6 | The Craigslist Ad

Sheriff Hannum's office.

We just had a gentleman come up to our front door, claims that he's been shot. He's got some blood on him.

The call to the Noble County Sheriff's Office came in the dead of night. A man had emerged from the darkness. He was covered in blood. He was alone and he was desperate. He told the caller's family he had hidden in the cold, damp woods for seven hours, then walked for more than three miles to find help.

What's that guy's name? What's your name, sir?

Scott Davis.

The man had no vehicle, no phone, just a story so strange, so bizarre, the local sheriff at the time, Steven Hannum doubted every word he said.

You were actually shot seven hours ago?

Yeah.

What was Jack driving?

I don't know, Cavalier or Cutlass or something. I don't know. It was white.

But Scott Davis insisted he'd been shot deep in the woods, hunted by a madman with a gun, intent on killing him for no good reason.

What kind of gun? A long gun or a pistol?

A pistol.

What'd this Jack look like?

Sure hair, John Deere hat.

Sure you weren't down country lane right out here? You sure you don't live down there with country?

Davis told the sheriff, he had responded to a Craigslist ad, a go-to site for many men seeking jobs in a struggling economy. The ad was crafted with precision, every word chosen to make Davis believe he'd accepted the job of a lifetime. Davis swore that Craigslist ad was real, but that Jack, the man behind the ad wasn't hiring. He was hunting.

I started to turn around and walk back, and I heard him say, F this. I'm like, what the hell? I've been talking to this guy off and on. He hasn't said one cuss word, so I spun around…

In that moment, Davis swore Jack's eyes turned black.

A gun was pointed directly at the back of my head. After that, I started running like the bat out of hell. I lost my hat, and I kept running and running. I said, man, what the F are you doing, man? What's wrong with you?

I'm Carol Costello. This is the God Hook, Episode six of 10: The Craigslist Ad.

Let's go back in time, three months before Scott Davis ran for his life. Because three months before Davis escaped a killer, that same killer, Richard Beasley was busy disappearing in Akron, prepping for his first murder. His mark? A homeless man named Ralph Geiger. Beasley had cooked up a new con. He would pose as a farmer who was looking for a caretaker to watch over his 600 acre property. The job paid 300 bucks a week. Beasley called it the job of a lifetime, except there was no farm, only a lie, and Ralph Geiger believed it because he said yes.

In August of 2011, Geiger got into a red car carrying all of his earthly possessions. Beasley sat in the passenger seat, 16-year-old Brogan Rafferty was in the backseat. Ralph Geiger was behind the wheel. Their destination: a remote stretch of land in Noble County, Ohio. Geiger thought he was driving toward a new beginning. He had no idea he was taking his killers exactly to where they wanted to go. Later, Brogan Rafferty would tell investigators what that trip was really about.

Did Richard instruct you to bring anything with you, or what did he tell you when you guys were going to be doing before you went?

He said that he was going to need to get another identity for this gentleman, that he had to have me help him do it.

Okay, and what were you going to do?

I wasn't told we're going to take him down here and murder him. He just said that he needed a new identity. That this guy looked similar to him, and he said that he needed to somehow murder him and then make his appearance overall similar to that gentleman's.

When Rafferty and Beasley returned to Akron, Geiger was not with them. They left his body behind, buried in a shallow grave. Brogan saw everything.

A boy of that age – you see something like that, you're going to go one way or the other.

You either recoil or go all in. Brogan chose the latter. A week later, he wrote a poem.

“I dug the hole. It reached my waist when I was in it, maybe four feet deep. We put him in with difficulty. We showered him with lime like a satanic baptism. It was like we were excommunicating him from the world. Prayed like hell that night.”

I'll spare you the rest, but let's stop a minute. Brogan wrote a poem about a murder.

Emily, I see you brought someone with you today.

I did. I brought my co-counsel, Paul Scarsella, the big brother I never had. He and I have been together for a number of years trying all kinds of crazy cases

Like the Beasley case.

Like the Beasley case. This one definitely is the most interesting of all of them.

Welcome, Paul.

Thank you.

Paul's been practicing law for a long time, like Emily, he's seen it all. He's now a criminal defense attorney, but years back, he was a dogged special prosecutor and Emily's co-counsel in the Beasley case.

The poem that Brogan Rafferty wrote – can you talk about that a little bit?

Brogan thought he was going to be some big bad biker boy.

He had people around him all the time and he saw someone get shot and helped bury him. The fact that he didn't report that or talk to anyone really does mesh with this idea that he thought this was going to be his lifestyle.

Brogan just needed a nudge. This was his future. This was what he was going to be. There are guys at that age group that believe that they're going to be the next Jax Teller, the next John Gotti, the next whatever, and most of them don't think they're going to live past 25.

