9 | Dumb Like a Fox

Hello, you have a call at no expefnse to you from Richard Beasley, an inmate at Summit County Jail.

Richard Beasley was back in jail and once again, he called his mom because of course he did.

Hi Rich. Hey mom. How's everything going? Good.

And once again, he explained a new set of charges against him – not murder or attempted murder. Not yet. The prosecution wasn't ready to play that card, but Summit County had an easy way to buy time, a way to keep Beasley locked up without a prayer of making bond. Brace yourself because Summit County finally dropped the hammer. It indicted Beasley on prostitution related charges.

I don't know where they're getting this stuff. A couple of the names I don't even recognize.

What kind of an indictment is that called?

Racketeering Indictment.

Racketeering indictment.

It’s supplemental, they attached it onto the prostitution charges.

Wow.

Lieutenant Detective Terry Pasko finally got what he'd been chasing for 18 months. A grand jury indicted Richard Beasley. One count of compelling prostitution for allegedly arranging for a 17-year-old boy to engage in sex for money. Beasley was also hit with 14 counts of promoting prostitution, all felonies, for allegedly managing and controlling over a dozen women involved in prostitution for more than a year. According to the indictment, this wasn't some one-off crime. It was an organized operation and Beasley was at the center of it.

There are eight women's names on it.

Okay, one of them is dead.

Yeah. One of them is deceased.

That was true. One of the women named in the indictment was deceased: Savana, the young woman who once believed Chaplain Rich would save her. The woman, Amy, the former sex worker turned informant, had tried to protect.

She had a very bad addiction, and Rich got her out of jail. She was one of the ones that thought she was going to get sober,

But Chaplain Rich had not saved Savannah from her life on the streets. He had not provided the love she craved or the safe haven she'd sought. Instead, Savannah died in a motel bathtub. She was 22.

Did she die of a heroin overdose?

That's what they said she died of, but I don't believe she died of that. She was an addict, so there would be no way to know. He's very smart, so he knows. He knows.

Baisley dismissed Savana’'s death as just another overdose and wondered how prosecutors could possibly use her words against him.

And I don't know how they think they can have somebody dead testify. She died of a heroin overdose when I was in jail.

I remember, how sad.

Yeah, it was, it was very sad And anyway, to make a long story short, I don't think any one of them ever spent, at least not with my knowledge, they would have spent a night in the house. Not one of them.

But the indictment told a different story. And Savana, she could no longer share her truth. I’m Carol Costello. This is The God Hook episode 9 of 10: Dumb Like a Fox.

On November 17th, 2011, Richard Beasley sat in jail scheming, but this time it wouldn't be so easy. He faced not just drug trafficking charges, but a new indictment for prostitution and racketeering. And this time a judge saw through his act. This wasn't about a chaplain on jacked up charges. This was about a dangerous man who could soon be charged with multiple murders. Beasley was hit with a staggering $1 million bond – too high for his mother to cover. Chaplain Rich, pastor Jack, Dutch, Ralph Jack. He wasn't going anywhere. Not this time. A public defender was appointed and the wheels of justice finally began to turn in earnest.

Just say your name and what title you want us to use.

I'm Rhonda Kotnick.

Rhonda Kotnick was Beasley's Public Defender. They – public defenders – are often the last line of defense for people accused of the unthinkable: murder, trafficking crimes that make headlines and turn stomachs. They walk into courtrooms knowing the world already sees their clients as guilty, sometimes even evil.

Someone asked me that the other day. They said, have you lost all faith in humanity? I'm like, no. There's only been a few cases that I really thought the person, they were a sociopath. Usually it's drugs, alcohol, mental health, some facts that are a little off, but I haven't had that many cases where I just thought that that person was just evil.

Would Richard Beasley fall into that category?

Something was off about him, so I'm going to say he didn't fall under those exceptions of mental health and drugs.

Rhonda had heard of Richard Beasley, or rather, chaplain Rich. Everyone had – he was a fixture at the Summit County Courthouse, always around the jail praying with inmates.

And that's what's weird about the whole situation is he was someone we all recognized. He was someone at the court. He was someone at the jail. He was someone that would contact us and say, I'm working with your client. I want to come to court and I want to write a letter on this person's behalf, or I want to speak on this person's behalf. So it was kind of shocking that someone you knew was somebody that was actually charged in these kinds of crimes.

It was difficult for Rhonda to reconcile the charges against Chaplain Rich: prostitution, trafficking, drugs, and possibly murder. If Rich Beasley was guilty of all of that, he'd conned nearly everyone at the courthouse and he knew it.

