Partial transcript from ‘After the Carver’ Episode 1
[Intro music fades in]
FREYA (host) :
Welcome to After the Carver . I'm Freya Landis—
KENNEDY (co-host) :
—and I’m Kennedy Campbell. Thanks for joining us.
FREYA :
In today’s episode, we’re diving into the first known case connected to the Carver. And… it’s personal. Because the victim was Kennedy’s father.
[Brief beat of silence. Music fades out.]
KENNEDY :
This one’s hard for me to talk about, but it’s where everything began. So let’s get into it.
For those of you who aren’t from Corwin Bay, let me paint a picture of the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s a pretty idyllic area. Quiet, tree-lined streets, not far from the ocean. The kind of place where everyone knows their neighbors. It never felt unsafe… until that night.
That’s why what happened next hit so hard. It was like evil had slipped in through the cracks of a perfect place.
FREYA :
Can you tell our listeners how old you were?
KENNEDY :
I’d just turned twelve. My younger sister was eight.
FREYA :
And you were the only witness to what happened that night, weren’t you?
KENNEDY :
Yes. But to explain that, I’ll need to give our listeners some background on my dad.
FREYA :
Go ahead.
KENNEDY :
My father was a general surgeon at Corwin Bay Regional Hospital. That meant he worked long hours, often at weird times.
FREYA :
Like, starting or ending shifts at midnight? That sort of thing?
KENNEDY :
Yeah. Pretty much what you’d expect with a career like his.
Anyway, that left my mother with the bulk of the day-to-day stuff when it came to me and my sister.
But we’d try our best to steal little moments with Dad when we could.
And… that’s actually how I ended up being the only witness to his abduction.
FREYA :
Wow. Can you elaborate?
KENNEDY :
At the time, Dad was working fourteen-hour shifts that ended around 1:30 in the morning. So he’d get home a long time after the rest of us were asleep. Because I was so young, I still had a set bedtime of 8:30. My mom was very strict with that.
FREYA :
Oh, I remember that! At school, you’d complain so much about how all the ‘cool parents’ let their kids go to bed at 9:30 instead. Or they just didn’t have bedtimes at all.
KENNEDY :
[Laughs lightly] Yeah. Now that I’m older, I know my mom was just trying to make sure I got enough sleep. But when you’re a kid, you don’t care about stuff like that. So… I had a little rebellion scheme going on.
FREYA :
Mind expanding on that?
KENNEDY :
Sure. I’d go to sleep at 8:30, but I’d have an alarm set for 1:45. That way I’d be awake when Dad got home. I’d go to the window and wave at him as he got out of his car and walked up the front path. Sometimes I’d do a silly little dance. Sometimes he would too.
FREYA :
That’s so cute.
KENNEDY :
Yeah. [Laughs lightly again] Sometimes he’d also do this ‘bit’ where he’d pretend he saw Mom coming outside to catch us. He’d act like we were both in big trouble. Shocked gestures, fake gasps. Stuff like that.
FREYA :
I love that. How long did you guys keep it up?
KENNEDY :
Not long. Just for a few minutes, and then I’d crawl into bed and go back to sleep.
But those few minutes really helped me at the time, because Dad was hardly ever home on weekdays for dinner or after-school events—through no fault of his own, of course—so our silly little nighttime ritual made me feel like we still had something special to share every day. Even if it was just for a few minutes.
FREYA :
I totally get it. And I think we’re all starting to see why you were the only witness to the abduction.
KENNEDY :
Yup. He was taken from the front of our house, around 1:50 in the morning, on January the 13 th , 2014. I guess the Carver assumed there’d be no witnesses.
FREYA :
Because how many people are awake and staring out of their windows at that time of night, right?
KENNEDY :
Exactly.
FREYA :
Could you run us through everything that happened on the night of the 13 th ?
KENNEDY :
My alarm woke me at 1:45, and I ran straight to the window to wait. A few minutes later, Dad pulled into the driveway.
Now, a quick description of my childhood front yard. The driveway was on the right with an attached garage at the end, and next to it, there was a garden and a patch of lawn with a cobbled path leading up to the front door.
You can enter the house through the garage once you’re inside it, but Dad never did that. Instead, he’d park in the garage, and then he’d walk back outside to check the mail before coming up the front path and entering the house through the front door.
FREYA :
And that’s when you’d catch each other’s eye through your upstairs window and do your little dance routine.
