8. The Evidence

Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Previously on Murder on Songbird Road. Julia Beverly's nine to one one call wasn't the only one of interest on the day of Jade's murder.

And this call was made at ten thirty for a suspicious person. No way. He was out there belligerent talking about harming somebody.

And it looks like there were two calls.

The police were responding to Julie Beverly's call, but it looks like Marion police were already en route to a call about a male in all black.

But I did overhear one of the officers state that we had a ninety one one call. They were looking for a person in a dark hoodie in dark hands, suspiciously running through backyard.

There was a guy in a mask or a person in a mask running through the backyard at that time, and he made that call. He said, I made the nine to one one call.

The property that's adjacent to the murder scene with multiple bodies of water, a heavily wooded area, and now what we're hearing a makeshift encampment for transient people and the police don't check it.

That's what I can't understand.

Jason Bom Bob Mada, Bob, Jason, nice.

To meet you.

Man.

We have this adversarial system right where the prosecution's trying to win and the defense is trying to defend their client.

What we need is an inquisitorial system.

I'm Lauren brad Pacheco and this is Murder on Songbird Road. Obtaining the trial transcripts and Julia Beverley's interrogation video had been a long, frustrating and arduous process. However, once we had them, they provided incredible insights into the prosecution's case against Beverly, particularly regarding the investigation. Would you date your name so we.

Have voice identifications, Julia Bethley?

Can you give me your day of birth Julia.

For twenty three ninety one?

And do you have a middle initial E B, E B E LA?

All right?

And the ninety one four, twenty three, four.

Twenty three and ninety one right, awesome.

I'm going to ask you.

Can you start all over from the beginning what happened home?

Oh?

Wait, wait, you sorry?

You did?

I need to read the nine of one to the left of seated across from two detectives at a small table in a compact interrogation room. A sweatshirt clad Beverly waved her rights to remain silent and to an attorney before agreeing to be questioned for what would end up being ours.

Do you wish to.

Speak with those today?

Many get your signature right now on your line.

The prosecution emphasized her staid demeanor during the investigation, but Beverly's emotions are evident when she speaks about finding Jade.

I realized I didn't have my cards with me. I turned around and came back home. Whenever I got home, I saw the front door with open. As I went to in, he came out and tried to grab the knife from him. And at that time, just multiple things, They're trying to grab them and stuff, and you got cut on my hand. At that point he just ran off. I ran in the house, tall boys.

Everywhere.

I ran to my dosthroom to grab my rag. I'll white my hand real quick because it was bleeding, and I ran to go find Jade when I found her in the bath groom.

Before we delve deeper, let's recap the key bad facts that ultimately led to Beverly's conviction for the murder of Jade Beasley. We have she left Jade alone, she left the dogs outside. She said she made it to Walmart. That is the number one thing that people who've listened to the podcast have hit me up with. They've said, why did she lie? Why did she lie? The bulk of the case against Beverly was built on the foundation

When was it that you realized you didn't have your cards? When I brought to Walmart, pulled out my purse and I was checking my phone, and that's when I realized I didn't.

Have any of my cards with me. Okay, And then you came back home. Yeah, okay.

Later in the interrogation, she's asked for more specifics about that Walmart trip.

Did when you went to Walmart?

Did you go into Walmart?

No, I I didn't even get out cause the Finemart pitched up my phone and realized I didn't have any of my cards with me.

Okay, but you were in the parking lot.

Yeah, just a parking moort.

Okay.

On face value, the Walmart story appears to be a lie. A quick aside. I had actually questioned Beverly extensively about that Walmart trip over the phone the day before. And you've mentioned the fact that lying is never good, but lying to the police is particularly bad.

Well, I mean, if you're trying to get yourself arrested and charged, that's the number one way to do it. But again, I cannot stress this enough. It's so easy to sit here in your chairs, or in your car, or in your bed or wherever you're listening to this podcast and think, well, I would never lie to the police in that situation. I would tell the truth. And

I have suffer from that same delusion, because it wouldn't be the first thing that I'd think of.

Really, the question for me always with respect to when somebody in that situation lies, and we see it all the time, is are they lying because they are in protection mode? Or are they lying for a situation like what Julie's talking about happening like her mind, because that was her plan.