Can you tell me anything about what he said about those charges to you?

That he denied everything.

So he denied ever ever luring women down on their luck to his halfway house using the Bible and then prostituting them?

A hundred percent.

Was he angry he was accused of that?

Yeah. How could you accuse me? I'm a religious man. I wouldn't do something like this.

What kind of an indictment is that called? Racketeering indictment. It’s supplemental – they attached it onto the prostitution charges,

Racketeering, indictment. And how many of the seven did you know?

Really only one or two. If they’d been to the house, it was because they were visiting clients and I wasn't there. They're clutching at straws.

In a way, Beasley was right. There was a good chance he'd never stand trial for selling sex. Not because the case was weak, but because of something far darker. This is where it gets a little complicated, so stay with me. Prosecutors were not ready to charge Beasley with murder. Not yet. It was a complicated case, possibly a death penalty case. They couldn't afford to make any mistakes, so they would hold Beasley on outstanding warrants and that prostitution related indictment.

Well, I had a conversation with the prosecutors from Summit County on this case.

Lieutenant Detective Terry Pasko.

Essentially what it means is, we're looking at a triple homicide and I think a felonious assault was tacked on there for the shooting.

Prosecutors wanted to throw every resource they had to prove those charges,

So we're going to not move forward on your charges.

But if the worst case scenario occurred and he was acquitted of those murder charges, Pasko’s prostitution case would be vigorously pursued.

I understood it. I didn't feel like I did all that work for nothing. It just never seemed that way because I was overcome with the gravity of the homicides once I learned about them.

While Summit County prosecutors grappled with when and how to file murder charges, Noble County Detective Jason Mackie sat down with Rafferty one more time. They talked about Tim Kern, the last man to go missing after answering the Craigslist ad. The man whose death so rattled former prosecutor, Paul Scarsella.

Tim was just a struggling dad. He was working a couple hours a week at Speedway, was living in his car some nights, but he loved his kids and he was always there. It's silly, but that one…

Tim was so down on his luck, he was driving a beat up 1989 Buick LeSabre that couldn’t go over 35 miles an hour, and according to Brogan, all Tim talked about were his sons.

I'm driving and begin to find out more and more that this gentleman, since he was planning on taking up his job in southern Ohio, he loved his kids and he missed his kids. Even though they were a little bit older.

Tim Kern had already given everything he had of value to his children. He was down to his last $5.

So with this one, you realize there wasn't going to be much financial benefit at all.

Yeah, so more or less, this was completely unnecessary and I felt horrible about it. I felt horrible about all of them, but this one was completely, no reason for it at all. At all.

And yet, Rafferty drove Tim Kern to a patch of woods behind a crumbling mall near Akron to a grave. A grave Rafferty himself had dug.

Beasley had me dig the hole for him, and this again was maybe only two feet because it was in the woods.

Beasley told Tim he hunted squirrels in the small patch of woods behind the shopping center and had lost his watch. He wanted to look for the watch before they headed down south to the farm. But Tim Kern never made it to Caldwell. He died near Akron in Summit County behind a shopping mall. His murder was brutal. Here's former assistant DA Paul Scarsella.

Geiger was shot twice in the head. I believe Paul was shot once. I believe the only one who had multiple gunshots was Tim.

Tim Kern was shot five times, the last shot between his eyes.

What kind of a gun did he use this time?

He used the .22 pistol that you found in my possession in my bedroom.

An FBI agent would later circle back to that .22, incredulous that Rafferty would stash a murder weapon in his bedroom.

How about the gun?

The gun, he said, you need to hold onto this for me.

Don't you think that could be potentially incriminating to you?

I know looking back, but there's not a whole lot to prove that I wasn't the one that killed this gentleman, but I know that I didn't because I had no reason to. There was no reason whatsoever, and it would be like a lion killed a zebra just to kill it, and then just because it wanted its hoof or something. The man literally I think had $5 in his pocket.

Mackie wasn't buying any of it.

Now we want to be tremendously clear on this next question here. You didn't shoot Mr. Kern yourself, did you?

I did not shoot him, and I did not shoot any of these gentlemen.

Okay.

It's frightening how casually 16-year-old Rafferty talked about murder. What's even harder to comprehend is how quickly everything escalated.

Let's turn our focus back to Richard Beasley. He went from an alleged sex trafficker to a cold-blooded serial killer; from a fake chaplain who exploited women to a fake employer who killed vulnerable men. It's a leap that seems so extreme I still can't wrap my head around it.

