Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Carson killed three people in Northern California between 1981 and 1983. The first was Keryn Barnes, a young aspiring actress who had let them stay in her San Francisco apartment. The second was Clark Stephens, a cannabis grower in Humboldt County for whom they had worked. The third was Jon Charles Hellyar, a man from San Diego County who gave them a ride. The couple said they had a religious duty to rid the world of witches, and they called themselves vegetarian Muslim warriors in a holy war. Each was convicted of all three murders, in three separate trials in three counties, and each was sentenced to 75 years to life.
The case returned to the news four decades later, when California's elder parole rules made both of them eligible for release hearings. Michael refused to take part in one, writing that no one would parole him because he had not renounced his beliefs. Both have been refused parole each time their cases have been heard.
Michael Carson was born James Clifford Carson. He was 64 at the end of 2015 and 69 in May 2020, which places his birth around 1950. In the 1970s he lived in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, with his first wife and their daughter. That daughter, who has spoken publicly about her father for years, described him to the Associated Press in 2015 as college-educated and as a stay-at-home father, and said she remembered that time as a very happy one.
Suzan Carson was born Susan. She was 73 in December 2015 and 83 in November 2025, which places her birth in the early 1940s, about nine years before her future husband. Michael's daughter, describing her stepmother to The Daily Beast in 2020, said Susan was the daughter of a publishing executive, had grown up with wealth and a country-club life, had schizophrenia, and was already using LSD before she met Michael. She was a divorced mother of two children when they met. These are the daughter's descriptions; no medical or court record of them was found.
The two met at a party in suburban Phoenix in the late 1970s. Both were heavy drug users, the daughter said, and both left their marriages and married each other. "It was like a match meeting dynamite," she told the AP. Susan gave him the name Michael, after the archangel, and changed the "s" in her own name to a "z". The couple also took on the name Bear.
The Carsons left their families behind, traveled in Europe and then settled in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. According to the AP, they invented their own moral and religious code, and described themselves as Muslim. The religion they practiced was their own construction, drawn from drug experiences and a version of Islam that they shaped for themselves; The Daily Beast in 2015 called it their own perverted version of Islam. They called themselves vegetarians and, at times, pacifists, while at the same time speaking of a holy war against witches. Suzan, according to Michael, was a yogi and a mystic. He came to describe the people they killed as witches, and he linked their deaths to witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion.
They also kept a list of people they wanted dead, which, according to The Daily Beast and SFist, included President Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown and the television host Johnny Carson. None of those people was ever harmed, and no evidence of any plan to carry out the list has been reported.
Michael's daughter later said that Suzan had once clawed her until she bled when she asked for a back rub, and that she believed her stepmother wanted her dead. Those are her recollections, given to The Daily Beast in 2020.
Keryn Barnes was 23, according to her family's account in 2020 (a 2015 report gave her age as 22). Her given name was Karen, but she went by Keryn, and much of the reporting uses one spelling or the other. She was an aspiring actress in San Francisco. Her sister, Lisa Long, has described her as someone who helped people, and the family remembered her as kind and as having a psychic side. Her mother, Barbara Miller, told The Daily Beast that Keryn had once predicted she would die before she was 30. Keryn was no relation of Suzan's, The Daily Beast noted.
She met the Carsons at a party in Haight-Ashbury in 1981 and let them stay at her apartment. They stayed about two weeks. Lisa Long has rejected the common description of the three as roommates; in her account Keryn had simply given two people a place to sleep.
Keryn Barnes was found dead in her San Francisco apartment on March 7, 1981. According to the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office, which summarized the case in 2020 and 2025, she had a fractured skull and 13 stab wounds; Michael Carson struck her repeatedly with a blunt object and stabbed her with a knife. Press accounts say the object was a frying pan.
After their arrest two years later, Suzan told reporters that she had ordered her husband to kill Keryn. She said Keryn had falsely converted to their religion and was draining her of her health and her "yogic powers." The couple called Keryn a "psychic vampire."
By 1982 the Carsons were in Humboldt County, on the far north coast of California, working on a marijuana farm run by Clark Stephens. He was 26 and made his living growing cannabis. Little more about his life has been reported.
On April 24, 1982, Michael Carson shot Stephens after a dispute over the marijuana growing, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office. The couple later told police that Stephens was a "demon" and a "petty witch." His body was burned, covered with chicken manure and buried in a shallow grave near the small community of Alderpoint.
