8 | Full Circle

It started with Ralph Geiger, killed in cold blood for nothing more than his name. Three months later, it happened again. David Pauley killed for a handful of belongings, two men both seeking redemption through a job offer, both buried deep in the woods on the Lord's day, murdered by a man who still fancied himself, godly. Then came Scott Davis -- another Sunday, another setup.

Scott Davis is a real hero in all this because had he not survived what he survived and made it through and then sounded the alarm, like, I don't know how many people could have been killed before this ever came to light.

But even with Scott Davis alive and talking with police, another man would die. But this time the con looked different. It wasn't as sharp or as clever. It was sloppy. You're about to hear a police interview. A man had come forward to tell detectives about his experience with Craigslist and the job of a lifetime.

What happened? How did you come into contact with this whole thing? I was just looking on Craigslist and then seeing a job posted. So I just sent him an email asking more about the job and stuff like that.

While the ad itself seemed professional, the emails from the prospective employer were not. They were far from polished. They looked like a kid wrote them.

I don't know. Whenever I got it back, it looked like a kid wrote it and stuff like that. So that's what it looked like? Yeah. Oh, okay. Because some of the words were misspelled with numbers and stuff like that.

This man thought it sounded like a scam, so he backed away, but others did not. The need for redemption is a powerful thing. It can pull a desperate man into darkness. Like Tim Kern. He would be the last known victim to die. Of all the murders, Tim Kerns was the most baffling. Then again, none of this makes much sense, but oh, Tim. Paul Scarsella was co-counsel along with Emily and Beasley's murder trial. Tim's murder hit him hard.

I had done, I don't know how many homicides up to this point, but Tim's kind of stuck with me. That's the one that has affected me.

Why? I mean, you don't have to go into the personal stuff. I just wondered why.

Fathers and sons. It's uh...

Scarsella's a tough guy, but the words catch in his throat.

I lost my dad in December, so this is, at the time, Tim was just a struggling dad. He was working a couple hours a week at Speedway and was living in his car some nights, but he loved his kids and he was always there. It's silly, but that one...

A Craigslist ad, a second chance, a shot at redemption. Tim's way back to being the father he yearned to be.

I had a great relationship with my dad. So seeing Tim struggle and just work and just the idea that this was going to be his chance to get back on his feet to take care of his sons and that prick, both those pricks, pardon my French, took that chance away from him.

I'm Carol Costello. This is the God Hook episode eight of 10: Full Circle.

Let's turn the clock back one more time to early November, 2011. Noble County Detective Jason Mackie knows that one man is dead, David Pauley, and that Scott Davis survived a gunshot wound. That's all he knows. He doesn't know about Ralph Geiger. He's never heard the name Tim Kern. Not yet, but he always suspected the worst because on the day he talked with Debra Bruce about her missing twin brother David Pauley, detective Mackie called for backup.

I'd already been in contact with Drew McConaughey from the FBI, our local agent, and we had met, I think on Thursday about this case, and we started working on it together.

A multi-jurisdictional task force formed quickly. That task force included Akron police, US Marshals, Noble County detectives, and the FBI all were to work together on an incredibly complicated case.

One of the important things when you have a case like this is to think, where are you going to start?

Investigators decided to start with the Craigslist ad. Here's Emily.

The FBI was able to go back forensically and say, okay, what was the IP address for this particular record? So through all those Gmails, where were those Gmails sent from? And then they go find the provider of that IP address, and then they say, okay, we now know the address of this particular IP address through this provider so they can kind of start their investigation. Up to that point.

