Felicia Carson was stabbed 72 times.
It was a regular day when seven-year-old Emily Carson and her 11-year-old brother went off to school in their home in Clarksville, Tennessee. Their mother Felicia helped them get ready and fed them breakfast as mothers do. Last that Emily remembered, her mom smiled at them from their couch and wished them a good day as they left.
Upon returning home around 3:30 that day, Emily recollects, “I had noticed what I know now was blood on the door. And, I opened the door, and I dropped my backpack, and I was like ‘mom, I’m home’. And there was just no response.”
What they saw next, no child should be subject to seeing. Hearing no one else in the residence, they made their way towards their mom’s room.
“There was blood on the wall,” Emily recalls.
Her brother shielded of the horror in their mother’s bedroom. Their laid Felicia Carson dead from 72 stab wounds from a weapon police were never able to find.
Felicia Carson was not the first Clarksville woman to be found slaughtered in her home around this time. She was in fact one of six women murdered in the city from September 1995 to May 1996.
Police don’t believe the killings were related. They point out that 72 stab wounds is a level of profound, frenzied psychological rage which may mean that the perpetrator knew Felicia Carson. In which case, he undoubtedly knew that she had two young children who could – indeed, did – discover her mutilated body.
If you have any information about this case, you are asked to contact the Clarksville Police Department’s Special Operations Homicide Unit at 931-648-0656 ext. 5042.
Journalist and dogged student of all things forensic, Wess Haubrich, examines the nitty, gritty details you didn’t know about infamous (and not so infamous but equally weird) crimes and their unseen motivations. Thanks for reading!
You can also support the Real Monsters’ podcast Wess does to get even deeper into these cases. Find it wherever you get your podcasts or here:
Follow the Show on Facebook here Twitter here. We’re also on Instagram and Snapchat.