Real Murders of Orange County – Who killed Jane Carver?

On June 10, 1995, 46-yer-old Jane Carver, a well-loved flight attendant with a sparkling personality and two sons was gunned down by an unknown man on her morning run. There were witnesses across the street who saw everything. While they didn’t know who the man was, they found him to be eerily calm. Her husband Al came outside when he heard sirens coming and saw his wife’s body from his doorway. Who killed Jane Carver?

Jane was gunned down in an idyllic community in Orange County called Fountain Valley. On June 10, however, the neighbor’s sense of calm was irrevocably shattered. Her murder was senseless, and coldbloodedly carried out. The manner in which it happened made people wonder if it had been a contract hit. The neighbors also suspected that her husband Al could have been behind it.

Jane has a large group of friends in the neighborhood, and they went to work spreading fliers with a composite drawing of the gunman and information about his car everywhere in the neighborhood. The airline that Jane worked for offered up a $10,000 reward for catching her killer. Others donated as well raising the reward to $45,000.

Still, despite all these efforts, the police had no lead, and her family worried that Jane’s murder might never get solved. The case eventually went cold.

A Loan Shark Out for Blood

On April 10, 1996 a similar shooting happened in San Clemente, California. A man named James Wengert had been shot in her face one time just like what happened to Jane except James survived.

When James was able to talk, he revealed that he owed money to a man named Coleman Allen, who operated a bloodthristy loan shark business called Premium Commercial Services Corp. As a condition of the loans he would offer, Allen made his debtors sign over huge life insurance policies to him. If they didn’t pay up, he had them killed and collected their life insurance. In the case of James Wengert, that amount was three times the amount James had owed Cole.

In an odd twist, days before James Wengert’s shooting, Cole Allen died of a heart attack.

Paul Gordon Alleyne was caught because he called Cole Allen’s widow asking for his money for completing the job. He was unaware that James Wengert had survived and that Cole Allen was now dead.

Mistaken identity

Jane Carver, however, had no connection to Cole Allen, but her killer thought she did. She was a victim of mistaken identity.

Paul later told investigators that Allen had been angry at a man named Leonard Mundy for shooting the wrong person. Mundy had mistaken Jane for James Wengert’s wife, Margaret “Peggy” Wengert, who had filed a lawsuit against Premium Commercial Services.

The Wengerts had lived in Jane Carver’s neighborhood, Fountain Valley, at the time of Jane’s death. All it took was a wrong turn to end up at the Carvers’ house instead of the Wengerts’.