You remember where the gate was? Yes. Was it back behind there? I know where the gate is. Is it further back into the woods?

It's maybe 50, 75 feet. It's not very far from the road.

Now, this here tells it a little different.

The poem that I wrote to express my thoughts on it,

But that is not factually how it happened.

It's not factual, but it kind of refers to the incident. It was just somehow of, since I wasn’t allowed to express it in any way, that was just kind of me getting it out that way that I knew it was real.

Okay.

After Ralph Geiger disappeared, so did Chaplain Rich. He ditched the Santa Claus look, dyed his white hair jet black, trimmed his light gray beard. Then it was onto the BMV – the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

He actually used Ralph's social security card. Because Ralph had it, because he was going to take his job.

There's a reason why Beasley selected Ralph as his victim. You go around and he looked for someone who looked like him, had the same gait, and in a homeless shelter who's going to be looking for him?

So when he went with Beasley to his new job, he figured he was going to need his social security card, he was going to need his driver's license, so, birth certificate – he had everything.

He very easily took over his identity.

And just like that, Rich Beasley was no more. In his place stood a new Ralph Geiger, the man who had gone to Caldwell and never came back. Beasley figured Geiger was the kind of man who could vanish without a trace. He was right. No one came looking. No one even filed a missing person's report. By the end of August, 2011, just about a month after Beasley was freed on bond, he opened a bank account in Geiger's name. He got a job at a trucking company. Everyone there knew him as Ralph or later, “Dutch.” The disguise worked, but he knew it could be better. The next dated polish. And this time, he wanted more – a victim with a truck, a trailer, a motorcycle, with something of value he could steal and a life he could erase.

In fact, I don't even know that he had actually used Craigslist for this one. He might've just been asking around.

Beasley had not used Craigslist to lure Geiger. He sold the lie face-to-face, but that wasn't sustainable. Beasley needed distance. He needed a wider net. He certainly knew how to pitch a story. He'd written letters to judges to get clients out early. Police say he wrote Backpage ads to sell sex. So why not a job listing on a site everybody seemed to be using? To be clear, I don't know what Beasley was thinking, but detectives say he wrote one hell of a Craigslist ad.

The Craigslist ad that Richard Beasley placed appealed to a certain kind of person who might be attracted to a certain kind of place, like this place. Did you see that in that ad when you read it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Noble County Sheriff, Jason Mackie.

The ad I think was purposely written to appeal to a certain demographic.

So he had to sit down and plan this for a long period of time.

Ralph Geiger, the first victim was early August of 2011, and then we don't see really anything until October. So August, which was kind of a different thing they did with Geiger because they found him basically on the street, a homeless shelter in Akron. They brought him down here and they killed him, and they stole his identity. And I think between that time period of August and October is when the light probably came on, that really worked well. And how could we find more people like Geiger or maybe similar situations where nobody may miss them?

Wanted: caretaker for farm. Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of hilly farmland and feed a few cows. You get 300 a week and a nice two bedroom trailer. Older and single preferred, but will consider all. Relocation a must. You must have a clean record and be trustworthy. This is a permanent position. The farm is used mainly as a hunting preserve and is overrun with game. Nearest neighbor is a mile away. The place is secluded and beautiful. It will be a real getaway for the right person. Job of a lifetime. If you're ready to relocate, please contact ASAP. Position will not stay open.

The ad promised a simpler life. Wide open land, no boss, no time clock. Just hard work and the freedom to get your head on straight.

So it was smart for Richard Beasley to word it that way.

Oh yeah, Richard Beasley, he's dumb like a fox. I mean, he knows what he's doing. This is not his first con.

Going back to the ad itself though, it sort of appealed to a certain kind of male fantasy, didn't it?

Oh, absolutely. It said the job of a lifetime.

What was that fantasy?

I think they want to be cowboys.

Beasley studied the men who answered the ad. He made them fill out applications and interviewed them on the phone, via email, and sometimes in person. He talked with some of his victims for weeks before he hired them. He was looking for people who were single, who were willing to move hundreds of miles to Noble County, Ohio with all of their possessions in tow.

Hey, this is Detective Mackie in Noble County.

How you doing, sir?

Good, I'm working on your case down here.

Alright,

On a chilly November morning in 2011, then-Detective Jason Mackie had never heard of Ralph Geiger or Chaplain Rich or Brogan Rafferty. He had no idea his quiet town had become ground zero for a serial killer.

Mackie was on the phone with a man named Scott Davis, a landscaper who'd stumbled into a neighbor's farmhouse and Caldwell soaked in blood. This is the man who claimed he'd been shot and was doubted by Sheriff Hannum. Davis had been transported 100 miles north to the nearest hospital that could handle a bullet wound. He needed surgery, a steel plate in his shattered elbow.

