Prosecutors say DNA excluded Carter as crime-scene match
Carter’s release follows more than a decade of legal challenges and a September announcement by Utah prosecutors that newly analyzed DNA evidence excluded him as a possible source of blood found on the victim’s doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of a kitchen knife found near her body.
Eva Olesen was stabbed multiple times and then shot in the back of her head at her home in Provo, Utah, in February 1985. She was the aunt of a local police chief. The knife recovered from the scene came from her kitchen; the gun was not found at the scene.
Carter, who is originally from Chicago, had been living with his mother in Utah at the time of the killing. Court documents show that police suspected him of killing Olesen during a robbery. Believing he was a suspect in an unrelated case, Carter fled Utah but was eventually found in Nashville, Tennessee. He then signed a confession while under interrogation that he has maintained was coerced.
At his original trial, no physical evidence linked Carter to the crime scene. A jury convicted him based on the confession and the testimony of two witnesses who said Carter had bragged about the murder. In 2011, both witnesses recanted, saying they had been told to lie in court, given cash and gifts by police, and threatened with deportation if they did not testify against Carter.
Carter’s defense lawyers, noting that Carter is Black, have argued that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to Olesen’s husband, Orla Olesen. They say witnesses reported seeing a white man fleeing the scene and that prosecutors were close to filing charges against the husband before a police officer asked them not to so he could continue investigating. Orla Olesen, who told police he had found his wife dead in their home, died in 2009.
Last year, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial, citing misconduct by investigators. On Monday, a judge granted Carter bail despite objections from the victim’s family, requiring him to wear a GPS monitor while on release.
Theresa Olesen, a daughter-in-law of Eva Olesen, told the bond hearing that her family had “serious concerns” about Carter’s release and that he should remain in jail while awaiting a new trial. “By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,” Olesen said of the DNA analysis, adding that the result does not exclude Carter’s presence at the scene.
Carter’s defense attorney, Neal Hamilton, called for the case to be dismissed entirely. “If the state of Utah had their way, he would have been executed 15, 20 years ago before we discovered the misconduct,” Hamilton told the Associated Press.
Carter has consistently maintained his innocence.