COBB, Calif. – It’s been nearly two months since Derek Vogel’s daughter was found murdered, and he still is seeking answers about the situation that led to her death.
Derek Vogel and his girlfriend, Kami Huston, say they’ve been kept in the dark by local officials over the death of 33-year-old Bethany Vogel, who they found dead in her Cobb home on Friday, May 4.
While he said he’s not angry, Derek Vogel said he’s “disappointed” by a lack of interaction with Lake County Sheriff’s detectives, who he said went weeks without returning his calls as he sought answers about his daughter’s death.
The matter has become even more complicated since the man arrested for the murder – 44-year-old James Carpy, Bethany Vogel’s ex-boyfriend – was found dead in his jail cell two days after her death.
Derek Vogel believes that Carpy murdered his daughter, and that it was a case of domestic violence. He said he wants officials to explain to him what happened.
“I don’t think it’s fair, I don’t think it’s right, and I think there should be answers,” he said.
A message seeking comment was left for Carpy’s sister, who did not return the call.
Lake County Sheriff’s officials say the delay has resulted because they have not yet received the full autopsy results from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, which last year began handling Lake County’s autopsies.
Those autopsy results are dependent, in part, on toxicology results from the California Department of Justice, the labs for which are backlogged and which give priority to actively prosecuted cases, according to local officials.
At the same time, the District Attorney’s Office is continuing to conduct its investigation into Carpy’s death at the jail, which also is meeting with delays due to the need for the final pathology report.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff said that based on his conversation with the district attorney’s investigator assigned to the case, a cause of death for Carpy likely won’t be ready before September or later in the fall, with the Sacramento County pathologist only recently getting caught up on their 2011 case reports.
Having to wait for answers has served to only compound the heartache for the family members left behind.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened up until the time we found her,” Derek Vogel said.
He also questioned the account of the May 4 incident that the sheriff’s office released to the public, which did not include mention of a gun that Carpy used to confront Derek Vogel and his girlfriend when they arrived at his daughter’s home.
But Derek Vogel is certain of one thing. “My daughter put up a very, very good fight,” he said, recounting meeting Carpy at the home in the hours afterward, and finding him with scratch marks down his face and neck.
“As soon as I walked in the door and saw his face, I knew who had done it,” Derek Vogel said.
Those same scratches were visible on Carpy’s face in his booking photo, where three large vertical marks can be seen on his forehead, as well as several marks on his neck.
Derek Vogel said he wants justice for his daughter.
“I’m not going to let my little girl go away and say the case is closed,” he said.
He added, “I want the truth to come out.”
‘She’s supposed to be here’
Bethany Vogel’s family and friends recall her as a smiling, vibrant, compassionate and generous young woman.
They say she was moving on with her life, that she and Carpy – who she had first dated when she was 18 and he was 33 – were no longer a couple.
Bethany Vogel and her family once had lived in St. Helena, where Derek Vogel said they knew the Carpy family.
She and James Carpy dated about 15 years ago, and then later she moved to Bakersfield. She moved to Lake County to be with her family in 2009 and to help her older half-sister, Kristine, who had been diagnosed with cancer.
About two years ago, she had started dating James Carpy again, which Derek Vogel said didn’t please him because he alleged that Carpy had once made a remark when they were first dating about killing Bethany if she showed up at his Montana home.
“To me, it wasn’t an idle threat,” Derek Vogel said.
But more recently, none of Bethany Vogel’s family or friends saw signs of domestic violence, although she had reportedly confessed that Carpy had pushed her around. But she didn’t want her father to know because she didn’t want to worry him.
Bethany Vogel, her father and Carpy also had been attending a water treatment class together at Yuba College. She had wanted Carpy to get a job and find something he would do. But about a month before the murder Carpy dropped out of attending, Derek Vogel said.
Several weeks before the murder Carpy showed up at Derek Vogel’s Cobb home. He was extremely drunk and very angry because he said Bethany Vogel would not let him into their home.
Derek Vogel said he told Carpy to do the right thing and grow up. Carpy left, only to show up again 45 minutes later. He was so drunk that Derek Vogel had him sleep in his guest bedroom.
At one point within the last few months, according to Bethany Vogel’s statements to family members, Carpy spent three days at the home he shared with Bethany Vogel in his room with three cases of wine.
Bethany Vogel tried to do an intervention on Carpy due to his drinking, her father said. She also made counseling appointments but Carpy wouldn’t show up.
Friend Sabrina Jose said she’s angry about the sheriff’s office’s handling of her friend’s death investigation, as well as what she perceives is an effort to sweep “this huge, horrendous act" – Bethany Vogel’s murder – under the rug.
“She’s supposed to be here. It wasn’t an act of God. It was an act of domestic violence,” Jose said.
Yuba College Professor Dr. Laurie Daly, who had Bethany Vogel in three of her early childhood education classes, recalled her as “a lively, fun, bubbly person, just this terrific human being.”
