Jessica Louise (Horabik) Carpenter (1974 - 2009)

Died 28 Feb 2009 at age 34 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio, United States

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Biography

JESSICA "JESS" LOUISE CARPENTER, age 34, born August 28, 1974, died February 28, 2009. Precious beloved wife of Lloyd "Louie" G. Jr.; loving mother of Amber, Tyler and Trevor; beloved daughter of Rosemarie Roberts (Noel); cherished sister of Jennifer, Nicole, Thomas, Matthew and sister-in-law of Sandy; devoted daughter-in-law of Lloyd and Wanda Carpenter; dear daughter of Thomas Horabik (Linda); beloved aunt of six nieces and nephews; loving cousin and niece to many; dearest friend to countless people. The family suggests contributions to the Jessica Carpenter Memorial Fund c/o any US Bank. Friends may call at RYBICKI & SON, A GOLDEN RULE FUNERAL HOME, 4640 TURNEY RD., where services will be held Saturday, March 7, at 8:45 AM and at St. Monica Church, Rockside Rd., at 9:30 AM. Interment All Saints Cemetery. VISITING HOURS: FRIDAY 2-4 & 7-9.

Sources

Published in The Plain Dealer on March 5, 2009

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/08/questions_surrounding_death_of.html

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/04/cuyahoga_county_coroner_revers.html

Footnotes

GARFIELD HEIGHTS -- Jessica Carpenter hated the cold.

She groused about Cleveland's icy winters. And when others sweated, she still felt freezing.

That's why five months after the mother of three died, her husband still can't fathom why she got out of a car on Interstate 90 in the middle of the night. Why, when her brother pulled the car over on the way home from a concert at the Beachland Ballroom Feb. 27, she left her coat behind and clambered up an embankment to a deserted industrial parking lot.

Her husband, Lou Carpenter, along with Jessica's brother, mother and sister, found her March 1 lying between two parked trucks, near East 55th Street, dead from hypothermia.

Carpenter's death was an accident, though alcohol played a role, the Cuyahoga County coroner's office ruled in a report completed last month. She had no drugs in her system but had a blood alcohol level of 0.16, twice the legal limit for driving. According to the report, she had 15 recent scrapes and bruises, including several small scrapes on her forehead and both hands.

"I've thought about it for five months, every single day, almost every single minute," Lou Carpenter said Wednesday, sitting in his garage smoking, surrounded by snapshots of his grinning wife. "When you close your eyes, it's the first thing you see."

It was 23 degrees that night, with a wind chill about 12 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Those are the details Lou Carpenter knows.

He knows the times he called and texted his wife and her brother that night. But he doesn't know why she got out of the car, where she was going, what she was thinking, why no one answered their cell phones between 1:45 and 3:10 a.m.

Her mom, Rosemarie Roberts, too, calls it a mystery: "It always will be, just what got her to that state of mind, what triggered her to get out of the car. It's just something we're not going to know."

Carpenter's brother, Tommy Horabik, 28, could not be reached for comment.

Roberts says Horabik feels awful. That, like Lou Carpenter, he blames himself.

The story of what happened that night has dripped out slowly these last five months, as Lou Carpenter reviews phone and GPS records and family members mention details. Sometimes the family wants to talk; often, they're silent.

Police officials said they ruled out criminal activity tied to Carpenter's death after they questioned Horabik, Carpenter's now-17-year-old daughter and her niece.

Lou Carpenter last saw his wife around 5:30 p.m. Feb. 27 at their bungalow off Rockside Road, when he surprised her, arriving home early from a construction site in Manassas, Va.

Then she left, Horabik driving her silver Impala, her 16-year-old daughter, her niece and two of her daughter's friends in the back. They were off to see a hard-core punk band called Escape the Fate in Collinwood.

Jessica Carpenter had bought the tickets two months earlier, Roberts said. She loved what she called "loud, angry music" and often saw shows in Cleveland or near Morrisville, N.C., where her mother, stepfather and four siblings lived.

The family moved south in 1993, while Carpenter stayed in Cleveland with Lou, whom she had met nearly three years earlier at a Halloween haunted barn in Berea. She was 15; he was 19. But by New Year's Eve 1989, they knew this was It.

"People get one chance at having a person like that," Lou Carpenter said. "To go through life and not have that ain't no life at all."

They married in 1996 and together raised their three children: Amber, 14-year-old Tyler and 8-year-old Trevor. They lived in Brunswick and Broadview Heights before moving to Garfield Heights.

Carpenter embraced motherhood, living for her sons' summer baseball games. But she stayed close with her siblings, calling or texting or Facebooking daily.

"She was a mom cheering in the stands, she was a mom's taxi," Carpenter's cousin, Alisha Scarpitti, wrote in an e-mail. "She was the birthday party planner, she was the 'Help me with my homework,' she was the keeper of the snacks."

Lou Carpenter describes his wife as "magnetic," everyone's best friend.

She worked off and on, most recently taking phone orders for a food company. She liked the beach and Cedar Point, shopping and hanging out with her family.

In 2007, Carpenter wrote on her MySpace Web page, "I am a wife and mother of three beautiful children! My husband and I have been together for 17 years (WOW)! He was my first, my last, my only!!"

Lou Carpenter said he is nothing without his wife.

His mom and sister take turns staying at the house, taking care of the kids. He keeps reliving the three days of Feb. 27 and 28 and March 1, trying to make sense of it all.

"He doesn't have closure," said his mother, Wanda Carpenter. "He needs closure."

So he replays in his head the phone conversation he had with Horabik at 1:15 a.m. Feb. 28, after the concert had ended and the group met the band. Horabik said Carpenter was going crazy and he didn't know what to do.

