On April 28, 1999, Carson told her father she planned to drive into town to pick up registration forms for the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, where she planned to enroll in the fall. The housekeeper said Carson left home between 11:45 a.m. and Noon.

About 12:15 p.m., a number of 911 calls reported a speeding white Ford pickup truck swerving erratically along the Arkansas River Bridge on Interstate 430 outside Little Rock. Inside the vehicle, a young woman was engaged in a life of death struggle with the driver, a young white male. As horrified witnesses watched, Carson Prince tumbled out the passenger door of the truck onto the highway. The driver sped off without a moment’s hesitation. Carson was rushed to a nearby hospital with massive head injuries, where she died later that evening without regaining consciousness.

Arkansas State Police found Carson’s Ford Bronco alongside Interstate 430, just a half mile from where her body was recovered. The car’s gas tank was empty. Strangely, less than 30 minutes after leaving her house, Carson seemed to be headed back home, in the opposite direction of her errands. A gas station was within walking distance. So Carson’s apparent next move does not make sense to her parents. Witnesses saw a young man with a white pickup truck stopped near Carson’s disabled vehicle. He was holding a gas can. Carson’s family doesn’t believe Carson would have willingly gotten into a vehicle with anyone she didn’t know, and feel she was either forced into the truck or may have known her assailant.

Authorities would learn that Carson was involved in a stormy relationship with a young man who was a suspected drug dealer, and who may have used Carson’s car to make deliveries. The day before her death, Carson had shown up at her mother’s home, upset because the boyfriend had been arrested on drug charges. Carson believed her mother, a deputy district attorney, might have been involved in her boyfriend’s arrest and prosecution. Carson's mother, Suzanne Hixson, had not been involved in the case, and, fearing the boyfriend was outside in Carson’s Bronco, asked her daughter to leave. Carson was fatally injured less than 12 hours later. While Carson’s former boyfriend has been cleared of any involvement in her death, could it have been related to his drug dealing? Was she fleeing a stalker? Or, did Carson merely run out of gas at the wrong place at the wrong time?

UPDATE: For five years, the investigation into the death of Carson Prince went nowhere.  But in October of 2004, Stephen A. Talley walked into the Perry county sheriff’s office and confessed that he pushed Carson Prince out of his car during a bungled attempt to abduct her.  He also admitted to killing two other people two months after prince’s violent death.  A packed courtroom heard Talley plead guilty to the three murders in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole.