Man serving life in prison charged in brutal 2002 stabbing death of 15-year-old Florida girl

Almost 20 years after a teenager was stabbed to death in her Florida home, authorities have announced a prisoner already behind bars and serving a life sentence has been charged with her slaying.

At a news conference, Miramar Police Department officials said they believe Joseph Pollard, 56, gained entry into the home of 15-year-old Farrah Carter and killed her on May 22, 2002. Pools of blood, a knocked-over chair and a couch pushed across the family room indicated the teenager tried to fight back against her attacker, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

The victim’s mother and sister were out at the time and found Carter’s body in her bedroom. A neighbor later reported seeing a man talking with the teenager at her door the morning she was killed and leaving after he attempted to talk his way into the home.

“You wouldn’t think that at 8 years old you could remember that much,” Keli Craig said of her sister’s death at the news conference. “But I remember that day as if it was yesterday.”

“This was a murder that shocked the community,” Miramar Police Department spokesperson Tania Rues noted. “It was one of the most horrific crime scenes our detectives have ever come across and it is a case they could never forget.”

Police said advances in DNA technology led them to Pollard as a suspect in 2019 and, after a lengthy investigation, they eventually charged Pollard with first-degree murder. Pollard denied he had anything to do with the crime.

Pollard, who at the time of the fatal stabbing had a decades-long criminal history that included violence against women, officials noted, is already serving a life sentence at Taylor Correctional Institution in Perry after he was convicted in the summer of 2004 of a case in Miami-Dade involving an attempted kidnapping, robbery and burglary.

“For the detectives to come forward with this information, it is very pleasing in a sense but it is still heartbreaking without her being here to see what her life would have been like, to see the children maybe she would have had,” said Kim Battle, the victim’s mother.

“There’s a still big hole in my heart that will never be filled,” Battle added.