Crime Junkie

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MURDERED: Carmen Van Huss

Explore episode Jul 6, 2026
True Crime
Sergeant Bill Carter: The Man Who Wasn't Supposed to Solve It

MURDERED: Carmen Van Huss · Jul 6, 2026 True Crime

Bill Carter started his law enforcement career as a state revenue agent, moved through domestic violence and nuisance abatement, and stumbled into cold case work by knowing how to navigate Facebook. He had no cold case training, no formal assignment — and he solved a case everyone else had given up on.

Where this was said

Bill Carter Enters the Case

At 22:20 · chapter starts 22:05

Twenty years after Carmen's murder, the case gets its most unlikely champion. Sergeant Bill Carter — whose career arc ran from state revenue agent to domestic violence officer to nuisance abatement — had stumbled into cold case work by helping a detective access a memorial Facebook page for a different victim: Amy Weidner. He got hooked, read the whole file, digitized it, spoke to the family, and solved it in his spare time despite a note in the file declaring 'all that could be done was done.' He got no accolades, no official transfer to cold cases. He went back to nuisance abatement. Then an IMPD officer who'd gone to high school with Carmen approached him: please look at this one too. Carter dives in, digitizes Carmen's file, and reaches the same conclusion investigators had in 1993 — the killer likely knew Carmen. But now it's 2013, and DNA technology has changed everything.

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