Behind the Yellow Tape Read online

  As Linda’s cross-examination continued, Beckham’s mouth became obviously dry. The nauseating sound of his lips and tongue sticking together was noticeable as he tried to wiggle through Linda’s bulletproof examination. Sometimes he would go off on rants, telling stories to the jury that no one had ever even heard before, while Linda allowed him to dig his own grave—although from time to time she would jab Beckham almost sarcastically when what he said contradicted something he had said earlier. At one point the defense asked for a recess, in order to get their client off the stand and hush his mouth. Beckham was a liar, a fact that even he had to admit while on the witness stand, saying once that he “was no angel.” Linda concluded her cross-examination by walking the court through what she believed Beckham had done, proving him as the culprit in the murder of Stacy Beals. Linda relied on the facts of the case, and not the ruminations of a known liar, as her guide to proving the commonwealth’s case.

  The defense and the prosecution were both given an hour for closing statements. The defense’s only real argument was to claim that although Beckham was admittedly a liar, he wasn’t lying now. Not much of a defense. Linda’s closing was powerful, teary, and theatrical. She likened what she and her team had done to working a jigsaw puzzle. They had provided the border and some of the pieces inside of the frame; and just as with a puzzle, you don’t have to have every piece in place to know what the picture shows. Linda told the jury that indeed, although she would not be able to provide them with every piece of the puzzle, there was enough. And with that, closing arguments concluded. It was up to the jury to determine whether Beckham was a liar or an angel.

  In only an hour and a half, the jury came back to the courtroom to present the judge their decision. Rodney Beckham was found guilty of murder in the first degree. With the verdict rendered, the judge moved to the sentencing phase, whereby the jurors would be allowed to hear Rodney’s other transgressions for the first time, including his two previous felony convictions. In less than an hour, the jury found Beckham a persistent felony offender and sentenced him to life in prison. He now sits in the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. He will be eligible for parole on January 11, 2026, when Stacy would have been only forty-eight years old.

  As we began to say our good-byes with Linda and the guys, we realized just how much justice means to the people here in Boone County. Linda certainly knows, and she takes it all to heart. Her life is really one of juxtaposition—Republicans and Dixie Chicks, pink shirts and blue blazers, babies and killers. Yet she juggles it all effortlessly. And she’s very successful at her job; no one even ran against her in the last election. But success doesn’t come without a price. When your job is to go after the criminal element, and you take that job seriously, it is easy to make enemies. And threats are par for the course. “Are you ever scared?” we asked Linda as we gathered our belongings to end our final day in Boone County. “Yes,” she told us, mentioning one particularly nasty thug whose case didn’t go quite as planned. “Not all cases turn out that well, no matter how hard you work or how good the evidence is,” Linda went on to say. Sometimes, juries simply make poorly informed decisions. “If you see a man on video writing a bad check, you don’t need a handwriting expert [to prove it]; or if a detective sees a dealer pulling a rock of crack from his mouth, you don’t need to run a DNA test on it,” she said feistily, on our way out the door. In the end, all any prosecutor can do is to work hard, understand what it is he or she is presenting, and present everything in the best light to get as solid a conviction as possible. But the reality is this—doing good means pissing some bad people off. Tragically, the threat of retribution is real. And in this line of work, you don’t view your life in years but in lengths of sentences.

  3

  Thunder Snow, Aye

  DULUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT, MINNESOTA

  Duluth, Minnesota—the county seat of St. Louis County—sits on the banks of Lake Superior. Before it was a city, the land of Duluth was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes, who grew wild rice, still a staple in many households throughout Minnesota. Founded in 1679, Duluth was once a thriving industrial town that boasted a steel plant and the leading port in the United States. In the early 1970s, the city had to shift its economic focus from industry to tourism. Today Duluth shares its port with Superior, Wisconsin, which together make Twin Ports, one of the major ports on the Great Lakes system. Duluth is known for its year-round cool temperatures, but especially its lake-effect snow, which comes in handy for the yearly dog-sled marathon every February. The Duluth Police Department is the third largest in the entire state of Minnesota, with 175 employees.