Do you know of anybody that wants to kill you?

No.

Davis had just uprooted his life in South Carolina, liquidated his business to take a job as a caretaker for a 600 acre farm in Caldwell. He was a deeply Christian man, a good son who wanted to move closer to his ailing mother so he could care for her, and he wanted to start fresh. He told Detective Mackie he'd exchanged emails with his prospective employer for months. They'd arranged to meet in Marietta for breakfast, a town 25 miles from Caldwell.

Now, Scott, I've got surveillance videos from Shoney's.

Yeah?

You were wearing an orange shirt that had some white writing on the back.

That's it.

Davis remembered the man clearly: he had black hair, a patchy gray beard. He said his name was Jack, not Ralph or Dutch, not Richard, but Jack. And he wasn't alone. Jack was with a tall young man, his nephew.

Was any of 'em wearing a hat? Do you remember?

The older guy was. He was wearing a John Deere hat.

Okay. Do you remember the young fella's name at all?

I can't remember. Can't remember. I think he only mentioned it once. I think Rodney, Ron, I can't remember or say for sure.

After breakfast, Scott climbed back into his truck and followed the two men and their car down the highway toward Caldwell. They stopped in a grocery store parking lot. Scott pulled in behind them, confused, but Jack had an explanation.

They had you park your truck. They said because the road was bad?

Yeah, they said, go ahead and park your truck here. And I asked them, I said, why I got to park my truck here? He says, well, he says, like I was telling you earlier, the road's been washed away and you won't be able to get your truck and trailer down in there. He says, what we're going to do today, he says, we're going to go get the equipment and we're going to clear the roads. He says, well, then we'll come back and get your truck and take you back out there.

It sounded reasonable. The ground was wet and muddy. Davis wasn't thrilled about working on the Lord's Day, Sunday, but like he told Mackie:

We got to clear a road, we got a clear a road.

He could haul his stuff, his landscaping equipment, his tools, and his motorcycle to the farm. Later, what Scott didn't realize, this was the next move in a carefully laid trap. Davis got into his employer's car, Scott in the backseat. Jack rode shotgun. The driver? The oversized, quiet teenager.

So they're having a nice conversation, just normal conversation?

Oh yeah. Talking about things about the farm and about the house and where he'd be staying at and what the expectations were.

They drove slowly down a quiet country road. Then the car veered onto gravel. The landscape began to shift. The road narrowed, and one by one, the bars on Scott's cell phone disappeared. They had reached the woods,

So they park. He and Beasley get out of the car, Rafferty drives off.

Jack, still friendly, told Davis to follow him into the woods where there was equipment to clear the roads. The teenager would make a U-turn at the wider part of the gravel road and circle back to pick them up, along with the gear.

When they get down there, there is a slip on that road. So it seems like it's making sense. Beasley tells him, we'll just go through the woods here to go get the equipment. It's faster. Go this way on foot.

Scott follows Jack, step by step deeper into the woods. The brush gets thicker. The light starts to change, and something doesn't feel right

And it's starting not to make sense to him. And Beasley says, oh, we went the wrong way. Let's turn around and go back. Well, Beasley was leading when they went in the woods. So when they turn around now, Beasley's behind Scott.

And I heard him say, “F this.”

The shift in tone from folksy to profane was sudden, frightening.

I'm like, what the hell? I've been talking to this guy off and on. He hasn't said one cuss word.

Scott heard a click like the sound of a gun misfiring.

So I spun around. A gun was pointed directly at the back of my head. So I smacked the gun away from me, and then he went ahead and he pulled the trigger, he was getting ready to shoot me again. And when he did, that's when he shot me in the arm. But after that, I started running like the bat out of hell. I lost my hat and I kept running the running. I said, man, what the F are you doing, man? What's wrong with you?

Did he say anything else to you when you were like, what the fuck you shooting at me for?

No,

He never said nothing? Okay.

Like, man, I was cussing, hollering him. I can't even remember.

Okay, but he never said anything that sticks out in your mind?

I was cussing, holler at him, man, because I just want to get the hell away from him. He was scaring the crap out of me, man.

The shots just kept on coming.

And then I started running up over the hill, and he kept popping caps at me. And thank God he wasn't that good of shape or who knows what would've happened. But then I ran as far as long as I could, and I hid in the bushes until it got dark.

Davis makes this part of the story sound almost mundane, but it was terrifying.

The first thing he's got to do is not let them finish the job of killing him.

Imagine you're alone in a place you've never been with no cell phone service, no houses, nothing but underbrush, trees, mud, and some crazy guy who just shot you.

And I don't know if you've ever spent much time to woods, but woods aren't quiet, so there's lots of noises. There's squirrels, there's small animals, there's deer, and I'm certain that every noise Scott Davis heard in his mind was Richard Beasley coming to finish the job.

