Sandy's Police File — Sandy Beal E5

and I Heart Original podcast, Chapter five listener update. Instead of releasing a full episode this week, I'm taking a small detour to explain some new information. I received. What you just heard were notes from the scene of Sandy's death, written over four decades ago. A few weeks back, in the middle of putting together this podcast, I got an unexpected email from the Prince George's County Office of Law,

attached with Sandy's police file. Kim had given me the police report on Sandy's death when I first met her, but several months ago I requested quote the entire police file of Sandy Beale to see if I'd get anything different. I'd all but put the request out of my mind, so I was shocked when I opened this email to find that the file was pages long. A few of the pages are fully redacted, and a good chunk of the file is made up of photocopies of Sandy's personal books.

This content was all familiar to me, of course, but on page eighty four the new stuff starts. It's Detective Shoelski's handwritten notes jotted down at the scene of Sandy's death. Reading these pages, you can sort of follow along with his investigation. He writes when he arrives, who we talked to, what he did, what he saw, And on one page he writes down the items that sat on top of Sandy's dashboard. The first item he notes is a quote p G County Police rig. I didn't know what that was,

so I asked him. He didn't remember this detail, but he said a rig can refer to a police duty belt, which officers used to carry equipment around their waist. I'm sure you can picture one. It's unclear if the rig was hers, perhaps given to her as part of the Explorer program, or maybe it was someone else's. Also on Sandy's dashboard was a quote personal card of a Prince George's County police officer, Mark Murphy. His name was also

listed in Sandy's address book. He died on the job, but I confirmed he did work in the Explorer program at the time Sandy was there. After that, Selski writes several police clippings. Again, he didn't recall this detail, but he thought the note may have referred to newspaper clippings about PGI County cops. He vaguely remembered that the local paper used to run an Officer of the Week story

along with a photo. Maybe Sandy had kept some copies. Lastly, he notes that Sandy had a quote schedule card on her dash. Selski was pretty sure this was for the Prince George's County Police Department. All of these items they confirmed Sandy's close connections to pg County police and her likely involvement in the Police Explorer program. Not only did she have address books with the names and numbers of local cops in her car, she had a police frigg

sitting right on top off of her dash. I sent the handwritten notes to Selski to see what he made of them so many years later. There are some things in here that I had forgotten, like the black mark. Selski's notes document that Sandy had a black mark under her left eye. I don't know what that was. I think, I said, if it would have been a bruise, I want to know it. But I don't know what it was. And I don't like that. I don't don't you don't like that. I don't like to that I don't remember.

The file also includes a crude diagram drawn by Selski showing where Sandy's car was located in the pollard and the track marks around it. The drawing is very rudimentary, and so I didn't want to read too much into it. But there are two sets of tracks next to each other. I a car pulled up next to another car. I asked him about this. Doesn't it look like maybe there was more than one car there? From what I have there, it does either that or try ton't make a note

of it. It would have been her tracks well, certainly in the police report it says that there were tracks like she had been trying to get out of the mud. But the way that you've drawn this doesn't just look like a person like backing up and you know, reversing and going forward and trying to get out of the mud. It looks like someone pulled up, yeah, next to her but I'm pretty sure that one in the case. Okay, how does it make you feel reading these notes from

so long ago? Well, I feel though it's still suicide. Schelski is still confident that he made at the right call. Those things that bother him now, the black mark, the tire tracks, they bother him because he can't remember exactly what he meant at the time when he made his notes,

not because he thinks there was foul play. The notes also revealed that Sholski did a search on Sandy's name, calling the records department to see if Sandy had any previous involvement with the police department, either as a suspect or as a victim. At first, he wrote no records, Then he scribbled it out because the search revealed that in the last year and a half of her life, Sandy sought helped from police on three separate occasions. It appears that a man had been following her at the mall.

As you might remember, Sandy worked at the Landover Mall in her senior year of high school. She was part of a work study program where students would go to school until lunch and then work the rest of the day at a local job um. According to Schelski's notes, in November nine, when she was seventeen, Sandy was assaulted at the mall by a twenty eight year old man who she said had been following her for three months. He grabbed her and made threats to harm her before

being sent on his way by the security guard. Then, in April nineteen seventy six, five months later, another incident occurred. The man followed Sandy's through the mall again. In July, there's a third report. This time the man apparently threatened Sandy forgetting a warrant for the assault. I called Sandy's mom to ask her about all of this. Hello, yeah, Nolica, Hi Joanne, I just missed a call from you. Yeah, yeah, Well,

