he was charged and jailed after police found him wandering the streets of Ocean Lakes on Sept. 11, the day following Cierra's death - the Carter family began pulling together.

Roger and Arlene Austin, along with other members of the Austin family, visited from Western Virginia. The Rameys, Zachery's parents, also were frequent visitors.

Everybody was in shock. None of what was happening seemed real. Everyone felt great sadness for the loss of Cierra, and a measure of guilt for the way it had happened. Nobody knew what would become of Anthony.

Two months before the shooting, Virginia had enacted a new, tougher juvenile statute. It was designed to curb crime by teen-agers by automatically treating violent juveniles 14 and older as adults.

Under the new statute, Juvenile Court judges would essentially be removed from the process. After a preliminary hearing in Juvenile Court, defendants like Anthony would be sent to adult court for trial. It was a change that would have an unexpected and tragic impact on the Carter family. Anthony would be the test case, the first juvenile in Virginia Beach to be tried for murder under the new law.

As members of the family began to understand what might happen to Anthony, a divide began to develop over what the punishment should be.

Roger and Arlene Austin were adamant in their support of Anthony. They believed Anthony's statement to police that the shooting was accidental. They claimed that the part of Anthony's statement that seemed to be an admission of guilt was the product of an adult police officer taking advantage of a cold, tired, and stressed-out child.

Zachery Carter felt bad for his son, but soon began to believe that not only had his son killed his daughter, but he had done so intentionally.

``I just couldn't be as delusional as the rest of the family was,'' Zachery Carter said. ``They weren't there in the room. They didn't see it. . . . I loved the kid. I still love him. But I can't condone what he did. It wasn't an accident. There is no way it was an accident.''

The Rameys supported Zachery but also realized that Zachery's son Anthony was about to be treated unlike any other juvenile before in Virginia Beach. They were sympathetic with his precarious position in the judicial system. Nevertheless, during both trials, they sat near their son on the prosecution side of the courtroom.

Curiously missing from the equation was Rebecca Kearns, Anthony's mother. She refused to get involved, said Traci Carter. Traci believes part of the reason is that she felt guilty for her part in raising Anthony. ``She told me from the very beginning, before the trial began, that she would not be a part of this,'' Traci Carter remembered.

Kearns remembers it differently. She said she attended the first trial, and did not come to the second trial only because Anthony's defense attorneys asked her not to.

She said tensions were so great between her and the Carters that being in their presence was uncomfortable. `` `Threatened' is more like it,'' she said.

The family rift became apparent to outsiders during the first trial in May. Much of it revolved around testimony concerning the murder weapon.

Roger Austin, testifying for the defense, claimed that he warned Zachery that he should lock up any weapons that he owned when Anthony came to live with his family in Virginia Beach. He told defense attorney Melinda Glaubke in court that Zachery promised to buy a gun cabinet and lock up all of his weapons. ``That was a lie,'' Zachery Carter said. ``That conversation never took place. Roger Austin did not even know there was a gun in my house. Period. Nobody did.''

Zachery said he kept the shotgun hidden in the closet of the master bedroom, buried beneath a pile of shirts, pants, shoes and other apparel. The shells were in another part of the closet, in a paper bag.

By the time of the first trial, the two men were no longer speaking. The families sat on opposite sides of the courtroom during the trial and were separated in the hallways by victim-witness representatives.

During trial recesses, Austin accused Zachery of lying about his son during his testimony.

Since his testimony, Zachery Carter has sold all of his weapons.

``I won't even look at a toy gun today,'' he said.

When the first trial ended in a mistrial, the Carters went into virtual seclusion.

The reasons were numerous. Their marriage was on the rocks, they were having difficulty selling the house where the murder occurred, and Zachery was being forced to retire early from the Navy - in part because of the stress of the first trial and the prospect of a second. But mostly they were reacting to the way the first trial ended. After a week of testimony and three full days of jury deliberation, the Carters thought their ordeal was almost over.

Then a juror talked to an attorney about the case, and Judge Lowe declared a mistrial. Suddenly they were back to Square One.

``The mistrial was devastating,'' Traci Carter remembered. ``Just when we were at the end, we had to go back to the beginning again.''

Just as suddenly, they were given hope that a second trial would not be necessary. Prosecutors offered Anthony and his attorneys a deal: If Anthony pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, they would guarantee that his sentence would be no more than 25 years in prison.

Zachery said Anthony and his attorneys accepted. But then Roger Austin got involved. He persuaded Anthony to reject the offer, Zachery said, forcing the commonwealth to have a second trial.

In the end, Austin provided good advice. Although Anthony was found guilty of second-degree murder in the second trial, Judge Lowe limited his sentence to 18 years.

But Austin and his side of the family still were outraged, as was Melinda Glaubke, one of Anthony's two attorneys.

Glaubke said Anthony should have been given a juvenile sentence, an option still allowed judges by a loophole in the new law.

``It just made both sides equally mad,'' said Traci Carter. ``One side because he didn't get more, and the other because he didn't walk.''

When Anthony Carter is released from prison, probably in the second decade of the next century, he'll be about the same age as his father is now. It doesn't seem fair to Anthony's father. ``I don't think he should get out of jail at the same age I was when he put me and the entire family through everything,'' Zachery said.

Traci Carter doesn't plan to be anywhere near Virginia when that happens. ``He is going to come out with some kind of anger,'' she said.

She fears for her life and the life of her surviving daughter, Casey. Especially when she remembers what Anthony said to her on the afternoon that Cierra was killed.

Traci came to the house that afternoon to find Anthony downstairs doing the dishes in the kitchen. Cierra was already dead in the upstairs bathroom.

Anthony told his stepmother that he had no idea where Cierra was and tried to get her to take the car and go look for her in the neighborhood. He suggested that she leave Casey, who was 3 at the time, at home with him.

She thinks her stepson might have been planning to hurt his other half-sister as well. ``Why would he have made an offer like that, if he didn't have something else in mind?'' Traci Carter said.

She trusted her instincts and refused to leave the house.

Moments later, Anthony ran out of the house; he hid in nearby woods for about 24 hours.

Zachery hopes the years will help mend both his son's soul and the shattered Carter family.

Part of that has already happened. His marriage with Traci is back on track and they no longer are planning a divorce.

Ironically, despite the ordeal, the Carters have made many new friends who gave them support during the trials.

As painful as it has been, Zachery thinks his reaction to what has happened is the only rational way to deal with a tragedy that most people could never contemplate happening to them. ``I don't think there is anyone who can put themselves in my shoes,'' Carter said. ``Yes, he is my son, and he is in the process of going to prison and paying for what he did, not only to me but to Traci, Cierra, Casey, and absolutely every family member involved. But there are a lot of people behind the scenes in this that nobody realizes how bad it affected them. Friends and neighbors.

``Just absolutely everybody was affected in some way or another.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Zachery and Traci Carter of Virginia Beach lost their older

daughter, Cierra Rose Carter, when Zachery's son, Anthony, killed

her with a shotgun. Zachery concluded that Anthony killed his

half-sister intentionally. Other family members still think it was

an accident.

Graphic

Color photos

Anthony Carter

Cierra Carter

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]