Speaker 1: In recording our coverage of Barry Beach, we realize that
Speaker 1: there are so many details and twists and turns that
Speaker 1: the story simply warrants two episodes, so we've split the
Speaker 1: episode and released both for your listening pleasure at the
Speaker 1: same time. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: On Montana's Fort Peck Reservation, just after seven am June sixteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, the body of seventeen year old Chimneys
Speaker 2: was found on the bank of the Poplar River. Her
Speaker 2: car was parked about one hundred yards away, and it
Speaker 2: appeared to be the scene of a vicious beating, potentially
Speaker 2: involving multiple assailants. Bootprints could be seen in the path
Speaker 2: from the car to the river, and fingerprints made in
Speaker 2: blood were found on the interior and exterior of the car.
Speaker 2: The police interrogated many local young men, including Barry Beach,
Speaker 2: who was initially cleared as a suspect, and for three
Speaker 2: and a half years the case remained cold. Barry Beach
Speaker 2: moved to Louisiana to build a relationship with his strange father.
Speaker 2: When his stepsister ran away and ended up in his apartment,
Speaker 2: Barry's stepmother notified police, also making sure to mention that
Speaker 2: Barry had been interviewed three times about a murder in Montana.
Speaker 2: The police in Monroe, Louisiana interrogated Barry about three open
Speaker 2: serial murders involving young women, but having been out of
Speaker 2: state for each, they began pressing him about the murder
Speaker 2: back in Montana. Eventually, Barry gave a confession that was
Speaker 2: presented at his trial. With a confession as well as
Speaker 2: the specter of a potential hair match, a punishment of
Speaker 2: life plus one hundred years must have seemed like justice
Speaker 2: was being served by the state of Montana. But this
Speaker 2: is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I don't
Speaker 2: even know what to say. I'm actually at a loss
Speaker 2: for words. What I'm going to do is just start
Speaker 2: by apologizing, Okay, to our guest today, Barry Beach, for
Speaker 2: what is one of the most egregious injustices that I
Speaker 2: have ever seen in almost thirty years of doing this work.
Speaker 2: So this story is going to blow people's minds anyway,
Speaker 2: without further ado, Barry Beach, Welcome to ronfel conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason, and good morning to you.
Speaker 2: And as I always say, I'm happy you're here because
Speaker 2: I'm honored to talk to you, but I'm sorry you're
Speaker 2: here because of everything, the hell that you went through
Speaker 2: that is going to form the basis of the story
Speaker 2: we're about to tell. And we'll also be talking to
Speaker 2: one of the heroes in this story in a bit,
Speaker 2: an investigator named Richard Hepburn, who helped unravel the open
Speaker 2: secret the prevailing wisdom of a small town in Montana,
Speaker 2: which is what actually happened on a terrible night on
Speaker 2: a hillside next to the Popular River all those years ago.
Speaker 2: But let's go all the way back to your childhood.
Speaker 2: Did you grow up there in Poplar, Montana?
Speaker 3: I actually grew up in several different locations, but mainly
Speaker 3: in Poplar, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in
Speaker 3: the northeast corner of the state of Montana. In a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, I had a very normal and happy
Speaker 3: childhood because my grandparents owned a large farm and ranch,
Speaker 3: and that was the best memories of my childhood was
Speaker 3: the horses and the cattle and the chores and the
Speaker 3: work and the labor, you know. But along with that,
Speaker 3: my mother was divorced when I was two years old
Speaker 3: from my father, who was an Air forceman. And was
Speaker 3: stationed in several different locations during my early years of life.
Speaker 2: You did get to know a bit the year that
Speaker 2: this incident happened, I guess when he was stationed down
Speaker 2: in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: Right, for over a year and a half, maybe two years,
Speaker 3: I had been trying to leave Poplar, Montana and discover
Speaker 3: my my biological father, who I did not know until
Speaker 3: I was seventeen. That being said, I had actually gone
Speaker 3: to work for a local farmer, saved up some money,
Speaker 3: purchased a car, was going to drive down there and
Speaker 3: spend the summer with my biological father for the first
Speaker 3: time in my entire life. So I don't know my
Speaker 3: dad from my childhood, but I had a stepfather who
Speaker 3: was a full blood Lakota Sioux. And just like any
Speaker 3: racial tension area in the United States of America, reservations
Speaker 3: were racially tense areas to live. That doesn't make it
Speaker 3: a bad place to live, It's just that there was
Speaker 3: always that conflict growing up in a mixed race home,
Speaker 3: and it created problems at school and.
Speaker 2: Right, you were from a mixed race household going to
Speaker 2: school in Poplar, Montana, a small farming and oil community
Speaker 2: where over seventy percent of the population were Native American,
Speaker 2: maybe twenty eight percent white. Also notable about the population
Speaker 2: is that there were only about a little over that
Speaker 2: some people living there, and the typic of graduating class
Speaker 2: was around twenty kids, so you all knew each other
Speaker 2: pretty well even between grades, you know, which put you
Speaker 2: in close proximity with the victim in this case, Kim Niese,
Speaker 2: a young white woman who was a great ahead of you.
