When Loud Music Leads to Murder... | The Case of the Carr Family

This was the Dubberly family. Before 1988, they lived a happy life in Alturas, Florida. They went to church every Sunday and never caused any trouble. On June 14th, 16-year-old Duane Dubberly found a disturbing letter in the mailbox threatening the family to move out of Florida or they would all die. When Duane showed the letter to his parents, his mother, Peggy, started to worry, while her husband, Pye, dismissed it as a prank. October 23rd, four months later, Duane's mother, Peggy, fell suddenly ill, complaining of nausea and extreme pain, losing large amounts of hair. As her condition got worse, Peggy's husband, Pye, refused to take her to the hospital. One week later, Peggy fell into a coma. Her son, Duane, started having the same symptoms.

December 2nd, police identify the cause of the sickness as thallium, a deadly chemical used in rat poison. When authorities tested the remaining members of the family, all of them showed high amounts of thallium, even Pye, Peggy's husband. The mystery that threatens the life of Duane and his family would remain unsolved, unless by some miracle, one undercover agent could catch the killer before he makes another victim. - To murder somebody by poisoning is exceptionally rare. - This takes a great deal of intelligence. This is not a brute force weapon. - He was a very evil, very devious person. - Susan could have very well been his next murder victim. - They want to sit from afar and watch someone suffer. - I hope I'm not a prime suspect. - [laughing nervously] - He's not the kind of person to get mad, he's the kind that would get even. - That could be messy. - Yeah, I would imagine. - The year is 1988. 16-year-old Duane Dubberly lives a happy life with his loving family. His mother, Peggy, works as a waitress at the local diner.

After years of raising three children on her own, she marries Pye Carr, who has two children himself. - They seemed to be happy. My mom loved him more than anything. - We've seen all the heartbreak that she had gotten in her life. I was hoping that Pye was gonna be the one. - The nuclear family moves in together in the quiet town of Alturas, Florida, a perfect place to raise a family, where nothing bad ever happens and no one locks their door. October 23rd, in the early hours of the morning, Peggy leaves for work. Shortly after arriving at the diner, Peggy begins to feel ill, complaining of burning in her legs and feet and an intense chest pain. When Peggy is taken to the hospital, she's almost incapacitated. Doctors put her under observation and collect blood samples for tests. But as every test comes back negative, her physician is unable to make a diagnosis.

Peggy is sent home with nothing more than a prescription for the pain. - She was laying in bed and she couldn't move. She said she couldn't open her eyes. She was nauseated. She was sick. She was very sick. - October 30th, one week after her first symptoms, Peggy, her son Duane, and her stepson Travis are all rushed to Winter Haven Hospital. All of them have the same symptoms. - Throwing up, super dehydrated. The pain that I had was unbearable. It was like a thousand needles just wrapped around your foot. - I was just crying. Me and Travis were both just crying. - I honestly thought I was gonna die. - As Peggy is put in the intensive care unit, infectious disease specialist, Robert Vanhook, notices something alarming. - At one point, she was noticed to have her hair coming out. It was not just a few hairs. She was losing excessive amounts of hair. - Doctor Vanhook fears the worst. This might be a result of poison. One that wouldn't show up on regular lab tests, but he's only read about this type of poison in medical books.

He then decides to run one more test for thallium poisoning. Thallium was widely used in rat poison until 1972, when it was banned in the United States. If ingested, it can cause delirium, paralysis, even death. The worst part is there is no known cure to thallium poisoning. When the test comes back, it shows that Peggy has in her system 50 times the maximum amount a human can survive. October 31st, Peggy falls into a coma, her stepson, Travis, is put on a respirator, and her son Duane is not showing any signs of improvement. - I remember waking up in the hospital, hysterical. "What's going on? Where's Mom at? Is she okay?" - Despite the pain, Duane asks to be wheeled up four floors to see his mom, but nothing can prepare him for what he's about to see. - Her hair was gone. She weighed probably 90 pounds. They had a cap on her.