At trial in Humboldt County, Michael's defense argued that he had shot Stephens because Stephens had sexually attacked Suzan. The jury did not accept that account and convicted both of them of murder.
Jon Charles Hellyar was 30. He grew up in Lakeside, in San Diego County, and his brother Danny said he had left home as a young man to join the hippie movement. By 1983 he had stopped using drugs and was turning his life around, his family said. He was known for stopping for hitchhikers. His sister, Dianne Winder, and his brother were still speaking for him nearly 40 years later.
In January 1983 Hellyar was driving north to visit friends in Santa Rosa when he picked up the Carsons, who were hitchhiking near Bakersfield. He brought them with him and, his family said, offered them shelter; the couple stayed with Hellyar and his friends. The Daily Beast describes a single night; NBC 7 San Diego, drawing on his family, says an argument broke out among the three days later.
Hellyar then drove the couple out of town. On January 12, 1983, on River Road in Fulton, just outside Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, Michael Carson shot him twice in the head and Suzan Carson stabbed him, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office. His sister said he was shot at point-blank range while begging for help. The Carsons drove off in his pickup truck.
The couple gave several reasons. Suzan claimed that her husband had to kill Hellyar because he had touched her inappropriately; his sister said she was sure he had not. In 1985 The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa reported the couple's claim that they had planned his death because he was a "triple Scorpio" witch who had made advances toward Suzan. The district attorney's office has said the Carsons believed he was a powerful witch.
The Carsons were caught in 1983, after the Hellyar killing. They confessed after their arrest.
In the spring of 1983 they were allowed something unusual: a jailhouse press conference arranged with the San Francisco news media, which ran for about five hours. The AP reported that the authorities agreed to it in exchange for information about the three murders. Michael said the killings had been carried out for religious reasons and to protect the future of America. "Witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion are causes for death," he said. He presented the couple as vegetarian Muslim warriors in a holy war against witches. Suzan used the occasion to say she had ordered the killing of Keryn Barnes.
A month later, SFist reported in 2015, citing a contemporary newspaper account, the couple pleaded not guilty at their arraignment.
The three killings were tried separately, in the three counties where they happened: San Francisco for Keryn Barnes, Humboldt County for Clark Stephens and Sonoma County for Jon Hellyar. Michael and Suzan were convicted of murder in each trial. For each murder each of them received a term of 25 years to life, three terms in all, and the AP has reported their combined sentences as 75 years to life each.
The order of the trials and the dates of the verdicts are not clearly reported. Reports from 2015 describe the couple as having been convicted about 30 years earlier, and the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office places the convictions in the early 1980s. Neither of them has publicly expressed remorse, the victims' families say.
Relatives of the victims told The Daily Beast in 2020 that police at the time believed the couple were involved in at least nine other killings. Lisa Long has said she believes they killed people in other states and in Europe, where, she said, no charges were pursued. Michael's daughter has said the family may never know how many people her father killed or where they are buried. These are suspicions and claims. The Carsons were charged with, and convicted of, three murders, and no other killing has been charged or proven.
Michael Carson has been held at Mule Creek State Prison, east of Sacramento. Suzan has been held in the state's women's prison system; her 2015 parole hearing took place at a women's prison in Chino.
According to his daughter, Michael's letters from prison in recent years frightened her. She said he had bragged about the murders and spoke of himself as though he were a political prisoner. Lisa Long told The Daily Beast in 2020 that neither of the Carsons had done anything in prison to better themselves. Neither Carson is known to have published any writings, and no appeal after the trials has been reported.
Under a life sentence in California, a prisoner becomes eligible for parole suitability hearings. Michael Carson voluntarily waived a suitability hearing for five years in June 2005, NBC 7 San Diego reported.
In 2014 a federal court overseeing California's overcrowded prisons ordered parole hearings for inmates aged 60 or older who had served at least 25 years, about 1,400 people at the time. Both Carsons qualified. Michael was due to be heard on June 30, 2015. He canceled the hearing, writing from Mule Creek State Prison: "No one is going to parole me because I will not and have not renounced my beliefs."
