A MONSTER IN MOUNT PLEASANT—CJ Williams

In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the idyllic calm of 1978 was shattered by a series of brutal murders. Karol Beavers, a vivacious high school junior, and her mother, Clementine, became the unsuspecting victims of a heinous act of violence that left the community reeling. For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then, another shocking murder occurred, tying the threads of horror together.
A Monster in Mount Pleasant delves into the unraveling of this dark chapter. Drawing from years of meticulous research, the story reveals not just the pursuit of justice, but the profound emotional scars left behind. From the shattered dreams of a bright young girl to the lifelong grief of families torn apart, this book captures the deep humanity behind the headlines.
This compelling narrative is told through the eyes of a classmate of Karol—and the murderer. Now a federal judge, the author unearthed the societal cracks that shaped both the victims and the perpetrator. It’s a haunting journey into a community forever changed by tragedy, where resilience and the quest for truth stand as testaments to those lost too soon. A MONSTER IN MOUNT PLEASANT: A Story of Murders and Justice-CJ Williams

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
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(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zupanski.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Good evening. In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa,
the idyllic calm of nineteen seventy eight was shattered by
a series of brutal murders. Carol Beavers, of Vivacious High
School junior and her mother, Clementine became the unsuspecting victims
of a heinous act of violence that left the community

(01:01):
reeling For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping
a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then another shocking
murder occurred, tying the threads of horror together. A Monster
in Mount Pleasant delves into the unraveling of this dark chapter.

(01:23):
Drawing from years of meticulous research, The story reveals not
just the pursuit of justice, but the profound emotional scars
left behind, from the shattered dreams of a bright young
girl to the lifelong grief of families torn apart. This
book captures the deep humanity behind the headlines. This compelling

(01:49):
narrative is told through the eyes of a classmate of
Carol and the murderer, now a federal judge. The author
unearthed the societal cracks that shape both the victims and
the perpetrator. It's a haunting journey into a community forever
changed by tragedy, where resilience and the quest for truth

(02:11):
stand as testaments that those lost too soon. The book
they were featuring this evening is A Monster in Mount Pleasant,
A Story of murders and Justice, with my special guest
author CJ. Williams. Welcome to the program, and thank you
very much for this interview. CJ. Williams.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Thank you for inviting me to do this interview here today.
I look forward to it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
And congratulations on this book, A Monster in Mount Pleasant.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Thank you. I'm happy to have finally got it accomplished
for all these years of thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Tell us of your connection to this area, this Mount Pleasant,
and also to this story. Tell us how you came
to be and wanted to be the author of this book,
A Monster in Mount Pleasant.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I'd be happy to so. I grew up in Mount Pleasant,
small town eight thousand people southeast Iowa. Pleasant quiet little
town back in nineteen seventies, and I grew up there,
and it was a safetown back in those days. The
last time there had been any murder of Mount Pleasant
had been back in the nineteen forties. It was policed

(03:28):
by a small police force, eight manned police force. The
chief of police was guy in his late twenties who
had no police training really and didn't really need it
in a town that size. But in the course of
about six months, one of my classmates was brutally murdered,

(03:48):
raped as she was dying on the garage floor of
her house. Her mother had been shot and killed first
during the assault. The crime was unsolved for six months
months the town was in terror. Six months later, a
waitress at a restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher
was brutally beaten to death in the early morning hours

(04:11):
and died a few days later in the hospital. It
turned out that the perpetrator the murder of all these
women was a classmate of mine, a year ahead of
me in high school, who had his own kind of
sad story. But I lived during that time period. I
lived during those murders, and it was a shock to
the community and a shock to my family directly. I

(04:35):
knew Carol, she was a classmate of mine. I wasn't
real close with her. My older brother was closer, but
our families were close to the Beavers family. Carol Beaver's
her mother, Clementine Max Beavers, her dad ran a small
grocery store in town where we shopped, and everybody knew
Max and Clementine. It was a shock in that sense.

