Probate case reopens Beth Potter and Robin Carre murder saga

The great coffee shop debate in greater Madison is this: Does Miriam Potter Carre want to go to a jury trial to decide whether she was complicit in the murder of her adoptive parents?

The parents’ natural children, Ezra and Jonah Carre, are suing to prevent Miriam from collecting any of their inheritance. They claim Miriam, with her boyfriend Khari Sanford, planned to burglarize her parents’ home — or worse, kill them — four years ago this month. At the least, according to the theory, a burglary-only plan led to their parents’ death; ergo, she should not benefit from the will. Probate Judge Diane Schlipper ordered the dispute go to trial “because a jury could believe that Miriam conspired in the killing of Robin and Beth.”

Dane County criminal prosecutors decided not to prosecute the young woman, then 18 years old, after Dr. Beth Potter and her husband Robin Carre were found face-down in a ditch that cold morning of 03-30-2020.

Her boyfriend, Khari Sanford, was convicted in May 2022 of both murders. He is now serving two life sentences with no chance for parole at the decrepit Green Bay Correctional Institute — Wisconsin’s own Shawshank, but without the redemption. Miriam had introduced her homeless West high school classmate into their home, surreptitiously at first, eventually with her parents’ reluctant consent. But when the young couple refused to comply with Covid pandemic precautions, the parents set them up in their own pad.

Trying to protect her lover, Miriam initially lied to authorities that Sanford was there with her all night when, in fact, he used her parents’ own van, which they had loaned the couple, to force at gunpoint Beth and Robin out of their beds and in their night clothes to the UW Arboretum, where he shot each of them in back of the head, execution style, at about 11 the night of March 30, 2020.

“God, I would do anything for you,” Miriam texted Sanford at one point during their love affair.

““I’m really scared I’m gonna lose you and you mean so much to me.”

Her frantic text messages asking Sanford’s whereabouts night of the murders may have indicated she was unaware of his deeds. Prosecutors may have needed her testimony against Sanford in deciding not to charge her with, at the very least, obstruction of justice.

The day after the murders, Miriam was notified that she was wanted back at her parents’ home on Rowley Avenue on Madison’s near west side. She asked Sanford to accompany her.  He declined, saying he was on probation and could go nowhere near police (which makes no sense on its own terms). Instead, he took refuge in the home of a school social worker where he had often retreated in troubled times.

That woman told this correspondent she believes Miriam “was a manipulator.”  

“I think she sent him there [to the house on Rowley Avenue] because she knew parents had cash money because they were broke and parents must have woke up and Khari just freaked out on them. Their intention was to get the money.”

Miriam, according to testimony at Sanford’s trial, was overheard at West high school ceramics class saying her parents had “bands of money.” As March 2020 drew to a close, Miriam and Khari were trying to rent an apartment on their own — unsuccessfully due to no security deposit — after Robin Carre threatened not to renew the two-week lease on their Airbnb on the south side due to the couple’s misbehavior.

But Sanford himself, in a brief e-mail interview with this writer, claimed: “I did not enter their home with the intent to kill them, nor burglarize their home. … I went in because their daughter told me to.”

Sanford demanded to be paid more money before he would disclose for what purpose. Eventually, the prisoner cut off all correspondence. He is appealing his sentence but the public defender representing him labels it a “No Merit Appeal,” that is to say, frivolous.

The Potter-Caire 2½-story Craftsman-style house on Rowley Avenue, measuring 2,118 square feet of living space, was sold five months after the murders for $566,900; probate records indicated a mortgage lien of almost $250,000 but probate court records still list it as Miriam’s residence.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Maybe the parents had fewer “bands of money” than supposed. The lawyers will take their cut in a probate case that began on 04-06-2020 — about a month after the murders.

Is Miriam better off saying ‘Forget the inheritance’?