March 23, 2022 • 49 mins
A journal entry sheds light on Sandy’s desires to be a police officer. When she suddenly dies, the homicide detective tasked with her case is inundated with strange phone calls.
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(02:32):
care while listening. I have dreams about Sandy for an
entire year. She's been in the back of my brain,
never far from my waking thoughts. The white coat she
was wearing on the last night of her life. It
hangs in my closet. I see it every time I
get dressed. Her things, her checkbook, her calendar, notes she
(02:57):
wrote are laying across my desk. Her handwriting is familiar
to me. Now there's a note Sandy wrote to herself
that I've almost memorized. I've read it so many times.
It helps explain where her interest in policing came from
and where her career ambitions might have first begun. It's
called my Life as a Cop Freak. This is a
(03:23):
real story of my life as a cop freak. It
goes back to when I used to walk past the
police department to catch my bus for school. I was
only fifteen, and policemen would wave, smile and say hi.
They look so good in that white County car and
blue uniform. I've always wanted a job where I could
be looked at with respect. They always seem to have
(03:46):
that sort of ego with them. Then one day I
got a job at the local drug store and at
nights we had county policemen in there. I met three
that were really nice guys. First night I met Ray,
a real nut. He was short and looked a lot
like John Denver. He asked if I wouldn't mind a
cold beer after work, until I told him I was
(04:07):
only seventeen. Then he kind of said, we'll wait until
you get older. After work, my dad was there to
pick me up. The next night, a real young, great
looking guy came up to me and asked who I was.
I could hardly believe what he asked. He stayed by
my counter all night, talking about bullshit. I'm pretty sure
(04:33):
Sandy was still in high school when she wrote this note.
The infatuation, the excitement, the giddiness about attracting male attention.
It reminded me of how I felt about boys at
that age. I'm not sure exactly what Sandy meant by
cop freak, but by her own admission, she was one.
She simultaneously wanted to be liked by them and wanted
(04:57):
to be like them. She wanted to to enter their world,
wear their uniforms, try on their egos, and at some
point in her senior year of high school, she did.
Sandy's family told me that's when she set her sights
on becoming a cop and began training in earnest going
on ride alongs with local police, and according to her
(05:20):
brother Michael, it all started out okay. She had her
heart set on becoming a police officer from the time
she first mentioned it all the way up through. You know,
she had nothing bad to say, probably a good year
and a half that she did the ride alongs. Whenever
(05:42):
they got a call. They went from speeding tickets to
traffic accidents, nothing major. If something major came up, I
think that she had to get dropped off. Ride alongs
are exactly what they sound like. A civilian rides with
an officer in their patrol car as they go about
(06:03):
their duties. The earliest record of one that Sandy attended
is marked in her calendar on March twenty seventh, nineteen
seventy six. Sandy would have just turned eighteen and been
in high school. Still. Based on my reporting, she would
have accompanied one other police officer on a shift that
typically lasted from three to eleven PM. I actually, you know,
(06:27):
the way she talked, I actually kind of wanted to
do one to myself, just to see, you know, hey,
what goes on here? You know, what do you do
when you pull somebody of you? What do you do
when you're you know, you're a bad situation? How do
things go here? You know? I wasn't as enthused about
that as she was, but I did think it was
(06:47):
kind of neat. But Sandy's sudden interest in policing was
a bit confusing to her family, who had no ties
to the profession. At first, I was a little surprised, like, really, yeah,
so she was talking about these ridals and how she
enjoyed them. Some long she was saying, you know, they
know it wasn't one hundred about board, But I do
(07:09):
recall she's saying, yeah, man, Jesus, guys get away with shit.
Sandy didn't go into detail about what kind of shit
they got away with, but the PG County Police Department
was notorious for its use of excessive force, especially against
the county's growing black population. Once a predominantly white, working
(07:29):
class county, the area saw a radical demographic shift in
the seventies as black families moved there from DC, but
as the racial makeup of the community changed, the police
department remained overwhelmingly white, the results of which were often
brutal for people of color. As one veteran cop told
The Washington Post at the time, quote, it was a
(07:52):
known fact that if you came into PG County and
made trouble, the police would kick your head in, simple
as that. Here's a story from around the same time
Sandy would have been going on ride alongs. In nineteen
seventy five, Thomas Pete, a black man, was pushing a
stalled car in a seven to eleven parking lot when
several Page County police officers arrived. Witnesses reported that, unprovoked,
(08:17):
the officers began beating Pete to the ground, cracking his
head open. This incident triggered a public conversation about police brutality,
but ultimately the police faced no real consequences. Like Sandy said,
they got away with shit. From iHeartRadio, I'm Melissa Jelson
(08:39):
and this is what happened to Sandy Beale an iHeart
original podcast, Chapter three, My life as a cop freak
growing up. She wasn't any different than us, getting in
trouble we had, all three kind of seemed to get
in the same kind of trouble. After a while, Sandy
(09:01):
kind of went her own way. Michael is in his
early sixties now and moves with a quiet and deliberate air.
He's warm, but also a little bit guarded, which makes
sense when you learn his backstory. He has lived through
the excruciating pain of losing two daughters, one to congestive
heart failure and another in a car accident. But Sandy
(09:25):
was the first loss of Michael's life, and it came early,
when he was a senior in high school. The two
siblings were close, both in age only a year apart,
and in the intensity of their relationship. With most of
her family. Sandy was tight lipped about her time with police,
but Michael was granted a rare glimpse of her world.
(09:47):
She graduated a year before me, and while she was
out of school, most of her time was spent with
work and with hanging it out with the East Department
and the ride longs and stuff like that, and then
going to these fop lodges and hanging out with them
(10:08):
and drinking and stuff like that. He said, She said,
they all just let the hair down when they're in
that FOP lodge. FOP stands for Fraternal Order of Police.
It's the largest professional police organization in the country. State
level outposts are called FOP lodges, and some, like the
(10:29):
FOP lodge in Prince George's County, have a bar where
officers can socialize. That lodge, number eighty nine is where
Sandy would go to grab drinks with cops. Michael said
the drinking age was only eighteen back then. She talked
about just going to the club and hanging out and
having a good time, and the cops would bring her home.
Half the time they had been half drunk when they're
(10:52):
bringing her home in a cop car. So I'm like, well,
there you go. The FOP lodge Sandy visited is'll open today.
I haven't been there, but I looked at pictures online.
On the inside, it looks a bit like your average
sports bar, with carpeted floors, bare walls, and blinds pulled
down over the windows. It has eight flat screen televisions,
(11:15):
two pool tables, and a jukebox. The bar stays open
until two am Monday through Saturday, and on Tuesdays. Domestic
beers are a dollar. As long as you are in
law and enforcement, you can go to this place. They
just go there and hang out and swap stupid stories
and cheat on their wives and doing silly things like that.
(11:36):
So it's about pretty much. But I got out of it.
But she was trying to learn as much as she
possibly could by going on these ride alongs and hanging
out with the police and you know, just taking things in,
seeing seeing just what goes on, how things are done,
so that when she was able to get into the academy,
(11:57):
she would have something, she would know what to expect,
what was coming down the line. At the time Sandy
was trying to become a cop, women accounted for only
two percent of sworn officers, and many of them worked
desk jobs. It was only in nineteen seventy two that
Prince George's County started admitting women into the police academy.
