April 22, 2022 • 43 mins
Sandy’s cousin Kim meets with a cold case detective who offers her something unexpected - and transformative.
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series includes talk of suicide and sexual violence. Please take
(02:32):
care while listening. So I had to be at a
friend's house in Annapolis at six and it was three
and I'm like, I got time, and I have an address,
so I'm going to go to his house and that
I could say hello, Douglass's house, right. Kim has never
forgotten about Doug, the married state trooper who is in
(02:55):
a relationship with Sandy before her death. In fact, she
has asked an impressive file on him. She's paid for
background checks on his name, studied his wife's Facebook page,
researched the properties the couple own. She even went to
the trouble of requesting Doug's training records from the State Police.
(03:16):
And she's done all this because of her suspicion that
Doug knows why Sandy was in the poleyard that night.
She thinks he might have been with her because in
the months before Sandy's death, they had an intimate relationship,
one that led, according to Sandy's writings, to a pregnancy
and an abortion, and on the night of her death,
(03:39):
Sandy was dressed up like she was meeting someone for
a date. The medical examiner found quote numerous well preserved
spermatozoa inside her body and the location of Sandy's death
the Poleyard. It was a local cop hangout a mile
from where Doug worked. In the car with Sandy was
(03:59):
a letter for him. As much as Kim has wanted
answers from Doug, she's always been too afraid to reach
out to him directly, worried about how he might react
to her meddling. But on her last trip to Maryland,
she decided to pay him a visit. So I'm driving
(04:21):
down this little cul de sac and I'm thinking, you
know nothing, I'm not nervous or anything. And so I
keep going and there's this little dinky road because I
see a house out in the woods. So I've already
gone down this wooded path. I'm driving down this road,
and my brain must have registered the sign that said
(04:44):
video surveillance stapled to a tree trunk was a sign
that warned visitors they were being recorded. And then all
of a sudden, I see his house. I trust my
instincts and I just hit my brake some now because
now I'm like, I'm going deeper into the woods and
it's getting a little creepier, and so I stop and
(05:11):
I start thinking, Okay, I'm getting I'm like taking a
little bit too much risk. I'm going to back out.
So I back out and leave in my heart's like racin.
Kim left without making contact with Doug. Her courage had
only taken her so far. What Kim didn't know at
the time was that Doug had recently had another unexpected visitor.
(05:33):
Just a few days earlier, a Prince George's County Police
detective showed up on Doug's doorstep asking questions about Sandy.
From iHeartRadio. I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened
to Sandy Beale an iHeart original podcast, Chapter seven, The unravel.
(06:07):
I'll come back to Doug later, but first I want
to explain why Kim was in Maryland. To begin with,
she had been invited to meet with a cold case detective,
Bernie Nelson, at the Prince George's County Police headquarters in Forestville.
Kim had never met Bernie before, but she'd known of
him since two thousand and six. He's the one who
(06:29):
answered her call when she first tried to get the
police report, and he's also the one in twenty nineteen
who actually tracked it down, going to Detective Shoushelski's house
to physically retrieve it. I mean, I've heard this man's
name since two thousand and six and it's twenty twenty one.
So that was kind of exciting that I was going
(06:49):
to finally meet him. He could have just blown me off,
but he didn't. And so on a brisk morning in October,
Bernie and Kim finally met in person, wearing masks. Due
to the coronavirus pandemic. Kim wasn't permitted to record their conversation,
but she invited her sister along and she took diligent notes.
(07:13):
I've used these contemporaneous notes, interviews with Kim, and written
responses from PG County to create this account of the meeting.
So this is eleven o'clock on Monday morning, and he asks, so,
how did all this podcast stuff happen? And so he
was very interested, and I encouraged him. I'm like, I
(07:36):
really think it's in your best interest to allow them
to interview you. Because he's stating, he goes, well, we
don't think that we should have to do it because
we've done our due diligence, and we've done everything that
we can and the powers to be believe there's nothing
else that we can do. And I'm like, how can
you say you've done everything? I've got all these questions,
and we've had questions for years. Kim was excited, but nervous.
(08:04):
A previous meeting with the state police years ago had
left him feeling intimidated. She brought with her a list
of questions for Bernie so that she wouldn't forget what
she wanted to say. And this guy was calm and
was wanting to educate me on his part on how
they saw it. Bernie told her that the department had
(08:27):
thirteen hundred coal cases and very hew staff to work
them all, but he had taken the time to get
familiar with Sandy's case. He knew, for instance, about the
ride along notations in Sandy's calendar, the names and numbers
of local police officers in her address books. Kim told
Bernie what she thought that a number of cops had
(08:48):
taken advantage of Sandy pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with the teen,
and to her surprise, he didn't dispute it. He agreed
that at the time, the climate was not there for
females to be police officers, and they didn't want her.
They did not want females to be there. He agreed
(09:09):
that all these officers were inappropriate. None of their behaviors
was becoming, and today they would have all been terminated,
or at least they should have been in his opinion.
And Nelson's going, I don't condone any of their behavior.
He was disgusted as we were talking, and I just
was floored that he was being so accountable. Bernie told
(09:31):
Kim that he understood why the Bill family was so
suspicious of PG County police given the circumstances, and he
came across as sincere to Kim, and he's like, I
understand why you guys doubt everything. He also credited Kim
with the amount of stuff she'd been able to dig
up on her own, acknowledging her fierce commitment to the case.
(09:53):
He said, you've done your homework. He said, you did
a good job with this. And he's like, that's another
reason that I wanted to find three, because he knew
you're not gonna let me go here. While Bernie was
telling Kim all of this, there was another cop in
the room detective McDonald. He remained fairly quiet throughout the meeting.
(10:17):
Kim didn't even know why he was there until he
started telling her about his recent visit to Doug's house.
Just days earlier, Detective McDonald had surprised the retired state
trooper at his home and questioned him about his involvement
with Sandy. I was able to confirm with PG County
(10:37):
Police that this visit took place, so McDonald called him
outside the house and he said, I questioned him for
an hour and a half. An hour and a half,
that's a long time to visit with somebody, according to McDonald.
Doug admitted that he'd had a relationship with Sandy, but
he downplayed its significance. He said he did not know
(10:57):
she was pregnant. He did not know she had in
a board. He didn't pay for any abortion. Doug confirmed
that the poleyard where Sandy was found dead was a
local hangout for state troopers and a place Sandy had
gone before. The Bills, including Kim, had suspected this for years.
He told MacDonald that Pepco Utility yard was the common
(11:19):
spot for Maryland State Police that gathered, and it was
called the eighty eight. Don't know what that means, but
the spot was called the eighty eight. He said, girls,
including Sandy, would come and socialize with the cops. He
said it was kind of like a groupie thing, like
they followed a band, and that the cops would just
gather there. But that was the extent of the information
(11:40):
Doug would share about Sandy. He denied being in the
poleyard the night of Sandy's death or having anything to
do with it. He said he had not been in
the pole yard that evening. He said, I didn't know
that she was dead until my supervisor brought me in
a few days later. He said, my supervisor reported to
me and that I was questioned. That Maryland State Police
(12:03):
did interview him made him do a polygraph. Doug stated
that after Sandy's death, his employer, the Maryland State Police,
opened an internal investigation on his relationship with the teen.
He said he was polygraphed to determine if his actions
violated the agency's code of conduct. So Doug was questioned
(12:23):
back then, but not by Prince George's County Police, who
were investigating Sandy's unnatural death. Rather, he had to answer
to his employer, who probably learned of the improper relationship
from Detective Shoshchlski. All of this it happened behind the
Bill's back. Joanne, Sandy's mom, was never informed about this investigation,
(12:47):
despite the fact that she called the state police looking
for Doug and expressed her concerns about the relationship. I
want to know what else they learned from him, and
I'm sure it's stuff they didn't want me to know
because was going to hurt my feelings. In Kim's eyes,
Doug had always existed in this protected bubble, untouchable, living
(13:10):
above the law. Now learning that he hadn't completely evaded scrutiny,
that he was compelled to explain his relationship with Sandy
on his front lawn, no less, it left her feeling elated.
To be clear, Kim didn't believe that Doug told the
whole truth, and she had so many more questions for him,
(13:33):
but it felt like a small victory that he had
acknowledged and confirmed his relationship with Sandy, because this was
something I'd tried to get him to do to no avail.
Doug never responded to my many letters and emails, even
though I have an email tracker and I could tell
that someone had read my messages, often many times soon
(13:54):
after I sent them. But Doug wasn't able to ignore
a detective on his doorstep, and so four decades after
Sandy's death, he was forced to remember her. There's no
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for more deals. The cold case detectives never explained to
(18:25):
Kim why they visited Doug, and I can't say for
sure because Prince George's County Police declined to make anyone
available for an interview. But my instinct is not that
they suspected Doug of murder, but that they wanted to
show the bills that they'd done something, because despite the
recent visit to Doug's house, the PG County Police Department
(18:47):
was still convinced that Sandy died by suicide. He stated
that they believed that there was no fall play, that
no further investigation needed to be done, and they didn't
need to investigate anything further because they felt there was
nothing criminal in nature. Bernie told her that based on
the forensic evidence at the scene of Sandy's death, it
(19:07):
was indisputable that she died by suicide. But Kim had
seen all the same evidence as Bernie and had come
to a dramatically different conclusion. And we're going back and
forth arguing, and he's like no, and so I pull
out all my notes and I put him out there.
For years, Kim had been compiling what she believed were
(19:27):
the most compelling pieces of evidence that cast doubt on
the theory of suicide. Now, Kim went over each point
one by one. There was the gun discovered without any fingerprints.
There was the cardboard found under Sandy's tires, which indicated
to Kim that Sandy was trying to leave. There was
(19:47):
the fact that Sandy's body was discovered so close to
her boyfriend's place of work, and yet he was not
interviewed by Prince George's County Police as part of the
death investigation. There was the sperm inside Sandy sperm, which
could now be tested for DNA and could potentially solve
the question of who was last with Sandy. But most importantly,
(20:10):
there was this strange location of the gunshot wound. Why
would Sandy, who was left handed, reach across her body
to shoot herself in the right side. So we get
into the trajectory part, and I told him that I
didn't understand how one could shoot themselves in the manner
that you're saying, and if she had in fact committed suicide,
(20:32):
and he goes, she was shot in the stomach, I'm
like no. Ever since I met Kim, she has described
the bullet as having penetrated Sandy's right side and exited
through the left side of her back. Kim is not wrong,
But when you look at the evidence a little more closely,
a more nuanced picture emerges. According to the autopsy report,
(20:55):
the entrance wound was in Sandy's abdomen, less than three
inches to the right of her midline, not in her
flank as Kim had described it. It's a slight difference,
but an important distinction when it comes to visualizing how
someone would inflict such an injury. To be told that
she was mistaken about the location of the entrance wound,
(21:17):
even by a small distance, was genuinely confusing for Kim.
And she and I said, but she couldn't have. Possibly,
she couldn't have. She couldn't be contortionist and do this.
And He's like, Kim, she took the gun. She braced
it on the steering wheel, and she used her thumbs,
(21:38):
and she put it to her stomach because it was
a direct shot to the stomach. It went through right here,
and it came right out the back behind her, her back.
The trajectory of the bullet had never been explained to
Kim in this way. Instead of traveling from right to left,
Bernie showed Kim that the path of the bullet really
(21:59):
moved from from to back. There was a deviation of
about five inches, but that could be accounted for by
the angle of Sandy's body or the angle of the gun,
or a combination of the two. And he says, but
there was gunpowder on the steering wheel. And I'm like what.