Speaker 3: We actually grew up on the same block, just four
Speaker 3: houses apart from each other, and one of the things
Speaker 3: that I've been talking about is the aspect of mixed
Speaker 3: racial tensions on the reservation as we grew up as kids.
Speaker 3: Kim Nice was also the granddaughter of a state senator.
Speaker 3: Her uncle, Stanley was the local banker. Her dad, Ted
Speaker 3: was a farmer as well as involved with some of
Speaker 3: the local oil explorations. So Kim was on that upper
Speaker 3: level of school of classmates of society. Growing up in
Speaker 3: in the United States of America are the most poverty
Speaker 3: stricken areas of our entire nation, which is a Native
Speaker 3: American reservation.
Speaker 2: So she kind of stood out a bit in the area,
Speaker 2: as did her sister, who was two years behind.
Speaker 3: You, and I actually dated Kim's younger sister, Pam, off
Speaker 3: and on for over two years, and we were still
Speaker 3: kind of dating off and on when this happened.
Speaker 2: And you had seen her on the day of the murder,
Speaker 2: right earlier in the day.
Speaker 3: I had seen Pam and we talked for twenty minutes
Speaker 3: or so that day before I left town for the river.
Speaker 3: I did not see Kim because Kim and I did
Speaker 3: not associate with each other, being that Kim was very athletic,
Speaker 3: she was the upper social class of society. I was
Speaker 3: a known drug user and alcoholic and fighter, and drove
Speaker 3: fast cars and liked rock and music. I was the
Speaker 3: guy that you do not take home. DeMont got it.
Speaker 2: So I guess her sister was really just kind of
Speaker 2: rebelling by dating you. I mean, from what I understand,
Speaker 2: in addition to being a wild kind of guy, you
Speaker 2: and your family were not as well off, not even
Speaker 2: close as the News family.
Speaker 3: We were a lower to middle class family economically, even
Speaker 3: though we were a hard working family. It just sometimes
Speaker 3: you can work really hard not go anywhere. But by
Speaker 3: the time I did get into high school, I was
Speaker 3: fairly regular user. And I do think that along with
Speaker 3: being from a biracial family, contributed to making myself a
Speaker 3: susceptible target for law enforcement.
Speaker 2: But up until this point, your run ins with the
Speaker 2: law consisted of a few traffic tickets, so no prior
Speaker 2: violence or criminal record to speak of. And there's something
Speaker 2: about the jurisdiction of law enforcement on a reservation that's
Speaker 2: a bit complicated.
Speaker 3: Right correct. In nineteen sixty two, the federal government passed
Speaker 3: what is called Public Law six point eighty. Native American
Speaker 3: Indian reservations are federal land established by the federal government
Speaker 3: during the eighteen hundreds. Therefore, the FBI have jurisdiction over
Speaker 3: that land. However, Native American tribes are independent governments nations,
Speaker 3: so they control the land even though it belongs to
Speaker 3: the federal government. Where that applies to jurisdiction is when
Speaker 3: there is a major crime such as a robbery, homicide, kidnapping,
Speaker 3: that takes place on a reservation. It is immediately the
Speaker 3: jurisdiction of the FBI until it is established that the
Speaker 3: perpetrator of that crime is not an enrolled tribal member.
Speaker 3: So on the reservations you have four, possibly five different
Speaker 3: law enforcement agencies with split jurisdiction and control. So you
Speaker 3: will have at the bottom of it what they call
Speaker 3: the BIA Police, which is a federally funded tribal police.
Speaker 3: Then you're going to have your city police, which controls
Speaker 3: the city limits, mainly involving non Native Americans. Then you
Speaker 3: have your county Sheriff's department, who will control the county,
Speaker 3: but they only have jurisdiction over non tribal members. And
Speaker 3: then you have the FBI, who have jurisdiction over tribal
Speaker 3: members and tribal lands and over all of those agencies.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a recipe for at a minimum, confusion and
Speaker 2: potentially disaster, since when anything happens on the reservation, there's
Speaker 2: not just one single agency that's responsible and accountable. You
Speaker 2: have all these competing agencies mucking up the crime scene
Speaker 2: together trying to figure out who should ultimately be working
Speaker 2: the case or have jurisdiction, and by the time that's determined,
Speaker 2: so many different hands, different people have tainted the investigation,
Speaker 2: which unfortunately happened here with the death of Kimneys and
Speaker 2: the investigation that included all of these agencies, not to
Speaker 2: mention also the police in Monroe, Louisiana that ultimately led.
Speaker 2: All of this just led to your prosecution, leaving the
Speaker 2: true perpetrators free. So let's get into that. So this crime,
Speaker 2: this horrible crime, took place on the early morning hours
Speaker 2: of June sixteenth of nineteen seventy nine. Kimberly Neese was
Speaker 2: murdered at the Poplar River on the Fort Peck Indian
Speaker 2: Reservation near Fort Peck, Montana. Now, she was a by
Speaker 2: all accounts, a lovely seventeen year old girl who had
Speaker 2: just graduated from high school. And she graduated as valedictorian.
