Unsolved: Allie Carver and Barbara Ivey

Allie Carver and Barbara Ivey were attacked at their New Llano residence in September of 2002. Miraculously, Barbara survived but suffered from significant injuries that left her unable to remember their attacker. 
Please contact the Vernon Parish Sheriff's Office at (337) 238-1311 if you have any information regarding the murder of Alicia Carver and the attempted murder of Barbara Ivey. 

Transcript

Hey y’all! I’m your host, Peyton, and today I’m going to tell you about a case out of New Llano, LA. Of the two victims, one managed to survive, but the case is still unsolved almost 20 years later. This is The Crimes-Picayune. 
 

The New Llano Police Department received a frightening call on the night of September 11, 2002 requesting assistance at a residence on Lake Street.

When the officer stepped into the tiny, white single-wide trailer, he was motioned through the kitchen towards a bedroom located at the rear left corner of the home. There he saw 2 young women, bloodied, and clinging to life. 

According to an article by the Leesville Daily Leader, that’s when the officer called for medical services and assistance from Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office. 

The two young women were 14 year old Barbara Ivey and 19 year old Alicia  Carver, who goes by Allie. 

Both had obvious signs of trauma to their heads and faces. 

14 year old Barbara was miraculously still alive and she was rushed to the nearby hospital for treatment where she would eventually undergo several surgeries to repair the damage done to her upper body. 

19 year old Allie, however, had succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Alicia Rose Carver was born September 9, 1983 in Pineville, LA. Pineville is just outside of Alexandria, LA in the middle of the state. 

She lived most of her life in the Leesville area and when she was 17 years old she met the love of her life, 20 year old Mark Carver, at a bowling alley in town. Allie was friends with the owner’s daughter and Mark worked there. The two dated for 6 months before tying the knot in July of 2000.  

In February of the next year, the two decided to move to New York to be with Mark’s family, but just a few days after arriving, the pair had to head back to Louisiana because Allie’s mom, Angela, passed away unexpectedly from sudden health complications. 

Allie took her mom’s death really hard; and she began using drugs to help her cope. 

Allie’s drug use took a toll on her marriage to Mark and the two eventually separated around the Spring of 2002. 

Allie needed a place to go and so she moved in with an old friend from high school, which was Barbara Ivey’s brother, but the family all lived under the same roof.  

His name has never been released in any of the articles, and after a quick Google search you could find his name but for the sake of the episode, I’m going to call him Jacob. 

A few months after Allie had moved in with the Ivey family, her dad stated that he received a phone call that was much different than any other call he had gotten from his daughter before. 

Her dad, Richard, says that in July of 2002 Allie called him and asked if he would come get her. He did not disclose to me why she asked for him to come get her, but he made the 10 hour trip from Georgia to bring her back with him. But her dad told me that once he made it to Leesville, Allie - for whatever reason - changed her mind and he made his way back to Georgia, alone. 

That would be the last time he would see his daughter because just 2 months later, Allie would be murdered. 

The night of the attacks, there’s said to have been 3 people in the home: Barbara, Allie, and Barbara’s mother’s boyfriend. 

Barbara’s mother, who is also unnamed in every article - but we will refer to her as “Cheryl,” she claims to have come home and seen the two women in the back bedroom of the home, bloodied. According to the Leesville Daily Leader, “The male family member who was asleep within the home indicated that he was not awakened by anything until his girlfriend returned home and came into the room screaming his name.” 

The article continues to say that he was cooperative during the investigation and was ruled out as a suspect, and I’m guessing that’s why he is also never named in any of the articles because authorities typically don’t want to put a person’s name out there unless they’ve been identified as a suspect and sometimes they’ll name a person of interest but they do that to protect the “innocent.” 

But after some hardcore digging, and when I say hardcore I mean I first had to identify Barbara’s mother’s name, and from there I searched for previous addresses and came across an old PO box that she shared with a man whose old address happened to be on Lake Street, which was the place of the murders. After discovering her boyfriend’s identity, I felt like a Louisiana version of Heather Ashley (and if you’re unfamiliar with her podcast, she’s the host of Big Mad True Crime and such a phenomenal story teller.)  

Anyway, so again, because I don’t have money for lawyer fees, I’ll refer to Barbara’s mother’s boyfriend as Derrick. 

So Derrick claims to have been asleep, and stayed asleep, while 2 young women were being bludgeoned in the room next to him. 

Allie’s husband sent me a drawing of the layout of the trailer so I could better understand how close Derrick was to the girls. 

Like I said earlier, the trailer was just a single wide and if you were to enter through the front door, you would be in the living room. To the left is the kitchen and the dining room and if you were to continue to your left you’d see a hallway that has 3 doors: one door to the left, one straight ahead, and one to the right. The door on the right of the hallway was the bathroom and the doors on the left and straight ahead were bedrooms. 

So the bedroom that Derrick “was in” and the bedroom the girls were found in actually share a wall. 

If you’ve ever been in a trailer, you know that oftentimes the walls are super thin and even from across the trailer you can hear everything, even with the doors closed. 

I just have a really hard time believing that he was asleep while Barbara and Allie were being beaten and more-than-likely screaming for their lives and the Leesville Daily Leader article even says “[t]his crime scene was one of the most brutal ever witnessed by many law enforcement officers within Vernon Parish” but he was able to hear his girlfriend screaming for him when she got back?? 

But, remember, authorities say that Derrick was cooperative with them and was eliminated as a suspect. 

