Evidence of Murder (18 page)

In their ongoing investigation, Cam Weir and John Linnert learned of an interview on the TV station WFTV, Channel 9, that reporter Rucks Russel held with a woman, Annette Moore.

The point of interest to the detectives was her address.

Weir told Linnert, “That’s right across the street from Angel and her mother’s house.”

Linnert replied, “We gotta talk to this Annette Moore.”

The two detectives met with Annette Moore on August 14. After a few introductory remarks, Moore readily agreed to be sworn in and to provide a statement of what she saw.

“Ms. Moore, will you please tell us what you know about a vehicle you saw here in this neighborhood?”

“Yes. It was all very strange. It was June eleventh. I know because that was my son Roger’s birthday.” She stopped to explain. “Because it was his birthday, I remember distinctly that was when I saw the white Ford parked at Faye Elms’s house. I think that they call that particular Ford, the Explorer.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Linnert said, “that’s right. And they are very popular.”

“It had gold trim around the bottom, and I think there were roof racks on the top of it.”

“Did you notice anything else?” Weir asked.

She hesitated, then added, “It looked like a new car, you know, like one that wasn’t driven around very much, and the windows weren’t tinted.”

“What was there about this vehicle that got your attention?” Detective Linnert inquired.

“Maybe this isn’t much, but it did catch my eye. When I first spotted the car, it was parked on the grass, just off the driveway to the left. I looked at that and thought that it was odd. I still don’t know why it was parked that way.”

“Is there something more, ma’am?” Linnert asked.

“I just wanted to say that I thought I saw that same vehicle parked at Angel’s twice. I’m not exactly sure, but I think I saw it there on two different occasions.” She thought for a moment, then clarified, “I think it was on June tenth that I first saw the Ford Explorer.”

The June 10 date raised the detectives’ investigative antenna.

“I didn’t do anything about it,” she continued, “but then I saw the incident mentioned on the television, about the woman being murdered in Orlando, and the disappearance of her vehicle.”

The detectives asked Annette Moore a barrage of follow-up questions, but she stated that she never saw a driver or anyone in that Ford Explorer. She could not make any other positive statements that the officers found helpful.

However, Moore said that her live-in boyfriend, Derek Hilliard, probably also saw the white Ford parked at the Elms house.

In the subsequent interview with Hilliard, he confirmed that he saw the vehicle. “I was on my way home from work at about four-thirty in the afternoon when I saw that white Ford Explorer.”

“Do you remember the date?” Linnert asked.

“I’m pretty sure it was on the eleventh, because that’s Roger’s birthday.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Linnert inquired.

“I just remember that it was a plain white Ford Explorer with windows that weren’t tinted.” He paused. “There’s something else, but I’m not sure about it.”

“It’s okay. Just tell us what’s on your mind,” Weir encouraged.

“A couple days after I first saw that Explorer, I thought I saw the same vehicle parked at the same residence. Only now it was black. Spray-painted black. It was a lousy paint job, with streaks and bands of uneven paint across the body.”

 

 

The July 29 edition of the
Orlando Sentinel
printed an article entitled
HUGGINS ARREST SHOCKS PASTOR
.

The writer stated, “A group of Christian missionaries is shocked that a volunteer they know is the prime suspect in the killing of an Orlando woman.

“John Steven Huggins is remembered for making at least 5 missionary trips to Haiti in the past 10 years to help run clinics and build churches and schools. ‘I’ve been beside John Huggins and seen the tears running down his cheeks in compassion for the children we were working with. I cannot imagine him hurting someone intentionally,’ said Pastor Sandy Stafford of Northwind Ministries on State Road A1A.”

The article also stated that John Huggins had an alcohol problem at one time, but Stafford thought he had put it behind him. He considered himself a born-again Christian.

 

 

Preparations began at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for the collecting and gathering of the diverse materials and enormous evidence that the detectives and their associates had compiled over the past several months. The compilation would be delivered to the state attorney’s office, which would present it to the grand jury.

On Wednesday, August 20, 1997, the Orange County grand jury indicted John Steven Huggins for the murder of Carla Ann Larson.

Thirty-five-year-old Huggins, whose entire life was devoted to a continuing career of robbery, burglary, wife beating and a variety of criminal activities, was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, carjacking and robbery.

Speaking to the national and local representatives of radio, television and press, Orange County/Osceola County State Attorney Lawson Lamar stated unequivocally that the state would seek the death penalty for John Huggins.

In his quiet, unemotional manner, Lamar said flatly, “Anytime someone as innocent as this lady is strangled to death, you have an excellent case for the penalty phase. Strangulation is a means of death which affords the killer a chance to stop. In this case he obviously didn’t stop.”

In the eager deluge of questions from the reporters, the dominant theme was whether the victim was sexually molested. The cautious state attorney carefully stated that it was not certain whether John Huggins would be charged with sexual battery.

On Monday, September 22, after being delivered to the Orange County Jail from incarceration in Sanford, John Steven Huggins made his first appearance in the court. He was charged with the first-degree murder of Carla Ann Larson, as well as the associated crimes of kidnapping, carjacking and robbery. He requested bail, which was summarily denied, and he was remanded to the Orange County Jail.

