In the quiet community of Elkridge, Maryland, a shocking and brutal crime unfolded in April of 1979, leaving residents fearful and investigators with a grim puzzle. Inside their home, 58-year-old Carvel A. Faulkner, a male, and his wife, Sarah, were discovered the victims of a violent homicide. The scene was disturbing; Carvel had been shot in the head and was found slumped in front of his bed. His wife Sarah was found on the bed in a pool of blood, her hands and feet bound and her throat slit. The brutality of the act was jarring, yet there were no signs of a forced entry into the Faulkner's residence. Perhaps most perplexing to investigators was the fact that a sum of $1,000 was left untouched and in plain view, suggesting that robbery was not the primary motive for this horrific double murder.
For years, the case of who killed Carvel and Sarah Faulkner grew cold, a lingering mystery in Howard County. However, as investigators began to unravel a series of other violent crimes in and around the Elkridge area between 1979 and 1989, a prime suspect emerged: Vernon Lee Clark. Investigators discovered a crucial link between Clark and the murdered couple; he had been an occasional employee for the Faulkners' poultry feed and sanitation company. This connection, combined with a pattern of violence against people he knew, placed him squarely on the radar of law enforcement. Clark was a man known to do odd jobs for several of his victims, ingratiating himself into their lives before he struck. As detectives looked closer at Clark, they believed he might be responsible for a string of slayings that had terrorized the community.
While Vernon Lee Clark was never formally charged or convicted for the murders of Carvel and Sarah Faulkner, his legacy as a serial killer was cemented by other cases. Advances in DNA technology, unavailable at the time of the Faulkner slayings, definitively linked Clark to multiple other murders. In 1991, he was convicted for the 1989 murder of 23-year-old Kathleen Gouldin. Years later, DNA evidence would also prove his guilt in the 1980 slaying of Rebecca H. "Dolly" Davis and the 1981 killing of Evelyn Dietrich, leading to further life sentences. In 2015, he was convicted of yet another cold case, the 1984 beating death of 81-year-old Iva Myrtle Watson. Although investigators conducted DNA tests on evidence from the Faulkner crime scene in an attempt to link it to Clark, the results have not led to a conviction. The double homicide of Carvel and Sarah Faulkner officially remains an unsolved cold case, though law enforcement and many in the community believe it to be the work of a man already imprisoned for a multitude of other heinous crimes.
