Transcript from ‘After the Carver’ Episode 3
[Intro music fades in — somber piano and static crackle, slowly fading out]
KENNEDY:
This is After the Carver. I’m Kennedy Campbell.
FREYA:
And I’m Freya Landis. Today’s episode is one that a lot of listeners have been waiting for… and one that we’ve both been dreading.
KENNEDY:
Yeah. Because this one is about the suspects. The ones who had fingers pointed at them, and then walked away with no charges, no trial… but also no real way to clear their names in the infamous court of public opinion.
FREYA:
A quick note before we get started: every person we’re going to mention in this episode was either officially cleared by law enforcement or is now deceased. So this isn’t an invitation to play detective or dig into their families’ lives. Please respect their privacy. And please respect the dead.
KENNEDY:
Before we jump into the list of names, we’re going to talk about the FBI’s psychological profile of the Carver, along with some theories from the public, because all of that will be relevant once we start discussing the suspects.
FREYA:
Here’s what the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit said. The Carver was likely a white male, aged anywhere between twenty and forty-five, with an above average IQ. He was organized, methodical, probably single, and lived alone.
KENNEDY:
He was familiar with the Corwin Bay area, either as a long-time resident or someone who spent significant time here in the years leading up to the killings. Someone who knew the geography. The routines. The rhythms of the town.
FREYA:
Sorry to backtrack, but I just have to ask this question before I forget.
How can anyone seriously believe that the Carver might’ve only been twenty years old?
I mean, I’m twenty-two, so twenty wasn’t so long ago for me, and I can’t even fathom doing all that stuff at such a young age.
It seems like something that would’ve taken years to plan. Even decades, maybe.
KENNEDY:
That’s the thing, though. You’re not a ruthless psychopath. So of course you can’t put yourself in the Carver’s shoes. Or mind, more accurately. Your brain’s just not wired that way.
FREYA:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I wouldn’t be capable of that stuff at any age.
KENNEDY:
I should hope not. Also, in case you’re still not convinced… almost ninety percent of serial killers are men between twenty and thirty-five. So it’s actually more likely that the Carver was a younger guy than an older one.
FREYA:
Wow. That’s seriously wild.
[Brief pause]
Anyway, back to the BAU profile. They speculated he might have experience in cryptography, literature, linguistics, or even computer programming. Something that could lend itself to the kind of riddles he created. So he might still be working in one of those fields today.
KENNEDY:
Not all the agents saw eye to eye on the profile, though. There was one key disagreement that came up again and again behind the scenes.
FREYA:
Which is how he chose his victims.
KENNEDY:
Yup. One of the lead agents believed the Carver knew his victims personally.
FREYA:
But the other lead profiler had the opposite take. She thought that the Carver chose random people and patiently stalked them for weeks or even months. During that time, he learned their habits so he could strike when the opportunity was perfect.
Whatever the case was… he always seemed to know exactly how, where, and when to abduct each victim without being caught.
KENNEDY:
Like my father. The Carver knew where he lived, and he also seemed to know he’d be getting home from the hospital just before two o’clock in the morning, because he arrived at the same time. It seemed planned. Not just an opportunistic abduction.
FREYA:
Yup. And that brings us to the theory that’s gained the most traction in true crime forums and message boards over the years. The hospital theory.
KENNEDY:
This theory is specifically in regard to Corwin Bay Regional Hospital. Two of the Carver’s thirteen victims worked there.
FREYA:
One was Kennedy’s father, as we discussed in Episode 1. The other you might recall from Episode 2—Christopher Miles.
KENNEDY:
The theory goes like this: if the Carver worked at that hospital, he could’ve personally known my father and Christopher. He also could’ve feasibly crossed paths with every other victim.
Maybe he met some of them while they were visiting a sick or injured friend.
Maybe they checked into the ER after a car accident or brought in a sick child.
Whatever the case, it gave him a reason to observe them up close without raising suspicion.
A hospital is intimate in that way. You’re vulnerable there.
FREYA:
This theory was so widespread that all hospital employees ended up being investigated by the police. Nothing came of it, but it’s one of those threads people can’t quite let go of. It feels plausible.