They didn't want to give me the shock of my life to see her laying there. I remember me thinking and hoping, everybody tells you, "She can hear you talk to her. She can hear you." - Right away, police do everything they can to find the source of the poisoning. Detective Ernie Mincey of the Polk County Sheriff's Office is assigned to the case. - Our sole purpose was to identify that poison and have it removed from the environment to prevent further injury to any other persons. - They investigate the orange groves surrounding the area, the neighborhood water supply, even the restaurant where Peggy works, but no trace of thallium is found. It isn't long before the public is made aware of the situation and panic begins to spread. - The community was clamoring for answers so that they would know whether or not they were safe. - I mean, we truly didn't know in the very beginning how this all came about. How did these people ingest? How did they touch? How did they inhale? Some of your first thoughts are the worst thoughts.

How many more people will show up at the hospital with this heavy metal poisoning? - Investigators scour the Carr home, collecting dust samples and gather more than 400 household items for laboratory analysis. One of them comes back positive. A six pack of Coke bottles, where three remained unopened. Inside, test results show each contained more than a gram of thallium, enough to kill an adult. Detective Mincey knows there are only two possible scenarios. The first one being product tampering at the Coke factory. If that's the case, how many more people have drunk the poison? - Where else could this be throughout not only the county, but the state or the nation? - They had people down here who were scared to death to drink Coke. The initial step was to look at the bottling company and see what could have happened there. - But with Coca-Cola's collaboration, a large-scale tampering is quickly ruled out. - It was actually physically impossible to tamper with the product at the plant. - Which leaves Detective Mincey only one scenario, this is a targeted attack on Peggy Carr and her family. As the investigation focuses on finding a suspect, they first take a look at the family members. - Her husband was a suspect. When Peggy was very sick and Pye didn't appear to be, obviously you think of him. - We dug very deeply at that point into Pye Carr's background.

Anything that would show motivation to poison his wife. - Although Peggy and Carr got married only seven months earlier, it seems their honeymoon was short-lived. Pye had been working long hours at the mine, and Peggy had grown suspicious. One night she found him with another woman. Detective Mincey also learns that the weekend Peggy first became ill, Pye was conveniently out of town. When he came back, he resisted taking his wife to the hospital. - I specifically remember my sister saying, "No, I'm taking her. I'm taking her to the hospital." He's like, "No, no, no. It's flu, it's a flu. It'll pass." I physically picked her up out of bed because she couldn't walk and carried her to my sister's car. - Everything seems to point to Pye Carr. Even Duane thinks he might be guilty. - I think he treated my mother horrible. I thought that he poisoned my mother because he wanted out of the marriage. I mean, my mom was in the hospital. I don't remember him ever shedding a tear ever, not one time. - But something doesn't sit well with Detective Mincey. Why would Pye Carr poison his own son, Travis? When they interrogate him, Pye reveals a clue that would confuse the police even further. June 14th, four months before Peggy is poisoned, Duane finds a letter in the mailbox.

Inside is a yellow Post-It with a threatening note typewritten on it. - It said, "You and all your so-called family have exactly two weeks to move out of the state of Florida or you will all die." And then at the bottom it said, "This is no joke." We were kids and we just laughed it off. Pye laughed it off. Nothing happened. We didn't call the cops. - The letter is addressed to Pye Carr with his name misspelled. Could Pye Carr have sent the letter to himself? Then Detective Mincey learns of another incident a few years prior. - Two of the Carr dogs died suddenly within a couple weeks of each other. - Both dogs had become very ill. Their fur had fallen out. - We suspect that he experimented on the dog first. - As Peggy's state continues to deteriorate, and Duane and Travis show no sign of improvement, the rest of the family are tested for thallium.

The results are far worse than anyone expected. - Everyone in the house had thallium in their system. - Including Pye Carr, which means he's no longer a suspect. - I wouldn't hold thallium powder in my hand. Anybody that had enough knowledge to do this crime wouldn't ingest thallium and take that risk. They just wouldn't do it. - Two-year-old Kasey, Peggy's granddaughter, also has traces of thallium. March 3rd 1989, Peggy has been suffering for five months when Duane is asked to come to her bedside for the last time. The family now needs to make the difficult decision to take her off life support. - “She's not coming back. She's brain dead.” They said that, “You're gonna see her lungs inflate and deflate quite a few times and then that's it.” That was it. It was terrible, I just lost the most important thing in my life. She was gone. - Peggy Carr dies at the Bartow Memorial Hospital. She was only 41. The nuclear family is shattered.

