Seek to keep key witness in custody

Robert Macy

Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000 | 2:09 a.m.

A pregnant outcall service dancer who is a key witness in a supermarket slaying rampage should remain in custody until she can testify at the murder trial, a prosecutor contends.

Tracie Rose Carter, 21, was arrested Sunday night on a warrant issued Dec. 8 after she failed to check in with prosecutors in the Zane Floyd murder case.

Floyd is accused of killing four people and wounding a fifth during a dawn shooting rampage at an Albertson's supermarket June 3.

Carter, an employee of the Love Bound outcall service, had answered a call to Floyd's home in the hours before the slayings. Floyd sexually assaulted the woman, then told her he had a gun with 19 bullets and planned to kill the next 19 people he saw. He walked to the nearby store and opened fire on customers and employees, finally surrendering to police who swarmed to the site.

Floyd is scheduled to go on trial March 6 and prosecutors contend Carter is a key witness because she can testify to his state of mind in the hours prior to the shooting. She had checked in with prosecutors until December, and a warrant was issued for her arrest when she failed to continue doing so.

"We're going to try and keep her in custody," Clark County Deputy District Attorney Bill Koot said Tuesday.

A hearing is scheduled Wednesday to determine if she should remain incarcerated at the Clark County Detention Center.

"Tracie is a complicated individual," Dale Horton, an investigator for the district attorney's office, said Tuesday.

"She doesn't - and understandably so - want to be a part of all this. She would just like to forget the whole thing and move on," Horton said. "But she's in the unfortunate position where she can't because she's a material witness in a very gruesome quadruple murder."

Carter has told friends she is pregnant but has denied reports that Floyd might be the father.

"She is very concerned about reports that the child she is carrying is that animal's child, and it is not," said a worker at Love Bound who declined to give her name. "She does know who the father is."

A judge declined last year to force Carter to give a deposition in the case, instructing her to stay in touch with prosecutors until the murder case went to trial. Horton said Carter did so weekly until mid-November, when she quit contacting him.

Horton said Carter is a flight risk because the Portland native has no family ties. She was working at the escort service when Floyd called asking for a dancer. The services send dancers to customers, usually at hotel rooms. Police contend the services are often fronts for prostitution.

"We want to make sure that she remains in custody," Horton said. "Because of her past conduct we can't be sure she will be there when she says she will be there.

"She's had a tough life," Horton added. "She makes decisions based on life experiences from the streets."