And it was kind of like this thing came at
me where all of a sudden things were becoming clear,
(22:21):
and I'm like, what do you mean? There was gunpowder
on the steering wheel. And he goes, yes, there was
spray of gunpowder on her hands, the gun on the
steering wheel and forward, and I'm like, oh god. Kim
had never heard about gunpowder being on the steering wheel
of Sandy's car. The detail wasn't in the police report,
(22:42):
and no one had ever mentioned it to her before,
but now she imagined it. What he said was that's
how it got in her hands, that everything goes backwards,
that the gunpowder sprays back. That's what they said. And
I don't know in anything about it. But as he's
telling me this, my whole body's going, oh God, this
(23:02):
is you know. It was the first time I was
able to see that it's a possibility. And I just
was like, I started crying. And we only had masks on,
so all I could see was his eyes, and his
eyes were watering up too. At that moment, Kim's certainty
(23:26):
in the facts that she had been repeating for so
many years started to break apart. It was a disorienting
and destabilizing feeling. She was able to glimpse an alternative
version of events for Sandy's death that made just as
much sense as the one she had believed for so long.
(23:51):
After Kim and her sister left the meeting. They drove
immediately to the pole yard where Sandy had died. They
sat in the car, their heads buzzed with the information
that just received, and it was here that Kim's sister
began talking. We went straight from there to Pepco utility
yard to just kind of like debrief and chill and look,
(24:15):
and she just got very sad. She's like, I wish
that I just knew. I wish that I could have
just told her that this too shall pass and this
doesn't have to be. But I know exactly what she
was going through if she was sitting in that car
by herself. Kim's sister confided that she had been in
Sandy's position before. She had too, had thoughts of suicide
(24:35):
a number of times during her life. Kim later described
this moment to me as one of the most vulnerable
she'd ever shared with her sister. Kim listened to her
sister talk while looking out at the pole yard. She'd
visited the location nearly a dozen times as part of
her investigation into Sandy's death, and she'd pictured all the
(24:58):
ways Sandy could have at the hands of another. Now
she saw the scene through her sister's eyes. Just like Kim,
I can tell you that the desire to commit suicide
is really hard and it's not a pleasant place to be,
and I know exactly what she was tormented with at
that moment. A brand new historical true crime podcast. The
(25:28):
year is eighteen hundred, City Hall, New York. The first
murder trial in the American judicial system as trial for
the charge of murder. Even with 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 hope you'll think
(25:51):
of me. Starring Alison Williams. I don't need anything simplified,
mister Hamilton. Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn as Alexander Hamilton.
She's so sad that it doesn't suit you. Written and
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of Elma San's She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl
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(26:39):
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for 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
(26:59):
get justice and protect her family. While we had prosecuted
some cold cases, this was the coldest, This was frigid.
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She said? We wanted a new life. You just don't
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dot com. I was in Spain on vacation when all
of this was happening, and my phone lit up with
a text from Kim. She had gone right from the
(29:16):
poliard to the airport, and as she waited for her
flight back to Texas, she gulped down a glass of
wine and she texted me this line quote, I think
she committed suicide. When I read this, I was stunned.
I had told Kim a lot of information over the
last few months that complicated the story she believed about
(29:36):
Sandy's death. She took it all in stride, but her
confidence in her stance remained strong. Now she had completely
reversed her position, abandoning a belief that had driven her
for so long. This belief, it was a part of Kim.
It dictated how she spent her free time. It reached
into her professional life and informed how she identified with
(29:59):
her clients. It molded her personality. How could a single
meeting change her mind? What could Bernie have said or
done to persuade her? I mean, look, think about you
know yourself and what you believe about this story, right
(30:21):
or like? What would it take to convince you of
a different narrative, and I think when you think about
it that way, you realize that, you know, getting entrenched
in the system of beliefs is actually shockingly easy, Like
that's what we do as human beings. Steven Slowman is
a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University.
(30:45):
He studies how people think. How do you actually change minds?
The traditional way to think about it is that if
you just see enough evidence, then finally you'll change your mind.
I think it's very clear that's false. In fact, in
the literature, there are people who propose what are called
(31:06):
backfire effects. You take people who feel strongly about an issue,
and you show them evidence that's inconsistent with their view,
and in some conditions, people come to feel even more
strongly the way they felt before, despite the evidence. If
you bombard someone with information that challenges their beliefs, they're
(31:29):
likely to double down on their original stance. But listen
to them, really listen, and the opposite might happen. Research
shows that people who are genuinely listened to feel safer
in the conversation and experience less anxiety. As a result,
they're less defensive and better at seeing both sides of
(31:49):
an argument and they walk away from the conversation with
a more nuanced perspective. But if we're talking about how
to approach an individual to change their well, the first
thing you do is you acknowledge where that person's coming from. Right.
You don't have to agree with it, but you have
(32:11):
to give the person the sense that you understand them
and you understand their values. Right, if you can acknowledge
their most sacred values first, that's a really good entry way.
Then the person feels respected and feels like they're talking
to someone who understands them. So that's step one. Hearing this,
(32:35):
it sounded almost exactly like what Bernie did. Kim told
me how he acknowledge that PG County police had mistreated
Sandy and how wrong it was. He didn't try to
minimize it or shrug it off, as every other police
officer had in the years. Kim had been asking questions.
Step two is not to enforce your own view on
(32:59):
the person. What you have to do is sort of elicit.
You have to be kind of platonic about it. That is,
you have to elicit that person's perspective and then start
asking them questions. So that they can see themselves where
the inconsistencies are in their story, and then if you
(33:21):
can fill them in, you might very slowly, gradually be
able to sort of turn the corner and allow them
to integrate the information with a different narrative, a new narrative.
