Realtor Lured into Lethal Trap: Beverly Carter | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[Music] This picture of my mom and dad at my cousin's wedding. It looked really happy
here. I'm reminded of how gracious and kind she was. always willing to jump in, help anyone,
and make things happen. We had such a good relationship that you don't always expect to come from your
mother-in-law, but she was truly one of my best friends. The last time that I saw my mom was on
the Sunday and we met at a church service and I remember how happy my mom seemed that we were all
there together as a family. [Music] I received the call about 1:00 in the morning. We had a missing woman, the
realtor that was showing a house. >> When I heard that she had disappeared and wasn't around, immediately I was
concerned. The last text that came through was not her. She was not someone that stayed out late. We knew that that
wasn't her on the other end of the text message. Over the weekend, crews and volunteers searched for Carter with
authorities asking land owners to search their property. >> Having no idea if she was in pain or if
she was out and exposed to the weather, it was crippling and it was torture. >> Beverly was a true victim. She was
prayed on. I did promise Beverly's husband that I would find her, but it's not the way that I wanted to.
I don't remember saying goodbye what I wouldn't give for just one more time to give my mom a hug. But I never saw her
again. [Music] My mom and dad met each other at a very young age. My dad was 19 years old. My
mom was 16. And they suddenly found themselves with an unplanned pregnancy. And that was me.
I was fortunate when I was growing up because my mom was at home with me and so I had a wonderful childhood. I had
lots of time with her and in some respects we kind of grew up together. My parents had three sons.
I'm the oldest of three boys. my brothers Chris and Chad and we're all spaced about three and a half years
apart. Although she was very sweet and short in stature, she could get all three of us
boys in line very quickly. Carl's relationship with his mom was they were very close.
They probably talked two, if not more times a day. I mean, he called her for advice. He called her to tell her
something funny. He called her just to see how she was doing or how her day was. They were probably the closest I've
seen a mother son be. >> Hey, you. I just got home and got this beautiful present in the mail.
>> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love it. Love it. Love it. >> You're so sweet. I love you very much.
Thanks. Bye. [Music] Tragically, we lost my middle brother Chris in an automobile accident in 2003.
My mom really, really struggled with the grief of the loss of my brother. Understandably, she wanted change. She
needed something different. and she had always had the interest in homes and home design.
So for her it was a very natural fit to go into this completely new career path.
She just really threw herself into the real estate profession. >> If there was an award to be won, Beverly
won it. I think the top award is diamond and I'm fairly certain she won that numerous times.
>> Beverly was my best friend. When I moved to the North Lorac office, we just started being buds, you know, it was
just automatic. It wasn't anything we had to work on. As a professional, she was just
topnotch. In 2012, we went and did our educator's license so that we could teach real
estate. In 2014, Little Rock was growing. Lots of construction, lots of new houses
being built, and so we were very active working with buyers and sellers. So, we were really, really busy that year.
Little Rock, even though it's the capital city of of our state, it still very much has a small town feel. It's a
tight community. You can't go anywhere almost without, you know, someone knowing you.
>> It's a very safe community. You don't hear much about like domestic crimes or
home breakins or, you know, it's not typically uh something that happens very often
here. >> It's a great place to raise a family. And of course, my mom working in real
estate, she was a part of so much of that excitement and people pursuing the American dream of moving and buying a
home and joining, you know, this this vibrant community, [Music] Thursday, September 25th. I remember it
being an absolutely beautiful day. I went for a run in my neighborhood and running past two homes that my mom had
listed for sale just thinking that I needed to just call her and check on her. It's around 4:30 and Beverly and I was
in my office. We were sitting there talking, making plans for Saturday and Sunday. When we both stood up to leave
to go to our appointment, we said goodbye, but we didn't give each other a hug. And if I'd known, it was the last
time. Sorry. Sorry. My mom called my dad and told him that she would be showing a property to a
couple from out of town, a couple that she had talked to him about prior to even that day.