The IP address behind the Craigslist ad led to a convicted felon, a fugitive who'd skipped his September drug trafficking trial in Summit County. His name? Richard Beasley, a man with a long rap sheet time served for a string of burglaries in Texas and gun running in Ohio. He was also wanted for violating his parole in Texas. Beasley's file was thick with mugshots, but when investigators compared those mugshots to the surveillance video from the diner, to the man who sat across from Scott Davis over breakfast, that man looked nothing like Santa Claus. Investigators were baffled, so they turned to the Akron Police Department to a lieutenant who still had unfinished business with a self-proclaimed chaplain who was also suspected of trafficking women. Yeah. Now we've come full circle because that lieutenant was Lieutenant Detective Terry Pasko.

I remember a guy in the task force calling me from, he was in our fugitive task force. He worked for Akron, but they were looking for Beasley.

That guy sent Pasko a still shot from the surveillance video taken from the Shoney's restaurant in Marietta. Pasko stared at the image. It showed a man with slick jet black hair. At first glance, the man looked nothing like the Richard Beasley he remembered.

This is the first time I'd seen him with completely black hair. He looked like an Elvis. The build was the same.

Pasko leaned in, studying every contour. The build matched. So did the nose, but the transformation was startling.

I go, yeah, that's him. But he looks remarkably different. He was still kind of heavy, but his hair was different and it was black. And so once I pulled the photos up and looked at him and I go, yeah, that's his nose. Yeah, that's him.

When Pasko heard Beasley was suspected of murder, it threw him. He'd seen Beasley as a hustler, a conman. Dangerous, but not a killer.

That was a shocker. Not only was I shocked, but I just didn't believe it because I saw him as somewhat of a phony. I know he had a background of being a convicted felon, and he could be violent, but his violence was generally limited to females and weaker people because of his size.

But these new allegations of murder may be more than one. Murder was something else entirely.

I mean, I was really surprised at somebody that I thought was street smart, but his idea of survival is just keep ripping people off and killing them and taking $200 worth of belongings and selling it for $50, then moving on. I mean, I still am shocked that the value of those lives was whatever they had in their trailer, and that still shocks me to this day, and that's when I realized there's a whole nother level of depravity out there.

Did it ever enter your mind that had Richard Beasley not made bond, those murders wouldn't have happened?

Absolutely.

To

This day, the whole

Thing troubles him. I can't imagine what he went through when he got that call.

Here's Emily.

It's kind of like that. Who's been in the corner all along screaming, Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. I know something really bad is going to happen, and no one paid attention to him. So for him to get that call, I can't imagine how he felt

Investigators say a job seeker was found dead and buried in a shallow grave. Another man from South Carolina was shot in all of this, but he managed to escape through the woods and call police.

Once the story hit the news, the phone lines lit up. Hundreds of calls, tip after tip, mostly from men who had responded to the same Craigslist ad. These men, by sheer luck or timing, had walked away before it was too late. And then another kind of call came into police -- this one from the family of a man named Tim Kern. They hadn't heard from Tim in days, and yeah, he'd answered the Craigslist ad too. With that, the investigation supercharged a fugitive on the run for four months was tracked down within hours.

And then they did some FBI magic.

Using tools only available to federal investigators, the FBI traced the digital trail in earnest. They tracked the IP address tied to the Craigslist ad and the email sent by the man who placed the ads and pinpointed where they had originated multiple computers with multiple accounts. Then came the phones, multiple numbers, multiple burner phones, phones. Beasley used to communicate with potential victims with landlords, even with his own mother.

So they did something magical in FBI land where they took all of these phone numbers and put them into some big salt shaker, and then they came out with where he was. Now, of course, that's not really what happened. That's what I like to think, because to have someone on the stand to truly explain what it is that they did, I believe it was some kind of triangulation of the cell number that they were able to eventually link to him.

So where was Richard Beasley?

He was in Akron just hanging out.

I can't even, I can't. Richard Beasley, a fugitive a man wanted for allegedly trafficking women who allegedly threatened a woman's life, who allegedly corrupted a troubled boy, was just hanging out in Akron, living in a rented room on Gridley Street that he'd found for 75 bucks a week on Craigslist.