I thought of Sandy's gunshot wound. Kim had walked into
the meeting believing one thing about its trajectory and was
(33:43):
shown gently that she was mistaken. I wondered if that
moment opened the door to her being able to see
other possibilities. Narratives, you know, have teeth that sink into
all aspects of our lives, especially when they concern really
important things like the death of a child. You have
(34:04):
all of this knowledge that's kind of sitting together in
this tight little story, and you have to loosen up
the whole thing, and then when it falls apart, it
falls apart as a whole and reshapes as a whole.
What Kim experienced in that meeting with Bernie may best
be described as an epiphany. And I don't think it
(34:26):
was the individual revelation of gunpowder on the steering wheel
that triggered this change. I think it has a lot
more to do with how she was treated during the
meeting and what Bernie was able to offer her recognition
acknowledgment a sympathetic ear I was heard, and I was
(34:47):
disarmed with his empathy and his compassion. I just I mean,
I just was blown away. And then I don't know,
for whatever reason, Maybe it was his demeanor and the
way he was presenting it opposed to how it was
presented in the past. Kim's previous experience with Prince George's
(35:08):
County police was dotted with contentious interactions, instances where she
was brushed off or treated as a nuisance. All the
things she'd found suspicious Sandy's address books, the ride alongs,
her close connections to local police officers were dismissed as insignificant,
and Kim was made to feel as if she was
(35:29):
losing it seeing things that weren't there. For the first time,
a PG County police officer acknowledged that she was justified
in her suspicions. Sandy's involvement with police was relevant, It
did matter, and Bernie went so far as to say
that it may have contributed to Sandy's decision to take
(35:49):
her own life. So I was focused on these eyes,
and his eyes were just kind and he carried and
it was like he could see the pain and he
could even I mean he felt the pain. He wasn't
in tears, but he just had those eyes and they
were so compassionate that it was there was a connection
(36:13):
of you really got to get it was like, you
really have to believe me. It's like he was almost
begging me, you know, almost get your stuff out of
this misery that you're in, because it's just the truth.
When Kim texted me, quote, I think she committed suicide,
(36:36):
it was a bold statement, and in our following conversation
she sounded confident that she now knew the truth, but
letting go of a core belief after all those years.
It's not a linear process. There were days, minutes, hours
where her suspicions resurfaced and her doubts rushed back in,
only to later subside, like a pendulum swinging back and forth.
(37:01):
She texted me about the experience, quote, I find myself
shifting often from knowing she was killed and grieving how
much she was really hurting. Kim was undergoing the painstaking
process of rebuilding her understanding of Sandy's death after her
tightly wound belief had started to unravel. I'm still struggling
(37:23):
with the transition of changing the words from killed two
took her life or whatever that's different, because it does.
I still have that resistance in my head to it.
Don't want to believe that that's the truth. But I
do know that what she was facing was really horrible.
(37:45):
How do you feel about like letting some of that
stuff go? I feel like I let her down, but
I feel like a fool that I still have questions.
I feel like I wasted your time, and I feel
like I wasted the beals time because it just felt
like a why did you make this into something that
it wasn't? I don't know. That's what I've been struggling with.
(38:11):
After Kim flew home to Texas, she knew she had
to tell the rest of the bills what she now
believed about Sandy's death, but she didn't want to do
it over the phone. She couldn't bear the thought of
having four individual conversations where she tried to put into
words what had happened during her meeting with Bernie, and
so she packed her bags once again and booked a
(38:32):
flight to Maine before leaving, she penned an email to
Bernie to say thank you. He wrote back right away,
here's Kim reading some of his email. And as I
said before, I'm very sorry about what happened to Sandy.
She was put through far too much by people who
should have known better and whom she trusted and looked
(38:53):
up to. It is shameful and has caused a young
lady with a promising future to die at a very
young age. I hope that answered your question satisfactory, and
please don't hesitate to let me know if you have
any other questions. Have a safe trip. What happened on
that trip is on our next and final episode. We've
(39:14):
come a long way with us you, Doug and Doug,
and so in my mind, I think we've come to
the end of the row when the loser grow. What
(39:34):
Happened to Sandy Beal is hosted by Me Melissa Jelson.
It's written and produced by me and Katrina Norvel. The
podcast is edited by Abu Safar, sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistants
by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
follow me on Twitter. At Quasamado. That's qu as I
(39:58):
am a d o. Thanks so much for listening. A
brand 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
(40:21):
man right there. Written and created by me, Alison Flack.
Is it possible? So we're standing by for your answer.
Erased the Murder of Elma Sans on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When
Trace who were killed, Burns was two years old, her
baby brother died. I was told that Matthew died in
(40:42):
an accident. Her parents told police she had killed him.
I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for Burden of Guilt, the
new podcast that tells the truth an incredible story of
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care while listening. So I had to be at a
friend's house in Annapolis at six and it was three
and I'm like, I got time, and I have an address,
so I'm going to go to his house and that
I could say hello, Douglass's house, right. Kim has never
forgotten about Doug, the married state trooper who is in
(02:55):
a relationship with Sandy before her death. In fact, she
has asked an impressive file on him. She's paid for
background checks on his name, studied his wife's Facebook page,
researched the properties the couple own. She even went to
the trouble of requesting Doug's training records from the State Police.
(03:16):
And she's done all this because of her suspicion that
Doug knows why Sandy was in the poleyard that night.
