2. The Arrest

Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Previously on Murder on Songbird Road.

I thought she was guilty at first, as I reading what the news that.

In Marion, Illinois, an eleven year old girl brutally stabbed death her father's longtime living girlfriend, maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder.

A few hours ago, I charged Julia Beverley, aged twenty nine, of eleven three or four Songbird Road, Marion, with three counts a first degree murder the murder of Jade Murray Beasley, an eleven year old girl.

Most people that kill have a reason, a motive. There's always a motive something, and it doesn't exist here.

It's scary because the person who did it is still out there and nobody seems.

To carened Pacheco and this is murder on Songbird Road. According to Jade Marie Beasley's obituary, the sixth grader was remembered as funny, smart and sassy, fond of playing outside and swimming. She enjoyed art, drawing, painting, and video games.

He wants in living with his mom and his two younger sisters. He lived with me in Carverdale, which is twenty miles away from Marriam. Pretty much, you know, we get to see his siblings not being in the same house. It was obviously bad sad for him that it was in an entirely different situation.

That's Stuart, the biological father of Jaden, Julia Beverly's eldest son. The weekend Jade Beasley was murdered. Jaden was staying with him.

Now, I was gonna have him for a weekend, and then he was going to go back Sunday afternoon evening, I got a call.

From like DCFS.

DCFS, for those not familiar, is the Department of Children and Family Services in Illinois like.

Kings Custody right then, so pretty much, you know, he's just visiting for the weekend.

Then he was with me.

As Will further explain, DCFS would basically prohibit Julia Beverley from physically interacting with her children pending the investigation, so Renee high Tower would be the one who broke the news to her grandson Jaden in person. The night of the murder.

I told his dad that I was coming over that I wanted to tell him, and he said okay. And I got there and I told him that something happened at his house. I said, a man broke in and his mom is okay. And I said, budd he hurt your mom and he hurt Jade. And I said, but Jade, he heard her too bad. So he's looking at me and I said, he's looking a little confused, and I said,

We will dive much more deeply into this later, but Julia Doveley wasn't the only one cut off from her two youngest daughters and the son she was unknowingly carrying at the time of the murder. Her eldest child, Jaden, would lose not only his stepsister Jade and his mother, but eventually all access to his younger siblings. So would Renee high Tower, their maternal grind who had been petitioning

DCFS wanted to talk to him, and I'm like, well, yeah, tell him truth, don't lie.

But there wasn't anything, you know.

TCFS talked him for like half hour and they were like, yeah, okay.

Well we'd left to interview.

But there's no signs or anything of abuse or neglect or anything like those lines.

Which wasn't keeping with all the years Stuart had co parented Jaden with Julia Beverly.

They never had a bad thing to say about his mom.

He was always you know, she was always nice and loving and caring. There was no abuse. We never said anything, no mark nothing. I mean even later on then when he had his younger sisters and other stuff, he never you know, he never had anything bad to say about her.

Suddenly the sole parent in terms of Jaden's day to day, Stuart had to manage the passage of time with his young son's relentless optimism that his mother's incarceration was temporary.

It took two years for the Troy where I mean it, it was a drug out so long, and as sometimes he was telling people that, oh well, once my mom gets out, I'm going back. Even before the trial, he was telling friends or his cousin like, well, I'm going to go back soon my mom gets out, we're back here. There're like, well, I know that's what you want. But even if she gets out, nothing will be the same.

Jaden's father has tried to help him navigate his new reality an uncertain future.

We even talked about stuff like with the news, like there's people that are, you know, innocent, locked up and then you know years later then they're like, oh yeah, whoops, you got the thrown person. Even if your mom gets out, it's not going to be the same. It's still it's going to be different, you know everything. Kind of like try to tell him like your grandma might be too optimistic.

You kind of need to be in the middle.

Because I don't think she did it, but you know what, if she's been in for so long, it's like there's a possibility she doesn't. In his reality, things you're going to go back to normals like that will never go back to normal.

If there was a magic wand waved tomorrow and Julie was out, you wouldn't have any reservation whatsoever about Jaden being with her.

No not right.

I mean, like I've told him, it's like I don't think she did it.

They've never found a weapon.

Or it's like if you step somebody that many times you would have blood splatter with you know, like where's the change clothes, where's this, where's that?

Yeah? Never made sense, Still doesn't make sense.

The accusation that Julia Beverly brutally stabbed her stepdaughter is particularly nonsensical to Beverly's cousin Nicki, who witnessed not only Beverly grow up but eventually interact as both the mother and stepmother.

She loved all her children, even the ones that she didn't give her to. That is one thing that she is extremely good at.

Nicki says she knows Julie extremely well, even for cousins.

She's my maid of honor. He's my best friend. Julia has been my best friend since since she was born.