There actually haven’t been any suspects publicly named in the 19 years this case has been opened. 

I have not been able to determine if Barbara’s brother, who I’m calling “Jacob,” has a solid alibi for the night of September 11, 2002. 

He was allegedly living in the trailer with his sister, his mother, his mother’s boyfriend, and Allie but has not been acknowledged in any of the coverage on this case. So I would like to know where he was that night and if anyone can corroborate those claims. 

I found an address Jacob used in 2004 that was located in Shreveport, LA. I don’t want to say that he moved there because I don’t know that to be true, but the address was linked to him for some unknown reason. 

Additionally, in February of 2013, authorities with the narcotics division of Vernon Parish went to pay Jacob a visit to serve him a warrant. An article by KPLC states that when authorities arrived, there were drugs in plain view and from there “law enforcement received consent to search the residence and found additional marijuana, drug paraphernalia and a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory.” Jacob was then arrested for one count of criminal conspiracy to create methamphetamine and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia. 

There at the home with him were 2 other men that were also arrested: a 40 year old - who I will call “Ray” - and a 29 year old - who I will call “Drew.” They were also charged with drug-related offenses. These 2 men, “Ray” and “Drew” have the same last name and after some digging I am pretty confident to say they are brothers, though they could be cousins, but they are definitely related. 

You’re probably asking why this is relevant to the attacks that happened to Allie and Barbara 11 years prior. Well, from what I’ve been able to find through public records, “Ray” was associated with a house that was about ½ of a mile from the Ivey residence at the time of the attacks. I’m not sure if he was living there or had mail sent there or what the circumstances were, but the address became associated with him less than 30 days before the murder in 2002. 

Allegedly, *they were connected* 

There’s something noteworthy that I haven’t mentioned yet. When you look at a map of the area, the Ivey residence sits between Ray’s home on Hickory St. and the New Llano Police Department. The home on Hickory St. sits ½ mile to the left of the Ivey home and the police department sits just ¼ of a mile to the right. 

I think this information is significant for 2 reasons: 1 - I don’t think an intruder would commit a random act with the Ivey home being so close to the police department. The Ivey residence was on Lake St. and if you were to continue all of the way down the sidewalk-less Lake St. you would run into the back parking lot of the police department where the patrols were stored. 

2 - If, and that’s a big if - this is all speculation - but if someone in that Hickory St. home had something to do with the attacks that night, they would have left the Ivey home and headed in the direction away from the police department. Allie’s time of death has not been released publicly, so there’s no telling how much time the perpetrator had to leave the scene, but even if he had just stepped out of the door when Barbara’s mom returned home and called 911, the police came from the opposite direction and would not have seen anyone on their route to the Ivey house from the police department. 

According to a report by the US Department of Justice, “from 1993 to 2008, among homicides reported to the FBI for which the victim-offender relationship was known, between 21% and 27% of homicides were committed by strangers and between 73% and 79% were committed by offenders known to the victims.” 

I don’t know it to be true (because the case is still unsolved) but I personally believe this was not carried out by a stranger to the family. Allie and Barbara were both beaten with an unnamed object. 

You might be thinking that I am contradicting myself now because earlier I said I didn’t believe a stranger would take the risk of killing someone so close to the police department, but why would I believe that someone who knows the family and knows the police are nearby would be willing to take that same risk?

And my answer is that I don’t think the attacks were planned. 

I believe that Allie and the perpetrator got into an argument or a disagreement and they picked up something that was nearby, whether a baseball bat or a hammer or some other heavy object, and they struck Allie out of rage. 

You can see part of Allie’s autopsy report in the background of a news story about Allie and Barbara (and I’ll have that linked on my Facebook page @The Crimes-Picayune https://www.kalb.com/content/news/VPSO-REOPENS-COLD-CASE-FROM-2002-560084201.html). 

It shows multiple lacerations and fractures to the center of her face and (from what I could see) another laceration was made to the back of her head towards the top. 

This leads me to believe (and remember I’m just an airchair detective that has zero work experience in the field of criminology) but I believe that she could’ve been struck on top of her head while facing away from the perpetrator which caused her to fall onto the floor or bed where he continued to assault her. And with Allie standing at only 5 feet, the spot on her head (in my zero-experience opinion) would be consistent with someone that was taller than her swinging the object down. 

Also included in the news story was a picture of 14 year old Barbara Ivey in her hospital bed after the attacks. The photo shows the left side of the girl’s shaved head with huge lacerations held together by staples. Though her face is blurred, you can still see the discoloration of Barbara’s black eyes. 

This has never been stated because as far as I could see Barbara does not remember the events that happened that night, but I suspect that Barbara heard what was going on in the bedroom and went into the room with hopes of stopping the attacker but she, too, became a victim that night. 

Allie’s husband, Mark, and her father, Richard, have not stopped fighting for justice. 

Mark has since remarried but the three of them together still have not given up hope and they continue to share articles about Allie. 

I wanted to read to you what was written under an article about Allie that was originally posted by Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office. 

In a response to Mark, her dad writes “we will find out who did this and I'm sorry that you are having to go through this again. Hang in there with me because I'm not giving up.” And to that Mark says, “I'm not giving up either. With (insert new wife’s name) by my side supporting me. We will find out who did this. And justice will be served.” 

Someone knows something. It’s never too late to come forward with information about this case. Please contact the Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office at (337) 238-1311.