She thinks he might have been with her because in
the months before Sandy's death, they had an intimate relationship,
one that led, according to Sandy's writings, to a pregnancy
and an abortion, and on the night of her death,
(03:39):
Sandy was dressed up like she was meeting someone for
a date. The medical examiner found quote numerous well preserved
spermatozoa inside her body and the location of Sandy's death
the Poleyard. It was a local cop hangout a mile
from where Doug worked. In the car with Sandy was
(03:59):
a letter for him. As much as Kim has wanted
answers from Doug, she's always been too afraid to reach
out to him directly, worried about how he might react
to her meddling. But on her last trip to Maryland,
she decided to pay him a visit. So I'm driving
(04:21):
down this little cul de sac and I'm thinking, you
know nothing, I'm not nervous or anything. And so I
keep going and there's this little dinky road because I
see a house out in the woods. So I've already
gone down this wooded path. I'm driving down this road,
and my brain must have registered the sign that said
(04:44):
video surveillance stapled to a tree trunk was a sign
that warned visitors they were being recorded. And then all
of a sudden, I see his house. I trust my
instincts and I just hit my brake some now because
now I'm like, I'm going deeper into the woods and
it's getting a little creepier, and so I stop and
(05:11):
I start thinking, Okay, I'm getting I'm like taking a
little bit too much risk. I'm going to back out.
So I back out and leave in my heart's like racin.
Kim left without making contact with Doug. Her courage had
only taken her so far. What Kim didn't know at
the time was that Doug had recently had another unexpected visitor.
(05:33):
Just a few days earlier, a Prince George's County Police
detective showed up on Doug's doorstep asking questions about Sandy.
From iHeartRadio. I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened
to Sandy Beale an iHeart original podcast, Chapter seven, The unravel.
(06:07):
I'll come back to Doug later, but first I want
to explain why Kim was in Maryland. To begin with,
she had been invited to meet with a cold case detective,
Bernie Nelson, at the Prince George's County Police headquarters in Forestville.
Kim had never met Bernie before, but she'd known of
him since two thousand and six. He's the one who
(06:29):
answered her call when she first tried to get the
police report, and he's also the one in twenty nineteen
who actually tracked it down, going to Detective Shoushelski's house
to physically retrieve it. I mean, I've heard this man's
name since two thousand and six and it's twenty twenty one.
So that was kind of exciting that I was going
(06:49):
to finally meet him. He could have just blown me off,
but he didn't. And so on a brisk morning in October,
Bernie and Kim finally met in person, wearing masks. Due
to the coronavirus pandemic. Kim wasn't permitted to record their conversation,
but she invited her sister along and she took diligent notes.
(07:13):
I've used these contemporaneous notes, interviews with Kim, and written
responses from PG County to create this account of the meeting.
So this is eleven o'clock on Monday morning, and he asks, so,
how did all this podcast stuff happen? And so he
was very interested, and I encouraged him. I'm like, I
(07:36):
really think it's in your best interest to allow them
to interview you. Because he's stating, he goes, well, we
don't think that we should have to do it because
we've done our due diligence, and we've done everything that
we can and the powers to be believe there's nothing
else that we can do. And I'm like, how can
you say you've done everything? I've got all these questions,
and we've had questions for years. Kim was excited, but nervous.
(08:04):
A previous meeting with the state police years ago had
left him feeling intimidated. She brought with her a list
of questions for Bernie so that she wouldn't forget what
she wanted to say. And this guy was calm and
was wanting to educate me on his part on how
they saw it. Bernie told her that the department had
(08:27):
thirteen hundred coal cases and very hew staff to work
them all, but he had taken the time to get
familiar with Sandy's case. He knew, for instance, about the
ride along notations in Sandy's calendar, the names and numbers
of local police officers in her address books. Kim told
Bernie what she thought that a number of cops had
(08:48):
taken advantage of Sandy pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with the teen,
and to her surprise, he didn't dispute it. He agreed
that at the time, the climate was not there for
females to be police officers, and they didn't want her.
They did not want females to be there. He agreed
(09:09):
that all these officers were inappropriate. None of their behaviors
was becoming, and today they would have all been terminated,
or at least they should have been in his opinion.
And Nelson's going, I don't condone any of their behavior.
He was disgusted as we were talking, and I just
was floored that he was being so accountable. Bernie told
(09:31):
Kim that he understood why the Bill family was so
suspicious of PG County police given the circumstances, and he
came across as sincere to Kim, and he's like, I
understand why you guys doubt everything. He also credited Kim
with the amount of stuff she'd been able to dig
up on her own, acknowledging her fierce commitment to the case.
(09:53):
He said, you've done your homework. He said, you did
a good job with this. And he's like, that's another
reason that I wanted to find three, because he knew
you're not gonna let me go here. While Bernie was
telling Kim all of this, there was another cop in
the room detective McDonald. He remained fairly quiet throughout the meeting.
(10:17):
Kim didn't even know why he was there until he
started telling her about his recent visit to Doug's house.
Just days earlier, Detective McDonald had surprised the retired state
trooper at his home and questioned him about his involvement
with Sandy. I was able to confirm with PG County
(10:37):
Police that this visit took place, so McDonald called him
outside the house and he said, I questioned him for
an hour and a half. An hour and a half,
that's a long time to visit with somebody, according to McDonald.
Doug admitted that he'd had a relationship with Sandy, but
he downplayed its significance. He said he did not know
(10:57):
she was pregnant. He did not know she had in
a board. He didn't pay for any abortion. Doug confirmed
that the poleyard where Sandy was found dead was a
local hangout for state troopers and a place Sandy had
gone before. The Bills, including Kim, had suspected this for years.
He told MacDonald that Pepco Utility yard was the common
(11:19):
spot for Maryland State Police that gathered, and it was
called the eighty eight. Don't know what that means, but
the spot was called the eighty eight. He said, girls,
including Sandy, would come and socialize with the cops. He
said it was kind of like a groupie thing, like
they followed a band, and that the cops would just
gather there. But that was the extent of the information
(11:40):
Doug would share about Sandy. He denied being in the
poleyard the night of Sandy's death or having anything to
do with it. He said he had not been in
the pole yard that evening. He said, I didn't know
that she was dead until my supervisor brought me in
a few days later. He said, my supervisor reported to
me and that I was questioned. That Maryland State Police
(12:03):
did interview him made him do a polygraph. Doug stated
that after Sandy's death, his employer, the Maryland State Police,
opened an internal investigation on his relationship with the teen.
