Karen Mason (left) and her daughter Sarah in a family photo presented in federal court on Tuesday, November 19, 2024. Sarah Mason died in 2017 along along with her unborn daughter, Milana.
US Attorney’s Office
CLAYTON — Six years after his pregnant girlfriend was shot and killed, a St. Paul man John, long suspected of killing her, was charged with murder.
Last week, Darius E. Carter was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal motion in reference to the deaths of Sarah Mason and the child she carried for seven months, Melanie.
Federal prosecutors recently presented nearly six hours of evidence — including text messages, cellphone data, ballistics data and eyewitness testimony — to point out that Carter likely killed her with a gun he purchased as a part of an illegal straw purchase.
But district attorneys who handle murder cases declined to charge him for years, citing insufficient evidence. Police in St. Counties John and St. Louis stated that the investigation remains to be open.
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The latest charging documents filed Wednesday repeat much of the information presented by federal authorities last month. They say Mason, hours before her death on Oct. 31, 2017, argued with Carter while he was at work. She told her mother that she was going to depart him. At around 5:25 p.m. he returned to their home in St. John. After 7 p.m., when a neighbor saw him kneeling over Mason’s dead body, Carter called police.
But documents in the latest case contain an extra detail that federal authorities haven’t provided: They say Carter called an unidentified witness around 5:52 p.m. — greater than an hour before he claimed to have discovered Mason’s body — and told them that Mason was bleeding from head.
According to court documents, “he could go to jail for this.”
Mason’s family didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment Monday, but her mother said after a federal hearing last month that she wanted “accountability for the life that was taken.”
Carter was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison after federal prosecutors said Carter’s mother, Lynn Hooks, bought him an HK VP9 gun at a pawn shop. At the time, he was on parole for against the law and was not allowed to own a gun.
Investigators consider the murder weapon was an HK VP9, although the weapon was never found.
A hearing has not yet been scheduled in Carter’s latest case.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch tracks reported homicide data on an interactive map that permits readers to view information in a wide range of ways.
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