Kidnapped by Her Ex, Fearing Even Worse
Dec. 18, 2003 -- When Carter Elliot was killed in his Conway, Ark., home late one Saturday night, no one could have guessed that his death was only the beginning of the terror for those he left behind.
Elliot was having a drink with a friend when they both were shot dead by someone wielding a 9mm pistol. There were few clues left behind.
"He was the person I looked to for answers," Elliot's grown daughter Ashley told ABCNEWS with tears in her eyes.
Then, only one month after the killings, Ashley and Trey's mother, Elliot's ex-wife Lark, would herself become a victim of violent crime.
Home Invader
Lark was living alone in Salt Lake City, and had come home from work one day to find an uninvited man in her apartment.
At gunpoint, the man forced Lark to drink a pink liquid from a small plastic cup. She says it was a cocktail of drugs and alcohol to knock her out. Then the man tied her up and dumped her in the back of his truck.
Lark woke up in the truck, groggy and barely aware of her surroundings. She saw six large duffel bags full of clothes — as if the man was stealing her away.
Beneath her, she felt a metal bar that she hoped might be the key to her escape. She used it to hit her abductor, but he just turned around and zapped her with a stun gun.
The man drove Lark 600 miles to a remote cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. She says she woke up on her abductor's bed in the master bedroom, her hands and feet cuffed to the bed.
Not Like a Friend
Lark's absence was noticed when she didn't show up for work. Her daughter Ashley called the police and asked them to go to her mother's house. "Having your Dad pass away 30 days before — that just sends off all sorts of triggers," she said.
In a search of Lark's computer, police found e-mails apparently written by her. The e-mails said she had decided to leave everything behind after meeting an extremely wealthy man, but Ashley says they hardly sounded rational, and they certainly didn't sound like they were written by her mother.
Looking for help, Ashley turned to Dr. Richard Conte, a family doctor with whom Lark had a brief marriage after her divorce from Carter Elliot. "Dick had always told me, 'If anything ever happened to your mother, please call me … I will do anything to help your Mom,'" she said.
But Conte and Lark hardly had a placid history. They were only married 90 days, during which they carried on a long-distance marriage, Conte in Nevada and Lark in Utah. Conte would also often disappear for days on end, saying he was on special missions in faraway places, said Lark.
Worse, during a visit to Conte's home, Lark found the place wired with hidden cameras. "Emotionally we were incompatible, socially incompatible, it was not what I wanted for the rest of my life," said Lark.
When Ashley finally spoke to Conte, she noticed something strange in his voice. She felt like she wasn't talking to a friend.
"I was screaming, 'Where's my mother? I want my mother,'" said Ashley. "And he was like, 'You need to calm down and don't call the police.'"
Shamed into Surrender
Suspecting her mother was in the doctor's house, Ashley called the local police in Douglas County. "My mother's been kidnapped and she's going to die if you don't find her! She is at Dr. Dick Conte's house and he lives in Carson City, Nevada," she told the 911 operator.
Meanwhile Trey, on another phone, called Conte, begging for his mother's life. Conte, he said, "would either be crying or he would just say 'I'm going to kill myself.' "
Both Trey and Ashley were desperate, feeling that their mother's death was imminent. Police say they were also alarmed, because they knew Conte had a lot of weapons with him.
The police activated a SWAT team. But even before sharpshooters arrived, Trey and Ashley accomplished the seemingly impossible. Speaking to Conte on a long-distance call from Arkansas, they shamed him into letting their mother go. Conte was arrested without incident.
Not the Only Victim?
In a three-hour interrogation, obtained exclusively by Primetime, Conte told police he snapped after finding an old love note along with a wedding gift from Lark.
"It just literally drove me crazy. I just thought literally bringing her back to Carson City would rekindle something that isn't there," he said in the interrogation.
Conte said he was guilty of loving Lark too much, but that he was innocent of kidnapping.
"She got in my truck voluntarily. She was acting like she was tipsy but she was still able to make decisions," he said in interrogation.
Conte's lawyer Bill Cole says Lark manipulated his client after the divorce and shares the blame for her own kidnapping.
"He was like a puppy dog where she was concerned. She would draw him back when she needed something and push him away when she didn't want his attention," Cole said.
"I think that push, pull, push, pull, — I think that's what finally pushed him to the edge and over the edge."
But Douglas County prosecutor Mark Jackson sees something sinister in Conte.
Going through the doctor's cabin, police found not only guns, pornography and prescription drugs, but evidence they say could tie Conte to the murder of Lark's first husband — a map of the town where Carter Elliot was killed, and a printout of all the law enforcement radio frequencies for that area.
Police say Conte is now the main suspect for that crime, but they don't have enough evidence to charge him. Conte's lawyer says the police have fingered his client "because they've run up against a brick wall and they don't have anyone else."
Conte was sentenced to 15 years for kidnapping, but he will likely be paroled in just four and half years. And for Lark, that means a life lived in fear.
"I'm afraid now that when he gets out of prison that he's going to kill me. This situation has totally changed my life … there's not a day that doesn't pass that I don't think about it," she said.