Speaker 1: Oh. Before we begin, please note this series includes talk
Speaker 1: of suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 1: Do you remember this letter? I think I do. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: What do you want me to start? I'm writing to
Speaker 1: you to request the following information in regards to the untimely, violent,
Speaker 1: and unwitnessed death of my daughter Sanda and Bill. There's
Speaker 1: not a day that goes by that I don't think
Speaker 1: of her. This marks forty one years without her, with
Speaker 1: no answers. A few years ago, Joanne Biale sent this
Speaker 1: letter to the Maryland State Police. It was later given
Speaker 1: into me by her distant cousin, who have since gotten
Speaker 1: to know very well. I'm a reporter who covers violence
Speaker 1: against women, and I get a lot of tips about
Speaker 1: stories emails from people who were desperate for a journalist
Speaker 1: to dig into what they believe to be the greatest
Speaker 1: injustice of their lives. When this letter came into my possession,
Speaker 1: I knew there was something important about it. It's kind
Speaker 1: of weird in retrospect, but I immediately began storing it
Speaker 1: next to my passport alongside all my most important documents.
Speaker 1: This letter is the reason why I found myself sitting
Speaker 1: beside Joanne in her living room a year into the pandemic,
Speaker 1: talking about Sandy. And I haven't gone over any of
Speaker 1: this because I figured was starting new here. So we'll
Speaker 1: just go ahead and throw out the questions and I'll
Speaker 1: give you what I can for the answers. Joanne is
Speaker 1: eighty two and lives in rural Maynell, near the coast,
Speaker 1: in a tidy house surrounded by wild blueberry fields. She's
Speaker 1: short and sturdy, with thick white hair cropped around her ears,
Speaker 1: and shiny blue, almost mischievous eyes. I come from a
Speaker 1: long line of short, sturdy women, and I was immediately
Speaker 1: at ease talking to her. These days, Joanne goes to church,
Speaker 1: shops for clothes, visits with her family. Maine is where
Speaker 1: she grew up, the place her family is from, but
Speaker 1: back in the seventies she lived in seat Pleasant, Maryland,
Speaker 1: in Prince George's County with her husband, Ronald, and their
Speaker 1: four kids, Sandy, Michael, Stephen, and Ronnie. Caperani home from
Speaker 1: school that day because he had a sore throat and
Speaker 1: he didn't you know, And that's when the detective came
Speaker 1: to the door and told me what what what happened?
Speaker 1: He said, I've got some uh news that I don't
Speaker 1: think the little fella should know, He said, could you
Speaker 1: send him to your neighbors? And so he proceeded to
Speaker 1: tell me. But where where? They found her? In this polelyard.
Speaker 1: On the morning of February eleven, Frank Middleton arrived at
Speaker 1: a utility pollard about twenty minutes away from Joanne's home.
Speaker 1: To give you some context, pollards are where energy companies
Speaker 1: store those tall wooden poles that are used to support
Speaker 1: power lines. This yard was in a somewhat secluded spot
Speaker 1: off the highway and surrounded by woods, which is why
Speaker 1: it was odd that there was a car parked in
Speaker 1: the lot when Frank arrived around nine am. And this
Speaker 1: this fella had gone to work and found her, and
Speaker 1: he thought she was asleep until he walked up to
Speaker 1: the car and noticed that her glasses were up here
Speaker 1: and she was disarrayed, and um, he knew that she
Speaker 1: was gone. Sandy's car, one blue Ford Pinto, appeared to
Speaker 1: be stuck in the mud. Cardboard had been shoved under
Speaker 1: all four tires, and there were tire tracks all around
Speaker 1: her car like she had been trying to drive away.
