The Alabama murder suspect who killed himself instead of surrendering to Arkansas State Police on Sunday was cutting through the state to lie low with family in Oklahoma, investigators said.
Lindsey Scott Carter, 44, of Jackson County, Ala., was wanted on a capital-murder warrant out of Madison County, Ala., after a shooting early Saturday morning that left 36-year-old Amy Murphy dead in her bedroom.
Carter was found with a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” at the end of a pursuit by state police on Interstate 40 near Alma.
Carter’s fatal path to Arkansas involved several former lovers, said Madison County sheriff’s office officials in Alabama, who described Carter as being heavily entrenched in the area’s methamphetamine community.
Sgt. Brian Chaffin, the supervisor of the Madison County sheriff ’s criminal investigations division, said Carter knew police were after him and was headed to live with “a brother or brother in-law” in Oklahoma.
Chaffin said investigators got a call at 6 a.m. Saturday from a former girlfriend of Carter’s, Hannah Mann, who claimed that Carter had justshot her roommate.
When investigators reached her home less than 2 miles east of Huntsville, Mann showed them to a bedroom where Murphy lay dead with a gunshot wound.
Chaffin said the shooting happened sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Afterward, Carter held Mann captive at gunpoint, preventing her from calling for help.
No neighbors heard the gunshot, which marked the fourth homicide handled by the Madison County sheriff’s office this year, Chaffin said.
“It was some kind of dispute,” Chaffin said. “I don’t know exactly what happened … but speculating, with the type of people we’re dealing with, it was over drugs.”
Carter, Mann and Murphy all had prior methamphetamine-manufacturing drug convictions, Chaffin said.
After fleeing his ex-girlfriend’s home, Carter didn’t come to Arkansas right away. Instead, he made the 45-minute drive to Arab, Ala., where he “had ties … [and] family in that area.”
He met another ex-girlfriend, Candice Burgess, Chaffin said, and traded his motorcycle for her 2006 Honda Accord.
Burgess then tried to report her car stolen, Chaffin said, but after questioning, she was arrested and charged with hindering prosecution after reportedly falsifying a police report.
Along the way to Arkansas,Carter picked up yet another former lover, Misty Burgess, 36, though investigators weren’t sure when, where or why.
“He was a man of many women in the drug game,” Chaffin said.
Arkansas State Police were notified to be on the lookout for a murder suspect in Candice Burgess’ Accord.
About 12:50 p.m., a trooper near Clarksville spotted the vehicle and pulled it over as it neared Ozark in Franklin County.
When the car pulled over, Misty Burgess bolted on foot, and the state police officerstarted chasing her.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said Carter was “hiding” somewhere in the car and that when Misty Burgess and the officer ran off, he hopped into the driver’s seat and continued fleeing on the westbound lanes of I-40.
Sadler said whether Misty Burgess panicked or was used as a decoy to distract state police remains under investigation. She has not been charged with any crimes, he said.
About 10 minutes later, state police caught up with Carter’s vehicle and pulled it over just outside of Alma.
When troopers approached the car, Carter was already dead, Sadler said.
Sadler said police found a weapon but said his agency wouldn’t say what kind it was or where Carter shot himself until the end of the investigation.
Sadler said the state police are conducting both a criminal and an internal investigation into the pursuit and shooting.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/10/2013