- Journalist Steve Fishman was interning at a newspaper when he was picked up as a hitchhiker.
- Six months later, he found out that the driver was a serial killer and he could have been a victim.
- The case drove his career as a true crime writer, and he's recorded a podcast about what he learned.
When journalist Steve Fishman did an exclusive jailhouse interview with a serial killer and rapist, he had one particularly important question to ask.
"Why didn't you kill me?" the rookie reporter asked Robert Frederick Carr III as they sat in a cell in 1976.
"I thought you were too big," the felon said, referring to the moment he eyed Fishman as his next victim after giving him a ride as a hitchhiker the previous fall.
Nearly 50 years later, Fishman has reflected on his narrow escape in the true-crime podcast, "Smoke Screen: My Friend, The Serial Killer."
Fishman told Business Insider he realized he was naive when he first covered the story. "I guess I tried to understand and humanize him," he said, noting that his coverage focused heavily on the lack of psychological treatment for sex offenders at the time.
But, with the wisdom he has gained in his career and as a father of three, he described Carr as a "monster" who showed no remorse.
Fishman thought the driver who picked him up would be an interesting subject of a story
Fishman first met Carr at the age of 19 while hitchhiking. He was a poorly paid intern at a local newspaper and needed a ride to his workplace in Norwich, CT.
Carr drew up in his sedan, beckoned Fishman inside, and introduced himself as "Red." Balding with wisps of ginger hair, he was about a decade older than the hitchhiker.
"I run up excitedly," Fishman said. "But I'm also anxious because you never know what will be on the other side of that car door. I'm not a big guy and didn't shave then, so I looked younger than I was."
But Carr put his mind at ease, telling him he also lived in Norwich and knew a shortcut to their destination. "He seemed amiable, personable, and completely unthreatening," Fishman told BI.
His journalist radar went off when Carr disclosed that he'd recently been released from prison. "Instead of it setting off an alarm bell, I thought, 'maybe this could be a story, and I could interview him about his challenges getting back into the community.'"
Carr said he would interested in appearing in the paper and gave Fishman his phone number. The plan was for the intern to speak to Carr's probation team first.
Still, Fishman got scared after telling the driver where to pull over. "I said goodbye, but the handle on the door didn't work," he said. "It was anomalous — enough to cause a moment of anxiety and almost panic."
To his relief, Carr said, "Sorry, I've got to get that door fixed." He told him to wind down the window and release the handle from the outside. Fishman left safely after wishing him a great day and promising to follow up on the story.
But the idea didn't come off. Carr's probation supervisor nixed it.
Disappointed, Fishman tossed Carr's number into the back of a file and got on with his job at The Norwich Bulletin. He mostly covered high school sports games and other family events such as Easter egg hunts.
Six months after he met Carr, he saw the man's photograph on a breaking news alert.
The report from the Associated Press described Carr's arrest for the attempted rape of a hitchhiker in Florida. He had shocked police by confessing to kidnapping and raping more than a dozen people and murdering four of them.
"I can still feel the shudder when I read it," Fishman said.
The journalist's biggest scoop was a jailhouse interview
He dug out Carr's number. His wife answered and agreed to be interviewed.
The reporter covered every aspect of the story, including Carr's sentencing deal. The murderer agreed to lead detectives to the places where four of his victims were buried. A judge gave him three life terms plus 360 years instead of the death penalty.
One of Fishman's biggest scoops was securing the face-to-face interview with Carr behind bars. "I was captivated by the excitement, the dead bodies, the deadlines, and the sense of purpose."
The journalist, who was then 20, said Carr's agenda dictated the conversation.
"He held forth for a couple of days, sitting at the head of the table in this little room," he said. "He intended to convince me and make me listen."
Carr, who died of prostate cancer in 2007 at the age of 63, discussed why he'd spared Fishman's life. He recalled every detail of the encounter and told his near victim that his size had warned him off.
The journalist said the killer painted himself as the victim as the state had not provided him with therapy. "I took it very seriously — as I would do now," Fishman, who won national and regional press awards for reporting on the case, said.
The two men developed a friendship and frequently bantered on the phone. "He'd call collect to the newsroom from jail and joke around with me and the editors," Fishman said.
Meanwhile, his career flourished. He told BI that his experience with Carr helped "define" his journalism. "It gave me a deep hunger for being inside the story and wanting to understand it."
Fishman went on to interview the so-called "Son of Sam" serial killer David Berkowitz, in the 2000s. The murderer is serving a life sentence for crimes committed in the mid-70s. He also interviewed the notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, sentenced to 150 years, before he died in 2021.
Now a father, he said that if he could have advised his younger self, he would have told the rookie to consider the human cost of the case more closely.
"At that point, I was extremely ambitious and driven," Fishman, whose children are 21, 15, and 2, said. "There was this seduction of having extreme access to this guy, so I told his story as he wanted. What I missed — but what I've learned a second time around — was that this guy was irredeemable."