A Utah judge ordered Douglas Stewart Carter released on bail late Monday after prosecutors said newly analyzed DNA evidence does not link the 71-year-old man to the 1985 killing of Eva Olesen, ending decades on death row while an aggravated murder charge remains pending.
The New York Post reported that Carter walked out of jail in a white shirt and grey sweatpants, smiled at times, shielded his face from a handful of journalists, and left without speaking as he got into a vehicle with his son and his attorney. Judge Derek Pullan set the release over objections from Olesen’s family and required a GPS monitor plus an order barring contact with the family.
The stakes are plain. Carter still faces a planned two-month retrial next year. County prosecutors withdrew their death-penalty notice last week and say they are reassessing what evidence remains. For conservatives who demand both public safety and clean process, the case tests whether Utah courts and police can deliver justice without shortcuts.
Prosecutors received the DNA analysis on Sept. 22. The testing excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and to genetic material recovered from the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot. Utah County prosecutor Erwin Petilos told the judge Monday that reassessing bail was “necessary and fair” while the state continues to look at remaining evidence.
Pullan said those results further undermined the case against Carter. He also said a reasonable jury still could conclude that Carter killed Olesen. Prosecutors declined Monday to say whether they are using the DNA to search for other suspects. The aggravated murder charge has not been dismissed.
Breitbart reported the same core sequence: decades on death row, DNA exclusion from the doorknob blood and knife-handle material, a Supreme Court-ordered retrial tied to investigator misconduct, and bail with GPS monitoring while prosecutors reconsider the file.
Eva Olesen was killed on Feb. 27, 1985, in her home. Her husband, painting contractor Orla Olesen, told police he found her dead, partially undressed, with her hands tied behind her back. She was described as the aunt of a police chief. Court documents indicate the investigation focused on Carter, then living with his mother in Utah and suspected of killing Olesen during a robbery.
By April 1985, Carter had fled Utah. Court documents say he believed he was a suspect in an unrelated assault case. Police apprehended him in Nashville, Tennessee, in June 1985. While under interrogation by a Provo detective, he signed a confession. His original trial rested on that confession and two witnesses. The defense called no witnesses. He was sentenced to death, then sentenced to death again after a 1992 retrial. Utah courts rejected numerous appeals in the years that followed.
Carter has maintained his innocence and says the confession was coerced. Reporting on the case has also noted that no physical evidence linked him to the crime scene at the time of the earlier convictions. Orla Olesen died in 2009.
In 2011, investigators tracked down the two original trial witnesses in Mexico. Those witnesses had said Carter bragged about killing Olesen. They later recanted. They said they had been told to lie in court, received cash and gifts from police, and were told not to disclose the payments. They also said police and prosecutors threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter. More than a decade of legal wrangling followed.
Last year the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial. The court cited “multiple instances of intentional misconduct” by police and a prosecutor. DNA analysis followed that order. Defense attorneys argue investigators suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including Olesen’s husband. They say witnesses saw a white man fleeing and that prosecutors had been close to filing charges against the husband until a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to. Those claims remain contested litigation points, not adjudicated findings of an alternate killer.
Defense attorney Neal Hamilton pressed the institutional failure hard at the release stage.
"If the state of Utah had their way, he would have been executed 15, 20 years ago before we discovered the misconduct,"
Hamilton said Carter will stay at an extended stay hotel near his son, will need therapy, and urged prosecutors to seek dismissal of the aggravated murder charge. Carter, a Chicago native described in coverage as a Black man in a case involving a white woman, still must answer the pending charge unless the state drops it.
Olesen’s daughter-in-law, Theresa Olesen, spoke at Monday’s bond hearing and voiced the family’s serious concerns about release. She did not accept the DNA results as the end of the matter.
"By golly we were hoping for a concrete match,"
She added a second line that framed the family’s view of the open question.
"It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there."
She also stated the family’s core demand in plain terms.
"We just want justice for Eva. And if he had any part of it we want that to be known,"
Pullan ordered the bail package anyway: GPS monitoring and no contact with the Olesen family. The court did not treat the DNA exclusion as a full exoneration. It treated the results as a material change that further weakened the state’s posture while leaving a jury question alive.
Carter’s son, Tyler Anger, waited outside as his father left custody. Anger, adopted by another family as an infant, learned of the conviction years later. He pushed a cart with pillows, blankets, and belongings and spoke only briefly.
"This is going to be a lot for him,"
Prosecutors still have a two-month retrial on the calendar for next year unless they change course. They have not publicly detailed which non-DNA evidence they believe can still carry a conviction. They have not said whether the DNA profiles will be run against other possible suspects. Investigators and prosecutors will need to determine what remains admissible, what weight a jury might give the old confession after coercion claims and the misconduct findings, and whether any alternate-suspect evidence must now be aired.
The procedural path is narrow and concrete. A death-penalty notice is already withdrawn. Bail is granted with electronic monitoring. A Supreme Court misconduct ruling forced the new trial. DNA has now excluded Carter from two key physical items tied to the scene. The charge remains. That combination leaves Utah County with a choice between dismissal and a hard retrial built on a thinner file.
Capital cases demand clean evidence and clean police work. Here the state’s highest court already found intentional misconduct by police and a prosecutor. Witnesses later described payments, gifts, and deportation threats. A confession obtained in a Nashville interrogation sits under a coercion claim. DNA now cuts Carter out of blood and knife-handle material that once helped anchor the physical story of the crime. None of that erases Eva Olesen’s death or the family’s demand for answers. It does put the burden back on the state to prove a case without the shortcuts the courts have already condemned.
Carter is not free of the charge. He is free of death row housing and free of immediate custody under conditions set by a Utah judge. The difference matters. Law-and-order credibility depends on convicting the right person with honest process, not on defending every old file after the evidence moves.
When police and prosecutors cut corners in a murder case, they do not only risk the wrong man on death row. They risk leaving a real killer untested by the evidence the public paid them to handle with integrity.