Speaker 1: Sandy was in the driver's seat with her keys still
Speaker 1: in the ignition. She had been shot in the right
Speaker 1: side of her abdomen, with an exit wound on the
Speaker 1: left side of her back. She was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: just a month shy of her nineteenth birthday. You know,
Speaker 1: I asked that detective. I said, why wasn't Ronald and
Speaker 1: I called to identify her? He said, but there was
Speaker 1: Streem policeman there that knew who she was. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: isn't that lovely? I'd like to know who the three
Speaker 1: cops were at the at the scene, because when that
Speaker 1: detective told me that, I was furious that we were
Speaker 1: not called immediately to claim her in any way shape
Speaker 1: of fall. We didn't get a chance to see her
Speaker 1: until she was in the funeral Paba. I've never gotten
Speaker 1: over that, and I was really rip shit about that.
Speaker 1: Just a few hours after Sandy's body was discovered, Joanne
Speaker 1: got a knock at the door. A detective told her
Speaker 1: that Sandy was dead and that it appeared she had
Speaker 1: taken her own life. In the short time between finding
Speaker 1: Sandy's body and notifying her family, the cops had already
Speaker 1: developed a working theory Sandy had died by suicide. I
Speaker 1: didn't take any of their crap because I could tell
Speaker 1: that they were hiding something. I says, you know something,
Speaker 1: you can put any damn thing you want down. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that happened that way. And I said, you
Speaker 1: will never make me and my family and my friends
Speaker 1: believe that. So I said, get the hell out of
Speaker 1: my house. And uh. And I wasn't very nice to
Speaker 1: him because I think they were skunking us all the
Speaker 1: way around. From my Heart Radio, I'm Melissa Jolson, and
Speaker 1: this is what happened to Sandy Beale an I Heart
Speaker 1: original podcast, Chapter one, The Girl in the Pollard. This
Speaker 1: is Michael. Yes, hi Michael, This is Stephen. Hi, Stephens,
Speaker 1: how you going to hie? I wanted to meet with
Speaker 1: the Beal family as a whole to learn more about Sandy.
Speaker 1: When we first sat down, I didn't really know anything
Speaker 1: about Sandy's case except for what was in Joanne's letter.
Speaker 1: But I soon learned that the entire bill family shared
Speaker 1: Joanne's suspicions. None of them believed Sandy had died by suicide,
Speaker 1: not back then and not now. I met them at
Speaker 1: Michael's house in the summer of to give you a
Speaker 1: quick sketch of the family tree. Sandy was born first,
Speaker 1: then a year later Michael, then Stephen. A year and
Speaker 1: a half after that, Bang bang bang, as Joanne described it,
Speaker 1: six years later, baby Ronnie was born. Joanne later asked
Speaker 1: her husband Ronald, to get a vasectomy. All three of
Speaker 1: Sandy's brothers live in Maine, within a thirty minute drive
Speaker 1: of Joanne. Still, it's rare for them to get together
Speaker 1: to talk about Sandy. What do we hope to gain
Speaker 1: from all of this? I mean, I think that is
Speaker 1: the question everyone might have. I'd love to hear your
Speaker 1: own answers for it. Well, personally, I have no expectations.
Speaker 1: These are people that's waiting on the sands of time
Speaker 1: to run out on us. I don't expect anybody's gonna
Speaker 1: serve it a day in jail, not even five minutes.
Speaker 1: That's Sandy's youngest brother, Ronnie. He was only nine when
Speaker 1: Sandy died, with almost a decade between them and age.
Speaker 1: They had a special relationship. Sandy doated on Ronnie, buying
Speaker 1: him presence and indulging him in games. In turn, he
Speaker 1: idolized her. Now Ronnie is in his early fifties, and
Speaker 1: he told me his recollections of her were beginning to fade.
Speaker 1: She was wicked smart. I mean, you know, he can
Speaker 1: do anything she wanted, as as you got, always got
Speaker 1: a good grades. David, that's Stephen, Sandy's middle brother. He's
Speaker 1: sixty and runs a printing press for the local newspaper.