The really sick part of this is that he was renting a room as Ralph Geiger, and he did it for about three weeks. It was also brazen. He went by the nickname Dutch when he was there.

Oh. Because somehow he came up with that nickname because when he got the job as Ralph Geiger, he told people on the job to call him Dutch.

And just think about how complex it would have to be to remember all of those stories. Like, well, who am I today? I'm at this location today. I'm going to be Dutch. Today, I'm going to be Jack. I mean, it's a lot of stuff to keep in your head.

So he was at the Gridley Street address for just three weeks. That probably meant that he was changing locations during his run from the law.

Just trying to find wherever he could to not be in one place. Absolutely. And what's interesting about this location, he was there for about three weeks, and he moved in around the beginning of November, and one of the big complaints that he had about this location is that it didn't have wifi, and he kept asking the homeowner, when are you going to get wifi? When are you going to get it? Can we have this? So that was one of his big concerns while he was at that property.

So he is probably planning on placing more Craigslist ads.

I mean, it adds up. They add, the timing adds up. If it's November 1st for about three weeks,

It was time for the FBI to move in to put an end to Richard Beasley's deadly con.

They kind of shut down the whole street.

Within seconds, Gridley Street was transformed into a sort of battlefield with FBI SWAT officers, agents and police everywhere.

I just imagine that final scene at "Christmas Vacation" where all the SWAT people are coming in through the windows and they're just coming in from all angles, and that's how I envision it was when they went to arrest Richard Beasley. So why the big police presence? Here you have someone who's evaded law. You have all of these different jurisdictions involved. You have the Marshals because he had an outstanding warrant, and you have the FBI involved. You have Noble County, you have Akron PD, Sheriff's Office, and at this point, they have no idea if he's killed again. They have this huge property in southern Ohio that could be filled with people that are underground and buried, and they know that there's an ad that was up and running online for recruiting these people. So they had to act as fast as they could.

In short order. SWAT had a man on the ground face down his hands and zip ties behind his back, but they needed to be sure they needed a positive id that this man who now resembled Elvis on a really bad day was actually Richard Beasley. Lieutenant Detective Terry Pasko was at the ready.

I didn't care for Rich, and one of the biggest moments was when he got arrested and he changed his appearance drastically. I mean, he went jet black Elvis hair, from Santa Claus to Elvis and the goatee and changed his clothing, and he had lost a little weight, but he was still overweight. So he kind of rolls over his side. He looks up and I go, "Richard Beasley, I'm Lieutenant Pasko. Nice to finally meet you." And he goes, huh. And that was just my really cool moment of introducing myself to him. After a year of shadowing him. I mean, I can remember one time on the steps of the police department, he'd come out from being upstairs watching a trial, and I was secretly taking pictures of him with my phone, and I was five feet away from him, he never knew it. But I never met him. So that was my chance. I'm like, yes, nice to meet you, Rich. It was great. Not as good to see him go to prison on my charges, but yeah

Inside Beasley's apartment investigators found Ralph Geiger's wallet and his social security card. There were two computers and something else, a plan, a backup scheme ready to go in case Scott Davis managed to crawl out of the woods alive. Beasley knew that if Davis went to the police, he'd need a cover story. Fast. Something that could twist the narrative, shift the blame, and keep his own name out of the headlines. So he set the stage. He told his landlord a stranger, maybe a member of a biker gang, had pulled a gun on him in the dead of night. The gun jammed. A miracle, Beasley said. He'd escaped by the grace of God, shaken but unscathed. It wasn't just a lie. It was insurance.

The night before Beasley's arrest, before it all began to unravel for chaplain Rich, detective Jason Mackie was still in Caldwell, exhausted, caked in mud, haunted by the image of the pre-dug grave and of David Pauley's body. But there was no time for any kind of reflection. Mackie was trying to prevent another murder. He called his contact at the FBI.

I told him I'd talked to Debra and that we had found a body, and he says, we've kind of got Beasley's location maybe narrowed down a little bit.

