S1: E31 – The Search for Bethany Correira, Part 1

In Alaska. The big concern is theirs. I always say the biggest danger in Alaska is the human animals.

Less than a week after moving to Anchorage, Bethany Carrera vanished.

She wasn't aware of what a violent place Anchorage could be.

And locating Bethany's killer would be just as difficult as finding her body.

We knew where the body was, and this is Alaska, and there was three feet of snow on the ground, and we couldn't recover a body until some of the snow melted.

Bringing justice would cost another life.

It was a tragedy for everybody involved.

Today we're an Anchorage, Alaska for part one of the search for Bethany Carrera. I'm Slow Glass and this is American Homicide. Just to note that this episode contained some graphic content, Please take care while listening. With more than six hundred square miles of Arctic coast, untamed wilderness, and majestic mountains, Alaska is our nation's largest state, but even with all that land, just over half a million people live there.

Half the population of the state is an Anchorage.

Ron McGee was the public affairs manager for the Anchorage Police Department.

The last I checked, we were like the sixty fourth largest city in the nation.

Historically, people have flocked to Alaska in search of riches.

The state has always been about oil.

Along with liquid gold. Alaska was home to the gold rush of the late eighteen hundreds that fostered the first generation of people who came to the state in search of riches. But then there's the other group of people.

In the thirty two years that I have been here, I encountered a lot of people who came to Alaska to try and get away from.

Something, whether it's the law, money issues, or something completely innocent. Alaska is a place where a lot of people go to escape their past.

We have a lot of the problems that people in the lower forty eight have, but Anchorage has always been what I would consider a very violent place. Our rate of violence is much higher than the rest of the nation. We've led the nation, for example, in rapes since I can remember.

Alaska's violent crime rate is more than double the national average, and most of those crimes happen in Anchorage, which is scary for the college students who move there.

The University of Alaska's campus in Anchorage is the largest in the university system. They offer the most majors, and we try to talk to the students and try and make them aware that, especially the students who come from rural Alaska, that this can be a very violent place.

One of those students who came to the University of Alaska and Anchorage or UAA was Bethany Carrera.

Bethany comes from this little small community in Talketina.

It's about one hundred miles north of Anchorage, a town so small that a cat won the race for mayor. As a writing candidate. Can you imagine losing to a cat? So, Bethany came from a small town, very small. In two thousand and three, the population was eight hundred and ten people. Bethany was a go getter who loved camping, snowboarding, and sailing. Adventure was in her blood. In fact, after graduating high school, Bethany embarked on a year long sailing trip through the

Bethany came from Talkeita in two thousand and three to attend UAA. She was pre mad. She's a good student, she's a good daughter. Her parents had wonderful things to say about her.

He found a small apartment a couple miles from campus in Bootlegger's Cove. It's a scenic area of anchorage along the coastline that got its name in the days of Prohibition. That's when barrels of moonshine used to roll off nearby boats. In the early two thousands, the area was popular with college students.

Bootlegger's Cove at that time was considered sort of a trendy place, a place that was a little more expensive than the rest of the town. Because it was close to the water.

Bethany's one bedroom apartment conveniently sat near several trails for hiking, biking, and running, all of which Bethany loved to do.

If you like the outdoors, this is the place to be.

At the time, many of the older homes and Bootlegger's Cove were being torn down to make way for bigger and fancier places. In fact, Bethany's modest four unit apartment building was scheduled to be torn down later that year.

Yeah, there's always there's a lot of development going on around here. You know, it's a place that is recreating itself constantly.

But it worked out for Bethany. She was able to sign a three month lease that coincided with her summer school schedule, and that final week of April two thousand and three, Bethany's boyfriend Joe helped her move into her new apartment. But by that Saturday, Bethany went a wall.

Bethany was supposed to pick up her brother from the airport and she didn't do it.

That was out of character for the reliable and responsible Bethany. As you can imagine, her family was concerned.

And her mother immediately drove about one hundred miles from tel Ketna to come to Anchorage and check on her. And when she checked on her, she couldn't find her. She wasn't at home. She found that Bethany had left her cell phone in her wallet in the apartment, and that immediately made her suspicious. You know, no young lady goes anywhere without her cell phone in her a while.