She thought that's what she was going to do.

When is the first time she mentions the Walmart stop? Is it initially before she's brought into the station, or is it when she's being interrogated.

It is I think on scene that she said that's where she was going. She was heading to town, and then her brain appears to have just filt in the missing pieces. So by the time they're in the interrogation, she's saying where she always parks because that's the easiest place for her to unload the kids without feeling like someone's going to park right next to her. Now, I did push her in the conversation we had yesterday about that,

The bigger issue for me initially was the gap in time from the time that she gets home till the time that she calls nine to one one. That was something that was tough for me to try to stretch it out.

Remember, according to the prosecution's timeline, Beverly failed to dial nine to one one for roughly thirty minutes after returning home.

This period of time, it's hard to account for all of it. That has always kind of been my one one thing more than anything else. Like, I completely understand that when Julia decides that, oh my god, they're coming after me, they think I'm the one who did this, that she'd try to get herself away from that house for longer.

If you're in her shoes.

And she's gone what fifteen to twenty minutes, you would realize, Okay, well, that seems crazy that somebody like snuck in and did this in the time that I just happened to leave the house.

I think that that would probably be running through your mind.

I agree with you that it's suspect, but we unfortunately are at the disadvantage of having to confirm the state's timeline because the defense never challenged.

It right, and it's it's problematic, but it's still explainable to me. Because you cannot know how you will respond to a situation like that unless.

You're in it. People can speculate all day long.

I like to think that if I or on the bus or a subway or on an airplane and somebody pulled out a shank, that I would jump out of my seat and I'd go tackle that person and save the day.

I've had that kind of fantasy dream a million times. Would I do that in real life? I have no idea.

You mentioned the gap in time, and that comes up in the interrogation. She actually isn't asked about it. She just offers that I found.

Her unless she could possibly not beat reading, and then at that point just was waiting in the kitchen. I know, I just kind of went to shut down panic mode. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I needed to do something for her to do.

Yeah, Julie shutting down as plausible when you have all of those things trying to work their way around in your mind and you're trying to make sense of it.

I could see that being crippling. I can see that causing somebody to just freeze up, to freak out.

The word freeze immediately made me recall conversations I'd had with three longtime friends of Beverly, Hillary, Katie, and Leah during my first trip to Marian. Here are their combined takes on that lapse of time before Beverly called nine one one.

I could see her freezing, like just in horror. I can see her just in total shock, like frozen, and I can picture her that way.

I can't even imagine how she even got the phone to call. I wouldn't have even had it in me.

Incidentally, that's Leah, a former military police officer who, like Julie, is mixed race and was singled out while attending Beverly's trial, but we'll get into that later in Julie's shakes.

So so how she was able to dial the phone Onnestly, I'm so.

Proud of her.

I know for a fact that oh Gosh, broke down. She can't. She's just very emotional. She can't handle any kind of thing without crying.

What seemed like five seconds to her was probably twenty minutes. She's a thinker, so she had everything going far. She had I'm the stepmom, I'm the one who found her. She had, I'm the mixed one in this white family. I am the one of color in this white family in this hick southern Illinois town. My girl that I raised is gone. How are my kids going to be effective? She probably had every bit of that running through her mind.

Let's not forget she was attacked by an intruder walking into her home, then found her daughter dead. She is in shock. No one can tell you how they would respond in that situation. I've been in a lot of stressful situations, and I've completely shut down at times where I wasn't even able to speak, just cry. And I'm not as soft as Julie.

Murder on Songbird Road. We'll be back after the break. Now back to Murder on Songbird Road. Back to Bob and his take on the time gap before the nine to one one call.

When I first read the Coburger probabill cause Affidavid was a phrase that was used, and I think they called it frozen shock phase. It was the exact same circumstance.

Bob is referencing the twenty twenty two Idaho four killings, in which four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in an off campus residence.

The roommate who saw the suspected killer walking out had the bushy eyebrows and then in that case doesn't call nine to one one. Ever, nine to one one didn't get called till just about noon the following day. She sees this stranger in the house at four am, four thirty am and doesn't make the call. They use the words she was in frozen shock phase. That one's explainable to me. It's still a bad fact.

