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The Demon Within
Orrin Ivan Carr (a.k.a Buzz)
Orrin Ivan Carr was a California murderer who, along with Vincent Regan, was convicted in 1975 for the murder of Joyce Coulter, a 27-year-old woman from Capitola. Carr was also connected to the killing of Robert S. Karnan, an Aptos musician whom he reportedly met at the Sea Breeze Bar in Aptos. Carr was sentenced to life in prison.
Family Background
Orrin Ivan Carr was raised in Santa Cruz County with his three brothers. In 1969, while Carr was still a minor, he and his brothers were involved in a serious automobile accident on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County near Capitola. Their mother was killed in the crash. Following the accident, Carr's estranged father, Orrin I. Carr, became the legal guardian of the children.
THE MURDERS
The Murder of Robert Sebring Karman
Aptos, California — May 20, 1975
In the early morning hours of May 20, 1975, 45-year-old Robert Sebring Karman, an Aptos musician and piano player, was found strangled to death in his home on Seabreeze Place.
Karman lived with his parents. His mother heard him return home around 3 a.m., apparently accompanied by another person. Around 5:30 a.m., she heard the front door close and went to investigate, discovering her son’s body. The coroner determined that Karman had been strangled with the cloth belt of a bathrobe.
Karman’s Final Hours...
Investigators traced Karman’s movements the previous evening. After dinner in Soquel, he visited several local bars, including The End Zone in Aptos and the Sea Breeze Bar in Rio del Mar, where he apparently met Orrin “Buzz” Carr.
Carr accompanied Karman back to his home.
The Murder of Joyce Coulter
Capitola, California — 1975
In April 1975, 27-year-old Joyce Coulter was followed home from a Capitola bar by Orrin “Buzz” Carr and Vincent Regan.
According to testimony from psychiatrist Dr. Joel Fort, Carr later described how the two men followed Coulter to her 41st Avenue apartment after discussing a plan to rape someone. Carr entered through an open bathroom window and let Regan inside.
Coulter was assaulted and repeatedly stabbed. Carr later assaulted her as well. The men ransacked the apartment, taking personal belongings before fleeing. During the investigation, Carr's extensive drug use and mental state became subjects of psychiatric testimony. Dr. Fort described Carr as exhibiting traits associated with antisocial personality, impulsiveness, hostility, and disregard for social rules.
THE INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH
Orrin Ivan Carr became one of paranormal investigative researcher, Maryanne Porter’s earliest contacts in her exploration into a disturbing question: Can a murderer experience guilt for the lives he has taken—and, perhaps more profoundly, can the dead continue to haunt those responsible for their deaths?
Porter first began reaching out to Carr around 2014.
“It wasn’t easy. In the beginning, he didn’t trust me. Even one of his brothers reached out to me, curious about what I wanted,” Porter recalled.
By 2015, however, the two had established a regular correspondence that would continue for years. According to Porter, at first the letters arrived as handwritten pages, written in pen and ink. As time went on, Carr began sending typed letters produced on an IBM Wheel writer, the kind of typewriter commonly found in institutions. He wrote regularly about his day-to-day life behind bars—his extensive participation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, self-improvement classes, and, inevitably, his complaints about prison life and the daily “slop” served in the chow hall.
Through her correspondence with Carr, Porter began to uncover the story behind a life that had gone terribly wrong—a history marked by pain, despair, drugs, alcohol abuse, mental illness, and a profound loss that began at a vulnerable age and left a scar that never fully healed.
But pain does not always remain contained within the person who carries it. Carr's internal entities would eventually reach beyond his own life, with consequences that were devastating. The demons he carried with him would follow a path that led, ultimately, to the destruction of innocent lives.
In this dossier, Porter examines Carr’s story through his own words, his history, and the disturbing questions that first drew her to contact him.
In Carr’s Own Words…
The Warning
"I always felt separated from myself, but that night, I had several dreams. I didn't think much of them at the time. Dreams were just dreams, or at least that's what I believed.”
“In one, my brother and I were in wheelchairs, rolling down a hospital corridor. He tried to do a wheelie, went over backward, and hit his head hard. Then he looked at me and asked me not to tell anyone.”
