Shirley Carter’s New Evidence: Trial, Verdict, and Lawsuits

The Shirley Carter new evidence is a set of audio recordings and witness statements from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s own files that surfaced after a civil jury had already found her son Jason liable for her death. It points to alternative suspects, contradicts her husband’s civil-trial testimony about the timeline, and includes a DCI agent conceding there was no forensic evidence against Jason. It helped secure Jason’s acquittal at his 2019 criminal trial, but every court that has since reviewed it has left the $10 million civil judgment against him in place.

What the New Evidence Consists Of

Shirley Carter, 68, was shot twice in the back inside her farmhouse near Lacona, Iowa on June 19, 2015. The scene appeared staged as a burglary, but her purse with $140 in cash and a $1,700 envelope were untouched.¹ The murder weapon was never recovered. In January 2016, her husband Bill Carter and two of their children filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jason, and in December 2017 a Marion County jury found him civilly liable and awarded $10,250,002.² Three days later, DCI agent Mark Ludwick obtained a warrant charging Jason with first-degree murder.³

What Jason’s attorneys came to call the new evidence broke into four main pieces.

The Followill Brothers and the Jailhouse Informant

In 2015, a Marion County jail inmate named Robert Sedlock told the DCI that brothers Joel and John Followill, along with a man named Matt Kammerick, had confessed to him that they killed Shirley Carter during a botched burglary. In a recorded interview, Sedlock said: “I got a guy who admitted doing it. Or admitted that his brother did it. His brother got spooked and shot this woman. Shot her twice.”⁴ The Followill brothers had drug charges on record in Marion County.⁵ According to court filings by Jason’s legal team, investigators had accumulated more than thirty reports tying the Followills and others to the homicide but never pursued those leads.

The Wendy Bonnett Statement

A witness named Wendy Bonnett told agent Ludwick in January 2018 that Joel Followill had confessed to the killing. Jason’s court filing alleged Ludwick then intimidated Bonnett into retracting the statement by falsely telling her that Jason’s defense team planned to blame her for the crime.⁶ Bill Carter’s attorney maintained the DCI had vetted the Followill brothers in 2015 and ruled them out based on “a complex analysis of lots of factors.”⁵ Neither Followill has ever been charged.

The Rigor Mortis Recording

In May 2018, Jason’s attorneys filed a 46-page petition to throw out the civil verdict, citing audio pulled from DCI files. One recording captured Bill Carter telling a DCI agent shortly after finding his wife: “She was cold. She was terribly cold. And she had rigor mortis. I’ve been, I was a butcher at one time and did a lot of skinning and butchering, and I know when something’s been dead for a long time. And she was so cold and stiff.”⁴ At the civil trial, Bill testified that Shirley’s head dropped loosely when he lifted it, suggesting rigor mortis had not yet set in and supporting a timeline in which she was killed shortly before Jason arrived.⁷ If Shirley had been dead long enough for rigor to set in, the timeline built around Jason’s arrival collapses.

The Agent’s Admission

Another recording captured DCI agent Mike Halverson acknowledging that he had “no forensic evidence” that Jason committed the crime.⁸

Why the Material Emerged Only After the Civil Verdict

Jason’s attorneys argued the state had held this material back because the criminal investigation was deemed “active” during the civil trial, which relieved investigators of any obligation to share it with the defense at that stage. On the eve of the criminal trial in March 2019, prosecutors disclosed more than two gigabytes of additional reports and recordings, prompting a brief postponement and a Brady v. Maryland objection from lead defense attorney Christine Branstad.⁹

What It Did in the Criminal Trial

The criminal trial was moved to Pottawattamie County on a change of venue. Branstad argued there was no forensic evidence tying Jason to the crime and that investigators had never tested his clothing for gunshot residue or biological material. Prosecutors pointed to Jason’s inconsistent statements, details they said only the killer could have known, and 31 of 55 fingerprints on Bill’s gun case that belonged to Jason, though Jason had testified in the civil trial that he never touched evidence at the scene.¹⁰

On March 21, 2019, the jury acquitted Jason after less than two hours of deliberation. Marion County Prosecutor Ed Bull said: “We didn’t do enough to rebut the presumption of innocence in this case.”¹¹

Why It Didn’t Overturn the Civil Verdict

The acquittal did not touch the civil judgment. Jason filed two petitions to vacate. The first was denied on the merits. The second was rejected as untimely, filed beyond the one-year deadline in Iowa’s rules of civil procedure.⁷

In March 2021, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the civil judgment in Carter v. Carter, 957 N.W.2d 623. Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote that “there is no rule requiring trial courts to stay civil proceedings until criminal proceedings conclude” and that “a reasonable mind could conclude by a preponderance of the evidence that Jason intentionally shot his mother.”¹² The civil standard of proof, a preponderance of the evidence, is lower than the criminal beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, which is why the same set of facts can support liability and acquittal.