As Duane is recovering slowly from the poisoning, he and his siblings are sent to live with relatives. Pye and his kids also move out. The house in Alturas is abandoned. For Detective Mincey, her tragic death changes everything. This is now a murder investigation. - To murder somebody by poisoning is exceptionally rare. It is something that has to be thought up in a very demented mind by a very brilliant person who thinks that they're smarter than everyone else. - When the FBI examines the contaminated Coke bottles, they find tiny scratch marks. This indicates the bottles were meticulously opened, the thallium added in, and the caps were replaced and sealed shut. Thallium is tasteless, odorless, and easily dissolved. It also causes soda to overflow, changes its color, and leaves a sediment at the bottom, but the mixture found in the soda avoided these problems. Whoever laced the Coke bottles with thallium has a sophisticated knowledge of chemistry. This was the work of a highly intelligent individual, one that would be very hard to catch.

Police begin questioning neighbors of the Carr house and around town. - Alturas is a very small community, a few hundred people. I think we interviewed every single person that lived in Alturas. - The closest residence in the vicinity is that of George Trepal and his wife, Diana. When Detective Mincey interrogates him, Trepal's reaction to the subject of the Carrs is shockingly harsh. - He had went into a tirade about the problems with these rednecked children and family that lived next to him. - Then Mincey asks him why he thinks anyone would want to poison the Carr family. - The same question I'd asked to many other people, and the normal standard response was, "I don't know. I have no idea." His response was, "Someone wanted them to leave." - The same message that was written in the threatening letter. - He said exactly what was in the note. Nobody else knew of its existence except for law enforcement. - He made himself a suspect. - Police find out that George Trepal is a self-taught chemist. His wife, Diana, has a Master's degree in chemistry.

Both are highly intelligent people and members of Mensa, an elite society for people with IQs in the top 2% of the population. When they dig further into his background, investigators find out that George has served time in prison. - He had been the chemist in a major, major methamphetamine laboratory in the Southeast. - One of the ingredients often used in the production of amphetamine, thallium. George Trepal is now a person of interest, which comes as a surprise, even to Peggy's son, Duane. - I said, "They've got the wrong guy. That guy couldn't hurt a flea. There's no way this guy could do that." - Detective Mincey also finds out that Trepal had an argument with the Carrs over some loud music. - George Trepal was standing behind our vehicles, hollering, telling us to turn the music down. So we turned the music down and he's like, "Is your mother here?" We're like, "No, no. We're sorry, we're sorry. We'll keep it down." And he took off. - But who would ever suspect a poisoning over some kids playing a television or a radio too loud? - Less than 48 hours after the argument, Peggy was poisoned.

Investigators are convinced they have the right man, but without any proof, they can't arrest him. In most cases, one possible option is to bring the suspect in for questioning and hope to get a confession, but detectives think that wouldn't work on Trepal. - He was introverted, he was very quiet. He was not confrontational. - Grabbing a guy like that and bringing him in will only make him shut down. - The FBI suggests there's only one alternative: Someone must go undercover and outsmart the certified genius at his own game. Detective Ernest Mincey assigned Special Agent Susan Goreck to the case. She's asked to infiltrate the Mensa group to which George Trepal belongs. - We suspected it would only be for that weekend that I would have to do the undercover role. And I was told to be careful because the person had a photographic memory.

So if he saw us that he could remember our cars or our faces. - Under an assumed name, Susan is planning to attend a Mensa Murder Mystery Weekend that George and his wife, Diana, are hosting. Susan Goreck becomes “Sherry Guinn,” a woman on the verge of divorce from an abusive husband. April 14th, 1989, Susan Goreck heads to the local hotel where the event is being hosted. When she arrives, she's greeted by George Trepal himself. Detective Goreck is now face-to-face with a suspected killer. - The biggest fear that I had was that he had seen me when I was doing surveillance. I really took a deep breath and I looked for any recognition in his eyes. - Trepal doesn't seem to recognize Susan, but she can't be sure.

After all, he's not a confrontational person who would just come out and say it. Susan has to play along. He's not going to get in your face. He's going to poison you so that you die a slow, painful death. We put her in a very dangerous position. I told him who I was, Sherry Guinn, and that I needed to register, and he handed me a packet with the weekend’s information.

