Volume 6 · Chapter 7
The Carnival Cult
Mark Goodwin, Keith Lawrence, David Lawrence and others
Victim: Tony Ault
Case at a glance
- When
- September 1991
- Where
- Farm building near Auburn, DeKalb County, Indiana
- Perpetrator
- Jimmie Lee Penick, Mark Goodwin, Keith Lawrence and David Lawrence
- Victim
- Tony Ault
- Outcome
- All four pleaded guilty; Penick received 60 years in Indiana on top of 20 years to life in Ohio, Keith Lawrence 50 years with 20 suspended, and Goodwin and David Lawrence eight years each
The case
William Anthony “Tony” Ault was 21 and worked the traveling carnival circuit in Indiana and Ohio in 1991. Some of his co-workers, Jimmie Lee Penick, Mark Goodwin and brothers Keith and David Lawrence, dabbled in a homemade form of Satanism. Ault knew that Penick had killed a young man in Ohio that summer, and he wanted into the group.
In late September 1991 the four took Ault to an isolated farm building in DeKalb County, north of Auburn, for what he believed was an initiation. They tied him to a makeshift altar, cut him in a ritual fashion and slit his throat, then dismembered his body and tried to burn parts of it. The group also meant to make sure he never talked about the Ohio killing. On December 12, Goodwin’s father told police his son had described a sacrifice in DeKalb County, and state police found the remains the next day.
Penick and Goodwin were arrested in mid-December, and the Lawrence brothers were picked up at Miami’s airport in January 1992. All four pleaded guilty. Penick received 60 years, to run after a 20-years-to-life term in Ohio for the earlier murder. Keith Lawrence got 50 years with 20 suspended, while Goodwin and David Lawrence received eight-year terms.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 6 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 6 on AmazonCase photographs
2 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“Tony Ault wanted to belong somewhere, and the people he chose were already hiding a killing. Nothing about their rituals was ancient or organized; it was a few young men building a story around violence. What cracked it open was a father who picked up the phone after hearing what his son had seen.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