Speaker 2: Which you know, it doesn't matter because this shouldn't have
Speaker 2: happened to anyone, but it kind of makes it even
Speaker 2: feel worse. It's giving me the chills. That night, that
Speaker 2: faithful night, she went to a drive in movie with
Speaker 2: her boyfriend, a guy named Greg Norgard, and he dropped
Speaker 2: Knees off at her home right after the movie. Well,
Speaker 2: she was home for about fifteen minutes before she left
Speaker 2: in her dad's truck around twelve eighteen am, r after midnight. Now,
Speaker 2: witnesses reported seeing her parked at the Exxon gas station
Speaker 2: on Highway To around twelve thirty, and she was later
Speaker 2: seen following several cars towards the Poplar River at one am.
Speaker 2: Now to set the stage, the Poplar River was an
Speaker 2: area where kids would go to drink and smoke pod
Speaker 2: and party until late at night, like countless other places
Speaker 2: like it all around the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Poplar River had had several areas. There are
Speaker 3: four or five areas because it encircled the town on
Speaker 3: three different sides. But the train bridge was definitely one
Speaker 3: of the areas where people not only partied, but they
Speaker 3: would go down there to swim and hang out. The
Speaker 3: boat docks were down in that area. It was a
Speaker 3: local park as well, so there was a baseball field
Speaker 3: down there.
Speaker 2: So it's an area that you might find in any town,
Speaker 2: USA where kids just go to hang out. And sometimes
Speaker 2: I find it helpful to look a place up on
Speaker 2: Google Maps, and here you have, like Barry said, the
Speaker 2: Poplar River that encircles the town on three sides, along
Speaker 2: with the Missouri River. US Route two runs through the
Speaker 2: town and as it heads west out of town it
Speaker 2: meets the Poplar River, you can see a train track
Speaker 2: that also crosses the river just to the south. So
Speaker 2: this is where it happened. And from what I understand,
Speaker 2: there's a hill that runs down to the river from
Speaker 2: where some younger kids heard what happened that night. In fact,
Speaker 2: there may have been a whole bunch of eyewitnesses who
Speaker 2: were close to this murder that simply never came forward
Speaker 2: for fear of reprisal. But what witnesses did feel safe
Speaker 2: reporting was that Kimney's's car was seen around one am,
Speaker 2: following several other cars to this area, and then at
Speaker 2: four AM, two of the tribal police officers observed the
Speaker 2: truck parked in the deserted field near the Poplar River,
Speaker 2: but they didn't feel the need to check it out
Speaker 2: of the time, it was just a truck parked in
Speaker 2: a field. Around seven am that morning, as the officers
Speaker 2: were driving back into town, they noticed that the same
Speaker 2: truck was still there and they decided to investigate further.
Speaker 2: They found blood in the interior of the truck, a
Speaker 2: large pull of blood at a clump of hair near
Speaker 2: the passenger side, and a trail of blood leading down
Speaker 2: to the river. When they followed the trail, sure enough,
Speaker 2: they found this poor girl's lifeless body a semi submerged
Speaker 2: in the Poplar River.
Speaker 3: Correct, But there actually were calls that we'd later found
Speaker 3: out years later that took place from several different citizens
Speaker 3: to law enforcement at about two o'clock reporting loud female
Speaker 3: voices and screams in the area of the park. And
Speaker 3: there is actually one report that a city police officer
Speaker 3: by the name of Stevie Greyhawks supposedly went down there
Speaker 3: and checked on those reports and reported that there was
Speaker 3: nothing down there interesting.
Speaker 2: Stevie Greyhawk. Let's let's tuck that name away because it's
Speaker 2: going to come back around later. So it seems like
Speaker 2: this crime should have been discovered sometime after two am
Speaker 2: by this city police officer, but it wasn't reported to
Speaker 2: be discovered until seven am by the tribal police.
Speaker 3: Tribal police officers noticed the vehicle and went down there
Speaker 3: and found the body. They called the city police department
Speaker 3: and the Sheriff's department, and the Sheriff's department then called
Speaker 3: the FBI.
Speaker 2: Wow. So this complex web of law enforcement has already
Speaker 2: given us a lazy and unaccountable investigation into what was
Speaker 2: going on down by the river at two am. And
Speaker 2: then four agencies entered a bloody and scattered crime scene
Speaker 2: in and around seven am, beginning with the truck. Now
Speaker 2: blood evidence indicated that the attack began in the cab
Speaker 2: of the truck on the driver's side. His knees was
Speaker 2: then yanked out the passenger side, where the bludgeoning and
Speaker 2: hair pulling continued and concluded about ten feet from the truck.
Speaker 2: Her one hundred and twenty pound body was then dragged
Speaker 2: almost the length of a football field down to the river,
Speaker 2: down an embankment, and then that's where it was found
Speaker 2: semi submerged in the water. The autopsy report noted skull
Speaker 2: fractures and brain injuries from the more than thirty blows
Speaker 2: to the head. There was no evidence of a rape,
Speaker 2: sexual assault, or anything remotely sexual about this attack, but
Speaker 2: there was a ton of blood and other physical evidence.
Speaker 3: The crime scene itself was absolutely loaded with physical evidence.