  Duluth, Minnesota. The Scandinavian Americans who dominate this semi-arctic climate pronounce it “Doo-looth.” Essentially, Duluth has two seasons—winter and July. On the one hand, winters in Duluth can be unbearable. It has been known to get so cold that a man can urinate outside and the stream will freeze before it hits the ground—not to mention, it’s hell on the penis. But on the other hand, July can be gorgeous, with people jogging around Lake Superior, enjoying a homemade root beer at Fitger’s Brewery or a malt down by the shore, and some folks even daring to surf the near-frigid waters. Just don’t stay too long, or you might get snowed in.

  On March 1, 2007, the 151st anniversary of the founding of St. Louis County, whose county seat is the City of Duluth, we were far from the balmy days of July. Sitting in the Comfort Suites Hotel, we anxiously awaited our second continental breakfast of the day. Sounds good, right? Except that this second continental breakfast was being served at seven thirty p.m., during the worst blizzard in the history of Duluth. Hurricane-force winds, two-plus feet of snow, thunder, lightning—all combined to close nearly everything in the entire city. Fortunately, we were saved from starvation by a few hard-boiled eggs, a waffle each, and some questionable breakfast meats.

  The outside of Fitger’s Brewery.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  We had been summoned to this bounty by the few brave hotel staff who remained stranded with us. And as the smells of maple syrup and thawing meat wafted into the air, we could hear the hotel staff talking among themselves. “Ya, dey say dere’s thunder wid da snow,” one of the staff explained to the other in a thick Minnesotan accent. “Ah, ya don’ say,” the other replied, neither remarkably moved by the unbelievable weather unfolding.

  That’s how it is in Duluth. It’s snowy; it’s cold; and, maybe because of the weather, people just don’t seem to get that excited about anything—it’s as if their blood is frozen. Most cope with the harsh climate by spending hours on end in their saunas (pronounced “sa-oo-nas”), in keeping with their Scandinavian heritage, or eating a “hotdish” full of meat, vegetables, and a binding ingredient such as canned soup. A hotdish is essentially a casserole popular in Minnesota. Pop the concoction into the oven and bake for thirty minutes—simple and Scandinavian. We later ate an authentic hotdish in the house of an authentic Scandinavian family. And, although we realize that everyone everywhere has had a hotdish of one kind or another, when a hotdish is served in Minnesota by Scandinavians, it just tastes better.

  The climate of Duluth can be inhospitable and is essentially smack-dab in wilderness country. Nearly 80 percent of the land in the county is uninhabited, with forests and lakes making up most of the area. Because of this lack of population and the light pollution found in most big cities, Duluth is able to partake in one of nature’s greatest events—the aurora borealis.

  However, all of this undisturbed nature has contributed to Duluth’s newfound popularity. In 2006, it was voted one of the top fifty places to live in America. Nevertheless, just like everywhere else, Duluth is not without its criminal element. Thieves, killers, and crooks, like most other animals, adapt to their environments, regardless of how cold it gets. Crime doesn’t stop on account of the weather, no matter how bad it gets or how unappetizing the continental breakfast becomes. And harsh winter conditions wreak havoc on crime scenes, as well as on crime scene inv
estigators.

  Two of the most useful pieces of evidence left at a crime scene are usually footwear impressions left in the ground and fingerprints left on objects. The cold, snowy climate can impact both tremendously. For example, after a snowfall of more than about one-quarter of an inch, it becomes virtually impossible to get a good footwear impression. This is because with each step, the shoe carries more snow to the next impression, making the subtle characteristics of the tread impossible to discern. Furthermore, the deeper the snow gets, the more likely that prints left in the snow will cave in on themselves. Not to mention the fact that, when it’s snowing or the wind is high (and it usually is), shoe prints can be covered up by the blowing snow and hidden forever.

