'Two-timer': Carl Foster killed his first wife before strangling his lovestruck girlfriend

This story is part of a look back at 150 years of crime coverage from The Detroit News. Check this page on weekends for periodic new material involving long-lost cases and other interesting tidbits from the News archives.

Penelope “Penny” Crook endured two failed marriages before her 21st birthday, and with the 1964 holidays approaching and her second divorce about to be finalized, the Pontiac store clerk fell for the wrong guy again.

Crook, the mother of a 3-year-old son from her first marriage, was looking forward to a third wedding. But the object of her affection, autoworker Carl Foster, loved someone else — and instead of marrying Crook, he killed her.

On Dec. 11, 1964, while parked at an isolated "lovers' lane" site at Opdyke Road and Featherstone in what is now Auburn Hills, Foster and Crook reportedly argued about his refusal to get married. The spat grew violent, and the 28-year-old General Motors factory worker fatally strangled Crook with her bra before dumping her body in a nearby bramble patch.

After killing the woman he'd rejected, Foster drove home to pick up his family's 24-year-old housekeeper, Thana Carver. Foster brought Carver to the crime scene and made out with the oblivious woman in the same 1964 Chevrolet in which he had strangled Crook earlier. When he was finished necking just a few yards from where his victim’s body lay, Foster drove to Bowling Green, Ohio, where he and Carver eloped.

A hiker stumbled onto Crook's body the day after the killing, and investigators identified the victim when they found her purse in the nearby thicket. When police learned Crook had gone on a date with Foster the night she was killed, they focused on him as the prime suspect.

As Pontiac detectives dug into Foster's background, they reopened the investigation into the Feb. 28, 1964, death of his first wife, Angela Foster. Her case had been ruled a suicide — but after exhuming and examining her body, investigators learned Crook wasn't Foster's only murder victim.

Foster, who was known to haunt the drive-in restaurants that lined Woodward during the 1960s, also was investigated for the 1963 strangling death of a 14-year-old girl who had run away from a Jackson juvenile facility to hang out with the cruising crowd.

Unlucky in love

Penny Crook suffered a load of heartache during her short life.

Described by The News as an "attractive brunet," Crook got married at age 16. The following year, 1960, the couple had a son. Crook divorced in 1963, and less than a year later, in January 1964, she married her second husband — only to file for divorce within three weeks.

Almost a year after the breakup, Crook's second divorce was about to become official on Dec. 14, 1964. By then, Crook had moved into the Pontiac home of her first husband's parents, who helped care for their grandson. Crook had worked for a few years as a drive-in restaurant carhop and bowling alley waitress along the Woodward strip, but had recently taken a clerk's job in a Yankee Discount clothing store in Pontiac's Miracle Mile shopping center.

As she counted down the days until her divorce was final, Crook again found romance with Foster, a line worker at the General Coach and Truck Division plant in Pontiac. Crook reportedly wanted to get married again, but Foster had other plans.

When Crook met Foster, he told her his previous wife had used a clothesline to hang herself from a pipe in the basement of their home a few months earlier. Following the suicide, Foster and his three children moved into his mother's Pontiac home, where the housekeeper, Carver, and her three children also resided.

According to Foster, he and Crook only dated for three weeks. He told police the situation was a "love triangle."

"Mrs. Crook was in love with him and he was in love with someone else," a detective told News reporter Max E. Simon.

On Dec. 11, 1964, a Friday, Crook phoned Foster and asked if she could see him that night.

"I didn't call her — she called me," Crook told police. "She wanted a date with me to talk things over."

Last date

Foster picked Crook up from her former in-laws' home at about 11 p.m.. He drove to a secluded spot on Doris Street where it dead-ended at I-75. The two drank beer, chucking the cans out the car window, before heading to a nearby secluded field at Opdyke and Featherstone, where a subdivision was under construction.

Foster said he and Crook made out for a while before the subject of marriage came up again.

"Sources quoted Foster as saying that 'there was an argument in the car' at the lovers' lane after he told Mrs. Crook Friday that he was going to marry someone else," The News reported.

Foster told police he tried to explain to Crook that he was in love with Carver, the family housekeeper. He claimed the lovestruck store clerk wouldn't listen, and that she kept pushing him to marry her.

"I told (Crook) … that I was going to get married (to Carver) — but I didn't tell her when," Foster told detectives.