Speaker 1: In his spare time, he plays the drums, though he's
Speaker 1: had a hard time finding bandmates who want to play
Speaker 1: heavy metal. When he thinks back to his time with Sandy,
Speaker 1: he remembers himself as a typical, annoying young her brother
Speaker 1: always butting heads with her. It's something that pains him now,
Speaker 1: that wasted time spent fighting. Yeah. I always look at her.
Speaker 1: Is you know the big sister is you know, which
Speaker 1: is kind of weird. I mean because Sandy he was
Speaker 1: she was no about five five something. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: mental image is larger than life. Yeah, Sandy seemed to
Speaker 1: get along, Okay, I mean she for whatever reason, you know,
Speaker 1: she I don't recall of her getting picked on or
Speaker 1: whatever during that time frame. But then again, she regularly
Speaker 1: kick my ass anyway. So lots of people I spoke
Speaker 1: to about Sandy mentioned this element of her personality. She
Speaker 1: was plucky, tough, and Sandy's toughness was an asset in
Speaker 1: her community. Prince George's County, where the Beals lived, is
Speaker 1: located just outside of Washington, d C. If you're in
Speaker 1: downtown d C, all you have to do is drive
Speaker 1: east along Pennsylvania Avenue and you'll eventually cross into Peg County.
Speaker 1: Keep driving for about twenty minutes, and you'll find yourself
Speaker 1: at the Bell's former house in seat Pleasant. A white,
Speaker 1: lower middle class family, the Beals lived in a modest
Speaker 1: home in a less than desirable part of town. The
Speaker 1: family described the neighborhood as sometimes chaotic. Crime and poverty
Speaker 1: were concerns for residents of Seat Pleasant, and you had
Speaker 1: to keep your wits about you, they explained. Joanne stayed
Speaker 1: home with the four kids, and Ronald supported the family
Speaker 1: working as a long haul trucker and doing construction. He
Speaker 1: was often away from home and money was pretty tight.
Speaker 1: He had two jobs. Sometimes he went out he had
Speaker 1: a long haul and the other job was construction. So
Speaker 1: he was pretty busy, and so he did the work.
Speaker 1: He paid the bills. I was to go grocery shopping,
Speaker 1: and I was to take care of the kids in
Speaker 1: the home, and that was it. Sandy, an outgoing girl
Speaker 1: with a knack for making friends, navigated the streets of
Speaker 1: seat pleasant with relative ease. But make no mistakes, she
Speaker 1: would not suffer somebody being wrong to her or messing
Speaker 1: with her. And then you know she was, you know,
Speaker 1: very smart, very pristine in her own way. But you know,
Speaker 1: she was very fierce. I guess it was the best
Speaker 1: way to put it. She didn't like me trying to
Speaker 1: break her hair. She hated that. And even when a
Speaker 1: little girl, and I was so happy because I had
Speaker 1: a little girl, like a bridge, you know, and she
Speaker 1: would take it out and I'd take it back and
Speaker 1: I so after a while, I just let it be straggling.
Speaker 1: She was a queen. She was the oldest and she
Speaker 1: lets you know about it, and she was the boss.
Speaker 1: We all shared one room, but Sandy had her own room,
Speaker 1: and no one was loud in her room but her,
Speaker 1: and unless you had a special permission to get in there.
Speaker 1: That's Michael, Sandy's oldest brother and the sibling who was
Speaker 1: closest to her. He's in his early sixties now and
Speaker 1: lives near the coast with his wife, Becky. When you
Speaker 1: get to know Michael, he has a really gentle demeanor,
Speaker 1: but from the outside he looks tough, like the kind
Speaker 1: of guy whose foot you wouldn't want to accidentally step
Speaker 1: on in a bar. I do remember she like an
Speaker 1: easy bake oven, and we used to make a bunch
Speaker 1: of junk and eat it. And she had a makeup
Speaker 1: mirror and you know, different things as you know, as
Speaker 1: a young girl, stuff like that. We really seldom ever
Speaker 1: thought about anything. I mean, we were just really connected.