(04:55):
It was a shock that my mother, who was a
newspaper reporter and edited and photographer at the time, was
recruited by the Bureau of and Criminal Investigation to come
and take photographs at the scene. That was common back then.
Police forces didn't have cell phones back then with their
own cameras, and taking photographs in the dark and so

(05:16):
forth was a talent, and so they would call upon
the local newspaper photographers come out and take photos of
crime scenes. So my first knowledge of the murders of
the Beavers was when I woke up at about five
am and found my mother out in a living room
with my father and a couple of friends, drinking and
crying because she just got back from taking photographs at

(05:40):
the murder scene, and so this at home. And then
it got even worse when Monte Seeger, the high school
boy who murdered all these women, was later evidence was
suppressed and he wasn't prosecuted for many years later. And
so all this happened at a very formative time in
my life life when my safe cocoon of a little

(06:04):
town of Mount Pleasant was shattered. Everybody was in fear,
the complacency, the security that we used to have was gone.
And then you had, on top of that the frustration
that you couldn't do anything about it. And then you
have the frustration of the legal system seemingly failing to
hold this man accountable for the murders he committed. Had

(06:27):
a huge, huge influence on me, a huge influence on
my twin brother. He later became a police officer. He
died in line of duty about three years ago. And
then I think it led me to get into law
enforcement and ultimately become a prosecutor and now a federal
judge because it had such an impact on our lives.
I think my brother and I both felt like we

(06:48):
had to do something. I think that influenced us in
our futures.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Very interesting. Let's get to your description of Clementine, Clementine
pardon me, and Max and Carol. You say Carol's almost
like an only child, just because her other siblings have
already moved on, and she was conceived when she was
when Clementine or Clementine pardon me, was forty two years old.

(07:16):
So just tell us a little bit about Max and
Clementine and Carol, and a little bit about what was
happening in their lives October twenty eighth, just previous to
October twenty ninth, nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
I'd be happy to so. Max, a World War Two veteran,
served in the Navy, and it was in the Navy
where he suffered some hearing loss. He and Clementine, who
was working in a post office in a small town
near Mount Pleasant, had met before the war and then

(07:51):
got married during the war. A good Catholic family. They
had eight children. Carol, as you mentioned, was the last
of eight children, and children were spread out over many years,
so her oldest brother was some twenty years older than Carol.
But so in nineteen seventy eight, Carol was the only
child left at home. Most of her siblings were around town.

(08:16):
A couple out of state, but most of his siblings
were around town living nearby. Every Sunday morning they went
to Mass at the church. Max was well known in town.
He was just assault of the earth kind of guy.
Back in those days. He would allow people to have

(08:37):
credit accounts at his grocery store, and so if people
couldn't pay for their groceries, they could buy groceries on credit.
He would often write off debts that poor families had
so they can make sure they could eat. He and
Carol liked golf, and so they were known to golf
and father daughter tournaments the local country club. Clementine was

(09:04):
a stay at home mom for most of the part,
but she also helped out at the grocery store at
the time as well. Just a real sweet family. Carol
was bubbly, energetic. Her locker in the high school was
in the same hallway as mine, And what I remember
most is her constant laughing and giggling. She had a

(09:27):
very unique, infectious laugh, and she was a very bubbly
person and cheerleaders one might imagine with some kind of
somebody with that kind of personality and they're just a
very sweet kind girl. Her aspiration one day was to
be an architect.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
You write about the home that the Beavers lived in,
and also the practice at that time in small town
America that they would leave the doors unlocked, and so
people were very trusting in those days. Tell us about
the situation that enabled this person a person to sneak

(10:06):
into this home.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Sure, I mean it's ironic in a way, because Clementine
was a little bit different from the typical Mount pleasanter
back in those days. So I remember, we never locked
the doors to our house growing up. Nobody did. Really.
We would leave our cars in the driveway with the
keys in the ignition because it was just easier that way,
and if you needed to move cars around, people could

(10:30):
do that and things went untouched. There just wasn't any burglaries, thefts,
that kind of stuff really to speak of in Mount
Pleasant in those days. Clementine was a little bit different.
And Clementine had a routine. Max always got up five
am or earlier in order to go into the grocery
store to start the baking, and so he went to
bed early every night, usually around eight thirty, and he