Her mom also found Bethany's car, passport, and even her favorite backpack at her apartment. But what really added to her mother's anxiety was what she saw outside.

The apartment next door burns. There had been a fire in the apartment, and that immediately made her suspicious.

The upstairs unit of the vacant duplex next door to Bethany's apartment was under construction and had caught fire earlier that morning. The unsettling smell of smoke still lingered in.

The air, so immediately she caught her husband and her husband drove to Anchorage, and then her mother called the police.

Bethany's mom told detectives that she last talked with her daughter late Friday night. It was now Sunday afternoon. She explained that her daughter's boyfriend, Joe, had been in town to help Bethany move, but there were no signs of Joe or any of his belongings at Bethany's apartment. Her mom admitted that she did I didn't know much about Joe. She then asked the detectives if they knew anything about the apartment next door to Bethany's, the one that had recently caught fire.

Originally, they thought that the fire was from electrical natural causes, but this additional investigator determined that the fire had been set intentionally. That made us even more suspicious when we found that out.

All right, So we have a missing twenty one year old woman who lived next door to a building that was intentionally set on fire. Immediately the Anchorage PD got involved.

My name is Walt Monnigan. That was the chief of police and the Anchorage Police Department at that time when we did get a report that she was missing. Normally we don't take those kind of reports. Most police departments don't for a couple of days because nine out of ten they showed back up. But because of the urgency in this one, we did.

Look at it.

The urgency stemmed from the fact that Bethany hadn't even lived in Anchorage for a week.

Coming from a smaller town where you pretty much know everybody and going into a larger place, you're not going to be as cognizant or aware of some of the dangers that are around you. If there's a person that you should stay away from. In tel Keita, everybody knows about it. In Anchorage not so so. I think a lot of folks when they first come to Anchorage or Fairbanks or some of the larger places, they're a little more trusting than most people who live in the cities.

As the police began their investigation. Nearly one hundred volunteers from Bethany's hometown arrived in Anchorage to search for her.

The family started putting out flyers. They basically papered downtown. You could hardly go buy a restaurant or a power pool that didn't have Bethany's picture on it. The first time I saw one of those, I just thought she had such an innocent smile, just a happy, genuine, likable person, and I had hopes that, you know, she'd be okay, like everybody else did.

It had been less than a week since Bethany moved into her apartment, which had no sign of forced entry. If anything, it looked like Bethany had simply left to go run an errand but never returned. And she was twenty one and knew in town. Did she go to the bar to not come home? Well, her mother said, Bethany wasn't much of a drinker or partier.

We found her person, her keys, and her phone. Everything was there. That kind of added to the evidence aspect that she didn't just scramble and take off someplace.

A look through Bethany's cell phone gave detectives their first clue.

I believe her boyfriend had just been talking to her.

Bethany's phone showed that one of the last phone calls came from her boyfriend, Joe, so the police got in touch with Joe, who confirmed that yes, he did talk with Bethany that Saturday morning, and that began a long conversation between Joe and the detectives. Because they learned Joe was married.

Everyone's a suspect, initially everyone.

Bethany Carrero was a twenty one year old student who was starting life on her own. On Monday, she moved into her new apartment in Anchorage. By Saturday, she was nowhere to be found. Ron McGee worked for the Anchorage PD.

This young lady was completely harmless. She was a kind of young lady that everyone would like to have as a daughter. She comes from this little small community in Talketna. For a lot of people who were raised in rural Alaska, Anchorage can be a little bit of a rude awakening. I always say the biggest danger in Alaska is the human animals.

And of course that was the fear that someone had done something to Bethany. The normally reliable Bethany was supposed to pick up her brother from the airport that weekend, but she never showed up. It left her family wondering where's Bethany.

She didn't want to disappear. I think everybody was on edge. The Talkatina community really responded to it, and the people here at Anchorage got involved in it too, particularly the students out of the university. We had a lot of students in the university that were distributing flyers and posting them all over the campus.