The pamphlet was made by George himself. It includes several well-planned-out murder scenarios members will have to solve during the weekend. One of them is a poisoning. One of the paragraphs that he wrote in this report said, 'When a death threat appears on the doorstep, prudent people throw out all their food and watch what they eat. Most items on the doorstep are just a neighbor's way of saying, 'I don't like you. Move or else.''

The message is eerily similar to the one the Carr's family received before Peggy was poisoned. Right away, Susan knows she has the right suspect. After I read that, I knew that it was just not coincidence. As she tries to engage Trepal in conversation, Susan watches every word she says. One slip and it could cost her her life.

When he asked me about my background, I told him that my husband was a lawyer from Houston, Texas and that I had left him. Talked about how he knew someone was lying by the way that their neck muscles moved. It made me very nervous. Before the weekend is over, Sherry confides in George that she intends to move to Florida to get away from her husband. That's when Detective Goreck gets her first break.

We have two winners! George said that they were thinking about moving his wife's practice and that they would be selling their house. After I talked to my supervisors, they immediately wanted me to follow up. They said, 'It'll just be a week.'

The undercover operation, which was supposed to last only for a weekend, is extended. Susan will continue to put her life at risk and carry on the role of Sherry, but she knows this could be the perfect opportunity to find evidence that could help her team get a search warrant for the house. Maybe he'd open a closet and I'd see lab equipment or maybe some chemicals or something. The following week, I went over to the house.

While touring the house, Trepal tells Sherry that Alturas is so safe, no one locks their door. What Susan discovers around the house raises suspicions, but nothing is enough to get a search warrant. He did show me a small secret passageway that he had built into the library. Upstairs he did have a mannequin that had some bondage-type things.

The plan has failed. After leaving the house, Susan must maintain her Sherry Guinn persona in order to collect as much evidence as she can against George Trepal, all while knowing that he's a highly intelligent killer. I had to be very careful. I had two children at home and a husband. That could be my life and my family's life.

If he found out that she was an undercover detective with the Sheriff's Office, then she would end up poisoned as well. Over the passing months, Susan meets Trepal over a series of lunch dates. A surveillance team watches from afar, capturing his every move. Every time I left the table and came back, I would never eat or drink anything else. It took me a long time for him to confide in me enough for me to understand just how much he hated people that had less intelligence than him.

After eight months, Susan has collected a large amount of small evidence, but not enough to build a case against George Trepal. Her supervisors are beginning to question the value of her operation. They could shut her down at any moment. But to Susan, this means more than just a failed assignment. She can't help but think of her own family. It could have been her husband, Gary, or her 12-year-old son, Greg, or even her two-year-old son, Steven, who drank the poison. Peggy and her family deserve justice. Susan has to bring in results, and soon.

December, 1989. Detective Goreck gets the call she's been waiting for. George and his wife, Diana, have moved out of town and are allowing Sherry Guinn to move into their home. Without a warrant, Susan now has legal permission to invite the Polk County Crime Scene Unit inside the house. But because they believe Trepal would be too smart to leave thallium around the house, they look for traces of residue instead. I truly believed that if we were going to find thallium that it would probably be either in the air conditioning filter or possibly down one of the drains.

George Trepal and his wife left the house filled with their stuff, which allows the unit to collect samples. In the garage, they collect vials and chemistry bottles to be sent for analysis. Susan hopes one of them will come back positive for thallium, but while they're waiting for the results from the FBI lab, Susan needs to continue her role of deception. I was starting to run out of ideas and ran out of scenarios to put him through. Time is running out.

January, 1990. With no news from the lab, Susan can no longer wait for the results. She has to take action and decides to try and trick Trepal into incriminating himself. What Susan doesn't know is Trepal is also preparing a trap for her. I had George meet me at a little picnic area behind a McDonald's in Sebring. The meeting between Detective Goreck and George Trepal is recorded on tape. I told him that I'd had two detectives come and talk to me when I moved into his house.

