Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators (9 page)

With our examination of the tarp over, the boys folded it back up and sent it to the incinerator, clearing the way for new and probably bloodier evidence.

The next morning, we were back in that “odd place for a prosecutor to practice law” building, wrapping up the Beckham case that we had begun discussing when we first convened. “Rodney Beckham was a prolific liar,” prosecutor Linda Tally Smith said disdainfully of the defendant. Indeed, he was no saint. He already had a long rap sheet, including two felonies, and was a known drug addict and dealer when on July 2, 2004, he was arrested for the attempted murder of twenty-seven-year-old Stacy Beals. The trial lasted seven days. Much evidence was examined and many witnesses were called in, including doctors who discussed in detail the brutality of Stacy’s injuries. Linda was kind enough to provide us the entire trial on tape so we could watch it and see for ourselves how it had unfolded. Tim Carnahan’s and Brian Cochran’s testimonies were brilliant, particularly Brian’s testimony regarding the bloodstains. He appeared quite scientific when examined by the defense, dispelling Hollywood myths about how blood travels on impact and how much blood they could expect to see. But overall there was little physical evidence, and they were missing the big kicker—no murder weapon had been found. The trial would all come down to whether the jury believed that the Commonwealth of Kentucky had met its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Rodney Beckham killed Stacy Beals. Ultimately, it would come down to Linda.

Rodney and Stacy had been out partying well into the morning of June 27, 2004. Eventually, the two of them left together to score some crack cocaine to smoke at the Econo Lodge in Carrollton, Kentucky. At some point between two and five a.m., Stacy was beaten and left for dead. Stacy, barely clinging to life, wasn’t found until a hotel maid discovered her as she attempted to clean the room. She had been beaten so severely that pieces of skull were found scattered throughout the hotel room. Rodney Beckham was nowhere in sight.

Word spread throughout the small Kentucky community that Stacy Beals had been hurt and that she’d last been seen with Beckham. One of Stacy’s friends, who was related to a police officer, called in the tip, and it wasn’t long until the hunt was on for Beckham. Rodney had heard that he was being sought after, and so he hid for a couple of days to “sober up” and to get his story straight. Even so, he eventually told the police several different stories to cover his own ass, weaving a bizarre tapestry of lies and half-truths that even he couldn’t keep up with. He told stories about buying crack supplies at a Kroger supermarket, including Bic lighters, a Chore Boy (a copper scouring pad commonly used as a filter in a crack pipe), and rubber gloves—to “throw off” the cashier, he said. He told more stories, of leaving Stacy in the hotel room and going back to find her beaten, and others of how he knelt down to hold her head as she moaned, and how her limp neck allowed her head to roll, striking him on the chin and “spattering” fine drops of blood onto his arms and into his eyelashes. He told more imaginative stories of how he touched nothing except a shiny tire gauge that he saw out of the corner of his eye as he fled the room, which he then threw across the motel parking lot. The police never found many items: Stacy’s money, underwear, pants; the hotel’s television remote and towels; all of the items Beckham claimed to have purchased at Kroger; and whatever was used to beat Stacy. And Beckham told yet even wilder stories of not knowing how a bloody shirt of his ended up in the trash where he lived, and how somebody else must have put it there. Linda would later tell the jury in her closing arguments that he “wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the butt.”

The bloodstained mattress at the Beckham murder crime scene.
PHOTO BY TIM CARNAHAN, OFFICE OF THE COMMONWEALTH’S ATTORNEY,
54TH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT

After police discovered that Rodney Beckham was lying to them, not to mention the bloody T-shirt in the trash behind his place of residence, he was arrested for the attempted murder of Stacy Beals. She managed to survive for weeks on life support. But eighty-three days later doctors removed Stacy from life support, and she slipped away forever. Beckham’s defense team tried to argue that he couldn’t be charged with murder because “she’d be alive if they had left her on life support.” But their argument fell on deaf ears, and the charge was amended to murder.

On the final day of trial, the defense called their last witness to the stand—Rodney Beckham. They examined him slowly, methodically, coddling him through his lies, his specious timeline, while ignoring many of the details that mattered most, like the bloody shirt in the garbage (and the blood spatter in his eyelashes). It was almost embarrassing to watch; there was little for them to defend. While Beckham answered the questions on the stand, Linda furiously took notes at her table, her demeanor growing more and more tense every time he spoke. The anger on her face came to a crescendo when Beckham began his tearful sobbing at the very end of his testimony. “I might be a piece of shit to a lot of people, but I’m not a murderer,” he told the court, his final words under direct examination. It was now Linda’s turn to cross-examine. Up until this point of the trial, she had been very friendly with the witnesses, but her demeanor changed with Beckham. Where the defense was slow, quiet, and unsure, Linda was not.

“Mr. Beckham, you indicated that Stacy was a friend of yours and that you thought a lot of her,” Linda began as Beckham continued to wipe away his tears. “Yes, I did,” he said, sniffing. “You know what today is?” Linda asked angrily. “Yes, I do,” Beckham responded, with an almost glad tone. “And what is it?” Linda asked again of Beckham. “Today is her birthday,” Beckham informed the court. “Today is Stacy’s birthday,” Linda repeated softly and remorsefully, fighting back tears. “Would you have known that prior to this happening?” Linda asked him, with disdain. “No, I would not,” Beckham said, hanging his head down low. Linda proved immediately that Beckham could not tell the truth even on the simplest of things, like being close friends with Stacy. Close friends know each other’s birthdays. Beckham’s inability to tell the truth was a pattern that continued throughout her examination.

