You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good evening, October twenty fifth, twenty twenty three was just an ordinary knight in Lewistown, a small, working class city of thirty seven thousand in central Maine. Friends and families had gathered at a bowling alley called Just in Time Recreation Center and Schemengi's, a popular sports bar and restaurant. They felt immune from the violent crime that seemed to rack the rest of the country. In a state that
the FBI had just named the safest in America. Then Robert card the Second, a deeply paranoid Army reserved soldier, walked into both places with a high powered rifle and open fire, killing eighteen people and wounding thirteen more. He then fled to a third location, where, according to the evidence and the testimony of his best friend, he likely planned to lay in wait and kill his ex co
workers when they came to work the next morning. The tragedy is that the numerous red flags he had raised in the months before weren't enough to stop him before he carried out his terrible plan. A combination of watered down gun control laws and law enforcement and military negligence
made sure of that. In The Lewiston Shootings, An All American Tragedy, author and award winning journalist Robert Conlin traces the shootings that deeply scarred a community that thought it was the last place on Earth where a mass shooting would take place. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Lewiston Shootings, An All American Tragedy, with my special guest, former journalist, longtime main resident, and author, Robert Conlin. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
this interview. Robert Conlin, Yes, Hi, thanks very much for having me, Dan, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And congratulations on the Lewiston shootings.
Thank you, Jan. Thanks.
Let's start off with the central character in this Robert Card, the second or known why most people as Robbie, his father Robert Sr.
And his mother Janna.
Just tell us a little bit about Robert Carr and his background before we start talking about this incredible rampage.
Yeah, he Robert Carr the second, not junior with the second, grew up in the small town of Bowden, which is a town of about three thousand people just in close to central close to central Maine in Sagatahawk County inland from the coast, just probably twenty miles. Yeah, a very small community and located about fifteen miles from Lewiston, the city of Lewison itself. The family was a farm family, dairy farm and then eventually cattle and also various other things.
It's like a lot of people in Maine. It's do a number of things to make a living. So I know his father worked as an electrician and as well as running the farm. And Robert the second was forty years old that at the time these shootings occurred. He had gone away to college for a year or two and then came back to Bowden. He went to the
University of Maine for engineering, but couldn't afford it. He got married at a very young age to his high school sweetheart and they had a son, but they weren't married that long and I spent some time with his ex wife, who was gracious enough to really help me
understand who he was. He joined the Army Reserve when he get when he when he left college, and the Army Reserve was a is a is a one weekend a month commitment and two weeks annually per year, and they act obviously in a reserve capacity, not they get confused a lot of the national guarret here in the States, But the Army Reserve is under the command of the
Department of Defense, just like the Army is. However, the soldiers, it's a little bit different in terms of their responsibility to the soldiers that they only have jurisdiction over the soldiers when they're on duty, so that one weekend a month and two weeks a year, which became an issue certainly in the case of in the case of his mental health treatment and his deterioration. But in any event, he was a truck driver for pretty much all of
his adult life, very good at it, I guess. They had a tendency to bounce around from job's job, and that's how he supported himself. Although he was he was an outdoorsman. Like a lot of people in Maine, are pretty rural state, and so people like to hunt and fish and go four wheeling and snowmobiling and et cetera. So he you know, those are all things that he did.
He was also an avid cornhole player in cornhole and this this really popular game board game with the beam bag toss thing, so he entered in all kinds of tournaments. Also a horseshoe player, So that's pretty much who he was in the lead up to the shootings in October twenty twenty three.
Tell us about the kinds of skills that he acquired in the training he had in the Army Reserve.
He actually signed up his MOS His occupation was a petroleum specialist, so refueling. But the unit did he eventually, and they moved, you know, they moved around from unit to unit. They tended to change in morph and consolidate
units from different places. So eventually he ended up at the unit based in Saco, Maine in southern Maine, and that unit was responsible for training West Point Cadets at the academy in West Point, the new recruits that come in the cadets and they trained them in machine guns, grenades, automatic rifles, and so they would go there for two weeks every summer, I think for a period of about eight years he did that and they would train the cadets,
and he primarily trained them on grenade throwing, and that ultimately, I think also became an issue in terms of his mental health, as they discovered when they did some brain scans on him later after he died.
Let's talk about some of that other training and included marksmanship. And in the beginning he enlisted, he thought suredly that he would see some action in Iraq.
He thought, oh yeah, oh yeah, so you know right after nine to eleven, so almost in anybody who went the military then, you know, even going into the reserves, would have expected to see some combat. You had Afghanistan and then Iraq, and it was just sheer happenstance that he was not called up to any kind of active duty combat duty. You know, some some members of the
unit were called up. It's not they don't go over in mass as a unit, so it depends on their mos, their occupation, and it just so happened that they didn't have a need for him at the time as a petroleum specialist. So he never did do that, and he spent a pretty you know, benign twenty years in the Army reserve training certainly, and they were they were they were highly trained. It wasn't like they were just stumbling around, you know, with no with no idea of how to
conduct themselves as soldiers. They were soldiers. They they went to a regular basic training just like any Army soldier. And they and they had training over the course of all those years. So he was a qualified marchman, you know, was was well versed in tactics like any soldier.