Flyers with Bethany's smiling face next to the ominous word missing went up all over town. It was a scary time for Bethany's parents, who struggled to stay positive.

I think a lot of times families blamed themselves, and in this situation, the family was doing it. They raised a wonderful daughter, they were sending her off to college like so many other families do. They were trying to do what was right for their daughter, and she ends up missing.

It was early May and Bethany was about to begin summer school. That's also when tourism season was about to begin, which meant the snow was melting and the ground was thawing. That turned Anchorage into a muddy mess for Bethany's search party, and.

They were going all around the town, putting up posters and looking in places trying to find her, and it's very hard work.

Detectives began tracing Bethany's last known whereabouts and got some help from her cell phone, which was found inside her apartment. It was two thousand and three, but even then, no twenty one year old would leave her house without their cell phone, which concerned everyone involved. At the time, Bethany owned a flip phone. A scroll through her phone long showed several calls from that Saturday morning.

I believe she talked to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was a pilot and they had a conversation.

Just before nine am that Saturday morning, Bethany had a short phone call with her boyfriend Joe, and.

I made a suspicious right from the beginning.

Joe lived in No Malaska, which is famous for being the endpoint of the Iditarod Dog Race, and the only way to get between Anchorage and Nome was by plane. Good thing Joe was a pilot at the time. Bethany was twenty one years old, Joe was well into his thirties. The two used to work together and had been dating for about six months. One important thing to note, Joe was married.

That made us even more suspicious when we found that out.

Bethany's parents told investigators they didn't know much about Joe, so detectives question Joe, who explained that his marriage was long over by the time he met Bethany. He said the reason his divorce had dragged out for so long was because he and his soon to be x were trying to do what was best for their child. Joe had been with Bethany before she disappeared. He was helping her move into her new apartment. He said the two had a nice visit. He even gave her a Puka

That immediately drew some concern from the mother and immediately from the detectives that responded to it.

Just a few weeks earlier, Joe's wife found Bethany at his apartment in Nome and was furious, even threw a glass at her, and later called Bethany's parents and told them their daughter was a home wrecker.

I'm a parent too, I have three kids and about the same age as she was, and so I just felt for the parents.

Detectives checked Joe's alibi and confirmed he was flying that entire weekend. As for the pilot soon to be ex wife, there are no roads between Noman Anchorage. If she were to come to Anchorage, she'd have to fly in, and there was no record of that happening. They cleared both the pilot and his wife and again left everyone asking where is Bethany.

There are a lot of people that disappear for a lot of different reasons, and so they wanted to know what happened to this young lady.

Do their conversation with Joe, detectives got a clear picture of what was happening in Bethany's life. Joe said Bethany had taken a new job cleaning and showing apartments for her landlord, a man named Mike Lawson, and that Saturday, Bethany planned to meet with Mike so he could train her.

The detective he questioned Mike immediately.

Mike Lawson said, yes, he and Bethany spoke early that Saturday morning, but it was to resolve an issue with Bethany's keys. But Mike said he never met up with Bethany that Saturday. In fact, he said he's the one who shows the apartments to prospective tenants, so he wasn't sure what Bethany was talking about.

Mike Lawson said that he was at home with his brother all day watching NASCAR.

After hitting several dead ends, investigators shifted their focus to the Dupleaux next door to Bethany's apartment.

There was a fire in the apartment, and in this case, there was something to that fire.

Early that Sunday morning, a newspaper delivery person noticed the fire and called nine one one. Originally ruled an accident, investigators later discovered it was no accident at all.

Well, the apartment was set on fire.

When we went to go look at the fire afterwards, we found some evidence.

Won't Want again was the chief of police for the Anchorage PD, and.

The fire basically was meant to destroy whatever evidence might.

Be inside Inside the apartment, the detectives noticed a suspicious patch of drywall, almost like the job was rushed to get done just before the fire.

The material that they used to you know, that coulking kind of drywall stuff, wasn't completely dry and actually kind of depressed because of the heat the moisture there. It actually shrank back and made us look at it. And as we examined that repair, we found some hair inside.