In 2023, Jason brought an independent equity action alleging that his father and law enforcement had committed extrinsic fraud by conspiring to conceal evidence. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment against him. The court ruled that his fraud allegations were directed at law enforcement rather than at the parties to the civil suit, which made them intrinsic fraud and not grounds to vacate a judgment through an equity action. The court also held that the newly discovered evidence argument was barred by collateral estoppel because the Iowa Supreme Court had already decided it.²

Why It Didn’t Win the Suits Against Investigators

Jason sued the State of Iowa and agent Ludwick under the Iowa Constitution, alleging illegal search and seizure and due process violations. His attorneys accused Ludwick of operating with “tunnel vision,” removing the Marion County sheriff from the case after the sheriff expressed doubt about Jason’s guilt, intimidating witnesses, and coordinating with Bill Carter’s civil attorneys.¹³ In May 2023, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed dismissal after overruling the legal framework Jason relied on, Godfrey v. State, in a separate decision called Burnett v. Smith. With the constitutional tort theory abolished, his remaining claims collapsed.¹⁴

Jason also filed a federal civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Ludwick and Marion County Deputy Sheriff Reed Kious, alleging false arrest, concealment of exculpatory evidence, and failure to investigate alternative suspects. Chief Judge Stephanie M. Rose of the Southern District of Iowa dismissed the case in March 2024. On June 12, 2025, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in Carter v. Ludwick, No. 24-1806. Judge Bobby Shepherd, writing for the panel, addressed each claim:

False arrest: the arrest rested on a facially valid warrant, and the investigation’s totality gave the officers arguable probable cause.¹⁵
Evidence concealment: Brady v. Maryland, which requires disclosure of favorable evidence to criminal defendants, does not extend to civil litigation. The claim was “entirely novel” and not clearly established law, so qualified immunity applied.¹⁵
Failure to investigate: the panel found the allegations amounted to “shoddy police work” that “reflects nothing more than negligent or grossly negligent conduct,” not the conscience-shocking misconduct required for a substantive due process claim.³

The panel also affirmed dismissal of state-law malicious prosecution and abuse of process claims against Kious, finding probable cause and legitimate use of process.¹⁵

Where Things Stand

The Eighth Circuit’s June 2025 ruling appears to end litigation connected to the case. Jason Carter was acquitted, has exhausted his challenges to the investigators, remains civilly liable for his mother’s death, and owes more than $10 million he has not paid. Bill Carter’s attorney, Mark Weinhardt, said publicly: “It is time he stops fighting in the courts and pays something — anything — against the $10 million judgment he owes.”¹² No one else has ever been charged with Shirley Carter’s killing.³

1
Iowa Cold Cases. Shirley Carter Case Summary
2
FindLaw. Carter v. Carter, Iowa Court of Appeals
3
Des Moines Register. Jason Carter Lawsuit Against Iowa Murder Investigators Appeal Denied
4
WHO 13. New Audio Files Point to Other Potential Suspects in Carter v. Carter Case
5
KCCI. Jason Carter: New Evidence Points to Other Suspects in Mother’s Death
6
WHO 13. Carter v. State Petition
7
FindLaw. Carter v. Carter, Iowa Supreme Court
8
Des Moines Register. Jason Carter Asks for New Trial Based on Exculpatory Evidence
9
Des Moines Register. Jason Carter Attorneys Say Prosecutor Withheld Evidence
10
KCRG. DCI Says Jason Carter Knew Details Only His Mother’s Killer Would Know
11
KCCI. Jason Carter Found Not Guilty in Mother’s Shooting Death
12
Seattle Times. Court Upholds Iowa Man’s Civil Judgment in Mother’s Death
13
Des Moines Register. Jason Carter Suing State of Iowa Over Handling of Investigation
14
FindLaw. Carter v. State, Iowa Supreme Court
15
FindLaw. Carter v. Ludwick, Eighth Circuit