Some couples absolutely thrive when they team up and work together. Some couples are quite successful when part of a team. But some couples should never have been together at all.
Susan Barnes was born on September 14th, 1941. By all appearances, she was a normal suburban housewife living in Scottsdate, Arizona. She stayed home with the kids, and her husband worked. They were quite wealthy. And the wealth seemed to bore Susan.
While wiling away her days, she indulged in LSD, mescaline, and peyote. She also began regularly hanging out with the high school aged friends of her two sons, and made a game of seducing and bedding any man she came across.
Soon, Susan began claiming that she was having ‘visions’. In reality, she was just delusional and hallucinating from the narcotic cocktail in her system. However, she’d claimed since childhood that she was a psychic, and these hallucinations seemed to cement the fact in her mind.
If the drugs, infidelity, and flirting with high school boys wasn’t enough, Susan’s deep dive into her delusions was the last straw for her husband. He filed for divorce, and Susan completely transformed.
She began spelling her name Suzan, replacing the ’s’ with a ‘z’, and followed her ‘visions’, which told her she needed to find her soulmate. But this wasn’t an ordinary soulmate. This soulmate would be her partner second, and her disciple first. Shortly after this transformation, Suzan Barnes met James Carson.
James Carson was born sometime in 1950 (dates were unclear), in Oklahoma. He earned an MBA from the University of Iowa. While in school, he met his wife. After graduating university, the couple moved to Arizona and had a daughter.
James supported himself by being a stay-at-home father, and dealing marijuana on the side while his wife worked and supported him. By all accounts, he was a kind, gentle man and a very affectionate and attentive father.
But then he started changing. In 1977, James’s wife asked for a divorce. His behaviour had become increasingly volatile and aggressive. He was prone to angry outbursts. James’s wife feared for her safety, and that of her child. She packed up and left. Then, James met Suzan.
The couple married, and became heavily involved in the hard drug scene, and dabbled with mysticism. James, like Suzan, then changed his name.
In a letter to his daughter, James said that ‘god’ had told him he was now Michael Bear. Suzan followed suit, and changed her name from Barnes to Bear.
Michael seemed to relish in Suzan’s delusions. He fell for them hook, line, and sinker. He believed in her and encouraged her when she began to develop her own form of religion. The result of drugs and psychosis-induced hallucinations and delusions was what is often described as ‘a twisted, radical interpretation of Islam’. They called themselves ‘vegetariam Moslem warriors’.
They believed that anyone who insulted women should be punished by death. They also believed that they were being surrounded by ‘witches’. Suzan wholeheartedly believed that these ‘witches’ were a threat, as they were using their powers not only to control others, but, most importantly, to control her. These witches had to be exterminated.
Michael Bear fell in line as Suzan’s perfect disciple.
In 1980, after returning from a long-term trip backpacking around Europe, the Bears moved to the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Fransisco, California. At the time, California was a hub for the counterculture. The Bears fit in quite nicely. They also increased their drug use exponentially.
Michael’s ex-wife was terrified of the man her ex-husband had become. She moved multiple times, and changed her phone number repeatedly out of fear. She cut contact with anyone who knew him and Suzan, and shielded their daughter from him. She was terrified that Michael would try to abduct their daughter. And their daughter was rightfully terrified of Suzan.
Suzan didn’t seem the mind the absence of the child much. She began preaching her fucked up beliefs, claiming she was an all-knowing yogi with mystic knowledge. She preached that witches were to be killed, and any human who was involved in ‘witchcraft, homosexuality, and abortion’ was also to be killed.
And Suzan had a target.
Michael and Suzan were living with a roommate, Keryn Barnes (no relation to Suzan), who was an aspiring actress from Georgia. Suzan believed that she’d received ordersto kill Keryn. Keryn was a witch, Suzan said. And witches needed to die.
In March of 1981, Michael and Suzan acted on those ‘orders’.
Keryn was found with her skull crushed in and thirteen stab wounds, wrapped in a blanket, hidden in the basement. Michael and Suzan were identified as the primary suspects, and police set out to apprehend them. But there was one problem. The Bears were gone.
Suzan and Michael had fled to Oregon, where they hid near Grants Pass. They stayed there for over a year. They hopped from residence to residence, never staying in one place too long.
Their last residence in Oregon was a treehouse owned by a kind stranger. The owner kicked them out in the spring of 1982 when their behaviour became way too much for him. They were always combative, and constantly aggressive. And Suzan didn’t like being told what to do. She wanted revenge for having lost what she’d considered her home.
Suzan told Michael what to do. Before leaving the state, the couple robbed the treehouse owner’s home, stealing a handgun, and then lit it ablaze.
Before police could catch up to them, they fled back to California. They settled in Alderpoint, and began working on a marijuana farm.
But things were not going smoothly. Michael butted heads with most of the other farm workers, but mostly, he fought with Clark Stephens. During a dispute in May of 1982, Michael shot Clark. In an attempt to hide the body, Michael tried to burn in and bury it under chicken fertilizer in the woods. Michael told Suzan he did it for her – Clark had been a ‘demon’ who intended to sexually assault her. He had to go.
Two weeks after the murder of Clark Stephens, he was reported missing. The investigation led to the discovery of his body, and, once again, the Bears were the primary suspects. But again, they were nowhere to be found. They’d fled.
While hitchhiking near Los Angeles in November of 1982, Michael Bear was picked up by police after an acquaintance had spotted him. Through police error, Micheal was let go before the detective investigating Clark’s murder could speak to him. However, he did leave behind a mugshot, an address, and a gun.
While on the run, the Bears took to hitchhiking to get around. Near Bakersfield, they were picked up by Jon Charles Hellyar while he was on his way to Santa Rosa.
Suzan didn’t like Jon. She claimed he was a witch and had to be stopped. The Bears physically began fighting Jon on U.S. Route 101, which resulted in Jon stopping the car. They got Jon outside of the car, where Suzan proceeded to stab him.
However, Jon wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He struggled with Michael over a gun. Michael overpowered Jon, and shot him. A passing motorist saw the entire altercation, and contacted police. The Bears took Jon’s car, and inspired a high-speed chase. Before anything else could happen, the Bears were stopped and apprehended.
The Bears held a press conference after their arrest, where they freely admitted to the murders of Keryn Barnes, Clark Stephens, and Jon Charles Hellyar. They told the press that all three of them had been witches, and they’d needed to be stopped.
The media took no time dubbing the killer couple ‘the San Francisco Witch Killers’.
Before their trial, the Bears recanted their confessions and both pleaded not guilty.
On June 12th, 1984, Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Bear Carson were convicted of Keryn’s murder. They were both sentenced to 25 years in prison.
A little later, they were convicted of the murders of Clark and Jon. They each were sentenced to an addition 50 years and 75 years in prison for the murders.
In 2015, Michael and Suzan came up for parole. Michael canceled his hearing, while Suzan refused to help her attorney prepare her case. Suzan was denied parole, and will next be eligible in 2030.
Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Bear Carson have never shown remorse for their actions. They still firmly believe in Suzan’s fucked up religion, and refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
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Sources:
The Bizarre Story of the San Francisco Witch Killers – Alyse Wax – The 13th Floor
The San Francisco Witch Killers – DeLani R. Bartlette – Medium
Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Carson Wikipedia page