Though.

The injuries Beverly claimed resulted from a struggle with the knife wielding intruder she says she encountered at the front door, along with others she attributed to self harm, were also under scrutiny. There was a bitemark on her arm, which Beverly attributed to a self inflicted bite. That's when the state brought in something that makes you and I both grown, and that is bitemark evidence because it has been debunked

The DNA on the arm to me, was probably the smoking gun in this case, in conjunction with the lies about Walmart out of physical evidence that it existed that DNA that they claimed that they that tested positive as to being Jades, but they didn't go so far as to figure out what the source was they didn't figure out if it was saliva blood. It's inexplicable to me, like, how are you not figuring that out.

Nonetheless, an implication was made, supported by the dentist's observations that the bite mark was caused by Jade as she struggled for her life. However, it's important to remember that the prosecution also argued that Beverly had thoroughly cleaned herself after the murder to eliminate any evidence from her body.

Here's Bob, that's going to be the primary wound that you're going to try to clean off if you know that Jade bit you. So again, it's insane to think that that would remain the one area where they found Jade's DNA, because it would have been the one area that she would have been sure to have cleaned off the most thoroughly.

Furthermore, in twenty twenty two, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reviewed the scientific foundations of bitemark analysis, concluding there was insufficient data to support its validity as a forensic technique. But what's even more significant the ARMSWAB taken from Beverly on the day of the murder, which the prosecution used to tie the bitemark to jade, despite the

It's unbelievable to me.

What's also hard to believe is who was deciding what evidence was or wasn't tested. A particular excerpt from the preliminary hearing transcript stood out to us right away. In it, Julie Beverly's defense attorney is cross examining Cindy Geittman, the lead detective. It's also worth noting again that this was Geatman's first and last time leading a murder investigation, as she has since retired. Bob and I will read that exchange for batim.

So every piece of physical evidence would have at least come into your journey.

Stiction.

You were the one that decides what goes to the lab for testing.

Correct incorrect.

Who does make that decision?

At the time, at the beginning of trial, we were using the Williamson County States Attorney's office, and Assistant State's Attorney Lisa Irvin was the one that directed me on what evidence to send to the state Police Lab for testing.

Okay, do you have any independent discretion in your own investigation to determine what items should or should not be tested, or what items you would suggest be tested.

I suggested items, and by my training it was I was supposed to use her as the final decision on what items were taken to the state lab. So was the prosecution essentially dictating the scope of the lead investigator's investigation. I've reached out multiple times to the current State's attorney for clarification on whether this is standard protocol in Williamson County, but to date I've yet to receive a response. Meanwhile, Bob's not exactly shocked.

I mean, there's some truth to it.

They can't test everything, and they are allowed to cherry pick evidence. They are allowed to pick and choose, even though in theory they do have unlimited resources and they do have a state lab that they're sending these things to. When you're talking to lay people about it, They're not going to like the answer. Well, they should be testing everything. We're trying to get to the truth here, But the reality is that they just don't test everything.

There's everything, and then there's what you would absolutely assume they had tested, because it doesn't make sense that they didn't test things like Julia Beverly's nail scrapings. If you're so sure that she is guilty, why wouldn't you test the swabs of her fingers on her hands, which were covered with blood from what she contends were her defensive wounds when she was met by the assailant, but what the state contends were wounds that she sustained while she

It's unexplainable.

You're asking me to answer a question that I couldn't possibly answer because it makes no sense at all. Like you said, it either opens and shuts the case immediately because she's got Jade's skin under her fingernails and the case is done, or it's somebody else's What I take from it, more than anything else is not that the state was cherry picking evidence that they wanted to test it because they wanted to keep a very narrow focus

I'm going to go in.

I'm at least making a record of it, even if the judge is going to deny it. I'm making a record because you know what, that's powerful on appeal.

I was just going to say, I think that a lot of people don't understand that your hands are tied on appeal by things that were raised as issues during trial. As we've seen, we have some very real issues, but the fact that they weren't raised by her defense attorney means that they cannot be tackled in the appeal. Honestly, the way in which her newborn son was immediately removed while she was a pre trial detainee speaks volumes to me in terms of lack of presumption of innocence. That

Can you describe him for it?