KENNEDY:
It does. But it’s not the theory you lean toward, is it?
FREYA:
Nope. I’ve got my own idea. But to be fair, the hospital theory is a jumping-off point for it.
KENNEDY:
Pray tell…
FREYA:
Okay, so, I always thought the Carver could be someone who wasn’t directly employed by the hospital, but instead just worked there on occasion as an outside consultant. Like, a lawyer or insurance agent, maybe.
I’ve also heard that hospitals occasionally bring in private psychologists and physical therapists for patient assessments when their own psychs and physios are overwhelmed. So maybe even someone like that.
KENNEDY:
Interesting. What made you think of that?
FREYA:
I think it takes the best part of the hospital theory—which is that the hospital was a good place to select future victims—and explains why no one was ever put under serious investigation when the police looked into it.
Because here’s the thing… they only looked at direct employees and regular volunteers. Not outside consultants.
KENNEDY:
Ooh. That seems like a major oversight, so you could really be onto something there. Also, a friend of mine interned at a hospital last summer, and he said the guy who came in every week to maintain the printers knew everyone’s schedule better than the doctors.
FREYA:
Exactly! People forget how many invisible roles exist in places like hospitals. Vendors, contractors, temp staff. They blend in so well that no one even thinks to look twice. But they’re often the ones watching the closest.
[Contemplative pause]
Anyway… I think it’s finally time for us to bring up the main list of suspects. We’ve already mentioned one of them in a previous episode, and that person is close to us, so this subject has become a bit of an elephant in the room.
KENNEDY:
The person Freya’s talking about is my stepfather, Ethan Kilkenny. He was my next-door neighbor when the Carver started up.
FREYA:
The whispers about him started up several years after the killings stopped… because he married Kennedy’s mother.
KENNEDY:
Yeah. When that happened, people started rumors saying that he must’ve planned it all to get my father out of the way so he could have my mother for himself.
He’s also been a linguistics professor at Corwin Bay University for the last twenty-one years, so people really latched onto that, because linguistics was in the BAU profile as a possible profession for the Carver.
But in general, I think people just thought he fit the profile because they wanted him to. He was close. Literally right next door to the very first victim. And proximity is easier to blame than randomness.
FREYA:
It sure is. Eventually, the rumors became so wild that the police had to investigate Ethan just to shut it all down. But he was completely cleared. Airtight alibis for every murder.
KENNEDY:
We really couldn’t believe it was happening at the time, because it’s such a ridiculous idea if you think about it for longer than ten seconds.
I mean, why would a man plan and execute thirteen vicious murders as a front for killing one man, just so he could ask out that man’s widow several years after her husband died? Please, make it make sense!
FREYA:
It really is ridiculous. But a lot of people believed it. Some still do.
KENNEDY:
Yeah. I’ve read all the Reddit threads, so I’ve seen the lingering suspicions. But I was there . I watched what my father’s murder did to my mom. And I watched how Ethan showed up for her—and also for me and my sister—every single day as nothing more than a friend for a very long time.
It's not like he swooped in and asked my mom out the day after my father vanished, or even the next year. They didn’t start dating until three years afterward, and they married another year after that. A whole four years after my father disappeared.
FREYA:
It’s like you said a minute ago: make it make sense.
KENNEDY:
[Sardonic laugh] Well, with that out of the way, let’s move on to the next name on the list. Matthew Brenner. Better known to online sleuths as the Superfan.
FREYA:
Brenner popped up pretty quickly as a suspect. He no longer lives in Corwin Bay, but he did when the killings started, and he quickly became obsessed with the case. So obsessed that he started to look suspicious.
KENNEDY:
He was an avid forum user, and he went by the handle ‘RiddleMeThis78’ on multiple true crime forums. He claimed to have insight into the Carver’s mind, and posted details about the bodies that only police would know.
FREYA:
So then the police had to look into him.
Once they did, they discovered he was a high school teacher who’d majored in computer science during college.
He also lived alone. That added to their suspicion that he could be behind the murders, given the BAU profile.
