Bio

Doris Ann Carlson was born on February 4, 1962. She is recorded as Caucasian in public records.

She and her husband, David Carlson, moved from Illinois to Arizona several years before 1996. They lived in a house in Peoria, Arizona that David’s mother, Mary Lynne Carlson, had bought after withdrawing money from an annuity.

Doris and David relied on Lynne’s trust and annuity payments to pay their living expenses. Lynne received monthly payments from a trust and annuities, and David was the named beneficiary.

Lynne had multiple sclerosis. She used a wheelchair and had trouble controlling her bodily functions. Court records say Doris was often impatient with Lynne and sometimes yelled and cursed at her.

Because Lynne needed more care than David and Doris could provide at home, she moved into a residential care facility in July 1996. After that move, some trust and annuity payments stopped coming to the house, and Doris and David faced serious financial problems. Court records also list brain damage as a non‑statutory mitigating circumstance in Doris’s later legal proceedings.

Murder Story

On the night of October 24/25, 1996, Doris Carlson drove two men from her house to the nursing home where her mother-in-law, Lynne Carlson, lived. The two men were John Daniel McReaken and Scott Smith. Smith stayed outside as a lookout while McReaken went into the apartment. McReaken repeatedly stabbed Lynne in a failed attempt to kill her. Lynne survived the attack but died about six months later on April 21, 1997.

Doris Carlson had planned the killing with the approval of her husband, David Carlson. She promised McReaken and Smith $20,000 from the expected inheritance and insurance proceeds in exchange for killing Lynne. Doris gave money to buy gloves and gave the men a key to Lynne’s apartment. She drove them to a nearby supermarket and waited while they went to the nursing home.

Doris, David, McReaken, and Smith were arrested on November 21, 1996. After Lynne’s death, they were charged with her murder. A jury found Doris Carlson guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and first-degree burglary on July 27, 1999. The trial started on July 15, 1999. The presiding judge at trial was Peter T. D’Angelo. The prosecutor was Cleve Lynch. Doris’s attorneys included Carmen L. Fischer and Phillip G. Noland.

At a sentencing hearing, the judge found three aggravating factors proven beyond a reasonable doubt: that Doris procured the murder by promise of payment, that the murder was committed for pecuniary gain, and that the murder was especially heinous, cruel, or depraved. The judge also found one statutory mitigating circumstance, duress, and two non-statutory mitigating circumstances, no prior criminal history and brain damage. The judge sentenced Doris Carlson to death for the murder, life without the possibility of parole for the conspiracy, and an aggravated term for the burglary. Those sentences were imposed on March 31, 2000.

On June 27, 2002, the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Doris Carlson’s convictions and reduced her sentence from death to natural life without the possibility of parole, per case number CR1996-012554.