BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) — A truck driver is accused of suffocating his prostitute fiancee as they celebrated their engagement with a meth and bondage sex party. Then, police said, he drove from California to Mississippi with the corpse in the cab of his 18-wheeler and set fire to the truck, with himself and the body inside.
Mark Andrew Rice told police that he tied up Natasha Carpenter in 2009 in Barstow, Calif., stuffed a gag in her mouth and covered it with tape. He passed out after they had sex and woke up to find her dead.
An attorney for Rice said he would plead guilty in Mississippi on Monday to desecrating a corpse. California authorities cited a lack of evidence and decided not to file charges, and a grand jury in Mississippi couldn't indict Rice for murder or manslaughter because Carpenter died in California.
"If it happened here, I have no doubt we could get a conviction. I don't know why California authorities haven't shown more interest," Hancock County sheriff's investigator Ricky Fayard said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. "He gave a complete confession, a detailed confession."
Prosecutors in California didn't respond to messages about the case. In a September 2010 letter to Mississippi authorities, they said there was "insufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Rice, 49, was a long-haul truck driver when he met Carpenter, a 30-year-old prostitute at a truck stop in Texas. He fell in love after several encounters along his rout and bought an engagement ring. He popped the question Sept. 15, 2009. As part of their celebration, Carpenter agreed to let him bind her arms and legs and put a gag in her mouth as he acted out a fantasy.
When he found her dead, Rice panicked and bought "all the meth his dealer had" and drove to Kiln, Miss., investigator Fayard said. Rice planned to say goodbye to an ex-wife and son and then kill himself. He climbed into the rig and set it ablaze. His ex-wife called police.
Hancock County deputies responded and Rice tried to fend them off, saying "he had a weapon and was not afraid to use it," according to a police report. The deputies pulled Rice and Carpenter's body from the burning rig, one of them suffering burns and smoke inhalation.
Fayard said Rice's confession was corroborated by the 18-wheeler's GPS tracking system and receipts from purchases along the way. Mississippi police even found the receipt for the tarp Rice bought to cover the woman's body.
Fayard, a third-generation law enforcement officer with 20 years on the force, was perplexed California authorities didn't seek a manslaughter charge.
"Did she die at his hand and as a direct result of his actions? Yes," Fayard said. He confessed, describing the events "like you and I sitting here talking."
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