A “Trials of Frank Carson” podcast review from a Modesto lens
A profane, curmudgeonly attorney in failing health shuffles from defending the accused in one courtroom to another where he himself stands trial for murder.
The star witness is a meth addict who initially brags that he killed someone and fed the remains to pigs, then recasts his story to fit the prosecution’s narrative.
And after the second-longest murder trial in California history, all defendants — including the cranky lawyer in a legal fight for his life — walk free.
Does this sound familiar?
If so, it’s because it all happened right here in Stanislaus County.
And now, people everywhere are hearing our strange, twisted story, thanks to a Los Angeles Times writer who spent two years turning it into a compelling true-crime podcast.
The first of eight episodes of “The Trials of Frank Carson” began airing a few weeks ago, and the eighth installment — the grande finale — will post Tuesday.
I have to tell you, it’s highly entertaining. I wonder if I would say that even if I – along with captivated Modesto Bee readers – had not watched this bizarre story unfold in the pages of our newspaper over the course of several years.
The Times’ Christopher Goffard, who wrote and narrates all episodes, meticulously pieced them together after researching thousands of documents, picking apart hours of wiretap recordings, and interviewing many participants, including Modesto’s Carson. The exhaustive work pays off, if you’re the kind that likes hearing every possible detail once you’re sucked in.
If that’s the case, a subscription to The Times gets you access to bonus episodes featuring Goffard discussing with a Times editor how the series came together. In these extra sessions you’ll learn his impressions of Modesto, and hear him reading from a Bee editorial slamming Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager.
I wrote that editorial, as the trial wound toward a close in June 2019. Here’s a part:
Is Fladager, the darling of Scott Peterson’s prosecuting team in 2004, so blinded by fury and pride that she can’t admit the Carson case was a loser? Shutting this thing down long ago would have saved untold amounts of taxpayer-funded resources. Keeping it going like this, at a time when her office is hemorrhaging attorneys and she can no longer prosecute some minor crimes, seems excessive. It’s not unreasonable for people to ask whether their tax dollars are being used in the best possible way.
Nearly a year ago, Goffard called asking for an interview for his podcast. Although I was on record criticizing Fladager’s judgment, I sensed an innocence project and decided it might not be a good look for The Bee’s opinion editor, and I declined.
A year later, I’m not sure that was the right call. But I was right about Goffard’s intention — he spares no effort to expose the prosecution’s shortcomings, and to show exactly why he thinks Carson was framed without actually saying it, at least not in the first seven episodes.
Goffard was happy to chat about his Modesto labor of love when I called a few days ago.
Initially he was drawn to the “complicated, interesting central character” of Carson, he said. The irascible, prominent defense attorney had been a thorn in the side of prosecutors for decades and had the audacity to run against Fladager as a condemnation of her investigation into his alleged involvement in the 2012 disappearance of Korey Kauffman.
After Carson’s predictable election loss, authorities arrested him, his wife and stepdaughter and five others, including three California Highway Patrol officers. Prosecutors painted Carson as the mastermind of a vast conspiracy to send a violent message to drug-addled thieves who ravaged property Carson owned in Turlock.
Damning indictment — of prosecutors
Goffard’s podcast portrays investigators as glomming onto thin strings supporting their theory of Carson’s involvement, while somehow dismissing mountains of evidence pointing to his innocence.
“The thing I was most struck by was how dramatically the star witness Robert Woody’s story mutated under intense police questioning. That didn’t become clear to me till I studied the interrogations back to back over many hours,” Goffard said.
In other cases he had covered, Goffard saw prosecutors hesitate to put any witness on the stand whose testimony might be undermined, he said. But in Modesto, authorities did quite the opposite – knowing that Woody’s various accounts contained some 200 inconsistencies, according to a defense tally.
Jurors could not swallow it. Bee readers certainly were affected when the judge castigated the prosecution for failing to share evidence with defense lawyers, releasing Carson and the others from custody even before the preliminary hearing concluded.
Because I had been wary of participating in the podcast, I wondered how Goffard had talked Fladager and lead prosecutor Marlisa Ferreira into it.
Aware of “what appeared to be the cozy relationship between the writer and the defense during the trial,” Fladager said in an email, “we hoped that we might give him a different perspective to balance whatever he decided to write.” They agreed to a five-hour interview, Goffard said.
“He is writing a story to entertain,” Fladager continued. “We prosecute cases that we believe in. Those are two very different things.”
She’s right about the entertainment factor. “The Trials of Frank Carson” comes off as something like “Tiger King” meets “Making a Murderer,” flavored with hints of Perry Mason and Sam Spade. Here are some of Goffard’s words, from Episode 4:
The story as presented by Stanislaus County authorities had irresistible appeal, with roots in beloved film noir tropes. It featured investigators who had labored heroically to expose a web of crooks with badges. It featured a crime family that hid behind the law license of a patriarch who was called, ominously, `Uncle Frank.’
Fladager said she has not heard the podcast and has no intention of doing so.
Goffard acknowledged that Fladager and Ferreira earnestly believe to this day that they went after the guilty party, Carson, and that he got away with murder.
No winners in sad Modesto story
But Carson was not blessed with a happy-ever-after ending. The case wrecked him financially, emotionally and physically, and he died last year at age 66, 14 months after the acquittal. Hearing Carson describe the toll in his own words, in the podcast – sensing he would not live much longer – is truly sobering.
“I hope,” Goffard said, “the podcast invites people to consider what it’s like to face charges like this, to be forced to decide whether to fight and risk total ruin.”
The cost to taxpayers is huge, too.
Fladager’s refusal to see this as the losing case it was forced her to spend untold millions of dollars in 18 months of preliminary hearing – a typical prelim lasts a few hours – and 17 months at trial. That makes the Carson case the second-longest murder trial in California history – longer than O.J. Simpson’s, Charles Manson’s and everyone else except the Hillside Strangler (1981-83), a Times researcher found.
And the meter is still running. All defendants are suing Stanislaus County in attempts to recover what they lost because of Fladager’s poor judgment. How many more millions of dollars will it take to end those lawsuits?
Meanwhile, the reputation of Modesto — already bruised in the court of public opinion from the grisly stories of Scott and Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and the Yosemite sightseer murders — absorbs yet another blow.
Time will tell whether podcast consumers turn “The Trials of Frank Carson” into a hit. The only winner here might be The Los Angeles Times.
This story was originally published June 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
