I am sorry for Carol and her family, I will pray for the repose of her soul and that healing will come to her family.
As to rural justice, it has been around for many more years than most of us have walked this planet. I can understand the mentality behind it, the need to protect their own from a threat, perceived or real. It also is known as Frontier Justice, where the community takes action, without the sanction of the law.
In this case we have the possiblity of a psychotic person, obviously capable of murder, that is not afraid of acting without concern for the consequences until after the fact.
Such a person on the loose is a cause for alarm in any community. I have a situation with a neighbors son who is both a drunk and a druggie, one of his older sisters is an alcoholic. And they both live with their recently widowed mother. We have had police visits over there on several occassions. One of the problems is that most of the houses on the block I live on are occuppied by other family members. I had to have any prescriptions I get be picked up at the pharmacy rather than delivered until recently.
A great deal of the time that you have these unsolved murders it can almost always be traced back to alcohol or drugs. Sometimes, in rural communities, it can also be traced to family fueds.
Whatever the case may be here, let us hope, for everyone's peace of mind that this coward is caught quickly.