I am a little bit older, but we grew up together and did everything together. We ama staying cheerleading from little league, you know, all the way through high school.

We went to the same high school with each other pretty much like every weekend at least. We were also close.

There was between me and my siblings, and her and her siblings, who were seven of us, run around my grandma's house all the time, so we.

All grew up together.

We were all extremely close, particularly Nicki and Julia.

We can look at each other and not say a thing and know exactly what the other one.

Is saying, which is why Nicki was the first to know. When Julia found out she was expecting her first child, Jaden, while still in high school.

She was really young.

I think she was about to be eighteen, and she hid it from us for a bit because she was scared, and then obviously you couldn't hide it. She did it on her own for a few years, and still his dad kind of came back into the picture and have more of a presence. I don't want to say she struggle with it, but it's just like any new transition. I know that I did whenever I had my first child.

It's hard.

It's difficult to do it at such a young age. I can't even really imagine. She pretty much had to drop everything to become a mom. She was a great mom and changed her because you're seventeen and you just got to drop all the things that you think are the most important. Things in your life, like your daily high school life that you think is going to be your entire life, or going and hanging out with friends

Home video show Jaden as a toddler playing rock band with a young Julia Beverley jamming on a small plastic guitar as Jaden sings lead. Their energy is loving and relaxed and natural, as is the clip of Beverly and Jaden still a toddler, enjoying the first flakes of a snowfall.

So snowball.

When Nicki and her parents moved from Marion to Massachusetts, Beverly eventually followed, living with Nicki for a period of time.

Jaden was two when she moved out here.

I had to be like twenty or twenty one, because I had met my husband at the time.

She had Jayden out here, Jesus me, Julie and Jane living together.

And so she went back after a few years.

Yes, yeah, I would see. I say it was probably about a year or so. It was it was just a little hard.

Like we were We were here to help her obviously, you know, but it was hard for her, I think, just being so far away from her own mom.

It was soon after Beverly returned to Marion that she met and started dating Mike Beasley.

She was extremely excited when she met him because he had a daughter who was the same age as Jaden. So she was excited because she being a single mom, she thought that it was going to be extremely hard to find somebody to be with. So when she met Mike and found out that he also had a daughter who was the same age, it was almost kind of like amazing because their kids good play together, you know, and they both kind of have the same situation going on.

So she was extremely happy when she met him.

Never Lily voice otherwise with me. Theyble together for eight years.

She actually came to visit you more than once with Jade.

Yes.

Yeah, so she came with Mike and Jade and Jaden, and they came a couple times.

They stayed with my mom one time, and then they came out again for our wedding.

Just tell me a little bit about your observations as to how Julie welcomed Jade into her life and their relationship dynamic.

She was obviously extremely, very wealthy.

When you come in as the girlfriend, you know, she never overstepped any sort of boundaries with her, but she was very much their always there to talk to you, to be supportive of. July treated her like her own, buy things for her as if it was her own child. Never had any sort of complainants about her. They came pretty close.

To the point.

I think she would prefer to stay at Mike and Julie's house over her mother's house. Just from when I was told. She had her own space, had her own room. She was included in all family functions, all things the holidays, pictures.

And things like that.

So I mean she was very much a part of the family, even though they weren't head completing that they were family.

Photos that Renee high Tower has shared appear to back up this assertion, as does Julia Beverly's still existing social media Her Facebook cover photo, now updated by Renee, boasts a banner with hashtag I Stand with Julie. Underneath is a clausee of seven photos, four depicting Jadon and Jade over the years. One shows a very pregnant Beverly as she smiles, her arms warmly wrapped around the backs of each step sibling as they bind down to kiss her

She was actually incredibly patient, probably more patient than me. Motherhood was everything to her.

I mean, she did work from home, so she still had a job as far as like bringing in money into the household, I'm pretty sure she was also the primary breadwinner, but she worked from home as a way to still be extremely present and available to her children. Every waiting moment was dedicated for her children.

It is of note again that Mike and Julie were together for nearly eight years and had already purchased wedding bands. They had planned for both of their daughters and were trying for a third, hoping for a son. Mike shared custody of Jade with her biological mother, Jessica. Before the murder, there had never been any reports of Beverly being violent

Well, she was telling me the story and I was just in disbelief and I was like, oh my god, You've got to tell Mike. They're under the impression this was suicide. And she's looking at me confused, like what I was telling her? What was being said to me? And I was wont through the story and she's just shaking her head and she's crying, and she's telling me how this man came in the house and she said nobody should ever have to see that. She said, no

When Beverly agreed to be questioned at the Williamson County Sheriff's Department without a lawyer present, she also willingly consented to the collection of DNA from both her person and her articles of clothing. We'll dive much more deeply into issues with how that DNA was collected later.