The agent gave Mackie a time: 6:00 AM and a place: Gridley Street in Akron, 100 miles north.

It's like 10:00 PM. So I go right from exhuming David Pauley's body to go home and sleep very little.

He tried to forget what he'd seen in the woods, but that was impossible. He tried to sleep. That was not easy. Then he was behind the wheel driving toward Akron, a suspect he knew little about, and whatever would come next.

We arrived there at the scene and they've got the whole block shut down.

It looked like a scene out of "Law & Order."

So we're walking through there. Somebody says, you the detective from Noble County? I said, yes, and they said, come with me. I said, okay?

An FBI agent led Mackie to a police car.

So he take me up to this police car. He opened the door, said, get in. I get in, and they put me in the backseat with Richard Beasley.

What?

Yes! That's what I thought.

Did you say hi?

Richard said, did he say you were from Noble County? I said, yeah. You ever been there?

Did he answer you?

Yeah. Yeah. He told me he'd been there. So now I'm trying to get a recorder onto my pocket, which I did.

Here's what Mackie just described in real time. You can hear him fumbling with his recorder, but listen closely, because Beasley seemed to believe his arrest had nothing to do with murder or attempted murder, or maybe that's what he wanted Mackie to believe, because he told the detective his arrest was all about a misunderstanding over a parole violation out of Texas. Yeah, Texas.

Well, after I was on probation, parole for three years, they told me Your parole is discharged, terminated. Several years later, I picked up another case and they said, oh, by the way, there's a parole warrant for Texas. I even had paperwork that said my parole was terminated. They said Ohio didn't have the authority to terminate it. Texas had to terminate it because they were the sending state.

If you didn't hear that, Beasley told Mackie he was a wanted man in Texas and that all of this was one big mistake.

So it's still active then as far as you know, or?

As far as I know. I mean, the parole officer was right there at the scene.

Today?

Okay, I just got here. Hell, I don't know what went on, what didn't.

After that brief exchange, a small town detective and a man suspected of multiple murders sat shoulder to shoulder in the backseat of a patrol car making small talk.

What do you go by? You prefer to be called Richard or Rich? Okay.

It was awkward. So really you're interrogating Richard Beasley in the police car as you're driving off.

Trying to build some rapport with him, not normally how it happens.

Normally, detectives have time to dig into a suspect's background, time to plan an approach, time to prepare for what they're walking into. But not this time. Remember, this was Mackie's first major homicide case, and he had no time to prep, no time even to take a deep breath. Nothing.

I'm telling you, I was only there maybe three minutes before I get put in this car. We just drive off. But it was just, I'm in the backseat of a cop car with that guy. It was kind of weird. It was unusual.

The patrol car finally rolled to a stop outside the FBI field office.

Third floor. We going the elevator or we go? We'll go straight here. Stop right there, Richard, Rich. I said, just stop there, Rich.

Inside a sterile interview room, the tension was palpable. Mackie and an FBI agent sat across from Beasley. What was his demeanor like?

He was on a bit of a fishing expedition, I think. Just trying to find out maybe what we knew.

Couple minutes ago. I advise you what your rights. Remember that? Yes, correct. When was the last time you were in Noble County?

I can't even remember to tell you the truth.

That was a lie. Mackie knew it. He opened a file and slid out a photograph.

If I showed you pictures of you in Noble County and in the area would help you remember? Sure. A week and a half ago. Show me the pictures.

And there it was in the photo: Beasley, clear as day, sitting across from Scott Davis at Shoney's restaurant in Marietta.

Looks a lot like me.

Note Beasley said, "it looks like me." He did not say "that's me." Mackie had enough. It was obvious the man in the photo was Richard Beasley because Beasley was wearing the same leather jacket.

Looks a lot like me.

