Caregiver Kills Patient, Encases Her in Concrete to Cover Up Murder

When the search for missing Lynn Keene began, no one imagined the 70-year-old’s body was tucked away in her North Carolina basement, encased in concrete.

The grim discovery—made by detectives in August 2021—finally solved the question of Keene’s whereabouts, but investigators still had to piece together the mystery of who killed her in a disturbing case featured on Oxygen’s Snapped. 

As her friend Geni Carter shared, “It just absolutely broke my heart when I heard what had happened to her."

Who Was Lynn Keene? 

To those who knew her, Lynn Keene was a kind woman with an adventurous personality. She met her husband Russell while working as a bartender in Florida. Though she had no children of her own, Lynn—who later moved to Linville Falls, North Carolina—enjoyed spending time with Russell’s three children and maintained a close bond with her mom Wanda.

But Lynn suffered several devastating blows in life in her late 60s, first with Russell dying in 2016 followed by her mom’s death in 2020. To cope, Lynn turned to alcohol. 

"It was really hard for her,” daughter-in-law Kristen Keene said. “She's lost her husband. Now she's lost her mother. It was tough.”

Kristen discovered just how bad the problem was after Lynn came to visit her in Florida. Kristen woke up in the middle of the night to find Lynn outside by the pool. She lost her balance, tripped over a planter and hit her head on the deck, resulting in a brain bleed. 

After the fall, Lynn required in-home care and Wanda’s neighbor-turned-caretaker Elizabeth Carserino agreed to move in and care for Lynn full-time in exchange for room and board. 

Lynn stopped drinking and was looking forward to taking a river cruise with her daughter-in-law, when she suddenly vanished in 2021. After no one heard from her in about a month, Lynn’s sister-in-law called the Avery County Sheriff’s Office July 29 to request a welfare check.

“Lynn, she was an alcoholic in the past. She would go sometimes for a few weeks that nobody could get in touch with her,” Detective Tim Austin explained. “She was just that type of person.”

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When Austin and several other detectives arrived at the home, no one came to the door and there were no outward signs of foul play.

Though they did not go inside the house, Austin did enter Lynn into the system as a missing endangered person and made several unsuccessful attempts to reach Elizabeth. 

Although they were unable to contact her, detectives learned that Elizabeth had spoken to Kristen, telling her that she was moving out of the house after Lynn supposedly left town with some drinking buddies. 

“We were all upset with Lynn,” Kristen remarked, “disappointed in the fact that she fell off the wagon, and she had done so well.”

Then, on Aug. 2, Lynn’s car was found abandoned in Cherokee, North Carolina. The keys, Lynn’s bank card and social security card were inside. 

Given the new development, Austin requested a search warrant for Lynn’s home. When they went inside, police made a gruesome discovery in the basement after noticing an odor and large number of flies. Austin followed the smell into a back room where he noticed a tarp in the corner of the room. 

“I pull the tarp back, what I see is something looks like a big mound of concrete, and sitting on top of it is a bag of pre-mixed concrete mix, and my smell is just overwhelming,” he remembered. “I can see mixed on the edges of the concrete what looks like a human shoulder [and] hair.”

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Realizing he had a crime scene, Austin called the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation for help. 

As they were chiseling the body out of the concrete, investigators discovered that a belt was wrapped around the victim’s neck, suggesting strangulation. An autopsy later confirmed the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head, followed by a ligature strangulation. 

Using bank records, authorities discovered that Lynn’s bank card had last been used at two gas stations. But, when they looked at surveillance footage from one of the businesses they realize it was Elizabeth—not Lynn—who used the card. 

Officers issued an arrest warrant for Elizabeth, based on the evidence that she’d used both Lynn’s car and bank card. Unable to track her down, they released several photos and labeled her a wanted woman. Then, a nurse at a local hospital saw the photos and recognized her as a patient at the hospital. 

They learned that, two days earlier, Elizabeth had been staying in a tent in Cherokee, not far from where Lynn’s car was abandoned, when she took some Tylenol P.M. and slit her wrists in a suicide attempt. 

According to NCSBI Assistant Special Agent Maggie Holder, “To me, that is showing that she's feeling very guilty for something, but definitely something traumatic has happened.”

Elizabeth was arrested and taken into custody.

While Elizabeth initially stuck to her story that Lynn had left the home, she did admit that caring for Lynn had been a challenge.

“I was constantly cleaning up everything. Of course, she didn’t remember that. Because she was drunk,” Elizabeth told investigators. “She yelled at me and told me that she might as well pay somebody to clean the house because I don’t do a damn thing but sit on my ass. And that pissed me off to no end because I did absolutely everything.”

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Who Killed Lynn Keene?

Eventually, Elizabeth admitted to killing Lynn.

“Yes, I killed her,” she said in the emotional interrogation. “I can’t get it out of my head.” 

Although she refused to provide details, investigators believe that Elizabeth snapped as tension was building in the house and struck Lynn in the head with something, then panicked and strangled her rather than call 911 for help.

Elizabeth pleaded guilty in 2024 and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. 

At the sentencing, Lynn’s family chose to remember her in happier times. 

“None of us are perfect, but in her heart and her soul, she was wonderful person,” Kristen said. “She was caring, she was kind.”