Marie Carlson, a 37-year-old mother of two from Fort Walton Beach, went missing and was later found dead. The next episode of NBC’s Dateline will go into more detail about this terrible story.
After choking Carlson to death, James Flanders was able to stay out of trouble for five years.
Watch the July 22, 2022, episode of NBC’s Dateline called “Secrets on the Emerald Coast” at 10/9c to learn more about the 2011 cold case.
Investigator Keith Morrison will write about the secrets and lies that surrounded the mysterious disappearance of a woman who left everything behind, including her newborn daughter.
The NBC Dateline episode will give a full picture of the murder case by combining journalistic research with the emotional effects on the victim’s family.
James Flanders last saw Marie Jane Carlson on October 17, 2011. This was at their home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The 37-year-old mother of two had just had her daughter with Flanders. With her ex-husband, Jeff Carlson, she had another daughter.
After getting out of a bad relationship, Marie went to live with James and Tanya Flanders, who used to run a church. Later, it was found out that Marie was living with the couple and that James thought of her as a “sister wife.”
Carlson’s family got a message that was hard to understand, but it said that she had left to do what she had always wanted to do. The message didn’t make them feel better. Instead, it made them even more suspicious.
Jeff Carlson told the police that she was missing on October 24, 2011, and a strange investigation began to find out what happened to her.
The case went cold for years until James admitted to manslaughter in 2015, when new evidence came to light. He said that he had put Marie “in a choke hold” until she died from being suffocated. Her body was found buried in their backyard in Fort Walton Beach.
Marie Carlson’s disappearance stayed a mystery until 2016, with no leads on where she might be or proof that she had died. In 2015, the cold case became interesting again because of the work of the people who made the show Cold Justice.
Parishioners started telling the truth about how hard James and Marie’s relationship was. They said that the two of them had a fight on the day that Marie went missing. They also told the police that James was in the hospital for days after she went missing because she was “devastated.”
Analyzing Marie’s old cell phone records showed that her phone never left Fort Walton Beach. Detectives also found that she had never planned to leave her newborn baby or stop talking to her 8-year-old daughter.
James was caught at his home in Arizona on May 5, 2015. He had moved there three months after Marie went missing. He was charged with murder in the second degree and sent to Florida.