January 5, 2023 • 43 mins
In June of 1979, a 17 year old girl was found brutally murdered near Fort Peck, Montana. 17 year old Barry Beach was a classmate of hers and learned of her death on the news. He was interrogated by police three times, and all three times was told he was cleared and no longer a suspect. Several years later, while living with his father in Louisiana, Barry’s step-mother had him arrested for supposedly helping her 14 year old daughter run away. Police found out Barry had been questioned for the Montana murder, and decided to question him for other Louisiana murders they needed to solve. After threatening him with the death penalty, Barry caved under pressure and confessed to the murder of his classmate back in Montana. Because he had been cleared three times before, Barry expected to go back to Montana and be cleared again. But that did not happen. The prosecution presented his confession and the jury convicted him – sentencing him to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In recording our coverage to Barry Beach, we realized that
there are so many details and twists and turns that
the story simply warrants two episodes, So we've split the
episode and released both for your listening pleasure at the
same time. Enjoy On Montana's Fort Peck Reservation, just after
seven am ch in sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine, the body
(00:23):
of seventeen year old Kim Knees was found on the
bank of the Poplar River. Her car was parked about
a hundred yards away, and it appeared to be the
scene of a vicious beating, potentially involving multiple assailants. Bootprints
could be seen in the path from the car to
the river, and fingerprints made in blood were found on
the interior and exterior of the car. The police interrogated
(00:47):
many local young men, including Barry Beach, who was initially
cleared as a suspect, and for three and a half
years the case remained cold. Barry Beach moved to Louisiana
to build a relationship with his strange father. When his
stepsister ran away and ended up at his apartment, Barry's
stepmother notified police, also making sure to mention that Barry
(01:08):
had been interviewed three times about a murder in Montana.
The police in Monroe, Louisiana interrogated Barry about three open
serial murders involving young women, but having been out of
state for each, they began pressing him about the murder
back in Montana. Eventually, Barry gave a confession that was
presented at his trial. With a confession as well as
(01:31):
the specter of a potential hair match, a punishment of
life plus one hundred years must have seemed like justice
was being served by the state of Montana. But this
is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I don't
(01:59):
even know what to say. I'm actually at a loss
for words. What I'm gonna do is just start by apologizing, Okay,
to our guest today, Barry Beach, for what is one
of the most egregious injustices that I have ever seen
in almost thirty years of doing this work. So this
(02:19):
story is gonna blow people's minds anyway, without further ado,
Barry Beach, Welcome to ronval Conviction. Thank you, Jason, and
good morning to you. And as I always say, I'm
happy you're here because I'm honored to talk to you,
but I'm sorry you're here because of everything, the hell
that you went through that is going to form the
basis of the story we're about to tell. And we'll
(02:39):
also be talking to one of the heroes in this
story in a bit, an investigator named Richard Hepburn, who
helped unravel the open secret that prevailing wisdom of a
small town in Montana, which is what actually happened on
a terrible night on the hillside next to the Poplar
River all those years ago. But let's go all the
way back to your childhood. Did you grow up there
(03:00):
in Poplar, Montana? I actually grew up in several different locations,
but mainly in Popular, Montana on the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation in the northeast corner of the state of Montana.
In a lot of ways, I had a very normal
and happy childhood because my grandparents owned a large farm
(03:21):
and ranch, and that was the best memories of my
childhood was the horses and the cattle, and the chores
and the work and the labor, you know. But along
with that, my mother was divorced when I was two
years old from my father, who was an airforceman and
was stationed in several different locations during my early years
(03:44):
of life. He did get to know a bit the
year that this incident happened, I guess when he was
stationed down in Louisiana. Right, for over a year and
a half, maybe two years, I had been trying to
leave Popular, Montana and discover my biological father, who I
did not know until I was seventeen. That being said,
(04:05):
I had actually gone to work for a local farmer,
saved up some money, purchased a car, was going to
drive down there and spend the summer with my biological
father for the first time in my entire life. So
I don't know my dad from my childhood, but I
had a stepfather who was a full blood Lakota Sioux.
(04:25):
And just like any racial tension area in the United
States of America, reservations were racially tense areas to live.
That doesn't make it a bad place to live, It's
just that there was always that conflict growing up in
a mixed race home, and it created problems at school
and right, you were from a mixed race household going
(04:46):
to school in Popular, Montana, a small farming and oil
community where over seventy of the population were Native American
maybe white. Also notable about the population is that there
were only about a little over at that some people
living there, and the typic of graduating class was around
twenty kids, so you all knew each other pretty well
(05:07):
even between grades, you know, which put you in close
proximity with the victim in this case, Kim Knees, a
young white woman who was a great ahead of you.
We actually grew up on the same block, just four
houses apart from each other, and one of the things
that I've been talking about is the aspect of mixed
(05:28):
racial tensions on the reservation as we grew up as kids.
Kim Nice was also the granddaughter of a state senator.
Her uncle, Stanley was the local banker. Her dad, Ted
was a farmer as well as involved with some of
the local oil explorations. So Kim was on that upper
(05:50):
level of school of classmates of society growing up in
what in the United States of America are the most
poverty stricken areas of our entire nation, which is a
Native American reservation. So she kind of stood out a
bit in the area, as did her sister, who was
(06:13):
two years behind you, and I actually dated Kim's younger sister, Pam,
off and on for over two years, and we were
still kind of dating off and on when this happened.
And you had seen her on the day of the
murder right earlier in the day. I had seen Pam
and we talked for twenty minutes or so that day
before I left town for the river. I did not
(06:34):
see Kim because Kim and I did not associate with
each other, being that Kim was very athletic, she was
the upper social class of society. I was a known
drug user and alcoholic and fighter, and drove fast cars
and like rock and music. I was the guy that
(06:55):
you do not take home to mall got it. So
I guess her sister was really just kind of rebelling
by dating you. I mean, from what I understand, in
addition to being a wild kind of guy, you and
your family were not as well off, not even close
as the Ns family. We were a lower to middle
class family, and economically, even though we were a hard
(07:16):
working family, it just sometimes you can work really hard
not go anywhere. But by the time I did get
into high school, I was fairly regular user. And I
do think that along with being from a biracial family
contributed to making myself a susceptible target for law enforcement.
(07:38):
But up until this point you're run into with the
law consisted of a few traffic tickets, so no prior
violence or criminal record to speak of. And there's something
about the jurisdiction of law enforcement on a reservation that's
a bit complicated, right, correct. And nineteen sixty two, the
(07:59):
federal government past what is called Public Law six eighty.
Native American Indian reservations are federal land established by the
federal government during the eighteen hundreds. Therefore, the FBI have
jurisdiction over that land. However, Native American tribes are independent
(08:22):
governments nations, so they control the land even though it
belongs to the federal government. Where that applies to jurisdiction
is when there is a major crime such as a robbery, homicide, kidnapping,
that takes place on a reservation. It is immediately the
jurisdiction of the FBI until it is established that the
(08:46):
perpetrator of that crime is not an enrolled tribal member.
So on the reservations you have four, possibly five different
law enforcement agencies, all with split jurisdiction. And control. So
you will have at the bottom of it, what they
(09:06):
call the b I A police, which is a federally
funded tribal police. Then you're gonna have your city police,
which controls the city limits, mainly involving non Native Americans.
Then you have your county Sheriff's department, who will control
the county, but they only have jurisdiction over non tribal members.
(09:29):
And then you have the FBI, who have jurisdiction over
tribal members and tribal lands and over all of those agencies.
Sounds like a recipe for at a minimum, confusion and
potentially disaster, since when anything happens on the reservation, there's
not just one single agency that's responsible and accountable. You
(09:50):
have all these competing agencies mucking up the crime scene
together trying to figure out who should ultimately be working
the case or have jurisdiction, and at the time that's determined,
so many different hands, different people have tainted the investigation,
which unfortunately happened here with the death of Kimneys and
(10:10):
the investigation that included all of these agencies, not to
mention also the police in Monroe, Louisiana, which like that
ultimately led. All of this just led to your prosecution,
leaving the true perpetrators free. So let's get into that.