Speaker 3: There were numerous clumps of bloody hair and footprints found
Speaker 3: around the pickup and in the drag trail. There were
Speaker 3: three different sets of footprints and i'man identifiable footprints in
Speaker 3: the trail that they used to carry Kim to the river,
Speaker 3: which was two hundred and fifty six feet long. There
Speaker 3: were over twenty eight fingerprints inside of the pickup, on
Speaker 3: the outside of the pickup and also on twenty three
Speaker 3: beer cans around the vehicle and specifically fingerprint sets number five,
Speaker 3: ten and number eleven. Those three sets of fingerprints were
Speaker 3: found on beer cans around the vehicle, on the outside
Speaker 3: of the vehicle, and they were also found on the
Speaker 3: inside dash of the vehicle. Some of those fingerprints were
Speaker 3: in blood, but the most significant evidence when the assailant
Speaker 3: drug Kim out of her pickup, they placed their palm
Speaker 3: on the side of the cab, leaving a full palm
Speaker 3: print in Kim's blood on the side of the pickup.
Speaker 2: The owner of that palm print has still never been
Speaker 2: identified to my understanding.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 4: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
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Speaker 4: in the communities where we work and live. In light
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Speaker 4: the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
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Speaker 3: All of the evidence that was collected ended up going
Speaker 3: to different jurisdictional locations. Some of it was sent to
Speaker 3: the FBI crime Lab in Butte, Montana. Some of it
Speaker 3: was actually taken to the local Poplar City Police department
Speaker 3: and put into an evidence room.
Speaker 2: It really is not that there was, perhaps still is,
Speaker 2: no standard practice or protocol for evidence collection in these instances.
Speaker 2: It seems so obvious that it should be collected by
Speaker 2: one bureau or one agency every time in one place.
Speaker 2: How can you mount an effective investigation in this manner? Well,
Speaker 2: the short answer is obviously that you can't. But even
Speaker 2: with this nonsensical evidence collection procedure, what about good old
Speaker 2: fashioned just talking to people. This was a very small
Speaker 2: community with only about twenty kids in a graduating class,
Speaker 2: and one of their recent fellow graduates just got murdered.
Speaker 2: There had to have been at the very least rumors
Speaker 2: going around town.
Speaker 3: For the first week or so, we all heard and
Speaker 3: knew around school and around town that it was supposedly
Speaker 3: this group of girls allegedly. Because I don't want to
Speaker 3: point the finger at somebody that has not been forensically
Speaker 3: and scientifically connected to this, that's something that we have
Speaker 3: to keep in mind as we talk about this case
Speaker 3: is that the State of Montana, the FBI, the city police,
Speaker 3: and the tribal police to this day, three forty four
Speaker 3: years later, have never matched any of those fingerprints, the
Speaker 3: palm print, the footprints, the blood samples to anybody. They
Speaker 3: have never made a legitimate, honest arrest with anybody but
Speaker 3: law enforcement. We're bringing numerous of US high school kids
Speaker 3: in for questioning and taking statements, and myself personally, six
Speaker 3: months or seven months after the crime, I was brought in.
Speaker 3: I was questioned, I gave fingerprints, I gave blood samples,
Speaker 3: I gave footprints, I gave hair samples, and was told
Speaker 3: that none of the physical evidence matched me and that
Speaker 3: they knew I did not commit the crime. That process
Speaker 3: right there actually took place with a lot of people
Speaker 3: in town.
Speaker 2: But somehow or other they managed to bring you, and
Speaker 2: as you said, a lot of other people in town
Speaker 2: in there, and they managed to I don't know if
Speaker 2: it was willful, but somehow or other they managed to
Speaker 2: not bring in the people who actually matched to this evidence.
Speaker 3: So, when you're dealing with a small community like that,
Speaker 3: how could they not bring in the people that everybody
Speaker 3: in town was talking about.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to draw a sort of a sinister conclusion,
Speaker 2: which is that at some level they were sort of
Speaker 2: protecting these people for reasons that may become clear as
Speaker 2: we go along in this episode, and thereby putting up
Speaker 2: almost like a sinister smokescreen where they were just sort
Speaker 2: of acting like they were doing some investigation by bringing
Speaker 2: people in to distract everybody from the fact that they
Speaker 2: were weren't actually interested in arresting the people that committed
Speaker 2: this heinous crime.
Speaker 3: Certainly there had to be somebody somewhere wondering why these
Speaker 3: people weren't being looked at closer. And to take it
Speaker 3: one step further, Kimneys's family put a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: reward up for information, and that reward went completely ignored.
Speaker 2: So even though there were rumors about the group of
Speaker 2: young women who had bludgeoned Kimneys to death, the police
Speaker 2: were dragging in young men for scrutiny, and then no
Speaker 2: one even responded to this ten thousand dollars reward. We're
Speaker 2: talking about four decades ago in a little town that's
Speaker 2: big money, and in all likelihood, there were eyewitnesses at
Speaker 2: this party by the river, so either no one was
Speaker 2: talking the police weren't actually trying to catch the assailants
Speaker 2: or both. Nonetheless, they had already ruled you out by
Speaker 2: virtue of the physical evidence, conclusively proved you could not
Speaker 2: have committed this crime, and that should have been it,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't correct.