Well, that's because it is. There's your jacket right there. The same one you're wearing today. So this fellow here wearing this orange shirt, he got injured a little bit later after this was breakfast meeting. He's alive and well, and that's what we're here to talk about. This situation is serious.

If Mackie thought that would rattle Beasley, he was wrong.

My lawyer's name is Barry Ward. Five, three five [beeped] is his phone number. You want to talk to me? We're going to have to do it through him. If he's not going to take the case, then I'll have to be appointed an attorney

Like a seasoned predator cornered, but not caught, Beasley, shut up. But he was still thinking, calculating. So wouldn't he at that point know the game was up?

Yeah, he did. I think that's why he didn't want to talk to us anymore. He was trying to figure out how deep was in, like how much we knew.

FBI Agents moved Beasley to another room to be transported to the Summit County Jail.

So we go there and talk to no idea, this place is a, it's got cameras. It's like an interview room. There's no audio. I had no clue.

To be clear, Mackie did not realize the room was not equipped to record sound. So thinking every word would be recorded. He made a decision to try again this time with a different approach.

I said, Hey. He said, what? I said, that guy's missing? He said, what about him? I said, well, he's not missing anymore.

That stopped Beasley cold. He stared at Mackie.

And he said, "oh my God, you found the bodies. I need an attorney." Which wasn't recorded.

An unrecorded, incriminating statement is not incriminating. There was no audio proof that Beasley had ever said, "oh my God, you found the bodies." It would be Beasley's word against Mackie's. It was unbelievably disappointing, but that wasn't the worst of it. As you're talking with him, interrogating him, are you wondering how many more bodies there are?

When he said bodies, plural? Yes, because I've only found one. I got a guy that's alive and I got a guy that's not, so I've only got one body.

So now there's more.

I assume there has to be more.

More graves hidden deep in the woods, but the woods would have to wait because before Detective Mackie could return to that cursed place, he had a meeting at a high school near Akron, in the principal's office. And what was waiting for him there would be just as macabre. Just after noon, Brogan Rafferty was called out of class, he was told to go to the principal's office. If he was surprised by who was waiting for him there, a detective from Noble County and an agent from the FBI, he didn't show it. So what was he like?

Arrogant.

So he wasn't a sweet 16-year-old who was ...?

No, he was not sweet at all and was not intimidated.

He didn't cry. He didn't ask why they were there except to say he was interested. Keep in mind, this was the very first time detectives had ever spoken to Brogan. The interrogation tapes you heard earlier in this podcast were police interviews conducted much later in the investigation, but even in this initial conversation with investigators, Brogan Rafferty was one cool customer.

Several weeks ago, evidently, you had the opportunity to go to Noble County with Richard Beasley?

Yes, sir.

What was the whole purpose of your trip down there?

I don't know.

So right now you have a great opportunity to help yourself, okay?

You're going to insinuate that I'm incriminating myself.

No no no.

I'm not to get insinuating anything.

Well, you are kind of insinuating that I'm putting myself in a position where in such position I would need a lawyer.

Brogan tried to steer the interview, and when that didn't work, he shut it down and demanded a lawyer. But Mackie and the FBI weren't done. They would bring the kid home to his parents to see if Brogan would slip. Brogan's mother met them at the front door and invited them in. Mackie, an FBI agent, and her 16-year-old son.

Where's dad at?

He's coming in.

So he's in the county jail, Rich Beasley?

Yeah, right now

You're okay.

So ultimately we all sit down at the kitchen table and started talking about why we're there.

Oh, come on. So you're sitting at the kitchen table with this family, talking about how their son allegedly murdered some people.

We didn't really start out that strong, but yes, yes.

Picture this: Brogan is sitting at the kitchen table. His parents on either side of him, a detective and an FBI agent are across the table. So they didn't call an attorney or anything? They just

No.

Instead, Brogan's mom and dad urge their son to tell the truth.

I believe in you, bud. You know that. For a change. I think your dad believes in you too. We don't always agree on how to take care of him.