Back to Renee, I got some of my clothes, gave her some little sweatpants, stretch pants and leggings and a hoodie to wear, and she went in the shower and she was in there for a little while. I want to check on her, and I can hear her crying in there, and she told me after she was in their crying because she had blood on the bottom of her feet, and when she got in the shower, the kind of brought it back.

This is actually an important detail. Jade was murdered on an unseasonably warm day, and Beverly had been wearing flip flops. At some point she'd flipped them off and likely walked through blood at the crime scene. Back to Renee, she got out of the shower, I said, you have to tell Mike.

We ended up driving back to Marion to go to Mike's parents house. Called him on the way and said we were on and way over and he said, well, DCFS just called him. They're about to be here too, so you might want to wait a minute. And I said, well, we're right down the street. So and we ended up pulling up almost right at the same time as DCFS, and we sat in the car. It was me, Michael, and Julie.

Quick clarification. Michael is Julie's older brother and an aviation mechanic with the US Navy, not to be confused with her boyfriend and then fiance, Mike.

We sat in the car. Cindy Maguire was her name from DCFS. She came over to the passenger side of my vehicle to talk to Julie, and that's when she informed Julie that she cannot see her children, and she lost it again and she's like no, She's screaming no, because at this point, all she wants to do is hug her family, her children. After some tragedy and horrific tragedy like this, she wants to hug her children, hug Mike and grieve.

What did they tell her.

They said that its protocol is how they termed it, that she has to have no contact with her children. She can have a video visit once a day for fifteen minutes and that's it. That's the contact she gets with her children until this is resolved. So she had a sign of paper to where Mike gets temporary customer of the children so they don't become wards of the state,

In Renee's opinion, Mike was already doubting Beverly's innocence the night of the murder. Subsequent events would reinforce her opinion and had even more painful layers to this tragedy.

They talked, and she got back in the car, and she was just upset. And for the next three or four days she got to talk to Mike once a day for fifteen minutes. On the very first phone call she got to FaceTime with the girls.

Being denied physical contact with her children, compounded by the stress and trauma of the murder, was overwhelming for Beverly. According to Renee, Mike and the girls were staying with his mother, Sheila Jaden remained with his father. Beverly stayed with her mother and grandmother.

She didn't eat anything for two and a half days. I finally forced her to eat a sandwich, and she probably not even half a sandwich. I made her some juice to drink some she had something in her I said, Julie, you got it. You can't not eat. She wasn't eating, she wasn't sleeping, she wasn't drinking.

Would you categorize her as in shock.

Yes, in shock, in horrific grief. I mean, yeah, yes. In the four days she was with me, the food she ate probably equated to the three fourths of a sandwich and a half a cup of liquid in four days. That's what she consumed.

Beverly's already limited access to her daughters would entirely disappear. Five days after the murder, when Julia Beverly was arrested. Renee had been trying to help her daughter remember any details from the day Jade was killed, hoping they would vindicate her with the timeline.

Well, I remember it like it was yesterday. Once she left that police station. She was with me for four days before her arrest. In that four days, she wasn't remembering a lot, and I didn't want to force her because I know what she had been through. But she would give me little bits and pieces that she could put together. It wasn't a clear pay sure, So I told her that fourth day, I said, I want you to sit down and write everything out that she did.

We'll get to the importance of Beverly's recollection that while she started out for Walmart, she never got there. Beverly suddenly recalled in the days that followed Jade Beasley's murder that she actually stopped at Hucks, the closest gas station to her house, because her gaslight came on. Thinking it would prove her daughter's innocence. Renee high Tower wanted to share the information with the police.

I said, Julie, you got to tell them. You're on camera, because as of right now, they're trying to say you never left the house. And she's like, I can't. I already I already invoked an attorney, so I can't speak to them without her. I said, do you want me to tell them? And she's like, well, I don't know if you can, but I guess. So I picked up the phone and I called and asked for Carl Gustantine personally.

That call didn't have the effect high Tower had hoped.

Within an hour and a half, they were knocking at our back door.

We'll be right back with murder on Songbird Road. Now back to Murder Songbird Road.

Cindy Geittman, Carl Gystantine and another officer stepped into my home, my mother's home, through the back door. They said they were there for Julie and they had a warrant for her arrest. A few moments prior to this, we've seen comments on Facebook showing her warrant on the judicial page, and Julie began to panic at that point, and then a few minutes later there was that knock at the door.

I have reached out to both Cindy Geatman and Carl Gustantine. Both have since retired, as have multiple officers and officials involved with the investigation into Jade Beasley's murder and the case against Julia Beverly. Geitman and I spoke on the phone, and she made it exceedingly clear that she did not intend to comment on what would be her first and last time leading a murder investigation back to Renee.