So this crime, this horrible crime, took place on the
(10:30):
early morning hours of June sixteenth of nineteen seventy nine.
Kimberly Knees was murdered at the Poplar River on the
Fort Peck Indian Reservation near Fort Peck, Montana. Now, she
was a by all accounts, a lovely seventeen year old
girl who had just graduated from high school. And she
graduated as valedictorian. Which you know, it doesn't matter because
(10:53):
this shouldn't have happened to anyone, but it kind of
makes it even feel worse. It's giving me the chills.
That night, that faithful night, she went to a drive
in movie with her boyfriend, a guy named Greg Nor Guard,
and he dropped Knees off at her home right after
the movie. Well, she was home for about fifteen minutes
before she left in her dad's truck around twelve am
or after midnight. Now witnesses reported seeing her park at
(11:15):
the Exxon gas station on Highway to around twelve thirty,
and she was later seen following several cars towards the
Poplar River at one am now, because at the stage,
the Poplar River was an area where kids would go
to drink and smoke pot and party until late at night,
like countless other places like it all around the country. Yeah,
the Poplar River had a had several areas there, four
(11:37):
or five areas, because it encircled the town on three
different sides. But the train bridge was definitely one of
the areas where people not only partied, but they would
go down there to swim and hang out. The boat
docks were down in that area. It was a local
park as well, so there was a baseball field down there.
So it's an area that you might find in the town,
(12:00):
USA where kids just go to hang out. And sometimes
I find it helpful to look a place up on
Google Maps, and here you have, like Barry said, the
Poplar River that encircles the town on three sides along
with the Missouri River. The US Route to runs through
the town and as it heads west out of town
it meets the Poplar River, you can see a train
(12:22):
track that also crosses the river just to the south.
So this is where it happened. And from what I understand,
there's a hill that runs down to the river from
where some younger kids heard what happened that night. In fact,
there may have been a whole bunch of eye witnesses
who were close to this murder that simply never came
forward for fear of reprisal. But what witnesses did feel
(12:43):
safe reporting was that kim Niss car was seen around
one am, following several other cars to this area, and
then at four AM, two of the tribal police officers
observed the truck parked in the deserted field near the
Poplar River, but they didn't feel the need to check
it out at a time, it was just a truck
park in the field. Around seven am that morning, as
(13:05):
the officers were driving back into town, they noticed that
the same truck was still there and they decided to
investigate further. They found blood in the interior of the truck,
a large pool of blood at a clump of hair
near the passenger side, and a trail of blood leading
down to the river. When they followed the trail, sure enough,
they found this poor girl's lifeless body a semi submerged
(13:29):
in the Poplar River. Correct, But there actually were calls
that we later found out years later. That took place
from several different citizens to law enforcement at about two
o'clock reporting loud female voices and screams in the area
of the park. And there is actually one report that
(13:51):
a city police officer by the name of Stevie Grayhawks
supposedly went down there and checked on those reports and
reported that there was nothing down there interesting. Stevie Grayhawk.
Let's um, let's tuck that name away because it's going
to come back around later. So it seems like this
(14:13):
crime should have been discovered some time after two am
by this city police officer, but it wasn't reported to
be discovered until seven am by the tribal police. Tribal
police officers noticed the vehicle and went down there and
found the body. They called the city police department and
the Sheriff's department, and the Sheriff's department then called the FBI. Wow.
(14:37):
So this complex web of law enforcement has already given
us a lazy and unaccountable investigation into what was going
on down by the river at two am. And then
four agencies entered a bloody and scattered crime scene in
and around seven am, beginning with the truck. Now blood
evidence indicated that the attack began in the cab of
(14:58):
the truck on the driver's side. Miss Knees was then
yanked out the passenger side, where the bludgeoning and hair
pulling continued and concluded about ten feet from the truck.
Her pound body was then dragged almost the length of
a football field down to the river, down an embankment,
and then that's where it was found semi submerged in
(15:20):
the water. The autopsy report noted skull fractures and brain
injuries from the more than thirty blows to the head.
There was no evidence of a rape, sexual assault, or
anything remotely sexual about this attack, but there was a
ton of blood and other physical evidence. The crime scene
itself was absolutely loaded with physical evidence. There were numerous
(15:45):
clumps of bloody hair and footprints found around the pickup
and in the drag trail. There were three different sets
of footprints, and I mean identifiable footprints in the trail
that they used to carry Kim to the river, which
was two d and fifty six ft long. There were
over twenty eight fingerprints inside of the pickup, on the
(16:08):
outside of the pickup, and also on twenty three beer
cans around the vehicle and specifically fingerprint sets number five, ten,
and number eleven. Those three sets of fingerprints were found
on beer cans around the vehicle, on the outside of
the vehicle, and they were also found on the inside
dash of the vehicle. Some of those fingerprints were in blood,
(16:32):
but the most significant evidence. When the assailant drug Kim
out of her pickup, they placed their palm on the
side of the cab, leaving a full palm print in
Kim's blood on the side of the pickup. The owner
of that palm print has still never been identified to
(16:52):
my understanding. Correct, We'll be right back after this. This
episode is underwritten by a i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
(17:14):
responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives
of its employees and in the communities where we work
and live. In light of the compelling need for pro
bono legal assistance and in recognition of a i g's
commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the A i
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. All of the evidence
(17:42):
that was collected ended up going to different jurisdictional locations.
Some of it was sent to the FBI crime Lab
in Butte, Montana. Some of it was actually taken to
the local Popular City Police department and put into an
evidence room. It really is not that there was perhaps
still is, no standard practice or protocol for evidence collection
(18:06):
in these instances. It seems so obvious that it should
be collected by one bureau of one agency every time
in one place. How can you mount an effective investigation
in this manner? Well, the short answer is obviously that
you can't. But even with this nonsensical evidence collection procedure,
what about good old fashioned just talking to people. This
(18:30):
was a very small community with only about twenty kids
in a graduating class, and one of their recent fellow
graduates just got murdered. There had to have been at
the very least rumors going around town. For the first
week or so, we all heard a new around school
and around town that it was supposedly this group of
(18:51):
girls allegedly. Because I don't want to point the finger
at somebody that has not been forensically and scientifically connected
to this, and that's something that we have to keep
in mind as we talk about this case, is that
the State of Montana, the FBI, the city police, and
the tribal police to this day, forty three forty four
(19:12):
years later, have never matched any of those fingerprints, the
palm print, the footprints, the blood samples to anybody. They
have never made a legitimate, honest arrest with anybody but
law enforcement. We're bringing numerous of US high school kids
in for questioning and taking statements, and myself personally, six
(19:36):
months or seven months after the crime, I was brought in.
I was questioned, I gave fingerprints, I gave blood samples,
I gave footprints, I gave hair samples, and was told
that none of the physical evidence matched me and that
they knew I did not commit the crime. That process
(19:56):
right there actually took place with a lot of people
in town. But somehow or other they managed to, you know,
bring you and as you said, a lot of other
people in town in there, and they managed to I
don't know if it was willful, but somehow or other
they managed to not bring in the people who actually
(20:18):
matched to this evidence. So when you're dealing with a
small community like that, how could they not bring in
the people that everybody in town was talking about? It's
hard not to draw a sort of a sinister conclusion,
which is that at some level they were sort of
(20:39):
protecting these people for reasons that may become clear as
we go along in this episode, and thereby putting up
almost like a sinister smoke screen where they were just
sort of acting like they were doing some investigation by
bringing people in to distract everybody from the fact that
they weren't actually interested in arresting the people that committed
(21:03):
this heinous crime. Certainly there had to be somebody somewhere
wondering why these people weren't being looked at closer. And
to take it one step further, kim Niece's family put
a ten thousand dollar reward up for information, and that
reward went completely ignored. So even though there were rumors
(21:26):
about the group of young women who had blooded Kimneys
to death, the police were dragging in young men for scrutiny,
and then no one even responded to this ten thousand
dollar reward. We're talking about four decades ago in a
little town that's big money, and in all likelihood, there
were eyewitnesses at this party by the river, so either
(21:48):
no one was talking the police weren't actually trying to
catch the assailants or both. Nonetheless, they had already ruled
you out by virtue of the physical evidence, conclusively proved
you could not have committed this crime, and that should
have been it, but it wasn't correct. Yes, they did
ask me to come in and take a polygraph test
to just to finalize their investigation. So I went in
(22:10):
and I took a polygraph test with the FBI. The
polygraph at that time showed that I did not commit
the crime, but that I had general knowledge of the crime,
which everybody in town had general knowledge. I mean, how
could you not be in high school in a small
town and understand what's going on around you. Now, at
(22:30):
this point you had been ruled out, no more suspicion allegedly,
so you moved on with your plan to reconnect with
your biological father in Monroe, Louisiana. Jumping forward to nineteen eighty,
when I returned to Montana again from down in Louisiana,
they brought me in one more time because of traffic
(22:51):
at tickets. I had to do thirty days in jail
for excessive traffic tickets. When they released me that day again,
I was going back to louis In Ssiana, and again
they questioned me, but again they said that they knew
I did not commit the crime. They just would like
to know if there was any information that I had.
They released me again. I returned to my father's house
(23:13):
in Louisiana and went on with my life. Okay, so
three times you come in, three times you're clear. Here
you are back in Louisiana working construction, building holiday inns,
as I understand it, And then you signed up for
the Navy and completed boot camp. Right, and we're preparing
to be deployed to the Mediterranean Sea as was the
time of the conflict in Lebanon. Correct, very few people
(23:36):
probably remember, but in nine two, the Lebanesian Army had
just shot down two of our American planes over the
Mediterranean Sea. So we were about to be deployed with
the U. S. S. Eisenhower aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean
see to defend our international spaces. In that process, being
(23:58):
that I was new to this ship and this was
my first overseas deployment, they ran a background check on me.
During that process. The Roosevelt County Sheriff had sent a
letter to the FBI stating that I was their suspect
in a homicide and that they had quote unquote two
(24:20):
eyewitnesses who could put me at the scene of the crime.
I was confronted with that letter by the United States
Navy Police Force. They put me in the brig and
after two days of being in the brig, I was
given an option to take an honorable discharge, returned to Montana,
and undergo an investigation, at which point, if the investigation
(24:43):
did not lead to an arrest, I could re enlist
in the military, or they could contact the Roosevelt County
Sheriff's Department, and if the Roosevelt County Sheriff's departments backed
up the letter, I would be charged with federal charges
of fraudulent enlistment into the military to avoid jurisdiction, and
I would immediately be incarcerated for ten years in federal prison.
(25:06):
So I took the honorable discharge. I went back to
Wolf Point, Montana, and once again turned myself into the
Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department, only to be told that they
didn't know of the letter, they had no witnesses that
could put me at the scene of the crime, and
that they knew I did not commit the crime based
on the forensic evidence, and they released me to go
(25:26):
back to Louisiana. There's absolutely no question that it came
from that sheriff. It was on his letter head, it
was his signature. It was mailed to the FBI office
in Butte, Montana. To this day, that letter exists in
the FBI files and Butte Montana. So him telling me
that he did not know about the letter was just
(25:47):
a blatant lie. But yet it destroyed my military career. Right,
but this is hardly the worst that's about to come.
So you're cleared by Roosevelt County back in Louisiana, go
back to work building holiday inns, right and putting this
hopefully behind you. But then there was some craziness with
your step mom, and that may have led indirectly or
(26:11):
even directly to this downward spiral that that got deeper
and deeper and faster and faster. Correct, it actually is
the direct link that led to a wrongful conviction, or
allowed the State of Montana to continue its pursuit of
a wrongful conviction. When I returned to Louisiana, I was
living with my father and his new wife, who had
(26:32):
five children. They all lived there at the house. There
became a pretty open dispute between me and my stepmother
as to whether or not I was even my father's child.
When on New Year's Eve nine three, we went out
as a family drinking, got back home all drunk, and
there was a large family argument over that issue. My
(26:56):
stepmother kicks me out of the house and I go
get a place to stay real quick. But when she
kicked me out, one of my younger stepsisters decided that
she was going to run away from home because she
couldn't stand her step mom. I was at work. My
stepsister called me up and said her and three of
her friends were out at the freeway hitchhiking to Houston.
(27:17):
I said, no, stay right where you're at. I'm gonna
come get you and call dad. That led to my
stepmother calling law enforcement and saying that I was a
prime suspect and a murder in Montana, and that she
was fearful that I was going to kill her daughter.
What I didn't know, Jason. At that point in time, Munroe, Louisiana,
(27:40):
had a serial killer on the loose, and they had
formed a seven member homicide task force to investigate these
serial killings. Two of those homicides took place while I
was in the military. The other one took place while
I was on a holiday in job in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(28:02):
So when those three homicides took place, I had absolutely
no knowledge. I wasn't even in the state of Louisiana, etcetera.
But my stepmother used those along with the fact that
she knew I was a suspect in Montana at one time,
and turned me into the local law enforcement and I
was arrested. So they started questioning you about the Monroe murders.
(28:23):
But of course you had no knowledge of those crimes,
because how would you have known. You weren't even the state.
I didn't even know those crimes existed at that time.
I wasn't charged with homicide. I was only charged with
misdemeanor charges concerning my step sister contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. So they took me into this interrogation room.
The initial interrogation was done by three members of the
(28:45):
Homicide Task Force, Richard Maderis, j V and Joe Cummings.
They had accused me on numerous numerous occasions of showing deception, etcetera, etcetera.
On what they called voice dress test, which was this
tape recorder that set there on the interrogation table the
whole entire day. So they were trying to extract the
(29:07):
false statement. Your alibi was air tight for the Monroe murders.
You were in a different state. Every single one of
those murders. You weren't in state. But they are experienced
and convincing suspects that they're super scientific. Voice stress tests
says that you're lying, then maybe they can course you
(29:27):
into a statement. For example, we'll tell the jury that
you registered deceptions, so you better plead guilty and get
a good deal. Another route is potentially convincing the suspect
of their own guilt. None of it had worked on
you yet. And then later on that even they brought
in their closer, a guy named Alfred Calhoun. Now he
was the bad cop to Jovis good cop. And they
(29:49):
continue to rail on you about these Monroe, Louisiana murders
while describing to you in great detail what happens, what
would happen to your body and Neil trip chair, And
this was something that they said you'd be able to
avoid if you just told them what they wanted to
hear correct. And it was only when Alfred Calhoun came
in and started threatening me with the death penalty in
(30:10):
Louisiana for the Louisiana crimes that the Kimneice murder in
Montana actually came into the picture. Alfred Calhoun promised me
that he would assure that I was convicted on the
three homicides in Louisiana and would ensure with everything that
he had within him that I received the electric chair,
(30:32):
and that he wanted to be there to push the
button and watch me fry for the Louisiana homicides. But
if I would just simply tell them the truth about
the Montana homicide, that they would go back to Montana
and help me to establish the facts of that case
and we get out in Louisiana, right, which actually sounded
like a logical thing to do, because you already knew
(30:56):
that everybody knew that you had nothing to do with
the Knees murder, and there was overwhelming evidence to prove it.
So why not get the hell out of Louisiana and
away from these monsters and go deal with the monsters,
you know, because you know you can prove eighteen ways
till Sunday that you didn't have anything to do with
(31:19):
the murder of Kim Knees. So ultimately you falsely confessed
to the murder of Kim Knees. This confession was a
tape recorded confession. There's actually a phone conversation between the
sheriff and Montana and the detectives in Louisiana where they
have me in the interrogation room. The sheriff in Montana
(31:40):
is feeding information to the detective in Louisiana. He's going
in and making sure it's a part of the confession
and then going back and getting more information. The sheriff
falsely and inaccurately told detective that Kim Niece was wearing
a plaid shirt with a brown jacket, and that actually
(32:01):
ended up in the confession with me saying that she
was wearing a plaid shirt and brown jacket, when in fact,
Kim was wearing a white pullover sweater. The inconsistencies and
contradictions between this confession and the crime scene border on
the ridiculous. There were multiple sets of bootprints for starters,
it wasn't a single assailant. Clearly, Barry exhibited a complete
(32:25):
misunderstanding about where the car was in relation to the river.
He confessed to multiple double football field length round trips,
which was not corroborated by the bootprints either, and then
on these round trips, Barry allegedly through one item in
the river at a time, which is not only ridiculous
considering the distance, but also after searching the river, these
items were never found, including a jacket, the keys to
(32:49):
the truck, which obviously would have just sank, and the
alleged murder weapon at tire iron that obviously didn't float downstream.
They did, however, find a claw hammer in the river,
with which her wounds, as well as gouge marks and
the ceiling of the truck were more consistent. He also
said that she had jumped out of the driver's side
and he had to run after her. Not only that
we know that she left through the passenger side direct
(33:12):
contradiction again, but also with the amount of blood found
on the front seat, the likelihood of her running was
borderlined impossible. And then Barry also confessed to choking her,
which we know never happened, but not only claimed to
have choked Kim, but allegedly I choked her to the
point that she passes out and the amount of force
(33:34):
that it takes to do that would have left very
clear and addictative physical evidence on the body that was
never found. It wasn't there, it didn't exist. More importantly,
the so called motive for this taking place was supposed
to be a rape, and there was no indication of
rape or sexual intercourse. Barry also said he had wiped
(33:57):
the scene of his fingerprints. However, there were no marks
at the scene. And to top it off, Barry said
that he put her body feet first into a garbage
bag that only came up to her armpits and dragged
the body to the river and pushed her in, again,
not understanding the distance because he didn't know anything about it,
but also that there was a twenty foot embankment that
he'd have to have figured out how to maneuver, but
(34:20):
he completely left that detail out. And on top of
all that, there was no garbage bag or remnants of
one being used that were ever found. But this wild
confession was seemingly good enough for everyone on both sides
of that infamous phone call. So one more interesting fact
(34:41):
about what you just said that probably should be brought
up at this point when you're talking about j V
and Alfred Calhoun in Louisiana. Alfred Calhoun j V and
that homicide detected group actually got two other individuals to
confess to those three Louisiana murders. Those two individuals were
(35:01):
later proven to be innocent and their confessions were proven
to be false as well. And later one of those
crimes in Louisiana were actually solved by DNA, proving that
all the people that Java and Alfred Calhoun got to
confess to those three homicides were false. I was actually
(35:37):
facing the death penalty all the way up until a
month prior to my trial. We actually had a hearing
to do away with the death penalty, and that's when
we learned at the tape of the confession had been erased.
It was like three weeks prior to my trial. So
you're being cleared as a suspect by all the physical
(35:58):
evidence just didn't matter at all. But this false confession,
the gathering of which was corrupt at best, the recording
of which had then been mysteriously erased. Yeah, this false
confession overcame all fingerprints, the bloody pomp print, the lack
of any white marks around the other fingerprints on or
(36:21):
in the interior or exterior of the truck, the bootprints,
the blood samples, how inconsistent your false confession was with
the crime scene. None of this mattered at all, and
you were charged with deliberate homicide in the fifteenth Judicial
District of Montana. And in the lead up to your
April trial, your attorney tried to expose that false confession
(36:44):
for what it was and suppressed it as involuntary, but
the judge allowed a recitation of the false confession by
Detective j. V I Now to corroborate that evidence. The
state was trying to admit a pubic hare that had
allegedly been discovered on Kimneys sweater, and the former head
(37:04):
of the Montana State Crime Lab, Arnold Melnikoff, was willing
to testify that the hair had characteristics that were somewhat
similar to Barry's hair, Which what does that testimony even mean? Similar?
How that it was hair? It was also hair? I mean, yeah,
it was hair, and there's hair. That's about it. There
(37:24):
was no other similarities. Let's start there with Arnold Melnikoff.
They were not allowed to have him testify for two reasons.
The fact that the sweater he claimed to have found
a pubic hair on had already been searched in nineteen
seventy nine and there was nothing found on it. But
not only that federal report saying that nothing was found
(37:46):
on that sweater. That sweater was kept in the Popular
City Police Department's evidence room. On the night of June six,
nineteen seventy nine, about well thirty one o'clock at night,
a police officer on duty for the Popular City Police
(38:06):
Department by the name of Stevie Grayhawk had actually broken
into that evidence room, kicking in the locked door, supposedly
to use the restroom. But that break in contaminated all
the evidence that was stored in that evidence room involving
the Kimney's murder, including the sweater that in night three,
(38:31):
Arnold Melnikov claims to have found a pubic care on
that had quote unquote similar characteristics two Bury Beach. So
the same guy, if you remember, I told you to
tuck his name away for later. This guy, Stevie Grayhawk,
the Popular City police officer who answered that two am
(38:53):
call early in the morning of June nine, down to
the river for the sounds of female voices screaming and
back with nothing to report, even though there definitely was.
That freaking guy is the same cop who had to
go to the bathroom so badly that he busted down
the door to an evidence room holding the evidence from
(39:16):
this crime. Again, nothing to see, there, nothing to report. Now,
I'm going to ask you to tuck that DV. Grayhawk
name back in again for later as we continue on
through the trial. So, no bogus planted pubic hair was admitted.
But this recitation of an alleged transcript of your false
(39:38):
confession was really all that was presented, because, I mean,
they couldn't present the physical evidence because all of it
they knew had already exonerated you. At this point, were
you worried going into this. My attorney kept telling me,
don't worry, don't worry. They can never find you guilty.
There's no physical evidence. It's impossible for to find you guilty.
(40:01):
But on the second day of my trial, the prosecutor,
even though the judge had thrown out the pubic hare
and stated that it was not admissible at my trial,
the prosecutor still managed to mention it to the jury,
saying that he had a pubic care that he would
later introduce that matched me, and that wasn't the only
(40:23):
time he pulled this type of trick. In his summation,
he did it twice, referring to the confession in ways
that were either misleading or outright lies. In reading the transcripts,
the prosecutor Roscoe talked about wondering how there was so
little blood on the drag trail from the truck to
the river, and that Barry had said in his confession
that he had put the body into the garbage bag
(40:44):
head first, so that explained it. But Barry didn't even
say head first. He said beat first, that her head
was not covered. So here he is misleading, lying to
the jury to bolster the state's narrative. Then, at some
point in the trial, Kim's father, Ted Knees, took the
stand and confirmed that he owned a tool like the
alleged murder weapon from Barry's false confession, a tire iron.
(41:08):
Now in the confession, Barry had said that he threw
it in the river, but when Ted knee was asked
if it was missing when the truck was returned, he
said that he hadn't noticed. In the prosecutor's summation, he
lied about Ted Nis testimony telling the jury that Mr
Needs had confirmed that the alleged murder weapon was missing.
None of this information actually holds value, as all of
(41:28):
it comes from a false confession, but using it and
lying about it to bolster the state's narrative was apparently effective,
but not nearly as much as the false confession itself.
