Speaker 1: Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Previously on Murder on Songbird Road. It's crucial to recognize
Speaker 1: the ripple effect of Beverly's conviction on her immediate family,
Speaker 1: and in Jaden's case, those ripples were more like shock waves.
Speaker 2: Miss Jade, missed, my mom, miss a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I made Mom promise to stay strong in the jail,
Speaker 3: and I'll stay.
Speaker 4: Strong for her.
Speaker 1: In August of twenty twenty four, nearly four years after
Speaker 1: Jade's murder, Renee and Jaden were reunited with Beverly's three
Speaker 1: youngest children.
Speaker 5: And I can already see Julian every single while.
Speaker 1: The autopsy also revealed evidence that may have been mishandled,
Speaker 1: and it involved a towel that was apparently tossed into
Speaker 1: the body bag used to transport Jade to the morgue.
Speaker 3: I just don't understand what person that was at that
Speaker 3: crime scene that thought that that was the right thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 6: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: What else is crazy? Of time it took for the
Speaker 1: then forensic pathologists to turn around Jade Beasley's autopsy. It
Speaker 1: took over a year to turn around the autopsy. Did
Speaker 1: you ever get any reason as.
Speaker 6: To why I did not.
Speaker 1: At the end of August twenty twenty four, Bob and
Speaker 1: I were back in Marian again, knocking on doors on
Speaker 1: or around Songbird.
Speaker 5: Road, and I was looking out the window and then
Speaker 5: the camera was videotaping him, and.
Speaker 4: He just kept knocking and knocking and waiting, and I
Speaker 4: was an answer.
Speaker 1: So a shirtless guy and he looked like he was
Speaker 1: under the influence of drugs or a mental illness.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he did.
Speaker 3: I have not been here in thirty years and more.
Speaker 1: They still have the video, really really wow. And guess
Speaker 1: who now has the video?
Speaker 8: You?
Speaker 1: Yep, I'm Lauren bred Pacheco and this is Murder on
Speaker 1: Songbird Road. Over the past ten episodes, you've heard the
Speaker 1: many pieces that came together to form an unfathomable story
Speaker 1: of heartbreak. You have listened to the devastating aftermath, families
Speaker 1: torn apart, relationships destroyed, siblings separated, and a community fractured
Speaker 1: by the shocking, controversial, and brutal murder of Jade Beasley.
Speaker 3: The biggest thing for me is that we were able
Speaker 3: to be boots on the ground and investigate, to really
Speaker 3: be able to kind of unpeel this onion. It just
Speaker 3: had to be boots on the ground what we were
Speaker 3: able to discover in this case, because remember we didn't
Speaker 3: get the discovery in total. You know, we didn't have
Speaker 3: that advantage, which again to me, speaks volumes, Lauren. I mean,
Speaker 3: the fact that we were never provided with that always
Speaker 3: tells me that they have something to hide. What is
Speaker 3: the motivation of people not wanting to answer questions or
Speaker 3: not providing information? It should make you suspicious, it certainly
Speaker 3: does me. But us being able to get down there
Speaker 3: to Marian as many times as that we did, and
Speaker 3: go and knock on doors and talk to people face
Speaker 3: to face and have that communication and that contact with them,
Speaker 3: it's just a different thing. I mean, that's it's because
Speaker 3: we care. It would be really easy to be.
Speaker 6: Just like guy I tried check that off the list.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 3: It's that persistence that is what drives these things. The
Speaker 3: persistence is what creates information for us that we can
Speaker 3: use to potentially lead us to other information which can
Speaker 3: potentially lead us to answers.
Speaker 1: Bob Mada and I didn't take on covering this case
Speaker 1: or Beverly's conviction without a great deal of forethought. We
Speaker 1: also didn't enter this investigation with preconceived notions.
Speaker 6: I cannot say this enough.
Speaker 3: When you and I got into this in the beginning
Speaker 3: of it, neither one of us had formed any kind
Speaker 3: of opinion as to innocence or killed at all.
Speaker 1: I agree, But also I think that the fact that
Speaker 1: we went in with no agenda right is what ultimately
Speaker 1: motivated us, because if we were just literally convinced she
Speaker 1: was innocent or convinced she was guilty, we would have given.
Speaker 6: Up totally, totally.
Speaker 10: There would be no.
Speaker 1: Point right once you really land where we have landed now,
Speaker 1: and that was not an easy place to land, because
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're opening yourself up for not
Speaker 1: just criticism, but real animosity. Yeah, because people like to
Speaker 1: believe if something was tried that it's done, it's finished.
Speaker 1: You don't go back and muddy.
Speaker 5: Up the waters.
Speaker 1: And it's a difficult thing too, because we know that
Speaker 1: we're dealing with very real lives and very real emotions,
Speaker 1: very real grief and trauma. It has taken us well
Speaker 1: over a year and a half to reach the point
Speaker 1: we're at now.