No one knew that. The crime had not been solved. At that point, there was really no doubt left in my mind that he was the one that had done it. Susan hands him a business card she says detectives left behind. She tells him they came looking for him. Right away, Trepal's behavior begins to change. He started getting extremely nervous. Then George asks her repeatedly to come over to his new house. Susan declines, but what would've happened if she had agreed to go to his house? After meeting, Trepal walks away, visibly shaken by the news.

Time is 11:30 and he's leaving very worried. April 4th, 1990, Susan gets a call she didn't expect. And I said, 'You're kidding!' And he said, 'No, they're on the phone and they found thallium.' The FBI confirms that one of the vials found in Trepal's garage contained Thallium(I) Nitrate, the exact compound used in the murder of Peggy Carr and the attempted murder of her entire family. We had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but this was the only piece of real evidence. I was just elated.

April 5th, George Trepal is arrested at his new home of Sebring. I seen it on TV, them walking George Trepal in his orange outfit into the Polk County jail. The same guy that I trusted and mowed his driveway. He remains unfazed, even when his friend Sherry Guinn, presents her true identity to him. I said, 'George, my name is Special Agent Susan Goreck. I work with the Polk County Sheriff's Office and I'm here to serve this on you and to get handwriting samples.' And he looked at me and said, 'Oh, okay!' And just smiled at me.

But Susan has no idea yet just how close she came to becoming his next murder victim. When police search Trepal's home in Sebring, they make a shocking discovery. As they look for a hidden room like the one in George Trepal's previous house, they find a door behind a pegboard. And he opened the door and there's no inside door handle. The only window in the soundproof space has been sealed. Inside the room is a platform bed with wood stirrups. He was building a bed on which to torture. He even had a pulley system to lift people.

So do you want a grand tour of the house? And I was so glad that I had not gone. They might've not found me. She just saw herself as being the person George had built that for. January, 1991. As George Trepal's trial begins, the jury is presented with overwhelming evidence against him. They show the items collected at Trepal's house, a journal titled 'General Poisoning Guides,' in which the use of thallium is described as the poison of choice by criminals. In this journal, there is even a reference handwritten by Trepal about getting rid of the neighbors.

A total of 55 fingerprints are found in that journal, all belonging to George Trepal. The prosecutor also shows the tools used in the decapsulating of the Coke bottles. He had a set of very tiny screwdrivers, like jewelers screwdrivers. When they compare the tools to the marks on the bottle caps, the jury is shocked. Those tool marks fit perfectly with one screwdriver that was missing in the jeweler’s screwdriver set. During the entire trial, Trepal remains calm, emotionless, sometimes even smiling.

George Trepal is truly evil. He knew what he was gonna do. The little girl had thallium in her and he didn't care. The reasoning behind what he'd done over loud music. He took somebody's life. He did the most horrible act that I've ever seen as a homicide investigator. He killed one person, put her through torture before her death. He justified it with his superior intelligence and the fact that people with lesser intelligence did not deserve to live. The trial lasts for two whole months, but it only takes the jury four hours to reach a verdict.

March 6th 1991, two years almost to the day after Peggy's death, George Trepal is found guilty on all counts. He is sentenced to death. The defendant, George James Trepal, shall be electrocuted until he is dead. It's been a long, hard struggle. Peggy was in hell. You'd have to have seen her to know what she went through. And I'm glad it's over with. The genius who thought he could commit the perfect crime has been defeated. He might have had a higher IQ than most of the world, but he certainly wasn't smarter than Susan. I was relieved because the family needed closure.

Susan Goreck brought justice to Peggy's family. She risked everything to put this criminal mind behind bars. She put her life at risk just to bring somebody's killer to justice. I think she's awesome. The rest of the family who were poisoned all recovered successfully. As for Duane, losing his mother at the young age of 16 has been very hard. Mother's Day comes around and you think, 'Okay, this year I'm not gonna be upset.' You can't get around it. That's all you think about all day long. What's gonna happen when my son asks me, 'Where's my grandma? Where's Mimi at?'

In the years that followed her death, Duane expressed his grief through anger and outbursts, but after getting in trouble, he decided to write to his mother. His letter reads, 'Duane made good on his promise. Today, he's married and has become the father figure his own family deserved. He makes sure every day that his mom is proud of him and that her memory lives on. Duane Dubberly is living proof that even after tragedy, there is a life worth living.