Epilogue | Loose Ends

I've been a journalist for what seems like forever and I've covered a lot of terrible crimes, but I'm always surprised that out of unimaginable pain, something beautiful could happen, a bond born out of survival.

I actually referred to Scott as my hero because he got out, he fought. He fought at everything he had to get out of those woods, and if it was not for him, I wouldn't have found David.

It was Scott Davis who alerted police to Beasley's bizarre Craigslist scam. It was Davis's story that led Detective Mackie to David Pauley’s grave.

Scott and I are close. We're on Facebook together. His sisters and I are friends. His mom and I are friends. Timothy's ex-wife and I are friends. We keep in touch, so we're a family. That's the best thing I could say is we became a family. A family that we didn't know we were going to need. We needed it and we have it, and that includes Emily and Jason and Paul and Mark and Drew and everybody else.

Those bonds are strong. They helped Deb when she decided to go to the woods to where Beasley and Rafferty buried her brother's body.

I texted, I call him my FBI guy. We're friends. We're friends and keep in touch too, and told him him how to get there and he was like, you are not going there by yourself. I said, well, I have my husband with me as you're not going there by yourself.

Drew the FBI guy was in the middle of a robbery investigation, but he dropped everything. When Deb called, he got on the phone with Detective Jason Mackie and arranged for a trip to the woods

And they drove us in Jason's car to the site.

A cold rain fell as they got out of the car and entered the woods.

We went up this really muddy path, and it was funny because as they walked in front of me and as they passed a certain bush, all of a sudden a branch from the bush popped out and got caught in my hair, and I can't remember which one said it to me, but they said, you're standing right where we think David was shot.

Then as if on cue the rain turned to snow, Deb stood enthralled. David had always known how much she loved the snow.

I held out my hand and let the snowflakes fall on there and I just could hear, I'm going to get emotional. I could hear him say, I'm okay. You're okay. It's okay. And then as fast as it had started snowing, it stopped, and that's when I looked at Jason and Drew and said, I'm ready to go back now.

I'm Carol Costello. This is The God Hook Epilogue, Loose Ends.

Of all the remarkable people we talked with for this podcast, the one we can't stop thinking about is Amy. What haunts us most is this: Amy will never get justice. That makes me angry and so very sad. Richard Beasley will never stand trial for prostitution related charges, and it's highly unlikely he would ever admit to trafficking women. So why go through another expensive trial? Plus he's already on death row. You can't punish him anymore than that. Amy gets it, but still it hurts because it reinforces her distrust of our criminal justice system and her belief that no one cared enough to fight for her. How did you feel about that?

Oh, I knew. I said I knew it. They were going to just, I said, I figured they're going to cover up for him. I figured they'd cover up for him because they would look stupid because how many of them fell for this?

Oh, so you felt that the judges would just not pay close enough attention to this case because it would embarrass them because of their relationship with Richard Beasley?

Yeah, and not to mention they didn't listen to us girls very much.

Yep, but excuse me, Richard Beasley was also convicted of crimes. He served time and he was also a drug addict and they believed him over you.

Yes, I know. Just the way I was. I don't know.

Didn't that piss you off?

Yeah, it did. It was infuriating and it was depressing. Well, they would always say, we don't mean anything. These people, they don't care about us.

Sometimes justice isn't about cold hard logic. It's about giving survivors the chance to be heard. Emily worked in the Ohio Attorney General's office. It was her job to prosecute the murder case against Beasley. It was Summit County's responsibility to bring Amy's case to trial. Emily understands why it all went down that way, but it bothers her too.

After he was convicted and put on death row, did anyone talk to you about dismissing that case or say, Hey, this is why we're doing it, or explain to you?

No, no one, no.

I'm sorry about that.

No, that's okay.

That's awful.

I didn't even understand what happened. I figured that out myself.

I'm very sad that no one got in touch with you and told you why it was dismissed or the circumstances because you had a right to know that. Absolutely had a right to know that.

Yeah.

Today, Amy is sober, strong and a caring mother and grandmother. She's still committed to her faith too, even though it was her belief in God and the power of redemption that led her to chaplain Rich. Not that you'd ever want to say anything to Richard Beasley, but if you could talk to him right now, is there any message you would want to give to him?

I forgive him because of where I am today, but I feel very bad for some of the people that he hurt and I feel like he did a lot of damage to some girls. Some people don't make it out of this lifestyle.

I think a lot of people would be confused by the fact that you forgive him. How did you find that in your heart?

Because I have to, because I just believe in my faith. God says I have to forgive in order to be forgiven, so I force myself to forgive.

The one person I would've loved to talk with is Carol Beasley, chaplain Rich's fiercely loyal mother. She forgave him everything. No matter what he did, she never stopped. Amy said their relationship was odd.

What did he sound like when he talked to his mom?

He's so like a little boy. I don't know. She was a totally different person. He was trying to portray or maybe he was, I dunno if he was mentally off because sometimes I really feel like he's like a little boy. I don't know. It just seems very strange. The whole thing was strange. He would call her for everything. It was very strange for a grown man.

