Beyond Criminal Headlines: Michelle Wright on the murder of Carla Larson

On June 10, 1997, Carla Larson, an engineer who was helping construct a Disney resort in Orlando, Florida, left work and went to a local grocery store to pick up food for an afternoon meeting.

A receipt later indicated that she purchased food, but Larson never returned to work.

This week, Cox Media Group’s Nicole Bennett had the opportunity to speak with Michelle Wright, a reporter for 95.5 WSB in Atlanta, about her extensive coverage of Carla Larson’s case.

>> Listen to the full episode below.

Beyond Criminal Headlines is a podcast in which Cox Media Group’s Nicole Bennett sits down with esteemed journalists and true crime experts who’ve covered some of the most notorious cases in American history. Find the latest ‘Beyond Criminal Headlines’ content on any podcast provider or listen on demand here.

Backing up a bit for context – unfortunately, this was not the first time the Larson family had gone through something like this.

Seven years earlier, The New York Times’ Rick Bragg writes the summer of 1990 was described as a ‘summer of terror’ for the college city of Gainesville, Florida.

Sonja Larson, Carla’s sister-in-law, enrolled as a freshman at the University of Florida. One night in August, she went to a Wal-Mart with her roommate, Christina Powell, to buy some odds and ends.

“Danny Rolling, a drifter who claimed he was possessed and that he followed the instructions of the demon ‘Ynnad’ (his name, Danny, spelled backwards), saw the two young women and followed them home,” Bragg writes. “He caught them in their beds and stabbed them again and again.”

In a 1999 interview, Carla’s husband and Sonja’s brother, Jim Larson, told Bragg, ‘’He confessed to killing five people. He cut their heads off, then played with them. He did the worst things you can possibly do to somebody.”

Around the time of Sonja’s murder, Carla had just graduated from the University of Florida as a construction engineer. She and Jim moved to Atlanta, then back to Florida, “chasing work, building a life,” Bragg explains. Carla wanted a child but she and Jim questioned whether they wanted to bring a child into any world where people like Sonja’s killer, Danny Rolling, existed.

Finally, Bragg says that after counseling, the Larsons decided to start a family.

Their daughter Jessica was born and the Larsons bought a small house on a dead-end street in Orlando. “They installed good locks and a home security system,” Bragg writes. “They bought a guard dog, a Rottweiler.”

Panning back to June 10, 1997, the day of Carla’s abduction – numerous witnesses later told police they saw a Ford Explorer SUV that matched a description of Larson’s SUV in a wooded area off the Osceola Parkway.

A few days later, while being led by witnesses who saw the SUV in the woods, coworkers found the Larson’s body. The cause of death was strangulation and Larson’s jewelry, clothing, and purse were missing.

For more on what happened next, as authorities turned their attention to a man named John Huggins, listen to the full episode above.

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