In a missing-persons report that Horabik and Lou Carpenter filed with Cleveland police Feb. 28, Horabik said he and his sister fought on the band's tour bus and he dragged her off because "something he didn't like was going down," according to the report. It does not elaborate.

She was angry at him, Horabik told police.

Lou Carpenter could hear his wife's voice on the 1:15 a.m. phone call. She wasn't screaming, he said.

He hung up and called her, but the phone rang without her picking up. A half-hour later, he said, Horabik called back and said Carpenter was out of the car.

"I said, 'What do you mean, she's out of the car? You have to go get her!' " Lou Carpenter remembers. Afterward, he tried his brother-in-law, his daughter, his wife. No one answered, he said, and soon Carpenter's phone was turned off.

The way Roberts tells the story, Carpenter was irrational. She tried to jump out of the moving car, so Horabik -- who had also been drinking -- stopped on I-90, near the East 55th Street exit.

Carpenter, she said, walked across traffic, from the westbound to the eastbound lanes, and up the grassy embankment. Horabik exited the highway and looped back around to try to find her, then drove all over looking, to no avail. She said Carpenter had her phone.

Lou Carpenter thinks his wife argued with her brother. But from what he's been told, he doesn't think she walked across traffic.

He wonders why, if his wife -- a phone addict who had texted him "I am standing outside in the freezing cold" while waiting to get into the concert earlier -- had her phone, she didn't call him. Or why she didn't answer his calls.

He wonders where exactly Horabik looked since, he said, a later review of the GPS in the car shows it pulled into a parking lot near where Carpenter was found.

The group returned to the Carpenters' home around 4 a.m.

By then, Lou Carpenter was asleep, a fact he berates himself for now. He woke up at 9 a.m. Feb. 28 to find Horabik standing over him, he said.

He checked Carpenter's bank and cell phone records online. Nothing. He checked the GPS system in her car, which showed the East 55th area. Around noon, he started calling her friends and family.

Later, he, Horabik and Horabik's father drove around East 55th. They called police, hospitals, news stations, the morgue. Nothing.

It wasn't until Roberts arrived on the morning of March 1, when the four adults set out to look again, that they found Carpenter's body, lying in the parking lot.

Her purse was there, with credit cards, her driver's license, cigarettes, cash. Her cell phone was in her left pocket.

Lou Carpenter only saw her sneakers.

Then he turned away.

"It's something that should have never happened," he said. "I don't have those answers."

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http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/04/cuyahoga_county_coroner_revers.html 4/15/2011 CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When a mother of three mysteriously froze to death in a Cleveland parking lot two years ago, the Cuyahoga County coroner ruled the case accidental. Now, after learning of domestic violence at the hands of her husband, Coroner Frank Miller has made a rare reversal, labeling Jessica Carpenter's death "violence of undetermined origin." The decision, he said, cracks the door open for further investigation. But Carpenter's death is still a closed case, Cleveland police Sgt. Sammy Morris said Friday, since Miller has not ruled it a homicide. "There are a lot of open, unanswered questions about who was around, what was she doing," said Miller, who can't remember a similar change in his time on the job. "It became less clear the more I thought about it . . . to make the leap to accident is too far." Miller has been coroner since 2007 and worked in the office for 14 years. Miller said Carpenter's sister pushed for the change, contacting him four times since his ruling in July 2009. She told him about a history of violence between Jessica Carpenter and her husband, Lou, and said 'Lou committed suicide in September 2009. That was six months after Jessica Carpenter was found lying between two trucks near East 55th Street. Previous Plain Dealer coverage Questions about death of Jessica Carpenter, a mother of three, still haunt her husband Garfield Heights woman froze to death after argument with brother Coroner's office awaits test results to determine cause of Garfield Heights woman's death Jessica Carpenter's death still not explained Carpenter, 34, of Garfield Heights, had no drugs in her system, but had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16, twice the legal limit, according to coroner records. Her body had 15 recent scrapes and bruises, including several small scrapes on her forehead and hands. The injuries fit the story family members told, that Carpenter had jumped out of a car on Interstate 90 and clambered up the embankment to a deserted industrial lot. "There's nothing [in her injuries] that can't be explained by just jumping out of the car and crawling under the fence," Miller said. "But the whole affair is fairly strange." Carpenter's brother, mother and sister could not be reached for comment. But in 2009, they said Carpenter, her brother, her 16-year-old daughter, a niece and two of her daughter's friends had gone to see a hard-core punk band at the Beachland Ballroom. Afterward, they met the members of the band, Escape the Fate, on the tour bus. In a missing person report that Carpenter's brother, Tommy Horabik, and Lou Carpenter filed, Horabik said he and his sister fought on the tour bus while it was still parked by the Beachland. He said he dragged her off because "something he didn't like was going down." Sometime after 1:15 a.m., Horabik pulled Carpenter's silver Impala to the side of I-90. She had already tried to jump out of the moving car. Carpenter climbed out, leaving behind her coat in the 23-degree February night. Horabik, who lived in North Carolina, said he searched for her, but didn't know the area. A day later, after Lou Carpenter said he checked his wife's bank and cellphone records, called her friends and searched the streets around East 55th, family members found her lying in the parking lot. Her purse was there, with credit cards, a driver's license, cigarettes, cash. Her cellphone was in her left pocket. Lou Carpenter made a big deal of that cellphone in the months after his wife's death. He described her as a phone addict. He contacted The Plain Dealer, asking why she had texted him before the concert saying, "I am standing outside in the freezing cold," but as the night went on wouldn't answer his calls or call him if she were in trouble. He shared snapshots of her with a reporter in July 2009. He called his wife "magnetic." He talked about how they met at a Halloween haunted barn in 1989. She was 15; he was 19. "People get one chance at having a person like that," he said.