Serialously with Annie Elise
273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre
Mon, 12 May 2025
This week on Serialously with Annie Elise, it started as an ordinary night among friends—but ended in one of the most harrowing and brutal crimes in modern history. In December 2000, five friends in Wichita, Kansas were suddenly ambushed in their own home by two armed intruders. Over the course of several hours, they were terrorized, humiliated, and forced to do the unthinkable to one another, all while being driven to their own execution. What unfolded was a chilling display of cruelty and control, known today as the Wichita Massacre. Why were they targeted—and how did one survivor live to tell the story? 🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks 🔎 Join The Club: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to EXTRA deep dive episodes every week on Apple! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 🌸 SPRING MERCH IS OFFICIALLY HERE! 🌸 Shop now at https://annieelise.com/collections/shop-all Don't miss out before your faves sell out! 🛒🌷 Follow Annie on Socials 📸 🩷Instagram: @ _annieelise 💜TikTok: @_annieelise 🗞️ Substack: @annieelise 💙Facebook: @10tolife ⭐️Sponsors ⭐️ Chime Financial: Open your account in 2 minutes at http://CHIME.COM/SERIALOUSLY. Everyday Dose: Get 45% off your first subscription order of 30-servings of Coffee+ or Bold+. You'll also receive a starter kit with over $100 in free gifts including a rechargeable frother and gunmetal serving spoon by going to http://everydaydose.com/AE or entering AE at checkout. RoBody: Head to http://Ro.co/AE for free insurance check. Shop Annie’s Closet & Must-Haves! 👗 Poshmark: https://posh.mk/Tdbki6Ae0Rb ShopMY: https://shopmy.us/annieelise Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/10tolife?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_aipsfshop_BKN1ZMCMEZHACVFQ2R75&language=en_US Disclaimer ‣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 🎙️ Follow the podcast for FREE on all podcast platforms! Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6HdheEH8WeMTHoe5da34qU All Other Platforms: https://audioboom.com/channels/5100770-serialously-with-annie-elise Get Involved or Recommend the Case 💬 About Annie: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [email protected] Episode Sources 🔗 AP News Crime Library Racerealist.com The U.S. Supreme Court The Wichita Eagle Wikipedia *Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. •••••••••••••••••• Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.
Chapter 1: Who were the Carr brothers and what was their crime spree?
Over the course of six days, the Carr brothers embarked on a reign of terror that culminated in the heinous murders of five people.
Someone was seeking shelter from these sub-zero winter temperatures. She was completely naked and bleeding from the head.
The level of violence, randomness, and cruelty of their actions shocked not only the city of Wichita, but the entire country.
The brothers decided they were going to go on a crime spree in Wichita, Kansas.
Because the actions of the two men had escalated substantially in a matter of days, they were likely to strike again and again, with their crimes getting worse and worse each time.
Their crimes highlighted the fragility of everyday life, showing how quickly one can become a victim of senseless brutality.
So begins one of the most brutal acts of violence in the history of Kansas.
Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist League. Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise.
I hope you guys all had a great weekend, that you are having a nice start to your week, getting ready to, you know, whatever you're doing, whether you're working out, whether you're driving to work right now, maybe you're at home cleaning, whatever it is you're doing. I hope that you had a great weekend and you are, like, ready to kick this week's ass. Now...
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Chapter 2: What happened during Andrew Schreiber's carjacking?
I mean, just the fact that it was so random and seemingly out of nowhere, because remember, Wichita wasn't really known for carjackings, for violent holdups, for violent crimes, things like that. So even though Andrew reported it to the police and gave them as many details as he possibly could...
They didn't really have a lot to go off of to get a clear picture of who these criminals could be, who they were. And nobody was immediately arrested for it. There was some security footage, yes, at these ATMs, but it was really hard to see these two guys' faces. So what happened to Andrew was terrifying for sure.
But at the time, it seemed kind of like a one-off type of thing, a one-off type of crime, just sort of a freak crime that wasn't going to be reported. But then, three days later, something really out of the ordinary in that area happened again. And this time, it was more violent. And this time, the victim was a librarian. Somebody who could not have been more harmless.
Ann Walenta was the definition of community. She was a 55-year-old woman, a well-spoken, well-respected librarian. and super talented at cello and played in the local symphony orchestra. Her life was full of music, books, family, and she was the kind of person who really was admired and liked by everybody who knew her.
Anne and her husband lived in a very peaceful, upscale neighborhood in a cozy, single-story house. And it was the kind of house and the kind of neighborhood and place where people felt safe and where crime seemed like something that happened somewhere else. But then on December 11th, 2000, so just a couple of days after this incident that happened with Andrew,
Anne pulled into her driveway just after 9.30 PM. She was just getting home from a rehearsal for the local symphony orchestra. She had spent the entire evening doing what she loved, playing music, surrounded by her people, bringing beautiful sounds to life, just really, you know, having a wonderful evening.
And like Andrew thought just a few days before, she had no reason to think that this evening was going to be any different than all of the other times she had done this same thing. Especially because, remember, at this point she was home. She was home safe in her own driveway.
So as Anne sat in her SUV, you know, gathering up some things before heading inside for the night, a man appeared at her window. He walked right up to her car and said that he needed help. But something about this whole thing, it felt off to Anne because her gut was telling her that something bad was about to happen. And she felt like she had to trust these instincts. She wanted to trust her gut.
So Anne threw her SUV into reverse, she hit the gas, and she tried to get away from this person as fast as possible. But in that moment, everything changed because the person who was standing outside her car shouted at her not to move. And then he pulled out a gun and he shot at her multiple times.
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Chapter 3: How did the attack on librarian Ann Walenta escalate the situation?
It was just two guys coming to town who were in their 20s looking for, I don't know, I guess you could say some kind of adventure or something. But here's the thing. Even with that, as I say it out loud, the Carr brothers, their definition of adventure probably differed a lot more than what ours would be.
I mean, my definition of adventure might be like a vacation, maybe trying out a new restaurant, maybe going on vacation. A hike, because that's not really in my normal realm of things that I do. But for these brothers, adventure meant a violent crime spree. And little did everybody know that Wichita's nightmare was only just beginning.
And for five friends who lived in the area, the worst night of their lives was about to begin.
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Chapter 4: What was the background and upbringing of the Carr brothers?
So Jason was actually a little bit annoyed because, I mean, he was getting ready to go to sleep, he and Holly were both tired, he wants to get out of, like, your bed when you're really exhausted and go turn off a light, and when people are talking, I get it, it's annoying. But before he even got a chance to get out of bed and go turn this light off,
one of the Carr brothers barged into Jason's bedroom with a gun. Jason screamed as literally the covers were being pulled off of the bed, and at the same time, the other brother dragged Aaron into the room and then threw him on the bed, right where Holly and Jason were laying. Holly's dog, Nikki, knew that something was off. She knew that something was going on.
So this dog just starts barking and barking, but they didn't like that, obviously. So they yelled to Holly and said, hey, you better shut this dog up or I'm going to kill it. Like, get it under control. Stop the barking. Then once that was taken care of, they listed their next demand. And they said they needed to know right now who else was in that apartment.
Now, Holly and Jason were obviously terrified, but they also knew they needed to comply with what they were being asked to do, because if they didn't, there was no way that they were going to make it out of this situation. So they gave the brothers the names. They said Brad and Heather.
Now, at the time, Brad had been asleep downstairs, and Heather was sleeping in one of the other upstairs bedrooms alone by herself. So right away, one of the brothers went and grabbed Brad and Heather and brought them back into Jason's room. So all five of these friends now are all in this single bedroom.
Which, imagine that you're all just going to sleep, a group of friends in your respective bedrooms, and then a stranger bursts down your door, rips you out of your bed, and then throws you in this other room where your friends are. It's terrifying. And as if things weren't already scary enough, they were about to even get way more horrifying.
Now, at first, it seemed like maybe the Carr brothers were just going to rob everybody because they started yelling about getting their ATM cards, about wanting to know where the money was in the home.
So it seemed like a robbery and that that was the motive here, which the group of friends had no problem giving over their bank cards, whatever cash they had on them, because again, they just wanted this whole ordeal to be over. They wanted to get out of this situation without being hurt. But Reginald and Jonathan, they had a very different idea of how this night was going to go.
