On a tragic Saturday morning in Mesa, Arizona, the life of 18-year-old Glenda Sue Carter, a White female, was cut short in a senseless act of violence. On November 12, 1966, Carter was one of several victims in a mass shooting at the Rose-Mar College of Beauty. The gunman, 18-year-old Robert Benjamin Smith, entered the beauty school and forced Carter, along with other students and customers, into a back room.
Inside the room, Smith ordered the victims to lie down in a circle.
When one of the women, Mary Margaret Olsen, began to pray, Smith became enraged and opened fire, shooting each person in the head. In the horrific scene that unfolded, Glenda Carter, along with fellow students Mary Margaret Olsen, 18, and Carol Farmer, 19, were killed. A customer, Joyce Sellers, 27, and her three-year-old daughter, Deborah, also lost their lives in the attack.
The perpetrator, Robert Benjamin Smith, a senior at Mesa High School, did not resist when police arrived. He told the officers he had shot people inside and pointed them to the weapon he had used. Smith confessed to the killings, stating he was inspired by other mass murderers and "wanted to get known." He was arrested at the scene.
Smith was found guilty of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in October 1967. However, his sentence was later commuted to life in prison after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision resulted in a moratorium on the death penalty.