Yet Sandy envisioned a place for herself there, even when
(12:20):
there was little indication that she would be welcomed. I
wanted to understand the climate she was operating within, and
without being able to talk to Sandy, I found the
next best thing, another woman who began policing around the
exact same time, Dottie Davis. It wasn't like it was
my lifelong goal to be a police officer. I literally
(12:41):
was looking for an occupation that paid well and that
was satisfying to me, And so I started as a dispatcher,
which then led to me applying to a neighboring agency. Literally,
I was watching the officers, the troopers that I was dispatching,
the calls for service, and I was thinking I could
(13:04):
do that. First of all, I'm an avid runner and
my father was a gunsmith, So I've been shooting since
I was eight and reloaded my ammunition since I was nine.
I grew up in what I believed to be kind
of a paramilitary household, where the only way you responded
to my parents was yes, sir and no ma'am. So
(13:25):
if you can put everything what I just said together
and think about what I recruit classes like and the academy, man,
I loved it. Dottie is retired from policing, but she
spent over thirty years with the Fort Wayne Police Department
in Indiana. She started as a patrol officer, moved up
to sergeant, then lieutenant, captain, and finally deputy chief. My
(13:50):
very first, very first training officer told me to get
in the car, don't touch anything, and shut up. If
I need anything from you, I'll tell you. And I
was like, this is going to be a really long
eight hours. It wasn't a very welcoming environment for females,
(14:12):
but I learned early on, you're probably not going to
be heard. If Dottie had been attempting this journey just
a few years earlier, it's likely she would have been
shut out. But in nineteen sixty four, Congress passed the
Civil Rights Act, which prohibited employers from discriminating workers on
(14:33):
the basis of sex. In nineteen seventy two, Congress extended
the law to local and state governments. In practice, that
meant women could no longer be excluded from important jobs
like policing and firefighting. Still, local police departments continued to
deny women jobs by issuing height and weight requirements that
(14:54):
many couldn't meet. In nineteen seventy seven, the Supreme Court
ruled that the use of high and wait as a
screening mechanism was unlawful discrimination. And so we were still
as two babies, if you will, We were still being
looked at as pilot projects to see whether or not
we were going to be able to be successful and
hold our own. While removing these barriers made it easier
(15:18):
for women to become police officers, they still had to
face workplace environments that were indifferent to their ambitions or
even outright hostile. A detective and I were writing the
elevator back up to the detective Bureau, which was on
the second floor, and he pinned me against the elevator
wall and tried to kiss me, and I shoved him
(15:41):
off of me and started yelling at him. And then
I went into the detective bureau, went to the captain
and said, I'm not riding with him anymore. He just
pinned me against the elevator tried to kiss me, and
I'm not putting up with that. And what happened? He
got nothing other than told leaver alone. Some of the
(16:04):
behaviors Dottie described were obviously predatory. Others seemed designed to
simply undermine women and keep them from getting too comfortable
in their positions. So as much as I love to shoot,
I had a firearms instructor that would stand over my shoulder,
I mean I could like next to my body and
(16:26):
he would tell me to squeeze the trigger like you
were squeezing a nipple, and I know, I'm looking at
your face. I wanted to bark because it was just
so ridiculous that he would even say that, And of
course it threw me off my game horribly, which I
(16:47):
don't know if that's what he wanted because he didn't
want a female to be the top gun. Dottie emphasized
how isolating it was to be one of the two
percent a woman in a sea of male cops, and honestly,
it's not that much different today. Currently around thirteen percent
of sworn law enforcement officers or women. That means in
(17:09):
many precincts across the country, it's not uncommon to be
the only woman on a shift, the only woman in
a division. That isolation can have a corrosive effect. It
is very easy for you to lose your identity and
try to fit in and become one of the boys.
And I learned that no matter how much rank you
(17:31):
have or time and grade, you are never going to
be one of the boys. And you have to continue
to maintain your identity and be sure of who you
are because they will eat you out. When Sandy's body
(17:52):
was found, there were two small books in her possession,
address books that she used to keep track of the
people she met them now, and I've spent the last
year poring over them, trying to see what they can
teach me. I've cataloged each of the names and researched
their identities. Alongside her classmates at Bladensburg High, her neighbors
(18:13):
in Seat Pleasant, and her colleagues from the department store
are another category of acquaintances, police officers. Every few pages,
the name of a cop appears, either a PG County
Police officer or a Maryland State trooper, along with their
phone number. Examining her handwriting, it's hard to tell if
(18:34):
these cops were her friends or professional contacts. Some entries
include official titles and others are written more casually. The
number for the FOP Lodge is also in there. And
then there's the list in the back of the book,
thirteen names long. In black ink, Sandy wrote down a
(18:54):
series of three digit numbers, each one adjacent to a
last name. As far as I can tell, they're all
PG County Police officers, and the numbers identify their police cars.
When I first flipped through Sandy's address books, it wasn't
clear to me how a high school student would know
so many police officers. That changed once I connected with
(19:18):
one of the PG County cops from Sandy's books. Ray.
That's Ray from the Drugstore Ray, the John Denver look
alike from Sandy's note My Life as a Cop Freak.
Ray's name appears in her books a few times, along
with a phone number, an address, and what appears to
be his police car number. Ray told me that he
(19:39):
doesn't remember Sandy, but he did have an idea why
she was able to go on so many ride alongs
as a teen. As he explained, Sandy was likely part
of the Police Explorer program in Prince George's County, which
launched in nineteen seventy six. The program allowed teens to
shadow police officers at work and try out out or
(20:00):
explore the job to see if they might want to
pursue a career in law enforcement. I hadn't heard of
Police Explore programs, so I did some research. Turns out
they now exist all over the country. They began in
the nineteen fifties as part of the Boy Scouts of America.
Although side note they're now run by a subsidiary called
(20:22):
Learning for Life. Girls weren't allowed to join until nineteen
seventy one. In nineteen seventy six, the Boy Scouts received
a grant from the federal government to promote the program,
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(25:04):
my reporting, I believe that Sandy joined the Prince George's
County Explorer program in its very first year, when she
was a senior in high school. Sandy would have been
one of the first generation of trainees, though I wasn't
able to confirm this, as a spokesperson for PG County
Police said they were unable to locate a record of
participants from that year. The program is still active today,
(25:28):
open to those age fourteen to twenty. When I checked recently,
there were about ninety current members. This is an established
set of rules around who can join and what requirements
you need to meet, but back in its early days,
it wasn't such an official program. Ray didn't want to
be recorded for the podcast, but he did offer some
(25:49):
helpful context. He told me that he was part of
the PG County Explorer program when it first began, and
as he described it, the program was pretty loose and disorganized.
Officers didn't receive any specialized training before being placed with teens,
and there were very few rules. He recalled chaperoning a
(26:09):
ski trip to Pennsylvania with a bunch of teenagers in
the Explorer program. When he went to check on a
group of girls in a hotel room, knocking on their door,
he discovered they were smoking pot. That was his cue
to quit the program. I understood from Ray that the
point of his story was to illustrate that he saw
(26:30):
the Explorer program as a risk to his career. The
potential for things to go wrong was just too high,
and so he left. He was looking out for himself.
But it made me wonder who was looking out for
explorers like Sandy over the past year, I've tried to
(26:51):
connect with every cop in Sandy's address books that I
could track down. I've sent emails, letters, and messages on
social media. Few responded to me, but I did manage
to talk to a couple of police officers whose names
corresponded with Sandy's records. There was one PG County police
officer in particular, though, who I really wanted to speak with, Bob.
