sister she was just this sweet giving person. they called it a horrible accident, but here is the thing. accidents just seemed to keep happening, deadly ones. these things kept coming up, intuitions that something wasn t right. wife number two had a growing suspicion. and she also had a plan. i had actually watched an episode of dateline and i had a revelation. a dangerous mission, was her own life at risk? this is a mystery that won t and, you couldn t write the story. hello and welcome to dateline. the death of a young mother in my house fire was almost too much for her family to bear. then, years later another devastating accident and another loved one gone. was this just a string of bad luck or the work of a calculating killer? here is andrea canning with deadly deceit. snapshots of a time gone by. capturing a life that could have been. now all that is left or the burned out remnants of the life that is gone. i ve seen the destruction in my family. i have
county knows one or all of us? carl s wife was gone but he still had his three little kids to think about. he went back to work at the quarry for a while. and then saw an opportunity in a local glass manufacturing plant that had just opened. was there a lot of concern for carl having just lost his wife? i think everybody realize that this poor guy isn t going to do it on his own. so people helped out. here in seneca county, he was surrounded by a big extended family in a place where the carlson name really meant something. and it all seemed to come together for him when he met cindy best aunt at a party in 1992. he told me he lost his wife at a fire and he was a single dad raising three kids on his own. cindy got herself an instant family when she married carl in 1983. between the farm and the glass job, carl was busy.
welcome back to dateline, i m craig melville. it was a stunning realization, cindy carlson believed that her husband karl had killed his son levi. so did the private investigator she hired to look into the young man s death. armed with a few tactics, she actually learned from dateline, cindy would actually take on a dangerous mission, confronting the man she feared. once again, here is andrea canning with deadly deceit. in november 2011, private investigator steve brown had decided it was time to meet carl carlson. so he and cindy came up with an audacious plan. i said, what if i kind of go undercover and be friend carl, if you will, as a marketer, our promoter for your duck business. it was a giant step for cindy and risky. what if carl found out who steve really was? no clue this was a private investigator? right. and when he came to the house i had to pretend like i was just meeting him for the first time. i just said, you know, where are you now, where will you be
then, in january 2020, the case went to trial, the prosecution made the case that carlson killed christina for the same reason he killed levi. the life insurance. life insurance on his wife or $200,000. just three weeks after carl took out that policy, christina was dead. this was his plan, the da said, this was carlson s deadly ammo. but now it was the defenses turn to fight back. carl s attorneys told jurors they couldn t draw any conclusions based on carl s guilty plea in levi s death. does carl carlson deserve a fair trial? now, some people would say well, he admitted to killing his son in new york, he doesn t deserve a fair trial. and to that i would say, if you believe that today based just on that fact, we have an obligation to let the court know that you can t be fair.
carl carlson pled guilty to murder to the second degree in the seneca county court, taking responsibility for the death of his son levi. the da said carlson would be given the minimum sentence, 15 years to life. at that same news conference, levi s sisters aaron and katie thank the investigation team, but then erin turn to the tragedy that shattered her childhood and changed her family forever. we ve been waiting just about 24 years now for some closure for things that transpired in california, you know? things that i will never be able to forget, things that my family, they ll never be able to overcome. it appeared someone was listening. in 2014, carl carlson was charged with first degree murder in the 1991 death of his wife christina, he was extradited to calaveras county in california where he pleaded not guilty.