My best friend, Mike Fitchett had always said, even when we were kids, “I’ve always been afraid of finding a body in the water.” It would creep me out and make me jump out of whatever lake or river we were swimming in.
We were roommates, in our late 20’s, who ran Recycled Records at 34th and Guadalupe. We had grown up, best friends, since 9 years old, in Baltimore. We moved to Austin together in 1979.
One day we we were walking our dogs on Red Bud Island, We had separated from each other and I heard him call….”Steve??”…with a questioning sound. As I walked over to him he held his hand to the side of his face and was looking down at the water. Mike had really curly hair, kind of a Fro and, I swear his hair looked like it a chunked up like when a black person starts to grow dreadlocks, just separated into chunks.
He said “I always knew this would happen, Does that look like a mannequin to you?”
I didn’t even want to walk over there, I KNEW what he was looking at.
You could tell it was a person, facing down and disappearing above the waist as the water got deeper. You could make out toes….no mannequin….
We went and called the Police at The Omelttery, pre cell phone days, and showed the Cop where the body was. He said “I think I know who this is, we’ve been looking for her, all night.” We had to stay there as they took her body out of the water. I was so sad and I was outraged that someone had done this to another human being.
Carolyn “Katy” Davis was kidnapped from her apartment October 17, 1981 by Charles Rector, 27, Howard Ray Simon, 21, and Michael Anthony Miller, 21. All three were on parole and lived in the same half way house on East 12th Street in Austin, Texas. They had broken in when she was out and when she got home, they had her own loaded gun. They raped her, shot her in the head and threw her in the lake. Not dead from the gunshot wound..she drowned.
Michael Anthony Miller went back after the burglary and turned himself and the other 2 in, cut a deal and was acquitted. They caught the other 2. I went to trial (Mike had moved back to Baltimore and wouldn’t come back for the trial. It had freaked him out.) to identify her in the photos,with Rosemary Lehmberg as the prosecuting atty., (she went on to become District Atty. in Austin.) and Charles Rector was given the death penalty. He was executed, claiming innocence all the way. I remember being enraged in court, inside myself, but I wanted to jump the rail and kill that guy, myself.
The main “baddy”, Howard Ray Simon, he been caught wearing Katy’s clothes and class ring. He escaped weeks after being caught and was shot and killed by the 12 year old son of a convenience store customer, as he tried to rob the place. Killed, from the parking lot with the deer rifle off the rack.”Not MY Momma, you ain’t!” Im guess God felt his time was up.
Over the next week or so friends would come up and say..”Hey, did I see you on TV?” not wanting to be too curious.
It was a terrible week for me. In the same week, my dog was crushed by a car and I had to shoot her, in the yard because we couldn’t move her. The whole thing put me off guns for a long time. The only positive is that I started to learn Kung-Fu and that lasted 9 years. So, good from bad….I like that.
My Entertaining Life-Steve Carter 