(10:55):
would go up to bed. Clementine liked to watch the
nightly news, and she would stay down in their basement furnished.
They had built a little bar down there, and it
was a kind of a TV room, if you will.
She would stay downstairs and watch the news. And then
it was her routine every night when she came up
after watching the news to go to bed, that she

(11:18):
would lock the doors to the house, which was very unusual,
but that was her routine. On this particular night. The
murders occurred sometime between nine ten o'clock at night. Clementine
was downstairs. Clementine, I'm sorry. It was downstairs watching TV
when she was murdered, And so it's interesting, ironic. Had

(11:39):
she had this taken place an hour later or so,
Clementine's schedule would have counted for her locking the door,
and the money secer would not have been able to
gain entry to the house. Any other house on that
block you probably could have gotten into, but not the
Beaver's house. But on this particular night, you struck before Clementine,
in her normal routine locked up.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
You write about that he likely, this perpetrator likely might
have seen her Clementine watching TV. He came into the basement.
You say that he likely heard some noise upstairs, but
decided to go into the basement. Clementine unaware. He attacked

(12:24):
her from behind, shot her in the back of the head.
Tell us what happens, and where is Carol at this time?
And where is Max at this time? Tell us what
happens with this perpetrator and after this initial attack of Clementine.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Sure, and so part of this is based upon the
forensic evidence, the circumstantial evidence, my years of experience as
a prosecutor and as a judge kind of piecing things together.
And part of it's based on what Money Seeger himself
told me. I interviewed Money Seger three times in the
prison and Moosa, Iowa, and he, for the first time

(13:02):
confessed committing the Beaver's murders to me. His version is
one where he claimed it was kind of a spur
of the moment, accidental kind of thing, premeditated. I don't
buy that for a number of reasons. So here's what
I think happened. Explain why I think it happened that way.
The basement had small basement windows that you could look through,

(13:27):
and Clementine and Carol were both downstairs watching TV for
a while when she goes upstairs. Sometime around nine o'clock,
she was trying to get a hold of a boyfriend
that she had been dating and they had split up,
and so she was trying to make a call to him.
Clementine stayed downstairs, and so I think that Monty was

(13:50):
outside casing the place. He was looking through the basement window.
And it was when Carol separated from Clementine that gave
him his opportunities strike and the best opportunity to kill
them separately. Max In the meantime, I had gone to
bed at about eight o'clock, between eight and eight thirty,
he had gone to bed and was down the hall

(14:13):
upstairs across from Carol's room, and Carol was in her
room listening to the radio and trying to call a
friend of hers, trying to locate her kind of ex
boyfriend at the time when Monty entered in through the
garage unlocked garage door. From there he entered into the
kitchen from the garage immediately to the left of the

(14:34):
stairs going down to the basement. He snuck down the stairs,
came up behind Clementine, put the rifle twenty two collars
or bold action rifle, put it up against the back
of her head and pulled the trigger. The way this
rifle operated was it was a manual feed, meaning he
had to pull the trigger and then he would have

(14:55):
to pull the bolt back, which would have ejected the
showcasing from that first shot. He would have then had
to have loaded another bullet and then push the bolt
forward in order to discharge firearm again. No shell casings
were found anywhere in the house. That tells me that
he was careful enough to pick up the shell caseinges

(15:17):
after a shot, which tells me this is somebody who's
thinking things through. No fingerprints were found anywhere in the house,
which tells me he was wearing gloves at the time.
So he kills Clementine goes upstairs. Carol had heard a
shot and heard something, and she came running down the
hallway to figure out what the loud noise was. I

(15:39):
don't know that she knew it was a gunshot, but
she came running down the hallway as Monty was coming
up the stairs into the kitchen. They met in the kitchen.
At that point, Monty raises the barrel of the gun
and points to that Carol's face. We know this because
she has a defensive wound. The first shot goes through

(16:00):
her left arm and acrossed her cheekbone and out the
side of her head. It didn't actually enter her skull,
but it was enough to knock her down. According to
the pathologist, the blow from that shot, Monty would have
you believe that the gun just accidentally went off. That
makes no sense. Carol would not have had the defensive

(16:21):
move of putting her hand in front of her face
if the gun burl had not been pointed at her,
and she likely recognized Monty they had a speech class together.
Once she was down, Monty came up to her and
then put the gun behind her left ear. I'm sorry,
you're right here, and put another bullet into her head
at that point. Then he dragged her out to the garage,

(16:44):
stripped her pants off of her, pulled down, pulled up
her shirt, pulled down her broad and raped her as
she was dying in the garage. So he shot her
twice in the kitchen. As I just related, no shewcases
were found there, which means he was careful enough to
pick up the shellcasings from those two bullet discharges as well.

