Heidi Kathleen Carter (Vandenburgh Detention Center)
A 37-year-old Indiana woman is facing decades in prison after being convicted of multiple felonies in a rape and murder case that left two men dead and a community in shock.
A Vanderburgh County jury on Monday unanimously found Heidi Kathleen Carter guilty of six felonies, including aiding, inducing or causing murder. She was also found guilty of two counts of aiding, inducing or causing rape and three counts of criminal confinement, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
A jury in November found Carter guilty on one count of misdemeanor carrying a firearm without a permit but could not agree on the other counts, resulting in a partial mistrial.
Carter was arrested at her Evansville home in October 2021 after a woman hired to clean the house found the body of Tim Ivy, 50, and a woman who had been sexually assaulted, severely beaten, and restrained with duct tape. Evansville is 180 miles south of Indianapolis.
Authorities have maintained that Carter’s then-boyfriend, Carrey Hammond, beat and strangled Ivy to death and sexually assaulted the woman before being fatally shot by responding law enforcement officers.
The question for jurors was whether Carter aided him in those acts.
Police said that Carter and the woman met on an LGTBQ dating app, and Carter invited her and her boyfriend to her home on Oct. 19, 2021.
According to court documents, when the couple arrived at Carter’s home, the three drank alcohol and took drugs before engaging in consensual sexual activity.
Hammond walked in as the three were engaged in sexual activity and became enraged. The surviving female victim told investigators that Hammond grabbed a baseball bat and began beating Ivy.
“The next thing I know there’s a man bursting through the door with a baseball bat attacking us,” the surviving victim testified on Monday, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.
Hammond restrained the couple with duct tape, “beating and abusing them for hours,” according to the affidavit. The victim testified that Carter helped Hammond restrain the couple and held a gun on them, repeatedly threatening to kill the victims.
The woman testified that Carter continued to hold the gun on her while Hammond repeatedly raped her, the Courier & Press reported. She reportedly described Carter as excited and angry during the sexual assault, saying she told Hammond to “do anything he wants” to her.
The victim said that after the assault, Carter left home for a couple of hours when Hammond severely beat Ivy before using a belt to strangle him to death because Hammond saw Ivy trying to escape his restraints.
Later, a woman Carter hired to help her clean the house in preparation for a landlord inspection found the female victim restrained and begging for help, authorities say.
The woman sat down on what she thought was a pile of blankets covering Ivy’s body.
When police arrived at the house, Hammond left home aggressively and held an object shaped like a handgun, police said. Officers opened fire, killing him. Police said he had a metal and plastic object that looked like a gun in his hand, and police described Hammond’s death as suicide by cop.
Carter told police she only pretended to help Hammond and held the gun on the victims to appease him.
At trial, defense attorney, Barry Blackard, portrayed his client as a scapegoat who was afraid of disobeying Hammond, the Courier & Press reported.