(27:16):
Sandy listed him as her emergency contact. She also noted
his birthday, and his name pops up on occasion in
her calendar too. I thought, if any of these cops
were Sandy's friend, if anyone could provide some insight into
her life, it would be Bob. Bob didn't want to
be recorded for the podcast, but he confirmed that he
(27:37):
worked in the Explorer program at the time that Sandy
would have been in it. He recalled taking students on ridelongs,
but he couldn't explain why his birthday and phone number
were written in Sandy's books, or why she would deem
him important enough to list him as her emergency contact. He,
like Ray, said he didn't remember her. This became a
(28:01):
recurring theme in my reporting. To my surprise, none of
the cops I spoke to remembered Sandy. At least they
said they didn't. They didn't even remember that a police
trainee had died by suicide, something I thought would leave
an impact. Sandy, it seemed, had been invisible to them.
(28:22):
I wondered what that said about how she was treated
when she was alive. I'm going to play the second
part of my interview with Detective Shozelski, now the PG
County police officer who handled Sandy's case, because I think
it speaks to this question of how police interacted with Sandy.
Sholski told me about something unusual that occurred right after
(28:45):
her death. Let me say this, let me say this
life found then after he would the officers hasty made
if their names were were in the bill skis referring
to Sandy's address books which were discovered in the car
with her. Were these just Prince George's County police or
(29:07):
with these state troopers? Yes? Okay? Why were they calling
if she had listed them as none of her friends?
What was their motivation though for calling? Like? Were they
trying not to get in trouble professionally, personally or like what?
(29:30):
And you estimated about ten people called you did they
admit to having relationships with her pretty much. It was
pretty clear. It wasn't really a part of my investigation.
But when they heard that she had killed herself, Benwill,
(29:52):
what was their end goal to calling you if she
had made any mention of them, in case it came
out in some way they wanted to head right? Not necessarily, Well,
I don't know why not would I had to be that,
you know, they were sexually involved with her. Did any
(30:17):
of the police that called you express sadness about her death? No?
Never a nurse, a person uh stressed or stressed, and
there was perhaps something written with their name for the
obvious reason. What did you make of her spending all
(30:40):
this time and having sexual relationships with police officers? I
knew it was going to be a stink. I didn't
imagine to be a thirty fourty years later, but at
least a stink was going to come off of it.
I want to slow down here because this is really important.
In the audio's great Detective Shozhelski is a little blase
(31:03):
in his delivery, but what he told me is that
while he was investigating Sandy's death, ten PG County police
officers called him to find out if their names had
been linked to Sandy. And this wasn't an offhanded comment either.
Shazhelski told me this detail in two different phone interviews.
He wouldn't tell me the names of the men who called,
(31:24):
which made this claim hard to fact check, but I
believed him the way he divulged this information though it
was like a gossipy aside, not something that he thought
should warrant any further investigation. But it sounded like a
big fucking deal to me. In my line of work
reporting on domestic violence and sexual assault, this scenario of
(31:47):
a teenager having intimate relationships with upwards of ten adult men,
let alone police officers who were supposed to be training her,
it rang every alarm bell in my body. I started
this project wanting to find out what happened the night
Sandy died, but as I got deeper into the recording,
I had more and more questions about exactly what happened
(32:10):
when she was alive, specifically when she was hanging out
with cops on these unsupervised ride alongs. I knew I
had to tell the bills what Shozelski said, because it
confirmed their gut instinct that the cops were hiding something.
It just wasn't what they had thought. The family was
(32:33):
heartbroken to learn about these PG County police officers, who
Shozhelski said spoke so callously after her death. Here's Kim,
her cousin. Well, until you guys uncovered all of that,
I think that I had a sense of naivete where
I just really believed that all of these people that
(32:54):
she had the names of were just nice people and
were her friends. And that snapped me out of my
believing in the kindness of these people, that they're really
just trying to cover their butts like me. Kim hadn't
known exactly what to think about Sandy's address books and
the list of cops she was collecting. She had settled
(33:15):
on a generous interpretation that the officers in the books
were Sandy's mentors who helped her as she tried to
pursue a career in law enforcement. Now she had to
contemplate something more nefarious. Now. I don't know what her
thinking might have been. Then, I do know that she
was very happy, go lucky, and maybe she thought that,
(33:38):
you know, with sex came power, so she was probably
pretty enamored that any of them would be interested in her,
and she probably saw it as Wow, these people that
have some authority and power are interested in me, and
she probably hoped that there was more to it than
it was. But she was a kid and she was naive,
even though she thought she knew more than she did.
(34:01):
But when ten of them are asking is my name
in there? There are some fishy stuff going on. I
don't know. It feels disgusting to me. Really, I don't
know how they live with themselves. Kim had believed the
police swept Sandy's case under the rug because of her
involvement with Doug, the state trooper. She suspected that Doug
(34:23):
was in the polyard that night, that Doug held all
the answers the family desperately yearned to hear. But now
there were other possibilities, And then you know, it could
have been any of those other guys too. But men
with that kind of power and that kind of ability
to manipulate and be charming and grooming her. How overwhelming
(34:46):
for an eighteen year old girl to try to sort
all that out. The immense pressure and shame she must
have been under at the time. It's really sad. It's sad.
It's just sad, so I do believe they have equal
(35:09):
responsibility in hurting her. A brand new historical true crime podcast.
The year is eighteen hundred, City Hall, New York. The
first murder trial in the American judicial system as trial
(35:30):
for the charge of murder. Even with defense lawyers Alexander
Hamilton and Erin Burr on the case, this is probably
the most famous trial you've never heard of. When you
lay suffering a sudden, violent, brutal death, I hope you'll
think of me. Starring Alison Williams. I don't eat anything simplified,
mister Hamilton, Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn as Alexander Hamilton.
(35:53):
Don't be so sad, It doesn't suit you. Written and
created by me. Alison Black listened to Erase the murder
of Elma San's. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl
until she met that man right there on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When
(36:18):
Tracy were kel Burns was two years old, her baby
brother died. I was told that Matthew died in an accident,
and no one really talked about it. Her parents told
police she had killed him. Medical records said that I
killed my baby brother. I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for
(36:43):
Burden of Guilt, the new podcast that tells the truth
an incredible story of a toddler who was framed for
murder and how she grew into an adult determined to
get justice and protect her family. While we had prosecuted
some cold cases, this was the coldest, This was frigid.
(37:03):
But how does a two year old get blamed for murder?
She said? We wanted a new life. You just don't
know what it's like when you'll do anything for somebody.
Listen to Burden of Guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I noticed Jacob is
(37:29):
not in his crib, so I look in and says
she's not there. So I'm like, okay, they're not there.
Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the
case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking,
you know, like what's going on, Like this is insane,
Like where are my kids? Despite signs that Catherine Hoggle
(37:51):
took her tiny children one by one into the night,
never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial.
Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared
incompetent to stand try. We have a blueprint to get
away with murder and the state of Maryland. At this
point in Maryland, if a defendant is found incompetent and
can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed
(38:14):
after five years. So, as the clock counts down, Catherine's
charges on the verge of being dismissed. What does justice
look like in this case? There's something's wrong her, you know,
whenever a one was allowed to kill my two kids.
Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts, and to hear the show
(38:37):
completely ad free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel,
available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus. You'll get ad free
access to dozens of hit true crime shows like Paper Ghosts, Betrayal,
and The Idaho Massacre. There's a place beyond this place,
(39:01):
between the light and the darkness, the natior and the zenith.
For some, it's a bridge between the living and the dead.
Yet for others it's something else. Entirely, it's the place
where our nightmares dwell each one of us has touched
the other side and felt the presence of something beyond
this world. Welcome to Hip Hop Horror Stories. I'm your host, Belly,
(39:26):
and each week we're gonna take you to the limits
of your imagination as we explore the reality of paranormal experiences.
