“The world is so much bigger than Knoxville, Iowa. “I’m not going to tell you it’s easy to be here, because it’s not,” said Shelly, who’s a teacher at a Knoxville elementary school.īut Shelly said every positive person far outweighs every 10 negative people. They know their personal business is widely known across the community, and, they suspect, for some people, the not-guilty verdict didn’t mean a lot. Once, a boy at school got into a disagreement with the youngest Carter girl, her parents said. “I just wish people would leave my family alone,” she said. “What’s wrong, honey?” Jason Carter asked his daughter when she came home from school upset one day. “I don’t know how much more complicated you can make life,” Shelly Carter said. She remembers facing a lot of looks and stares on the sidewalks, at restaurants. Shelly Carter said she felt there was pressure in their small town for a guilty verdict against Jason. Plus, they have a brood of 11 chickens at home that their daughter fondly named Becky and the Nuggets. Now, they farm about 1,500 acres of corn, beans and hay across five plots of leased land. Jason and Shelly met when he was in college and she was in high school. Knoxville, where Jason and Shelly Carter live, is a town of about 7,000 people in Marion County, about 35 miles southeast of Des Moines. “I thought he would be convicted and then I thought I could see my grandkids,' Bill Carter said of his son Jason. 'I lost all that hope.” Couple and their children struggle in old community When asked if anything gives him hope and if he feels like there's been some justice, Bill’s voice became deeper as he quickly said “no, no.” They had three children together and she spent her life farming alongside him.īut he wouldn’t fathom leaving the home of 48 years in which they built a life together.Ī frame hanging on the wall over Bill's right shoulder read: “A house is made of brick and stone, a home is made of love alone.” “She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,' he said, remembering her short auburn hair that she grew out as she aged. He was a linebacker on the school's football team and asked her to go to the homecoming dance with him. He was a junior in high school she was a sophomore. When Bill Carter spoke of the first time he asked Shirley out, his blue eyes widened as a grin spread across his face. 'It's hard to keep faith' after the slaying When Jason and Shelly’s son filled out college applications, he was asked in a questionnaire, whom he had admired most. “She’d do anything for the kids,” Shelly said. One day Shelly came home from work to find ducklings swimming around a filled bathroom sink, courtesy of Shirley, per her grandson’s request. She loved to take her grandkids on hikes through the timber sometimes they would run around the house playing pirates. She and Jason work to keep Shirley's memory alive for their kids, often sifting through old photo albums and telling stories of their grandmother's adventures. “The worst time is when I wake up in the morning and I reach across the bed and she’s not there,” Bill Carter said.

He usually awakes a few hours later and heads to his bedroom. He often falls asleep in his recliner next to Shirley’s old rocking chair a blue quilt made of her old shirts hangs over her old seat. A sleep aid among the medication mix knocks him out by 8:30. He takes a fistful of pills in the evening.

Paying attention to the machinery means letting the dark memories fall away, if only temporarily. More: 'Mom's dead': At son's murder trial, father tearfully recalls day that altered his lifeīut farming usually provides a much-needed distraction.īill’s in the field most every day this time of year, putting up hay. Now, Bill makes his own coffee in the morning, but nothing else. He got a call from their daughter a few hours later, telling him his wife was dead. She was in a really good mood that day, he recalled. Bill Carter went to haul grain and Shirley Carter stuck around the house to do chores. He dropped her off in their circle drive when they got home, a cup of coffee in her hand. They followed the same routine the morning she died. They’d eat at the table together before heading to a nearby Casey’s General Store to get coffee. Shirley used to be up at 6 a.m., said Bill, who remembered her clanging around the kitchen before waking him up at 7 with breakfast.

Dateline the man who wasn t there