As black clothes, I mean, average bill, maybe a little muscular.

Not I mean, couldn't really tell.

He had like a fe mask so I could see from here, I could tell he's white.

And then.

You little taller and me maybe a few inches or so.

Beverly has always described the male she says she encountered that December day as around five foot five or so. But as mentioned before, why if the guy is a fictional scapegoat, wouldn't she have made a made up man sound more imposing. Granted, Beverly's only four foot eleven, but the average height for American men is five feet nine inches, and her then fiance, Mike Beasley stands about six foot Why if she was said on creating someone else to blame. Would she have said this to police.

Always, I've lest her.

You were there with her, you were there for her.

I should to just take her Wedsday.

Co In the interrogation, Beverly even says, this is my fault. I should have taken her with me. This is my fault, which speaks to her innocence. I mean that speaks to her innocence. It does, so does something else. You'll remember from our last episode that police were advised of a male fitting the description Beverly gave in terms of clothing. From the CAD reports, Marian advised they saw a male wearing a black hoodie walking on Buckley about fifty yards

Officer Welgi, I believe, advised for me to check on a person that was wearing a black hoodie or a black jacket that was walking on Buckley Road.

I believe is the name of the road. So I did that.

So Officer Welgi went to the residence.

Yeah, he continued on, and I stopped.

You stopped. Did you get out of your car?

Yes?

I did.

And did you talk to the person in the black hoodie?

Yes? I did.

Did you identify that person?

I don't believe I identified her. Uh?

Was it female?

Yes? Okay.

Did you speak with her?

Yeah?

She was walking your dog or looking for her dog or something to do with her dog.

She was looking for a.

Dog in the area, and you were able to confirm she lived in that area.

Yes, she's a resident.

Okay, After you spoke with a female, did you what did you do next?

I continued to Songbird to assist Officer Welgi.

Here's Beverly's defense attorney's cross examination, Officer Sloan, Did you prepare a written report in this case?

Yes, ma'am I did.

In that report. Did you mention any contact with this individual wearing a black hoodie on Buckley Road?

No?

I did not.

Did you when you stopped to identify this person? Did you get a name?

I do not believe so.

Did you get an address?

I do not believe so.

How long did this contact occur?

Guessing probably moments, A couple of minutes.

Maybe like a whole couple of minutes.

I assume I didn't. I didn't. I didn't time it.

Okay, did this person have a dog with them?

I don't recall seeing a dog.

Okay, so if you reported back that this individual was walking a dog, that would have been an error.

I said she was either walking a dog or she said something she was walking or looking for her dog or something.

But you don't recall if the dog was there.

I do not believe so.

But this person was dressed in black? Is that correct?

She had a black hoodie on.

All right, So this, to me is such an interesting exchange because Officer Sloan didn't get her name or address, but knew she was a resident, couldn't remember if she was walking a dog or looking for a dog, but remembered the color of her hoodie, and did not make any official note or report of this interaction.

Yeah, it's got zero evidentiary value. Again, themes should have filed emotion in Lemonae barring this entire line of testimony.

The only reason that.

Mudge asked that question was in order to say that, oh, yeah, I saw a woman in a black hoodie. I spoke to her. She was looking for her dog or she was walking her dog, to just discredit the black hoodie situation. Oh yeah, we found the person.

That It wasn't a guy, it was a woman. She lives in the neighborhood. But I didn't get her name. I don't remember she had a dog. Didn't get her address, but she lives in the neighbor It seems really disingenuous to me.

It is disingenuous, and it completely undermines Julie's story in One Fell Swoop. And it's got no evidentiary value. It shouldn't have been allowed in if they can't prove it in terms of it's not written in a report that it doesn't exist anywhere other than this cops memory. I mean, how much weight can you give that they're offering it for one reason, and one reason alone, because of the mention of a black hoodie that was it.

I find it very interesting too, just a coincidence, But Sloan was one of the officers who responded to Aaron Luton that morning and let him go the first time. Murder on Songbird Road will continue after the break. Now back to Murder on Songbird Road. Next, we turned to the collection of Beverly's DNA on the day of the murder. After Beverly voluntarily agreed to be questioned without an attorney. She also consented to the collection of her DNA from

It's all good about for seconds of.

