Broker Kills Boyfriend

Kimberly Carter

Los Angeles Police Detective Joel Price wonders how an accused murderer went from bank robber to mortgage broker. “That left me scratching my head,” Price told MortgageDaily.com. “There ought to be a law against it.” There is a law against murder, and that’s what Kimberly Carter, 43, has been charged with by Los Angeles police. She was lodged in the Los Angeles County Jail after being arrested March 9 at a Palm Springs spa. Her bail was set at $1 million. Carter, who had apparently worked in the mortgage industry as a broker, is charged with shooting her boyfriend, Harry Phillips, Jr., 42. The two had lived together. After allegedly shooting him, Carter fled to the Palm Springs Spa and Casino. Two days after the shooting she called a Palm Springs television station and said she was willing to surrender in the presence of a reporter, according to a statement from Los Angeles Police.

KNBC then notified police, who made the arrest.“Detectives found a gun inside the hotel room, which will be compared to the Phillips’ wounds and ballistic evidence,” police said.

During a search of Carter’s home, Price said police found evidence that she had worked for at least two mortgage companies, Seven Seas Mortgage and later Eastman Mortgage Group.

However, her role at the companies is unclear.

“She didn’t’ have much to say to us at all,” Price said.

An online search of licenses and records filed with California mortgage and real estate regulators produced no information about Carter. And neither of the mortgage companies could be reached for comment.

“It appeared she did run a (mortgage) company out of her house,” Price said in the interview. “The garage was set up as an office. There was business equipment out there, though it didn’t look like it had been used recently.

“There were also various trophies for performance from various lending institutions and mortgage companies,” he said.

Carter is on federal probation for a bank robbery police say she committed in Detroit. She was convicted of robbing two branches of Standard Federal Bank and while fleeing the scene of one of the robberies crashed her car into two police vehicles.

She moved to southern California in 2003 and moved in with Phillips and her mother in 2004. It was her mother who discovered Phillips’ body, police said.

During her brief time on the lam following Phillip’s death, police said Carter contacted her brother by phone and “sounded to him to be distraught or suicidal.”

Price said Carter often went to Las Vegas and may have been having financial problems.