And I just want to throw out a very quick trigger warning that we are about to get into some very graphic details. First, the Carr brothers told all five of the friends that they needed to take their clothes off.
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Chapter 5: Who were the five friends targeted in the Wichita Massacre?
Each of these friends, just kind of in this line, they all had to watch as the friends before them were shot in the head execution style, just waiting for their turn when they were up and when they were going to be shot. But that wasn't enough. Even after shooting all five of the friends in the head, these brothers wanted to make sure that they were truly dead.
So they jumped back in Jason's truck and they ran over the bodies just to make sure that they were dead and then they sped away. Once the brothers drove off, all five of these friends' bodies were just laying there in the snow, on the ground, bullet wounds and motionless. But then one of them moved. So you guys know I'm not a coffee drinker. Never have been. Never really have gotten into it.
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One of these friends that had been shot in the head was still alive. Holly had somehow miraculously survived this. It turns out that the bullet that hit her head actually deflected off of a plastic butterfly hair clip that she had in her hair. And you may remember the kind from the early 2000s, right? It's the tiny little colorful butterflies.
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Chapter 6: How did the horrific night unfold inside the friends' apartment?
And listening back, it's almost as if Holly was trying to get out her whole story as fast as she could. Tell them exactly what happened, you know, as fast as possible in case she was going to die too. That way they would have all of the information. Just pure panic and chaos. So when the cops got to the scene of these executions, it was clear that Holly was the only survivor.
Jason, Heather, Brad, and Aaron, they were all dead at the scene. And this just really makes me feel for Holly, because think about how grateful you are to have survived something like that, but then you're also trying to deal with the fact that you lost all of your friends, you lost your potential fiancé,
it's somebody who she was going to spend the rest of her life with possibly, that they're all dead and that you're the one who survived. I would imagine that there's some survivor's guilt in that. And I think the same can be argued, and I've been saying it from day one, the Idaho 4 case.
And I'm not going to go off a whole, you know, diatribe on it, but those two girls, Bethany and Dylan, have gotten so much crap in the online world.
for how they responded how they acted the delay in the 911 call but we don't know what happened we don't know why we don't know what trauma they went through and think about after the fact think about the survivor's guilt that I would imagine that they are both feeling that four of their friends and roommates were brutally murdered yet they somehow survived and my thought on that personally and I can go into this on a whole different episode is I think that it's because Zanna and Ethan weren't even the target that night I
Heck, I don't even think that Kaylee was the target that night. I think Maddie was. And I think that when he came downstairs, he was surprised by Zanna since she was still awake, had ordered the DoorDash and was on TikTok. And that's why she fought back so much. But my point in saying all of that is survivor's guilt is a very real thing.
And now that's something that Holly was going to have to deal with. So when the news started breaking the next morning, the entire city was on edge. I mean, everybody was scared because now not only were they hearing about this horrific quadruple execution, almost five people execution, but these cold-blooded killers, they were still on the loose. They still were out there. Anybody could be next.
Not only that, but as the dots were starting to be connected with all of the other crimes, it meant that these brothers had been on a crime spree for over a week. And a crime spree that clearly was escalating. It went from a carjacking and letting him go safely to a shooting. Remember, shooting the librarian Anne in her own driveway. Now, this horrific execution-style mass killing continues.
and sexual assault of this group of kids. I mean, who's to say what was going to come next, right? So naturally, a manhunt began. Now, one of the biggest pieces of evidence that the police knew would help them track down the killers was the fact that Jason's truck was still missing.
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Chapter 7: What were the details of the assaults and hostage situation?
But once they entered, it didn't take them long to find Reginald, and as soon as they did, they slapped the handcuffs on him and were going to bring him in. Now luckily, he didn't put up a fight, and when they searched him, they even found a gas card that belonged to Jason. They also found a watch that belonged to Heather, and a little under $1,000 in cash.
Now, somebody else who was watching the news that day was Andrew Schreiber. And remember, Andrew was the very first victim in the carjacking. And when he saw the face of Reginald blasted all over the TV once he was arrested, he called the police immediately and said, yeah, that's him. That's the guy. That's one of the guys who carjacked me.