So Beasley gets out on bond for that last time. He's not even charged with prostitution yet, but he gets out on bond and he skips his court date and disappears, and that's when he engages this young accomplice and starts to plot this bizarre plan to assume the identities of these men. I don't know, Emily, did that ever make sense to you?

For me to sit and think, okay, I'm going to go find someone who looks like me, who's down on their luck, and then I'm going to kill them. I'm going to assume their identity and then come up with this whole next scheme where I'm playing myself off as now this dead guy that I've murdered, and then go murder more people so I can get their things and make money. That's just not the thought process of a normal person. You can't try to put yourself into the mind of the person who's coming up with this crime,

Dr. Topalli, you as a criminologist, you do put yourself into the minds of criminals, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think that's what Emily said is actually really important is that motive in the legal sense is not the same as motive in the criminological sense

Criminologist, Dr. Volkan Topalli.

And the motive can be very simple. He wanted the new identity so that he would be able to keep on offending. He wanted to keep offending so he could get money. And seems to me that he thought, I'm ready to move up to the next level essentially. And the reason why I say that is skipping on the court date. That's kind of saying, I'm ready to move on here, I'm done dealing with these petty court dates and going in and out of jail. I don't have time for that. So it's kind of disdain for the court and the legal system. I'm above that, I'm beyond that, and I have this very elaborate kind of plan, which of course I will get away with because I'm brilliant. I'm smart. God is on my side. God's not just on my side, but I've got it over on him as well. I think there is some of that mixed up in it. And so, when you have these belief systems, these kinds of plans, although they may look to the rest of us, they don't make sense or that boy, there's no way this guy's going to get away with this. In his mind, in anyone's mind, things always turn out differently than what you may imagine.

Beasley didn't have time for courts or rules. He operated with disdain for the legal system, for authority, for anyone who thought they could hold him accountable. In his world, he was untouchable, smarter than everyone, and maybe in his mind even smarter than God. He spun elaborate schemes, convinced he'd outmaneuver everyone: investigators, prosecutors, and the media. After all, he had one up on God.

We'll see what happens. Anyway, well, let me see what else is going on. Yeah, definitely nothing from Gentlemen's Quarterly.

That was a new one.

So make sure you get a business card from him. There'll be more. I got something from Indigo Films. They turn that away.

They want do a movie on you.

Actually, oh, there'll probably be movies on this. There'll be movies and books, multiple movies and all. Especially once truth comes out. Again, I'm not giving details in that case, but I'm just saying they're so far wrong, like such idiots in court. This is the kind of stuff, I could end up being a millionaire from this stuff.

Wahoo!

Yeah, that'd be nice, but that aside, the whole thing's incredible. They think they know. They know nothing.

Everyone connected to this case suspects Richard Beasley murdered other people before he ever placed a Craigslist ad.

So do you think there are more victims too?

Oh, without a doubt. Beasley has killed. Yeah, there's more people that he's killed. I'm absolutely convinced of that.

Is there any way to find out who those victims are?

Not unless he decides to have a conversation with somebody.

Do you think he will one day?

Nope.

Even though he's Chaplain Rich?

He's something. The end of his existence is not going to scare him enough to ever have that conversation. He's deluded himself too much in my opinion.

What about Brogan Rafferty?

He will never talk either. He had his opportunity to talk and he told just as much as he thought law enforcement knew until they could prove that they knew more. But I don't think that we'll ever be able to find out. I just don't. And the property where all of this happened, it is so vast and in parts, so dense, there's no way to go out and to look. We all have our theories that we believe there's no way to prove it, but I just don't understand how you can have your first in such a remote location.

Beasley often bragged about his violent past. He claimed he ran guns for the Hell's Angels, said he had ties to a violent motorcycle gang. Lieutenant Pasko said it was part of his con, a way to manipulate and control the women in his halfway house.

We developed information that he bragged about beating people up, can make you disappear. But he never crossed that bridge and said, oh yeah, I killed somebody here or there. Even if just to puff himself up. We never got that.

Amy said Beasley's bravado worked, that he often told her he'd killed someone in Texas and liked how it felt.

So you knew that he'd been in prison in Texas. What did you hear about that?

He told me he killed a guy in prison and got away with it. He was trying to scare me because he was telling me how when he killed him, he was watching the life drain from his eyes and he enjoyed it.

There was no evidence Beasley murdered anyone in Texas, but on the streets there were rumors. Sex workers whispered that some of the girls who had crossed paths with Chaplain Rich had disappeared. One moment stood out. It was a warning from an older man who ran a drug house and had known Beasley for years.