Hello running Mat.

From with the stake leaf.

Matt is Matt Deschamps, a member of the Illinois State Police Crime scene Unit. What struck us immediately was that Deschamps entered the room wearing gloves, propping the door open with his left hand as he entered. Then, without hesitation, he began handling the folders belonging to the detectives who had just interviewed Beverly, moving them to the side with both gloved hands.

So, first of all, tonight, then I think to pictures of us to document your what you're wearing.

And he then adjusted the camera around his neck, still wearing the same gloves, changing them not once.

If you want you have a shirt on or in your hoodie, do you want to take that off?

You didn't have anything in your pocket that you do?

Great, A little bit lower, sorry, thank you, and we wonder take it the world and to go closer bunting child, I camera.

Being correct.

If you have any more scrapes or any other injuries on your arms.

You know that, In fact, Deschamps collected all samples while wearing the same set of gloves, which came into contact with multiple objects throughout the procedure. This appears to be in clear violation of the Illinois State Police's Clean Technique Protocol, which mandates that investigators use disposable gloves during sample collection and exercise caution to prevent gloves from coming into contact

And then what about I'm going to get you get a little cupture on your chin that I want to take a picture of.

And an up your way your eyebrow.

The video clearly shows to Shaps touching his own face with his gloved hands while referencing Beverly's injuries. He also reaches into his pocket for a ruler and later a pen, retrieving them multiple times. Observing this, I began documenting each potential instance of contamination on a Google doc which I later shared with this woman.

My name's Katie Hartman, and I worked with the Creme Scene Unit in Louisbo, Kentucky.

And how long did you work in that capacity?

Eleven years for the unit itself.

And you were in law enforcement for even longer than that, correct, Yes.

I was in law enforcement for.

Twenty one now retired. Hartman has earned an impeccable reputation throughout her decades long career and is also married to a former detective. Are there standard protocols for collecting DNA samples from a suspect?

Yes, standard, and they can be different from state to state because each state has their own labs as far as they are affiliated with police department or any other law enforcement entity. Those protocols let us know how they want that evidence collected and what that does. It enables them to do the best possible testing without contamination.

How often would you, hypothetically, if you had to test four different things, how often would you change your gloves?

Very often, especially when you're dealing with DNA or gunshot residue where you're touching the other person's hands or the other person's body. You want to change gloves in between hands even really, yes, the best thing you can do is change your gloves constantly, make sure that you're not also touching anything else and transferring anything that might topically be on something of fibers, liquids, anything onto another piece of evidence by doing so when you're touching something else.

I asked Hartman to review the video of Beverly's DNA collection and this was her response.

There was a lot of red flags. Let me say that got it. If I was training him, I would have stopped him and said, you need to change your gloves, you know, because he was taking samples of her fingernails and everything.

Then after all that, he holds the sweatshirt she's just removed with both hands again with the gloves that he's touched everything, folding it for several seconds, and then the ungloved female detective continues to hold the collection bag to assist.

And again that goes back to training, you know, the ungloved detective. You know, I can't say I never had ungloved detectives touching my stuff. But at the same time, most of our detectives thankfully made themselves aware of the possibility across contamination and they would glove up if they were going to be in the room with you.

And that sweatshirt further played into something called chain of custody.

Chain and custody simply is what happens to a piece of evidence, including DNA is a piece of evidence. Blood is evidence. So all these things are documented in where they go, who has them, what time they went, there was anybody else involved in the handling of that said evidence. So what you're doing is you're creating a timeline that's a chain of custody. If you're in the chain, then that means you had something to do with this case,

I bring it up because the bag containing Beverly's sweatshirt, the one Deschamps touched with his gloved hands while an ungloved Cyndi Geittman helped place it inside, that was left in the interrogation room after Deschamps departed. This resulted in a break in the chain of custody for an item that could have held crucial DNA evidence from the alleged assailant Beverly claims to have encountered. Now back to Katie Hartman.

That really bothered me. Then he left some evidence in there.

Yeah, he left her clothing in the back beyond.

That bothered me. And then the tecta just through picked it up through the corner.