“In another dream, my little brother was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by metal braces, tubes, and all kinds of equipment. There was a third dream, but I can't remember it anymore.”
“The next morning, we left in our Volkswagen van. As we were leaving town, I noticed Mom was crying. I remember seeing her, but I didn't say anything. I don't know why.”
“On the outskirts of Santa Cruz, we stopped for supper. When it was time to leave, something inside me changed. I suddenly had a strange, uneasy feeling. At the time, I didn't connect it to the dreams I'd had the night before. My dreams had never told me where anything was going to happen, so I had no reason to think they were connected to what I was feeling.”
“But I didn't want to get back into the van.”
“I had my learner's permit, so I told Mom I wanted to drive the rest of the way home. She refused. Then I started trying to convince her to take the frontage road instead of the freeway. I couldn't explain why. I just had this overwhelming feeling that we shouldn't take the freeway.”
“Mom said no.”
“I argued with her for at least ten minutes before finally giving up. Once we were on the highway, I kept asking her to take every off-ramp we passed. She wouldn't.”
“As we came over the hill overlooking the Capitola area, I remember suddenly thinking--
"It was too late…”
THE ACCIDENT
“As we started up the hill from the bottom we were in the fast lane. A car just coming on to the highway came along beside us and to the front of us. It was an old 50's model. I could hear the music coming form their car. They were blasting one of my favorite songs from the band Cream titled White Room.
“They went to move into the fast lane. When they did their back left bumper hit our right front bumper. As they moved into the fast lane they shoved us into the fast lane of the opposite traffic. There was a small cement border only a couple of inches high between the lanes. As we went over it the bounce dropped me to the ground. I pulled myself back up in time to see us in the fast lane with a white caddy in front of us. Mom was screaming.
“When I woke up I was on my back. I was in shock and could feel nothing. There was somebody above me wiping the blood from my eyes. I had a split open skull along my left forehead. After a moment I lifted my head to look around. The first thing I saw was our mangled van. The impact had torn the van in half throwing out my two brothers and mom, who were in the back.
“The other two were asleep when it happened. Mom and Steve had gone through the windshields. Because of the position I was laying in I panned first from the south to the north. Then I saw there were people gathered. A crowd of lookers.
“I saw first the arm of my little brother. There was nothing wrong with it except it wasn't attached to my brother anymore. Then I saw the first body. Saw the knees first. There were no legs below the knees. I was struck of how white the inside of the knee looked. The body also was missing, the arm of itself was on the side towards me. It was also missing the head.
“All the clothes were bloody but here was one patch that was not. It showed the pattern [paisley?] of the dress my mom was wearing and that's how I knew it was her. Just beyond her I saw her head. There were no other bodies. There was only the blood and debris of the accident.
“A ways down the road they were loading one of my brothers into an ambulance and he was screaming. I was the last of the living to be taken away. They took us to Dominican hospital.”
THE AFTER MATH
Carr reported that the accident left all three of his brothers with devastating injuries. One brother suffered two broken legs and a serious brain injury. Another seemed to have reverted to a childlike state after the accident. The youngest brother suffered catastrophic injuries and lost one arm entirely. Carr himself survived with a broken leg and a skull fracture. But the physical injuries were only part of the tragedy. Carr said that all three of his brothers lost their memories of their mother after the accident. He was the only one who retained his memories of her.
“My mother was my universe,” Carr said.
“No one talked about Mom after that, not even Dad. I think that was the cruelest punishment of it all.
“It was like she never existed.”
REGRETS…
When Porter asked Carr about the killing of Robert Karnan and how it came about, he explained that they had met at the Sea Breeze Bar in Rio del Mar.
“I was a Rio Rat,” he described himself.
“We partied at the bar, having drinks and doing drugs, and I went to his house around the corner. It got sexual. And then, all of a sudden, I snapped. I felt shame. I was raised in a household with a Catholic father. All I could hear was his voice.”
“And what about you and Vincent Regan?” Porter asked.
“It was my idea. It got out of hand, I was on drugs at the time. I wanted a thrill. I wasn't who I am now.”
“How did you get caught?” Porter asked.
“When the detectives came to question me about it, I confessed."
“So, do you think that if you hadn't been caught, you would have killed again?”
“Yes. I thought after Robert I would kill more people.”