They put j v I on the stand, who took
the confession, supposedly did a handwritten transcript that he himself
wrote out of that take confession, and the prosecutor and
(41:52):
j v I, line by line for two and a
half days, will play this confession in in front of
the jury, including j VI from Louisiana getting on the
floor of the courtroom as if he was Kim Nice
and the prosecutor choking him, mimicking in front of the
(42:13):
jury the confession, and when the judge allowed that to happen,
I knew without question that I was going to be
found guilty. On part one of our coverage of Barry Beach,
you've heard about how he was wrongfully convicted. Now you're
(42:36):
about his epic fight for freedom in part two available now,
thank you for listening to ronful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburn and Kevin
Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this
production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(43:00):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flom Wrangful Conviction is
the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
(43:20):
Signal Company Number one
In recording our coverage to Barry Beach, we realized that
there are so many details and twists and turns that
the story simply warrants two episodes, So we've split the
episode and released both for your listening pleasure at the
same time. Enjoy On Montana's Fort Peck Reservation, just after
seven am ch in sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine, the body
(00:23):
of seventeen year old Kim Knees was found on the
bank of the Poplar River. Her car was parked about
a hundred yards away, and it appeared to be the
scene of a vicious beating, potentially involving multiple assailants. Bootprints
could be seen in the path from the car to
the river, and fingerprints made in blood were found on
the interior and exterior of the car. The police interrogated
(00:47):
many local young men, including Barry Beach, who was initially
cleared as a suspect, and for three and a half
years the case remained cold. Barry Beach moved to Louisiana
to build a relationship with his strange father. When his
stepsister ran away and ended up at his apartment, Barry's
stepmother notified police, also making sure to mention that Barry
(01:08):
had been interviewed three times about a murder in Montana.
The police in Monroe, Louisiana interrogated Barry about three open
serial murders involving young women, but having been out of
state for each, they began pressing him about the murder
back in Montana. Eventually, Barry gave a confession that was
presented at his trial. With a confession as well as
(01:31):
the specter of a potential hair match, a punishment of
life plus one hundred years must have seemed like justice
was being served by the state of Montana. But this
is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I don't
(01:59):
even know what to say. I'm actually at a loss
for words. What I'm gonna do is just start by apologizing, Okay,
to our guest today, Barry Beach, for what is one
of the most egregious injustices that I have ever seen
in almost thirty years of doing this work. So this
(02:19):
story is gonna blow people's minds anyway, without further ado,
Barry Beach, Welcome to ronval Conviction. Thank you, Jason, and
good morning to you. And as I always say, I'm
happy you're here because I'm honored to talk to you,
but I'm sorry you're here because of everything, the hell
that you went through that is going to form the
basis of the story we're about to tell. And we'll
(02:39):
also be talking to one of the heroes in this
story in a bit, an investigator named Richard Hepburn, who
helped unravel the open secret that prevailing wisdom of a
small town in Montana, which is what actually happened on
a terrible night on the hillside next to the Poplar
River all those years ago. But let's go all the
way back to your childhood. Did you grow up there
(03:00):
in Poplar, Montana? I actually grew up in several different locations,
but mainly in Popular, Montana on the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation in the northeast corner of the state of Montana.
In a lot of ways, I had a very normal
and happy childhood because my grandparents owned a large farm
(03:21):
and ranch, and that was the best memories of my
childhood was the horses and the cattle, and the chores
and the work and the labor, you know. But along
with that, my mother was divorced when I was two
years old from my father, who was an airforceman and
was stationed in several different locations during my early years
(03:44):
of life. He did get to know a bit the
year that this incident happened, I guess when he was
stationed down in Louisiana. Right, for over a year and
a half, maybe two years, I had been trying to
leave Popular, Montana and discover my biological father, who I
did not know until I was seventeen. That being said,
(04:05):
I had actually gone to work for a local farmer,
saved up some money, purchased a car, was going to
drive down there and spend the summer with my biological
father for the first time in my entire life. So
I don't know my dad from my childhood, but I
had a stepfather who was a full blood Lakota Sioux.
(04:25):
And just like any racial tension area in the United
States of America, reservations were racially tense areas to live.
That doesn't make it a bad place to live, It's
just that there was always that conflict growing up in
a mixed race home, and it created problems at school
and right, you were from a mixed race household going
(04:46):
to school in Popular, Montana, a small farming and oil
community where over seventy of the population were Native American
maybe white. Also notable about the population is that there
were only about a little over at that some people
living there, and the typic of graduating class was around
twenty kids, so you all knew each other pretty well
(05:07):
even between grades, you know, which put you in close
proximity with the victim in this case, Kim Knees, a
young white woman who was a great ahead of you.
We actually grew up on the same block, just four
houses apart from each other, and one of the things
that I've been talking about is the aspect of mixed
(05:28):
racial tensions on the reservation as we grew up as kids.
Kim Nice was also the granddaughter of a state senator.
Her uncle, Stanley was the local banker. Her dad, Ted
was a farmer as well as involved with some of
the local oil explorations. So Kim was on that upper
(05:50):
level of school of classmates of society growing up in
what in the United States of America are the most
poverty stricken areas of our entire nation, which is a
Native American reservation. So she kind of stood out a
bit in the area, as did her sister, who was
(06:13):
two years behind you, and I actually dated Kim's younger sister, Pam,
off and on for over two years, and we were
still kind of dating off and on when this happened.
And you had seen her on the day of the
murder right earlier in the day. I had seen Pam
and we talked for twenty minutes or so that day
before I left town for the river. I did not
(06:34):
see Kim because Kim and I did not associate with
each other, being that Kim was very athletic, she was
the upper social class of society. I was a known
drug user and alcoholic and fighter, and drove fast cars
and like rock and music. I was the guy that
(06:55):
you do not take home to mall got it. So
I guess her sister was really just kind of rebelling
by dating you. I mean, from what I understand, in
addition to being a wild kind of guy, you and
your family were not as well off, not even close
as the Ns family. We were a lower to middle
class family, and economically, even though we were a hard
(07:16):
working family, it just sometimes you can work really hard
not go anywhere. But by the time I did get
into high school, I was fairly regular user. And I
do think that along with being from a biracial family
contributed to making myself a susceptible target for law enforcement.
(07:38):
But up until this point you're run into with the
law consisted of a few traffic tickets, so no prior
violence or criminal record to speak of. And there's something
about the jurisdiction of law enforcement on a reservation that's
a bit complicated, right, correct. And nineteen sixty two, the
(07:59):
federal government past what is called Public Law six eighty.
Native American Indian reservations are federal land established by the
federal government during the eighteen hundreds. Therefore, the FBI have
jurisdiction over that land. However, Native American tribes are independent
(08:22):
governments nations, so they control the land even though it
belongs to the federal government. Where that applies to jurisdiction
is when there is a major crime such as a robbery, homicide, kidnapping,
that takes place on a reservation. It is immediately the
jurisdiction of the FBI until it is established that the
(08:46):
perpetrator of that crime is not an enrolled tribal member.
So on the reservations you have four, possibly five different
law enforcement agencies, all with split jurisdiction. And control. So
you will have at the bottom of it, what they
(09:06):
call the b I A police, which is a federally
funded tribal police. Then you're gonna have your city police,
which controls the city limits, mainly involving non Native Americans.
Then you have your county Sheriff's department, who will control
the county, but they only have jurisdiction over non tribal members.
(09:29):
And then you have the FBI, who have jurisdiction over
tribal members and tribal lands and over all of those agencies.
Sounds like a recipe for at a minimum, confusion and
potentially disaster, since when anything happens on the reservation, there's
not just one single agency that's responsible and accountable. You
(09:50):
have all these competing agencies mucking up the crime scene
together trying to figure out who should ultimately be working
the case or have jurisdiction, and at the time that's determined,
so many different hands, different people have tainted the investigation,
which unfortunately happened here with the death of Kimneys and
(10:10):
the investigation that included all of these agencies, not to
mention also the police in Monroe, Louisiana, which like that
ultimately led. All of this just led to your prosecution,
leaving the true perpetrators free. So let's get into that.
So this crime, this horrible crime, took place on the
(10:30):
early morning hours of June sixteenth of nineteen seventy nine.
