Released child molester, suspect in deaths, dies during SWAT showdown
A drifter who was released from prison last month after serving a five-year sentence for molesting a 6-year-old in Lawrence County died during a confrontation with SWAT team officers in Texas, where he was suspected of robbing and killing four older people.
Donald Carhart Wilcox, 34, who was released Jan. 12 from the State Correctional Institution in Houtzdale, Clearfield County, died Wednesday morning outside a Corpus Christi motel room, where he pointed a gun at SWAT team officers who opened fire.
Wilcox fell to the ground and appeared to fire at his own head, but the Nueces County Medical Examiner has yet to determine if Wilcox committed suicide or was killed by a police bullet.
A 15-year-old boy from New York, who Wilcox apparently met on the bus ride to Corpus Christi, has been charged with capital murder in two of the deaths, homicide detective T.K. Revis said Thursday.
Revis said police don't know why the victims were killed after being robbed. "There was no motive other than meanness," Revis said.
Police records show that Wilcox was arrested on March 27, 1997, in New Castle on charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault and corruption of minors.
Lawrence County District Attorney Matthew Mangino said Wilcox was sentenced to serve two to five years in prison after pleading guilty in October 1998 to corruption of minors. As part of the plea agreement, the other two charges were dropped.
Mangino said the victim was 6 years old but that other specifics of the case were unavailable last night. He said county court records show that Wilcox told police he lived in Winchester, Va., but Revis said other records list a variety of addresses, none of them in Pennsylvania.
Revis said it is not known where Wilcox boarded the bus to Texas but that detectives believe he arrived there on Jan. 13 with the 15-year-old and the teen's father, described as being a drifter. Police were still hunting for the teen's father last night.
Investigators believe that Wilcox and the 15-year-old burglarized the home of Weldon Parker, 79, and his wife, Charlotte, 77, on Feb. 5, shot them both and dumped their bodies in a field. Their bodies were found Tuesday following an extensive ground-and-air search.
Tests showed the same gun was used in the shooting death of Louis Victor Mokry, 61, who was shot in the head inside his home on Monday.
The 15-year-old, who has not been charged with Mokry's death, was found camping under a bridge late Tuesday night and brought in for questioning. His name has not been released.
Revis said that after detectives questioned the teen, they obtained a warrant for Wilcox's arrest and asked the SWAT team to accompany them to the motel to make the arrest.
Police said as they were surrounding the motel in the city's Flower Bluff neighborhood, Wilcox walked out of his room at 2:12 a.m., holding a .45-caliber pistol.
After Wilcox died, police searched the car they believed he had used and found the body of 87-year-old Luther Butler in the trunk.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