I believe in this shit for real, and the stories
you're about to hear might make you believe too. Everywhere
I look, I saw something, and I looked closer and
noticed there was a hoodest figure and whatever it is,
it's like cave. It's like it became reality. Listen to
(39:48):
Hip Hop Horror Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm the Wizard of Oz,
but I'm the one making everything happen real. Housewife of
Sul City star Jen Shaw is running the scam of
the century. We probably will never be able to be retired,
left can't work anymore, living a fat, million dollar lifestyle
(40:11):
on the backs of thousands of elderly victims. She turned
up their lives for what a fake bendy bag. Congrats girl.
When you have her confronted and instead of stopping, she
finds ways to be sneakier about it and keeps going.
I remember one time Stuart lost like about eight million,
(40:31):
and John was very upset, and she came down to
the office late at night with coach yelling, as your
app I am asking him where their money is. Would
you call her a con artist? I would just call
her a con She's not very much of an artist.
Bingch all eight episodes of Queen of the Con Season four,
The Unreal Housewife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(40:53):
wherever you get your podcasts. There have been few times
in my career where my perspective on a story has
changed so quickly. Kim initially asked me to investigate Sandy's
case because of my experience reporting on domestic violence, specifically
(41:14):
domestic violence homicides. Sandy's family was worried that she had
been killed by her boyfriend, but my conversation with Shoshelski
opened up a whole new line of reporting as I
tried to make sense of the calls that flooded in
after her death. On the one hand, it provided some
evidence that Sandy might have been struggling emotionally, keeping secrets
(41:37):
that would have been profoundly isolating for the teen and
on the other it hinted at a larger conspiracy involving
many cops with a lot to lose. It all reminded
me of a story Joanne told me the first time
I met her in the summer of twenty twenty one.
It's about one of Sandy's friends. Her name is also
(42:00):
so Sandy, Sandy Sheridan. According to Joanne, Sandy Beal and
Sandy Sheridan spent a lot of time together in the
months before Sandy died. Despite my best efforts, I've never
been able to find her, but Joanne told me she
called shortly after Sandy died. She called me right up.
(42:23):
She said, what happened all those cads that we collected
of different cops. Sandy Sheridan explained that she and Sandy
Beal had been collecting business cards of all the cops
they met, but when Joanne looked through her daughter's belongings,
there was only two cuts in her belonging, so they
laid out on the table for us to say. Sandy
(42:45):
Sheridan told Joanne one more thing, that local police had
been told to stay away from the funeral, and as
far as Joanne could tell, they did. I wasn't sure
what to make of these claims. At first, they felt
a little conspiratorial, but after learning about those calls to Shoyzhelski,
it seemed a lot more likely that the stories were true.
(43:08):
I ain't got no reason to really not trust the cops.
But there's you know, shit ain't adding up. You know
I've always had that was shit just ain't adding up.
That's one thing I did tell those, the detective and
that other guy, I told him, I said, you know
what really burns my ass is she wanted to be
just like one of you. She wanted to be liked
(43:31):
by them, and she wanted to be like them. And
at some point between her innocent flirtations with cops at
the drug store and her body being discovered on a
cold February morning, something went horribly wrong. Whatever happened to
her while she was in the Explorer program, I think
(43:51):
it's unlikely she was the only one. I asked PG
County for any records related to complaints of inappropriate sexual
behavior within the Explorer program from nineteen seventy six to now.
They told me that a search of the current internal
affairs system uncovered no complaints, and that to search an
older system, I would need to give them the officer's
(44:14):
name in question. I've passed along a list of names
since Sandy's books, and I'll let you know what we hear.
But here's what I found when I searched for old
news articles about the Page County Explorer program. In nineteen
eighty two, just five years after Sandy died, a veteran
Prince George's County police officer took a sixteen year old
(44:35):
on a ride along. The girl ended up attending the
police academy and becoming a police officer, fulfilling the dream
that Sandy had. But thirteen years later, after she joined
the sex crimes unit, she reported that she had been
raped by her mentor on one of the many ride
alongs she attended. The officer was later convicted of child abuse.
(44:59):
I think Sandy was victim too. I think her desire
to be a cop, for teenage infatuations, and her inexperience
they all coincided to leave her open to exploitation. That's
next week. Well, this is the whole thing about predation.
(45:22):
It works better for the predator if your victim is vulnerable,
And what more vulnerable place than a desperate young person
trying to start a career in law enforcement. I'm not
done digging into this story, and i have more questions
about what happens in police Explorer programs. If you have
(45:45):
ever been part of a police youth program or participated
in a ride along where you witnessed or experienced some
sort of inappropriate sexual conduct, please email me at what
Happened to Sandy Beal at gmail dot com. What Happened
to Sandy Beal is hosted by me Melissa Jelson. It's
written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell. It's edited
(46:08):
by Abu Safar, Josh Fisher, and Mary Do. Sound designed
by Aaron Kaufman. Jason English is our executive producer and
Marissa Brown is our associate producer. To find out more
about the investigation, follow me on Twitter at qu as
I am Ado. Thanks so much for listening. A brand
(46:39):
new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a
sudden brutal death starring Alison william I hope you'll think
of me Erased the murder of Elma Sans. She was
a sweet, happy, virtuous girl until she met that man
right there. Written and created by me. Alison Flack is
it possible, Sirs, standing by for your answer. Erased the
(47:02):
murder of Elma Sans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When Tracey, who
were killed Burns was two years old, her baby brother died.
I was told that Matthew died in an accident. Her
parents told police she had killed him. I'm Nancy Glass.
Join me for Burden of Guilt, the new podcast that
(47:25):
tells the truth an incredible story of a toddler who
was framed for murder. Listen to Burden of Guilt on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The System's broken. I said something's wrong her. You know,
(47:46):
whenever a woe is allowed to kill my two kids.
Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the
case of Catherine Hoggele, a mother accused of murder. Despite
signs that Hoggs took her tiny children one by one
into the night, never to come home again, she has
yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app,
(48:11):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and to
hear the show completely ad free. Subscribe to the iHeart
True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus.
You'll get add free access to dozens of hit true
crime shows like Paper Ghosts, Betrayal, and The Idaho Massacre.
(48:32):
You're going to Die, I guess I should have softened
that a little. Someday. You're gonna die. We all are.
I'm Kyle McMahon, and after my mom passed away, I
went on a journey to talk with the world's foremost
experts on death and grief for my new series, Death,
Grief and others we don't discuss, from conducting a seance
to talking with near death experiencers and everything in between.
I hope you'll join me on that journey, and you
(48:53):
should probably do it soon, because who knows how long
you're going to be around death, grief and others we
don't discuss. Available now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Fall is coming and the nights
are getting longer, and a strange Hollywood couple have moved
into the Winchester Mystery House. If you are brave enough,
you're invited into the unhinged housewarming from September twenty second
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to October thirty first experience the terrifying line between reality
and imagination as darkness falls and those that haunt the
Winchester Mystery House join the party. Get your general admission
in rip tickets at Winchestermisteryhouse dot com
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Dot org slash iHeart. Before we begin, Please note this
series includes talk of suicide and sexual violence. Please take
(02:32):
care while listening. I have dreams about Sandy for an
entire year. She's been in the back of my brain,
never far from my waking thoughts. The white coat she
was wearing on the last night of her life. It
hangs in my closet. I see it every time I
get dressed. Her things, her checkbook, her calendar, notes she
(02:57):
wrote are laying across my desk. Her handwriting is familiar
to me. Now there's a note Sandy wrote to herself
that I've almost memorized. I've read it so many times.
It helps explain where her interest in policing came from
and where her career ambitions might have first begun. It's
called my Life as a Cop Freak. This is a
(03:23):
real story of my life as a cop freak. It
goes back to when I used to walk past the
police department to catch my bus for school. I was
only fifteen, and policemen would wave, smile and say hi.