Tell us about his teen teenage sweetheart, Caro Lamb and their marriage.
Yeah, she they've been in high school. She went to a different high school than him, but just just one town over. And you know, she explained to me she was kind of young and dumb and puppy love. She did say that, and initially the it didn't last long. The you know, the the romance sort of faded pretty quickly. She said. He was more or less my way the highway kind of guy. Anybody else who would have talked about him said he was very dependable and steady, reliable,
not quick to anger. She you know, saw a little bit of a different side of him, I think, and you know, after I think it was five years. She was trying to get him to go to marriage counseling
and he refused, said he wouldn't learn anything. So she asked for a divorce and he was very, very angry and bitter about that, and they had a very a lot of animosity in the post years after the divorce when they were raising their son, which you know, they he more or less and talked to her, and when he did, he was very very brusque and she, you know, it was a tough period for her, and I think she did her best to raise her son without any
real input from him. She said he was a good father to her, to his son, but not a good father to raise a son with.
You mentioned the son Colby, But there we get to the point that Colby is actually living with his father in a trailer, and the reason he goes back living with his mother is what.
His father said that he wanted to have his friend, staff Sergeant Sean Hodgson, who was in the same unit with him and he had met many years before. I think they were friends for seventeen years. He wanted to move him into his bedroom in the trailer, and by that time there were signs to his son certainly that his father there's mental health was starting to deteriorate and some pretty pretty obvious signs that things weren't going well
with him. So he he asked him to leave, and he and his son did and went back to live with his mother. His son was only seventeen. I think it might have been eighteen at the time, but it was just graduating high school.
So did Sean Hodgins move into the trailer with cart.
He did for a short while and then he left after I think it was I think it was a few months. And he was also getting some real strong, you know, some strong signals that things were not right with his friend, and he developed a real concern for him really in the in the in about a year's lead up to the shootings, you know, it progressively got worse and worse, and we can talk about what the real signs were at anytime, but yeah, his friend was
starting to get really concerned. His son was starting to get really concerned. His son passed that concern on to his mother, Card's ex wife, and his sister and family were also concerned. They were his brother. He was close to his brother and his sister Nicole, who wasn't necessarily close to, but she was, you know, getting indications from the rest of the family that things were really not going well. And the sister in law was a nurse.
Ryan Card's wife who was close to him, also noticed you know, some really really bizarre behavior and concerning signs.
What was he saying specifically, what were some of the source of hallucination or delusion that he was spouting.
His you know, his sole focus seemed to be on the fact that he thought that virtually everybody in his
orbit was calling him a pedophile. It started out with strangers, you know, they would go, he would go with his son to home depot and insists that he could hear ya just got these new hearing aids, by the way, because he did have hearing difficulties, and they were bluetooth enabled hearing aids, but they were giving him a lot of he was having a hard time adjusting them, so he would be picking up on conversations from far away, or he was getting a lot of distortion and would
shut them off and then not be able to hear well at all. So he was claiming that he was hearing people from a you know, from quite a distance away. Saying that he was a pedophile, and that it started out was you know, just strangers, and eventually as time went on over that period of that year, he insisted the adverse that everybody was calling, including his own son, his family, his friend. So he that was really seemed to be the sole focus of his his parent.
You're right about this job he had as a driver for a recycling plant. And interestingly, where possibly he might have this this gossip might have possibly come from.
The recycling plant is called Main Recycling in a town of Lisbon, about ten miles from Lewiston. He worked there for I believe it was close to two years, and his friend Hodgson also worked there with him. So I got some of this information from Hodgson and some from just public sources. But he told his friend, and he told his sister that someone at Main Recycling claimed that he was on the sex offender registry and essentially called
him a pedophile. That seems to be the source of the origin of the whole fixation on being called a pedophile. His sister told me that she went on to the sex offender Registry online to look to see if that was the case. If you know, somebody was claiming that he was honest. She wanted to just try to find out because he seemed to be so fixated on that idea, and she wanted to just let him know that it wasn't the case. But when so, she did go on
and she did do a sert, and she didn't find him. Ultimately, it turns out there was a Robit card on the sex offender industry, same exact name, which is not a common name, by the way, so it's it's pretty it's a pretty random happenstance that there is a Robert card on the sex offender registry. His birthday was eerily similar to the other Rubbit card. I think it was like four three eighty four versus four four eighty three, so
they were about the same age. They didn't necessarily look alike, but you didn't if you weren't good with faces, you might say, well that's a you know, a different picture or a different time or whatever. You could see some similarity, certainly, but she she didn't see that person. And had she had seen as she could have gone back and said, no, no, no, this is a mistake. This is another guy. They got you confused with somebody else. But she did not see
it when she did her search. When I looked into that, I went on the registry myself and I started to dig around a little bit. And then because I was wondering, why would why would they be looking on the registry for Robert card And as it turns out that particular place where he worked had at least a dozen employees that were on the sex offender industry. I think just got mixed up in his head, the whole toxic stew of things.
