Jealousy, coupled with rage, appear to be a substantial part of the motive for the murder of Ashley E. Neville, according to a prosecutor in opening arguments in the murder trial of Anthony W. Carter in Bartholomew Superior Court 1.
That is essentially what Chief Deputy Prosecutor Kimberly Sexton-Yeager told a six-man, six-woman jury during opening arguments in the Anthony W. Carter murder trial. Bartholomew Superior Court 1 Judge James Worton is presiding.
Neville was killed in the early morning hours of April 16, 2023 inside her home along County Road 650S. Shortly after her body was found, the 50-year-old Carter was found hiding nearby, investigators said at the time.
Deputies with the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s office found several text messages and voice mails between the defendant and victim that indicate Carter believed that Neville, his girlfriend, had been seeing someone else, Sexton-Yeager said.
After getting off work at 10 p.m. the night before her death, Neville drove up to Carter’s home in Indianapolis to bring him back to her home near Azalia, the deputy prosecutor said. She added that after they arrived at the house, the arguments continued.
“He wanted to see what was in her phone, and he was very curt about that,” Sexton-Yeager told the jury. “He was upset that she had turned off the outside (security) camera feed, so he couldn’t see what she was doing when he wasn’t there.”
While being questioned during the investigation, Carter indicated he wanted to talk extensively about how poorly Ashley had treated them in their relationship, the chief deputy prosecutor said.
“There was something very consistent in all the stories (Carter) gave investigators,” Sexton-Yeager said. “And that is the defendant portraying himself as the victim.”
During his first interview, Carter told investigators he went into the bedroom and saw Ashley with her hand underneath the sheets, Sexton-Yeager said. According to the defendant, a struggle took place after Neville pulled out a gun that resulted in the gun going off accidentally, she added.
“(Carter) was so distraught that she was still alive,” Sexton-Yeager said. “He could hear her gurgling. He took his hand and put it on her neck. But he didn’t stop there. He went and got a bag and taped it to her head.”
It was revealed during the opening statements that an Ohio coroner had ruled that Neville died of both a gunshot wound and asphyxiation.
Convinced that Neville was dead, Carter started covering her body with items such as pillows, blankets, clothes and hangers, Sexton-Yeager said. She added that he threw the victim’s cellphone into a water-filled horse trough before fleeing the scene in the victim’s red Chevrolet Cruze.
Investigators believe he first stopped at his daughter’s home in Edinburgh to tell her she wasn’t going to see him for a while, Sexton-Yeager told the jurors. It was the daughter who called 911 to report her father had told her he had just killed his girlfriend, and that he didn’t regret it, she added. The daughter also gave police Neville’s address, the deputy prosecutor said.
While Carter drove to Indianapolis to tell his mother he had to disappear, the defendant claims he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her, so he drove back to Bartholomew County, Sexton-Yeager said.
Meanwhile, the 911 call from the defendant’s daughter resulted in sheriff’s deputies being sent to the victim’s home to make a welfare check. Upon arriving, deputies found the house was padlocked from the outside, with all doors and windows locked, according to Sexton-Yeager.
Upon arriving back in Bartholomew County, Carter abandoned the car in a farm field and began walking through dense woods and thickets to find his way back to Neville’s house, the deputy prosecutor told the jurors. But it wasn’t long before a neighbor spotted the Chevy Cruze and notified authorities that a random wrecked car was in his field, Sexton-Yeager said.
After deputies found out who owned the rental home where Neville lived, they received permission to do a sweep of the interior of the house, the deputy prosecutor told the jurors. She added that it was only after they removed several layers of clothes, pillows and blankets that they discovered the victim, who was dead.
Deputies received a lucky break when a young male on an all-terrain vehicle approached and informed them his mother had just seen a suspicious man walking in the nearby woods, Sexton-Yeager said. After an extensive amount of searching with a police dog, Carter was discovered nearby hiding in the brush, she said.
When Carter was asked where the murder weapon was, he told investigators it was somewhere between the house and the car, the deputy prosecutor said. But he would later admit he knew exactly where the weapon was, and the gun was found exactly where Carter said it would be, she said.
While officers are searching for the gun, Carter confided to Detective Kevin Abner that Neville never had the gun, Sexton-Yeager told the jurors. He admitted he took the weapon from where it was usually kept, and brought it into the bedroom where Yeager was in bed, she said.
Public defender Greg Long described what happened next as “a tragic accident that went out of control.” He told the jurors Carter only brought the gun into the bedroom to scare Neville into being truthful with him. Long repeatedly said his client had no intention of firing the gun.
“But in a moment of recklessness, the gun went off,” Long told the jurors. “It struck the victim in the temple above her left ear. He will admit he made a mistake by taking the gun into the bedroom. But the evidence will show he did not intend to shoot Ashley.”
After the shot was fired, Carter could see that Ashley was barely alive and he began to panic, the public defender said.
“(Carter) was terrified,” Long said. “He knew she had suffered a fatal head shot wound. He knew she was going to die. ”
Carter’s court-appointed attorney described his client’s act of taping a bag over the victim’s head as “a misguided and desperate attempt to end her suffering.”
The trial could last for a week-and-a-half, according to court officials. However, Bartholomew County prosecutor Lindsey Holden-Kay said she’s hopeful the trial will wrap up sooner than what is being predicted.
