Heidi Kathleen Carter, suspect in Evansville murder, has violent criminal history

Jon Webb Ray Couture
Evansville Courier & Press
Multiple bullet holes are marked on a front window of 1801 Stinson Avenue in Evansville, Ind., Wednesday morning, Oct. 20, 2021. Two people are dead, including one who was shot and killed by police, after law enforcement responded to a possible "murder and kidnapping" on the city's West Side Tuesday night.

EVANSVILLE – The living suspect in an incident that began with a meeting on a dating app and ended with a homicide and police-involved shooting has a violent history, court records show.

Heidi Kathleen Carter, 36, was preliminarily charged with felony murder, rape and abuse of a corpse after a man was found dead inside a house at 1801 Stinson Ave. on  Tuesday night.

Police say Carter and a second suspect, who is identified in a police report as her boyfriend, Carey Hammond, restrained both a man and a woman in chairs with duct tape, beating and abusing them for hours.

What we know:One suspect faces rape, murder charges and another dead after Stinson Ave. incident

Hammond eventually choked the male victim to death with a belt, investigators wrote in an affidavit. The Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office will release the victim's name after an autopsy Friday, coroner Steve Lockyear said.

The female victim survived and was taken to a hospital, police said.

Hammond reportedly became enraged after walking in on Carter and the victims having a sexual encounter. Police shot and killed him just after 11 p.m., when dash and body camera footage showed him stepping out of the front door clutching an object authorities thought was a gun.

It turned out to be a piece of metal or plastic twisted into the shape of a firearm, Evansville police spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Gray said during a news conference Wednesday. Investigators believe Hammond ultimately committed “suicide by cop.”

Heidi Kathleen Carter's criminal history

According to court records, Carter committed a pair of lower-level violent crimes in Central Indiana in the last few years.

She was sentenced to a year in Marion County jail in October 2018 for a domestic battery charge, court records state. As part of a plea agreement, Carter served just 13 days of that sentence.

She was also involved in an incident at a house in Franklin in September 2017. According to the Franklin police, Carter repeatedly punched one of the house’s occupants in the face for forgetting to close the front door and allowing Carter’s dog to run away. She later re-entered the home and attempted to break down the door to a bedroom the victim was in.

When police arrested Carter, she reportedly tried to kick officers before being placed in a jail van. She spent 54 days behind bars for resisting arrest and breaking and entering.

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All that pales in comparison to the charges Carter faces now. In addition to the felony murder, rape and abuse-of-a-corpse accusations, police also listed felony counts of criminal confinement with a firearm, intimidation with a firearm, felon in possession of a firearm, and assisting a criminal.

According to the affidavit, Carter helped Hammond restrain the victims, brandishing a firearm and telling them she "knows someone in Indianapolis that knows how to get rid of a body." 

She later told police she only pretended to help Hammond to appease him. 

Carter was scheduled to appear in Vanderburgh Circuit Court at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Gray said she believed Hammond has a criminal history as well. There are several cases under the name “Carey Hammond” in Indiana court records, but the Courier & Press couldn’t confirm if that was the Hammond police killed Tuesday night.

'Gruesome'

Hammond’s shooting was the culmination of a complicated, grisly sequence of events Gray described as “gruesome.”

According to the affidavit, Carter and the two victims met on a dating app.

“(Hammond) arrived home during their sexual activity,” police wrote in the affidavit. “Mr. Hammond became angry and began to beat (the victim) with a baseball bat.”

The female victim later told police that Carter helped Hammond restrain her and the male, and that she wielded a gun and made threats while Hammond raped the female victim.

Police only discovered all this after a woman reportedly came over to visit Carter.

According to the affidavit, the woman said she’d help Carter clean the house for a “landlord inspection.” Carter and the woman ordered pizza and cleaned at least two rooms near the front of the house before the woman heard a noise coming from a rear bedroom.

The woman "stated she heard a female asking for help and begging to use the restroom," the affidavit reads. "She then went to sit down on what she thought was a pile of pillows and blankets. She found after she sat down that under the blankets was a dead body,” the affidavit reads. 

Stinson Avenue crime scene:EPD: 2 dead on Evansville's West Side, including 1 shot by police

She told investigators Hammond initially didn’t allow her to leave, but she escaped and alerted an Indiana State Police trooper who happened to be nearby. The trooper relayed the situation to Evansville dispatchers as a possible “murder/kidnapping.”

Others found in home

Several other aspects of  the case remain unclear.

As of Wednesday, Gray said investigators didn’t know how Carter and Hammond ended up at the Stinson Avenue home, and that Carter wasn’t a resident there.

The man who police believes lives there exited the house with his hands up as soon as police arrived, and Gray said he isn’t a suspect. Two juvenile teenagers and several pets were also inside the home when police searched it.

The investigation, Gray said, is ongoing. And none of it was what police expected to encounter Tuesday night.

“The entire situation – from the first responding officer who was flagged down (and told) there was a dead body in this house … (to others) finding a victim who was tied up and beaten – it took officers by surprise,” she said.

Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com and Ray Couture at rcouture@gannett.com.