Agnes Carpenter

Nobody in this room had spent Karen's childhood hearing about Richard's musical promise.

Nobody had watched Agnes Carpenter build her life around her children's career, and nobody needed Karen to continue behaving like the woman pictured on a Carpenter's album cover.

To these musicians, she was simply the singer whose record they had been hired to make.

And more importantly, they treated her like a musician.

The problem got worse after the Carpenters returned from Europe in 1971.

Richard remembered arriving home looking terrible from lack of sleep, and Agnes Carpenter happened to have recently been prescribed a sleeping medication by the family doctor.

The drug was methaqualone, sold under the brand name Quaalude.

Richard tried it.