In the early morning hours of April 25, 1986, the life of 20-year-old Carla Maxwell, a White/Caucasian female, was tragically cut short. A truck driver discovered her body around 4 a.m. inside the 7-Eleven store on North Main Street in Layton, Utah, where she worked as a clerk. She had been fatally shot in the head. Investigators initially suspected that robbery was the motive for the violent crime that shook the quiet community. Carla, who had brown hair and blue eyes, was last seen alive at approximately 1:30 a.m., leaving a small window of time for her killer to strike.
The investigation into Carla's death soon revealed a chilling connection to other recent homicides in the Salt Lake City area. Ballistics testing determined that the. 38-caliber handgun used to kill Carla was the same weapon used in the murder of 18-year-old Christine Gallegos in May 1985 and would be used again to kill 25-year-old Lisa Strong in May 1986. This discovery prompted the formation of a multi-agency task force in July 1986, bringing together detectives from several police departments, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to hunt for a possible serial killer.
Over the years, the investigation has explored multiple leads and potential suspects, though no arrests have ever been made in Carla's case. One prominent person of interest was Paul Ezra Rhoades, a spree killer who was active in Idaho and Utah during the mid-1980s. Investigators noted similarities in the methods used in his confirmed crimes and the murder of Carla. The bullets used to kill her matched those in other murders attributed to Rhoades, and some evidence placed him in the area at the time. Despite the strong suspicion, he was never formally charged with her murder and was executed in Idaho in 2011 for other crimes without admitting to any involvement.
Another line of inquiry focused on a Salt Lake City gang known as "Varrios Chosen Few." Some investigators believed members of this gang were responsible for the three connected murders. This theory gained some traction when an associate of the gang provided a pawn slip for the murder weapon in early 1987, but the gun had already been sold by the time police tried to retrieve it. Eventually, a known gang member, Forrest Whittle, was convicted of the murder of Lisa Strong, one of the three victims linked by the same gun. He is currently serving a life sentence for that crime. However, Carla Maxwell's murder, along with Christine Gallegos', officially remains unsolved, leaving her family without answers decades after her death.
