TRUE CRIME

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: The Murder of Nicholas Stein

Bev Potter
3 min readSep 7, 2023
Carl Spencer (Stark County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Department)

Even at 28 years old, Carl Spencer was so soft-spoken and polite, he whispered the words “suck my dick” during his last tell-all interview with police. As if the cops might not be used to profanity. As if he didn’t normally say words like that.

As if his mom was in the next room. Which she was.

The interview was a condition of his plea deal. He’d get 11 years in exchange for singing like a (very quiet) canary about the murder of Nicholas Stein at the hands of Bryan Gentry.

Going back over early stories about the murder, it’s amazing how wrong they all were.

The press immediately fingered Spencer as the murderer, stating that he lived with Gentry and was involved in a love triangle that revolved around 28-year-old Kristen Lain.

He didn’t, and he wasn’t. The third side of the triangle was in fact the victim, Nicholas Stein, who lived with Lain and Gentry in Massillon, Ohio.

The press initially said that Spencer killed Stein by pushing him down the basement stairs, then shoving his body in a plastic container and burying it in concrete in the backyard.

Yes, there were a lot of drugs involved, but the real

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Bev Potter
Bev Potter

Written by Bev Potter

Legal secretary by day, insomniac by night. Ally. BA, MA. Humor, pop culture, and things that make you think. My weekly-ish newsletter is bevpotter.substack.com

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