2008 college student’s murder accusation dropped

A county prosecutor in North Carolina has dismissed first-degree murder charges against a man whose conviction in the death of a university student was overturned eight years later.

Friday, District Attorney Travis Page of Gaston County officially dropped the indictment against Mark Bradley Carver, 54, of Belmont, stating that “the evidence no longer supports” the count.

Carver, who was freed from jail in 2019 but remained under house arrest until a new trial due to the dismissal, had an electronic monitor removed from his ankle late Friday, according to CBS station WBTV.

Mark Carver’s murder case has been withdrawn, years after he was convicted for a crime committed in 2008. https://t.co/11dah9EbXK

WBTV News (@WBTV News) on 12 August 2022
His sister-in-law, Robin Carver, said, “We’re glad it’s finally finished.” It took a long time to arrive.

Carver and his cousin were charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of University of North Carolina at Charlotte student Ira Yarmolenko, age 20.

Ira Yarmolenko WBTV
The corpse of Yarmolenko was discovered on the Catawba River bank adjacent to her automobile, which was at the bottom of an embankment. Her neck was wrapped with a ribbon, a bungee rope, and a drawstring.

Carver and Neal Cassada had been fishing in the area. Cassada passed just hours before his trial started. Carver, who has always maintained his innocence, was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison.

In June of 2019, Superior Court Judge Christopher Bragg ordered a new trial for Carver, citing the DNA evidence used against him by prosecutors.

Page, who became district attorney in July 2021, said that the evidence against Cassada no longer supported a murder indictment. In his press release, he said that the DNA used by prosecutors during Carver’s trial to link him to Yarmolenko’s automobile “was no longer adequate for analysis.”

However, Carver’s attorney and executive director of the North Carolina Center for Actual Innocence, Chris Mumma, has said that state laboratories used obsolete techniques to analyze the DNA discovered on the automobile.

“Both guys have always maintained their innocence,” Mumma stated in a press statement.

WBTV reported that Mumma said that the DNA evidence used to convict Carver was disregarded when new federal standards for DNA testing were implemented.

“Mark’s case sheds light on the challenges involved with the interpretation of DNA mixes before our state lab and Charlotte-Mecklenburg lab revised their criteria,” Mumma stated.

No more suspects have been discovered in Yarmolenko’s murder. Page said that his office would “continue to pursue justice for the Yarmolenko family and other murder victims as evidence and the rule of law allow.”