Carol Beasley died a few years back, still beloved by her family and her church. The chapel we're working on a bonus episode about the bond between mother and son, so stay tuned. The investigators who went above and beyond to take down Beasley told us they don't like Richard Beasley. That sounds so personal to me. Normally cops don't betray those feelings. They keep it professional, at least with journalists. But the way Beasley perverted religion and exploited vulnerable people, well, it got to them too.

You can't underestimate the value of bringing religion into this because when you're dealing with the jail population and the homeless population, I mean 90% of the organizations out there that help them are religious affiliated.

Terry Pasko says most of those organizations do great work, but he worries. Pasko retired as a captain, not from vice but from the narcotics division because by the time Richard Beasley went out on the run, the vice unit didn't exist anymore. The Akron police chief at the time axed it.

I remember this like yesterday. Our then-chief disbanded the vice unit. He felt vice was, it doesn't hurt anybody. He didn't understand human trafficking, didn't care. His feeling was it's misdemeanor crimes. They're victimless essentially, which is complete bullshit. So when he did that, I went over and worked narcotics. Some of the detectives went different places, some retired and all this, but I was in narcotics when they were looking for him.

The loss of the vice unit still troubles Pasko. Without dedicated officers watching for signs of exploitation, he fears another chaplain. Rich could be at work preying on women in plain sight. In your mind, could this sort of thing happen again?

I think it could, and it probably does happen. They no longer have a vice squad, so there isn't anybody really that their job every day is to monitor this kind of thing, and since 2010, social media has exploded. So there are other avenues where you can do things and be less visible and run under the radar.

The better news? Investigators are much more dedicated when it comes to human trafficking and how to fight it, although there's a long way to go on that front. Pasko put in 27 years and is proud of the work his team did Vice, he's now retired, actually, he's not exactly retired. He writes books. His first novel, Knights of the Graveyard Watch comes out August 12th. You can pick it up at Barnes and Noble. I'll put the info and the credits.

I'm Jason Mackie. I'm running to be your next Noble County Sheriff.

Detective Jason Mackie is now Sheriff of Noble County. He's been elected twice. When I first sat down to interview him, I was curious if this case affected him. I mean, he dug up a body using his hands deep in the woods. I can't imagine what that does to your psyche. Mackie brushed it off. He's just not the kind of man who talks about personal pain. How do you protect your mental health? I mean, I think that would be hard.

I'm sure you do.

Why didn't you do this?

Who else going to do it?

I told you the season finale that I had no desire to confront Richard Beasley. What would he say? That he didn't do it. Other reporters have spoken with Beasley In prison though, Devin Friedman wrote a powerful piece for gq. Maybe this makes me a hypocrite, but I did find his article fascinating, especially when he asked this question. Friedman asked Beasley, how is it a fellow gets to heaven? I was so dumbstruck by Beasley's answer. I immediately picked up the phone and called a friend of mine, a theologian, Dr. Amir Hussein. I needed to make sense of something that defies sense, and Richard Beasley says, I believe you'll go to heaven if you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as savior. Reporter: You don't have to confess to anyone easily. You have to confess to God and ask forgiveness. Do you know the story of King David? You're of Jewish descent, right? He killed a man and had an adulterous affair and he was the apple of God's eye. That is true. King David coveted his favorite soldier's wife, Bathsheba. She got pregnant. King David then arranged for her husband's murder and still God forgave him. So can you put the story of David in perspective for us?

Oftentimes people do horrible things. When you look at what David is doing, that's no different than what people do now, and this was 3000 years ago. You sleep with someone, you get them pregnant. How do you try and work it out? In this case ends up killing the husband, and so it talks about very real kinds of issues here, but David has that moment. It's in Psalm 51 where he asks God to give him a clean heart. He understands what he's done, he repents his ways, and then he doesn't do those things. I think that's really the key here.

I know a lot of people who think that you can just ask God's forgiveness and he will grant you forgiveness in all his cool.

There's a difference between forgiveness in this world and forgiveness in the world to come, and so again, speaking as a Muslim, the prophet Muhammad is told in the Quran, you are not sent, but as a Warner, you're not the judge of people. I God am the judge of people. You are there to warn people. You're there to say to people, Hey, here's how you should behave. If you behave this way, here's the reward. If you behave that way, there's the punishment. The interesting thing about that is God is God, which means God's able to do whatever God wants. God may well pardon and give Richard Beasley a place in heaven that would be horrific to me, but I'm not. God gets to decide and do those things.

Richard Beasley may pay the ultimate price on Earth. As of now, though, that's unlikely. Ohio has postponed executions because it can't find a way to carry them out without violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and more people are questioning whether the death penalty is just or effective to many. It's a cruel form of retribution, of vengeance that does nothing to stop men like Richard Beasley.

As for Brogan Rafferty, he remains behind bars, but maybe not forever. Even though he was sentenced to life without parole, there is a chance he'll get out. Here's former DA Paul Scarsella. Is it possible that he could get parole?