So now the police had gotten one of the guys, but they still needed to get the other brother, Jonathan. And little did they know, they were about to get a tip from a woman named Tony who would share exactly where Jonathan was. Now, Toni had been working in the healthcare field, and that day she was a little bit sick at work, so she went home early.
When she got home, she was cleaning the house, she was listening to the news, and then something caught her attention because the news was giving a description of Jonathan Carr. And when she saw that, she's like, wait, wait, wait, this sounds an awful lot like the man who's asleep on my couch at this very moment. Which, let me just explain how all of that came to be.
Tony had a daughter named Tronda, and Tronda had been dating a new guy for literally about one week, the same amount of time as this crime spree had been going on, and it turns out that that guy was Jonathan Carr.
Now, Tony was obviously really spooked that whatever she was hearing on the news at this moment seemed a lot to be in line with the description of this person, her daughter's boyfriend, who's sleeping on the couch. It matched the description, it seemed like it was him, but then the news also mentioned the stolen engagement ring of Holly's.
So she decided to creep over and start going through Jonathan's leather jacket, checking the pockets, seeing what's in there. And sure enough, she found the diamond ring that Jason had bought for Holly. And she knew that there was no way that this ring could be for her daughter. I mean, they had only been dating for a single week.
So Tony immediately went and grabbed her daughter and also a niece who was staying there at the time as well. And she's like, we have to leave. We have to get out right now. There is a wanted murderer sleeping in our house. So the three women left the house immediately. And I'm talking so fast that they didn't even put shoes on. They just got the hell out of there and went to a neighbor's house.
And when they got to the neighbor's house, they called 911. And they said, you know, I think we have this Jonathan Carr guy at our house. I think he's asleep right now in my house. Now get this, as these women, after they called 911 from the cell phone and as they were approaching the neighbor's house, they looked back at their own house.
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Chapter 8: How did the attackers control and terrorize their victims throughout the night?
And it turns out that the brothers were incredibly sloppy about everything that they did. Their DNA was everywhere at the house, and not to mention the police had already found a ton of the belongings in the brothers' possessions that they had stolen. And as if that wasn't enough, remember, we also have the eyewitness accounts from Andrew, Anne, and Holly. They all said, yeah, these are the guys.
However, unfortunately, Andrew and Holly were going to be the only survivors who could testify and finally see justice be had against these brothers, because sadly, Anne died of her gunshot injuries right before the trial began. Reginald and Jonathan were both charged with felony murder, which that was for killing Anne.
Then they were charged with four counts of capital murder, which is considered an incredibly serious charge because it means that it can result in the death penalty. And usually, capital murder is reserved for cases where maybe like a child, a public official, or several people were killed, or when maybe there's torture involved before the killing.
And from everything that we know about this case, that absolutely fits the bill, right? Because those five friends, I mean, they were put through pure hell before they were killed that night. Now as for why the victims were chosen, don't worry, I'm going to get to that, and it is truly terrifying.
So in total, there were 113 counts against the brothers, and I'm not going to list them all here, but some of these included robbery, rape, kidnapping, felony murder, and then of course the capital murder charges. Now, when it came time for the jury to see the physical evidence in the case, there was enough to fill an entire room. I mean, literally.
The judge had to actually instruct people to watch their step so that they didn't trip over anything in the room. And when the trial started, both of the brothers were tried together. Which one thing that everybody was curious about was how the heck the defense team was even going to try to defend them for what they did.
I mean, I know everybody deserves a fair trial, but this was such a horrific act. There was so much evidence. It was going to be interesting to see what the defense came up with. But one thing that the defense tried to do was bring in a forensic psychologist named Dr. Preston. This psychologist testified about how the boys' childhood is what really messed them up.
The doctor even said that he took a look at some brain scans that belonged to the brothers, and that when he looked at these scans, they looked abnormal. According to him, both of the brothers had severe brain damage to their temporal lobes, which, that's the part of the brain that involves risk evaluation and even short-term memory.
The state of Kansas didn't bother to try to disprove any of the childhood stuff, but they did have an expert come in and look at those brain scans too. And this doctor said there was absolutely nothing abnormal about them. And essentially, the brothers were just trying to avoid the death penalty, and instead, they were hoping to get life in prison.
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