As Linda’s cross-examination continued, Beckham’s mouth became obviously dry. The nauseating sound of his lips and tongue sticking together was noticeable as he tried to wiggle through Linda’s bulletproof examination. Sometimes he would go off on rants, telling stories to the jury that no one had ever even heard before, while Linda allowed him to dig his own grave—although from time to time she would jab Beckham almost sarcastically when what he said contradicted something he had said earlier. At one point the defense asked for a recess, in order to get their client off the stand and hush his mouth. Beckham was a liar, a fact that even he had to admit while on the witness stand, saying once that he “was no angel.” Linda concluded her cross-examination by walking the court through what she believed Beckham had done, proving him as the culprit in the murder of Stacy Beals. Linda relied on the facts of the case, and not the ruminations of a known liar, as her guide to proving the commonwealth’s case.

The defense and the prosecution were both given an hour for closing statements. The defense’s only real argument was to claim that although Beckham was admittedly a liar, he wasn’t lying now. Not much of a defense. Linda’s closing was powerful, teary, and theatrical. She likened what she and her team had done to working a jigsaw puzzle. They had provided the border and some of the pieces inside of the frame; and just as with a puzzle, you don’t have to have every piece in place to know what the picture shows. Linda told the jury that indeed, although she would not be able to provide them with every piece of the puzzle, there was enough. And with that, closing arguments concluded. It was up to the jury to determine whether Beckham was a liar or an angel.

In only an hour and a half, the jury came back to the courtroom to present the judge their decision. Rodney Beckham was found guilty of murder in the first degree. With the verdict rendered, the judge moved to the sentencing phase, whereby the jurors would be allowed to hear Rodney’s other transgressions for the first time, including his two previous felony convictions. In less than an hour, the jury found Beckham a persistent felony offender and sentenced him to life in prison. He now sits in the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. He will be eligible for parole on January 11, 2026, when Stacy would have been only forty-eight years old.

As we began to say our good-byes with Linda and the guys, we realized just how much justice means to the people here in Boone County. Linda certainly knows, and she takes it all to heart. Her life is really one of juxtaposition—Republicans and Dixie Chicks, pink shirts and blue blazers, babies and killers. Yet she juggles it all effortlessly. And she’s very successful at her job; no one even ran against her in the last election. But success doesn’t come without a price. When your job is to go after the criminal element, and you take that job seriously, it is easy to make enemies. And threats are par for the course. “Are you ever scared?” we asked Linda as we gathered our belongings to end our final day in Boone County. “Yes,” she told us, mentioning one particularly nasty thug whose case didn’t go quite as planned. “Not all cases turn out that well, no matter how hard you work or how good the evidence is,” Linda went on to say. Sometimes, juries simply make poorly informed decisions. “If you see a man on video writing a bad check, you don’t need a handwriting expert [to prove it]; or if a detective sees a dealer pulling a rock of crack from his mouth, you don’t need to run a DNA test on it,” she said feistily, on our way out the door. In the end, all any prosecutor can do is to work hard, understand what it is he or she is presenting, and present everything in the best light to get as solid a conviction as possible. But the reality is this—doing good means pissing some bad people off. Tragically, the threat of retribution is real. And in this line of work, you don’t view your life in years but in lengths of sentences.

DULUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT, MINNESOTA

Duluth, Minnesota—the county seat of St. Louis County—sits on the banks of Lake Superior. Before it was a city, the land of Duluth was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes, who grew wild rice, still a staple in many households throughout Minnesota. Founded in 1679, Duluth was once a thriving industrial town that boasted a steel plant and the leading port in the United States. In the early 1970s, the city had to shift its economic focus from industry to tourism. Today Duluth shares its port with Superior, Wisconsin, which together make Twin Ports, one of the major ports on the Great Lakes system. Duluth is known for its year-round cool temperatures, but especially its lake-effect snow, which comes in handy for the yearly dog-sled marathon every February. The Duluth Police Department is the third largest in the entire state of Minnesota, with 175 employees.

Duluth, Minnesota. The Scandinavian Americans who dominate this semi-arctic climate pronounce it “Doo-looth.” Essentially, Duluth has two seasons—winter and July. On the one hand, winters in Duluth can be unbearable. It has been known to get so cold that a man can urinate outside and the stream will freeze before it hits the ground—not to mention, it’s hell on the penis. But on the other hand, July can be gorgeous, with people jogging around Lake Superior, enjoying a homemade root beer at Fitger’s Brewery or a malt down by the shore, and some folks even daring to surf the near-frigid waters. Just don’t stay too long, or you might get snowed in.

On March 1, 2007, the 151st anniversary of the founding of St. Louis County, whose county seat is the City of Duluth, we were far from the balmy days of July. Sitting in the Comfort Suites Hotel, we anxiously awaited our second continental breakfast of the day. Sounds good, right? Except that this second continental breakfast was being served at seven thirty p.m., during the worst blizzard in the history of Duluth. Hurricane-force winds, two-plus feet of snow, thunder, lightning—all combined to close nearly everything in the entire city. Fortunately, we were saved from starvation by a few hard-boiled eggs, a waffle each, and some questionable breakfast meats.