  A crime scene investigator will also have more trouble finding and developing fingerprints in cold weather. One obvious reason is that everybody wears gloves during the winter, so by default fewer fingerprints will be left at a scene. Couple that with the fact that cold climates are usually drier, and therefore a perp’s hands will be less oily or sweaty than usual—and in order to leave good fingerprints, hands need to be moist.

  The weather also affects how a crime scene is processed. In subzero temperatures, camera batteries wear out after taking just two or three shots, and the ink in a ballpoint pen will freeze within seconds. Bullets fired into the snow burn right through, making it nearly impossible to locate the evidence. In some cases, the Duluth CSIs had to call in the fire department to hose down an entire hillside, washing away the snow, in an effort to find spent bullets.

  And don’t forget about the toll the weather can take on an investigator. The blinding snow, the all-night crime scenes in freezing temperatures, and the lessons they have all learned about not using their mouths to hold anything. Many Duluthian CSIs have jumped out of their vehicles on a cold, icy night and put their keys into their mouths in order to free up both hands. Unfortunately, this usually results in a reenactment of the classic scene in A Christmas Story, except it’s a tongue stuck to a set of keys instead of to a flagpole.

  This wild winter weather calls for good planning, regardless of which side of the criminal justice system a person is on. Sometimes it even calls for a little old-fashioned ingenuity. This far north, the ground may be frozen solid until May, and people who die during the winter sometimes lie in state in a mausoleum until the spring thaw, when they can finally be buried in the ground. That certainly makes it difficult to bury someone you’ve just killed. The frozen tundra forces some killers to pick their season or, at the very least, buy a wood chipper (like the scene in Fargo). Or, if they are really clever, they time it just right and catch an ice-fishing hole just ripe for a burial spot.

  “For God’s sakes,” Sergeant Eric Rish had said to us when we arrived on the eve of the worst blizzard anyone could remember, trudging through the remnants of the previous week’s snow. He was commenting on our “big coats,” similar to the one George sported on an infamous episode of Seinfeld. “It’s not that bad,” he scoffed. We met Rish in 2004 during Session VIII, a winter session at the academy. Winters in Tennessee can occasionally be cold and snowy, such as the blizzard of ’93, as the natives refer to it, when Knoxville had its worst snow ever—piling on nearly thirty inches in and around the city, crippling it for weeks. But since that time it has rarely snowed, proving that at least in Al Gore’s home state, global warming is for real. At least, that is, until Eric showed up, bringing with him both snow and the very first snow-covered exhumation practical exercise.

  We had arrived at Rish’s house for dinner that night and what we hoped would be our first encounter with a traditional hotdish. Eric and his wife, Kris, are an interesting pair. They both work in law enforcement, and they both work in investigations. Yet their jobs are completely different. Eric is with the Duluth Police Department who investigates crime and puts criminals in prison. Kris is an investigator with the Minnesota State Department of Corrections who investigates prison crimes committed by the people whom her husband helped put in there. Crime, major crime, doesn’t end at the prison gates. It continues within the confines of a prison and continues to affect law-abiding citizens on the outside. It’s amazing what some criminals are still able to do, from sending threats to their estranged lovers during their phone call time to full orchestration of gang activities. Essentially, it’s the effed-up circle of criminal life. Eric investigates criminals and puts them behind bars, and Kris keeps on investigating them until they are put to death or released back into society, where Eric begins his work all over again.

  The Duluth blizzard, February 2007.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  Kris told us about her side of the law enforcement world over our hotdish and frosted mugs filled with Fitger’s Brewery root beer. We hadn’t planned on researching prisons and prisoners, but when the opportunity came to spend the day with Kris touring prisons, including one of Minnesota’s oldest and meanest institutions, we said what the hell.

  The Stillwater prison is located about thirty-five minutes south of Duluth. Its population is roughly three thousand inmates. It smells like a cross between a school cafeteria, a locker room, a morgue, and a rhino’s ass. Stillwater is a maximum-security prison, housing the worst of the worst. At various “free” times, murderers, rapists, and even serial killers roam about the facility at will.