He said, Amy, you got to get out of there because I've known Rich for a lot of years and he's not right. He said, he's sick, he's a sic individual. He said that he would hurt us and that he was capable of much more than we thought.

Just street talk? I don't know. For a while though, even Pasko began to wonder. A local sex worker had died under murky circumstances. Beasley's name kept coming up. Word even made its way to Noble County. Detective Jason Mackie who decided to ask Rafferty if he knew anything,

There was another incident. You've known Richard for a while?

Yes.

And he had some apparently, problems with prostitution charges.

Yes.

One of those prostitutes ended up dead.

Mackie was vague. No names, no details, and yet…

Was her name Savana?

I don't know.

I had heard Beasley was incarcerated because of the prostitution or whatever, and while he was incarcerated, one of 'em, that was like one night he was fond of, I think she had been staying in his house or whatnot. He liked her. He cared for her a lot. She died of an overdose. But as far as any of them getting killed or anything like that, I don't know anything of that. I know that the one died of overdose, but he was incarcerated.

Rafferty was right. Beasley was behind bars, but Mackie had not brought up Savana’s name. Rafferty did. That doesn't mean he or Beasley had anything to do with death, but the fact that Rafferty jumped to Savana’s death unprompted is unsettling.

Hi mom. Hi honey. Before I say anything else, I just want you to know you're not to reply in any way to what I'm going to tell you or to say anything on the phone to anyone or anyone around you. That's what Rhonda said.

Okay.

Did you hear everything I said?

Yes.

Okay. Well, the news is plastered and the headlines in the Beacon today saying that they found a body in Caldwell County.

I don't know what to tell you. I’m still quite shocked.

I know, honey. So were we. I can only say that everybody's praying about the situation and praying for all of us, and we'll just find out what's coming up next.

What happened deep in the woods surfaced slowly, but once the media truly engaged, the story came crashing down like an avalanche. Beasley had to know murder charges were coming because he began to do what he did best: he came up with a new con. He semi-retired Chaplain Rich, Totally erased Pastor Jack and his farm. In their place, he introduced a new persona: Grandpa Rich, an ailing old man, feeble and frail.

I'll give you a ring Church tomorrow just asking to pray for me. Tell him I'm starting to have problems with my left knee. Now I don't know what it's, it just hurts all the time.

Can you put ice on it at all? Do you have access to ice?

No. Wish I could.

Soon. Grandpa Rich was asking jail guards to help him cope with his many physical ailments.

The other thing is the cervical fusion. It was causing me a lot of pain. I got have regular pillow, so they put on their computer, give pillow if available. What's going to happen is if a lawyer ever comes back, is I’ve got to have a pillow.

As Beasley polished his latest con, the Summit County prosecutor made a decision. Richard Beasley would be charged with multiple murders, and she would not pull any punches. This would be a death penalty case, an intricate one. The crime stretched across jurisdictions. One victim killed in Summit County. The others in Noble County, a minor was involved. Summit County prosecutors knew they could not do this alone. They would need help.

When Emily and I worked for the attorney general's office, we didn't have any original jurisdiction, so we only got cases when prosecutors asked us to come help with cases. So when this all happened, the conniving person that I am wanted this case. Right?

What was it in you that made you want this type of attention grabbing sensational…?

As a prosecutor or as a trial lawyer, you just want those cases. It's about testing yourself. It's about testing your abilities. It's about am I really as good as I think I am, or can I be this good?

The Feds were interested too. So the competition was on.

So the goal was to leverage the relationships that Emily and I had developed over those years to get Summit County to ask us to come in and do it and to handle everything in Summit County because Tim Kern had been killed there. So we had jurisdiction in Summit County.

And I think that was one of the things as a special prosecutor at the time, is we had to have a good reputation that we knew what we were doing when we went and tried cases, but we also had to know that we were going into someone else's county and we'd say to them, we can come in and try this case and we will make you look really good because you brought us in the additional help. It doesn't cost you money, and if we lose it, you don't look bad because we've taken the hit for you.

That vision clicked. Summit County said yes. The Ohio attorney general’s office would assist with the case. Emily, Paul and a Summit County assistant prosecutor would lead the prosecution. It's the kind of case you don't see much anymore, and one that divides people. I mean, sure, according to Pew, most Americans, about 64%, still believe the death penalty is morally justified in cases of murder. But if you're someone who's firmly against it, that stat doesn't matter to you. A lot of people of faith, for example, are taught to choose mercy over punishment. That's what I was taught growing up Catholic, which some might find ironic given the church's history. Emily and Paul understand all of that. They respect it, but they also have their own convictions, convictions shaped by the weight of this case and what they were about to uncover.