Speaker 3: I think that some of the bad facts, as we
Speaker 3: call them, that exists will still have people wondering because
Speaker 3: some people can never get over those bad facts. Once
Speaker 3: that gavel hits after twelve people have deemed somebody guilty,
Speaker 3: it's really hard to erase it completely because the mindset
Speaker 3: being that, all right, well, no matter how screwed up
Speaker 3: the trial was, the fact is that they had enough
Speaker 3: evidence to convince it. You're that she did it, despite
Speaker 3: the fact that it went unchecked and unchallenged, which is
Speaker 3: really the entire point of a trial, you know, to
Speaker 3: vet the evidence from beginning to end. This thing was
Speaker 3: just a railroad job in the sense of what was
Speaker 3: allowed in and how it flowed and just all the
Speaker 3: little things that happened. We can't do it justice in
Speaker 3: terms of really articulating just how messed up this trial was.
Speaker 10: You know what, you just gave me the words.
Speaker 1: It was a railroad job that went off the rails.
Speaker 5: It was that bad.
Speaker 6: It was that bad.
Speaker 1: So now, in terms of where we have landed, let's
Speaker 1: just quickly address that. I do understand how people can
Speaker 1: still have some reservations about what you and I have
Speaker 1: referred to as bad facts, but it is undeniable that
Speaker 1: Julia Beverly did not get a fair trial.
Speaker 6: Right. There's no Quoestan.
Speaker 1: We were told that what we now have video of
Speaker 1: was an impossibility, that nobody's knocking on doors. We believed
Speaker 1: it when we went down on the first trip. We
Speaker 1: looked around and said, nobody has ring camera footage here.
Speaker 1: This isn't the place where you get foot traffic, and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. And if they
Speaker 1: had done a proper investigation, they would have discovered it
Speaker 1: within two months of the murder. We have spent far
Speaker 1: more time investigating this case than the four days that
Speaker 1: had been spent when former Williamson County State's Attorney Brandon
Speaker 1: Sonati announced Jade Beasley's death at the same press conference
Speaker 1: in which he announced Julia Beverly's arrest, Although he spun
Speaker 1: it this way.
Speaker 11: There's, as I said, you know, any given time, twenty
Speaker 11: people working this, you know, like I said, working around
Speaker 11: the clock. These things just don't happen overnight.
Speaker 9: You know, we have to you know, we have to.
Speaker 11: Follow the rules. You know, we have to you know,
Speaker 11: conduct these investigations we have you know, under you know,
Speaker 11: constitutional safeguards and constraints, and you know, ideally like it
Speaker 11: to be wrapped up and tied up now, but unfortunately
Speaker 11: I said it's not. It's still going to take some time.
Speaker 1: It took just four days for the investigation to conclude
Speaker 1: it had gathered enough evidence to arrest twenty nine year
Speaker 1: old Julia Elaine Beverly, though even that decision came with
Speaker 1: a disclaimer pursue it.
Speaker 11: To Supreme Court rule, I must remind the public that
Speaker 11: charges are not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed
Speaker 11: innocent and is entitled to a fair trial, on which
Speaker 11: the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a
Speaker 11: reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: The state was tasked with the burden to prove Julia
Speaker 1: Beverly's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Having processed everything you've
Speaker 1: now heard, do you think they met that burden? Here
Speaker 1: is the opinion of one former juror.
Speaker 9: After listening to the podcast and listening to you guys, saw,
Speaker 9: I feel like I've definitely got a different perspective of
Speaker 9: reasonable doubt.
Speaker 12: I kind of feel like because you're coming up.
Speaker 13: With different alternatives to what there supposedly was, and I
Speaker 13: feel like it's a different ball game.
Speaker 1: In our previous episode, we shared audio from ring camera
Speaker 1: footage of an unknown intruder banging on a door on
Speaker 1: Songbird Road, just weeks after Jade Beasley's murder. Here is
Speaker 1: that jurors reaction to seeing that video?
Speaker 12: So many thoughts, so many thoughts. I know some people
Speaker 12: will be like, oh, but that was two months later. Okay,
Speaker 12: it was two months later. But also it was only
Speaker 12: two months later, and it was a man matching the
Speaker 12: same description and stuff, the same body build that Julie games.
Speaker 12: And if this man was clearly on drugs, you should
Speaker 12: have been on drugs two months earlier trying to get
Speaker 12: somebody else's house and stumbled upon Jays.
Speaker 1: If you had seen that video during the trial, do
Speaker 1: you think that would have changed things in terms of
Speaker 1: the jury's deliberation.
Speaker 12: I think it could have, guess. I think the fact
Speaker 12: that the guy matching the same description was trying to
Speaker 12: get into another house on the same road.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this, had you been given
Speaker 1: everything that was presented in the podcast, how would that
Speaker 1: have impacted the deliberation in your opinion?
