He’d been working underneath the truck, that had been propped up with a jack.Ĭould one man really be so lucky? It seemed suspicious that Karlsen had profited so greatly from a policy that Levi had signed the very same day he’d died. When they returned, they found Levi crushed under the fallen vehicle. It was November 20, and Karlsen and Cindy were at the funeral of a relative. In 2008, Karlsen’s son Levi, then a 23-year-old divorced father of two was doing a favour for his dad on the farm, looking at an old Chevy pick-up truck that needed some repairs.
But then tragedy struck again 17 years after the fire that claimed Christina. They built a new life together on a quiet detached farm. She cared for Karlsen’s children and they went on to have a son. Cindy felt enormous sympathy for the man who had been forced to watch his wife die in such a horrific way. Seemingly, Karlsen was so broken with grief, he didn’t even wait for Christina’s funeral – he left after the fire.Ī year later, Karlsen met Cindy Best and they married in 1993. Karl and Christina’s daughter Erin, who was 6 at the time of the fire, recalled hearing her mother calling for help from inside the house but said her father did not attempt to break the boarded-up bathroom window.The widower was able to use the money to move back to his hometown in Varick, New York, buy a house and start his life again. Christina’s sister, Collette Bousson, said that just hours after his wife’s death, her brother-in-law referred to Christina as “a crispy critter.” Karl’s brother, Mike, who flew out from New York upon hearing of the fire, said Karl had been “emotionless” about the death and suggested they take a sightseeing excursion to Calaveras Big Trees State Park. He collected $114,000 from the insurance. A retired fire insurance investigator from New York testified about a 2002 fire that destroyed Karlsen’s barn and killed three horses. She had told him Lyons would be gone on New Year’s Day for a “polar plunge” swimming event. The daughter of the Karlsens’ closest neighbor, Vic Lyons, said Karl Karlsen had been “very interested” in her father’s schedule, asking her multiple times about when he planned to be at home. A friend who had visited the Karlsen house three days before the fire said the bathroom window was not broken or covered over and there was no smell of kerosene.
#Karl karlson murder trial#
A day before the trial was to begin, he made a deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree homicide.Īmong the testimony presented at the three-week trial this month in San Andreas, according to the Union Democrat: The investigation led to Karlsen’s arrest for his son’s murder. Karl Karlsen collected $700,000 as the sole beneficiary of Levi’s life insurance policy, bought 17 days earlier.įour years later, police in New York received a phone tip advising them to look into similarities between Levi’s death and Christina’s.
There, in 2008, his 23-year-old son, Levi, was crushed to death in the family’s barn when the truck he was working on apparently fell off its jack. The fire trapped his wife in a bathroom off the hallway Karlsen had recently nailed plywood over its window.Īfter his wife’s death, Karlsen moved his family to the Finger Lakes area of New York. He said kerosene had been spilled on the hall carpet the previous week.
He speculated to investigators that the fire, which started in a hallway, was ignited by a trouble light he had been using. Karlsen had collected $215,000 from a life insurance policy purchased three weeks before Christina died of smoke inhalation in their home on Calaveras County’s Pennsylvania Gulch Road, between Murphys and Arnold.
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