He said he was polygraphed to determine if his actions
violated the agency's code of conduct. So Doug was questioned
(12:23):
back then, but not by Prince George's County Police, who
were investigating Sandy's unnatural death. Rather, he had to answer
to his employer, who probably learned of the improper relationship
from Detective Shoshchlski. All of this it happened behind the
Bill's back. Joanne, Sandy's mom, was never informed about this investigation,
(12:47):
despite the fact that she called the state police looking
for Doug and expressed her concerns about the relationship. I
want to know what else they learned from him, and
I'm sure it's stuff they didn't want me to know
because was going to hurt my feelings. In Kim's eyes,
Doug had always existed in this protected bubble, untouchable, living
(13:10):
above the law. Now learning that he hadn't completely evaded scrutiny,
that he was compelled to explain his relationship with Sandy
on his front lawn, no less, it left her feeling elated.
To be clear, Kim didn't believe that Doug told the
whole truth, and she had so many more questions for him,
(13:33):
but it felt like a small victory that he had
acknowledged and confirmed his relationship with Sandy, because this was
something I'd tried to get him to do to no avail.
Doug never responded to my many letters and emails, even
though I have an email tracker and I could tell
that someone had read my messages, often many times soon
(13:54):
after I sent them. But Doug wasn't able to ignore
a detective on his doorstep, and so four decades after
Sandy's death, he was forced to remember her. There's no
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to save twenty five percent your first year LifeLock Identity
Theft Protection starts here 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, a messans
trial for the charge of murder. Even with defense lawyers
(15:25):
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 need
anything simplified, mister Hamilton, Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn as
Alexander Hamilton. Don't be so sad, It doesn't suit you.
(15:49):
Written and created by me Alison Flock. Listen to Erased
the Murder of Elma Sans. She was a sweet, happy
virtue girl until she met that man right there on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
your podcasts. When Tercy were Kill Burns was two years old,
(16:14):
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.
(16:34):
Join me for 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. But how does a two year old
(16:57):
get blamed for murder? She said? We wanted a new life.
You just don't know what it's like when you'll do
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for more deals. The cold case detectives never explained to
(18:25):
Kim why they visited Doug, and I can't say for
sure because Prince George's County Police declined to make anyone
available for an interview. But my instinct is not that
they suspected Doug of murder, but that they wanted to
show the bills that they'd done something, because despite the
recent visit to Doug's house, the PG County Police Department
(18:47):
was still convinced that Sandy died by suicide. He stated
that they believed that there was no fall play, that
no further investigation needed to be done, and they didn't
need to investigate anything further because they felt there was
nothing criminal in nature. Bernie told her that based on
the forensic evidence at the scene of Sandy's death, it
(19:07):
was indisputable that she died by suicide. But Kim had
seen all the same evidence as Bernie and had come
to a dramatically different conclusion. And we're going back and
forth arguing, and he's like no, and so I pull
out all my notes and I put him out there.
For years, Kim had been compiling what she believed were
(19:27):
the most compelling pieces of evidence that cast doubt on
the theory of suicide. Now, Kim went over each point
one by one. There was the gun discovered without any fingerprints.
There was the cardboard found under Sandy's tires, which indicated
to Kim that Sandy was trying to leave. There was
(19:47):
the fact that Sandy's body was discovered so close to
her boyfriend's place of work, and yet he was not
interviewed by Prince George's County Police as part of the
death investigation. There was the sperm inside Sandy sperm, which
could now be tested for DNA and could potentially solve
the question of who was last with Sandy. But most importantly,
(20:10):
there was this strange location of the gunshot wound. Why
would Sandy, who was left handed, reach across her body
to shoot herself in the right side. So we get
into the trajectory part, and I told him that I
didn't understand how one could shoot themselves in the manner
that you're saying, and if she had in fact committed suicide,
(20:32):
and he goes, she was shot in the stomach, I'm
like no. Ever since I met Kim, she has described
the bullet as having penetrated Sandy's right side and exited
through the left side of her back. Kim is not wrong,
But when you look at the evidence a little more closely,
a more nuanced picture emerges. According to the autopsy report,
(20:55):
the entrance wound was in Sandy's abdomen, less than three
inches to the right of her midline, not in her
flank as Kim had described it. It's a slight difference,
but an important distinction when it comes to visualizing how
someone would inflict such an injury. To be told that
she was mistaken about the location of the entrance wound,
(21:17):
even by a small distance, was genuinely confusing for Kim.
And she and I said, but she couldn't have. Possibly,
she couldn't have. She couldn't be contortionist and do this.
And He's like, Kim, she took the gun. She braced
it on the steering wheel, and she used her thumbs,
(21:38):
and she put it to her stomach because it was
a direct shot to the stomach. It went through right here,
and it came right out the back behind her, her back.
The trajectory of the bullet had never been explained to
Kim in this way. Instead of traveling from right to left,
Bernie showed Kim that the path of the bullet really
(21:59):
moved from from to back. There was a deviation of
about five inches, but that could be accounted for by
the angle of Sandy's body or the angle of the gun,
or a combination of the two. And he says, but
there was gunpowder on the steering wheel. And I'm like what.
