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Karl Karlsen pleaded guilty in New York to second-degree murder in the 2008 death of his son, then was convicted in California of first-degree murder by arson in the 1991 death of his first wife.

Karlsen, reported as 53 when sentenced in 2013, lived in Murphys, California, in Calaveras County, with his first wife, Christina, and their three children. On New Year's Day 1991, a fire destroyed their home. Karlsen said he rescued the children but could not save Christina, whose body was found in the bathroom. Prosecutors later said a bathroom window was boarded up and that Karlsen had bought a $200,000 life insurance policy on her 19 days before the fire. The fire was initially treated as accidental.

Karlsen later moved to a farm near Waterloo in Seneca County, New York. His second wife was Cindy, whose later surname is given in some reports as Best. On November 20, 2008, his son Levi, 23, died at Karlsen's home on Yale Farm Road in Varick when a pickup truck fell from a jack and crushed him as he worked underneath it. Karlsen collected on a $700,000 life insurance policy taken out 17 days earlier. The death was initially ruled accidental.

Relatives' suspicions led New York authorities to reinvestigate Levi's death. In April 2012, Cindy Karlsen agreed to cooperate with police and wore a wire to record conversations with her husband. She later testified that he had taken out a policy on her and that she would be worth 1.2 million dollars dead to him.

Investigators questioned Karlsen in New York in 2012. He repeatedly denied killing his son and said anything he told his wife was untrue. Details of what he admitted in the interview were not confirmed beyond that.

In 2013, Karlsen pleaded guilty in Seneca County Court to second-degree murder in Levi's death, admitting he caused the truck to fall on his son. Judge Dennis Bender sentenced him in December 2013 to 15 years to life. Karlsen later challenged the plea, arguing that he was improperly denied a lawyer during the police interrogation and that his statements were not voluntary. A New York appeals court rejected those arguments in 2017.

California authorities then charged Karlsen in Christina's death. After a month-long trial, a jury of seven women and five men found him guilty on February 3, 2020, of first-degree murder by arson. The jury also found true special allegations of murder for financial gain and a prior murder conviction. On March 17, 2020, he was sentenced in Calaveras County Superior Court to life in prison without the possibility of parole and ordered to pay his two daughters the proceeds of the original insurance award. No ruling on any appeal of the California conviction has been publicly reported.

The video is a police interview-room recording that runs about 191 minutes and shows the interview itself. It opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved. The uploader incorrectly spells Karlsen's surname as "Carlson."

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Part 2 of 4 of the recording described above.

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Part 3 of 4 of the recording described above.

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Part 4 of 4 of the recording described above.