Which means that the chain of custody was disrupted. Yeah, Bob and I have discussed Matt Deschamp's evidence collection at length, so it's of note also that he processed the crime scene and Beverly's car. We don't have any video of the protocol he followed during that, but when he knew he was being videotaped, it was pretty noteworthy. Do you have any thoughts you want to add on that.

The collection, Look, it's always one of our primary tools and our tool belt as defense attorneys to attack the investigation the collection of evidence, and this one was.

Worse than most. The problem with.

It from the defense side of it is it's a bit of a double edged sword in that theoretically, if exculpatory DNA evidence was found, that too, in theory could be.

Tainted, you know, So it's like it's just a shame. It's a shame that.

It wasn't done properly, and I don't know that there's anything that you can do to fix it.

Katie Hartman remains more troubled by what wasn't tested, including Beverly's fingernail scrapings and finger swabs.

Not upset me. That disturbed me because your job as a crime scene person sometimes it's hard not to be biased. I'm not gonna lie. It's very hard, very hard, especially if you see a lot of things through the years. But your job is still to prove or disprove what someone is being accused of and try to find out who did it, not who they think did it, but prove or disprove if this person who has been accused

Absolutely in your personal experience, who would dictate what should or should not be sent for testing to the state lab.

Our head detective and the crime scene person. I've never had anybody but a lead detective or a detective or a police officer who I was working in case with and worked with me on the lab. No one else has told me what to send to the lab.

So it would be unusual, in your experience or opinion, for the prosecutor's office to dictate exactly what should and should not be sent.

I've never had that happen. Now I have had prosecutor to ask me, can you resend something? Or is there still anything left of this piece of evidence to do an additional testing. You know, they do get involved in that type of thing, but I've never had any of them be the sole person to tell me or a detective what stand.

This is how Special Prosecutor Jennifer Mudge addressed selective testing in our closing argument. So now we're in CSI Miami and we have to test every single thing that was in that house. No, this is the real world. We can't do that.

Yeah, you don't make that statement publicly ever, let alone a trial. It's just one of those things that you know, there's some truth to it. They're not going to test everything.

They're just not.

But all the critical things, which had they been brought up on cross examination, would have absolutely laid.

Waste to the state's case.

You have to point the finger at who it needs to be pointed at it shouldn't be you and I on a podcast being the first two people to point this out publicly.

That should have happened a trial.

Because it's a big d Is that unusual for the state to do it? No, not necessarily, but it is unusual for a defense attorney not.

To point it out. All the things that they should have tested.

One could argue that things that would implicate Beverly were tested, while anything that could possibly vindicate her was purposely not tested. Her nail scrapings and her finger swaps aside. It was our impression that only Julia Beverly's phone was subjected to forensic examination. When we talk about a timeline, you have an eleven year old who's at home with a smartphone,

Game over, It destroys, it completely destroys the state's timeline. That means that she's alive and well while Julie's allegedly dumping all the bloody closed murder weapon in a Huk's garbage can.

I mean it just it destroys their timeline.

In December twenty twenty four, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Illinois Office of the State's Attorney's A Pellet prosecutor, confirmed that none of Jade Beasley's electronic devices were forensically tested. None. Why like the testing of Beverly's nail scrapings, it would have potentially been a slam dunk for the prosecution.

It's insane.

When we learned of that fact, I bout lost my mind. I mean, in the day and age that we live in where forensic device examination has now become the primary way that they are getting convictions on cases, solving cases. To think that that they didn't even look at any of those devices to find out if Jade was active in order to build a timeline, a real timeline, is.

Unbelievable to me.

This thing slides into the ineffective assistance of council column very very easily, because you have to challenge things in court on the record, and when you don't do it, it creates a massive problem.

And now the question was who or what would be able to fix it on the next murder on Songbird Road, access to Hucks footage raises new issues.

Does it mean that I don't think there's any way in hell that that's what she was disposing of?

There?

Absolutely compounded by observations about Beverly.

She didn't like blood, she didn't like violence.

Before her legal team morphs in a major way.

If anyone can get Julie out, it's her.

Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Taylor Chackoine 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 Tyre and Taylor Chackoine. Additional music by Asher Kurtz. Please like, subscribe, and leave us