Speaker 12: Honestly, after listening to you and Bob, if the defense
Speaker 12: could have presented a case like you guys, did I
Speaker 12: feel like we would have had to have said, should
Speaker 12: work with guilty.
Speaker 1: Additionally, on April third of twenty twenty one, so less
Speaker 1: than two months after the video of the unknown porch
Speaker 1: intruder was taped on Songbird Road, there was a home
Speaker 1: invasion in Marion committed by an intruder brandishing a knife.
Speaker 1: A woman told police a man had come in through
Speaker 1: an open window and threatened her with a knife. She
Speaker 1: was injured, but the assailant fled the scene. At the time,
Speaker 1: police were asking anyone who might have seen something or
Speaker 1: who might have video surveillance in the area to contact
Speaker 1: them with information, but that request was apparently contradicted when
Speaker 1: a local crime watch page posted the incident and people
Speaker 1: began weighing in with tips and speculations. Here's Renee High Tower.
Speaker 8: There was a post on the crime watch page run
Speaker 8: by Becky Grimes, and there was a lot of people
Speaker 8: commenting under there saying that there was a lot of
Speaker 8: similarities in the incident with Jade.
Speaker 5: There was another intruder breaking into a home with.
Speaker 8: A knife, threatened to harm this woman actually did cut her,
Speaker 8: I believe, and then got away, and they were striking similarities.
Speaker 8: Then I started noticing the comments disappear and I sent
Speaker 8: a direct message private message to Becky Grimes. I told
Speaker 8: her some people are more comfortable speaking on her and
Speaker 8: I said, I know the police are watching the page
Speaker 8: because they get tips from social media all the time.
Speaker 8: And she said, yeah, I know they're watching my page.
Speaker 8: And she said they're the ones who told me to
Speaker 8: take it down when it.
Speaker 14: Veers into Julie's case. And I said to police and
Speaker 14: she said yes. And I was just in disbelief, shocked
Speaker 14: that she just said that.
Speaker 1: Becky Grimes, the woman who ran that Facebook page, has
Speaker 1: subsequently passed away, but high Tower has shared the text
Speaker 1: message exchange with her that backs Renee's version of the events.
Speaker 1: High Tower then went to the Marian police station in person.
Speaker 2: I went down to that police station and I was
Speaker 2: telling the alswer, this sounds a lot like my daughter's.
Speaker 5: He first takes my information, he's got his pain going, telling.
Speaker 2: Him it looks a lot like my dog. He put
Speaker 2: his pen down and sat back in his chair and
Speaker 2: just stared at me and didn't say another word. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, I think it connects. You're not even
Speaker 2: listening to me. You're not right now, I said, I
Speaker 2: he was just going to quit listening your time and I left,
Speaker 2: and I realized, this is never going to be any
Speaker 2: kind of help from law enforcement whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't law enforcement want possible tips pertaining to Jade
Speaker 1: Beasley's murder?
Speaker 3: What can you take away from it other than that's scary,
Speaker 3: and it's scary for all the reasons that Flom was
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 6: That that other part of these.
Speaker 3: Wrong convictions that people just tend to kind of forget about,
Speaker 3: which is when they convict the wrong person, that the
Speaker 3: actual killer is still roaming free, free to create havoc
Speaker 3: and make mischief and kill people. Further, which, if you're
Speaker 3: the community that's the taxpayer that's paying for these people's
Speaker 3: salaries who have a job.
Speaker 6: To do, that would upset me and it should upset you.
Speaker 5: What are they afraid of?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 1: Why would an investigation be afraid of people questioning the
Speaker 1: investigation in the early stages of it, offering another option
Speaker 1: that would have forced them to deviate from their tunnel vision.
Speaker 1: Murder on Songbird Road will return after the break. Now
Speaker 1: back to mur on Songbird Road. While the podcast was
Speaker 1: in production, Julia Beverly from prison was also going through
Speaker 1: trial transcripts, journaling and sharing thoughts with Renee. One recovered
Speaker 1: memory she experienced was that the door to the bathroom
Speaker 1: Jade was in was locked, and that Beverly spent time
Speaker 1: finding pliers to unlock it. Here's Renee.
Speaker 5: I don't know if she had them in her hand
Speaker 5: or where she put them. Don't know where they went to,
Speaker 5: but she had to go to the laundry room to
Speaker 5: get them out of this toolbox.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just wondering after exactly, but that's important because
Speaker 1: they could conceivably be in the crime scene photos. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: when we finally received the inventory listing, those pliers were
Speaker 1: mentioned and were found next to the bathroom a top
Speaker 1: of laundry basket in the hall. Beverly also recalled seeing
Speaker 1: a crime scene photo of the interior front door knob,
Speaker 1: depicting a short light hair in embedded in what appears
Speaker 1: to be blood. This is significant because of the hair's
Speaker 1: length and color. Beverly's hair is dark, long and curly,
Speaker 1: and Jade's hair fell past her shoulders. Here's Renee.