Nothing was out of the ordinary. I got home probably around 6. Around 8:00, Carl and I got into bed to like turn on
TV and watch a show or something. Around 8:30, my father-in-law called Carl, which is not normal. They didn't
talk on the phone often, so there was a little concern. Carl answered the phone and just like, "Hey, Dad, what's going
on?" >> He explained that he had been trying to call and to text my mom and she wasn't
replying. and he just kept going on about this being weird and that he was worried
about her. And he really wasn't letting it go. I didn't think anything else of it cuz I
really did think I guarantee you she is at a house sitting at a kitchen table signing a contract. Her phone is
probably in her car. But when he called back, that's when I think it shifted a little bit.
>> I told my dad that I would go to her office and I encouraged my dad to go to the house that she would be showing that
afternoon and that we would find her at one of those places. Upon arriving to my mom's real estate
office, it was immediately evident that no one was there. The building was just completely dark, not a single light on
in the parking lot. It was just empty. >> I remember at that moment something felt
wrong. I could I could just feel it. And as we're sitting there, my dad calls me and he said that he had arrived to
that house on Old River Drive and that my mom's car was parked in front of it and the front door was open, but that my
mom was gone. I told my dad that we needed to contact law enforcement. And so we made the call
to report my mom missing and started making my way out to that home to be with my dad.
>> Once the police arrived, everyone was looking around the property. A few of the sheriff's deputies started going
door to door to see if anybody had any information. The later it got, the more concerned I
became because even with all of the ideas that we had come up with for reasons why we might not be hearing from
her, they just didn't fly anymore. And we really had to begin facing the fact that something truly may have
happened to her. [Music] I enjoy helping people. Being a homicide detective, you get
closure for people. I was actually off on call uh when I found out about Beverly. Initially, I was just told that
she went to show a house and the husband found her vehicle and was not able to find her. When I went inside the house,
you could tell that the house had been vacant. There was a lot of dust and you could tell there were disturbances in
that dust where somebody had walked outside of the house. I saw tire tracks that looked like they had backed all the
way to the front door. I noticed that her car was locked, but her purse was inside. When I realized the purse was in
Beverly's car, it's about the same time that a cell phone text came through from
Beverly's phone. >> I just remember being out there huddled and watching our phones
And then suddenly just after midnight, my dad begins just yelling out to all of us. Beverly has text me back
and we all just start running toward his truck. And in that moment, it was so like,
okay, okay, there we there she is. You know, she's fine. And it is crazy how you can go from it
is fine to it is not fine. Right after that, the next message came in. It said, "Sorry, phone dead." And we
were like, "Okay, that's still that's okay. That makes sense. I mean, that's fine."
>> Not long after the second text, we received a third text from my mom. It was letting my dad know that she was
out drinking with friends and knowing my mom, knowing that her favorite beverage
was chocolate milk, not alcohol. We went from relief to just complete horror because we knew just with those few
words that my mom had been taken and that she was in a very dangerous situation.
[Music] >> At that point, I felt that Beverly had been kidnapped. >> And I got the phone call about 2:00 that
morning from the police department. It scared me to death cuz I knew that Beverly would be at home. There was no
question that something had happened to her. >> We decided to ping the cell phone since
the cell phone was turned on and sending messages. Try to figure out a GPS location of that phone. When the cell
phone pings come in, it gives us a GPS coordinate. So, I pull that up and I go to those locations
and I look for any kind of evidence that may lead me to Beverly. [Music] Old River Drive and Scott is is a very
remote area. It's a lot of farmland out here. There's not a high crime volume. The fact that Beverly's phone was moving
around and we had three different pings showed me that that phone was actually moving.
So, we had a direction of travel that her phone was moving in. We got the pings where the house is at
on Old River. We got a ping at Faulner in Interstate 440. We got a phone ping at Dixon Road. And that phone ping was
about 20 minute ping. So that phone stayed there in one spot for about 20 minutes.
I kept thinking I'm going to get there and she's going to be sitting there waiting for somebody to pick her up. But
I didn't find anything that I felt was involved in the in the crime. After this, we received zero further
pings. When that happens, we know that more than likely the SIM card has been removed.
It puts a freeze on it because we can't track the phone anymore. I knew that someone had turned her phone
off. While I was looking into the paintings, one of the neighbors across the street
reported seeing a small black car backed up to the driveway with a white male standing beside the car.
She didn't think anything of it. Well, that's the last person that we could put Beverly with. So, that was
significant. That was a first lead that we had had. That first night that I was involved, I
did realize that Beverly was in serious danger. I think that she was somewhere against her will.
