Francis M. Carroll Case Chronology
Compiled by Rob Warden
Copyright © 2006, Center on Wrongful Convictions
Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
October 13, 1937 — Dr. George G. Littlefield and his wife Lydia, both sixty-four, disappear from their hometown of South Paris, Oxford County, Maine.
October 16, 1937 — The Littlefields’ bodies are found in the trunk of their parked car in North Arlington, New Jersey. Paul Nathaniel (Buddy) Dwyer, eighteen, who was sleeping in the car with his feet protruding from one of the windows, confesses that he killed the couple.
October 17, 1937 — Dwyer waives extradition and is flown to Oxford County, Maine, where he is committed to the custody of Francis Carroll, a forty-three-year-old deputy sheriff and the father of Dwyer’s former girlfriend, Barbara (Babs) Carroll.
November 5, 1937 — Dwyer is indicted for the murder of Dr. Littlefield, although not for that of Mrs. Littlefield (perhaps owing to uncertainty whether her death had occurred in Maine).
November 29, 1937 — Dwyer trial opens in Oxford County and he pleads not guilty.
December 2, 1937 — Dwyer changes his plea to guilty and is sentenced to life in prison.
Late 1937 or early 1938 — Dwyer accuses Carroll of having committed the crime, to prevent the doctor from disclosing that Carroll and Babs Carroll had engaged in incest.
May 27, 1938 — Babs allegedly acknowledges that she engaged in sexual activity with her father on several occasions beginning when she was eleven years old. Carroll is arrested and jailed in lieu of $15,000 bond on the incest charge.
June 24. 1938 — Special Attorney General Ralph M. Ingalls obtains an indictment of Carroll for the murder of Dr. Littlefield.
August 1, 1938 — Carroll’s trial opens before an Oxford County jury. On the courthouse steps, a vendor sells autographed copies of a provocative photograph of Babs in a bathing suit.
August 12, 1938 — The jury finds Carroll guilty. Judge William H. Fisher sentences him to life in prison.
September 20, 1950 — Carroll is released unconditionally on a state writ of habeas corpus granted by Superior Court Justice Albert Beliveau based on extensive prosecutorial misconduct in the case.
October 19, 1959 — Dwyer is released on parole after Maine Governor Clinton A. Clauson commutes his life sentence to time served.