Kimberly Knees was murdered at the Poplar River on the
Fort Peck Indian Reservation near Fort Peck, Montana. Now, she
was a by all accounts, a lovely seventeen year old
girl who had just graduated from high school. And she
graduated as valedictorian. Which you know, it doesn't matter because
(10:53):
this shouldn't have happened to anyone, but it kind of
makes it even feel worse. It's giving me the chills.
That night, that faithful night, she went to a drive
in movie with her boyfriend, a guy named Greg Nor Guard,
and he dropped Knees off at her home right after
the movie. Well, she was home for about fifteen minutes
before she left in her dad's truck around twelve am
or after midnight. Now witnesses reported seeing her park at
(11:15):
the Exxon gas station on Highway to around twelve thirty,
and she was later seen following several cars towards the
Poplar River at one am now, because at the stage,
the Poplar River was an area where kids would go
to drink and smoke pot and party until late at night,
like countless other places like it all around the country. Yeah,
the Poplar River had a had several areas there, four
(11:37):
or five areas, because it encircled the town on three
different sides. But the train bridge was definitely one of
the areas where people not only partied, but they would
go down there to swim and hang out. The boat
docks were down in that area. It was a local
park as well, so there was a baseball field down there.
So it's an area that you might find in the town,
(12:00):
USA where kids just go to hang out. And sometimes
I find it helpful to look a place up on
Google Maps, and here you have, like Barry said, the
Poplar River that encircles the town on three sides along
with the Missouri River. The US Route to runs through
the town and as it heads west out of town
it meets the Poplar River, you can see a train
(12:22):
track that also crosses the river just to the south.
So this is where it happened. And from what I understand,
there's a hill that runs down to the river from
where some younger kids heard what happened that night. In fact,
there may have been a whole bunch of eye witnesses
who were close to this murder that simply never came
forward for fear of reprisal. But what witnesses did feel
(12:43):
safe reporting was that kim Niss car was seen around
one am, following several other cars to this area, and
then at four AM, two of the tribal police officers
observed the truck parked in the deserted field near the
Poplar River, but they didn't feel the need to check
it out at a time, it was just a truck
park in the field. Around seven am that morning, as
(13:05):
the officers were driving back into town, they noticed that
the same truck was still there and they decided to
investigate further. They found blood in the interior of the truck,
a large pool of blood at a clump of hair
near the passenger side, and a trail of blood leading
down to the river. When they followed the trail, sure enough,
they found this poor girl's lifeless body a semi submerged
(13:29):
in the Poplar River. Correct, But there actually were calls
that we later found out years later. That took place
from several different citizens to law enforcement at about two
o'clock reporting loud female voices and screams in the area
of the park. And there is actually one report that
(13:51):
a city police officer by the name of Stevie Grayhawks
supposedly went down there and checked on those reports and
reported that there was nothing down there interesting. Stevie Grayhawk.
Let's um, let's tuck that name away because it's going
to come back around later. So it seems like this
(14:13):
crime should have been discovered some time after two am
by this city police officer, but it wasn't reported to
be discovered until seven am by the tribal police. Tribal
police officers noticed the vehicle and went down there and
found the body. They called the city police department and
the Sheriff's department, and the Sheriff's department then called the FBI. Wow.
(14:37):
So this complex web of law enforcement has already given
us a lazy and unaccountable investigation into what was going
on down by the river at two am. And then
four agencies entered a bloody and scattered crime scene in
and around seven am, beginning with the truck. Now blood
evidence indicated that the attack began in the cab of
(14:58):
the truck on the driver's side. Miss Knees was then
yanked out the passenger side, where the bludgeoning and hair
pulling continued and concluded about ten feet from the truck.
Her pound body was then dragged almost the length of
a football field down to the river, down an embankment,
and then that's where it was found semi submerged in
(15:20):
the water. The autopsy report noted skull fractures and brain
injuries from the more than thirty blows to the head.
There was no evidence of a rape, sexual assault, or
anything remotely sexual about this attack, but there was a
ton of blood and other physical evidence. The crime scene
itself was absolutely loaded with physical evidence. There were numerous
(15:45):
clumps of bloody hair and footprints found around the pickup
and in the drag trail. There were three different sets
of footprints, and I mean identifiable footprints in the trail
that they used to carry Kim to the river, which
was two d and fifty six ft long. There were
over twenty eight fingerprints inside of the pickup, on the
(16:08):
outside of the pickup, and also on twenty three beer
cans around the vehicle and specifically fingerprint sets number five, ten,
and number eleven. Those three sets of fingerprints were found
on beer cans around the vehicle, on the outside of
the vehicle, and they were also found on the inside
dash of the vehicle. Some of those fingerprints were in blood,
(16:32):
but the most significant evidence. When the assailant drug Kim
out of her pickup, they placed their palm on the
side of the cab, leaving a full palm print in
Kim's blood on the side of the pickup. The owner
of that palm print has still never been identified to
(16:52):
my understanding. Correct, We'll be right back after this. This
episode is underwritten by a i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
(17:14):
responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives
of its employees and in the communities where we work
and live. In light of the compelling need for pro
bono legal assistance and in recognition of a i g's
commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the A i
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. All of the evidence
(17:42):
that was collected ended up going to different jurisdictional locations.
Some of it was sent to the FBI crime Lab
in Butte, Montana. Some of it was actually taken to
the local Popular City Police department and put into an
evidence room. It really is not that there was perhaps
still is, no standard practice or protocol for evidence collection
(18:06):
in these instances. It seems so obvious that it should
be collected by one bureau of one agency every time
in one place. How can you mount an effective investigation
in this manner? Well, the short answer is obviously that
you can't. But even with this nonsensical evidence collection procedure,
what about good old fashioned just talking to people. This
(18:30):
was a very small community with only about twenty kids
in a graduating class, and one of their recent fellow
graduates just got murdered. There had to have been at
the very least rumors going around town. For the first
week or so, we all heard a new around school
and around town that it was supposedly this group of
(18:51):
girls allegedly. Because I don't want to point the finger
at somebody that has not been forensically and scientifically connected
to this, and that's something that we have to keep
in mind as we talk about this case, is that
the State of Montana, the FBI, the city police, and
the tribal police to this day, forty three forty four
(19:12):
years later, have never matched any of those fingerprints, the
palm print, the footprints, the blood samples to anybody. They
have never made a legitimate, honest arrest with anybody but
law enforcement. We're bringing numerous of US high school kids
in for questioning and taking statements, and myself personally, six
(19:36):
months or seven months after the crime, I was brought in.
I was questioned, I gave fingerprints, I gave blood samples,
I gave footprints, I gave hair samples, and was told
that none of the physical evidence matched me and that
they knew I did not commit the crime. That process
(19:56):
right there actually took place with a lot of people
in town. But somehow or other they managed to, you know,
bring you and as you said, a lot of other
people in town in there, and they managed to I
don't know if it was willful, but somehow or other
they managed to not bring in the people who actually
(20:18):
matched to this evidence. So when you're dealing with a
small community like that, how could they not bring in
the people that everybody in town was talking about? It's
hard not to draw a sort of a sinister conclusion,
which is that at some level they were sort of
(20:39):
protecting these people for reasons that may become clear as
we go along in this episode, and thereby putting up
almost like a sinister smoke screen where they were just
sort of acting like they were doing some investigation by
bringing people in to distract everybody from the fact that
they weren't actually interested in arresting the people that committed
(21:03):
this heinous crime. Certainly there had to be somebody somewhere
wondering why these people weren't being looked at closer. And
to take it one step further, kim Niece's family put
a ten thousand dollar reward up for information, and that
reward went completely ignored. So even though there were rumors
(21:26):
about the group of young women who had blooded Kimneys
to death, the police were dragging in young men for scrutiny,
and then no one even responded to this ten thousand
dollar reward. We're talking about four decades ago in a
little town that's big money, and in all likelihood, there
were eyewitnesses at this party by the river, so either
(21:48):
no one was talking the police weren't actually trying to
catch the assailants or both. Nonetheless, they had already ruled
you out by virtue of the physical evidence, conclusively proved
you could not have committed this crime, and that should
have been it, but it wasn't correct. Yes, they did
ask me to come in and take a polygraph test
to just to finalize their investigation. So I went in
(22:10):
and I took a polygraph test with the FBI. The
polygraph at that time showed that I did not commit
the crime, but that I had general knowledge of the crime,
which everybody in town had general knowledge. I mean, how
could you not be in high school in a small
town and understand what's going on around you. Now, at
(22:30):
this point you had been ruled out, no more suspicion allegedly,
so you moved on with your plan to reconnect with
your biological father in Monroe, Louisiana. Jumping forward to nineteen eighty,
when I returned to Montana again from down in Louisiana,
they brought me in one more time because of traffic
(22:51):
at tickets. I had to do thirty days in jail
for excessive traffic tickets. When they released me that day again,
I was going back to louis In Ssiana, and again
they questioned me, but again they said that they knew
I did not commit the crime. They just would like
to know if there was any information that I had.