A death penalty case. In my mind, I would be conflicted. Right? Is it hard to know that you're going to try a death penalty case?

This would be a death penalty case. It's funny. I don't really like to look at the defendants. When I tried cases, I didn't like to look at them. In some respects, I wanted to keep them not personal, but not real. But in this case in particular, I never even looked at him, but this was like the worst of the worst, and I think as prosecutors, I have religion in my life. I am a human. I know that every person is the child of a mother, a father, and a sibling, a brother, sister. There are relationships there and some are just bad.

Paul is more blunt, and when I say blunt, I mean blunt.

Some folks just need killing. There's just no way around it. I mean, some folks just need killing Beasley. I wanted on death row. He deserved to be on death row.

There was never a plea offered to him.

There was never really a plea offered to Beasley. He deserved to be on the row. You killed this many people in the manner in which you did it. That's what the death penalty was designed for, and if the jury found that it was appropriate, then that's what was going to happen.

What was it about him that made him particularly evil in your mind, if that's the right word?

No, I think it is, and I think that's a discussion. We don't have enough as a society is that there is in fact evil in the world, and we don't want admit that, and we want to think that everybody just kind of makes a bad decision. There's this, but some people are just flat out evil. Okay? Having worked as many homicides as I have, I don't think every one of my defendants or clients that I've prosecuted or that I've defended is evil. But Beasley was, they weren't humans to him, they weren't people to him. They weren't family members. To him, they were just a means to an end.

In your mind, I know the religious angle comes into it in your estimation of why Richard Beasley was such a bad person.

Well, he prayed on vulnerability and he did so using hope, the promise of something better and all under the guise that he was this religious man, and that's, I get very skeptical, and perhaps this is part of the jaded part of the prosecuting world that has continued with me. When someone leads with I'm religion, so I'm good. Religion has been the undermining of how many wars since the beginning of time? So you have this person who's using religion to say that he's good and he's drawing people in and gaining their trust, and they're thinking, well, he's religious. He can speak the Bible. He can do all of these things. He's good, therefore, I'm going to put my guard down even more and trust him. That's just the worst. People that use religion and God as a means to gain trust and to have a position of authority over others, and then just to exploit that, that's the most evil in my opinion.

We'll talk more about the death penalty in a special bonus episode.

Were you able to see anything on today's paper?

No. Uhuh.

I guess they found two more victims. One up here behind Rolling Acres, off one of those roads that goes back into there where it’s kind of brushy. And another one buried in Noble County, close to where the others were in that vicinity anyway.

As always, Beasley's mom broke the news. They found two more bodies, but Beasley didn't need to hear the names. He already knew: Ralph Geiger, Tim Kern. Two more victims. Secrets that Beasley hoped would stay buried.

Did you start your Bible study yet?

No. We're going to do that this weekend on Sunday. I’ve just been too rattled. This is all just so overwhelming. I tell you this, there is some disinformation going around on top of what we said, but that's a different story.

Yeah, yeah.

On January 20th, 2012, 35 days after Beasley's arrest, and nearly two years after Lieutenant Detective Terry Pasko began investigating Chaplain Rich for sex trafficking, Richard Beasley was indicted in Summit County on 28 counts, including murder, robbery, and kidnapping. Beasley was down but not out. He stuck with what he knew how to do best. He sank deeper into his latest con. A new role, a new disguise. The frail old chaplain, the gentle grandfather wracked with aches, weighed down by age, and now he hinted the boy he once taught scripture might turn on him.

The problem they got is Brogan admitted he lied about the details. He thinks he's going to get out when he's 21 years old.

Yeah, I know.

Beasley would soon blame Rafferty. After all, he was too broken, too devout to kill, certainly too weak to drag a body, let alone bury one. Beasley kept on spinning it, still playing the role of the peaceful man of God.

Nobody who knows me is going to believe that. You're talking about a guy who's never raised his hand against another human being in his life.

The truth will come out, Richard.

My biggest worry is that Brogan will lie to get himself out of trouble.

Yeah.

I love you very much.

I love you too.

Next week: The Final Con.

Beasley's trial would be sensational, a contest between the state and a conman. So he was even playing a con in court?

Every word that came out of his mouth was a con,

But you said he was good on the stand. Right?

Every conman has that ability, right? That's what makes him a conman. They can spin a yarn, they can tell a tale, and he told a heck of a story.