Sibling murderers avoid death penalty

Jace Radke

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004 | 11:42 a.m.

Both Susanne Carno and John Ray avoided a potential death sentence this morning by agreeing to serve two consecutive life sentences each, with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

They also agreed to waive their right to appeal.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens said prosecutors felt it was "in the best interest of justice" to enter into the agreement.

He said the agreement would "bring closure to the case." Owens said there was no guarantee that the defendants would actually get parole after 40 years, only that they would be eligible.

Defense attorneys representing the siblings said they had discussed the agreement with their clients at length this morning.

"Despite all the repercussions, I do recommend this sentencing agreement wholeheartedly," said Deputy Special Public Defender Alzora Jackson, Susanne Carno's attorney.

Jurors had been scheduled to begin the process today of deciding if Susanne Carno and her brother John Ray should be put to death for the murder of Susanne Carno's husband January 2002 at a Las Vegas trailer park.

Family members of 36-year-old Richard Carno, who was found strangled to death in his car, smiled and hugged and one yelled, "Yes!" as guilty verdicts were read for Susanne Carno on Wednesday.

"We knew from the beginning that they were guilty," said Richard Carno, the father of the victim. "We knew when we first got word. This is justice."

Susanne Carno and Ray were found guilty on all counts -- conspiracy to commit murder, first-degree kidnapping and robbery with use of a deadly weapon, and first-degree murder.

After the verdict was returned Wednesday night, Richard Carno, who said he hoped that the jury would sentence the defendants to death, excitedly walked down the hallway outside District Judge Joseph Bonaventure's courtroom while relatives called friends and family on cell phones.

"That wicked witch is dead," Richard Carno said of Susanne Carno.

Mary Ellen Hodder, the mother of the victim, said Wednesday that she would have favored the death penalty for Susanne Carno and Ray.

"This verdict comes two long years after I lost my son, but now justice has been done," Hodder said.

The defendant's family members quickly left the courtroom after the jury was dismissed, and Susanne Carno's daughter wept throughout the hearing.

The weeklong trial included prosecutors laying out the story of how they say Susanne Carno hired her brother, Ray, to kill her husband, Richard Carno. Prosecutors told the jury that Susanne Carno cooked up the scheme in order to collect on a $500,000 life insurance policy.

They say she manipulated her brother into carrying out the plan and promised to pay him $50,000.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz said Carno practiced her "role" as widow in the months leading up to the slaying while she took a psychology class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Jackson suggested that Ray and two of his friends kidnapped and killed Richard Carno during a methamphetamine binge. She maintained that Susanne Carno never plotted to kill her husband.

Attorneys for Ray told jurors that while Carno may have tried to manipulate her brother into carrying out the crime, Ray did not follow through with it. Ray's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Joseph Abood, said his client was a "drifter" and a "drug addict" who wasn't savvy enough to carry out a contract killing.

Abood said that if jurors believed the state's theory -- that Carno conjured a scheme to kill her husband -- they had to question the involvement of an 18-year-old state witness named James Walsh. Walsh, who described himself as a former friend of Ray's, admitted to smoking methamphetamine with Ray on the day Carno disappeared.

Walsh's fingerprint was the only one found on the plastic bag around Richard Carno's neck when he was found.

Richard Carno was found dead in his green Ford Escort on Jan. 31, 2002, near the Comstock Trailer Park in northeast Las Vegas, and an autopsy revealed that he had been strangled.

The victim's sister, Laura Carno, said she remembered her brother as a fantastic person.

"He wouldn't have hurt a fly," she said. "He was just a great person.

"This was a really horrible crime," she said, "and I'm fine with the death penalty. I'm fine with life in prison. I just want them to be uncomfortable for the rest of their lives and pay back what they did to my brother."