Let's this is as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, let's talk about the people, including Ryan and Sean Hodgens, and what they did in reacting to this, to their friend Robert Carr's bizarre behavior, who did they speak to and the members of Bravo Company, his other soldiers, fellow soldiers noticed his mental deterioration, What was noted and who did they speak to about his mental health?
It was noted in early in the spring of twenty twenty three, some members of his unit were hearing the same thing with other people. At that point, we're hearing that they were pedophiles, or or he was hearing pedophiles.
Everybody's calling him a pedofile, and they had internally had conversations, but it really sort of became public when his son went to the school resource officer at his high school with his mother and they ended up calling the local sheriff's deputy, who came and listen to the story about his behavior, and then reached out to the Army Reserve unit because they decided, well, this would be a good place for the Army Reserve to maybe step up because they,
you know, because it's a contained unit, they're close to each other, and they have programs that could maybe help them, so they reached out. The deputy deputy in May of twenty twenty three, reached out and was very proactive. He wrote a thirteen hundred page police report, very detailed. He took a lot of a lot of proactive steps to try to see what could be done to help him. At this point, he hadn't other than his behavior. There was no there was nothing that would rise to the
level of dangerous behavior. But the Army Reserve, the commanding officer a captain who would By the way, a number of the members of that reserve unit, the Bravo Company, were civilian law enforcement in the state of Maine, New Hampshire. So the captain of the unit, himself a police officer in New Hampshire, assured the deputy that they would come up with some kind of a mental health plan, some
kind of a plan to get him some help. That didn't happen, and ultimately he ended up going to training at West Point in July of twenty twenty three, and it was supposed to be another weapons training for the cadets. But when he showed up at training, he was acting very bizarrely. He was making the comments that now his members of his unit were calling him a pedophile, and then he assaulted one of them when they went to a comedians sto to buy some beer and then barricaded
himself in his room and wouldn't come out. And at that point they really had no other recourse put to It was a National Guard base in New York, so it wasn't the Army Reserve that was involved at MPs. It was actually they had to call the New York State Police right who showed up and he was command directed, so he was told that he had to go to
a psychiatric facility. It wasn't voluntary, and that becomes that's because sort of an issue in the in the post, you know, the posts follow up on could they have used any kind of laws to take him into custody? And they took him to a psychiatric facility, first the army unit there and then that and then eventually to a civilian facility where we stayed for three weeks.
What was the their diagnosis and was there any follow up with any type of drugs prescribed?
Mhmm. Yeah, The diagnosis was he was psychotic, and there's there's still there's still a lot we don't know about his stay at that facility. There were pending lawsuits, so a lot of this stuff is not going to come out into the open, you know. And of course it's hip hop hip hop regulations also. But we do know
that that they diagnosed him as as being psychotic. The army psychiatrist who did the pre screening before he went to the civilian facility specifically said he should not be in possession of personal firearms when he went to the facility. We do know that through some information that has come out, that he told them that he had a hit list of people that he wanted to kill. He told him about his weapons, he told them he continued with a
pedophile story, and he stayed for three weeks. They at one point there was supposed to be a hearing before a judge in New York, but because he was because Card himself asked for a release from the facility, so that that triggered a potential hearing before a judge. But then he withdrew that request, so there was no hearing, so there was no finding from a court at all about whether he was a danger to the community. And
ultimately he was released. And you know, once again, I spent some time talking to his friend Hodgson, who he was in communication with while he was in the facility, and he called Hawgson said can you come pick me up? And did Card get in the car and then complained, I mean, he was happy to get out, complained a lot about how they didn't do anything for him. Everybody
thought he was crazy, but he was fine. It's hard to notice that his knuckles were all battered and bruised, and he asked him why that was the case, and he said, because he had been rolling up his mattress in his room and punt using it as a punching bag. So clearly really angry and he had threatened to punch one of the other patients at the facility, and he told his friend Hadgston. He said, you know, I threatened
to punch her. But then, you know, I managed to convince him that I was just kidding or something so that they would release him. So he more or less just pulled the wall over their eyes about enough anyway
to get them to release him with a plan. But the plan was essentially he had some medication which he stopped taking almost immediately, and they spoke to his family and his mother, who had her own, you know, pretty severe health issues at the time, was supposed to monitor his follow up with mental health professionals in Maine, but he just you know, ducked out of any any follow
up at all. And the Army Reserve program that they had in place, the psychological health program, tried contact contacting him, but he kept just ignoring the phone calls and eventually they just gave up.
Now, let's talk about what Robert card the second does the very next day. Where does he go and what does he try to purchase? You talk about suppressors, what are they in actual fact, and also what are the laws regarding someone that has mental health Health red Flags will say regarding the ability to purchase guns.