But in the end... he was just another armchair detective who went too deep.
KENNEDY:
He was totally cleared. Airtight alibis, just like my stepdad. In fact, he wasn’t even in the country when two of the murders occurred. He was vacationing in Indonesia.
FREYA:
So… how did he get the information that only the police were supposed to know?
KENNEDY:
It turned out that one of the officers working at Corwin Bay PD was Brenner’s cousin. The officer in question wasn’t assigned to the case, but he’d sneaked a look at the files and photos because he was curious. He then drunkenly shared what he saw with Brenner at a family BBQ.
FREYA:
It was a huge embarrassment for Corwin Bay PD. The disgraced officer was fired, obviously, and Brenner was no longer under suspicion.
KENNEDY:
But as we’ve seen, he still posts on forums, frequently referencing his past as a suspect. Almost like a badge of honor. It’s hard not to feel unsettled by that.
FREYA:
Sorry to be so blunt, but I actually can’t stand how he does that. I think it’s in such poor taste, especially considering what we know about the next suspect on our list.
KENNEDY:
Yeah. This is a sad one.
FREYA:
The third suspect—at least, the third one whose name went public—was a man named Elijah Dougherty.
He was a computer programmer and college professor who became a person of interest in early 2015.
He’d submitted a riddle-based scavenger hunt to a local newspaper just two months before the first Carver letter, and that put him right on law enforcement’s radar.
KENNEDY:
He was also single his whole life and lived alone until 2004, when he took in his brother’s three children after their parents’ tragic passing. But by 2014, when the murders were happening, he was living alone again, as the children were grown by then.
FREYA:
The police and FBI didn’t have any concrete evidence on the guy. He just matched the BAU profile very closely. So he was placed under covert surveillance.
But then someone leaked his name to the media. Corwin Bay PD has never admitted who was responsible for this leak.
KENNEDY:
After it happened, Dougherty was viciously harassed by a certain group of locals who’d collectively decided that he must be guilty.
His home was burned down by one of those locals in the summer of 2015, by a man who publicly admitted that he did it because he ‘knew’ Dougherty was guilty of the Carver murders.
FREYA:
Later that year, Elijah Dougherty took his own life.
He left a note addressed to his nieces and nephew, apologizing and outlining his wishes for the funeral.
There was no admission of culpability in regard to the Carver case in the note.
In fact, he didn’t even mention the case at all…
though most believe the constant persecution over the leak was the ultimate reason for his decision to end his life.
KENNEDY:
To this day, there’s still zero evidence that Dougherty was responsible for the Carver killings. But in many people’s eyes, he remains the prime suspect.
FREYA:
It’s tragic. People really forget that speculation has consequences. That being named, even falsely, can destroy a person’s life. And in Elijah’s case… it did.
KENNEDY:
We debated whether or not to even say his name on this show, but at the end of the day, the truth matters. Elijah wasn’t charged. He wasn’t tried. And yet, he paid the ultimate price.
FREYA:
The fact that a lot of people still talk about him like he was definitely the Carver… I think it says much more about them than it does about him.
KENNEDY:
Yeah. For some, I guess it’s a fear-based response.
They desperately want a scapegoat because they can’t bear the idea of the Carver never being caught.
But for others, it’s just easier to blame a dead man than admit that we still don’t know who’s really responsible.
And for others still… well, sometimes people want a villain more than they want the truth.
FREYA:
Yeah, exactly. And we wanted to end this episode on that note. Not with more theories, or with more outrage. Just with a reminder that sometimes the loudest voices don’t know the truth. They just want or need someone to blame.
KENNEDY:
Next week, we’ll be interviewing Heather Voss’s sister and taking a closer look at what the victims left behind: their families, their stories, and the lives that were shattered in the aftermath.
FREYA:
Until then, take care of yourselves. And if you have any relevant memories or stories related to Corwin Bay Regional Hospital circa 2014… we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at the email address on our website, afterthecarver.com.
KENNEDY:
As always, thanks for listening. Bye for now.
[Outro music fades in—low and haunting]