Speaker 1: And actually when we were I think I was fifteen
Speaker 1: or so, she might have been sixteen when we found
Speaker 1: out she was actually adopted. Joanne got pregnant with Sandy
Speaker 1: Young around her eighteenth birthday. Sandy's biological father wasn't interested
Speaker 1: and become a dad, but Ronald, a suitor of Joanne's
Speaker 1: who should written letters to while he was deployed overseas,
Speaker 1: was up for the task. He married Joanne when she
Speaker 1: was eight months pregnant and raised Sandy as his own child.
Speaker 1: When my mom told us that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: at first, I didn't believe it. I was like, what
Speaker 1: are you kid me? All this time my dad treated
Speaker 1: everybody equal. And then after that, I when I found
Speaker 1: that out, I was just even more in love with her,
Speaker 1: and you know, as a sister type, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, wow, um. She She asked a lot of
Speaker 1: questions like what happened, why, and different things like that,
Speaker 1: but the answers she got were it was enough to
Speaker 1: satisfy her. Is like, Okay, Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna stop loving my dad. You know, whether
Speaker 1: or not he's my real dad or not, he's He's
Speaker 1: always been my dad and he always will be my dad.
Speaker 1: So I think we kind of got tighter. If anything,
Speaker 1: We've been through a lot in this family. I say,
Speaker 1: the Good Lord was good to me to give me
Speaker 1: a life to live this long. We know what we've
Speaker 1: been through and it's been hell. I hope they we
Speaker 1: find out something. For over forty years, the Beal family
Speaker 1: has believed that Sandy was a victim of a violent crime,
Speaker 1: a belief fueled by the suspicion that her death was
Speaker 1: covered up. Here's Stephen, the guilty carry around over time
Speaker 1: that ship turns a fucking anger. You passed you son
Speaker 1: him a bit, she stole from me, You sold my family.
Speaker 1: That's since it's put that category unforgivable ship, Sandy's sudden
Speaker 1: death was disorienting to her family. She lived at home
Speaker 1: and her family saw her every day. They were intimately
Speaker 1: familiar with her behaviors, her moods, and her values. The
Speaker 1: Sandy they knew was optimistic and ambitious, and, like many
Speaker 1: teen girls her age, eager for her real life, her
Speaker 1: adult life to begin. She was popular, she worked part
Speaker 1: time at the mall. She didn't appear depressed or withdrawn
Speaker 1: or hopeless. Suicide it didn't align with her personality. And again,
Speaker 1: she had being you know, as passionate as she wasn't
Speaker 1: fierce as she was. I just would not have thought
Speaker 1: that she would want to do something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: I just never got it. Could not wrap my fucking
Speaker 1: head around her doing it. Suicide seemed completely out of
Speaker 1: character for Sandy, and the crime scene, instead of bringing closure,
Speaker 1: just raised more questions. Police said Sandy had shot herself
Speaker 1: in the right side of her abdomen, but the teen
Speaker 1: was left handed. The family told me how they tried
Speaker 1: to put themselves in Sandy's shoes, imagining how she would
Speaker 1: have shot herself. Sitting in the front seat of her
Speaker 1: subcompact Ford Pinto with a steering wheel in front of her, chest.
Speaker 1: The gun would have been too heavy for Sandy to
Speaker 1: hold and fire with her non dominant right hand. Instead,
Speaker 1: she would have had to reach across her body with
Speaker 1: her left hand to aim the gun at her right side.
Speaker 1: It seemed like a clumsy way to shoot oneself. When
Speaker 1: I was told what was happening, what had happened, I
Speaker 1: was like, it's no way. It's just it's just no
Speaker 1: way that it's gonna be. I couldn't believe it. Michael
Speaker 1: was familiar with the gun found in Sandy's car. In fact,
Speaker 1: all the kids in the Beale family knew about the gun.