KENNEDY :
Yep, that’s right. But that night, things were different.
FREYA :
How so?
KENNEDY :
A car pulled up across the road while Dad was walking toward our mailbox. A black sedan.
FREYA :
Sorry to butt in here, but a few people have questioned this over the years, wondering how you knew for sure that the car was black when it was the middle of the night.
They say it could’ve been dark gray or dark blue.
So I thought it might be useful for you to explain to our listeners how you knew for certain.
KENNEDY :
Good point. I could tell it was black because the moonlight was so bright that night. Also, our neighbor across the street had two cars that were always parked outside their garage. One was very dark gray, and the other was dark blue.
FREYA :
So you could tell the difference between those cars and the one that pulled up, because they were all in your line of sight.
KENNEDY :
Yup, exactly. The car was definitely black.
FREYA :
So what happened after it pulled up?
KENNEDY :
My dad noticed it and looked over. A man got out and approached him.
He was tall and wearing dark clothing with his hood pulled up.
From the angle he was walking at, and also because I was on the second floor looking down, I couldn’t really see his face.
Just a few brief flashes of his jawline.
I could tell he was white, but that’s it.
FREYA :
How did you feel in that moment?
KENNEDY :
Right then? I wasn’t scared yet. In fact, I didn’t think much of it at all, because as the man approached my father, he gestured in a way that made it seem like he was lost and looking for directions.
My father clearly interpreted it the same way, because he lifted his hand in a casual, friendly sort of wave, and then he pointed down the street before making a ‘turn right’ sort of gesture.
As for the hood pulled all the way up… that wasn’t suspicious either, because it was the middle of winter.
FREYA :
Ah. So you thought it was just some guy who happened to get lost in the middle of a freezing night. Then he saw your dad and decided to stop and ask for directions.
KENNEDY :
Yep, that was all I thought at the time. So I wasn’t worried.
FREYA :
What happened after that?
KENNEDY :
The guy waved like he was saying thanks.
Then he turned around, like he was going to head back to his car.
My dad checked the mailbox, found it empty, and turned around too, so he could head up the front path toward the house.
I waved at him from the window, and he stopped and looked up, smiling at me.
Just as he lifted his hand to wave, I noticed something. The hooded man had turned back around and entered our front yard.
FREYA :
He was following your dad?
KENNEDY :
Yes. Even then, I didn’t really know what to think. I definitely thought it was strange , but I figured he might’ve forgotten the directions my dad gave him, or something like that. So I still wasn’t scared. More like… ‘ Huh? What’s happening now? ’.
FREYA :
It’s one of those things where in hindsight, you can totally hear the alarm bells ringing, but in the moment, your brain just scrambles to explain it all away.
KENNEDY :
Exactly. I’m pretty sure my dad had the same thought process as me, because when he heard the guy behind him, he didn’t look scared.
Just confused. He turned around and slowly lifted his hand in a vague sort of wave, with his head tilted like he was asking a question.
I couldn’t hear anything, but I’m pretty sure he would’ve been saying something like, ‘ Hey, is everything okay? Did you need something else? ’.
FREYA :
Yeah, I can totally picture that.
KENNEDY :
That’s when things started to happen. The man got really close and lifted his right hand, and there was a glint in the moonlight. I know now that it was a knife. But like I said, I was trying to rationalize things in my mind. So I just thought, ‘ Is that his phone? ’.
[Brief beat of silence.]
I still mentally kick myself for not realizing what was happening sooner.
FREYA :
You were just a kid. And like you said before, that part of Corwin Bay is so idyllic. You’d never expect anything bad to happen there. Especially because before that night, the Carver hadn’t done anything. So no one even knew to be scared of him.
KENNEDY :
That’s true. No one ever saw it coming.
FREYA :
What happened after you saw that glint?
KENNEDY :
There was a blur of movement. Dad sort of stumbled forward, like he’d been punched. Then I saw a few drops of blood hit the ground. It was obvious what it was, because the yard was covered in snow.
FREYA :
By then, you knew something terrible was happening.
KENNEDY :
Yes. I started screaming and banging on the window. I was screaming for my dad, but also screaming for my mom to wake up.
FREYA :
What happened then?
KENNEDY :
While I was screaming, the man started dragging my father down the path. Dad struggled a little, but he went limp pretty fast. He was just losing so much blood.
[Sniffs]