Hey, I got kids myself.

Brogan's mom asked how her son would make up his schoolwork. Brogan assured her it would be okay. This talk would only take a minute. It was all so surreal. What did Rafferty say?

He tried to play dumb a lot. So we talked to him about Scott Davis.

Rafferty spun a story. He said, Scott Davis just walked off, never came back to the car. It was no big deal. Did he care about how Scott was feeling or?

No, no. Not at all.

Mackie moved on to David Pauley initially. Brogan said he didn't know anything about a Mr. Pauley. He told investigators, Beasley invited him down to Southern Ohio to dig holes for some drainage pipes. He had an excuse for everything, but even Brogan's parents weren't buying it.

I mean, his parents were like, they were pretty good interrogators. They were like, wait a second here. You telling me this happened twice?

Listen closely. You'll hear Brogan's dad jump into the interview.

Did you

See a handgun, a revolver at any time with Richard?

Yes, sir.

This is Brogan's father.

Did he have any blood on him or anything like that when he came back to the car? No. Did he seem like he was upset or nervous, sweating, anything like that? No. Let me ask you this: so he listened to radio while he was down there? Couldn't get a reception down there. Couldn't hear no gunshots or nothing like that? No.

It soon became clear Brogan was more than just a teenager who agreed to dig drainage ditches, especially after police searched the boy's bedroom and found items that belonged to David Pauley.

I came out with a tool chest. The one that's in your bedroom? One of them, yes.

Once again, Brogan's father confronted his son.

What made you think it should take this guy's tool chest? Said that he wasn't going to need it. Well, he didn't say that he wasn't going to need it in that way. Cus that sounds kind of strange.

Police also confiscated a shotgun and a computer. Among the files, that disturbing poem -- "I dug the hole like a satanic baptism, prayed like hell that night." -- a poem that described a murder. Investigators also found books about the Irish mob and how to fool police during interrogations.

He had an excuse for everything, and so he was just trying to delay, delay, delay.

There was no real emotion? He was just cold.

Absolutely none.

None.

No. So we arrest him and then we transport him from there to Juvenile Detention facility in Zanesville, Ohio. So now we have a long ride. It's me and Agent McConaughey, and now we got Brogan with us.

During that ride to juvenile hall, Mackie got one more chance to interview Brogan Rafferty, and this time Brogan admitted that he knew about David Pauley, but that Richard Beasley was to blame for everything.

I think in his mind, and he had time to think about it, like, I've got problems here. So it was almost like he was trying to maybe work his way into maybe trying to cooperate a little bit. But you know what he didn't tell me about? Everybody else.

Not a word about Ralph Geiger and not a word about Tim Kern, a man who'd been shot just three days before Mackie sat down at the dinner table with the Rafferty family. Tim Kern, whose murder so rocked, special prosecutor, Paul Scarsella, he still breaks down talking about it.

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 Kern was so down on his luck. He was drawn in by a carefully crafted Craigslist ad. The emails that followed were not the norm. They were not clever but clumsy. Again, here's what one man who also responded to the ad told investigators:

Just looking on Craigslist and then seeing a job posted so, I just sent him my email asking more about the job and stuff like that, and then just, I don't know. Whenever I got it back, it looked like a kid wrote it and stuff like that, so. That's what it looked like? Yeah. Oh, okay. Because some of the words were misspelled with numbers.

But Tim Kern accepted the job anyway, and unlike Beasley's other victims, Kern's murder was messy. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it wasn't like the others. Here's former assistant DA 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. Five times. And he wasn't buried in Noble County. Investigators say the murder was the work of an amateur, quite possibly a teenaged boy named Brogan Rafferty.

Next time, Dumb Like a Fox.

Hi, mom. Before I say anything else, I just want you to know you're not to reply in any way what I'm going to tell you, or 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, now the news is plastered 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. So were we.