SoHum Murder Trial Scheduled for April

The trial of Benjamin Carter for the 2014 death of Zachery Chapman begins on April 27.  (See here for more.) The Southern Humboldt man confessed to killing Chapman during an interview with this reporter but said that he did it in self-defense.

Carter described in a series of emails Chapman turning a gun on him. He claimed, “Out of fear and reaction I brought his shot gun up and discharged the single round it had in it in his abdomen.”

The trailer was eventually burned and Chapman’s body dumped in the Eel. Chapman’s body was found not far from Tooby Park during the Community Easter Egg hunt.

Eventually, Carter’s wife was arrested as an accessory to murder and Carter went on the run. In May, Carter reached out to this reporter insisting that his wife, Melinda, was innocent and he had contacted the media because he couldn’t “sit by silently while my wife is being wronged… .”

On May 12, law enforcement arrested Carter in Lake Havasu, Arizona.