Speaker 1: It was owned by Sandy's father. Was a long barrel,
Speaker 1: chrome black handle, black Hawk model. Very nice looking gun,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said it was. It was long,
Speaker 1: and it was always loaded with hollow point bullets. It
Speaker 1: was actually white something to shoot. It was so powerful
Speaker 1: that when I first shot it, had to hold it
Speaker 1: with both hands because I didn't know what to expect
Speaker 1: out of it. It was because of their strong familiarity
Speaker 1: with the gun and it's large Cumberson quality that the
Speaker 1: Bills were convinced Sandy could not have used it on herself.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of those three seven. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know they have a lot of recoil, a lot largest
Speaker 1: handguns you're gonna get. Yeah, you think dirty Harry mag
Speaker 1: You know the old movie is like how pulls out
Speaker 1: that it's about that length gun recoil with a senate fly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just physics and her left hand have never gone
Speaker 1: over that far to be able to do that, And
Speaker 1: the unbelievable part about her and committing suicide was just
Speaker 1: too far out. The family also thought the location of
Speaker 1: the wound was strange. Why would someone intent on suicide
Speaker 1: shoot themselves off center in the stomach and as small
Speaker 1: as she was in the in the size of that
Speaker 1: gun on her non dominant hand would have been would
Speaker 1: have been really hard. I mean, if if that's what
Speaker 1: you plan on doing, was was killing yourself, that was
Speaker 1: certainly you know, why don't you just slowly walk through
Speaker 1: a fire and see if you'll eventually, you know, burn
Speaker 1: the death. We don't know why Sandy had her father's
Speaker 1: gone with her that evening, but her family is convinced
Speaker 1: that whatever she was doing, she wasn't alone. When the
Speaker 1: Bill's got her clothes back from police, they noticed that
Speaker 1: she dressed up nicely, wearing brown gaucho slacks, a white blouse,
Speaker 1: and calf high black suede boots that her mom had
Speaker 1: given her for Christmas. Sandy's nails were recently manicured, painted
Speaker 1: with pale pearlyzed nail polish. To the family, her choice
Speaker 1: of outfit suggested she was meeting someone that night who
Speaker 1: else they wanted to know could have been in the
Speaker 1: Pollard with Sandy. Here's what they think happened. Sandy was
Speaker 1: shot by someone else sitting beside her in the passenger seat.
Speaker 1: This would explain the location of the gunshot and the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the bullet from the right side of Sandy's
Speaker 1: abdomen to the left side of her back. It was
Speaker 1: the cardboard found under the wheels of Sandy's car that
Speaker 1: solidified their doubts. The cardboard told a story of a
Speaker 1: girl who was trying to leave the Pollard that night,
Speaker 1: not one intent on suicide. My name is Kim Parmer.
Speaker 1: I am a second cousin of Sandy Belle, and we
Speaker 1: are in the home of where the origin of all
Speaker 1: of our family began, and John's Port, Maine. I met
Speaker 1: Kim at a hotel just up the street from Joanne's house.
Speaker 1: Kim is a licensed therapist, and it comes through and
Speaker 1: the way she communicates. She makes good eye contact and
Speaker 1: speaks carefully, with kindness and warmth. She's the type of
Speaker 1: person who makes you feel like you could tell her
Speaker 1: anything and she'd never judge you. These days, Kim now
Speaker 1: sixty four, lives in Texas and she's got a solid
Speaker 1: tan to show for it. But she comes to Maine,
Speaker 1: the place of her birth, whenever she can to see
Speaker 1: the bells. See Andy has a grave marker here too,
Speaker 1: and she visits it when she can. So this is
Speaker 1: a map of um just Prince George's county, in the
Speaker 1: area where she lived, and based on all the information
Speaker 1: that I have of her date books or letters or
Speaker 1: anything that had an address on it or that I
Speaker 1: could identify, I plotted it onto the map. Where she lived,
Speaker 1: where she went to school, where she died, where she worked.