Speaker 3: Yes, they did ask me to come in and take
Speaker 3: a polograph test just to finalize their investigation. So I
Speaker 3: went in and I took a polygraph test with the FBI.
Speaker 3: The polygraph at that time showed that I did not
Speaker 3: commit the crime, but that I had general knowledge of
Speaker 3: the crime, which everybody in town had general knowledge. I mean,
Speaker 3: how could you not be in high school in a
Speaker 3: small town and understand what's going on around you.
Speaker 2: Now, at this point you had been ruled out, no
Speaker 2: more suspicion allegedly, so you moved on with your plan
Speaker 2: to reconnect with your biological father in Monroe, Louisiana.
Speaker 3: Jumping forward to nineteen eighty, when I returned to Montana
Speaker 3: again from down in Louisiana, they brought me in one
Speaker 3: more time because of traffic at tickets. I had to
Speaker 3: do thirty days in jail for excessive traffic tickets. When
Speaker 3: they released me that day, again, I was going back
Speaker 3: to Leuisiana and again they questioned me, but again they
Speaker 3: said that they knew I did not commit the crime,
Speaker 3: they just would like to know if there was any
Speaker 3: information that I had. They released me again. I returned
Speaker 3: to my father's house in Louisiana and went on with
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 2: Okay, so three times you come in, three times you're clear.
Speaker 2: Here you are back in Louisiana working construction, building holiday inns,
Speaker 2: as I understand it, And then you signed up for
Speaker 2: the Navy and completed boot camp right, and we're preparing
Speaker 2: to be deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. This was the
Speaker 2: time of the conflict in Lebanon.
Speaker 3: Correct, Very few people probably remember, but in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: one eighty two, the Lebanesian Army had just shot down
Speaker 3: two of our American planes over the Mediterranean Sea. So
Speaker 3: we were about to be deployed with the USS Eisenhower
Speaker 3: aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean Sea to defend our international spaces.
Speaker 3: In that process, being that I was new to the
Speaker 3: s and this was my first overseas deployment, they ran
Speaker 3: a background check on me. During that process. The Roosevelt
Speaker 3: County Sheriff had sent a letter to the FBI, stating
Speaker 3: that I was their suspect in a homicide and that
Speaker 3: they had quote unquote two eye witnesses who could put
Speaker 3: me at the scene of the crime. I was confronted
Speaker 3: with that letter by the United States Navy Police Force.
Speaker 3: They put me in the brig and after two days
Speaker 3: of being in the brig, I was given an option
Speaker 3: to take an honorable discharge, return to Montana and undergo
Speaker 3: an investigation, at which point, if the investigation did not
Speaker 3: lead to an arrest, I could re enlist in the military,
Speaker 3: or they could contact the Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department, and
Speaker 3: if the Roosevelt County Sheriff's departments backed up the letter,
Speaker 3: I would be charged with federal charges of fraudulent enlistment
Speaker 3: into the military to avoid jurisdiction, and I would immediately
Speaker 3: be incarcerated for ten years in federal prison. So I
Speaker 3: took the honorable discharge. I went back to Wolf Point, Montana,
Speaker 3: and once again turned myself into the Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 3: only to be told that they didn't know of the letter,
Speaker 3: they had no witnesses that could put me at the
Speaker 3: scene of the crime, and that they knew I did
Speaker 3: not commit the crime based on the forensic evidence, and
Speaker 3: they released me to go back to Louisiana. There's absolutely
Speaker 3: no question that it came from that sheriff. It was
Speaker 3: on his letter head, it was his signature. It was
Speaker 3: mailed to the FBI office in Butte, Montana. To this day,
Speaker 3: that letter exists in the FBI files in Butte Montana.
Speaker 3: So him telling me that he did not know about
Speaker 3: the letter was just a blatant line. But yet it
Speaker 3: destroyed my military career.
Speaker 2: Right, But this is hardly the worst that's about to come.
Speaker 2: So you're cleared by Roosevelt County, back of Louisiana.
Speaker 3: Go back to work building holiday inns.
Speaker 2: Right and putting this hopefully behind you. But then there
Speaker 2: was some craziness with your stepmom, and that may have
Speaker 2: led indirectly or even directly to this downward spiral that
Speaker 2: got deeper and deeper and faster and faster.