(17:07):
All this time, maxis asleep down the hallway. I remember
he had hearing loss from his service in the war,
and he was asleep and so he didn't hear any
of this and slept through the entire thing. He wakes
up a round one thirty in the morning. His Clementine
is not in bed next to him, which was unusual
and of course, and so he went out to investigate

(17:29):
and first found Carol. He saw a trail of blood
from the kitchen leading out to the garage. His initial
thought was as somebody cut themselves really badly somehow and
probably went to the doctor. And he went out to
the garage to see if the car was gone, and
that's where he found his daughter. I felt her, she
was cool. He goes back inside. He calls the police.

(17:52):
Back in those days, there was no nine one one,
so he tries to dial the police using the long number.
He's off by a diday. He gets a stranger in town,
mumbles out some words. The stranger gets enough to understand
that the police are needed at the Beavers home and
tells Max he'll take care of it. And then Max

(18:13):
goes downstairs to find Clementine and finds her dead downstairs.
So that's how Max came to discover the murder of
his wife and his youngest daughter.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Yes,
this is an incredibly vivid scene that you create in
this book. The idea that a sergeant Duncan arrives immediately
and doesn't know the particulars yet, and he's in a
dark garage. He hears a voice. He discovers Carol's body

(18:51):
and all the blood, and notices that her clothes are
missing from the waist down. But he when he gets
his person, he urges this person to come out of
the garage. This person is disoriented. Max is completely disoriented.
He has stunned. His arms are flailing away. You say, spastically,

(19:13):
tell us what happens in this incredible vivid scene.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah, I mean imagine this. So you're you're an officer
in Mount Pleasant who has never encountered violent crime like
this ever. You're one of two officers on duty. It's
the middle of the night. The only other officer is
a rookie who just joined the police force six months before,
and you're called to this horrific scene where all you

(19:40):
know is that somebody's been shot. That's the most that
Max is able to convey to this other person that
got conveyed ultimately to the officer. So So shows up
to the scene. He has a flashlight, he has a
three point fifty seven magnum revolver, pulls a revolver because
he sees movement, as you mentioned in the garage, here's

(20:01):
something in the garage. He can see enough into the
garage with a flashlight beam to see a body, half naked,
body on the floor with blood. So he knows things
are bad and he calls out to whoever's in the
garage to come out with their hands up pall several times.
The officer related this to me. He's scared to death

(20:21):
at this point. He has no idea what he's going
to encounter, and his finger is on the trigger of
the revolver of the three point fifty seven magnum. When
Max finally starts to come out, a Max is worrying.
He's disheveled, his hairs dishevel He's got a pajama top on.
He had managed to pull some pants on, but he

(20:42):
is in shock and he's mumbling incomprehensively. Hands are as
you said, spastic moving all about. According to the officer
and it's dark, and so, as the officer described it
to me, Max wasn't stopping. He ordered Max to stop
once he came outside, he wasn't stopping. At the last second,

(21:04):
the officer recognizes Max and recognized him from the store.
Anybody who knew Max knew he wasn't anybody to be afraid.
He wasn't violent, and so the officer immediately released the
tension he had on the trigger. He said he came
very close to killing Max that night. About that time,

(21:25):
the rookie shows up. Max's oldest son shows up because
Max had managed to call his son as well, and
so the officer puts Max in his son's care, tells
the rookie to go around back the house, and then
the officer makes the brave decision to enter the house
because he's convinced the killer is still inside. Max mumbled

(21:46):
something about his wife, and so the officer enters the
house alone in the full belief that the murderer is
still inside. He goes through the top floor the main
floor of the house and finds nobody, So now he
has to go in the basement. There's only one way
in and one way out of the basement, and so
as he's going down the basement stairs, he's convinced that