Speaker 1: This was just her little world. Kim showed me the
Speaker 1: material she's gathered over the years, medical records, court documents,
Speaker 1: freedom of Information Act requests, spreading them out on a
Speaker 1: hotel bed for me to look through. She's the detective
Speaker 1: of the family, inquisitive, diligent, and fixated on this idea
Speaker 1: of justice. Joanne and I just stayed in touch intermittently
Speaker 1: over the years, and they started sending me stuff. I
Speaker 1: started I was asking so many questions there, like here,
Speaker 1: just take it. And so that's you know, these files
Speaker 1: of stuff that I have now. Kim is the entire
Speaker 1: reason why I started looking into the story, why I
Speaker 1: learned the name of Sandy Beale in the first place.
Speaker 1: She's the one who gave me Joanne's letter, and I
Speaker 1: just learned to keep Sandy's summary with me. I carried
Speaker 1: it with me all the time, so if I ever
Speaker 1: met anyone an investigator, whatever, I I just passed them out.
Speaker 1: I first met Kim at a domestic violence conference in Texas.
Speaker 1: I was there to moderate a panel with Lorraina Bobbitt,
Speaker 1: whose experience of domestic abuse and marital rape had been
Speaker 1: badly overshadowed by the act that had made her infamous.
Speaker 1: If you don't know her story, I encourage you to
Speaker 1: look it up. Something I said that night must have
Speaker 1: resonated with Kim, because immediately after the panel she approached me.
Speaker 1: Remember going up to you afterwards and almost running up
Speaker 1: there and trying to get there before other people because
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to get bombarded with people
Speaker 1: asking questions, and I thought, well, who knows, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: she would find this intriguing. I did. As a reporter,
Speaker 1: I've written more stories than I can count about women
Speaker 1: who have died violent deaths, and I've spent time with
Speaker 1: their families as they've begun the grieving process. But usually
Speaker 1: those cases had answers, however unsatisfying, they might feel. This
Speaker 1: was a true mystery, one that had persisted for over
Speaker 1: four decades. The Bell family was stuck in the unknown.
Speaker 1: I kept finding myself looking at a photo of Sandy
Speaker 1: that Kim gave me along with Joanne's letter. It's a
Speaker 1: black and white portrait Sandy's high school graduation photo. She
Speaker 1: has long, blonde, feathered hair with a middle part that
Speaker 1: makes you think a fair faucet. Her mouth is poised
Speaker 1: into a half smile, and she stares off camera like
Speaker 1: something in the background amuses her. Almost everyone I spoke
Speaker 1: to about Sandy mentioned how pretty she was, especially her
Speaker 1: long blonde hair, and while she got attention for her looks,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem to give her a big head. She
Speaker 1: was just genuinely nice and friendly to those around her.
Speaker 1: That's the Sandy Kim remembers. We didn't meet until we
Speaker 1: were fourteen. The two girls were only six months apart,
Speaker 1: and their friendship was a defining one. And we headed
Speaker 1: off and went back to her bedroom like teenagers do,
Speaker 1: and we sat on her bed and we just started
Speaker 1: talking and just loved her from the start. Kim and
Speaker 1: Sandy met for the first time shortly after Kim moved
Speaker 1: to Maryland, to a neighborhood about an hour from the Bells.
Speaker 1: The two girls spent their early teenage years going back
Speaker 1: and forth to each other's houses and trading worlds. Living
Speaker 1: in Maryland was you know, you would think that it's
Speaker 1: this preppy, kind of wonderful place with Annapolis and preppy
Speaker 1: clothes and everything. But I look back now and those
Speaker 1: are some of the most traumatic, scarious times of my life.
Speaker 1: The thanks I got exposed to it at that age.