how he's going? I told Joanne what I found, the reference to the three police reports involving Sandy as a victim. She didn't know about them, she said, but she faintly recalled that something strange had happened at the mall. I never heard that from Sandy, but her good friends Sandra Sheridan had told me, and I think Sandy might have said something to her father, But I don't know. If I didn't know how it ended, or how it came out of what happened to it? What did Sandy Sheridan

tell you? And when did she tell you? After Sandy's death or before that? I think it was before that. I think she called me because she wanted me to talk to Ronald about it, because she said, we have a security guy that marks her out to the car now or after she gets through her shift. Because she worked at the mall and it was a new you know, it was a big mall and it was new, and I guess somebody was, you know, following her. I didn't

know that she had been assaulted. Almost every time I talked to Joanne, she brings up Sandy Sheridan, And this is one of the reporting goals I really wanted to achieve for the bills. I wanted to find her because she was Sandy's best friend and probably knows more than anyone else about what was going on in her life. I think she's married and has a different last name now, so it's been hard to track her down. Joanne hasn't

lost hope though. The last time I talked to her, she said she was optimistic that Sandy Sheridan might hear the podcast and come forward, Sandy, if you're listening, we want to hear your story. I asked Joanne why she thought Sandy Sheridan called the house all those years ago to tell her about the situation at the mall. I don't know, because we never discussed it. I took it for granted that it was taken care of, either by the security guard or her father talked her into doing

something different. I didn't know if Romo got involved with that or not. Uh, you know, maybe when she told him that somebody was the security guard was going to help her, you know, talk. You know, maybe Ronald felt but I won't get involved. You know. He was busy, you know, trying to take care of the family work, and so I don't know all the ins and outs about what happened here. In my many conversations with Joanne, she had never mentioned this to me, the fact that

a man had been following Sandy at the mall. She had completely forgotten about it, and so had Detective Shoelski until I refreshed his memory with these notes. To be honest, it wasn't that surprising to me these incidents. They happened months before her death, and the actual conduct the stalking. In the seventies, stalking wasn't called stalking, and it wasn't

taken all that seriously. The threshold for tolerating unwanted male attention was front at that time, and I imagine that the guy who was following Sandy was seen as an annoyance and nothing more. I wasn't able to track him down based on the information included in Sachelski's notes, and the original reports are no longer available. Well, Alissa, it's good talking to you, honey. Oh, good talking to you too.

I did a news archive search about the Landover Mall, and it turns out that it wasn't such a safe place when Sandy worked there. In the same year Sandy was assaulted, three different women were abducted from the parking lot and raped in three separate incidents. The victims were fifteen, seventeen, and twenty five years old. The perpetrators were caught, and

none of their names matched Sandy Stalker. But this context might help explain the safety measures put in place to help Sandy, like the security guard who walked her to her car. I don't have any evidence that Sandy Stalker continued to bother her after the last known incident in July, seven months before she died, and there's nothing at the scene of her death that points to his involvement. But knowing about his existence it puts her whole experience with

law enforcement in a new light. We already knew that Sandy had met cops just going about her day. She saw them in the neighborhood and interacted with them at the drug store, but now we know that on multiple occasions Sandy appealed to them for help as a victim of a crime. Selski told me that Sandy would have reported these incidents at the Seat Pleasant Station, which was

the police precinct around the corner from Sandy's house. A lot of the officer names in her address books worked at this station, including Ray from My Life as a Cop Freak and Mark, whose cards she had on her when she died. In the last episode, I put out a call to listeners to share their experiences with police Explorer programs or police sexual violence in general, and I've

received a number of powerful messages so far. One person told me how they had a positive experience in an Explorer program and learned a lot of great skills, But most of those who emailed were survivors speaking their truth. One woman described how she joined and Explorer program when she was sixteen, a junior in high school, and was sexually abused by a cop in his thirties. She wrote, quote, it has been hard for me to come to terms with it because at the time, it was what I

thought I wanted. I was infatuated. I felt noticed, wanted, and special by someone who was seen as a here row and role model by a whole community. I can relate to Sandy so much because of this, and it breaks my heart that her memory was smeared to save the reputation of monsters. It was always drilled into our head that females just caused problems and we were to

blame for male law enforcement officers getting in trouble. They create this environment that makes the few women feel like it's a privilege for them to be involved, like they owe every man something just for doing the same job. It's like there's an unwritten code among females and male dominated fields. We never acknowledge any wrongdoing against us because we are quite tough and we just want to fit in.

Next week, we jumped back into Sandy's story, revisiting the evidence at the scene of her death with top experts. Was she meeting with someone who did she have relations with in the hours for her death? What happened? Was there a breakup? We don't know, and that that's kind of the big question here, you know, why why she in this muddy area, you know, sort of next to the barracks. I'm Melissa Jolson and this is what happened to Sandy Beale. Thank you so much for listening. M h m hmm.