Yeah, Well, as far as what he did when he came back from New York from the facility, he went the next stage in Maine. Back in Maine, in the town of Auburn, City of Auburn, right across the river from Lewiston, he went. He went to pick up a suppressor or a silencer. It's also known as that he ordered a few months previously. They actually they're quite regulated, and you have to fill out an FF Federal license form and you have to answer a bunch of questions
about this and that. And one of the things that he had answered when he went to go pick it up was had he been adjudicated in a psychiatric facility? And he answered yes because his friend Hodgson advised him that if he didn't, if he lied on that form or was a felony. So he did answer yes, and as a result, they would not give him the suppressor. So he was unable to get that whether he tended to use it later on or not. I mean, obviously intended to use it somewhere at some point, but I'm
not sure if it was for the shootings. As far as the law is, yeah, complicated, just trying to think of a way to distill these things down. Maine has what they call a yellow Flag law. So there are twenty states in the country that have a red Flag law, which allows someone in a family or in a professional law enforcement or mental health capacity to petition a court to remove the firearms from somebody who was presenting a
danger to themselves or others. Maine has a watered down version of that called the Yellow Flag Law, which does not which which requires a couple of extra steps, including getting a mental health professional to render a prognosis or diagnosism sorry, before the weapons can be removed by a
judge's orders. It's sort of a it requires a couple of extra steps, and as we found out later when it wasn't used in cards case by the local sheriff's department, it's pretty unwieldy a law for a small rural police force because it just requires a lot of steps and a lot of resource, a lot of time. So he you know that, and those laws have been tightened up since these shootings, but they still, you know, they were
in the eyes of the sheriff's deputies. Later in September, they were impediment to taking him into custody and removing his firearms.
Let's get to you have an incredible statement about eight days before there's an announcement on how safe Maine really is in regards to murder per capita.
Oh yeah, yeah, the FBI came out with a press release, like you said, eight days before saying that Maine was actually the safest state in the nation for in terms of violent crime. And you know, to put in perspectively, year before, there were nineteen homicides in the entire state. So you know this, he killed eighteen people in fifteen minutes and then himself eventually, so that was nineteen That equaled the entire you know, murder rate for the state
from the from the prior years. It's not a place where a lot of murders occur. It's not a lot of it's not a place where there's a lot of gun violence, despite the pretty high ownership gun ownership ratio in the state. And that's an argument used by gun proponents. They say, we're responsible gun owners in this state. Why are we going to be changing these laws because of one horrible incident, And that's you know, that's a question that will go on for quite a while.
Let's talk about the officials that were warned and their reaction just before preceding October twenty fifth. Give us the play up to October twenty fifth.
Yeah, in September, in the middle of September, Hodgson his friend Card went to a casino and on the way back, Hodson accused his I mean sorry. Card accused Hardson of once again calling him a pedophile, and Hodgson of course denied that, and Card then as he was driving the vehicle, punched him in the face, almost putting almost putting the
car into the into the woods. Hodgson demanded that he stop, and he jumped out, and then he when he got home, he wrote a text to the to the sergeant in the Inn Bravo company, the NCO in charge, squad leader, and he said, I'm afraid he's going to go shoot up the facility meeting the SOCCO Army Reserve base. You're gonna need to change the pass code, and then ultimately ended that text by saying I'm afraid he's gonna going to snap and do a mass shooting. That text was sent.
That text actually put then triggered a call from that, the guys in that unit to Sagata Hawk County Sheriff's Department where Bowden is and they asked that they do a welfare check on Card. He had not showed up for the training on that Saturday, so they asked for welfare check, and the Sheriff's department sent out one deputy, twenty five year career law enforcement career Segatahawk County Sheriff actually deputy. He responded to the call. He went there
and on I think it was the sixth. On the fifteenth, he went there and there was nothing, no indication of anybody in the in the in the house or in the driveway. The next morning he went back and Guard's car was in the driveway, so he knocked on the
door and he could hear him moving around. And by the way, by this time he had all this information about Card having been in a psychiatric facility, about the fact that he owned ten to fifteen personal firearms, the fact that the family was really afraid of him, the fact that he had been acting erratically and the son was afraid of him, and the people in the unit were afraid of him. They were afraid he was going to do a mass shooting. He had all that information.