Speaker 5: She said there's a picture, and she remembers it now
Speaker 5: that she's seen it in testimony. There's a hair in
Speaker 5: the blood on the doorknob of the front door collected.
Speaker 5: Possibly don't know, but no, for sure it wasn't tested.
Speaker 5: A light colored hair and she said it may be
Speaker 5: an inch and a half long at best. She said
Speaker 5: you could see it plain as day.
Speaker 1: I wonder where that is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So I was like, you've got to be
Speaker 5: hidden me. There's a hair, Yes, there's a hair.
Speaker 1: And whose blood is on the doorknob?
Speaker 5: Jade's And that's the thing. There weren't very many samples.
Speaker 5: I think it was twenty nine samples that were sent off.
Speaker 1: Now was it the inside or the outside doorknob?
Speaker 6: The inside?
Speaker 5: And then she said that she could because she had
Speaker 5: a storm door and then the inside door. And Julie
Speaker 5: said she could swear in the pictures there was blood
Speaker 5: on the storm door, on the inside of the storm door.
Speaker 5: And they never tested it because they said, oh, it
Speaker 5: looks like mud, never tested, never swapped, so it looks
Speaker 5: like somebody brushed against it going out.
Speaker 1: I've reached out to Williamson County with a foyer request
Speaker 1: for that photo, along with several others. My request was
Speaker 1: denied and I shared the response with Bob. Does that
Speaker 1: surprise you?
Speaker 3: No, I mean, at this point of course, not your
Speaker 3: foyer request. Journey has been legendary. I mean you've gone
Speaker 3: up to the age. I mean you've gotten some results,
Speaker 3: but it's still just been like pulling teeth.
Speaker 6: It's been pulling teeth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, we get are the things that they think
Speaker 3: are probably benign, the least problematic for them. They're the
Speaker 3: things that they think can't hurt them. And we're still
Speaker 3: finding shit. We're still finding just inconsistencies and things that
Speaker 3: bug us, which only adds fuel to the fire in
Speaker 3: terms of us wanting to see more that the concept
Speaker 3: that there was an unknown hair on the inside of
Speaker 3: the door that was covered in blood could only indicate
Speaker 3: that it could have been left.
Speaker 6: How wasn't that tested.
Speaker 1: I've also reached out to the Williamson County Sheriff and
Speaker 1: the state's attorney for explanation as to why it took
Speaker 1: over fourteen months and a court order to complete and
Speaker 1: file Jade Beasley's autopsy report while they've ignored my request.
Speaker 1: Former crime scene investigator Katie Hartman finds the turnaround time
Speaker 1: highly unusual.
Speaker 10: Since you reached out to me, I talked to another
Speaker 10: friend of mine who is a lieutenant with their homicide
Speaker 10: that just to double check with him because he would
Speaker 10: receive the final pathology reports on our homicide victims. And
Speaker 10: I asked him what was the longest he ever had
Speaker 10: to wait. He said, at the most three months, So
Speaker 10: I thought it was an extraordinary amount of time to
Speaker 10: get a final report from the pathologists. Do we know, Lauren,
Speaker 10: was the pathology report done? It just wasn't released, so
Speaker 10: we don't know.
Speaker 1: We just know that it wasn't in the discovery and
Speaker 1: the court had to compel the completion of the report.
Speaker 10: And the reason why I asked that is it's dated,
Speaker 10: as you know, twelve six, twenty twenty. These findings are
Speaker 10: precise and they are final, so I wonder if it
Speaker 10: was finished in twenty twenty, but it's been held up
Speaker 10: for whatever reason or whatever mistake or whatever miscommunication for
Speaker 10: two years.
Speaker 1: When the defense went to reference, it realized that it
Speaker 1: hadn't been filed and so asked for it, and the
Speaker 1: court had to compel to get the finished autopsy, which
Speaker 1: again wasn't signed until February fourth, twenty twenty two. It
Speaker 1: wasn't signed, it wasn't submitted, it wasn't filed, it wasn't completed.
Speaker 10: So it wasn't submitted to the state. No. I mean, so,
Speaker 10: how can prosecution charge anybody with murder without a final
Speaker 10: finding from a pathologist who did the autopsy? That's what
Speaker 10: I want to know. Do you understand what I'm asked?
Speaker 10: There's a lot in this autopsy that I cannot understand
Speaker 10: how it was not submitted immediately and why things weren't
Speaker 10: followed up on. There's a few things in here that
Speaker 10: should have been.
Speaker 6: Followed up on.