  Entering any prison is a very disheartening and disturbing experience. Entering a prison like Stillwater is even worse. We had to give our driver’s licenses to the guards (so that in case something happened to us while we were on the inside, they could identify us), get our hands stamped as if we were going to a club, and pass through several very thick steel gates before arriving at the main part of the facility. And when the last gate opened up, we entered, for the first time, the place where we help put the bad guys away. It was akin to waking up in hell.

  The prison cells flanked both sides of the main portal, five stories tall, stacked on top of one another like cubes. Ten-by-ten single-dwelling cubes—if they were lucky. Those not so lucky had to share their ten-by-ten space with a roommate. We walked slowly down one of the corridors, with the cells to our left and an old brick wall with a bank of pay phones on our right. We were looking at the prisoners as if they were animals in a zoo. And they were looking at us as if we were food. Some were reading, some were watching television, and all of them were staring. Right away, our guide, Tee—one of the investigators at Stillwater—told us not to get too close to the cells, but also not to stand too far away from them either. This was because being either too close or too far out increased the chance of having bodily fluids being hurled at you, similar to Clarice Starling’s ejaculate experience in The Silence of the Lambs. Except any experience of ours would be real.

  At one point we were cornered in the chow line, with about five hundred of the worst of the worst walking by, many of whom were doing life without the possibility of parole. One of the convicts was reportedly the infamous Harvey Carrigan, serial killer extraordinaire, who leered at us all as if we were some sort of human dessert. And then came the catcalls, from which none of us were excluded, male or female. A vile, palpable, nauseating sense of wickedness permeated the place, the likes of which neither of us had ever experienced. As evening approached, we were offered the opportunity to have dinner before we left, cooked and served by some of Stillwater’s finest, something with Alfredo sauce, no less. We passed on the opportunity.

  Prisons are like cities unto themselves. When a prisoner arrives in Stillwater, he is first placed into a multiperson cell. With time and good behavior, he can apply for a job and possibly upgrade his digs, eventually earning a cell to himself. Prisoners apply for jobs, get jobs, get paid, get fired, earn free time, and buy groceries, television sets, coffee pots, candy bars, sodas, and so on. Prisons are essentially mini-metropolises for the seedy underworld. The old adage that crime doesn’t pay is false. It pays roughly twenty-five cents per hour to start in Minnesota. And with cigarettes going for about three dollars a
piece and jailhouse tats going for about forty bucks, many hours have to be put in to afford such luxuries. Not that those luxuries are legal. Sometimes, instead of purchasing their brand of vice, they just make it themselves—in the toilet. Homemade alcohol or hooch is easily made from a little water, a little ketchup, and a little bread. Presto, a ketchup wine that Emeril himself wouldn’t even taste. Around the Super Bowl, extra guards have to be brought in to simply do bed checks for all of the hooch contraband made for the event. Gotta love football.

  The guards at Stillwater do not carry guns. On average, there are seven or eight major incidents a day, including violent fights with some unbelievable homemade weapons. We saw every type of item imaginable sharpened into deadly weaponry—toothbrushes, plastic forks, shower curtain rings. The one amazing thing about prisoners and prison life is the ingenuity that it breeds. If necessity is the mother of invention, then these mothers really have it. With nothing but time to think, these guys can come up with just about anything. For example, an entrepreneur has contracted with Moose Lake Prison, the prison where Kris Rish works, to have the inmates remove all identifying markings from returned merchandise from Wal-Mart, Target, and the like, which arrives by the truckload, which he then sells in town by the pallet. Moose Lake Prison is also known as the tattoo capital of Minnesota, and enterprising inmates who work in this returns department from time to time break open a VCR, a DVD player, or the video controller to a video game system, and in a split second pull out the little motor to make a tattoo gun. It also helps that Moose Lake Prison has one of the best print shops in all of Minnesota, giving the prisoners access to all of the colors of the rainbow. You just have to admire someone who will take the vibrating motor out of a wireless Xbox 360 controller, shove it up his ass, jerry-rig an electrical plug to it, steal a needle and some ink, and start his own tattoo business at forty dollars a pop. Capitalism, even in prison, is alive and well.