“And now, do you feel regret or remorse for killing those people?”
Carr replied, “I 'am sorry for the awful things I have done.”
THE HAUNTING
When Porter broached the subject of whether Carr was haunted by the ghosts of the persons he had killed, his answer was unexpected. It wasn't their ghosts that haunted him. It was his demons.
Carr spoke to Porter about the first night he spent in a prison cell, when the reality of his situation finally settled in and he realized that his life as he had known it was over. In an attempt to end his life, he removed a glass bulb from its socket, broke it and opened his veins. He wanted to meet his maker. Carr remembered the warmth of the blood flowing from his body as he faded in and out of consciousness. Then everything went black.
He described the sensation as falling down a deep, dark hole, surrounded by screaming. Surrounded by hate and despair. There was no end to it. He remembered seeing horrible things but said it wasn't necessarily what he saw that stayed with him—it was what he felt.
He described it as Hell. But more importantly it was an endless feeling, he would never forget.
Carr claimed that, in this moment, he was literally dead. Guards intervened and got him immediate help, including CPR, their efforts saved his life. After the experience, he said, something within him began to change.
“My path back to sanity didn't start until I was on death row.”
THE WAKENING
Orrin Ivan Carr would spend nearly fifty years serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. During those decades, he underwent years of therapy, participated in rehabilitation and self-improvement programs, found solace in Christ and eventually became regarded as a model prisoner.
His face would age and his body would grow older behind the prison walls. Over the years, he was transferred between institutions and faced the realities of aging, including serious heart problems that eventually required a pacemaker. The young man who entered prison at approximately twenty-two years old would spend much of his life reflecting on the choices that had brought him there.
Yet the past remained with him. Carr spoke of the demons he carried, now no longer as something separate from himself, but now as part of the life he had to confront and understand.
Perhaps that is the quiet complexity of Carr's story: a life that began in trauma, descended into violence and madness and finally was followed by decades of reflection and attempts to conquer the demons within.
Although his transformation will never erase the victims or the pain left behind. It simply becomes another part of the story—the story of what a person does with the rest of his life after living with the consequences of what he has done.
Orrin Ivan Carr (a.k.a Buzz)
Orrin Ivan Carr was a California murderer who, along with Vincent Regan, was convicted in 1975 for the murder of Joyce Coulter, a 27-year-old woman from Capitola. Carr was also connected to the killing of Robert S. Karnan, an Aptos musician whom he reportedly met at the Sea Breeze Bar in Aptos. Carr was sentenced to life in prison.
Family Background
Orrin Ivan Carr was raised in Santa Cruz County with his three brothers. In 1969, while Carr was still a minor, he and his brothers were involved in a serious automobile accident on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County near Capitola. Their mother was killed in the crash. Following the accident, Carr's estranged father, Orrin I. Carr, became the legal guardian of the children.
THE MURDERS
The Murder of Robert Sebring Karman
Aptos, California — May 20, 1975
In the early morning hours of May 20, 1975, 45-year-old Robert Sebring Karman, an Aptos musician and piano player, was found strangled to death in his home on Seabreeze Place.
Karman lived with his parents. His mother heard him return home around 3 a.m., apparently accompanied by another person. Around 5:30 a.m., she heard the front door close and went to investigate, discovering her son’s body. The coroner determined that Karman had been strangled with the cloth belt of a bathrobe.
Karman’s Final Hours...
Investigators traced Karman’s movements the previous evening. After dinner in Soquel, he visited several local bars, including The End Zone in Aptos and the Sea Breeze Bar in Rio del Mar, where he apparently met Orrin “Buzz” Carr.
Carr accompanied Karman back to his home.
The Murder of Joyce Coulter
Capitola, California — 1975
In April 1975, 27-year-old Joyce Coulter was followed home from a Capitola bar by Orrin “Buzz” Carr and Vincent Regan.
According to testimony from psychiatrist Dr. Joel Fort, Carr later described how the two men followed Coulter to her 41st Avenue apartment after discussing a plan to rape someone. Carr entered through an open bathroom window and let Regan inside.