But I found out later when Cindy Geatman walked Julie

Well, Carl Gustantine did not respond to my multiple attempts to question him about receiving the tip Rene High Tower, so she gave him. The police appear to have acted upon it.

After she was arrested. I was furious, so I said, I guarantee they're out there searching right now. So I went past the guest and there they were searching the trash cans somewhere in the dumpster.

And once they pulled the video from the gas station, what did they claim they'd found.

They said that they got Julian camera stopping at the gas station to throw away items, and they see her on camera with this bag that could fit in the palm of her hand, about the size of a diaver, because that's what she had in the bag, a diver. She said, maybe there was two in there, but it was divers but she could clearly see on the camera it could fit in the palm of her hand and threw it away and then she went back to the house to get her cards.

The prosecution would contend that the small bag Beverly discarded contained the murder weapon, blood saturated clothing, and any material she used to clean up any trace of blood on her person. None of these items have ever been located, not at that Hawk's gas station, nor the dump police came for evidence. High Tower continues to take issue with how the incentive to search Hucks was portrayed in court.

There was an officer in trial who testified that he went to Hucks and the defense attorney she asked, well, what made you go there, and he said, oh, I just got a feeling, just got a feeling.

So they set it up to make it look like Julie lied, when it was something that she remembered and you gave as a tip, and then they didn't even attribute it to Julie or to you.

Correct So Gustantine was also on the prosecution's witness list, and if he would have testified then I could have, but they kept him off too.

He didn't testify again.

And so they never disclosed where that tip came from.

Never I've even said this to people on my social media platform and I get called a liar and no, they found out that she lied, and I'm like, okay, well, I've got a text message to my sister to prove it, time stamped and all.

You probably would have phone records showing that you called.

Sure Do and every call is recorded that comes into that police station.

High Tower has indeed showed me text messages and phone records that back up her version of that outreach. Again, to date, Carl Gustantine has not responded to my multiple attempts to reach him. But while Renee's call didn't prevent her daughter's arrest, it didn't provoke it.

The arrest warrant was issued the day before, actually it was signed and issued the day before, and they chose to arrest her on this day because her first appearance it would line up on the same day as Jay's funeral, And that was a calculated decision, I believe, to boost and bolster the emotional outrage of the public because here you have her having her first appearance at the exact same time that the funeral is going on, and they are a parking a lot away from each other.

Criminal defense attorney Bob Mada and I connected with Renee on a call. Hello, Hey, how are you?

I I'm good.

I'm gonna patch and Bob stand by. Hello, Okay, I'm merging us with Renee. Hold on one second, all right, you guys, Bob, Renee, Renee, Bob, so Bob, we have some really interesting updates for you. In the press conference held five days after the murder, the then Williamson County State's attorney states that Julia Beverly's claim she was met by a knife wielding massed assailant were proven false, but Renee high Tower and Julia's supporters have never stopped looking

My private investigator said that he overheard a dispatcher because they come out to his shooting range. He overheard dispatcher saying, I thought we were on our.

Way to the other nine on one call.

Julie's nine one one call was placed at twelve twenty four, so there's supposed to be another call. They subpoena the number one calls. It's not in there. However, there is a incident out in the same area that Julie is at and this call was made at ten thirty for a suspicious person and no way, yes, this is at

This would spur the first of many rabbit holes. Bob and I would go down looking for the knife wielding man, and Julia Beverly claimed she encountered. But this tip led to a specific man, a man now incarcerated for attempting to disarm an officer and arrested multiple times previously, a man who, unlike Julia Beverly, has a history of crimes, mental illness, and a fondness for hunting.

Never in a million trillion years which never suspected Julie of this ever, not one person. As a matter of fact, they thought it was suicide before they even thought about Julie until the police said it was Julie.

I mean, that guy sounds like somebody that we really need to look at.

Yes, man, that is crazy.

If Julia Beverly didn't kill Jade Beasley, someone else did and there was one likely place to start searching. We're heading to Marian.

Yes we are, Yes we are. I'm here for it. I'm ready.

On the next murder on Songbird we travel to Mary in Illinois to sit face to face with Julia Beverly.

She says she wasn't even thinking, and then she's walking.

Through and then she sees the blood in the living room.

She says, oh my god, Jay and encounter a community divided. The woman behind the desk at Starbucks she said it's sad, but she also had her doubts as to whether or not Julie did it before heading to the site of the murder.

Should we go walk it?

I think so.

I think we should. I think we should. All right, let's go, Let's see what's up.

Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Taylor Chaqoine and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Research writing and hosting by Lauren Bright Pacheco. Investigative reporting by Bob Matta and Lauren Bright Pacheco, editing, sound design and original music by Evan Tyer and Taylor Chaqoine. Additional music by Ashra Kurtz. Archival elements courtesy of WSIL News three.