(22:09):
he's going to encounter the murder down the basement, and
yet he carries on. He can hear some dripping coming
from the basement. He doesn't know what the dripping is.
He discovers the dripping sound as the dripping of blood
coming from Clementine's head into a puddle beneath her as
she lay slumped over in the chair. Ultimately, nobody else

(22:32):
is found in the house. Ambulance spears personnel arrived soon after.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Now you say that the murders sends shock waves through
the mount pleasant, Well, that's of course that would happen.
But also you talk about the autopsy of when it
reveals and some of the things that like the locket
that the heart shaped locket that seems to be missing.

(23:00):
Just tell us what the autopsy reveals about the crimes committed.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah, So the autopsy showed Clementine was killed probably fairly instantly.
She had a single gunshot, one in the back of
the head. It was a twenty two Cloiber rifle. And
what many people don't understand is a low velocity twenty
two caliber seems it's a very small bullet in many ways,
you know, maybe three times the size of a babe.

(23:28):
It can be very deadly because it doesn't have enough
velocity to exit. And so what happens when it goes
into a cavity like your orso or your head, is
it will bounce around inside and tear things apart. And
so that's what happened when it went into Clementine's skull.
It bounced around inside her skull, scrambling her brain and

(23:49):
ultimately lodging right in front of her teeth. Harold again,
I described the wounds on her. She had been raped.
They did recover some semen. In those days, DNA didn't exist,
DNA testing didn't exist, and so what they were able
to tell was blood type and that the person was

(24:09):
a secret So some of us secrete blood in our saliva,
in our body of fluids, sweat and so forth, and
some of us don't. So if you, if you had
faint amount of blood that comes out in those circumstances,
you're coldest secretor. And Monte segu was a secreter. He
had sucked on Peril's nipple and from that saliva they

(24:33):
had obtained his blood type as well as from the semen,
but that's all we had back in those days. It
was just blood type. He had a blood type that
as a screeter, basically thirty five percent of the population
could be could be the perpetrator. So it didn't give
a lot of leads to the police. And so there

(24:54):
were no fingerprints recovered from the scene. There were some oddities.
So there was some unknow fingerprints on the hood of
the car that was right next to Carol where she
was raped, but that could have been left at any
time by anybody. Carol gone out to a restaurant earlier
that night, a fast food restaurant, and some high school kid,
for all we know, leaned against the car and put

(25:17):
his hand on it. There was a stray pubic care
that was found on Carol's clothes. I was later told
I did a book talking unpleasant about this book back
in April, and the Beaver's family, who were very supportive
about this book, came up to talk to me afterwards.
And one of the people came up there was a cousin,
female cousin, and she thinks that it was probably hers

(25:39):
because Carol on her was an older cousin and She
and Carol used to trade clothes, share clothes, and so
she hypothesized it was probably her puba care that was found.
It was not Monty's because it didn't come back to
match him. So there are some stray things like that,
but otherwise there was no Despite the closeness of the neighborhood,

(26:03):
nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything. There were no eyewitnesses,
there were no forensics found at the scene. For the
next six months, the police had nothing. They would need
an offer for a reward for anybody with knowledge. Nobody
came forward. There was a few perhaps sightings or people

(26:25):
thought they saw things, but nothing of any value. So
for six months the community was terrified. They had no
idea who the murderer was living amongst us. There was
no motive that anybody could discern for why somebody would
kill Carol and Clementine. They were well liked family. It

(26:46):
was a real puzzle and everybody's afraid. Suspicion immediately fell
on Max. Of course, he was home during this time
period asleep, but anybody again in New Max quickly ruled
him out as a suspect.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
What does the autopsy reveal regarding Carol's condition? In terms
of the sexual assault.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, the autopsy did show that it was a violent,
violent rape. Her vagina had been torn. I asked Monty
about the rape when I interviewed him in prison afterwards,
because when I asked him about the murders, he explained
shooting Clementine, explained shooting Carol, as I said, you know,
he claimed that shooting Carol was an accent to the