Speaker 10: She had round contusions in the autopsy. She refers to
Speaker 10: them as circular contusions. I think one's on her jaw.
Speaker 1: So implying that she was hit with an object.
Speaker 10: Possibly or somebody had a ring on or something like that.
Speaker 10: You know, you got to look at all these things.
Speaker 10: That's evidence. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not ANME.
Speaker 1: ME is an abbreviation for medical examiner.
Speaker 10: I'm a cramecy investigators. So if I'm having a meeting
Speaker 10: with a prosecutor about a murder case, I'm gonna ask
Speaker 10: do you have everything you need? Do you have all
Speaker 10: of my reports? Do you have the me's report. I mean,
Speaker 10: I don't get why you can prosecute or have a
Speaker 10: prosecution without an autopsy report. How's that allowed.
Speaker 1: We do not wish to sensationalize the autopsy's findings in
Speaker 1: a graphic way. But in addition to the circular contusions,
Speaker 1: there are other things mentioned in the autopsy that may
Speaker 1: have benefitted preparation for both the defense and prosecution if
Speaker 1: more thoroughly examined and or tested. For example, Jade's next
Speaker 1: showed scratches and keeping with attempted strangulation, and there were
Speaker 1: hairs found on her body.
Speaker 10: The autopsy is a part of the investigation. It's there
Speaker 10: to answer calls death, manner of death, everything, what exactly
Speaker 10: killed the person. I mean, these things are in here
Speaker 10: about what exactly killed her and how, But there are
Speaker 10: so many other facts that are raised, or injuries that
Speaker 10: are raised that no one even questioned. We're doing things
Speaker 10: that a defense attorney should have looked at and said,
Speaker 10: well what about this and what about that? And while
Speaker 10: a prosecutor didn't bring up some things, you know, you
Speaker 10: can use some of these injuries to compare to Beverly's.
Speaker 10: Does she work rings? What about a fair nail clippings?
Speaker 10: We've got those, let's send them. I mean, I don't
Speaker 10: understand any of it. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: You're preaching to the converted and speaking of nail scrapings.
Speaker 1: While Jades were tested, there was something discovered but not
Speaker 1: further tested, that was a bit buried during the trial.
Speaker 1: Here is Beverly's defense attorney's closing statement from the transcript, verbatim.
Speaker 1: The DNA could have told us something from the nails
Speaker 1: if the state hadn't been so short sighted defendants. Exhibit
Speaker 1: seven was shown to doctor Reich after he was asked
Speaker 1: was it only X or only female DNA found under jade?
Speaker 1: And he had to say, no, no, it's not. These
Speaker 1: are jades nails. These are the white chromosomes. It might
Speaker 1: have been a minuscule amount popping on two different areas,
Speaker 1: but it's there. It just doesn't fit the state's theory.
Speaker 1: I'm done with this now, Judge. Of course, we'll never know,
Speaker 1: or we don't know what was on Julie's hands, what
Speaker 1: was under Julie's nails. The state also decided to not
Speaker 1: test it might not fit their story unknown male DNA
Speaker 1: under Jdb's Lee's fingernails, which was downplayed at trial.
Speaker 3: If you're a person that's out there and you hear
Speaker 3: of all the things that weren't done, that do exist
Speaker 3: that should have been done in terms of evidence and
Speaker 3: things that should have been tested, and you're still sitting
Speaker 3: there thinking like, well, I don't care she did it.
Speaker 3: I just pray that you never get into law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I pray that you never get on the bench. I
Speaker 3: pray more than anything that you never become a prosecutor,
Speaker 3: because you have to look at everything. This is about
Speaker 3: getting to the truth, no matter what the truth is.
Speaker 3: This isn't about convictions, This isn't about wins.
Speaker 6: That's the con that you have with prosecutors.
Speaker 3: They are elected officials. The thing that they run their
Speaker 3: campaigns on is convictions that in and of itself is
Speaker 3: a conflict of interest with the truth because the truth
Speaker 3: takes a back seat.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Murder on Songbird Road. Here
Speaker 1: again is Murder on Songbird Road. We started this podcast
Speaker 1: by asking whether Julia Beverly was truly guilty of the
Speaker 1: murder for which she was convicted. Could a mother of
Speaker 1: four with no history of violence have brutally stabbed an
Speaker 1: eleven year old girl she had raised as her own
Speaker 1: for nearly eight years, or was there a rush to judgment,
Speaker 1: one that began on the day of the murder and
Speaker 1: continues to this day. As we've dealt deeper into the case,
Speaker 1: we've encountered individuals whose perspectives on Beverly's conviction have evolved.
Speaker 4: It's the life we're talking about, and it's Jade's life
Speaker 4: as well. There's just too many fishy things. It's supposed
Speaker 4: to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and in my opinion,
Speaker 4: that's not what it was.
