Third person sentenced in fake carnival mafia killing of Wichita couple

A third suspect in the 2018 killing of a Wichita couple selling crafts at a Kansas fair has been sentenced.

Rusty Lee Frasier, 37, of Aransas Pass, Texas, was sentenced this week in Barton County in connection to the deaths of Alfred “Sonny” Carpenter and Pauline Carpenter, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office said in a news release on Friday.

“Frasier was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 50 years on each of two counts of first-degree murder,” the news release says. “The sentences are to run consecutively.”

The Carpenters had been selling jewelry, crafts, purses and other handmade items at the fair in Barton County in July 2018 when they were killed, according to The Associated Press.

After being shot, they were taken in their camper to the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, where they were buried in a shallow grave. Arkansas police said the murders were ordered by a carnival worker posing as a member of a fake carnival mafia.

Two other people have been sentenced, and charges are pending against a fourth person, according to the attorney general’s office.

Christine M. Tenney, 40, of La Marque, Texas, has been sentenced to 59 months in prison for aggravated robbery and obstructing apprehension. Michael Fowler, Jr., 56, of Sarasota, Florida, has also been sentenced to “life in prison without the possibility of parole for 100 years” in connection to the killings, the news release says.