35 years later, woman’s killing is solved

Ex-boyfriend found guilty of murdering ex-Canton resident.

It took nearly 35 CANTON — years to solve Marsha Carter’s murder.

The former Canton woman was stabbed to death in her California home as her four sons slept in 1983.

On Friday, her killer, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, was scheduled to be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The sentencing has been delayed until Friday.

Sherill L. Smothers, 56, was a prime suspect but it wasn’t until after DNA evidence proved his connection to Carter’s death that he was charged, according to the Contra Costa County, Calif. District Attorney’s Office. The six-week jury trial ended Sept. 20 in a guilty verdict.

Smothers, Carter’s on-again/off-again boyfriend, was rendered a paraplegic in a car crash years after her murder. He later successfully sued General Motors for $6 million.

“I’m glad he’s being sentenced; I’m glad he’s going to be off the streets. But I care about his soul,” said Travis Carter, the woman’s son. “I’m a Christian man. I think prison is for rehabilitation. Hopefully, he will come to terms with what he’s done and ask God for forgiveness.

“I want to see people take self-accountability. I don’t wish the death chair on him, even though what he did to my mom was gruesome.”

Marsha Carter moved to California in 1979 with her husband. By 1983, they were divorced.

She was living in Richmond, Calif. with their three boys and her fourth son, who would turn a year old days after she was killed.

Travis Carter was just 9 when his mother was killed as he and brothers — Donte, then-11; Antoine, 7; and Andre, 11 months — slept.

He told The Canton Repository on Friday that his mother had dated Smothers and had broken it off. He recalled his mother slamming the door in Smothers’ face and repeated instances when she told him and his brothers to run if Smothers ever came close.

The boys awoke that morning to find blood in her bedroom and in the hallway. The youngest child was found under her bed, still alive.

Marsha Carter was missing.

“Smothers’ blood was found in Carter’s residence after her initial disappearance,” according to the District Attorney’s office news release. “Ten days later her body was found in the trunk of her car in West Sacramento. The investigation into her murder led law enforcement authorities to establish Carter and Smothers knew each other and had a previous relationship.”

The three oldest boys went on to live with their dad, also a former Canton resident, in an apartment in East Oakland.

Travis Carter recalled his father breaking the news that their mother’s body was found: “Dad calls us all into the bedroom and said, ‘Hey, guys, they found your mom.’ Our first question: ‘Well, is she alive?’ He said, ‘No, she was dead,’ and we started bawling and crying.”

Eventually, the boys moved back to Canton where they attended school and lived with family.

Police long suspected Smothers, “but they said they didn’t have enough evidence,” he said.

“We knew who she was afraid of and his name kept coming up,” Travis Carter said.

When the killer wasn’t immediately charged, friends and family speculated.

Over the years, Travis Carter said, he heard people suspect his own father, and his youngest brother’s father. Antoine Carter had a different father, he said.

But the boys always suspected Smothers.

Travis Carter credits his older brother, Donte, for encouraging police to reopen the case.

“They reopened the case and a couple years later, they called and said we found (Smothers’) DNA on the scene and we feel we have enough to indict him,” Travis Carter said.

Smothers was indicted in 2016.

Included as evidence were recorded conversations in 1983 between Smothers and another man who police believe Smothers tried to hire for $500 to kill Marsha Carter.

During those conversations, Smothers had taken the man to the American Automobile Association building where he obtained two maps of Sacramento. Smothers reportedly told the man where to dump Carter’s body.

Travis Carter said one of those locations was where police found his mother’s body.

The man, who now has Stage 4 cancer, testified against Smothers. Travis Carter said the man has apologized to him and his brothers for not coming forward earlier.

In the years that followed their mother’s death, the boys worried that Smothers would either come after them or pay someone to kill them, Carter said.

“He had money. He’s a millionaire. When you have money, you can pay people to do things. After seeing all those pictures of my mom, the way she was .... All that fear I had at 10 years old, all that came back,” he said.

On Sept. 18, when the jury had notified the judge that a verdict had been reached, Smothers was not in court.

He initially told his attorney he was on his way. After a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, an inspector with the District Attorney’s Office located Smothers at his residence in Granite Bay and took him into custody.

According to an article dated Sept. 20 in the Mercury News, “The reading of the verdict was delayed two days after Smothers — who won a $6 million judgment after he was paralyzed in an 1989 car crash and had bailed out of jail following his arrest — failed to show up for the reading of the verdict. His attorney said Thursday that Smothers had a ‘panic attack’ when he learned the verdict had been reached within a few hours, and had somehow fallen into a pool in his backyard but managed to pull himself out and crawl to a phone.”

Marsha Carter’s three oldest sons made a statement at Smothers’ sentencing Friday.

“We definitely (wanted) to say our peace to the court, how this affected us, the negative residual effects that have happened,” Travis Carter said. “We’re all doing much better now. We’ve become very successful individuals and businessmen. But it wasn’t without a lot of pain, a lot of tears, poverty growing up ... a lot of things that you don’t want your kids to go through.

“We all have families, we all have kids. We believe that we’ll see her again. That’s the positive part that we take of our faith.”