Carole Clement (Ace of Hearts, Florida)
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What happened to Carole Clement?
Our card this week is Carol Clement, the Ace of Hearts from Florida. When a beloved mother and grandmother is found stabbed to death inside her own home in an affluent seaside community, detectives were immediately suspicious of her soon-to-be ex-husband. But when his alibi seemed to check out, they were compelled to look at less obvious alternatives. Was this a murder-for-hire plot? Or could the killer be someone much closer to Carol than they previously assumed? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Lieutenant Robert Young told us it was late Sunday morning, March 8th, 1992, when a woman named Welma stopped by her 51-year-old daughter's place on Gulf Shore Boulevard North in Naples, Florida.
At about 10.45, 10.50, Carol's mom was coming back from church and she had to drop off a dress that she wanted her daughter to bleach or do something with. And she drove to her daughter's condo and she noticed that her daughter's car was not there. So she had keys to the condo, and when she went, there were some pamphlets that had been shoved in the door, in the wedge of the door, and she made her way in. And when she went in, she saw the living room looked like it was in disarray, and then she saw her daughter, obviously deceased with multiple stab wounds, blood everywhere, and mortally wounded, laying on the floor, partially in the kitchen part in the living room. She's laying, a portion of her was just outside of the kitchen area. There were three knives missing from the butcher block. Two of those knives were laying on the kitchen counter. The third knife, the biggest one, was laying across her chest and neck. And that was ultimately proved to be the murder weapon.
So there was also a pillow that was found and detectives theorized that that may have been used to muffle her from screaming in agony from all the stab wounds, which I think we believe were about between 13 to 15 stab wounds. When she was taken to the medical examiner's office, they were right in that range. Obviously, there was a significant one to her neck. She had like a large t-shirt on and she had underwear underneath it. And the underwear were intact. Sexual assault kit was taken and there was no indication that this was a sexually related attack. Her living room table was turned over. So it appeared maybe she was running around the table and the assailant just flipped the table over and got to her. Her shirt pocket was torn off.
Like it's almost maybe someone grabbed it and yanked it off.
From what they could tell, this didn't look like a burglary gone wrong. In fact, the only thing missing was Carol's car. So it appeared that the sole purpose of whoever was inside Carol's home was to come in, kill her, and leave. And maybe through the sliding glass door that led out to Carol's second-story balcony as it had been left wide open.
Carol is very security conscious, according to people who were interviewed who knew her. So they found that odd that her sliding glass door was open. So that leads you to speculate. Did she have the sliding glass door open in the evening because it was nice out and then the assailant could have just leapt into the balcony and made their way in through there? or whether she knew someone and she opened the door for them willingly and let them in. There was a ladder left nearby because her building was being painted, and all the painters who were working on the building were interviewed as part of the investigation. So there was a ladder that was actually taken as evidence by the detectives back then.
More than just the latter was collected. They pretty much gathered up anything they thought could have been touched by their perpetrator, including Carol's clothing, all of the knives, the carpet, and her fingernail clippings, thinking that maybe she fought back during the struggle. They also collected two unknown hairs found on Carol's arms. All of that would be sent off to the FDLE lab, while other investigators spoke with Carol's neighbors in the then-called Holly Green's Villa Condominium community, which was just walking distance from the beach.
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