LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) A Kansas carnival worker posed as a member of a fictitious mafia group and ordered fellow workers to kill a couple as part of an initiation ritual, police in Arkansas alleged in filing charges related to dumping the bodies.
Carnival workers Kimberly Younger, Michael Fowler, Rusty Frasier and Christine Tenney were charged this week in Crawford County Circuit Court, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. The charges include abuse of a corpse, theft by receiving and tampering with physical evidence in the deaths of Alfred Sonny Carpenter and Pauline Carpenter.
Younger allegedly posed as a carnival mafia member named Frank Zaitchik and texted others last month to kill the Carpenters on the fairgrounds at Great Bend, Kansas, where the couple were vendors, according to Van Buren, Arkansas, police. Detectives discovered Younger had a Facebook page in the name of Frank Zaitchik while examining her phone, according to police reports.
Police said Fowler told investigators that Frasier stabbed Alfred Carpenter before Fowler shot him. Fowler then went into the couples camper and shot Pauline Carpenter, according to police reports.
Fowler told investigators that the killings were initiation into the carnival mafia, police said.
Asked whether there was even such a thing as a carnival mafia, Van Buren police spokesman Jonathan Wear said in an email that was something the woman definitely made up.
Zaitchik also told texted others to clean the inside of the camper and to dispose of the bodies, Fowler allegedly told investigators.
The four suspects loaded the couples bodies into the camper and dumped them in a creek bed north of Cedarville, Arkansas, according to police reports. Tenneys sister-in-law told authorities Tenney called and said she was kidnapped by three others who had murdered an elderly couple and that shes being held against her will, police said. Authorities found the suspects at an apartment complex.
