The suspect accused of killing Arkansas realtor Beverly Carter defiantly denied murdering her in a jailhouse interview, claiming that Carter's death "was an accident."
"I didn't murder her, and anything that did occur was an accident," Arron Michael Lewis, 33, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, capital murder and four counts of a felon in possession of firearms, told NBC affiliate KARK in Arkansas from behind bars.
Carter, 50, went missing while showing a home on Sept. 25. Her body was found five days later in the Little Rock suburb of Cabot. Investigators have said Lewis first contacted Carter about a home for sale, but Lewis refused to confirm how the two met. "It didn't have nothing to do with her showing the home. Just a place to meet," he said. "It wasn't necessarily like an appointment."
He added that while Carter did leave the home with him in his car, investigators were overreaching in the kidnapping charges. "The kidnapping's false. I mean, somebody goes with you of their own free will, they're not being kidnapped."
Authorities have pinned the crime on him because he's a convicted felon, he told KARK. "It's not as clean cut as they're wrapping it up to be," he said.
IN-DEPTH
— Elizabeth Chuck