He went to the door, he heard him moving around. He decided, this is dangerous. I can't go in there and get them because I'm not allowed to get a warrant in this case to take someone into protective custody. So he didn't have that capability. So he decided, and I don't think you can question this. He decided he would just back off and come up with another plan. And you know, knowing what he knew, and knowing that he possessed a lot of firearms, I certainly can't blame
him for that. However, his plan was to talk to the card family and asked them to make sure that the guns were removed. And at this point they were they were afraid of him. They were walking on eggshells around him, and he had more or less cut off all communication with all of them, even his brother who he was very close to by this point. And of course now he's also not even talking to his friend Hodgson, who was the last person to really have any contact
with him at all. The sheriff's deputy spoke to the family. The family, you know, made some assurances that they would try to do that, but there was certainly no guarantee that they'd be able to do that. And that was a brother and then Scofield. His name was Sergeants Schofield. He went on vacation. The next day. He had a conversation with the superior and they agreed, okay, that the best course of action is to not to try to, you know, try to force him to come out. But
they didn't. They didn't come up with anything else. And then he went on vacation the next day and then he was gone for I think ten days. When he came back, he didn't call to check the sea, so he didn't notify anybody about what was going on. He didn't ask anybody to follow up. He didn't, he didn't do anything. And then when he came back, he didn't follow up at all. And then there was a there
was an alert. They had put out a bolo for him, be on the lookout, calling it this is Schofield who had done this, and the wording was he's armed and dangerous and you know it's psychotic and you know, watch out, be careful. But when he came back, he lifted that bolo without even checking to find out if there had been any resolution to the if anybody had spoken to him or anything. And you know that was the last contact. That knock on the door was the last contact they
had with card. That's just is that's an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, let's get to October twenty fifth, Lewiston, Auburn, the Twin Cities nine urgency.
In Auburn. The first calls came in at six fifty five pm from people in the Just In Time Recreation Center, which is a bowling alley complex from the and the people say, I'm at the front desk, tell us about this incredible interaction between nine to one one operators and people experiencing the rampage of Robert Carr.
The second they released the transcripts, it's horrifying to read those obviously during real time people, you know, experiencing something that was the worst nightmare for anybody. He came in at six fifty five pm dressed in tactical pants and a sweatshirt and with an AR ten semi automatic capable of firing seven hundred rounds a minute, raised to a shoulder, just in a shooting position, just like he would have
touted all those cadets, and he just opened fire. He did actually have a jam when he came into front entrance. He fired one shot and then it jammed, and he was trying to clear that jam when two lifelong friends, fifty one year old men, Jason Walker and Michael Deloier. They they were lifelong friends from kindergarten as a matter of fact, and they were with their wives and they were bowling. They heard the shot and as he was trying to clear it, they charged him and tried to
disarm him. Unfortunately, he was able to clear the weapon in time to kill them. He randomly opened fire. It didn't really move much from the position where he was at near the door, but he started shooting, and he ended up killing six other people there at the bowling alley, including a couple seventy late seventies, the Violets who were mentors to the kids at that bowling alley, the youth bowling league, and they were, you know, they were just teach case ou and they were sort of they were
everybody's grandmother and grandfather. They shot and killed them because they were shielding some kids who were there. There were eighteen kids in that bowling alley at the time, one fourteen year old boy, Aaron Young died, but they shielded some others and the violets died, and then a couple of employees and yeah, eight people in total. They're at the bowling alley. And then he left as everybody just
scrambled to try to get out a horrifying scene. And he left and he got in his car and he dress. So I'll follow this up by saying, all of which is what he did was clearly planned. Harson and I discussed his at length about he was trained in the Army Reserve to plan, to train, to execute, and he had a plan, and the plan was to go from the bowling alley to the and by the way, he had bowled there. He had encounters with people there, and he had an encounter where he thought that they were
openly accusing him of being a pedophile. He knew the bowling alley and then he went to the next place that he knew well because he used to play corn hole. There was at Schremengy's Bar and Grill about five minutes away, four miles. He drove there and they were having a cornhole league and it was a including a deaf cornhole league. So there were ten member, ten male members of the deaf community in the state of Maine, very tight knit group.
They were there. He opened the door and stood there and opened fire, and he shot and killed ten people there, including four members of the deaf community, and wounded a number of others. And extraordinary thing happened there. The the manager, Joe Joe Walker, you know, by all accounts said, taken a butcher knife or some kind of a knife from behind the bar and was trying to you know, to go after card. But he was shot and killed. And during all this, one man who was able his son
playing corn hole. They were at separate boards. They were right next to each other, but he looked across and saw his son crouching in fear. As soon as the shots went out, he was behind a wall, but he was very exposed and very vulnerable. The father ran into a utility closet and as he was leaning against the wall, he looked up and saw the electrical panel and just he pulled the main breaker switch for the panel, and
the room plunged into the darkness. Though the entire placed it he put it, you know, no lights at all except from the parking lot lights outside seeping through the windows, and that undoubtedly saved many many lives, as did Joe Jason Walker and Michael Delorier back at the Bowling Alley. That they distracted Card enough for people to be able to escape. They save countless lives. And then this this
particular case, he was reloading. Card was reloading and putting a magazine into his rifle at the time the lights went out, and a number of survivors said that they were sure that he would have shot and killed them had had the lights knock one out, including by the way, the man's son who was who Card was approaching as he was putting the new magazine in, and you know, more than likely would have shot him to death. So it was an amazing I guess you could say act of God.
Now, at the same time he leaves this crime scene, he's on the run. You call it manhunt part one. But the thing is is that there is a video image eventually shown, and people like Sean Hodgins seemed to well they do he recognizes the image.