That night when the detectives returned back to the scene and advised that they weren't able to track or find the phone,
they asked that we go home and rest and start the search again at daylight. I remember just feeling so much guilt
for leaving that spot, thinking that wherever she may be, that if she were to come back to the spot where she had been
taken, that we wouldn't be there. It was a very quiet ride home. We laid in bed and I just started crying
and then he started to crying. I think the last time I looked at the clock it may have been like 3:00 3:30 in
the morning and obviously we fell asleep just from exhaustion but also maybe a hopeful we'd wake up
and it was this was all not real. The next night, as we went past the 24-hour time frame, we knew the
importance about finding her within that span of time. >> The longer somebody is missing, the more
likely it is that they will not be found alive. So, the police were extremely concerned.
The chances they would find her in a safe state were decreasing by the minute. I can remember every minute of those 5
days. The police department said that they would set up a search party. It was very well organized. The community was
involved. Churches were involved. It was really a lot of people. [Music] Safety was always at the foremost for
Beverly. I knew from the beginning that something bad had happened. I did not want to
think that it was the end of Beverly. She would not have left her husband, her family without telling them what she was
doing. >> Speaking with her family, I did feel like Beverly was a safety conscious
person. She seemed to be very smart. She had shown thousands of houses and have never had an issue before.
>> There had to be some other explanation for why her car was there, but she wasn't there. We were all trying to come
up with scenarios. I mean, honestly, we were even like, maybe she left, maybe she has a boyfriend, maybe they maybe
they've run off together, maybe they're on a plane somewhere, you know, like we had we were going far trying to find
something that would make more sense than something bad had happened. Every time she went to a showing,
Beverly would convey to her husband who she was going to show the house to, she kept a list of it. She made sure she
left her purse in her car. She tried to take affirmative steps to protect herself and she thought that that was
more than enough to keep her safe. >> The investigators found a notebook in my mom's car. And in this book, my mom
would put in details, you know, around names and phone numbers or types of properties that people were interested
in seeing just anything and everything that she wanted to, you know, remember um about about who she was working with
at that time. >> The police looked in Beverly's notebook and saw that the most recent entry was
for a couple that essentially didn't exist. They were fake names and numbers. Why would prospective buyers give a fake
name and number if they were intending to actually buy this house? We looked into the details of the
notebook that Beverly had in her vehicle. We had the address of the old river road and underneath that was an
email address and then a telephone number. The phone number we found out was a fake and
figured out that it was a text app that was downloaded. You have to have a real number in that application. So, we were
able to send a search warrant and find out who it actually was registered to. The real phone number that the fake
number was created from was owned by Crystal Lowry. Crystal Lowry's husband was Aaron Lewis.
>> When police had found out the last people that Beverly was with were Crystal and Aaron Lewis, they became
very concerned. While Crystal did not have any criminal record, Aaron Lewis had an extensive criminal history,
including for violent offenses. When we got Aaron's physical description, it matched the description
that the neighbor saw of the white male standing beside the small black car at the house on River Road.
Crystal Lowry and Aaron Lewis lived in Sherwood, which is about 10 to 15 miles from the scene where Beverly was
kidnapped. So, we sent vehicles and marked units to that area to get an eye on the house.
[Music] [Applause] When we were going over to put surveillance on the house, they actually
saw Aaron Lewis walk out of the door. He saw them and he fled. We took off on a car chase and he was
driving so erratically he actually got into an accident crashing his vehicle and sustained injuries himself.