They released me again. I returned to my father's house
(23:13):
in Louisiana and went on with my life. Okay, so
three times you come in, three times you're clear. Here
you are back in Louisiana working construction, building holiday inns,
as I understand it, And then you signed up for
the Navy and completed boot camp. Right, and we're preparing
to be deployed to the Mediterranean Sea as was the
time of the conflict in Lebanon. Correct, very few people
(23:36):
probably remember, but in nine two, the Lebanesian Army had
just shot down two of our American planes over the
Mediterranean Sea. So we were about to be deployed with
the U. S. S. Eisenhower aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean
see to defend our international spaces. In that process, being
(23:58):
that I was new to this ship and this was
my first overseas deployment, they ran a background check on me.
During that process. The Roosevelt County Sheriff had sent a
letter to the FBI stating that I was their suspect
in a homicide and that they had quote unquote two
(24:20):
eyewitnesses who could put me at the scene of the crime.
I was confronted with that letter by the United States
Navy Police Force. They put me in the brig and
after two days of being in the brig, I was
given an option to take an honorable discharge, returned to Montana,
and undergo an investigation, at which point, if the investigation
(24:43):
did not lead to an arrest, I could re enlist
in the military, or they could contact the Roosevelt County
Sheriff's Department, and if the Roosevelt County Sheriff's departments backed
up the letter, I would be charged with federal charges
of fraudulent enlistment into the military to avoid jurisdiction, and
I would immediately be incarcerated for ten years in federal prison.
(25:06):
So I took the honorable discharge. I went back to
Wolf Point, Montana, and once again turned myself into the
Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department, only to be told that they
didn't know of the letter, they had no witnesses that
could put me at the scene of the crime, and
that they knew I did not commit the crime based
on the forensic evidence, and they released me to go
(25:26):
back to Louisiana. There's absolutely no question that it came
from that sheriff. It was on his letter head, it
was his signature. It was mailed to the FBI office
in Butte, Montana. To this day, that letter exists in
the FBI files and Butte Montana. So him telling me
that he did not know about the letter was just
(25:47):
a blatant lie. But yet it destroyed my military career. Right,
but this is hardly the worst that's about to come.
So you're cleared by Roosevelt County back in Louisiana, go
back to work building holiday inns, right and putting this
hopefully behind you. But then there was some craziness with
your step mom, and that may have led indirectly or
(26:11):
even directly to this downward spiral that that got deeper
and deeper and faster and faster. Correct, it actually is
the direct link that led to a wrongful conviction, or
allowed the State of Montana to continue its pursuit of
a wrongful conviction. When I returned to Louisiana, I was
living with my father and his new wife, who had
(26:32):
five children. They all lived there at the house. There
became a pretty open dispute between me and my stepmother
as to whether or not I was even my father's child.
When on New Year's Eve nine three, we went out
as a family drinking, got back home all drunk, and
there was a large family argument over that issue. My
(26:56):
stepmother kicks me out of the house and I go
get a place to stay real quick. But when she
kicked me out, one of my younger stepsisters decided that
she was going to run away from home because she
couldn't stand her step mom. I was at work. My
stepsister called me up and said her and three of
her friends were out at the freeway hitchhiking to Houston.
(27:17):
I said, no, stay right where you're at. I'm gonna
come get you and call dad. That led to my
stepmother calling law enforcement and saying that I was a
prime suspect and a murder in Montana, and that she
was fearful that I was going to kill her daughter.
What I didn't know, Jason. At that point in time, Munroe, Louisiana,
(27:40):
had a serial killer on the loose, and they had
formed a seven member homicide task force to investigate these
serial killings. Two of those homicides took place while I
was in the military. The other one took place while
I was on a holiday in job in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(28:02):
So when those three homicides took place, I had absolutely
no knowledge. I wasn't even in the state of Louisiana, etcetera.
But my stepmother used those along with the fact that
she knew I was a suspect in Montana at one time,
and turned me into the local law enforcement and I
was arrested. So they started questioning you about the Monroe murders.
(28:23):
But of course you had no knowledge of those crimes,
because how would you have known. You weren't even the state.
I didn't even know those crimes existed at that time.
I wasn't charged with homicide. I was only charged with
misdemeanor charges concerning my step sister contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. So they took me into this interrogation room.
The initial interrogation was done by three members of the
(28:45):
Homicide Task Force, Richard Maderis, j V and Joe Cummings.
They had accused me on numerous numerous occasions of showing deception, etcetera, etcetera.
On what they called voice dress test, which was this
tape recorder that set there on the interrogation table the
whole entire day. So they were trying to extract the
(29:07):
false statement. Your alibi was air tight for the Monroe murders.
You were in a different state. Every single one of
those murders. You weren't in state. But they are experienced
and convincing suspects that they're super scientific. Voice stress tests
says that you're lying, then maybe they can course you
(29:27):
into a statement. For example, we'll tell the jury that
you registered deceptions, so you better plead guilty and get
a good deal. Another route is potentially convincing the suspect
of their own guilt. None of it had worked on
you yet. And then later on that even they brought
in their closer, a guy named Alfred Calhoun. Now he
was the bad cop to Jovis good cop. And they
(29:49):
continue to rail on you about these Monroe, Louisiana murders
while describing to you in great detail what happens, what
would happen to your body and Neil trip chair, And
this was something that they said you'd be able to
avoid if you just told them what they wanted to
hear correct. And it was only when Alfred Calhoun came
in and started threatening me with the death penalty in
(30:10):
Louisiana for the Louisiana crimes that the Kimneice murder in
Montana actually came into the picture. Alfred Calhoun promised me
that he would assure that I was convicted on the
three homicides in Louisiana and would ensure with everything that
he had within him that I received the electric chair,
(30:32):
and that he wanted to be there to push the
button and watch me fry for the Louisiana homicides. But
if I would just simply tell them the truth about
the Montana homicide, that they would go back to Montana
and help me to establish the facts of that case
and we get out in Louisiana, right, which actually sounded
like a logical thing to do, because you already knew
(30:56):
that everybody knew that you had nothing to do with
the Knees murder, and there was overwhelming evidence to prove it.
So why not get the hell out of Louisiana and
away from these monsters and go deal with the monsters,
you know, because you know you can prove eighteen ways
till Sunday that you didn't have anything to do with
(31:19):
the murder of Kim Knees. So ultimately you falsely confessed
to the murder of Kim Knees. This confession was a
tape recorded confession. There's actually a phone conversation between the
sheriff and Montana and the detectives in Louisiana where they
have me in the interrogation room. The sheriff in Montana
(31:40):
is feeding information to the detective in Louisiana. He's going
in and making sure it's a part of the confession
and then going back and getting more information. The sheriff
falsely and inaccurately told detective that Kim Niece was wearing
a plaid shirt with a brown jacket, and that actually
(32:01):
ended up in the confession with me saying that she
was wearing a plaid shirt and brown jacket, when in fact,
Kim was wearing a white pullover sweater. The inconsistencies and
contradictions between this confession and the crime scene border on
the ridiculous. There were multiple sets of bootprints for starters,
it wasn't a single assailant. Clearly, Barry exhibited a complete
(32:25):
misunderstanding about where the car was in relation to the river.