Suzan's hearing went ahead on December 2, 2015, at the women's prison in Chino. She did not attend. Her lawyer, the public defender Laura Sheppard, said Suzan had refused to meet with her and did not seem interested in seeking parole. Lisa Long traveled from the Atlanta area to testify against her release. Michael's daughter and his former wife also formally opposed release for both Carsons. "They are still dangerous," the daughter said. The board found Suzan unsuitable for parole and set her next consideration for 2030, a 15-year denial. "I am so happy we won't have to worry about her for another 15 years," Lisa Long said afterward.
Michael's turn came on May 27, 2020, his first full parole hearing. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic it was held by video. He was 69. Prosecutors from all three counties opposed his release: Deputy District Attorney Javier Vaca appeared for Sonoma County, and the Humboldt County District Attorney, Maggie Fleming, said one of her deputies would argue that release would pose an unreasonable risk to society. Lisa Long and Hellyar's sister and brother asked to speak against him. "I think he would kill again because that's all he knows," Dianne Winder told NBC 7 San Diego. Michael's daughter, who had circulated a petition against his release, warned that someone else would be dead within a year if he were freed.
The board denied parole and imposed a ten-year denial. In a release on June 2, 2020, the Sonoma County District Attorney, Jill Ravitch, said his crimes "demonstrated a clear lack of conscience and a disregard for human life," and that he remained a danger to the public.
Changes in California law later made Suzan eligible to request elder parole, which applies to prisoners over 50 who have served more than 20 years. Her second parole hearing was held by video conference in the first week of November 2025; the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office, in a release dated Monday, November 10, described it as Thursday's hearing. She was 83. The board reviewed her prison file and psychiatric evaluations and heard from victims' families, her lawyer and prosecutors from Sonoma, San Francisco and Humboldt counties; Deputy District Attorney Jason Rifkind opposed release for Sonoma County. The board found that she still posed an unreasonable risk to public safety and issued a five-year denial.
Both Carsons were last reported in prison. Michael was at Mule Creek State Prison in May 2020, when he was refused parole for ten years. Suzan was refused parole for five years in November 2025. No later parole decision, release or death of either had been reported by October 2026.
Proven by conviction, and final: the murders of Keryn Barnes, Clark Stephens and Jon Hellyar, for which each of the Carsons was convicted.
Claimed or suspected, never charged: involvement in at least nine other killings (the belief of police at the time, as reported by victims' relatives in 2020); killings in other states and in Europe (claimed by Lisa Long).
The couple's own accounts: the claims that their victims were witches, that Keryn Barnes was draining Suzan's powers, that Clark Stephens attacked Suzan and that Jon Hellyar made advances to her are the Carsons' statements. The Humboldt County jury rejected the defense built on the Stephens claim, and Hellyar's family rejects the claim about him.
Details that vary between sources: Keryn Barnes's age (22 or 23) and the spelling of her name (Karen or Keryn); whether the Carsons were her roommates or short-term guests; and whether Michael's 2020 hearing was his first parole hearing, as NBC 7 San Diego reported, given that he had waived one in 2005 and canceled another in 2015.
About 1950: James Clifford Carson, later Michael Bear Carson, is born.
Early 1940s: Susan, later Suzan Carson, is born.
Late 1970s: the two meet at a party in suburban Phoenix, leave their marriages and marry each other; he takes the name Michael and she changes her name to Suzan.
Late 1970s to 1981: they travel in Europe, then settle in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.
1981: they meet Keryn Barnes at a party and stay at her apartment for about two weeks.
March 7, 1981: Keryn Barnes is found dead in her San Francisco apartment.
April 24, 1982: Clark Stephens is shot on his farm in Humboldt County; his body is buried near Alderpoint.
January 1983: Jon Hellyar picks up the couple near Bakersfield and takes them to Santa Rosa.
January 12, 1983: Hellyar is shot and stabbed on River Road in Fulton, Sonoma County.
1983: the Carsons are arrested, confess, hold a five-hour jailhouse press conference and later plead not guilty.
1980s: three separate trials in San Francisco, Humboldt and Sonoma counties; each is convicted of three murders and sentenced to 75 years to life.
June 2005: Michael waives a parole hearing for five years.
2014: a federal court order makes both eligible for elderly parole hearings.
June 2015: Michael cancels his June 30 hearing.
December 2, 2015: Suzan is denied parole for 15 years.
May 27, 2020: Michael is denied parole for ten years.
November 2025: Suzan is denied elder parole for five years.
October 2026: no later parole decision, release or death reported for either.