Oh yeah, he recognized his image, but he actually was in a truck on it. He was doing a delivery to Massachusetts when he heard about the shootings. And his first thought was before they even there was any photo, any image hinting, was oh my god, it's my friend. Right. It was a camera right near the door, which he didn't even look at it. He knew it was there, but so he didn't care about being identified. He came
in and that was released to the public. Meanwhile, he had left the bowling alley and once again he trained and executed the plan, which was he drove to a boat launch about ten miles away in Lisbon, about a mile away from Main Recycling where he used to work. He parked his car there. That's where they found his car at ten o'clock that night, so about three hours after the shootings. His car was visible from the road
from a pretty busy road. They found his car there and the weapons that were used in the shooting shootings were laying on the front seat. And then he left and they you know, it took him forty six hours to find him.
Did they ask Sean Hodgins what he thought where his friend might go? Did they ask anyone?
Yes, this is something that is really There's been a whole bunch of commission. It was an independent commission to find the facts. The mainstap police released their own The Mainstay Police were in charge of the entire investigation. They released their own report, and this is something they're not discussing, but it's worth discussing because it shows some real holes that need to be filled. Augstin did talk to them, and so did his brother Ryan about six hours after
the shootings. When they asked him a Mainstreak police detective asked him where did he think his brother was going to go next? He said Main Recycling. Addgson also told detective's Main Recycling. He and Ryan Card had a conversation and agreed, yes, he hates those people there. This is the origin source of the story that drove him to
do all this. So he parked at the boat launch and then there's a bicycle trail that runs from the boat launch across underneath an overpass of that busy road, and then it goes into the woods and runs along the river and Raskagin River for one point one mile and then ends up at the back of Main Recycling at the overflow lot where all the tractor trailers aparked,
and that's where he went. I went down that route three or four times myself, and it's a perfect way to stay out of sight, you know, from one one direct way to get exactly to where he wanted to go, which is what he did. And main state police had that information. But in the in the you know, in the heat of war, little details get dropped, and unfortunately they were. They were getting a lot of tips. They had a tip line and I think they responded to I forget how many they responded to, but they I
think they received over nine hundred tips. And the region was in a lockdown. I mean it wasn't There wasn't anybody moving except law enforcement for forty six hours. So they were chasing a lot of tists. But they did not follow up the tips from the two people who knew him best that told them where told them where he was going. They dropped the ball. And he was
going there for one reason. And he went there by the way with another semi automatic rifle and two hunder rounds of ammunition and a handgun, and he was going there to kill the employees that man recycling when they showed up for work the next morning. He hid in a tractor trailer which he attracted trailer that he used to drive. He knew exactly where he was going he opened one up and climbed inside and pulled the door shut.
And then you know, the plan would have been to wait until the employees, who by the way, would have parked their cars right near the trailer where he's found. He was going to kill them in the morning, but they didn't show up because there was a lockdown.
Let's talk about, just briefly, about any concern for his ex wife, Carol Lamb.
Oh, yeah, oh sure there was concern. She had concerned. She was with her son when that image came across of him at the Bowling Alley and the family, by the way, I spent you know, like I said, some time and with the sister as well, and the family was doing everything they could to try to notify people that you know, he was a real concern. They were really, really, really concerned about him. They were trying to get him help. The sister was calling the VA to try to get
him help. You know, whatever happened didn't happen because that family didn't care about their brother and their ex husband and their father. They really were trying to get him help. And they called in the night of the shooting and said, we know who this is. They cooperated completely with law enforcement, and she was concerned, of course, that he was coming after her, so she managed to find a place to hide for the next few days until he was found.
Let Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, we haven't talked about this, You say, the forty eight hours that they couldn't find him, You haven't spoke about the extent of that search, including helicopters and CANAI units. Just tell us briefly about the extent of the search.
Oh yeah, yeah, No, I mean, you know, listen, they obviously did their best to try to find him and stop him. And you know, I do like to say this, if it sounds like I'm pointing a finger at law enforcement, it's only only in service of trying to you know, to tell the true story and the real story. And you know, hopefully once again, if something like this happens that you know, some lessons would have been learned. But they had the resources. You know, there were eight hundred
law enforcement agents. Within twelve hours of this happening. The state was crawling with ATF and with FBI tactical teams, armored vehicles, helicopters, the Coast Guard crutters on the road. I mean there was all the resources were there, and they CA. Nine teen did not go down the bicycle trail that night. They were worried about him having a thermal scope and laying away to ambush them, And as it turns out, he when he was in that trailer for all that time before they found him, Lauren Forsman
was all around him. He could have jumped out and taken out as many as were around at the time. That's right, and he didn't do it because it wasn't part of his plan, I think is really what it was. That's not who he was angry at.
What happens in terms of finally finding Robert cart and what had happened to him.