And it was kind of like this thing came at
me where all of a sudden things were becoming clear,
(22:21):
and I'm like, what do you mean? There was gunpowder
on the steering wheel. And he goes, yes, there was
spray of gunpowder on her hands, the gun on the
steering wheel and forward, and I'm like, oh god. Kim
had never heard about gunpowder being on the steering wheel
of Sandy's car. The detail wasn't in the police report,
(22:42):
and no one had ever mentioned it to her before,
but now she imagined it. What he said was that's
how it got in her hands, that everything goes backwards,
that the gunpowder sprays back. That's what they said. And
I don't know in anything about it. But as he's
telling me this, my whole body's going, oh God, this
(23:02):
is you know. It was the first time I was
able to see that it's a possibility. And I just
was like, I started crying. And we only had masks on,
so all I could see was his eyes, and his
eyes were watering up too. At that moment, Kim's certainty
(23:26):
in the facts that she had been repeating for so
many years started to break apart. It was a disorienting
and destabilizing feeling. She was able to glimpse an alternative
version of events for Sandy's death that made just as
much sense as the one she had believed for so long.
(23:51):
After Kim and her sister left the meeting. They drove
immediately to the pole yard where Sandy had died. They
sat in the car, their heads buzzed with the information
that just received, and it was here that Kim's sister
began talking. We went straight from there to Pepco utility
yard to just kind of like debrief and chill and look,
(24:15):
and she just got very sad. She's like, I wish
that I just knew. I wish that I could have
just told her that this too shall pass and this
doesn't have to be. But I know exactly what she
was going through if she was sitting in that car
by herself. Kim's sister confided that she had been in
Sandy's position before. She had too, had thoughts of suicide
(24:35):
a number of times during her life. Kim later described
this moment to me as one of the most vulnerable
she'd ever shared with her sister. Kim listened to her
sister talk while looking out at the pole yard. She'd
visited the location nearly a dozen times as part of
her investigation into Sandy's death, and she'd pictured all the
(24:58):
ways Sandy could have at the hands of another. Now
she saw the scene through her sister's eyes. Just like Kim,
I can tell you that the desire to commit suicide
is really hard and it's not a pleasant place to be,
and I know exactly what she was tormented with at
that moment. A brand new historical true crime podcast. The
(25:28):
year is eighteen hundred, City Hall, New York. The first
murder trial in the American judicial system as trial for
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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 hope you'll think
(25:51):
of me. Starring Alison Williams. I don't need anything simplified,
mister Hamilton. Thank you, with Tony Goldwyn as Alexander Hamilton.
She's so sad that 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
(26:15):
until she met that man. Right there on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When
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 faid that
(26:39):
I killed my baby brother. I'm Nancy Glass. Join me
for 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
(26:59):
get justice and protect her family. While we had prosecuted
some cold cases, this was the coldest, This was frigid.
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She said? We wanted a new life. You just don't
know what it's like when you'll do anything for somebody.
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dot com. I was in Spain on vacation when all
of this was happening, and my phone lit up with
a text from Kim. She had gone right from the
(29:16):
poliard to the airport, and as she waited for her
flight back to Texas, she gulped down a glass of
wine and she texted me this line quote, I think
she committed suicide. When I read this, I was stunned.
I had told Kim a lot of information over the
last few months that complicated the story she believed about
(29:36):
Sandy's death. She took it all in stride, but her
confidence in her stance remained strong. Now she had completely
reversed her position, abandoning a belief that had driven her
for so long. This belief, it was a part of Kim.
It dictated how she spent her free time. It reached
into her professional life and informed how she identified with
(29:59):
her clients. It molded her personality. How could a single
meeting change her mind? What could Bernie have said or
done to persuade her? I mean, look, think about you
know yourself and what you believe about this story, right
(30:21):
or like? What would it take to convince you of
a different narrative, and I think when you think about
it that way, you realize that, you know, getting entrenched
in the system of beliefs is actually shockingly easy, Like
that's what we do as human beings. Steven Slowman is
a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University.
(30:45):
He studies how people think. How do you actually change minds?
The traditional way to think about it is that if
you just see enough evidence, then finally you'll change your mind.
I think it's very clear that's false. In fact, in
the literature, there are people who propose what are called
(31:06):
backfire effects. You take people who feel strongly about an issue,
and you show them evidence that's inconsistent with their view,
and in some conditions, people come to feel even more
strongly the way they felt before, despite the evidence. If
you bombard someone with information that challenges their beliefs, they're
(31:29):
likely to double down on their original stance. But listen
to them, really listen, and the opposite might happen. Research
shows that people who are genuinely listened to feel safer
in the conversation and experience less anxiety. As a result,
they're less defensive and better at seeing both sides of
(31:49):
an argument and they walk away from the conversation with
a more nuanced perspective. But if we're talking about how
to approach an individual to change their well, the first
thing you do is you acknowledge where that person's coming from. Right.
You don't have to agree with it, but you have
(32:11):
to give the person the sense that you understand them
and you understand their values. Right, if you can acknowledge
their most sacred values first, that's a really good entry way.
Then the person feels respected and feels like they're talking
to someone who understands them. So that's step one. Hearing this,
(32:35):
it sounded almost exactly like what Bernie did. Kim told
me how he acknowledge that PG County police had mistreated
Sandy and how wrong it was. He didn't try to
minimize it or shrug it off, as every other police
officer had in the years. Kim had been asking questions.
Step two is not to enforce your own view on
(32:59):
the person. What you have to do is sort of elicit.
You have to be kind of platonic about it. That is,
you have to elicit that person's perspective and then start
asking them questions. So that they can see themselves where
the inconsistencies are in their story, and then if you
(33:21):
can fill them in, you might very slowly, gradually be
able to sort of turn the corner and allow them
to integrate the information with a different narrative, a new narrative.
I thought of Sandy's gunshot wound. Kim had walked into
the meeting believing one thing about its trajectory and was
(33:43):
shown gently that she was mistaken. I wondered if that
moment opened the door to her being able to see
other possibilities. Narratives, you know, have teeth that sink into
all aspects of our lives, especially when they concern really
important things like the death of a child. You have
(34:04):
all of this knowledge that's kind of sitting together in
this tight little story, and you have to loosen up
the whole thing, and then when it falls apart, it
falls apart as a whole and reshapes as a whole.