Daly said Bethany Vogel had mentioned to her at one point that Carpy wasn’t crazy about her going to school.
But other than that, Daly said she had not been aware of any issues between Carpy and Bethany Vogel. It wasn’t until after their deaths that Daly found out Vogel was leaving Carpy.
Daly said had she known about the ending relationship, she would have talked to her student about getting out of the situation sooner, since during break ups women are most vulnerable to the possibility of domestic abuse.
“I saw no indications of domestic violence or I would have stepped in,” said Daly, who explained that domestic violence is a topic she teaches on in her coursework.
If she had seen any signs, “I would have dragged her down to Freedom House myself,” she said of the county’s domestic violence shelter, run by Lake Family Resource Center, on whose board Daly has served.
Jose said she believes it was not a classic domestic violence scenario until the end. “You wouldn’t have seen this coming,” she said, explaining Carpy had come to her home and worked on her computer.
However, Jose called Carpy “entitled and lazy,” someone who had nothing else going on. She believed that was part of the problem, because Bethany Vogel had outgrown him and was making a life beyond her former boyfriend. While she still loved him, “she wasn’t in awe of him any more,” Jose said.
In the final weeks before Bethany Vogel’s death, Jose said things were “getting strange,” adding, “I was worried about it.”
An unusual silence
Huston said she left work on the afternoon of May 4 and was headed home when she received a phone call from Kristine, Bethany Vogel’s older half-sister.
Kristine asked if Huston could check on her sister, who hadn’t showed up to her home as planned earlier that afternoon. Bethany Vogel’s cell phone also was going straight to voice mail.
Huston headed to the Hogan Hill Lane home that Bethany Vogel and James Carpy shared. The two were no longer a couple, according to Derek Vogel, who said his daughter was planning to move to Lakeport in preparation for beginning a new job working with developmentally challenged children.
When she arrived, Huston walked around the back of the house to the master bedroom, knocking on the glass door. There was no answer, and all the shades were drawn.
Huston then walked around the front of the house and rapped on the front door. The guest bedroom, where Carpy was staying, was located to the left of the front door, and Huston said she could hear someone coughing inside the house.
“At that point I made the choice that it was better for me not to be there. I could tell something was not quite right,” Huston said.
She called Kristine, told her she was going to wait for Derek Vogel to get home, and then Huston went home to meet him.
Derek Vogel said he got home at around 6 p.m. Initially, he didn’t believe there was any reason to be alarmed, but due to Huston’s and his older daughter’s concerns, he agreed to head to Bethany Vogel’s home at 6:30 p.m.
They pulled up to the top of the driveway and went around to the master bedroom, knocking again on the window. There still was no answer, so they went to the front of the house, where through the shades they could see that a television was on.
Huston said he knew Carpy was there, and she started rapping on the window, telling him to come out. At the same time, Derek Vogel began ringing the doorbell.
“We could hear somebody coming down the hallway,” Derek Vogel said.
He and Huston said that they saw Carpy looking very much like he looked in his mug shot.
“He said, ‘I did it. I’m sorry, I don't know what happened,’” Huston said.
Huston said Carpy started “chesting up” and she pushed around him to go to Bethany Vogel’s bedroom.
They found Bethany Vogel lying facedown. She was cold, her hair was damp and a bathrobe had been placed over her, covering her from the shoulders down.
“She was beat up pretty bad,” Derek Vogel said.
They said the young woman had bite marks on her back and her face was partially caved in and covered with bruises. Her arms also showed bruising.
Derek Vogel said he turned to Carpy and saw him coming out of his bedroom with a handgun.
“I told him, Jimmy, we’re not going this way,” Derek Vogel said.
They got him to lay the gun down on the couch. As Derek Vogel tried to grab it, Carpy grabbed it again and started waving it around.
Carpy again laid the pistol down. “This time when he put it down, I got the gun,” said Derek Vogel.
Huston told Carpy to look at her. She told him, “Jimmy, go to your room.” He went, then came back out. She told him to go back.
Afterward, Huston called 911, which automatically patched them into the California Highway Patrol. During that call they reported the presence of the handgun, which they believe led to initial reports of there having been a shooting. But they said no shooting took place, and they don’t believe Bethany Vogel was killed with a gun.
The dispatcher told Huston that they couldn’t find where they were, so Derek Vogel told Huston to go door to get a landline, while he remained on the cell phone with the CHP in house, with his daughter.
“I wanted to be with my daughter,” Derek Vogel said of why he stayed.
The CHP dispatcher asked him if Carpy had more guns; Derek Vogel said he didn’t know.
The dispatcher then told him to get out of the house, at which point Derek Vogel left, taking the handgun with him, eventually placing it in the bed of his truck.
About 15 to 20 minutes later sheriff’s deputies and CHP officers began to show up. Derek Vogel and Huston estimated there were four units from each agency.
