Our card this week is Carole Clement, the Ace of Hearts from Florida. When a beloved mother and grandmother is found stabbed to death inside her own home in an affluent seaside community, detectives are immediately suspicious of her soon-to-be ex-husband. But when his alibi seemed to check out, they were compelled to look at less obvious alternatives. Was this a murder-for-hire plot, or could the killer be someone much closer to Carole than they’d previously assumed?If you know anything about the murder of Carole Clement in Naples, Florida, in March of 1992, you’re urged to come forward. You can remain anonymous by submitting a tip through Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers online or by calling them at 1-800-780-8477.Additional ways to contact Naples Police directly:Napes Police Department AppNumber for Naples Police Department: (239) 213-3000Lieutenant Robert Young’s Desk Line: (239) 213-4823Email for Naples Police Department: [email protected] Robert Young’s Email: [email protected] View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/carole-clement Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: What happened to Carole Clement?
Our card this week is Carol Clement, the Ace of Hearts from Florida. When a beloved mother and grandmother is found stabbed to death inside her own home in an affluent seaside community, detectives were immediately suspicious of her soon-to-be ex-husband. But when his alibi seemed to check out, they were compelled to look at less obvious alternatives. Was this a murder-for-hire plot?
Or could the killer be someone much closer to Carol than they previously assumed? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Lieutenant Robert Young told us it was late Sunday morning, March 8th, 1992, when a woman named Welma stopped by her 51-year-old daughter's place on Gulf Shore Boulevard North in Naples, Florida.
At about 10.45, 10.50, Carol's mom was coming back from church and she had to drop off a dress that she wanted her daughter to bleach or do something with. And she drove to her daughter's condo and she noticed that her daughter's car was not there.
So she had keys to the condo, and when she went, there were some pamphlets that had been shoved in the door, in the wedge of the door, and she made her way in. And when she went in, she saw the living room looked like it was in disarray, and then she saw her daughter, obviously deceased with multiple stab wounds, blood everywhere, and
mortally wounded, laying on the floor, partially in the kitchen part in the living room. She's laying, a portion of her was just outside of the kitchen area. There were three knives missing from the butcher block. Two of those knives were laying on the kitchen counter. The third knife, the biggest one, was laying across her chest and neck. And that was ultimately proved to be the murder weapon.
So there was also a pillow that was found and detectives theorized that that may have been used to muffle her from screaming in agony from all the stab wounds, which I think we believe were about between 13 to 15 stab wounds. When she was taken to the medical examiner's office, they were right in that range. Obviously, there was a significant one to her neck.
She had like a large t-shirt on and she had underwear underneath it. And the underwear were intact. Sexual assault kit was taken and there was no indication that this was a sexually related attack. Her living room table was turned over. So it appeared maybe she was running around the table and the assailant just flipped the table over and got to her. Her shirt pocket was torn off.
Like it's almost maybe someone grabbed it and yanked it off.
From what they could tell, this didn't look like a burglary gone wrong. In fact, the only thing missing was Carol's car. So it appeared that the sole purpose of whoever was inside Carol's home was to come in, kill her, and leave. And maybe through the sliding glass door that led out to Carol's second-story balcony as it had been left wide open.
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Chapter 2: How did the investigation unfold initially?
Wellma told detectives that James had connections, suggesting that if it wasn't him who was responsible for Carol's murder, then he would have had the means to hire someone else to do it for him.
Off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly, so I'll paraphrase, but she said, if it's Jim, he can get people from anywhere or he can be anywhere. But he was immediately mentioned in items that detectives had recovered at the time. And Wilma had mentioned during interviews with them that she said, if anything did happen to me, that it was Jim Clement who was responsible.
Detectives learned that Carol and James, or Jim as most people call him, they'd been separated for about three years or so, with Jim now living in Northern Virginia and Carol in their Naples condo while working in real estate. But the two were still in the process of a nasty divorce battle, one that was actually set to be finalized in about a week's time. So the question was, where was Jim now?
What were his movements? What were Carol's? And had they crossed paths in her last day alive? From speaking with Carol's neighbors and loved ones, police started putting together a timeline of her last movements leading up to when she was discovered. She was seen washing her car in the complex parking lot at some point late that afternoon.
Then, there was a friend who spoke to her on her landline at around 7.30 p.m. And in that call, they hadn't noted anything alarming. Now, another call came into Carol's line at 9 or 9.30 p.m., but this one, Carol didn't pick up. Now, the medical examiner gave a rough estimate that her time of death might have been sometime around midnight. So...
The question is, was Carol incapacitated in some way as early as 9 p.m., or was she just busy and didn't answer her phone? And if she was killed around midnight, what had the killer been doing for the somewhere around 7 hours between then and when her car was moved at around 7.15 in the morning? Investigators wondered why the killer would have even bothered taking the car anyway.
Did they not have their own ride? Did it have to be used as a getaway? And maybe it's the latter based on where they ended up locating Carol's white Ford Taurus the very next day on Monday night.
The car is located at the Fort Myers Airport. It's a rest area. One of the attendants who checked in the rest area saw that the car had been here a while. It's got no tag on it. Looked inside. Doors were locked. Nothing appeared out of place. The back seats, though, were pulled out off their slide. But I don't know if Carol did that. Don't know if the suspect did that.
But the car was left there and the plates were removed. The theory was, okay, someone took it there, dropped it off, because the airport is literally less than a mile away at the time.
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