Speaker 1: That's Brittany, the woman who created a gofund me page
Speaker 1: to help the Beasley family cover funeral expenses for Jade.
Speaker 1: She also believed she was on the phone with Jade's grandmother, Sheila,
Speaker 1: when Renee high Tower was desperately seeking information on the
Speaker 1: day of the murder.
Speaker 4: We were on the phone and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: she received the news and she told me Jade committed suicide.
Speaker 4: And I said, oh my gosh, what could she have
Speaker 4: been going through to do that? And I think she
Speaker 4: just said, I don't know. Then we got off the
Speaker 4: phone because she got that call from Renee.
Speaker 1: Here are her thoughts after having heard the issues we've
Speaker 1: raised over the course of this podcast.
Speaker 4: Looking back in hindsight, and I'm guilty of saying things
Speaker 4: and being manipulated by the media, and the things people
Speaker 4: were saying were god awful, and she hadn't had trial.
Speaker 4: And this is a small community. People believe the media.
Speaker 4: People believe, Oh, the police don't lie. Oh if the
Speaker 4: court said she's guilty, they're right.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 4: People just don't understand corruption. And people were saying the
Speaker 4: meanest things. It shouldn't have been held in this jurisdiction,
Speaker 4: I mean, death threats.
Speaker 1: Even do you think, looking back that there was any
Speaker 1: presumption of innocence for Beverly before trial?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not know that it should have never been held
Speaker 4: around here. It should have been in a I don't know,
Speaker 4: a different state. But there's no way that they could
Speaker 4: have picked a juror that didn't.
Speaker 5: Already see all that stuff.
Speaker 4: And then there was other things. But that made me
Speaker 4: start having an open mind and started questioning things. Why
Speaker 4: was her phone the only one dropped to in forensic
Speaker 4: They said, this isn't CSI Miami. We can't test everything.
Speaker 4: What this is a murder of an eleven year old?
Speaker 4: What do you mean that's a screwed up thing to say.
Speaker 4: I was convinced by the media because they made it
Speaker 4: sound like she went to a dumpster as if she
Speaker 4: was dumping a bunch of stuff or a huge bag
Speaker 4: or something like that in a dumpster on like the
Speaker 4: side of hawks.
Speaker 6: And then truth is she.
Speaker 4: Was by a gas pump and threw away something very
Speaker 4: small in one of the small trash cans by the
Speaker 4: gas pumps. So that's manipulation by the media. And then
Speaker 4: the number of Titans Jade was stabbed is apparently incorrect.
Speaker 5: It was not.
Speaker 4: I think one hundred and twenty is what was going around.
Speaker 1: In fact, Jade Beasley's autopsy report details fifteen specific stab
Speaker 1: wounds to her neck and torso, with additional injuries identified
Speaker 1: as scratches and marks consistent with defensive wounds. Yet the
Speaker 1: inflated number continues to circulate in news reports, on social media,
Speaker 1: and even in the courtroom. Special Prosecutor Jennifer Mudge reference
Speaker 1: to this in her sentencing statement, as seen verbatim in
Speaker 1: the transcripts. Sometimes on TV or in real life, prosecutors
Speaker 1: pound on the table when someonould get shot or stabbed.
Speaker 1: Not one, not two, not three, not four. If I
Speaker 1: did that in this case, we'd be here till five
Speaker 1: o'clock to night. So I'm not going to do that
Speaker 1: and before senten and saying Julia Lane Beverly to fifty
Speaker 1: five years in prison without the possibility of parole, Judge
Speaker 1: Stephen Green said.
Speaker 3: This, Okay, I have to agree that this case was horrific.
Speaker 3: You have an eleven year old child stabbed over a
Speaker 3: hundred times. I believe the testimony was at least one
Speaker 3: hundred and four times throughout a home.
Speaker 1: All right, So do you find it interesting that even
Speaker 1: after she was convicted, you know, at the sentencing, why
Speaker 1: perpetuate false information?
Speaker 3: I mean to drive it home for Mudge, as if
Speaker 3: she didn't know that he was going to sensor to
Speaker 3: the max or right around it.
Speaker 6: I guess as to her, that's why.
Speaker 3: As to the judge, I don't know for the judge
Speaker 3: to be kind of adding in, chiming in beyond what
Speaker 3: he's doing legally, and on top of that, to be
Speaker 3: mistating what the evidence actually was and symptomatic of the
Speaker 3: problem with this case and with this trial. You know,
Speaker 3: it's what we've seen for the last year and change.
Speaker 3: This was a one sided trial that ended in one
Speaker 3: sided sentencing, with untruths being spoken to the very end
Speaker 3: all the way through.
Speaker 1: Danny Vaie was a local reporter during the time of
Speaker 1: Jade's murder, and subsequently reported on the investigation, trial and
Speaker 1: sentencing before accepting a job out of state. Here are
Speaker 1: his thoughts on Beverly's case in light of the issues
Speaker 1: we've raised.