It was almost incredible that investigators located those hairs and fibers within the poorly patched drywall. They were sent off to the lab for testing, and while they waited for answers, they were left to wonder whose hair was in the wall and how did it get there because the apartment it was found in was vacant. Franco Beznis was a contractor who worked on that building.

Mike Lawson and I worked for a construction company and the guy calls me up and he says, hey, Franco, the building caught on fire. The duplex, the one that I was in the work. It's a two story burnt through the first floor. The flames went up and even the ceiling was burnt, but it didn't actually break the shell of the whole building, and it was ruled as electrical fire, which really obsessed me because I'm the one that does the work and I don't want to be

That's when the police started looking at everyone who had been working on the apartment.

The lead investigator starts telling us about Bethany Krarraz missing, and they knew the connection that we had already, that our company is the same company that rent it tour, so they're questioning.

All of us.

Little I realized that they ran it background track and literally everybody right there on the spot.

And wait until you hear what they found.

Out of the seven guys that I worked with, five of them come back as rester sex offenders, which blew me away.

Okay, so there are five registered sex offenders working on an apartment building where a twenty one year old girl went missing and the neighboring building was set on fire.

There's one gal that just ended the apartment there who's alone. So that really drew a lot of attention to our company for investigators.

The hope was that one of these five registered sex offenders might lead them to Bethany, and with any luck, they'd find Bethany alive.

I believe that somebody knows something.

As the Anchorage PD pieced together a timeline of Bethany Carrera's disappearance, they were focused not only on her apartment, but the building next door. Right around the same time Bethany disappeared that Saturday, her next door apartment caught on fire.

The timing of the fire was back to back.

Francobznai's was a contractor who worked with Bethany's landlord.

Saturday night. The fire broke out same Bill and I had all the work at so Initially it was ruled electrical fire. Then after more investigation, it was ruled as arson. That changed everything.

Detectives got even more suspicious when they did a background check on a construction crew.

Five out of the seven were roster sex offenders. I'm sitting there going what am I working with?

The police looked into all of their alibis, including Bethany's landlord, Mike Lawson. At the time, Mike Lawson was forty five years old. He was tall, and husky with jet black hair. He slipped back and yes, Mike did have some well documented problems with women.

The lead investigator actually asked him right in front of me, is it okay if I do a visual search on your vehicle? Mike said yes. So they walked over to Mike's vehicle. Mike opened every door, including the hatchback to his SUV Mercedes. They walked around, did a bit look, and then they drove off. I go back to work. An hour and a half goes by and I look back over there. Mike never left. All he's doing is walking in circles around his car, looking sort of like what the investigators did.

Can you imagine seeing one of your coworkers doing that. So yeah, Franco found it a little suspicious, And then things got even more strange.

He walked up to me and said, Franco, can you cover for me? And I'm like, yeah, I'll cover for you. He said that he needs to go get an attorney. I looked at Mike and I said, Mike, we don't all need attorneys. I know for fact that I didn't do anything, and I don't think any of these guys did, But why worry about it Mike, and he said, well, they're looking at me.

The next day, Mike showed up to work with his car completely cleaned and detailed.

This car is the cleanest I've ever seen it. But you got to understand about Mike this car. I've known him for several months. One time I could ever get in the car.

It was so.

Dirty, papers and boxes. There was never no room except for just him.

And look, this could be one giant coincidence that Mike had his car cleaned a day after the police searched it. But it's what Franco learned about Mike that concerned him.

Mike Lawson is a restler sexpender. He was a restler sexpender that did not reregister himself here in Anchorage. And so I started having this gut feeling about Michael and called crime Stoppers. They connected me with the lead investigator.

As soon as the investigation began, we started talking to people and they said that Mike Lawson was a very angry man.

Ron McGee worked for the Anchorage PD.

He's got a lot of problems with women, very violent.

In nineteen eighty seven, Mike was living in Illinois. That's when he was arrested for tying up, beating, and repeatedly sexually assaulting his then girlfriend. A year later, a jury convicted Mike Lawson of aggravated criminal sexual assault. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. After serving only three years in prison, Mike Lawson was released. That's when he relocated to Alaska. He and his brother Bob, then started

Clearly he's got some anger issues. His wife had just left him. He indicated that he wanted to do violence to women, and I made a suspicious right from the beginning that made him a suspect right away.