Speaker 1: While Kim was technically older by a few months, Sandy
Speaker 1: often played the role of protector. And I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to avoid it right now because i don't want to cry,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to okay. Um. So, at fourteen, I'm
Speaker 1: in this new school and it was exciting and everything,
Speaker 1: and that um, my mom had to come pick me
Speaker 1: up one night because I was at a friend's house
Speaker 1: at a playground in the middle of a cold a
Speaker 1: sack and I'm just like waiting for my mom and
Speaker 1: this guy walks up and I recognize him because he's
Speaker 1: on the football team. He's a senior on the football team.
Speaker 1: And I, to this date don't know how it unfolded,
Speaker 1: but before I knew it, he had his hands down
Speaker 1: my pants and I I just remember freezing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hadn't even been kissed yet by a boy at all,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking all these people they're looking out their
Speaker 1: windows watching this guy do this to me, and I
Speaker 1: just associated. And so that weekend I went to go
Speaker 1: see Sandy and I was telling her about it, and
Speaker 1: I was really upset about it, and she got pissed
Speaker 1: and she's like, I'm going to take care of this
Speaker 1: for you. Kim told me that A few days later,
Speaker 1: Sandy appeared out of the blue. She had driven an
Speaker 1: hour to Kim's neighborhood to confront the football player who
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted Kim. Sandy was ready for a fight, but
Speaker 1: he was nowhere to be found. It didn't matter to
Speaker 1: Kim though, the fact that Sandy showed up for her
Speaker 1: it was enough. That's the part that I remember the most,
Speaker 1: And I'm just I never had been around anybody like
Speaker 1: that that protected me like that. She I knew she
Speaker 1: was going to take care of me. It was a
Speaker 1: very short relationship because she lost her life. A few
Speaker 1: years later. Kim left Maryland to go to college in
Speaker 1: Illinois while Sandy was still in high school. The distance
Speaker 1: led the two girls to fall out of frequent contact. Still,
Speaker 1: after police found Sandy's body, Kim was one of the
Speaker 1: first people that joined called to let her know what
Speaker 1: had happened. I just remember getting that call from Joanne
Speaker 1: that Sandy had died, and I just remember being shocked
Speaker 1: and like, what do what do you mean? You know?
Speaker 1: Eighteen year olds don't die from a gunshot wound. Kim
Speaker 1: tried desperately to get back to Maryland for the funeral,
Speaker 1: but couldn't afford the journey. I remember looking into the
Speaker 1: flights and they were way too expensive. So I looked
Speaker 1: into the train, but it was ninety dollars from Chicago
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. And it should have it could
Speaker 1: have just been ten thousand. I didn't have it She
Speaker 1: missed the funeral, but kept in regular contact with Joanne.
Speaker 1: She died on the eleventh, on a Friday, very early
Speaker 1: in the morning. But she had gone out the tenth
Speaker 1: Thursday night, so something happened like right at midnight. She
Speaker 1: was probably alone for eight or nine hours, hurting and
Speaker 1: shot and dark. She had to be scared to death.
Speaker 1: Just that should matter happen to anybody. Joanne was notified
Speaker 1: of Sandy's death when a detective came to her house.
Speaker 1: He asked if she and her husband, Ronald could come
Speaker 1: to the precinct later that day see when he came
Speaker 1: into tell us, tell me what happened. He said, when
Speaker 1: your husband gets home, will you guys come over to
Speaker 1: the barracks. And everything was laid out on the table.
Speaker 1: Sandy's personal belongings, items collected from her car were spread
Speaker 1: out like evidence for her parents to see. And among
Speaker 1: her things was a letter. It was written to a
Speaker 1: man named Doug and addressed to his place of work,
Speaker 1: the Maryland State Police Department. He had a uniform on.
Speaker 1: He gave her a sweet talk, and it went to
Speaker 1: the surprise of her family. Sandy was in a relationship.