Speaker 3: Correct, it actually is the direct link that led to
Speaker 3: a wrongful conviction, or allowed the state of Montana to
Speaker 3: continue its pursuit of a wrongful conviction. When I returned
Speaker 3: to Louisiana, I was living with my father and his
Speaker 3: new wife who had five children. They all lived there
Speaker 3: at the house. There became a pretty open dispute between
Speaker 3: me and my stepmother as to whether or not I
Speaker 3: was even my father's child. When on New Year's Eve
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three, we went out as a family drinking,
Speaker 3: got back home all drunk, and there was a large
Speaker 3: family argument over that issue. My stepmother kicks me out
Speaker 3: of the house and I go get a place to
Speaker 3: stay real quick. But when she kicked me out, one
Speaker 3: of my younger step sisters decided that she was going
Speaker 3: to run away from home because she couldn't stand her
Speaker 3: step mom. I was at work. My stepsister called me
Speaker 3: up and said her and three of her friends were
Speaker 3: out at the freeway hitchhiking to Houston. I says, no,
Speaker 3: stay right where you're at. I'm going to come get
Speaker 3: you and call dad. That led to my step mother
Speaker 3: calling law enforcement and saying that I was a prime
Speaker 3: suspect and a murder in Montana, and that she was
Speaker 3: fearful that I was going to kill her daughter. What
Speaker 3: I didn't know, Jason. At that point in time, Mondro,
Speaker 3: Louisiana had a serial killer on the loose and they
Speaker 3: had formed a seven member Homicide Task Force to investigate
Speaker 3: these serial killings. Two of those homicides took place while
Speaker 3: I was in the military. The other one took place
Speaker 3: while I was on a holiday in job in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: So when those three homicides took place, I had absolutely
Speaker 3: no knowledge. I wasn't even in the state of Louisiana, etc.
Speaker 3: But my stepmother used those along with the fact that
Speaker 3: she knew I was a suspect in Montana at one time,
Speaker 3: and turned me into local law enforcement and I was arrested.
Speaker 2: So they started questioning you about the Monroe murders. But
Speaker 2: of course you had no knowledge of those crimes, because
Speaker 2: how would you have known. You weren't even in the state.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know those crimes existed at that time.
Speaker 3: I wasn't charged with homicide. I was only charged with
Speaker 3: misdemeanor charges concerning my stepsister contributing to delinquency of a minor.
Speaker 3: So they took me into this interrogation room. The initial
Speaker 3: interrogation was done by three members of the Homicide Task Force,
Speaker 3: Richard Maderis, Javi and Joe Cummings. They had accused me
Speaker 3: on numerous numerous occasions of showing deception, etc. Etc. On
Speaker 3: what they called voice stress test, which was this tape
Speaker 3: recorder that set there on the interrogation table the whole
Speaker 3: entire day.
Speaker 2: So they were trying to extract a false statement. Your
Speaker 2: alibi was air tight. For the Monroe murders. You were
Speaker 2: in a different state. Every single one of those murders.
Speaker 2: You weren't in state. But they are experienced in convincing
Speaker 2: suspects that their super scientific voice stress test says that
Speaker 2: you're lying. Then maybe they can coerce you into a statement.
Speaker 2: For example, we'll tell the jury that you registered deception,
Speaker 2: so you better plead guilty and get a good deal.
Speaker 2: Another route is potentially convincing the suspect of their own guilt.
Speaker 2: None of it had worked on you yet. And then
Speaker 2: later on that even they brought in their closer, a
Speaker 2: guy named Alfred Calhoun. Now he was the bad cop
Speaker 2: to Joe Vie's good cop, and they continued to rail
Speaker 2: on you about these Monroe, Louisiana murders while describing to
Speaker 2: you in great detail what happens what would happen to
Speaker 2: your body chair And this was something that they said
Speaker 2: you'd be able to avoid if you just told them
Speaker 2: what they wanted.
Speaker 3: To hear correct. And it was only when Alfred Calhoun
Speaker 3: came in and started threatening me with the death penalty
Speaker 3: in Louisiana for the Louisiana crimes that the Kimnice murder
Speaker 3: in Montana actually came into the picture. Alfred Calhoun promised
Speaker 3: me that he would assure that I was convicted on
Speaker 3: the three homicides in Louisiana and would ensure with everything
Speaker 3: that he had within him that I received the electric chair,
Speaker 3: and that he wanted to be there to push the
Speaker 3: button and watch me fry for the Louisiana homicides. But
Speaker 3: if I would just simply tell them the truth about
Speaker 3: the Montana homicide, that they would go back to Montana
Speaker 3: and help me to establish the facts of that case,
Speaker 3: and we'd get out of Louisiana.
Speaker 2: Right, which actually sounded like a logical thing to do,
Speaker 2: because you already knew that everybody knew that you had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the these murder and there was
Speaker 2: overwhelming evidence to prove it. So why not get the
Speaker 2: hell out of Louisiana and away from these monsters and
Speaker 2: go deal with the monsters, you know, because you know
Speaker 2: you can prove eighteen ways till Sunday that you didn't
Speaker 2: have anything to do with the murder of Kimnese. So
Speaker 2: ultimately you falsely confessed to the murder of Kim Nice.
Speaker 3: This confession was a tape recorded confession. There is actually
Speaker 3: a phone conversation between the sheriff in Montana and the
Speaker 3: detectives in Louisiana where they have me in the interrogation room.
Speaker 3: The sheriff in Montana is feeding information to the detective
Speaker 3: in Louisiana. He's going in and making sure it's a
Speaker 3: part of the confession, and then going back and getting
Speaker 3: more information. The sheriff falsely and inaccurately told Detective VI
Speaker 3: that Kim Nice was wearing a plaid shirt with a
Speaker 3: brown jacket, and that actually ended up in the confession
Speaker 3: with me saying that she was wearing a plaid shirt
Speaker 3: and brown jacket, when in fact, Kim was wearing a
Speaker 3: white pullover sweater.
