Kimberly Younger’s jury trial for the 2018 murders of Alfred and Pauline Carpenter won’t take place before 2021, according to Barton County District Court records.

This week, District Judge Mike Keeley moved the next conference meeting on this case from May 6 to 1 p.m. on June 24. The courthouse reopened on Monday but court hearings have been limited. Friday’s docket has hearings scheduled from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Younger was arraigned in February when her attorney announced her plea of “not guilty” to capital murder or the alternative of two counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, criminal solicitation, and felony theft.

At that time,  Younger waived her right to a speedy trial within 150 days of the arraignment. Defense Attorney Tim Frieden suggested then that the court might not want to schedule the trial earlier than May or June of 2021 as the defense needs time to find potential witnesses from other states.

Younger remains in custody pending her trial.

Alfred and Pauline Carpenter were a Wichita couple in their late 70s who were vendors at the Barton County Fair and were killed July 14, 2018.

Investigators determined carnival workers killed the Carpenters, who sold crafts, jewelry, purses and other handmade items during the fair. The suspects used the couple’s recreational vehicle to drive the bodies to Arkansas. Their bodies were found on July 16, 2018, next to a creek bed outside the small community of Natural Dam in the Ozark National Forest.

Other suspects charged in connection with the Carpenters’ deaths entered guilty pleas in 2019. The state alleges that when Michael Fowler Jr. and Rusty L. Frasier killed the Carpenters, it was Younger, posing as “Frank Zaitchik” via phone texts, who ordered the killings. 

This story originally appeared in March of 2020.