(27:31):
first shot was an accent. Then once he saw that
he had injured so badly, he said he was going
to put her out of her misery by shooting her
in the back of the head. I asked him then,
so why the rape? And his words to me were
I felt like I was giving something back to her
she was dying, which is a chilling way of looking

(27:53):
at it. When he tells me about killing Clementine and Carol,
he really had no expression in his eyes and his face.
He told me about it like you'd be describing parking
the car. It's no emotion, no remorse in his voice.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
All you say this forensic testing, the state of forensic
testing at that time, doesn't narrow down the search much,
and so this case goes very very cold. What happens
in that six month period in terms of the investigation,
who comes forward in terms of the lead the investigation,

(28:33):
and then what happens to reveal what what happens in
the murder of Sue Wheelock.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
So the investigation is taken over by what was then
called the Bureau of Criminal Investigation now the Division of
Criminal Investigation, basically the State of Iowa equivalent of the FBI.
It was a police force that was formed in the
nineteen twenties in response to Ryan Waves. Back then profession
all investigative force at the state level. And so there

(29:02):
was an agent that was out of Brilington, Iowa that
came and kind of took up residency working with the
local law enforcement officers, staying at the Irish Hotel, a
hotel on the outskirts of town. There was a restaurant
attached to called the Irish Restaurant. It was the fancy
place to eat, the Irish Restaurant. If you were going

(29:25):
to celebrate a wedding or birthday or something, you went
to the Iris. It was a fancy restaurant. And that's
where I worked as a dishwasher part time when I
was in high school. And that's where Monty Seeger the
murder of Beaver's. It turns out he also worked there
as a short order cook part time while he was

(29:45):
in high school, and then Susan Wilock was an assistant
manager and ran the lounge, the bar that was attached
to the restaurant as well. It's very likely that the
officers were served by her, because they would go and
sit in the lounge after investigating the case at night.

(30:09):
Very likely that Susan Weilock waited on the officers there.
It was on a good Friday that night in the
spring of nineteen seventy nine when Susan Weilock was going
to close up. The owner of the restaurant, Dave Heaton,
and the restaurant closed down. They stopped serving at nine o'clock.

(30:30):
The bar stayed open until about one o'clock and Dave
eating a big good night to Susan, and she was
going to close up that night. She was alone closing
up when she hears a noise in the back kitchen
area of the restaurant, back where I worked as a dishwasher.
This is about one o'clock in the morning, and she

(30:51):
hears a noise and obviously there shouldn't be one, and
she had been counting the money from the till and
was going to put it in the safe in the
ret in a closet at the restaurant. When she went
down to the kitchen to investigate the noise, that's when
she is attacked. She was beaten by two weapons glass bottles.

(31:13):
Back in those days we had glass leader bottles of soda.
He was encountered somewhere in the back of the restaurant
and then ran to the front, running from her attacker,
where she ultimately went down right by where the bottles are.
She was beaten also with a large wooden paddle that

(31:33):
was used by Dave to make his famous jam that
he made in a huge vat. Paddle had been used
as a weapon against her as well. Dave Eaton shows
up the next morning on Easter morning to open up
shop on Saturday morning. I'm sorry to open up the
restaurant for breakfast. He gets there about six am. He

(31:55):
comes in and he noticed there are lights left on
that normally Susan would have turned off off. He noticed
that Susan's car was stole in the rut in the
parking lot. He came back to the kitchen area and
He found her on her face, face down on the
floor and a pool of blood with broken bottles around her.

(32:15):
He rushed her aside. He touched her. She moaned, but
otherwise was unresponsive. Dave immediately calls for the police, rushes outside,
waves them down as they arrive, and waves them inside,
and they investigate that murder. They quickly conclude from footprints

(32:36):
in the blood that match footprints in the mud outside
the back of the hotel that whoever did this had
been hiding in a hotel room, had broken into a
back window of one of the hotel rooms and been
hiding in there before the attack. From the pattern, it
was a herringbone pattern from some tennis shoes, and so

(32:57):
they had that to go on when they started the
investigation who killed Susan Weelock. Susan was rushed to the
hospital course and then ultimately life flighted to the University
of Iowa Hospital, where she died three days later.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Let's do this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages now in this investigation, how do they get
to Monty Seegers. There is some past experience that people
say they'd witnessed in terms of going into this restaurant
after hours because Monty Seegers also worked at this restaurant.