They look so good in that white County car and
blue uniform. I've always wanted a job where I could
be looked at with respect. They always seem to have
(03:46):
that sort of ego with them. Then one day I
got a job at the local drug store and at
nights we had county policemen in there. I met three
that were really nice guys. First night I met Ray,
a real nut. He was short and looked a lot
like John Denver. He asked if I wouldn't mind a
cold beer after work, until I told him I was
(04:07):
only seventeen. Then he kind of said, we'll wait until
you get older. After work, my dad was there to
pick me up. The next night, a real young, great
looking guy came up to me and asked who I was.
I could hardly believe what he asked. He stayed by
my counter all night, talking about bullshit. I'm pretty sure
(04:33):
Sandy was still in high school when she wrote this note.
The infatuation, the excitement, the giddiness about attracting male attention.
It reminded me of how I felt about boys at
that age. I'm not sure exactly what Sandy meant by
cop freak, but by her own admission, she was one.
She simultaneously wanted to be liked by them and wanted
(04:57):
to be like them. She wanted to to enter their world,
wear their uniforms, try on their egos, and at some
point in her senior year of high school, she did.
Sandy's family told me that's when she set her sights
on becoming a cop and began training in earnest going
on ride alongs with local police, and according to her
(05:20):
brother Michael, it all started out okay. She had her
heart set on becoming a police officer from the time
she first mentioned it all the way up through. You know,
she had nothing bad to say, probably a good year
and a half that she did the ride alongs. Whenever
(05:42):
they got a call. They went from speeding tickets to
traffic accidents, nothing major. If something major came up, I
think that she had to get dropped off. Ride alongs
are exactly what they sound like. A civilian rides with
an officer in their patrol car as they go about
(06:03):
their duties. The earliest record of one that Sandy attended
is marked in her calendar on March twenty seventh, nineteen
seventy six. Sandy would have just turned eighteen and been
in high school. Still. Based on my reporting, she would
have accompanied one other police officer on a shift that
typically lasted from three to eleven PM. I actually, you know,
(06:27):
the way she talked, I actually kind of wanted to
do one to myself, just to see, you know, hey,
what goes on here? You know, what do you do
when you pull somebody of you? What do you do
when you're you know, you're a bad situation? How do
things go here? You know? I wasn't as enthused about
that as she was, but I did think it was
(06:47):
kind of neat. But Sandy's sudden interest in policing was
a bit confusing to her family, who had no ties
to the profession. At first, I was a little surprised, like, really, yeah,
so she was talking about these ridals and how she
enjoyed them. Some long she was saying, you know, they
know it wasn't one hundred about board, But I do
(07:09):
recall she's saying, yeah, man, Jesus, guys get away with shit.
Sandy didn't go into detail about what kind of shit
they got away with, but the PG County Police Department
was notorious for its use of excessive force, especially against
the county's growing black population. Once a predominantly white, working
(07:29):
class county, the area saw a radical demographic shift in
the seventies as black families moved there from DC, but
as the racial makeup of the community changed, the police
department remained overwhelmingly white, the results of which were often
brutal for people of color. As one veteran cop told
The Washington Post at the time, quote, it was a
(07:52):
known fact that if you came into PG County and
made trouble, the police would kick your head in, simple
as that. Here's a story from around the same time
Sandy would have been going on ride alongs. In nineteen
seventy five, Thomas Pete, a black man, was pushing a
stalled car in a seven to eleven parking lot when
several Page County police officers arrived. Witnesses reported that, unprovoked,
(08:17):
the officers began beating Pete to the ground, cracking his
head open. This incident triggered a public conversation about police brutality,
but ultimately the police faced no real consequences. Like Sandy said,
they got away with shit. From iHeartRadio, I'm Melissa Jelson
(08:39):
and this is what happened to Sandy Beale an iHeart
original podcast, Chapter three, My life as a cop freak
growing up. She wasn't any different than us, getting in
trouble we had, all three kind of seemed to get
in the same kind of trouble. After a while, Sandy
(09:01):
kind of went her own way. Michael is in his
early sixties now and moves with a quiet and deliberate air.
He's warm, but also a little bit guarded, which makes
sense when you learn his backstory. He has lived through
the excruciating pain of losing two daughters, one to congestive
heart failure and another in a car accident. But Sandy
(09:25):
was the first loss of Michael's life, and it came early,
when he was a senior in high school. The two
siblings were close, both in age only a year apart,
and in the intensity of their relationship. With most of
her family. Sandy was tight lipped about her time with police,
but Michael was granted a rare glimpse of her world.
(09:47):
She graduated a year before me, and while she was
out of school, most of her time was spent with
work and with hanging it out with the East Department
and the ride longs and stuff like that, and then
going to these fop lodges and hanging out with them
(10:08):
and drinking and stuff like that. He said, She said,
they all just let the hair down when they're in
that FOP lodge. FOP stands for Fraternal Order of Police.
It's the largest professional police organization in the country. State
level outposts are called FOP lodges, and some, like the
(10:29):
FOP lodge in Prince George's County, have a bar where
officers can socialize. That lodge, number eighty nine is where
Sandy would go to grab drinks with cops. Michael said
the drinking age was only eighteen back then. She talked
about just going to the club and hanging out and
having a good time, and the cops would bring her home.
Half the time they had been half drunk when they're
(10:52):
bringing her home in a cop car. So I'm like, well,
there you go. The FOP lodge Sandy visited is'll open today.
I haven't been there, but I looked at pictures online.
On the inside, it looks a bit like your average
sports bar, with carpeted floors, bare walls, and blinds pulled
down over the windows. It has eight flat screen televisions,
(11:15):
two pool tables, and a jukebox. The bar stays open
until two am Monday through Saturday, and on Tuesdays. Domestic
beers are a dollar. As long as you are in
law and enforcement, you can go to this place. They
just go there and hang out and swap stupid stories
and cheat on their wives and doing silly things like that.
(11:36):
So it's about pretty much. But I got out of it.
But she was trying to learn as much as she
possibly could by going on these ride alongs and hanging
out with the police and you know, just taking things in,
seeing seeing just what goes on, how things are done,
so that when she was able to get into the academy,
(11:57):
she would have something, she would know what to expect,
what was coming down the line. At the time Sandy
was trying to become a cop, women accounted for only
two percent of sworn officers, and many of them worked
desk jobs. It was only in nineteen seventy two that
Prince George's County started admitting women into the police academy.
Yet Sandy envisioned a place for herself there, even when
(12:20):
there was little indication that she would be welcomed. I
wanted to understand the climate she was operating within, and
without being able to talk to Sandy, I found the
next best thing, another woman who began policing around the
exact same time, Dottie Davis. It wasn't like it was
my lifelong goal to be a police officer. I literally
(12:41):
was looking for an occupation that paid well and that
was satisfying to me, And so I started as a dispatcher,
which then led to me applying to a neighboring agency. Literally,
I was watching the officers, the troopers that I was dispatching,
the calls for service, and I was thinking I could
(13:04):
do that. First of all, I'm an avid runner and
my father was a gunsmith, So I've been shooting since
I was eight and reloaded my ammunition since I was nine.