Coulter was assaulted and repeatedly stabbed. Carr later assaulted her as well. The men ransacked the apartment, taking personal belongings before fleeing. During the investigation, Carr's extensive drug use and mental state became subjects of psychiatric testimony. Dr. Fort described Carr as exhibiting traits associated with antisocial personality, impulsiveness, hostility, and disregard for social rules.
THE INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH
Orrin Ivan Carr became one of paranormal investigative researcher, Maryanne Porter’s earliest contacts in her exploration into a disturbing question: Can a murderer experience guilt for the lives he has taken—and, perhaps more profoundly, can the dead continue to haunt those responsible for their deaths?
Porter first began reaching out to Carr around 2014.
“It wasn’t easy. In the beginning, he didn’t trust me. Even one of his brothers reached out to me, curious about what I wanted,” Porter recalled.
By 2015, however, the two had established a regular correspondence that would continue for years. According to Porter, at first the letters arrived as handwritten pages, written in pen and ink. As time went on, Carr began sending typed letters produced on an IBM Wheel writer, the kind of typewriter commonly found in institutions. He wrote regularly about his day-to-day life behind bars—his extensive participation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, self-improvement classes, and, inevitably, his complaints about prison life and the daily “slop” served in the chow hall.
Through her correspondence with Carr, Porter began to uncover the story behind a life that had gone terribly wrong—a history marked by pain, despair, drugs, alcohol abuse, mental illness, and a profound loss that began at a vulnerable age and left a scar that never fully healed.
But pain does not always remain contained within the person who carries it. Carr's internal entities would eventually reach beyond his own life, with consequences that were devastating. The demons he carried with him would follow a path that led, ultimately, to the destruction of innocent lives.
In this dossier, Porter examines Carr’s story through his own words, his history, and the disturbing questions that first drew her to contact him.
In Carr’s Own Words…
The Warning
"I always felt separated from myself, but that night, I had several dreams. I didn't think much of them at the time. Dreams were just dreams, or at least that's what I believed.”
“In one, my brother and I were in wheelchairs, rolling down a hospital corridor. He tried to do a wheelie, went over backward, and hit his head hard. Then he looked at me and asked me not to tell anyone.”
“In another dream, my little brother was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by metal braces, tubes, and all kinds of equipment. There was a third dream, but I can't remember it anymore.”
“The next morning, we left in our Volkswagen van. As we were leaving town, I noticed Mom was crying. I remember seeing her, but I didn't say anything. I don't know why.”
“On the outskirts of Santa Cruz, we stopped for supper. When it was time to leave, something inside me changed. I suddenly had a strange, uneasy feeling. At the time, I didn't connect it to the dreams I'd had the night before. My dreams had never told me where anything was going to happen, so I had no reason to think they were connected to what I was feeling.”
“But I didn't want to get back into the van.”
“I had my learner's permit, so I told Mom I wanted to drive the rest of the way home. She refused. Then I started trying to convince her to take the frontage road instead of the freeway. I couldn't explain why. I just had this overwhelming feeling that we shouldn't take the freeway.”
“Mom said no.”
“I argued with her for at least ten minutes before finally giving up. Once we were on the highway, I kept asking her to take every off-ramp we passed. She wouldn't.”
“As we came over the hill overlooking the Capitola area, I remember suddenly thinking--
"It was too late…”
THE ACCIDENT
“As we started up the hill from the bottom we were in the fast lane. A car just coming on to the highway came along beside us and to the front of us. It was an old 50's model. I could hear the music coming form their car. They were blasting one of my favorite songs from the band Cream titled White Room.
“They went to move into the fast lane. When they did their back left bumper hit our right front bumper. As they moved into the fast lane they shoved us into the fast lane of the opposite traffic. There was a small cement border only a couple of inches high between the lanes. As we went over it the bounce dropped me to the ground. I pulled myself back up in time to see us in the fast lane with a white caddy in front of us. Mom was screaming.
“When I woke up I was on my back. I was in shock and could feel nothing. There was somebody above me wiping the blood from my eyes. I had a split open skull along my left forehead. After a moment I lifted my head to look around. The first thing I saw was our mangled van. The impact had torn the van in half throwing out my two brothers and mom, who were in the back.
“The other two were asleep when it happened. Mom and Steve had gone through the windshields. Because of the position I was laying in I panned first from the south to the north. Then I saw there were people gathered. A crowd of lookers.