Speaker 15: It's definitely taking turns that I didn't expect it to take,
Speaker 15: especially with the treatment of Julia Beverly.
Speaker 9: I mean, I don't know if I have any words
Speaker 9: to describe it.
Speaker 15: I mean, it was just so horrible the way she
Speaker 15: was treated, especially when she had her baby. Nobody deserves that.
Speaker 15: I don't think anybody even knew in the media that
Speaker 15: she was pregnant by the time. The big takeaways is
Speaker 15: just like it's a big lesson.
Speaker 16: Of what not to do in a murder investigation like.
Speaker 7: This, because there was a lot of things they didn't do,
Speaker 7: and me at the time, not being as experienced in
Speaker 7: these kinds of cases and covering these kinds of cases,
Speaker 7: I didn't know what to ask.
Speaker 16: These are elected officials that people are entrusting to do
Speaker 16: their due diligence, and they're going to hang on the
Speaker 16: words of those elected officials. And it just sads to
Speaker 16: kind of realize all these years later that we may
Speaker 16: have been misled.
Speaker 1: What would you ideally like to see happen, knowing what
Speaker 1: you now know and having had the proximity to it
Speaker 1: as it unfolded.
Speaker 16: I definitely would like to see all the angles explored.
Speaker 16: I definitely would like to see the people that were
Speaker 16: on that witness list who weren't call called. I think
Speaker 16: there was a lot of things that could have been
Speaker 16: done differently with everything uncovered, and just it's easy.
Speaker 6: To hide stuff. It's so easy to hide the smallest thing.
Speaker 16: You know that to the media, to a wider audience
Speaker 16: that it doesn't seem significant, but to the person's happening
Speaker 16: to it's the world.
Speaker 1: We recognize that there are individuals who were and still
Speaker 1: are deeply upset by our decision to revisit the conviction
Speaker 1: of Julie Beverly. However, it's important to emphasize that justice
Speaker 1: for Jade and justice for Julie are not mutually exclusive,
Speaker 1: and even as this podcast comes to a close, we
Speaker 1: remain steadfast in our commitment to pursuing both. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the generosity of Jason Flahm, Julie Bevely's appeal is receiving
Speaker 1: the attention and legal representation it rightfully deserves.
Speaker 17: Let's start with what I've heard unfold over the last
Speaker 17: seven minutes of the last episode, which with the thing
Speaker 17: was episode ten, which had me rewinding and going, excuse me,
Speaker 17: I mean the fact that you guys found the video.
Speaker 17: I don't have the right word. It reminds me of
Speaker 17: the fact that we live in an era in investigative
Speaker 17: journalism slash criminal justice in general, where we as podcasters
Speaker 17: oftentimes have to do the work that should have been
Speaker 17: done in the first place, and could have been much
Speaker 17: more easily done by people who we pay with our
Speaker 17: tax dollars.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 17: But you and Bob did it, and you found the
Speaker 17: smoking gun. Crazy.
Speaker 1: It's kind of heartbreaking too, because if you think about
Speaker 1: the fact that that couple they closed the day she
Speaker 1: was arrested, They moved in the day after, and keep
Speaker 1: in mind, that was four days after Jade easily was
Speaker 1: brutally murdered next door, not down the street, not in
Speaker 1: a neighboring town, in the adjacent property, and no official
Speaker 1: anybody ever knocked on that door, and if they had,
Speaker 1: that would have been the first thing on that couple's
Speaker 1: minds when they had that ring camera footage.
Speaker 17: You can't help just feeling a sense of how it's
Speaker 17: a combination of awe, gratitude and also discussed right the
Speaker 17: idea that this was allowed to go on, It's still
Speaker 17: going on, right She's still in prison right right now.
Speaker 17: And I think about this often. Maybe you guys do too,
Speaker 17: the idea that while we're sitting here, I'm in my
Speaker 17: home studio talking to you and gonna go out the door,
Speaker 17: and we're going about our lives. Meanwhile, Julie, if you
Speaker 17: juxtapose what her reality is right now, right separated from
Speaker 17: her kids, dealing with gleam deprivation of every kind, like
Speaker 17: she is literally in hell right now, being deprived of
Speaker 17: every single thing that a human being needs to survive
Speaker 17: and thrive and be healthy.
Speaker 1: In an attempt to remedy the situation, and because of
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm's generosity, Beverly is now being represented by Chicago
Speaker 1: based defense attorney Kathleen Zelner's firm.
Speaker 18: My name is Joanna Klozawska. I am an associate for
Speaker 18: Miss Kathleen Zelner. You know, the basic facts of the
Speaker 18: case that there was a third party male DNA left
Speaker 18: under the victim's fingernails, really sparked our interests from the beginning. Currently,
Speaker 18: the briefs on appeal have both been submitted from both sides.