As he sat in the desolate spot arguing with Crook, having consumed multiple cans of beer, Foster snapped. He strangled Crook with her bra before dumping the body in a patch of nearby overgrowth. Foster then drove to his house a few miles away. It was late, but he roused Carver and took her back to the crime scene.

"I picked up Thana about 2 a.m. or a little after and we wanted to park, so we drove to the lovers' lane near where Mrs. Crook's body later was found," Foster told police. "We stayed a while there — and then we drove to Bowling Green, Ohio, and got married. We got married early that same morning."

The killer confesses

By Saturday afternoon, after Crook hadn't returned home, her former mother-in-law phoned Foster, who said he'd dropped Crook off in front of her house following their date.

When a hiker reported finding a woman's body in Pontiac the day after the killing, investigators recovered Crook's purse at the scene with her identification inside. They phoned her former mother-in-law, who said the victim had been with Foster the previous evening.

Foster was taken to Pontiac Police headquarters and hooked up to a lie detector machine. The suspect told the police he'd picked up Crook and that they'd driven around in his car for two hours without stopping before he dropped her off at home. Investigators questioned Foster all night and into the next afternoon. Finally, after being administered a second lie-detector test, the suspect came clean and admitted to killing Crook.

Foster was charged with first-degree murder, although on March 26, 1965, he entered what The News described as a "surprise plea" of manslaughter. On April 10, 1965, Foster was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison.

There is no record of what the victim's friends and family thought about the surprise plea deal. Recent attempts to reach Crook’s son and others who were involved in the case were not successful.

Not a suicide

Two weeks after Foster was sentenced for Crook's killing, authorities announced they'd reopened their investigation into the death of his first wife, Angela Foster.

When Foster was questioned about his wife's death, "He insisted she had killed herself because of despondency," The News reported.

But during a coroner's hearing, a pathologist testified that after studying police photographs, he didn't think Angela Foster had killed herself.

While authorities were preparing charges against Foster in connection with his first wife’s death, The News reported on April 27, 1964, that detectives planned to also question him about the strangling death of 14-year-old runaway Connie Crossland a year earlier.

"Detectives say they have learned that Carl F. Foster — who will be questioned today about the unsolved slaying of 14-year-old Connie Crossland — frequented the same Woodward Avenue drive-ins that she hung around," Simon reported. "Foster ... was known around the drive-in restaurants that light up Woodward in Oakland County."

Police checked into whether Foster had ever owned a white car like the white Pontiac Bonneville a witness said he saw Connie get into hours before she was killed. The News reported that Foster claimed to have once borrowed a white car "but had returned it before Connie's death."

Foster was never convicted in connection with Connie's murder, which remains unsolved.

During Foster’s May 6, 1965, preliminary hearing for the killing of his first wife, the defendant’s friend testified that a drunken Foster told him his first wife's death wasn't a suicide, and that he said, "I killed her. I killed her."

Following the hearing, Pontiac Municipal Court Judge McCallum bound the defendant over for trial on first-degree murder charges.

On June 17, 1965, The News reported that Foster’s former housekeeper had filed for a divorce from the killer who’d gotten her pregnant.

“Mrs. Foster, 24, charges Foster — who is now serving a 10-to-(20) year sentence for manslaughter — with mental cruelty,” the item said. “She is asking custody of a child she says she is expecting.”

Guilty again

Foster’s trial for the killing of his first wife commenced July 15, 1965, in Oakland County Circuit Court. Testimony included two of the three Foster children. Prosecutors objected to the children’s testifying on “humanitarian grounds,” while Foster’s attorney said their testimony was “vital” to the case.

Foster’s 6-year-old daughter told the judge, “When I woke up (the day of Angela Foster’s death) I wanted to go downstairs, but Mommie locked the door.”

Foster's 7-year-old son was asked about the last day he saw his mother.

“I got up early,” he said. “Mommie was asleep. I went in and kissed her. It was five o’clock and I said goodbye to Mommie. Then Daddy took me to school.”

Foster, who had opted for a bench trial, was found guilty July 21, 1965, of strangling Angela Foster and arranging her death to look like a suicide. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Two years later, The News ran an item at the bottom of Page 4B informing readers that the killer’s bid for a new trial had been rejected.

The April 5, 1967, article, which misspelled Crook’s name as “Crooks,” marks the last entry in The News archives about Crook, Angela Foster or their killer.

ghunter@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2134

@GeorgeHunter_DN