“I saw first the arm of my little brother. There was nothing wrong with it except it wasn't attached to my brother anymore. Then I saw the first body. Saw the knees first. There were no legs below the knees. I was struck of how white the inside of the knee looked. The body also was missing, the arm of itself was on the side towards me. It was also missing the head.
“All the clothes were bloody but here was one patch that was not. It showed the pattern [paisley?] of the dress my mom was wearing and that's how I knew it was her. Just beyond her I saw her head. There were no other bodies. There was only the blood and debris of the accident.
“A ways down the road they were loading one of my brothers into an ambulance and he was screaming. I was the last of the living to be taken away. They took us to Dominican hospital.”
THE AFTER MATH
Carr reported that the accident left all three of his brothers with devastating injuries. One brother suffered two broken legs and a serious brain injury. Another seemed to have reverted to a childlike state after the accident. The youngest brother suffered catastrophic injuries and lost one arm entirely. Carr himself survived with a broken leg and a skull fracture. But the physical injuries were only part of the tragedy. Carr said that all three of his brothers lost their memories of their mother after the accident. He was the only one who retained his memories of her.
“My mother was my universe,” Carr said.
“No one talked about Mom after that, not even Dad. I think that was the cruelest punishment of it all.
“It was like she never existed.”
REGRETS…
When Porter asked Carr about the killing of Robert Karnan and how it came about, he explained that they had met at the Sea Breeze Bar in Rio del Mar.
“I was a Rio Rat,” he described himself.
“We partied at the bar, having drinks and doing drugs, and I went to his house around the corner. It got sexual. And then, all of a sudden, I snapped. I felt shame. I was raised in a household with a Catholic father. All I could hear was his voice.”
“And what about you and Vincent Regan?” Porter asked.
“It was my idea. It got out of hand, I was on drugs at the time. I wanted a thrill. I wasn't who I am now.”
“How did you get caught?” Porter asked.
“When the detectives came to question me about it, I confessed."
“So, do you think that if you hadn't been caught, you would have killed again?”
“Yes. I thought after Robert I would kill more people.”
“And now, do you feel regret or remorse for killing those people?”
Carr replied, “I 'am sorry for the awful things I have done.”
THE HAUNTING
When Porter broached the subject of whether Carr was haunted by the ghosts of the persons he had killed, his answer was unexpected. It wasn't their ghosts that haunted him. It was his demons.
Carr spoke to Porter about the first night he spent in a prison cell, when the reality of his situation finally settled in and he realized that his life as he had known it was over. In an attempt to end his life, he removed a glass bulb from its socket, broke it and opened his veins. He wanted to meet his maker. Carr remembered the warmth of the blood flowing from his body as he faded in and out of consciousness. Then everything went black.
He described the sensation as falling down a deep, dark hole, surrounded by screaming. Surrounded by hate and despair. There was no end to it. He remembered seeing horrible things but said it wasn't necessarily what he saw that stayed with him—it was what he felt.
He described it as Hell. But more importantly it was an endless feeling, he would never forget.
Carr claimed that, in this moment, he was literally dead. Guards intervened and got him immediate help, including CPR, their efforts saved his life. After the experience, he said, something within him began to change.
“My path back to sanity didn't start until I was on death row.”
THE WAKENING
Orrin Ivan Carr would spend nearly fifty years serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. During those decades, he underwent years of therapy, participated in rehabilitation and self-improvement programs, found solace in Christ and eventually became regarded as a model prisoner.
His face would age and his body would grow older behind the prison walls. Over the years, he was transferred between institutions and faced the realities of aging, including serious heart problems that eventually required a pacemaker. The young man who entered prison at approximately twenty-two years old would spend much of his life reflecting on the choices that had brought him there.
Yet the past remained with him. Carr spoke of the demons he carried, now no longer as something separate from himself, but now as part of the life he had to confront and understand.
Perhaps that is the quiet complexity of Carr's story: a life that began in trauma, descended into violence and madness and finally was followed by decades of reflection and attempts to conquer the demons within.
Although his transformation will never erase the victims or the pain left behind. It simply becomes another part of the story—the story of what a person does with the rest of his life after living with the consequences of what he has done.
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