>> Aaron suffered a cut on his head and a broken nose and he was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
When we ran the search warrant on Aaron Lewis's vehicle, we were able to find duct tape. We found a cell phone and we
found hair fibers. We had a officer that went to the hospital when Aaron Lewis went for a CT
scan. He flees the hospital. There's no reason for Aaron to run from the hospital unless he committed a
crime. He's trying to get away. I wrote a search warrant for Crystal Lowry and Aaron Lewis's house. When we
executed the search, we were able to locate Beverly's cell phone with the missing SIM card. At that point, I knew
that Aaron Lewis was involved with the kidnapping of Beverly Carter. We immediately put out a bolo for Aaron
Lewis. A bolo is a be on the lookout for. It's a notification of other law enforcement
agencies and the community that they are looking for somebody because they feel either the public is in imminent danger
or this person could escape very serious criminal charges. We included a photograph of him from the
car crash. We stated that we were looking for him as a person of interest in the kidnapping of Beverly Carter and
asked that anyone have any information contact us. [Music] >> 911. Hey, uh they're looking for a guy
here uh that was involved in the realtor being kidnapped. And this guy looks like
him and he is nervous and he's out here at the bus stop. >> Okay, but don't tip them off or
anything. Get someone out there. >> When officers arrived, Aaron fled on foot into an apartment complex and then
jumped off the second story floor right into the bottom of the feet of an officer standing there. So they took him
into custody. >> My mom had been missing for 4 days and I was with my dad at his house and we
got the call from the investigators to let us know that Aaron Lewis had been taken into custody.
>> The family had never heard of Aaron Lewis before. They were in hopes that Beverly would be found alive and that we
were on the right track to find her. >> There was a part of me that was relieved
because I felt like he would do the right thing and tell us where where my mom was.
>> Where is she? >> Who? >> I'm asking you a question. Did you do anything? >> No. Did you?
>> Why did they have you arrested? >> I have no idea. They haven't told me. [Music]
From a detective point of view, when you make the arrest, that's when the work is
really just starting. We've got to be able to find Beverly, and the only person that knows that answer is going
to be Aaron Lewis. When I interviewed Aaron Lewis, Aaron was the narcissist. He thinks that he's
the smartest person in the room. This is more of a game to him than anything else.
Where's my phone? Cuz you can't unlock it. Oh, >> we can. >> Yeah. What you going to show me on the phone?
>> Well, actually, I'll let you listen to something. Then you'll know that I'm serious.
And I said that you're running out of time. >> Normally, we wouldn't give a suspect
their evidence like that, but we needed to try to find Beverly. So, we allowed him to have his phone. He played a audio
note and it was Beverly Carter's voice. >> Carl, Beverly, I just want to let you
know I'm okay. I think they hurt. Just do what he says and please don't call the police. If you call the police, it
could be bad. Just want you to know I love you very much. >> Aaron told me that he had this message
on his phone in the event that he got caught, he can prove that Beverly was alive. We knew that we had to hurry. My
concern was that that she was not actually alive. He he was still playing games with us.
>> Are you guaranteeing me this woman's alive? Depends on how long it takes. How long do we have? How long can a
person without food and water? Aaron Lewis essentially said that if police don't find her in time, it's
their fault if she dies. He was trying to set the foundation for him being found not guilty for her death.
The investigators did tell us that he was not being cooperative. And so any hope, relief that we had that he might
tell us where she was was really fleeting. [Music] So, we started looking at his phone
records, figuring out where he had been, and we're able to figure out that he had
been to a place called Argos, which is a concrete facility. We found out through his background that
he had been recently fired from Argos. So, I asked him why he would be there if he had been fired
and just threw it out. You take Beverly to Argos. And that was the only time that I ever
had any kind of reaction from him. I knew right then that's probably where she was going to be at.
We immediately sent a search team to Argos plant. It was late in the evening. One of the detectives searching the
woodline saw some fresh dirt and walked over. And as that detective was walking through that dirt, she actually tripped
on something and she looked back to see and it was Beverly's elbow that was protruding out of the ground.
When we uncovered Beverly from the grave, we found out that she was duct taped from the eyes to the chin that
covered her mouth and her nose. Obviously, she suffocated. The location where they buried her is
actually a cement runoff. Had we not found her when we did, she would have been completely covered with
concrete in another matter of days. When Beverly's body was found, obviously we were hoping to find her alive. So
when we found her deceased, it was probably the worst, best feeling I've ever had.
>> When police found Beverly's body, they immediately questioned Aaron and Crystal. They charged them with multiple
crimes, including capital murder. Once Beverly's body is located, we have to tell the family that she's been
found. It's a very hard job to do. I've had to do it a lot. And it's never never easy
to have to tell a family member that their loved ones is is deceased. Division captain went and told the
husband, Carl, that we had located Beverly and she was deceased. And then Beverly's friends actually got together
and went and told her sons that she had been found. I was awakened at 4:00 a.m. with people
at my doorstep. And standing there at the door were some of my mom's real estate colleagues,
all with very solemn expression. And I let them in my home and they immediately said that my mom had
been found. And I was so excited. [Music] And my response was, "Well, where is she?"