Speaker 2: The inconsistencies and contradictions between this confession and the crime
Speaker 2: scene border on the ridiculous. There were multiple sets of
Speaker 2: bootprints for starters, it wasn't a single assailant. Clearly, Barry
Speaker 2: exhibited a complete misunderstanding about where the car was in
Speaker 2: relation to the river. It confessed to multiple double football
Speaker 2: field length round trips, which was not corroborated by the
Speaker 2: bootprints either, and then on these round trips, Barry allegedly
Speaker 2: threw one item in the river at a time, which
Speaker 2: is not only ridiculous considering the distance, but also after
Speaker 2: searching the river, these items were never found, including a jacket,
Speaker 2: the keys to the truck, which obviously would have just sank,
Speaker 2: and the alleged murder weapon, a tire iron that obviously
Speaker 2: didn't float downstream. They did, however, find a clawhammer in
Speaker 2: the river, with which wounds, as well as gouge marks
Speaker 2: and the ceiling of the truck were more consistent. He
Speaker 2: also said that she had jumped out of the driver's
Speaker 2: side and he had to run after her. Not only
Speaker 2: that we know that she left through the passenger side
Speaker 2: direct contradiction again, but also with the amount of blood
Speaker 2: found on the front seat, the likelihood of her running
Speaker 2: was borderline impossible. And then Barry also confessed to choking her,
Speaker 2: which we know never happened.
Speaker 3: I not only claimed to have choked Kim, but allegedly
Speaker 3: I choked her to the point that she passes out
Speaker 3: and the amount of force that it takes to do
Speaker 3: that would have left very clear and indictative physical evidence
Speaker 3: on the body that was never found. It wasn't there,
Speaker 3: it didn't exist. More importantly, the so called motive for
Speaker 3: this taking place was supposed to be a rape, and
Speaker 3: there was no indication of rape or sexual intercourse.
Speaker 2: Barry also said he had wiped the scene of his fingerprints. However,
Speaker 2: there were no ways marks at the scene. And to
Speaker 2: top it off, Barry said that he put her body
Speaker 2: feet first into a garbage bag that only came up
Speaker 2: to her armpits and dragged the body to the river
Speaker 2: and pushed her in again, not understanding the distance because
Speaker 2: he didn't know anything about it, but also that there
Speaker 2: was a twenty foot embankment that he'd have to have
Speaker 2: figured out how to maneuver, but he completely left that
Speaker 2: detail out. And on top of all that, there was
Speaker 2: no garbage bag or remnants of one being used that
Speaker 2: wherever found. But this wild confession was seemingly good enough
Speaker 2: for everyone on both sides of that infamous phone call.
Speaker 3: So one more interesting fact about what you just said
Speaker 3: that probably should be brought up at this point when
Speaker 3: you're talking about Javi and Alfred Calhoun in Louisiana. Alfred
Speaker 3: Calhoun JF and that homicide detected group actually got two
Speaker 3: other individuals to confess to those three Louisiana murders, and
Speaker 3: those two individuals were later proven to be innocent and
Speaker 3: their confessions were proven to be false as well. And
Speaker 3: later one of those crimes in Louisiana were actually solved
Speaker 3: by DNA, proving that all the people that JAYVII and
Speaker 3: Alfred Calhoun got to confess to those three homicides were false.
Speaker 3: I was actually facing the death penalty all the way
Speaker 3: up until a month prior to my trial. We actually
Speaker 3: had a hearing to do away with the death penalty,
Speaker 3: and that's when we learned that the tape of the
Speaker 3: confession had been erased. It was like three weeks prior
Speaker 3: to my trial.
Speaker 2: So you're being cleared as a suspect by all the
Speaker 2: physical evidence matter at all, but this false confession, the
Speaker 2: gathering of which was corrupt at best, the recording of
Speaker 2: which had then been mysteriously erased. Yeah, this false confession
Speaker 2: overcame all fingerprints, the bloody pomp print, the lack of
Speaker 2: any white marks around the other fingerprints on or in
Speaker 2: the interior or exterior of the truck, the bootprints, the
Speaker 2: blood samples, how inconsistent your false confession was with the
Speaker 2: crime scene. None of this mattered at all, and you
Speaker 2: were charged with deliberate homicide in the fifteenth Judicial District
Speaker 2: of Montana. And in the lead up to your April
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four trial, your attorney tried to expose that
Speaker 2: false confession for what it was and suppress it as involuntary,
Speaker 2: but the judge allowed a recitation of the false confession
Speaker 2: by Detective J. V. Now to corroborate that evidence. The
Speaker 2: state was trying to admit a pubic here that had
Speaker 2: allegedly been discovered on Kimney's sweater, and the former head
Speaker 2: of the Montana State Crime Lab, Arnold Melnikoff, was willing
Speaker 2: to testify that the hare had characteristics that were somewhat
Speaker 2: similar to Barry's hair, Which what does that testimony even mean? Similar?
Speaker 2: How that it was hair? It was also hair? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was hair, and there's hair. That's about it. There
Speaker 2: was no other similarities.