I grew up in what I believed to be kind
of a paramilitary household, where the only way you responded
to my parents was yes, sir and no ma'am. So
(13:25):
if you can put everything what I just said together
and think about what I recruit classes like and the academy, man,
I loved it. Dottie is retired from policing, but she
spent over thirty years with the Fort Wayne Police Department
in Indiana. She started as a patrol officer, moved up
to sergeant, then lieutenant, captain, and finally deputy chief. My
(13:50):
very first, very first training officer told me to get
in the car, don't touch anything, and shut up. If
I need anything from you, I'll tell you. And I
was like, this is going to be a really long
eight hours. It wasn't a very welcoming environment for females,
(14:12):
but I learned early on, you're probably not going to
be heard. If Dottie had been attempting this journey just
a few years earlier, it's likely she would have been
shut out. But in nineteen sixty four, Congress passed the
Civil Rights Act, which prohibited employers from discriminating workers on
(14:33):
the basis of sex. In nineteen seventy two, Congress extended
the law to local and state governments. In practice, that
meant women could no longer be excluded from important jobs
like policing and firefighting. Still, local police departments continued to
deny women jobs by issuing height and weight requirements that
(14:54):
many couldn't meet. In nineteen seventy seven, the Supreme Court
ruled that the use of high and wait as a
screening mechanism was unlawful discrimination. And so we were still
as two babies, if you will, We were still being
looked at as pilot projects to see whether or not
we were going to be able to be successful and
hold our own. While removing these barriers made it easier
(15:18):
for women to become police officers, they still had to
face workplace environments that were indifferent to their ambitions or
even outright hostile. A detective and I were writing the
elevator back up to the detective Bureau, which was on
the second floor, and he pinned me against the elevator
wall and tried to kiss me, and I shoved him
(15:41):
off of me and started yelling at him. And then
I went into the detective bureau, went to the captain
and said, I'm not riding with him anymore. He just
pinned me against the elevator tried to kiss me, and
I'm not putting up with that. And what happened? He
got nothing other than told leaver alone. Some of the
(16:04):
behaviors Dottie described were obviously predatory. Others seemed designed to
simply undermine women and keep them from getting too comfortable
in their positions. So as much as I love to shoot,
I had a firearms instructor that would stand over my shoulder,
I mean I could like next to my body and
(16:26):
he would tell me to squeeze the trigger like you
were squeezing a nipple, and I know, I'm looking at
your face. I wanted to bark because it was just
so ridiculous that he would even say that, And of
course it threw me off my game horribly, which I
(16:47):
don't know if that's what he wanted because he didn't
want a female to be the top gun. Dottie emphasized
how isolating it was to be one of the two
percent a woman in a sea of male cops, and honestly,
it's not that much different today. Currently around thirteen percent
of sworn law enforcement officers or women. That means in
(17:09):
many precincts across the country, it's not uncommon to be
the only woman on a shift, the only woman in
a division. That isolation can have a corrosive effect. It
is very easy for you to lose your identity and
try to fit in and become one of the boys.
And I learned that no matter how much rank you
(17:31):
have or time and grade, you are never going to
be one of the boys. And you have to continue
to maintain your identity and be sure of who you
are because they will eat you out. When Sandy's body
(17:52):
was found, there were two small books in her possession,
address books that she used to keep track of the
people she met them now, and I've spent the last
year poring over them, trying to see what they can
teach me. I've cataloged each of the names and researched
their identities. Alongside her classmates at Bladensburg High, her neighbors
(18:13):
in Seat Pleasant, and her colleagues from the department store
are another category of acquaintances, police officers. Every few pages,
the name of a cop appears, either a PG County
Police officer or a Maryland State trooper, along with their
phone number. Examining her handwriting, it's hard to tell if
(18:34):
these cops were her friends or professional contacts. Some entries
include official titles and others are written more casually. The
number for the FOP Lodge is also in there. And
then there's the list in the back of the book,
thirteen names long. In black ink, Sandy wrote down a
(18:54):
series of three digit numbers, each one adjacent to a
last name. As far as I can tell, they're all
PG County Police officers, and the numbers identify their police cars.
When I first flipped through Sandy's address books, it wasn't
clear to me how a high school student would know
so many police officers. That changed once I connected with
(19:18):
one of the PG County cops from Sandy's books. Ray.
That's Ray from the Drugstore Ray, the John Denver look
alike from Sandy's note My Life as a Cop Freak.
Ray's name appears in her books a few times, along
with a phone number, an address, and what appears to
be his police car number. Ray told me that he
(19:39):
doesn't remember Sandy, but he did have an idea why
she was able to go on so many ride alongs
as a teen. As he explained, Sandy was likely part
of the Police Explorer program in Prince George's County, which
launched in nineteen seventy six. The program allowed teens to
shadow police officers at work and try out out or
(20:00):
explore the job to see if they might want to
pursue a career in law enforcement. I hadn't heard of
Police Explore programs, so I did some research. Turns out
they now exist all over the country. They began in
the nineteen fifties as part of the Boy Scouts of America.
Although side note they're now run by a subsidiary called
(20:22):
Learning for Life. Girls weren't allowed to join until nineteen
seventy one. In nineteen seventy six, the Boy Scouts received
a grant from the federal government to promote the program,
and it worked. A lot. Of new posts, as they're called,
cropped up all around the country, including one in Prince
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LifeLock identity. Theft Protection starts here. A brand new historical
true crime podcast. The year is eighteen hundred, City Hall,
(21:53):
New York. The first murder trial in the American judicial system,
A man sense trial for the charge of murder. Even
its defense lawyers Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the case.
This is probably the most famous trial you've never heard of.
When you lay suffering a sudden, violent, brutal death, I
(22:13):
hope you'll think of me. Starring Alison Williams. I don't
need anything simplified, mister Hamilton, Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn
as Alexander Hamilton. Don't be so sad, it doesn't suit you.
Written and created by me Alison Black. Listen to Erased
the Murder of Elma San's She was a sweet, happy,
(22:35):
virtuous girl until she met that man right there on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to
your podcasts. When Tracy were Quel Burns was two years old,
her baby brother died. I was told that Matthew died
in an accident, and no one really talked about it.
(22:56):
Her parents told police she had killed him. Medical records
fit that I killed my baby brother. I'm Nancy Glass.
Join me for Burden of Guilt, the new podcast that
tells the true an incredible story of a toddler who
(23:17):
was framed for murder and how she grew into an
adult determined to get justice and protect her family. While
we had prosecuted some cold cases, this was the coldest,
This was frigid. But how does a two year old
get blamed for murder? She said? We wanted a new life.
You just don't know what it's like when you'll do
(23:38):
anything for somebody. Listen to Burden of Guilt on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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that works for you at CuriosityStream dot com. Based on
(25:04):
my reporting, I believe that Sandy joined the Prince George's
County Explorer program in its very first year, when she
was a senior in high school. Sandy would have been
one of the first generation of trainees, though I wasn't
able to confirm this, as a spokesperson for PG County
Police said they were unable to locate a record of
participants from that year. The program is still active today,
(25:28):
open to those age fourteen to twenty. When I checked recently,
there were about ninety current members. This is an established
set of rules around who can join and what requirements
you need to meet, but back in its early days,
it wasn't such an official program. Ray didn't want to
be recorded for the podcast, but he did offer some
(25:49):
helpful context. He told me that he was part of
the PG County Explorer program when it first began, and
as he described it, the program was pretty loose and disorganized.
Officers didn't receive any specialized training before being placed with teens,
and there were very few rules. He recalled chaperoning a
(26:09):
ski trip to Pennsylvania with a bunch of teenagers in
the Explorer program. When he went to check on a
group of girls in a hotel room, knocking on their door,
he discovered they were smoking pot. That was his cue
to quit the program. I understood from Ray that the
point of his story was to illustrate that he saw
(26:30):
the Explorer program as a risk to his career. The
potential for things to go wrong was just too high,
and so he left. He was looking out for himself.