And one of her friends said to me, [Music] "Oh, sweetie, [Music] your mom wasn't found alive."
We weren't there yet. We weren't to a place where we were talking about her not being alive.
>> And it didn't seem real. It didn't seem possible. It just seemed like a bad movie.
Probably the most confused person in the whole situation was and still is my dad.
My dad lost his wife of 34 years. His whole world just is taken from him in a moment.
[Music] The autopsy report showed that Aaron wrapped her entire head in duct tape and
basically created a mask which she couldn't breathe. She laid there and suffocated. She was unable to rip it off
because her hands were duct taped behind her back. She just laid there on the ground out there and died.
I think Beverly went through hell in her final hours when she died. They made her
walk to the grave site. I can't imagine going through what she went through. >> She literally laid
in her grave, taking her last breath. Ultimately, Crystal Lowry did confess to being involved
and agreed to tell us everything in agreeance to a lighter sentence because in the state of Arkansas, kidnapping and
capital murder brings either the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
So, instead of taking that, she decided to take a 30-year plea deal in exchange for testimony in court explaining how
and why this happened. Crystal Larry was a nursing student and the night that Beverly went missing,
Aaron had spoken about doing a kidnapping for ransom. She suggested kidnapping a realtor broker because
brokers usually had a lot of money. Uh, so they conducted an online search for a
realtor broker in area and Beverly was the first name that popped up. >> Crystal had recently married Aaron and
it seemed at first like Aaron was acting alone until police came to know Crystal
a little bit better. She maybe wasn't the ring leader, but she was feeding him ideas on how to commit his intended
crime even better. Aaron Lewis made contact with my mom requesting to see the property that day
and my mom apologized and told him that she didn't show property alone. And so Crystal Lowry spoke to my mom and
told my mom that she would be there, giving my mom this false sense of comfort that there would be another
person there and and make it a safer environment to show the house. My mom arrived to that appointment prior
to anyone getting there. You know, she opened the home. Aaron Lewis showed up with an apology and an excuse that
Crystal had gotten caught up at work and she was going to be unable to make it to
that showing that day. >> Aaron duct taped her, put her in a trunk of his car, and then he's going to take
her someplace, take photograph of her, and send that photograph to Beverly's husband for ransom.
He ended up taking Beverly home and realized that he forgot to get the debit card out of her purse in the car. So he
left Beverly at their house for Crystal to stand guard over and he went back to the scene to try to collect her debit
card. >> The purse was an important part of their plan because they would have my dad move
money to accounts that were accessible with the cards in my mom's purse. And so no purse, no ransom.
>> When he got there, police were on scene. He panicked. So he left, went back to
Crystal, told her what was going on. So they had to come up with a new plan. It was Crystal's idea to kill Beverly.
She told Aaron, "You've got no choice. You're you're going to have to kill her, so go do what you've got to do."
She knew too much already. So he went and bought a shovel and put her back in his car, drove her to the site of his
former employer. There was video surveillance at Walmart where he bought the shovel and Crystal
was in the car with him. There was enough evidence to show that she aided him in it.
When asked why Beverly, here's what he told reporters. >> She was a rich broker.
>> Do you have anything to say to the family? >> Sorry. [Music] Beverly was such a good friend. She was
my best friend. And this is a reminder of how much I miss the things that we could be doing together
and how much fun we had doing those things together, but we can't do them anymore because she's not here.
This is actually the dress that they buried her in because they knew that she loved that dress and they wanted her to
have that to be buried in. That's what they did. It wasn't long after we laid Beverly to
rest that we learned that Aaron was a sixtime felon and he married Crystal and then he ran out of money.
[Music] Supposedly the two were trying to get a divorce and couldn't afford it. So that
was the reason that they were going to try to kidnap somebody and get some ransom money so they could afford to get
a divorce. >> He saw my mom as an easy way to get money. [Music] My mom was not fantastically wealthy. He
just ruined her beautiful family because he only cared about getting rich. [Music]
Aaron Lewis went on trial January of 2016 at Plaskki County Circuit Court. Aaron Lewis was at times within an arms
length from us. There was a part of me that wanted to just shake him and ask why.