Speaker 3: Let's start there with Arnold Melnikoff. They were not allowed
Speaker 3: to have him testify for two reasons the fact that
Speaker 3: the sweater he claimed to have found a pubic air
Speaker 3: on had already been searched in nineteen seventy nine and
Speaker 3: there was nothing found on it. But not only that
Speaker 3: federal report saying that nothing was found on that sweater.
Speaker 3: That sweater was kept in the Poplar City Police Department's
Speaker 3: evidence room. On the night of June sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: about twelve thirty one o'clock at night, a police officer
Speaker 3: on duty for the Poplar City Police Department by the
Speaker 3: name of Stevie Greyhawk had actually broken into that evidence room,
Speaker 3: kicking in the locked door, supposedly to use the restroom.
Speaker 3: But that break in contaminated all the evidence that was
Speaker 3: stored in that evidence room involving the Kimney's murder, including
Speaker 3: the sweater that in nineteen eighty three, Arnold Melnikoff claims
Speaker 3: to have found a pubicare on that had quote unquote
Speaker 3: similar characteristics to Barry Beach.
Speaker 2: So the same guy, if you remember, I told you
Speaker 2: to tuck his name away for later, This guy, Stevie Greyhawk,
Speaker 2: the Poplar City police officer who answered that two am
Speaker 2: call early on the morning of June sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: down to the river for the sounds of female voices screaming,
Speaker 2: and back with nothing to report, even though there definitely was.
Speaker 2: That freaking guy is the same cop who had to
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom so badly that he busted down
Speaker 2: the door to an evidence room holding the evidence from
Speaker 2: this crime. Again, nothing to see, there, nothing to report. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you to tuck that's Stevie Greyhawk
Speaker 2: name back in again for later as we continue on
Speaker 2: through the trial. So no bogus planted pubic hair was admitted.
Speaker 2: But this recitation of an alleged transcript of your false
Speaker 2: confession was really all that was presented, because, I mean,
Speaker 2: they couldn't present the physical evidence because all of it
Speaker 2: they knew had already exonerated you. At this point, were
Speaker 2: you worried.
Speaker 3: Going into this? My attorney kept telling me, don't worry,
Speaker 3: don't worry. They can never find you guilty. There's no
Speaker 3: physical evidence. It's impossible for to find you guilty. But
Speaker 3: on the second day of my trial, the prosecutor, even
Speaker 3: though the judge had thrown out the pubycare and stated
Speaker 3: that it was not admissible at my trial, the prosecutor
Speaker 3: still managed to mention it to the jury, saying that
Speaker 3: he had a pubycare that he would later introduce that
Speaker 3: matched me.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't the only time he pulled this type
Speaker 2: of trick in his summation. He did it twice, referring
Speaker 2: to the confession in ways that were either misleading or
Speaker 2: outright lies. In reading the transcripts, the prosecutor Roscoe talked
Speaker 2: about wondering how there was so little blood on the
Speaker 2: drag trail from the truck to the river, and that
Speaker 2: Barry had said in his confession that he had put
Speaker 2: the body into the garbage bag head first, so that
Speaker 2: explained it. But Barry didn't even say head first. He
Speaker 2: said beat first, that her head was not covered. So
Speaker 2: here he is misleading, lying to the jury to bolster
Speaker 2: the state's narrative. Then, at some point in the trial,
Speaker 2: Kim's fire Tedneese, took the stand and confirmed that he
Speaker 2: owned a tool like the alleged murder weapon from Barry's
Speaker 2: false confession, a tire iron. Now, in the confession, Barry
Speaker 2: had said that he threw it in the river, but
Speaker 2: when Tedaneese was asked if it was missing when the
Speaker 2: truck was returned. He said that he hadn't noticed. In
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's summation, he lied about Tedanese's testimony, telling the
Speaker 2: jury that mister Neese had confirmed that the alleged murder
Speaker 2: weapon was missing. None of this information actually holds value,
Speaker 2: as all of it comes from a false confession, but
Speaker 2: using it and lying about it to bolster the state's
Speaker 2: narrative was apparently effective, but not nearly as much as
Speaker 2: the false confession itself.
Speaker 3: They put Jvi on the stand, who took the confession,
Speaker 3: supposedly did a handwritten transcript that he himself wrote out
Speaker 3: of that tape confession, and the prosecutor and jav line
Speaker 3: by line for two and a half days role play
Speaker 3: this confession and in front of the jury, including Jayvi
Speaker 3: from Louisiana getting on the floor of the courtroom as
Speaker 3: if he was Kim Nice and the prosecutor choking him,
Speaker 3: mimicking in front of the jury the confession, and when
Speaker 3: the judge allowed that to happen, I knew without question
Speaker 3: that I was going to be found guilty.
Speaker 1: On part one of our coverage of Barry Beach, you've
Speaker 1: heard about how he was wrongfully convicted. Now Here about
Speaker 1: his epic fight for freedom in Part two, available now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 2: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn and Kevin Wardis,
Speaker 2: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 2: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 2: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 2: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 2: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 2: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
Speaker 2: TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is
Speaker 2: the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with
Speaker 2: Signal Company Number one