Speaker 1: Doug was ten years older than her and married with
Speaker 1: a young child. This discovery agitated Sandy's grieving parents and
Speaker 1: left them with a slew of questions, but at the precinct,
Speaker 1: Joanna Ronald were left with the impression that the investigation
Speaker 1: was basically complete, no more answers would be forthcoming. It's
Speaker 1: calm for police to speak with the boyfriend in unnatural
Speaker 1: deaths such as this. When women are murdered, it's far
Speaker 1: more likely to be at the hands of a husband
Speaker 1: or boyfriend than anyone else. But as far as Joanne knew, Dug,
Speaker 1: the state trooper, was never interviewed in the course of
Speaker 1: the investigation, which seemed particularly odd when you considered the
Speaker 1: location of Sandy's death. The Pepco utility yard was only
Speaker 1: a mile down the road from the State Police barracks
Speaker 1: where Doug worked, and as the family soon learned, the
Speaker 1: Pollard was a popular State trooper hangout. And then the
Speaker 1: place where she died. Um, that was the most revealing
Speaker 1: to see that literally there across the street from each other,
Speaker 1: the Maryland State Police barracks of the man that she
Speaker 1: was dating, and then the place that she died. That
Speaker 1: was a well known place where police gathered to you know,
Speaker 1: I guess have privacy for whatever reason. How police do
Speaker 1: their jobs in the aftermath of an unexpected death can
Speaker 1: have a profound and lasting impact on the families of victims.
Speaker 1: Sandy's death was a defining moment for the Beal family,
Speaker 1: but what came next, what they feel was an absence
Speaker 1: of a proper investigation, compounded their trauma. Without confidence in
Speaker 1: the police, the Beal family suspected a conspiracy. A guide
Speaker 1: for investigators published by the Department of Justice in explains
Speaker 1: how essential it is to ensure that the proper steps
Speaker 1: and procedures are taken at the scene of a death. Quote,
Speaker 1: A few things in our democracy are as important as
Speaker 1: ensuring that citizens have confidence in their institutions in a crisis.
Speaker 1: For many individuals, the death of a loved one is
Speaker 1: just such a crisis. I wanted to understand how the
Speaker 1: family and the police could have such starkly different interpretations
Speaker 1: of the same events. This chasm, I felt deserved scrutiny.
Speaker 1: One thing I was sure of the Bell family, even
Speaker 1: after forty five years, was adamant that there was something
Speaker 1: suspicious about Sandy's death, and because of that they had
Speaker 1: endured decades of uncertainty, and to be honest, I sensed
Speaker 1: it too. I thought it was strange that Sandy was
Speaker 1: shot in the stomach, and I questioned whether she would
Speaker 1: have been able to kill herself the way cops said
Speaker 1: she did. It seemed like there was more to Sandy's
Speaker 1: story than her family knew after so many years. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what kind of answers I'd find. But tucked
Speaker 1: away in the tattered stack of papers Kim collected were
Speaker 1: clues to Sandy's past, clues that offered me a rare
Speaker 1: glimpse into Sandy's private life, clues written by Sandy herself,
Speaker 1: if she hadn't written that damn note to ship head.
Speaker 1: On our next episode, we learned about Doug and his
Speaker 1: relationship with Sandy, and I speak to the detective in
Speaker 1: charge of Sandy's case. I would compare my skills as
Speaker 1: a homicide detective against anybody in the world. Scotland Yard,
Speaker 1: New York City, anywhere, Fraud, Atlanta where they're loaded, rhythm,
Speaker 1: anywhere you go, there's nobody, there's nobody any better. It
Speaker 1: turns out he had a lot to say. What happened
Speaker 1: to Sandy Beale is hosted by Me Melissa Jolson. It's
Speaker 1: written and produced by me and Katrina Norvelle. The podcast
Speaker 1: is edited by Abu Safar. Sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistance
Speaker 1: by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu A s
Speaker 1: I M A d O. Thanks so much for listening.