And then there were other moments of just sheer rage as they were showing the jury pictures
of my mom being unearthed from that shallow grave. >> The most standout moment in the trial
for me is when the prosecutor during closing arguments took a roll of duct tape and she grabbed it and just opened
it real fast. And you know, duct tape makes a distinct sound when you open it. And she said, "That's the last sound
that Beverly Carter ever heard." And I I'll never forget that. [Music] While we were waiting for the verdict,
Carl and I actually went into a side room and I heard heels like running down a hallway. and one of our prosecuting
attorneys came in and said, "The verdict's in." >> The verdict the jury came up with is
that Aaron Lewis was guilty of capital murder and kidnapping. When that guilty verdict came in, it was
like a,000 lbs was lifted off my chest. tears just began to flow and just I don't know that there was happiness from
the sense of the fact that we had gotten justice for my mom but also there was just relief that this part of this
journey was over for capital murder. Aaron Lewis was sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole and kidnapping. He was also sentenced to a life sentence. So basically, he got two life sentences.
>> There's a part of me that thinks that if you take a life, you shouldn't be given the luxury
of keeping your own. But they were given fair trials and justice at least when defined like that
was served. >> He's never going to be able to get out. He'll never see the light of day again.
And now Aaron gets to sit in prison the rest of his life and remember what he did.
[Music] I do think about this case. I think about Beverly a lot and the stuff that
she actually went through. And I always think back to the voicemail that she left.
>> Carl Beverly, I just want to let you know I'm okay. I haven't been hurt. Just
want you to know I love you very much. The calmness in her voice, it just I don't know how somebody could be so calm
going through that kind of thing. >> The details are always kind of hard to hear because she was such a scaredy-cat.
She was always afraid of the littlest things. That's what hurts the most. I do pretty good until I think about her
final moments on Earth, and those break me. They're really hard. >> Carl Jr., her son, created the Beverly
Carter Foundation to help realtors try to educate them on better ways to stay safe and doing their job and come up
with ways to make their job safer. Carl felt this pressure to like take just the worst thing in his life and
make it better for somebody else. And it was his therapy. He needed to speak about it. The
foundation for him was a way to uh process his grief. We do work alongside Carl Jr. with his
foundation and make sure safety is first and foremost with every agent. I'm really proud of Carl doing that and
I think that his mother would be very proud of him because I think that this foundation uh carries on Beverly's
legacy of trying to help people. [Music] Looking back, having Beverly as my mother-in-law was truly one of the
greatest gifts I will always choose to remember her in the fact that she had a weakness for sweets and she hated
exercise and just wanted to live out her days at the beach, which is basically me in a
nutshell now. But I think that uh remembering her will always be that she was truly one of the greatest
friends that I'll ever have. I hit the jackpot with her. My mom was the matriarch of our family.
She was the center. She made everyone feel welcome. She was the first hello you heard when
you came through the door and she was always out greeting you, you know, goodbye. She took care of all of us.
Navigating life without her has been a challenge for our family. We're all trying to step up
and uh trying to make her proud. [Music] [Music] [Music]

Beverly Carter, 49, disappears after scheduling a viewing to show a house to a prospective buyer in the rural area of Scott, Arkansas.

Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

Beverly Carter's kidnapping and murder are recounted, detailing her family's grief and the investigation that led to her killers' arrest and trial.

Key points

A Mother's Love. The speaker reflects on the deep bond with their mother, who was also a friend.
The Disappearance. A realtor goes missing after a routine showing, sparking concern and a search.
The Search Begins. Family and authorities mobilize to search for Beverly after she goes missing.
The Texts. A series of texts from Beverly lead to confusion and horror about her fate.
A Break in the Case. The arrest of Aaron Lewis marks a pivotal moment in the investigation.
Beverly's Voicemail. Beverly left a voicemail saying she was okay, but it was a chilling message.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I would give anything for just one more time to give my mom a hug.

Reflecting on the last goodbye with his mother.

2:16WatchSep 14, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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