The criminal career of John Huggins continued to unfold like an old-time serial movie that linked one perilous adventure to another and another.

Cameron Weir entered the sheriff’s headquarters on Friday morning, September 26, and greeted John Linnert, who was already at his desk.

“Morning, John.” He seated himself at his own desk and asked, “Did you read the morning paper?”

“Not yet. Anything interesting in it?”

“Yeah.” Weir smiled. “There was a story that Huggins is now being linked with two robberies in Brevard County.”

“No fooling?” Linnert asked incredulously.

“No fooling,” Weir replied. “A Cocoa Beach policewoman, Kim Smith, said that Huggins is charged with two separate robberies at the Space Coast Credit Union. One on February twenty-third and one on June twelfth.”

Weir stopped, a grim expression crossing his face. “June twelfth,” he reminded his partner, “that’s the day Carla Larson’s body was discovered here in Orange County.”

“That’s right,” Linnert said thoughtfully. “He didn’t wait long after the murder. Guess he was short of money.” After a pause he asked, “You say he robbed the same bank twice?” Linnert was amazed at the audacity.

“That’s what the paper said. The story said that they suspected that the two felonies were committed by the same person, because in each case the man entered the credit union in the early afternoon, approached a teller and showed her a semiautomatic handgun and demanded money.” Weir paused, shook his head and said, “Wonder if it was a real gun or if it was the same plastic handgun discovered at the Salisbury Inn in Maryland. Anyhow, the robber was described as a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound man. Ironically, the witnesses to the bank robbery subsequently ID’d Huggins from his pictures shown when he was named a suspect in the Carla Larson murder.”

Linnert shook his head in amazement. “That guy is a never-ending surprise.”

The saga continued. On November 27, 1997, in Sanford, Florida, John Huggins was tried for possessing $5,000 worth of tools, stolen from a former neighbor in Oviedo. He pleaded no contest in February but asked to withdraw the plea, saying his judgment was impaired at the time of the plea. He said that at his birthday party, the day before the hearing, he used alcohol and methamphetamines.

Judge Seymour Benson, unmoved and unconvinced, rejected that excuse and sentenced him to fifteen months in prison.

 

 

Assistant State Attorney (ASA) Jeff Ashton felt complex emotions as he stared at the wall of his office in the new extravagant Orange County Courthouse in downtown Orlando. Moments ago Ashton had accepted an offer to assist the prosecutor of one of the most compelling, most publicized, most talked about cases of murder in his memory.

A pleasant man with incisive brown eyes, and slightly wavy grayish brown hair, Jeff’s tall, trim figure of 185 pounds packaged a personable fellow with an amiable smile.

As he sat at his desk, Ashton recalled the more than seventy murder trials that he had prosecuted in Orange County, Florida, and he concluded that none compared with the intensity, the interest or the challenge of this case.

A native of Florida from St. Petersburg, a graduate of the University of Florida and that institution’s law school, Class of 1980, Ashton was a 100 percent Sunshine State product.

His thoughts drifted back to the meeting with his good friend and fellow assistant state attorney Ted Culhan, who would prosecute the Huggins case.

Culhan had come into his office, and after he was seated, he faced Ashton with a serious expression. “I’d like you on this case with me, Jeff.”

Startled by the statement, Ashton had sat silent for a long moment looking at him questioningly.

Culhan, a stocky, 5’9”, brown-eyed, gray-bearded attorney, with a warm smile, then began to explain why he wanted to bring another attorney onto his case.

Ashton worked with Culhan for many years and knew the lawyer was capable of handling a big case alone, even one as important as this.

“Jeff,” he had continued, “I’m having some health problems, and at this point I don’t know how serious, but I would like you to work the case with me. How about it? Are you interested?”

Ashton, facing his friend and associate of two decades, had answered, “Sure, Ted, I’ll be glad to work with you.”

Jeff Ashton dragged his thoughts back to his desk and focused on the mountain of paperwork and evidence lying before him on this new case with which he would have to familiarize himself.

Ada Larson, who became Jim’s mother in a full sense when he was eight years old and she married his father, is a charming, capable woman, with engaging hazel eyes and dark blond hair.

She has somehow acclimated herself to tragedy. Remarkably strong, Ada Larson has experienced and lived with the intrusion of death into her quiet life since August 1990, when her daughter, Sonja, was one of the five victims brutally murdered in the Gainesville mass-killing spree by Danny Rolling.

In a further tragedy her husband, who never recovered from the grief in the loss of their daughter, succumbed to an early death.

Ada’s life suddenly veered from its comfortable orbit to focus on the subsequent trial and hearings of Danny Rolling, her daughter’s killer, which she attended with religious fervor.

Amazingly, Ada Larson somehow was able to cope with tragedy again, this time the loss of her beloved daughter-in-law. She wrote a column of thankful observations that appeared in the
Orlando Sentinel,
fittingly, on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1997.

She wrote: