Rob218
06-01-2004, 09:01 AM
Almost 20 years ago 3 of my family's best friends were murdered in Cold Blood on their boat that was docked near Channelview. The murderers were caught soon after and well, we're doing research on them to see if they are out of prison. We've discovered that Carl Napier, a repeat offender, was paroled and died a few years back of a combination of Hepatitis C, and Liver disease. We're looking for the other one, believed to be paroled named Charles Rummel. (he was sentence to 45 years) We are also on the hunt for the daughter of one of the people savagely murdered. Her name is Megan Michelle Carlin and was born in 1984. I'll post articles we've recovered:
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HUNTSVILLE - A paroled robber condemned for a shooting spree 15 years ago that left three people dead during a robbery aboard a tugboat in the Houston Ship Channel has died of natural causes in prison, officials said Monday. Carl Napier, 55, was found dead in a cell Sunday at the Stiles Unit near Beaumont where he had been taken last week for medical treatment, said Larry Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Death was attributed to hepatitis C and liver disease, he said.
Napier also received treatment at the prison hospital in Galveston Friday before he was returned to the Stiles Unit.
Napier, born in Lincoln County, N.M., was on parole from a 60-year robbery sentence in Dallas when he was arrested for the Feb. 20, 1986 shooting deaths of Jack and Martha Carlin, both 62, and their son, Andrew, 31.
Court and prison records show Napier and an accomplice broke into the boat, which had been renovated into a houseboat and was docked in the Houston Ship Channel, and shot the couple and their son before fleeing with a television and video recorder, a sewing machine, jewelry, a fur coat and some $5,000 in cash.
Evidence also showed Jack Carlin's finger had been hacked off by his killers so they could get a large diamond ring off his hand.
Napier was arrested the day after the slayings when police who stopped him on a bad check warrant found some of the stolen property in his car. They also found some of the stolen property at his apartment.
Napier insisted he was innocent, that he had loaned his car the night of the slayings and was at what he called a "dope house" elsewhere when the murders occurred.
"I've been guilty of a lot of things," he said in a death row interview. "But I'm not guilty in this case. I was doing wrong but I don't do robberies and kill people."
The accomplice, Charles Rummell, known as "Red-Headed Pete," pleaded
guiltyto a single murder charge and received 45 years in prison. He testified he shot Jack Carlin during a struggle over a shotgun and that Napier used a .32-caliber pistol to kill Carlin's wife and son.
Copyright: 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
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There actually were no signs of struggle on Jack's part. He was found dead sitting down in his chair. After Martha and Andrew heard the shots they came and we stopped in their footsteps. Megan is Andrew's Daughter and we're trying to find her as the Carlins where very close with our family. We do not plan to seek revenge or anything of the sort on Charles Rummel, but simply find out if he is dead, still in prison, or was paroled and where.
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Here's another article telling of the nature of the crime and what jurors thought of the murderers:
Jack Carlin and his wife, Martha, had a dream. They wanted to spend their retirement years in Belize and support themselves with a modest scuba-diving and fishing business.
In the early '80s, they bought an old tugboat and rebuilt it to include living quarters. By February 1986, they were packed; everything they were taking to Belize was stashed on the boat, which was docked near Channelview.
Shortly before they were scheduled to leave, two armed thugs boarded the boat, robbed the Carlins and killed them and their grown son, Andrew.
According to testimony and crime-scene photos, the murderers were brutal. They cut off their victims' fingers, for example, to steal rings.
"They definitely were not nice people. They weren't nice people at all," remembers Marion Couvillion, who served as jury foreman at Carl Napier's capital-murder trial. "I didn't even know there were people like that."
Couvillion, 70, says determining guilt or innocence was easy. Deciding between the death penalty and life in prison -- before that meant a mandatory 40-year sentence -- was much more difficult.
"Some of us wanted to give Napier life in prison without parole. Since we didn't have that option, I felt the only way to stop Napier was the death sentence," Couvillion says. "As long as he was alive, he was going to cause problems."
Jurors were told Napier had come close to murder on several other occasions; each time, his victims had escaped. In the most harrowing case, Couvillion says, Napier and a partner spent much of one night raping a teen-age girl. Napier threatened to kill her many times, but when he left for a beer, his accomplice let her go.
Napier had been in and out of prison. What worried Couvillion and his fellow jurors was that he seemed to have little difficulty getting out and was so dangerous when free.
Two jurors, both women, resisted the ultimate punishment. They believed Napier was guilty, Couvillion says, and they even believed in the death penalty.
"But they didn't want to make that leap. They didn't want that on their conscience. Really, I couldn't blame them. We asked the judge several times if we could make other recommendations. But he just got angry. We had our orders. We had two choices. Really, I think juries should have a little more input in such things."
After much discussion, jurors settled on the death penalty.
"We got along pretty well," Couvillion says. "In fact, one lady wanted to make a little club of it. She wanted to get together a year later. But I didn't agree to that. It didn't bother me to sentence this man -- sooner or later he was going to kill someone else -- but it did bother me to make a social thing out of it. This was, after all, a human life."
Napier was never executed. He died in prison, probably from liver disease, last July.
Over the years, Couvillion has served on several juries. His close look at the judicial system has hardly been reassuring, he says.
During the Napier case, both the prosecutor and the judge smoked, even though the courtroom was supposed to be a no-smoking facility.
The Associated Press
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So just to recap, we're trying to find two people, Megan Michelle Carlin, (Daughter of the late Andrew Carlin) and Charles Rummel, an accomplice in the murders. Megan was born in 1984 and that's all we know. We also know that there is a man in Texas named Charles Rummel LIVING in Harris County.
Thank you for reading this and if you can please contribute to a way we might find them.
Gratefully Yours,
Robert Campbell and The Eller Family
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HUNTSVILLE - A paroled robber condemned for a shooting spree 15 years ago that left three people dead during a robbery aboard a tugboat in the Houston Ship Channel has died of natural causes in prison, officials said Monday. Carl Napier, 55, was found dead in a cell Sunday at the Stiles Unit near Beaumont where he had been taken last week for medical treatment, said Larry Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Death was attributed to hepatitis C and liver disease, he said.
Napier also received treatment at the prison hospital in Galveston Friday before he was returned to the Stiles Unit.
Napier, born in Lincoln County, N.M., was on parole from a 60-year robbery sentence in Dallas when he was arrested for the Feb. 20, 1986 shooting deaths of Jack and Martha Carlin, both 62, and their son, Andrew, 31.
Court and prison records show Napier and an accomplice broke into the boat, which had been renovated into a houseboat and was docked in the Houston Ship Channel, and shot the couple and their son before fleeing with a television and video recorder, a sewing machine, jewelry, a fur coat and some $5,000 in cash.
Evidence also showed Jack Carlin's finger had been hacked off by his killers so they could get a large diamond ring off his hand.
Napier was arrested the day after the slayings when police who stopped him on a bad check warrant found some of the stolen property in his car. They also found some of the stolen property at his apartment.
Napier insisted he was innocent, that he had loaned his car the night of the slayings and was at what he called a "dope house" elsewhere when the murders occurred.
"I've been guilty of a lot of things," he said in a death row interview. "But I'm not guilty in this case. I was doing wrong but I don't do robberies and kill people."
The accomplice, Charles Rummell, known as "Red-Headed Pete," pleaded
guiltyto a single murder charge and received 45 years in prison. He testified he shot Jack Carlin during a struggle over a shotgun and that Napier used a .32-caliber pistol to kill Carlin's wife and son.
Copyright: 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
---------------------------------------------------------------
There actually were no signs of struggle on Jack's part. He was found dead sitting down in his chair. After Martha and Andrew heard the shots they came and we stopped in their footsteps. Megan is Andrew's Daughter and we're trying to find her as the Carlins where very close with our family. We do not plan to seek revenge or anything of the sort on Charles Rummel, but simply find out if he is dead, still in prison, or was paroled and where.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another article telling of the nature of the crime and what jurors thought of the murderers:
Jack Carlin and his wife, Martha, had a dream. They wanted to spend their retirement years in Belize and support themselves with a modest scuba-diving and fishing business.
In the early '80s, they bought an old tugboat and rebuilt it to include living quarters. By February 1986, they were packed; everything they were taking to Belize was stashed on the boat, which was docked near Channelview.
Shortly before they were scheduled to leave, two armed thugs boarded the boat, robbed the Carlins and killed them and their grown son, Andrew.
According to testimony and crime-scene photos, the murderers were brutal. They cut off their victims' fingers, for example, to steal rings.
"They definitely were not nice people. They weren't nice people at all," remembers Marion Couvillion, who served as jury foreman at Carl Napier's capital-murder trial. "I didn't even know there were people like that."
Couvillion, 70, says determining guilt or innocence was easy. Deciding between the death penalty and life in prison -- before that meant a mandatory 40-year sentence -- was much more difficult.
"Some of us wanted to give Napier life in prison without parole. Since we didn't have that option, I felt the only way to stop Napier was the death sentence," Couvillion says. "As long as he was alive, he was going to cause problems."
Jurors were told Napier had come close to murder on several other occasions; each time, his victims had escaped. In the most harrowing case, Couvillion says, Napier and a partner spent much of one night raping a teen-age girl. Napier threatened to kill her many times, but when he left for a beer, his accomplice let her go.
Napier had been in and out of prison. What worried Couvillion and his fellow jurors was that he seemed to have little difficulty getting out and was so dangerous when free.
Two jurors, both women, resisted the ultimate punishment. They believed Napier was guilty, Couvillion says, and they even believed in the death penalty.
"But they didn't want to make that leap. They didn't want that on their conscience. Really, I couldn't blame them. We asked the judge several times if we could make other recommendations. But he just got angry. We had our orders. We had two choices. Really, I think juries should have a little more input in such things."
After much discussion, jurors settled on the death penalty.
"We got along pretty well," Couvillion says. "In fact, one lady wanted to make a little club of it. She wanted to get together a year later. But I didn't agree to that. It didn't bother me to sentence this man -- sooner or later he was going to kill someone else -- but it did bother me to make a social thing out of it. This was, after all, a human life."
Napier was never executed. He died in prison, probably from liver disease, last July.
Over the years, Couvillion has served on several juries. His close look at the judicial system has hardly been reassuring, he says.
During the Napier case, both the prosecutor and the judge smoked, even though the courtroom was supposed to be a no-smoking facility.
The Associated Press
-------------------------------------------------------------------
So just to recap, we're trying to find two people, Megan Michelle Carlin, (Daughter of the late Andrew Carlin) and Charles Rummel, an accomplice in the murders. Megan was born in 1984 and that's all we know. We also know that there is a man in Texas named Charles Rummel LIVING in Harris County.
Thank you for reading this and if you can please contribute to a way we might find them.
Gratefully Yours,
Robert Campbell and The Eller Family