So he's hiding and he is bleeding.

Yes.

Scott Davis, hid in the woods for seven hours, his elbow shattered by a bullet. He was losing blood. It was cold and every noise terrified him.

He is running through the bush, right? He is running through the woods and he's at some point he is hiding under a fallen tree.

Former special prosecutor Paul Scarsella.

And he was worried because the squirrel kept chattering and barking at him and he was like, I just wanted the squirrel to go away because I thought he was going to give my position away. I thought he was pointing him out. He's like, obviously was just crazy in my head, but I just wanted that squirrel to go away.

And like so many of Richard Beasley's victims, Scott prayed.

The whole time I was in the woods. I prayed that I will make it out of there to see my family. I just kept praying. I had a warm feeling come over me and those words in my heart that said, I got this. What a great feeling that was, knowing I was not alone in those woods.

Davis covered himself with brush and waited for the only cover he could count on: darkness. Only then did he move, stumbling through the night, falling into holes, slashing himself on barbed wire. Then, exhausted, he fell down in the brush, certain he would die.

That warm feeling came over me one more time and it said, I got you. That's the power of our father, son and Holy Spirit, thank you again, God for saving me from that beast.

He got up, still disoriented, but he knew one thing: if he stopped moving, he might die in these woods. So he forced himself to keep walking toward what he hoped was a road toward what he hoped was help. Then out of the darkness, the farmhouse. The man who answered the door couldn't believe what he saw: a man bleeding on his front porch.

Sheriff Hannum’s office. We just had a gentleman come up to our front door, claims that he's been shot. Got some blood on him.

An ambulance came. The sheriff and a deputy followed. The man who was sheriff at the time questioned Scott, and as you know, flat out didn't believe him.

You were actually shot seven hours ago?

Yeah.

Sheriff Hannum was so suspicious of Scott's story, he told Mackie it was no big thing.

He said, I talked to him briefly. I don't need you to come in right now because they've taken him in the ambulance and they're probably going to transfer him to Columbus or Akron or somewhere. But I would say he came here to deal some drugs or it was some kind of a drug deal going bad or something of that nature.

So when the sheriff initially heard his story, he just thought, what a weird story. That just doesn't sound plausible to me?

No, I think he thought he was a liar

In a town where everybody knew everybody. Scott Davis stood out. He had long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He looked like a middle-aged biker, like someone who could be trouble.

Sometimes it's easier to put people in a box and say that's what it is, and it couldn't be anything else. And so that's what some people do. I tend to try to follow the evidence and try to find the truth.

Mackie found Scott's truck and trailer exactly where Scott said they'd be: parked at the grocery store. He called the restaurant in Marietta and confirmed Scott did have breakfast with two men. Still, Scott's story sounded so strange. I mean, here's a guy who drove up from South Carolina with everything he owned. He left it all at a grocery store parking lot to get into a car with two strangers, to take a job at a farm that didn't exist. Mackie needed to find the crime scene, something to back up what happened to Scott in the woods. But Scott's memory was a blur. He remembered running through the trees, hills, gravel roads, brush, and a creek bed. But no landmarks, no road signs, just acres and acres of woods.

How far did he chase you on foot, do you think before he stopped, before he gave up?

Well, we started going up the hill.

Okay, did you cut off? You think to the left or the right?

I cut off to the left.

And you ran back up the hill towards where the slip was?

Davis's answer again and again:

I was in panic mode, man, I'll tell you, I really can't remember much. I started running like the bat out of hell. I lost my hat…

And there it was: a clue.

So you find a baseball cap. That's where it happened.

Think about that. Finding the crime scene came down to a lost hat, a black leather Harley hat with a Sturgis pin.

Lemme tell you how difficult it's to find a baseball cap in the area of Noble County they were in,

Because literally you're out in the middle of nowhere and everything looks the same, right?

No, it doesn't look the same. It's beautiful down here. I mean, there's beautiful sites everywhere. There's not a lot of baseball caps laying around, but you got to find the baseball cap before you have a scene.

This would not be a coordinated search. There was no task force, no team. There was Detective Jason Mackie, just him alone in the woods. Next time: A Grave in the Woods.

You're not hearing from your brother, and that's unusual. What's going through your mind at this time?

I knew something was wrong. I knew it wasn't going to be good because David would've called me. I all of a sudden remembered he mentioned Cambridge, so I Googled the newspaper for Cambridge and found it, and that's when I found the article. I called the sheriff's office, talked to the dispatcher, told her the whole thing, and she said, detective's going to call you back.

Within two minutes of talking to her. It was very clear we had a big problem.

So in your mind, David was probably dead?

Yeah.