A 19-year-old newspaper intern escaped a serial killer. It defined his career.

• Steve Fishman, a newspaper intern at the time, was hitchhiking and picked up by Robert Carr.
• Six months later, he found out Carr was a serial killer and he could have been a victim.

When Steve Fishman did an exclusive jailhouse interview with a serial killer and rapist, he had one particularly important question.

"Why didn't you kill me?" the rookie reporter asked Robert Frederick Carr III as they sat in a cell in 1976.

"I thought you were too big," Carr replied. About a year earlier, Fishman was hitchhiking and had been picked up by the convicted serial killer.

Nearly 50 years later, Fishman is reflecting on his narrow escape in the true-crime podcast "Smoke Screen: My Friend, The Serial Killer."

Fishman told Business Insider he was naive when he first covered the story. "I guess I tried to understand and humanize him," Fishman said, noting that his coverage focused heavily on the lack of psychological treatment for sex offenders at the time.

But with the wisdom he's gained throughout his career and as a father of three, he now describes Carr as a "monster" who showed no remorse.

Fishman thought the driver who picked him up would be an interesting subject for a story

Fishman, who was 19 at the time, was hitchhiking when he first met Carr. Fishman was a poorly paid intern at a local newspaper and needed a ride to his workplace in Norwich, Connecticut.

Carr drew up in his sedan, beckoned Fishman inside, and introduced himself as "Red." Carr, who was balding with wisps of ginger hair, was about a decade older than him.

"I run up excitedly," Fishman said. "But I'm also anxious because you never know what will be on the other side of that car door. I'm not a big guy and didn't shave then, so I looked younger than I was."

But Carr put his mind at ease, telling him he also lived in Norwich and knew a shortcut to their destination. "He seemed amiable, personable, and completely unthreatening," Fishman told BI.

His journalist radar went off when Carr disclosed that he'd recently been released from prison. "Instead of it setting off an alarm bell, I thought, 'Maybe this could be a story, and I could interview him about his challenges getting back into the community.'"

Carr said he would interested in appearing in the paper and gave Fishman his phone number. The plan was for the intern to speak to Carr's probation team first.

Still, Fishman got scared after telling the driver where to pull over. "I said goodbye, but the handle on the door didn't work," he said. "It was anomalous — enough to cause a moment of anxiety and almost panic."

Carr said, "Sorry, I've got to get that door fixed," and told Fishman to wind down the window and release the handle from the outside. Fishman exited the car, wishing Carr a great day and promising to follow up on the story.

But Carr's probation supervisor nixed the story idea.

Disappointed, Fishman tossed Carr's number into the back of a file and got on with his job at The Norwich Bulletin. He mostly covered high-school sports and family events such as Easter egg hunts.

Six months later, Fishman saw Carr's photo on a breaking news alert.

The Associated Press reported that Carr had been arrested for the attempted rape of a hitchhiker in Florida. He had shocked police by confessing to kidnapping and raping more than a dozen people and murdering four of them.

"I can still feel the shudder when I read it," Fishman said.

The journalist's biggest scoop was a prison interview

Fishman dug out Carr's number. When he called, Carr's wife answered and agreed to be interviewed.

The reporter covered every aspect of the story, including Carr's sentencing deal. The murderer agreed to lead detectives to the bodies of his four victims. A judge sentenced Carr to three life terms plus 360 years instead of giving him the death penalty.

One of Fishman's biggest scoops was securing a face-to-face interview with Carr behind bars. "I was captivated by the excitement, the dead bodies, the deadlines, and the sense of purpose," Fishman said.

The journalist, who was then 20, said Carr's agenda dictated the conversation.

"He held forth for a couple of days, sitting at the head of the table in this little room," he said. "He intended to convince me and make me listen."

Carr, who died of prostate cancer in 2007 at the age of 63, talked about why he'd spared Fishman's life. Carr recalled every detail of the encounter and told Fishman he was put off by his size.

The journalist said the killer painted himself as a victim because the state had not provided him with therapy. "I took it very seriously — as I would do now," Fishman, who won national and regional press awards for reporting on the case, said.

The two men developed something of a friendship and frequently bantered on the phone. "He'd call collect to the newsroom from jail and joke around with me and the editors," Fishman said.

Meanwhile, Fishman's career flourished. He told BI that his experience with Carr helped "define" his journalism. "It gave me a deep hunger for being inside the story and wanting to understand it."

Fishman went on to interview the "Son of Sam" serial killer David Berkowitz in the 2000s. Berkowitz is serving a life sentence for crimes he committed in the mid-1970s. Fishman also interviewed the notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison, before Madoff's death in 2021.

Now a father, Fishman said that he would have advised his younger self to consider the human cost of the case more closely.

"At that point, I was extremely ambitious and driven," Fishman, whose children are 21, 15, and 2, said. "There was this seduction of having extreme access to this guy, so I told his story as he wanted. What I missed — but what I've learned a second time around — was that this guy was irredeemable."