Well, they eventually went back to the overflow lot. I mean, this is another thing the main state police said was they didn't know there was an overflow lot. But you can see it from the main road next to the facilities easily as you can see a traffic light. Trailers are marked the main recycling it's right off the main road. So it was pretty implausible that they even suggested they didn't know it was there, but it had been searched.
A cursor research had been done by a local police department before the investigation got turned over to Mainstay police. Ultimately they went back because they said they were notified about the overflow lot, which once again I questioned, because you couldn't miss it on Friday night. So the shooting was on a Wednesday at seven. On Friday at eight, they found his body in the trailer. He had shot himself to death.
Now, tell us about the public reaction and law enforcement's reaction and the media.
Yeah, wow, jeez, a lot there. Obviously, the state was in shock. You know, this was I mean, that was the predominant response the entire including from me. By the way. I you know, I had been to that bowling alley and I knew Lewis, and well, I've skated in the ice rink there, I you know, took my motorcycle license there, all kinds of stuff. So, like everybody else, it was just a complete shock that this happened here. How could
it happen here? This is in Maine. So that was the reaction, and statewide was just shock and disbelief that this happened. And then you know, given the scale of the manhunt and the fact that there were two different shooting locations. It was an overwhelming episode for all that for a long period of time, and it's still discussed almost daily in the newspapers here. Investigations and hearings, you know.
The hearing and the independent commission they've formed to find the facts concluded that they were just egregious errors and judgment by Sagadahawk County Sheriff's department. And I should mention, by the way, that that Sagatahawk County Sheriff who they specifically pointed out, Sargant Schofield decided, first of all, he hired his own lawyer and issued a twenty page rebuttal to their findings. But then he decided he did such a good job, he's going to run for sheriff. So
he's now up for in November. And I happened to go buy one of his election signs planted in a yard and bath the other day, and I had a visual reaction when I grow by it, like, oh my god, how could you, my god, how could you do this? You know, there's got to be some accountability. There has to be for these things, for lessons to be learned. It would be the right thing to do would say, it would be to say, boy, we made some mistakes,
but we're going to learn from this. And as a matter of fact, that Sheriff's department Segada County had never used the yellow flag law and the prior three years it was in place. Since incident, they've used it at least I think of fourteen times that I know of an overall statewide the amount of times that law, which has been streamlined a little bit, but still essentially the same law it's been used. You know, I think the
quad the amount of times that's been used since. So there is some lessons that have been learned in that respect, but there still needs to be some accountability. And in the case of Sake a Hot Country shure, they're just not. They hired a lawyer to do a ninety three page review that completely exonerated them. Also, and you know, they thirty thousand dollars the taxpayers money to say, to try to pull the ball over everybody's eyes. Money could have been better spent.
You talked earlier in the book about the three day loophole. And as a result of these hearings, our gun laws are there are any significant changes to gun laws in Maine as a result of these hearings and this rampage.
Yes, there has been a couple there's been They've now streamlined that yellow flag to allow for warrants to be issued to take someone into protective custody, which then triggers the removal of firearms. So that's been you that's been implement into. Has also been a universal background check instituted for private sales of guns, a seventy two hour waiting period, guns that have purchased at gun shows and advertised private sales.
And I expect this. You know that there were attempts to do others that they attempted to just go straight to a red flag law to eliminate the need for mental health diagnosis, but that there was pushback on that that did not pass. The governor was reluctant to sign a couple of other things they'll be you know, there's a lot of push now in light of this these shootings to get tougher on the laws in the state. Whether that makes a big difference or not, you know,
it remains to be seen. It's difficult to know. But I think the fact that they've you know, the yellow flag of lar has been implemented so much more since then indicates that they're taking it in a lot more seriously, and I think in its own ways, recognition of the fact that they really felt they fell far short of the standards they needed to be held to. That you know, these police officers have all had this training and it's
a difficult job. I wouldn't want to do it. It's really a really hard job to try to ascertain mental health and firearms and substance abuse, and really difficult job. But you know they swore uphold and protect in this case that didn't happen.
There were survivors. There was eighteen killed and thirteen wounded. So there were survivors like Arthur Bernard and Artie Strout who formed a group Maners for Gun Safety January twenty twenty four rally involving Governor Mills. You also talk about the difficulties of the survivors after even going out in public as a result of this. But also you have the photos of the eighteen victims and the names of
each one of them. Thomas Conrad thirty four, Tricia Aslin fifty three, Lucille Violet seventy three, and her husband Bob seventy six years old, Aaron Young, which was fourteen, and you mentioned this young man, William Young's father forty four, Jason Walker fifty one, and Michael Delorier fifty one. The best friends that tried to intervene when they saw the gun was jammed. Keith mcneer sixty four, Joe Walker fifty seven,
Ron Moran fifty five. We mentioned Artie Strout Arthur Strout forty two years old, Max Hathaway thirty five, Peyton Brewer Ross forty, Joshua Seal thirty six, William Billy Brackett forty eight, Steven Vosella forty five, and Brian McFarland forty one years old.