What Kim experienced in that meeting with Bernie may best
be described as an epiphany. And I don't think it
(34:26):
was the individual revelation of gunpowder on the steering wheel
that triggered this change. I think it has a lot
more to do with how she was treated during the
meeting and what Bernie was able to offer her recognition
acknowledgment a sympathetic ear I was heard, and I was
(34:47):
disarmed with his empathy and his compassion. I just I mean,
I just was blown away. And then I don't know,
for whatever reason, Maybe it was his demeanor and the
way he was presenting it opposed to how it was
presented in the past. Kim's previous experience with Prince George's
(35:08):
County police was dotted with contentious interactions, instances where she
was brushed off or treated as a nuisance. All the
things she'd found suspicious Sandy's address books, the ride alongs,
her close connections to local police officers were dismissed as insignificant,
and Kim was made to feel as if she was
(35:29):
losing it seeing things that weren't there. For the first time,
a PG County police officer acknowledged that she was justified
in her suspicions. Sandy's involvement with police was relevant, It
did matter, and Bernie went so far as to say
that it may have contributed to Sandy's decision to take
(35:49):
her own life. So I was focused on these eyes,
and his eyes were just kind and he carried and
it was like he could see the pain and he
could even I mean he felt the pain. He wasn't
in tears, but he just had those eyes and they
were so compassionate that it was there was a connection
(36:13):
of you really got to get it was like, you
really have to believe me. It's like he was almost
begging me, you know, almost get your stuff out of
this misery that you're in, because it's just the truth.
When Kim texted me, quote, I think she committed suicide,
(36:36):
it was a bold statement, and in our following conversation
she sounded confident that she now knew the truth, but
letting go of a core belief after all those years.
It's not a linear process. There were days, minutes, hours
where her suspicions resurfaced and her doubts rushed back in,
only to later subside, like a pendulum swinging back and forth.
(37:01):
She texted me about the experience, quote, I find myself
shifting often from knowing she was killed and grieving how
much she was really hurting. Kim was undergoing the painstaking
process of rebuilding her understanding of Sandy's death after her
tightly wound belief had started to unravel. I'm still struggling
(37:23):
with the transition of changing the words from killed two
took her life or whatever that's different, because it does.
I still have that resistance in my head to it.
Don't want to believe that that's the truth. But I
do know that what she was facing was really horrible.
(37:45):
How do you feel about like letting some of that
stuff go? I feel like I let her down, but
I feel like a fool that I still have questions.
I feel like I wasted your time, and I feel
like I wasted the beals time because it just felt
like a why did you make this into something that
it wasn't? I don't know. That's what I've been struggling with.
(38:11):
After Kim flew home to Texas, she knew she had
to tell the rest of the bills what she now
believed about Sandy's death, but she didn't want to do
it over the phone. She couldn't bear the thought of
having four individual conversations where she tried to put into
words what had happened during her meeting with Bernie, and
so she packed her bags once again and booked a
(38:32):
flight to Maine before leaving, she penned an email to
Bernie to say thank you. He wrote back right away,
here's Kim reading some of his email. And as I
said before, I'm very sorry about what happened to Sandy.
She was put through far too much by people who
should have known better and whom she trusted and looked
(38:53):
up to. It is shameful and has caused a young
lady with a promising future to die at a very
young age. I hope that answered your question satisfactory, and
please don't hesitate to let me know if you have
any other questions. Have a safe trip. What happened on
that trip is on our next and final episode. We've
(39:14):
come a long way with us you, Doug and Doug,
and so in my mind, I think we've come to
the end of the row when the loser grow. What
(39:34):
Happened to Sandy Beal is hosted by Me Melissa Jelson.
It's written and produced by me and Katrina Norvel. The
podcast is edited by Abu Safar, sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistants
by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
follow me on Twitter. At Quasamado. That's qu as I
(39:58):
am a d o. Thanks so much for listening. A
brand 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
(40:21):
man right there. Written and created by me, Alison Flack.
Is it possible? So we're standing by for your answer.
Erased the Murder of Elma Sans on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. When
Trace who were killed, Burns was two years old, her
baby brother died. I was told that Matthew died in
(40:42):
an accident. Her parents told police she had killed him.
I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for Burden of Guilt, the
new podcast that 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
(41:03):
you get your podcasts. The system's broken. I said, something's
wrong here. You know, whenever a one is allowed to
kill my two kids, unrestorable is a new true crime
podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggle, a mother
accused of murder. Despite signs that Catherine Hoggle took her
(41:26):
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, Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts, and to hear the show completely.
Add free subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel,
available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Plus. You'll get ad free
(41:50):
access to dozens of hit true crime shows like Paper Ghosts, Betrayal,
and The Idaho Massacre. Hey guys, Brittain Laurie he from
Life on Cup podcast. We are the number one Dating
in Relationships podcasts in Australia because we do things different
down on them. We cover everything from dating, sex, relationships
(42:10):
and pop culture. We chat with a lot of experts
about things like love, cheating, narcissists because we both dated one,
long distance, fertility, communication and breakups, and we talk to
some people you might be familiar with, like Rebel Wilson,
Matthew Hussey, Stephen Bartlett, Joann McNally and Mark Manson. You
can join us while we unpack it all by searching
for life on cut Now wherever you get your podcasts
(42:32):
fall this coming and the nights are getting longer, and
a strange Hollywood couple have moved into the Winchester Mystery House.
If you are brieve enough, you're invited to the Unhinged
housewarming from September twenty second to October thirty first experience
the terrifying line between reality and imagination as darkness falls
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and those that haunt the Winchester Mystery House join the party.
Get your general admission and our IP tickets at Winchester
Mystery House dot com
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