They stayed at the home of the next door neighbors for several hours as the investigation went on, and gave statements to deputies.
Derek Vogel and Huston feel very lucky that they were not hurt in their encounter with Carpy on the night they found Bethany Vogel’s body.
Her older sister Kristine arrived as the deputies were bringing Carpy down the driveway. After they told Kristine that her sister was dead, she collapsed. But when she saw Carpy, she sprang to her feet and lunged for him.
Two days later, Carpy would be found dead in jail, and the Vogels would hear nothing about it until it became public the following Monday morning.
While district attorney investigators commonly are called to the scenes of homicides around the county – and even within city limits of Clearlake and Lakeport – Hinchcliff said the District Attorney’s Office was not present at the Cobb residence on the night Bethany Vogel’s body was discovered.
He said the agency was only officially notified on the following Monday that there had been a homicide.
They were, however, asked to conduct the investigation into Carpy’s death at the jail.
“Our office is investigating the death of Carpy at the jail to determine if there is any criminal wrongdoing,” said Hinchcliff, with investigators interviewing potential witnesses.
The sheriff’s office did send the District Attorney’s Office a case on Vogel’s murder, but after Carpy’s death, Hinchcliff was left with no alternative but to reject it.
Derek Vogel questioned why the District Attorney’s Office was not involved.
“I thought the whole system was in place, and apparently it was not,” he said, asking how things can be changed so no one else gets hurt.
In the weeks following the murder, the sheriff’s office released Bethany Vogel’s home to her family. When her sister and mother went to empty out a storage space under the home, they found it had been broken into and emptied of its contents, which included Bethany Vogel’s belongings. Her cell phone also is reportedly missing, as is her purse, her father said.
When the family called to report it and ask for a deputy to come and take a report, they were kept waiting two hours. Derek Vogel said when they called back to inquire about the delay, a sergeant told them that during his interrogation Carpy admitted to investigators that he had broken into the storage area and taken the items.
Carpy reportedly took the items to a storage unit the Vogel family still hasn’t located, but which they believe may be in Napa County.
Bethany Vogel’s father also received a copy of her death certificate, dated May 15. The immediate cause of death was listed as “pending investigation.”
He said he was told at the scene that it could take as long as six months to get her full autopsy report.
“It seems like everybody wants to let this die,” said Derek Vogel.
Mourning, with no answers
Derek Vogel and Huston said they’re grateful for the community’s support and kindness, calling the outpouring of love “incredible.”
That support and love was in evidence at Bethany Vogel’s memorial service, held at the Hidden Valley Community Church June 9.
The Vogels were surrounded by friends and family, who came to remember the young woman and her passion for life.
Pastor Walt Trumbo recalled his attempt to comfort Bethany Vogel’s mother, after the young woman’s death. “Sometimes even pastors run out of words.”
Daly also eulogized her former student, and Jose read one of Bethany Vogel’s poems, titled, “If.”
Derek Vogel said James Carpy’s sister and her husband were there, and she walked up and gave him a hug after the service.
Besides that brief contact, Derek Vogel said his family and the Carpy family have not been in communication.
During the service, Pastor Trumbo touched on the painful mystery for Bethany Vogel’s family and friends, noting that they could not pretend to know the cause of the young woman’s senseless death.
Ultimately, the final answers are dependent on the official findings in the ongoing investigations into both her death and the death of James Carpy.
Jill Spriggs, chief of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Forensic Services, said law enforcement agencies send samples to the state labs, and it takes a couple of weeks to screen blood or urine samples for a variety of drugs.
Blood alcohol tests go to the Santa Rosa lab, while full toxicology is sent to Sacramento, she said.
If any drug is found, each must be independently confirmed, which can require additional tests or reextractions, she explained.
Depending on how many substances are found, it can take from a few weeks up to a few months to complete the tests, said Spriggs, who would only generally discuss the process and not the Carpy or Vogel cases.
Capt. Chris Macedo of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said the agency asked for full toxicology tests to be done both on Vogel and Carpy, with full confirmations on any drugs found.
“That’s standard procedure on homicide cases,” said Macedo, explaining that they try to cover “all the bases” in coming to a final conclusion about a death.
The state crime lab backlog is definitely having its effect, said Macedo.
“It’s not just this case, it’s all of our cases,” he said.
Cases don’t get any special priority, Macedo said. “They just take it as we get it.”
Derek Vogel has concluded that his daughter’s death was a result of domestic violence, and that it was avoidable.
“All he had to do was just go the other way,” he said of Carpy.
“And, so, the message is, with this domestic violence, we have to stop this,” Derek Vogel said.
It’s a struggle for him to talk about his daughter for long without his voice becoming heavy with emotion.
“The last final act of what he did was, he took my baby from me,” Derek Vogel said. “And he didn't take her gently, he took her brutally.”
Email Elizabeth Larson at [email protected] .