It's a lot of people just hearing it read out like that, just it's yeah, it's a lot of people just going out for a good time.
You write that in the The Aftermath the Reckoning you called the reckoning for the Sheriff's office. Sheriff Mary goes from a lofty position of trust to becoming a pariah.
Yeah. You know, he's also running for reelection, so he's running against that particular deputy. I don't talk about it in the book, but privately I had some email exchanges with him that were off the record, So I'm not going to get into the content of those exchanges, but I can say that he there's a lot of remorse,
a lot of remorse I do. I came to the conclusion myself that I think he was a little far removed from the day to day operations of that department, and he had a lot of irons in the fire that were outside of the departments, on different commissions and boards and et cetera. Hopefully if he does when selection, that he becomes more hands on. He's a good man, a long, long time law enforcement official, highly respected up and up until that point, and and you know by
some people still is. But you know, obviously his department will be forever linked to this tragedy. So you know, I think he carries that burden, I really do.
What does the family of Robert Carr want and need as a family, But also tell us about some of the research done regarding Robert Carr's brain.
Yeah, the family has been, in my opinion, has been incredible in terms of their response. But you know, they're entrenched in the community there. You know, they're they're people. They don't want to get up and leave. They're part
of this community. They and to you know, to be linked to that just must I can't even imagine how difficult it is to they lost their own First, they lost their own family, bereaving over that of course, and then the fact that they knew he was responsible for all these deaths is just such a I know, triggered
such guilt with them. So they their respond. They were brave enough to get up in front of a commission and talk about what they knew about him and tell the community how sorry they were, which was really brave, But they also were angry. Carol Lamb is angry that law enforcement and the army have not stepped up and said, yeah, you know what, we screwed up and we can do better. There's been some little you know, some little things, but nothing,
nothing that would really be satisfy that anger. So I know car is still really angry about the response and about the lack of accountability. You know, she hurt, as she says to me, you know, she's like, my son lost his father and it didn't have to happen. And all those people lost their fathers and their brothers and
their sons, and it didn't have to happen. So they did find out, and this was a source of solace to them, was that they sent his brain off to Boston University's Brain Trauma Center and they ran it through some tests and found out that he had severe TBI traumatic brain injury, a severe case of it. And almost assuredly it came from his training with Greenades and training the cadets at West Point. I mean, they wore ear protection,
but it wasn't enough. And besides that, as it turns out, it's probably linked to blast over pressure, which is caused by the blast waves and not the sound repeated exposure. And because they said it was very significant, and is that the sole source of his psychosis and was it the only reason why he did what he did. It's
impossible to say, but it certainly had a connection. And the family has been very strongly advocating for mental health treatment for soldiers and veterans, and as a result, just recently the DoD passed well, the Congress passed a blast Over Pressure Act, which is which is requires the four branches of the Service to give cognitive baseline tests to their recruits when they come in so they can track them. So it's not just combat related TBI, but training related TBI.
And that's a positive first step. And I know that the family is happy. You know. The silver lining and this is that this might help down the road prevent any other soldiers from experiencing such significant injury. And you know, we tried to make sure in the book that we we didn't want the victims of the shooting to just be the statistical numbers. We wanted to try to, you know, demonstrate, let people know what kind of human beings they were,
and that it could happen to anybody anytime. It's just a matter of luck. That's where we've come to with this epidemic of mass shootings is that I know there were plenty of people here in the state, myself included. I remember I took my kids. I've got six kids
and some of them are adults now. But anyway, we were skating in an ice skating rink a couple of months later, and I had a sort of semi panic attack as I looked around and realized, what a you know, what an opportunity for somebody to come in and kill a lot of people, And where's the exit? How do you get out of here? Wow? Yeah, yeah, so that you know that. I think that seed was certainly planted by by Robert Carter, and that seat is not going to go away.
And I think what we haven't spoken about but people will enjoy in the book is the personal stories of what happened that night, the brave stories of people like Delorier's and Walker who had tried to intervene when they saw the gun was jammed, very brave efforts to try to save people, which did save some lives. And then the again brave again at the Schmengis location where somebody turned out the lights trying again to save people's lives.
So you include all the personal stories and the backgrounds of these people that were innocents at this mass shooting perpetrated by Robert Carr the second.
Yes, I tried to do that as best as I could.
I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about the lewis Than shootings and all American tragedy for those that might want to find out more information about this. Do you have a website and do you do any social media? I do, Yeah, I should do more social media, and I don't have a website.
I do have a LinkedIn page, a Facebook page, and in an Instagram page. I'm told that I should use them more, but I don't. I'm one of those I guess the ludeites. But in any event, the book's audiobook and the books itself can be found on any site. And Wild Blue Press is the publisher. They've been a fantastic publisher to work with. Yes, and so yeah, the book's available just about anywhere.
Thank you so so much, Robert Conlin for the Lewiston shootings and all American tragedy. Thank you so much for this interview, and you have a great evening. And good night, thank you, good night, thank you.