If you remember, Mike had an alibi for the day Bethany went missing.

Mike and his brother had said that they were home all day watching TV, watching race car driving. We were able to get their phone records and a turn in from their phone records that they were lying to us.

So let's talk about those phone records. On the Saturday morning Bethany went missing, Mike called his brother Bob seven times, and all seven calls happened within three minutes. Why was Mike so desperately trying to get a hold of Bob. Well, a closer look at these phone calls might tell us Mike's cell phone had pinged the cell tower near Bethany's apartment. So Mike may have said he and Bob were at home all day Saturday, but their phone records said otherwise.

They were not telling the truth that he had not been at home. So you know, obviously something was amiss there, and of course that raises more suspicions when you find out that people were lying to you.

That Saturday morning, Mike's brother Bob finally took his brother's call just before eleven am. Afterwards, records showed Mike's cell phone returning to his home before travel lame some forty five miles north, which is close to Tolkita. Mike's phone then went silent for hours.

First of all, we didn't have enough evidence to charge him, but we had a suspect, so we had to find other ways to prove that Lawson had been involved in this.

Mike Lawson had lied to investigators, and that's when the police leaned on Mike's brother Bob. Here's the audio of Bob being questioned by detectives. Do you believe that your brother's involved in the arson or Bethany's disappeared.

I really don't. I just got deep down, true blue from my heart. I really don't think Mike's involved. If my brother came home and told me he did something like that, I'd tell.

You I'm not going to jail for anybody. I'll tell you that's flat out.

So investigators went to Plan B and played hardball. They showed Bob alone application he and his brother, Mike Lawson, filled out for their roofing company.

Lawson had applied for a loan and had falsified some informations on documents during this loan process.

The application had this question, are any of the applicants a convicted felon? Mike was a convicted felon, but he lied he had checked off the box for no, and by doing that, Mike and Bob had committed fraud, which is a federal offense. Police charged both brothers, but offered Bob a deal if he would cooperate in their investigation into Bethany Carrera, he'd avoid punishment for the fraud case.

We kept emphasizing to him that this is a young lady and her family wants to know where she's at.

Bob could either join Mike and jail or take the deal. It took some serious thought, but Bob finally came around. He accepted the plea deal and agreed to flip on his brother.

That's what I got to do. Somebody's got to tell the story. If that has to be me, I will someday when I'm eulogized. All I want somebody to say is I stood up and did the right I always dried to the right. I think eventually it got to his conscience and he decided to help us. I'm sure it was a very difficult decision that he had to make, but he eventually did the right thing.

Some nine months after Bethany Carrera went missing, Bob told the detectives his brother Mike shot and killed Bethany, and he said he knew where to find her body.

I think that basically they just wanted it to be far away from town.

Well't Monagan was the Anchorage chief of police.

It's about four hundred miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks. That mine is a big gravel pit.

That's where Bob told the caravan of police and search crews to pull off the road.

The crew went out there where we believed that she was disposed at. It's airly large gravel pit and you're surrounded by mountains. By that time it was wintertime. I think at one point it was like four feet of snow.

Bob Lawson led investigators through the deep snow to where he claimed he and his brother Mike dumb Bethany's body nine months earlier. After four hours of searching the gravel pit, which was the length of two football fields, they called off their search.

We knew that she was there, but we had to wait until the snow melted.

With the search on hold, something unexpected happened. Mike Lawson told investigators he was ready to talk and get this. Mike told detectives that it was his brother Bob who was responsible for Bethany's death, not the other way around, and Mike volunteered to wear a wire to prove it.

If there's anything that could help us find a clue, lead a person who might give us more insight, that's always what we try to do.

So now you had two brothers blaming one another for the death of Bethany Carrera, would you be willing to talk to your brother, and if so, would you be willing to let us take record that conversation?

Sure?

Join us next week for part two of the search for Bethany Carrera. I'm slung Glass. That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by by me Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is