But it made me wonder who was looking out for
explorers like Sandy over the past year, I've tried to
(26:51):
connect with every cop in Sandy's address books that I
could track down. I've sent emails, letters, and messages on
social media. Few responded to me, but I did manage
to talk to a couple of police officers whose names
corresponded with Sandy's records. There was one PG County police
officer in particular, though, who I really wanted to speak with, Bob.
(27:16):
Sandy listed him as her emergency contact. She also noted
his birthday, and his name pops up on occasion in
her calendar too. I thought, if any of these cops
were Sandy's friend, if anyone could provide some insight into
her life, it would be Bob. Bob didn't want to
be recorded for the podcast, but he confirmed that he
(27:37):
worked in the Explorer program at the time that Sandy
would have been in it. He recalled taking students on ridelongs,
but he couldn't explain why his birthday and phone number
were written in Sandy's books, or why she would deem
him important enough to list him as her emergency contact. He,
like Ray, said he didn't remember her. This became a
(28:01):
recurring theme in my reporting. To my surprise, none of
the cops I spoke to remembered Sandy. At least they
said they didn't. They didn't even remember that a police
trainee had died by suicide, something I thought would leave
an impact. Sandy, it seemed, had been invisible to them.
(28:22):
I wondered what that said about how she was treated
when she was alive. I'm going to play the second
part of my interview with Detective Shozelski, now the PG
County police officer who handled Sandy's case, because I think
it speaks to this question of how police interacted with Sandy.
Sholski told me about something unusual that occurred right after
(28:45):
her death. Let me say this, let me say this
life found then after he would the officers hasty made
if their names were were in the bill skis referring
to Sandy's address books which were discovered in the car
with her. Were these just Prince George's County police or
(29:07):
with these state troopers? Yes? Okay? Why were they calling
if she had listed them as none of her friends?
What was their motivation though for calling? Like? Were they
trying not to get in trouble professionally, personally or like what?
(29:30):
And you estimated about ten people called you did they
admit to having relationships with her pretty much. It was
pretty clear. It wasn't really a part of my investigation.
But when they heard that she had killed herself, Benwill,
(29:52):
what was their end goal to calling you if she
had made any mention of them, in case it came
out in some way they wanted to head right? Not necessarily, Well,
I don't know why not would I had to be that,
you know, they were sexually involved with her. Did any
(30:17):
of the police that called you express sadness about her death? No?
Never a nurse, a person uh stressed or stressed, and
there was perhaps something written with their name for the
obvious reason. What did you make of her spending all
(30:40):
this time and having sexual relationships with police officers? I
knew it was going to be a stink. I didn't
imagine to be a thirty fourty years later, but at
least a stink was going to come off of it.
I want to slow down here because this is really important.
In the audio's great Detective Shozhelski is a little blase
(31:03):
in his delivery, but what he told me is that
while he was investigating Sandy's death, ten PG County police
officers called him to find out if their names had
been linked to Sandy. And this wasn't an offhanded comment either.
Shazhelski told me this detail in two different phone interviews.
He wouldn't tell me the names of the men who called,
(31:24):
which made this claim hard to fact check, but I
believed him the way he divulged this information though it
was like a gossipy aside, not something that he thought
should warrant any further investigation. But it sounded like a
big fucking deal to me. In my line of work
reporting on domestic violence and sexual assault, this scenario of
(31:47):
a teenager having intimate relationships with upwards of ten adult men,
let alone police officers who were supposed to be training her,
it rang every alarm bell in my body. I started
this project wanting to find out what happened the night
Sandy died, but as I got deeper into the recording,
I had more and more questions about exactly what happened
(32:10):
when she was alive, specifically when she was hanging out
with cops on these unsupervised ride alongs. I knew I
had to tell the bills what Shozelski said, because it
confirmed their gut instinct that the cops were hiding something.
It just wasn't what they had thought. The family was
(32:33):
heartbroken to learn about these PG County police officers, who
Shozhelski said spoke so callously after her death. Here's Kim,
her cousin. Well, until you guys uncovered all of that,
I think that I had a sense of naivete where
I just really believed that all of these people that
(32:54):
she had the names of were just nice people and
were her friends. And that snapped me out of my
believing in the kindness of these people, that they're really
just trying to cover their butts like me. Kim hadn't
known exactly what to think about Sandy's address books and
the list of cops she was collecting. She had settled
(33:15):
on a generous interpretation that the officers in the books
were Sandy's mentors who helped her as she tried to
pursue a career in law enforcement. Now she had to
contemplate something more nefarious. Now. I don't know what her
thinking might have been. Then, I do know that she
was very happy, go lucky, and maybe she thought that,
(33:38):
you know, with sex came power, so she was probably
pretty enamored that any of them would be interested in her,
and she probably saw it as Wow, these people that
have some authority and power are interested in me, and
she probably hoped that there was more to it than
it was. But she was a kid and she was naive,
even though she thought she knew more than she did.
(34:01):
But when ten of them are asking is my name
in there? There are some fishy stuff going on. I
don't know. It feels disgusting to me. Really, I don't
know how they live with themselves. Kim had believed the
police swept Sandy's case under the rug because of her
involvement with Doug, the state trooper. She suspected that Doug
(34:23):
was in the polyard that night, that Doug held all
the answers the family desperately yearned to hear. But now
there were other possibilities, And then you know, it could
have been any of those other guys too. But men
with that kind of power and that kind of ability
to manipulate and be charming and grooming her. How overwhelming
(34:46):
for an eighteen year old girl to try to sort
all that out. The immense pressure and shame she must
have been under at the time. It's really sad. It's sad.
It's just sad, so I do believe they have equal
(35:09):
responsibility in hurting her. A brand new historical true crime podcast.
The year is eighteen hundred, City Hall, New York. The
first murder trial in the American judicial system as trial
(35:30):
for the charge of murder. Even with defense lawyers Alexander
Hamilton and Erin Burr on the case, this is probably
the most famous trial you've never heard of. When you
lay suffering a sudden, violent, brutal death, I hope you'll
think of me. Starring Alison Williams. I don't eat anything simplified,
mister Hamilton, Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn as Alexander Hamilton.
(35:53):
Don't be so sad, It doesn't suit you. Written and
created by me. Alison Black listened to Erase the murder
of Elma San's. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl
until she met that man right there on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When
(36:18):
Tracy were kel Burns was two years old, her baby
brother died. I was told that Matthew died in an accident,
and no one really talked about it. Her parents told
police she had killed him. Medical records said that I
killed my baby brother. I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for
(36:43):
Burden of Guilt, the new podcast that tells the truth
an incredible story of a toddler who was framed for
murder and how she grew into an adult determined to
get justice and protect her family. While we had prosecuted
some cold cases, this was the coldest, This was frigid.
(37:03):
But how does a two year old get blamed for murder?
She said? We wanted a new life. You just don't
know what it's like when you'll do anything for somebody.
Listen to Burden of Guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I noticed Jacob is
(37:29):
not in his crib, so I look in and says
she's not there. So I'm like, okay, they're not there.
Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the
case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking,
you know, like what's going on, Like this is insane,
Like where are my kids? Despite signs that Catherine Hoggle
(37:51):
took her tiny children one by one into the night,
never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial.
Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared
incompetent to stand try. We have a blueprint to get
away with murder and the state of Maryland. At this
point in Maryland, if a defendant is found incompetent and
can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed
(38:14):
after five years. So, as the clock counts down, Catherine's
charges on the verge of being dismissed. What does justice
look like in this case? There's something's wrong her, you know,
whenever a one was allowed to kill my two kids.
Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts, and to hear the show
(38:37):
completely ad free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel,
available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus. You'll get ad free
access to dozens of hit true crime shows like Paper Ghosts, Betrayal,
and The Idaho Massacre. There's a place beyond this place,
(39:01):
between the light and the darkness, the natior and the zenith.
For some, it's a bridge between the living and the dead.
Yet for others it's something else. Entirely, it's the place
where our nightmares dwell each one of us has touched
the other side and felt the presence of something beyond
this world. Welcome to Hip Hop Horror Stories. I'm your host, Belly,
(39:26):
and each week we're gonna take you to the limits
of your imagination as we explore the reality of paranormal experiences.
I believe in this shit for real, and the stories
you're about to hear might make you believe too. Everywhere
I look, I saw something, and I looked closer and
noticed there was a hoodest figure and whatever it is,
it's like cave. It's like it became reality. Listen to
(39:48):
Hip Hop Horror Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm the Wizard of Oz,
but I'm the one making everything happen real. Housewife of
Sul City star Jen Shaw is running the scam of
the century. We probably will never be able to be retired,
left can't work anymore, living a fat, million dollar lifestyle
(40:11):
on the backs of thousands of elderly victims. She turned
up their lives for what a fake bendy bag. Congrats girl.
When you have her confronted and instead of stopping, she
finds ways to be sneakier about it and keeps going.
I remember one time Stuart lost like about eight million,
(40:31):
and John was very upset, and she came down to
the office late at night with coach yelling, as your
app I am asking him where their money is. Would
you call her a con artist? I would just call
her a con She's not very much of an artist.
Bingch all eight episodes of Queen of the Con Season four,
The Unreal Housewife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(40:53):
wherever you get your podcasts. There have been few times
in my career where my perspective on a story has
changed so quickly. Kim initially asked me to investigate Sandy's
case because of my experience reporting on domestic violence, specifically
(41:14):
domestic violence homicides. Sandy's family was worried that she had
been killed by her boyfriend, but my conversation with Shoshelski
opened up a whole new line of reporting as I
tried to make sense of the calls that flooded in
after her death. On the one hand, it provided some
evidence that Sandy might have been struggling emotionally, keeping secrets
(41:37):
that would have been profoundly isolating for the teen and
on the other it hinted at a larger conspiracy involving
many cops with a lot to lose. It all reminded
me of a story Joanne told me the first time
I met her in the summer of twenty twenty one.
It's about one of Sandy's friends. Her name is also
(42:00):
so Sandy, Sandy Sheridan. According to Joanne, Sandy Beal and
Sandy Sheridan spent a lot of time together in the
months before Sandy died. Despite my best efforts, I've never
been able to find her, but Joanne told me she
called shortly after Sandy died. She called me right up.
(42:23):
She said, what happened all those cads that we collected
of different cops. Sandy Sheridan explained that she and Sandy
Beal had been collecting business cards of all the cops
they met, but when Joanne looked through her daughter's belongings,
there was only two cuts in her belonging, so they
laid out on the table for us to say. Sandy
(42:45):
Sheridan told Joanne one more thing, that local police had
been told to stay away from the funeral, and as
far as Joanne could tell, they did. I wasn't sure
what to make of these claims. At first, they felt
a little conspiratorial, but after learning about those calls to Shoyzhelski,
it seemed a lot more likely that the stories were true.
(43:08):
I ain't got no reason to really not trust the cops.
But there's you know, shit ain't adding up. You know
I've always had that was shit just ain't adding up.
That's one thing I did tell those, the detective and
that other guy, I told him, I said, you know
what really burns my ass is she wanted to be
just like one of you. She wanted to be liked
(43:31):
by them, and she wanted to be like them. And
at some point between her innocent flirtations with cops at
the drug store and her body being discovered on a
cold February morning, something went horribly wrong. Whatever happened to
her while she was in the Explorer program, I think
(43:51):
it's unlikely she was the only one. I asked PG
County for any records related to complaints of inappropriate sexual
behavior within the Explorer program from nineteen seventy six to now.
They told me that a search of the current internal
affairs system uncovered no complaints, and that to search an
older system, I would need to give them the officer's
(44:14):
name in question. I've passed along a list of names
since Sandy's books, and I'll let you know what we hear.
But here's what I found when I searched for old
news articles about the Page County Explorer program. In nineteen
eighty two, just five years after Sandy died, a veteran
Prince George's County police officer took a sixteen year old
(44:35):
on a ride along. The girl ended up attending the
police academy and becoming a police officer, fulfilling the dream
that Sandy had. But thirteen years later, after she joined
the sex crimes unit, she reported that she had been
raped by her mentor on one of the many ride
alongs she attended. The officer was later convicted of child abuse.
(44:59):
I think Sandy was victim too. I think her desire
to be a cop, for teenage infatuations, and her inexperience
they all coincided to leave her open to exploitation. That's
next week. Well, this is the whole thing about predation.
(45:22):
It works better for the predator if your victim is vulnerable,
And what more vulnerable place than a desperate young person
trying to start a career in law enforcement. I'm not
done digging into this story, and i have more questions
about what happens in police Explorer programs. If you have
(45:45):
ever been part of a police youth program or participated
in a ride along where you witnessed or experienced some
sort of inappropriate sexual conduct, please email me at what
Happened to Sandy Beal at gmail dot com. What Happened
to Sandy Beal is hosted by me Melissa Jelson. It's
written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell. It's edited
(46:08):
by Abu Safar, Josh Fisher, and Mary Do. Sound designed
by Aaron Kaufman. Jason English is our executive producer and
Marissa Brown is our associate producer. To find out more
about the investigation, follow me on Twitter at qu as
I am Ado. Thanks so much for listening. A brand
(46:39):
new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a
sudden brutal death starring Alison william I hope you'll think
of me Erased the murder of Elma Sans. She was
a sweet, happy, virtuous girl until she met that man
right there. Written and created by me. Alison Flack is
it possible, Sirs, standing by for your answer. Erased the
(47:02):
murder of Elma Sans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When Tracey, who
were killed Burns was two years old, her baby brother died.
I was told that Matthew died in an accident. Her
parents told police she had killed him. I'm Nancy Glass.
Join me for Burden of Guilt, the new podcast that
(47:25):
tells the truth an incredible story of a toddler who
was framed for murder. Listen to Burden of Guilt on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The System's broken. I said something's wrong her. You know,
(47:46):
whenever a woe is allowed to kill my two kids.
Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the
case of Catherine Hoggele, a mother accused of murder. Despite
signs that Hoggs took her tiny children one by one
into the night, never to come home again, she has
yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app,
(48:11):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and to
hear the show completely ad free. Subscribe to the iHeart
True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus.
You'll get add free access to dozens of hit true
crime shows like Paper Ghosts, Betrayal, and The Idaho Massacre.
(48:32):
You're going to Die, I guess I should have softened
that a little. Someday. You're gonna die. We all are.
I'm Kyle McMahon, and after my mom passed away, I
went on a journey to talk with the world's foremost
experts on death and grief for my new series, Death,
Grief and others we don't discuss, from conducting a seance
to talking with near death experiencers and everything in between.
I hope you'll join me on that journey, and you
(48:53):
should probably do it soon, because who knows how long
you're going to be around death, grief and others we
don't discuss. Available now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Fall is coming and the nights
are getting longer, and a strange Hollywood couple have moved
into the Winchester Mystery House. If you are brave enough,
you're invited into the unhinged housewarming from September twenty second
(49:17):
to October thirty first experience the terrifying line between reality
and imagination as darkness falls and those that haunt the
Winchester Mystery House join the party. Get your general admission
in rip tickets at Winchestermisteryhouse dot com
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