He confessed to multiple double football field length round trips,
which was not corroborated by the bootprints either, and then
on these round trips, Barry allegedly through one item in
the river at a time, which is not only ridiculous
considering the distance, but also after searching the river, these
items were never found, including a jacket, the keys to
(32:49):
the truck, which obviously would have just sank, and the
alleged murder weapon at tire iron that obviously didn't float downstream.
They did, however, find a claw hammer in the river,
with which her wounds, as well as gouge marks and
the ceiling of the truck were more consistent. He also
said that she had jumped out of the driver's side
and he had to run after her. Not only that
we know that she left through the passenger side direct
(33:12):
contradiction again, but also with the amount of blood found
on the front seat, the likelihood of her running was
borderlined impossible. And then Barry also confessed to choking her,
which we know never happened, but not only claimed to
have choked Kim, but allegedly I choked her to the
point that she passes out and the amount of force
(33:34):
that it takes to do that would have left very
clear and addictative physical evidence on the body that was
never found. It wasn't there, it didn't exist. More importantly,
the so called motive for this taking place was supposed
to be a rape, and there was no indication of
rape or sexual intercourse. Barry also said he had wiped
(33:57):
the scene of his fingerprints. However, there were no marks
at the scene. And to top it off, Barry said
that he put her body feet first into a garbage
bag that only came up to her armpits and dragged
the body to the river and pushed her in, again,
not understanding the distance because he didn't know anything about it,
but also that there was a twenty foot embankment that
he'd have to have figured out how to maneuver, but
(34:20):
he completely left that detail out. And on top of
all that, there was no garbage bag or remnants of
one being used that were ever found. But this wild
confession was seemingly good enough for everyone on both sides
of that infamous phone call. So one more interesting fact
(34:41):
about what you just said that probably should be brought
up at this point when you're talking about j V
and Alfred Calhoun in Louisiana. Alfred Calhoun j V and
that homicide detected group actually got two other individuals to
confess to those three Louisiana murders. Those two individuals were
(35:01):
later proven to be innocent and their confessions were proven
to be false as well. And later one of those
crimes in Louisiana were actually solved by DNA, proving that
all the people that Java and Alfred Calhoun got to
confess to those three homicides were false. I was actually
(35:37):
facing the death penalty all the way up until a
month prior to my trial. We actually had a hearing
to do away with the death penalty, and that's when
we learned at the tape of the confession had been erased.
It was like three weeks prior to my trial. So
you're being cleared as a suspect by all the physical
(35:58):
evidence just didn't matter at all. But this false confession,
the gathering of which was corrupt at best, the recording
of which had then been mysteriously erased. Yeah, this false
confession overcame all fingerprints, the bloody pomp print, the lack
of any white marks around the other fingerprints on or
(36:21):
in the interior or exterior of the truck, the bootprints,
the blood samples, how inconsistent your false confession was with
the crime scene. None of this mattered at all, and
you were charged with deliberate homicide in the fifteenth Judicial
District of Montana. And in the lead up to your
April trial, your attorney tried to expose that false confession
(36:44):
for what it was and suppressed it as involuntary, but
the judge allowed a recitation of the false confession by
Detective j. V I Now to corroborate that evidence. The
state was trying to admit a pubic hare that had
allegedly been discovered on Kimneys sweater, and the former head
(37:04):
of the Montana State Crime Lab, Arnold Melnikoff, was willing
to testify that the hair had characteristics that were somewhat
similar to Barry's hair, Which what does that testimony even mean? Similar?
How that it was hair? It was also hair? I mean, yeah,
it was hair, and there's hair. That's about it. There
(37:24):
was no other similarities. Let's start there with Arnold Melnikoff.
They were not allowed to have him testify for two reasons.
The fact that the sweater he claimed to have found
a pubic hair on had already been searched in nineteen
seventy nine and there was nothing found on it. But
not only that federal report saying that nothing was found
(37:46):
on that sweater. That sweater was kept in the Popular
City Police Department's evidence room. On the night of June six,
nineteen seventy nine, about well thirty one o'clock at night,
a police officer on duty for the Popular City Police
(38:06):
Department by the name of Stevie Grayhawk had actually broken
into that evidence room, kicking in the locked door, supposedly
to use the restroom. But that break in contaminated all
the evidence that was stored in that evidence room involving
the Kimney's murder, including the sweater that in night three,
(38:31):
Arnold Melnikov claims to have found a pubic care on
that had quote unquote similar characteristics two Bury Beach. So
the same guy, if you remember, I told you to
tuck his name away for later. This guy, Stevie Grayhawk,
the Popular City police officer who answered that two am
(38:53):
call early in the morning of June nine, down to
the river for the sounds of female voices screaming and
back with nothing to report, even though there definitely was.
That freaking guy is the same cop who had to
go to the bathroom so badly that he busted down
the door to an evidence room holding the evidence from
(39:16):
this crime. Again, nothing to see, there, nothing to report. Now,
I'm going to ask you to tuck that DV. Grayhawk
name back in again for later as we continue on
through the trial. So, no bogus planted pubic hair was admitted.
But this recitation of an alleged transcript of your false
(39:38):
confession was really all that was presented, because, I mean,
they couldn't present the physical evidence because all of it
they knew had already exonerated you. At this point, were
you worried going into this. My attorney kept telling me,
don't worry, don't worry. They can never find you guilty.
There's no physical evidence. It's impossible for to find you guilty.
(40:01):
But on the second day of my trial, the prosecutor,
even though the judge had thrown out the pubic hare
and stated that it was not admissible at my trial,
the prosecutor still managed to mention it to the jury,
saying that he had a pubic care that he would
later introduce that matched me, and that wasn't the only
(40:23):
time he pulled this type of trick. In his summation,
he did it twice, referring to the confession in ways
that were either misleading or outright lies. In reading the transcripts,
the prosecutor Roscoe talked about wondering how there was so
little blood on the drag trail from the truck to
the river, and that Barry had said in his confession
that he had put the body into the garbage bag
(40:44):
head first, so that explained it. But Barry didn't even
say head first. He said beat first, that her head
was not covered. So here he is misleading, lying to
the jury to bolster the state's narrative. Then, at some
point in the trial, Kim's father, Ted Knees, took the
stand and confirmed that he owned a tool like the
alleged murder weapon from Barry's false confession, a tire iron.
(41:08):
Now in the confession, Barry had said that he threw
it in the river, but when Ted knee was asked
if it was missing when the truck was returned, he
said that he hadn't noticed. In the prosecutor's summation, he
lied about Ted Nis testimony telling the jury that Mr
Needs had confirmed that the alleged murder weapon was missing.
None of this information actually holds value, as all of
(41:28):
it comes from a false confession, but using it and
lying about it to bolster the state's narrative was apparently effective,
but not nearly as much as the false confession itself.
They put j v I on the stand, who took
the confession, supposedly did a handwritten transcript that he himself
wrote out of that take confession, and the prosecutor and
(41:52):
j v I, line by line for two and a
half days, will play this confession in in front of
the jury, including j VI from Louisiana getting on the
floor of the courtroom as if he was Kim Nice
and the prosecutor choking him, mimicking in front of the
(42:13):
jury the confession, and when the judge allowed that to happen,
I knew without question that I was going to be
found guilty. On part one of our coverage of Barry Beach,
you've heard about how he was wrongfully convicted. Now you're
(42:36):
about his epic fight for freedom in part two available now,
thank you for listening to ronful Conviction. I'd like to
thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburn and Kevin
Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music in this
production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
(43:00):
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flom Wrangful Conviction is
the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
(43:20):
Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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