Speaker 18: We filed the brief on appeal on Beverly's behalf in
Speaker 18: July of twenty twenty four, and then the state filed
Speaker 18: its brief in Sember of twenty twenty four. We filed
Speaker 18: a reply brief in October of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: All of this leading up to both sides arguing the
Speaker 1: case in front of a panel of judges in February
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 18: The oral argument was held just last Friday, February twenty first,
Speaker 18: before three justices of the Fifth District Appellate Court. And
Speaker 18: so now we are just waiting on a written opinion,
Speaker 18: which could take several.
Speaker 1: Months, and we will update you as soon as they
Speaker 1: reach a verdict. But here's Bob's take on the path ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, best case scenario is that the appellate court grants
Speaker 3: her a new trial and kicks it back down. And
Speaker 3: this is best case scenario, And that the State's attorney's
Speaker 3: office decides not to proceed on it again, that's best
Speaker 3: case scenario. Next best case scenario is that they do
Speaker 3: decide to proceed on it again, all the corrections are
Speaker 3: made with respect to what's coming in, what's staying out
Speaker 3: in terms of evidence, and she goes to trial.
Speaker 1: But the brutal reality is there is no scenario in
Speaker 1: which Julie Beverly finds out next week she's walking out
Speaker 1: a free woman. No, no, As we bring this podcast
Speaker 1: to a clothes at least for now, we leave you
Speaker 1: with these questions. Do you believe Julia Beverly is guilty
Speaker 1: of murder? Do you believe she had the presumption of innocence?
Speaker 1: Do you believe she received a fair trial? Do you
Speaker 1: believe the state proved her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
Speaker 1: Or do you think there was a rush to judgment
Speaker 1: one that began the day of the murder and continues
Speaker 1: to this day.
Speaker 6: It's never gotten better.
Speaker 3: There was never a point where either of us were like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: there we go.
Speaker 6: The ship was righted. And because it never happened.
Speaker 1: Even if you believe she's guilty, you cannot deny that
Speaker 1: it was not a fair trial, and for that reason alone,
Speaker 1: she deserves a proper day in court.
Speaker 12: One of my.
Speaker 1: Favorite quotes is that justice will not be served until
Speaker 1: those who are unaffected or as outraged as those who
Speaker 1: are a lot of people have reached out to us
Speaker 1: outraged when they have put together the pieces of what
Speaker 1: went into Beverly's conviction. Where do you suggest they vent
Speaker 1: that outrage right now?
Speaker 3: The most effective tools social media. Frankly, between Reddit, Twitter
Speaker 3: or x Facebook pages Facebook groups, you can have a
Speaker 3: loud voice, and advocacy comes in many different forms. Advocacy
Speaker 3: is about using your voice. Advocacy is about using your
Speaker 3: mind and writing letters or emails, whatever the case may be,
Speaker 3: whatever you have to make your voice heard somehow it
Speaker 3: can affect change.
Speaker 6: It really can, It really can.
Speaker 1: And in Illinois, the good news is that the Attorney
Speaker 1: General has implemented a conviction Integrity Unit. We will link
Speaker 1: to that information as well as information to contact the
Speaker 1: Governor of Illinois. Bob and I, along with our production team,
Speaker 1: deeply appreciate you and everyone else who has taken the
Speaker 1: time to listen to this investigation. We also want to
Speaker 1: extend our heartfelt thanks to the many individuals who have
Speaker 1: contributed their thoughts, expertise, and voices to this podcast. A
Speaker 1: very special thank you goes out to innocence activists Jason
Speaker 1: Flomm and his wife, Kalia Ali, whose remarkable empathy, compassion,
Speaker 1: and generosity have paved a path forward for Julia Beverly,
Speaker 1: a journey we will continue to update as it infolds, because,
Speaker 1: as British Statesman Benjamin Disraeli put it, justice is truth
Speaker 1: in action. Murder on Songbird Road is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Taylor Chaqoine and Lauren
Speaker 1: Bright Pacheco. Research writing and hosting by Lauren Bright Pacheco.
Speaker 1: Investigative reporting by Bob Matta and Lauren Bite Pacheco. Editing,
Speaker 1: sound design and original music by Evan Tyer and Taylor Chaqoine.
Speaker 1: Additional music by Asher Kurtz. Archival elements courtesy of wsil
Speaker 1: News three. Please like, subscribe, and leave us a review.
Speaker 1: Wherever you're listening. You can follow me on all platforms
Speaker 1: at Lauren Bright Pacheco and email the show with thought,
Speaker 1: suggestions or tips at Investigating Murder at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Bob Mada, check out Defense Diaries,
Speaker 1: and for more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get the stories that matter
Speaker 1: to you. Thanks for listening,