Theoretically, he was a juvenile when this happened, so whereas he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, based upon all of the evidence, the Ohio legislature changed the law and commuted all juvenile life without parole sentences to life with the possibility of parole. And as far as I'm concerned, when Brogan comes up for parole, I don't care if I'm 90 years old, I'm going to be sitting there on behalf of Tim and his family. I don't care if I'm defense attorney of the year at that point, and I might be, but I'm going to be sitting there making sure Brogan stays exactly where he belongs because he's the one who put those bullets in his face and that's where he needs to be.

If you're wondering whether Rafferty is being rehabilitated in prison, that appears to be unlikely. Paul has kept track of Rafferty's time behind bars. Do you know how he's doing in prison?

He has spent some time at Supermax in Ohio, the correctional facility in Youngstown.

So for those of us that don't know,

You get to Supermax because you are very gang involved and based upon the tattoos that I am able to see that come through on his picture, I believe there's a significant Aryan Brotherhood tie that he has developed since he got to prison.

Like a skinhead,

Ayian Brotherhood's. Different than skinheads.

Worse?

Yeah, they run kind of the dope and everything else in the jail and the prisons. You don't get the Supermax by being a good inmate.

You might think Paul Scarsella was born to be a tough prosecutor. Maybe he was, but that's no longer his passion. Somewhere along the way, shortly after the Beasley case, he flipped sides today. He defends people like Brogan Rafferty. He defends the very people he once tried to put away. So you became a defense attorney. Why?

You want the nice answer or the real answer?

Oh, please. The real answer.

Politics. It's not about the cases anymore. Emily and I honestly lived by the idea that you do the right thing for the right reason and the politics will take care of itself. I've come to the realization that I must have been a patsy as a prosecutor because nobody did it the way we did. My favorite quote from a prosecutor in the last six years is I knew the case was shit when I indicted it, but given his record, I figured he plead to something. Oh, wow. These are people. Okay. Just like Tim was a person and Ralph was a person, and David was a person, and even Beasley was a person, okay? I spent 20 years as a prosecutor with the idea that I never wanted to wake up 10 years down the road and find out that I had put somebody in prison who didn't deserve to be there. That's the last thing in the world I ever wanted. Six years. Now on this side, I don't see many people who have that same idea, and it scares me. Politics aside, it's not the system that I started In.

So when you say politics, is it sort of like that law and order thing, and it doesn't matter who you convict?

No, it's about winning and it's about making sure that I don't end up on a front page of Channel 10 because I did something that maybe I shouldn't have done, and we have to believe every victim. There's a whole podcast just in that, okay, just in the transformation that I've made over the last six years of looking at how this system is, and frankly, it's broken in my opinion,

I would like to do that podcast.

Tell me when. Oh, I’d happily sit down with you. I also had a tendency to run my mouth at the attorney general's office. I know it's shocking that I didn't necessarily get along with everybody, and apparently elected officials don't like being told that they're doing dumb shit, and eventually they came into my office when I had six homicides pending and said that I needed to go to workers' compensation fraud. That's where I was going to be better suited, and I had left shortly thereafter.

And Emily, this case. I know that it had an effect on the direction of your life.

So I did this case, and then I want to say I did one more cold case out of Ashtabula.

That case turned out to be exactly the kind of case Paul talked about politically fraught less about justice and more about theater for political gain. We convicted her

And they took all the credit for it, and that was probably one of the lessons. Plus I had two small children. I was ready for a change too.

You didn't enjoy it when the elected Attorney General came down at the verdict for Beasley and sat there and was the one who talked to the media and wouldn't even mention our names for the year and a half that we put in on this case.

It's part of the job when you're working under an elected that they take the credit for what the workers have done, but give credit words due sometimes to some of these people that are out sacrificing their mental health and building these relationships and just trying to do the right thing. But for me, that was it. I had done what I wanted. I felt fulfilled in the cases that I tried. I didn't think I had done anything where I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'd put somebody innocent in prison. I had let the juries do their thing and eventually COVID. I said, I'd like to try something new, and I took a summer off and spent time with my girls and went to Europe. Then I started teaching pre-law students at my alma mater. The interesting thing now that I see is a lot of the students of this generation really want to be proactive with their communities.

They want to go back to where they're from. They want to help. They want to build up all of the injustices that are going on. So they all want to be defense attorneys. To which I tell them, why don't you start from the source so that you're not being reactive and go into the positions for the right reasons. Don't go to be a DA because you want to work up a political chain. Go be a prosecuting attorney institute. Change at that level where you're indicting the cases for the right reasons and not just to get a guilty verdict, but you're really using the system, how it's supposed to be used, and then you can work with a defense attorney, but don't be reactionary. So that's what I've taken all of my years of trial work and all of the lessons that I learned with working with Paul and other attorneys is trying to get people to do things for the right reasons, not paying attention to politics and all of the shiny nickels that kind of pop up when you do this kind of work.

Emily and I will continue to explore these issues when we get our act together for season three. In the meantime though, we will continue to drop bonus episodes every two weeks or so. Needless to say, we have a lot of compelling material. Again, thank you for listening and for subscribing. It is much appreciated.