(33:34):
So tell us how police proceed after this crime.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, so it's a slow movie investigation in a way.
The forensics again are limited, so the footprint that was
left in the blood in the mud is a huge clue,
and they figured it's an inside job. There was no
sign of breaking and entering into the restaurant itself, so
they interviewed all of us employees. They fingerprinted us, and

(34:02):
they asked us to come wearing what we wore the
night before, including shoes, and then they took our shoes
from us so that they could match the pattern. Monty
was among the people interviewed, and they made several observations
of Monty. First, he had a herring bone pattern on
the bottom of his shoes. He also had a brown

(34:24):
reddish brown stain on his pants. They seized his pants
from him during the interview. Of course, he denied have
anything to do with killing her. He did admit that
he had gone to the restaurant earlier that night to
borrow some money, and nobody loaned him any money. Dave
Heaton was interviewed immediately suspected Monty and mentioned that Monty.

(34:48):
He had found Monty once before in the kitchen area
late at night when he shouldn't have been there, and
sent him on his way, And so Monty came under
immediately immediate suspicion as the murder in this case, based
on the shoe print and the pants that they later

(35:09):
discovered or concluded that that brown stain was in fact
blood that was not matched in Mantes but matched Susan's.
They got a search one for Montes's house, and they
searched his house and they found cash that would have
been consistent cashing coins consistent with the money taken from
the restaurant. The money that Sue had been collecking was missing,

(35:32):
and they found other things like iris restaurant match book.
They also found some other things that were interesting. They
found a number of photographs of high school girls. Monty
had a hobby of taking photographs and gave a speech
on it one time in a class, and among the
photographs were photographs of Carol. Now there are a lot

(35:54):
more photographs of other girls, but Carol was among the
photographs they found there. They also saw standing in the
corner twenty two caliber rifle. Up to this point all
the officers had believed that the weapon used in the
house that killed the beavers was probably a twenty two
caliber Saturday Night Special. The reason for that is a

(36:18):
revolver does not expand or shoot out showcasings. The showcasings
remain in the revolver, and it would make sense you
would have a small caliber, a small easily handled weapon
you'd use a house, not a long rifle. And so
the officer officers had never even thought about the possibility
that the murderer used a twenty two caliber rifle. Now,

(36:41):
when the officers went in to search for Susan Weelock's murder,
they did not have authorization to seize a rifle. No
weapon was used, no firearm was used in killing Susan WIELOCKX.
They had no authority to seize that rifle at the time,
but they did seize other evidence that was consistent with
Manty having been involved in the Wheelock murder. And so

(37:03):
he was very quickly after that charge held in Costy
and taken to a jail first in Henry County in
Mount Pleasant, and then moved to Burlington, Iowa, because that's
where his lawyer lived pending trial for the murder of
Susan Weelock. Now, a few months later, officers would go
back to a judge to seek a follow up search

(37:25):
warrant to seize the firearm that they had seen, because
they now thought Monty was a lead candidate for the
murder of the beavers and they needed that rifle. When
the officer Gus Hagers, the chief of police and Mount Pleasant,
went to the judge to get the warrant for that rifle,
the judge didn't think there was enough evidence to authorize

(37:45):
the seizure. You have to have probable cause, which isn't
a very high standard. But the judge didn't think there
was enough even for probable cause to seize that rifle,
and so at first he said no, and then Max,
I'm sorry. Then gus Hager's the police chief, said well,
there's something else. One of the sheriffs. Sheriff had mentioned

(38:06):
to me when we were in the house searching during
the Weelock search, he had seen a heart shaped pendant
that was missing. Carol had been given for her birthday
right a few months before she was murdered, a heart
shaped pendant by her mother. She woreked all the time
everywhere and it was missing, it wasn't on her body,

(38:27):
it wasn't in the house, and police chief said that
the sheriff said that he had seen that in Monty's room. Well,
the judge course says, well, geez, that's huge, write that up,
And so gus Hand wrote that on the search warrant application.
The judge granted the search one at that point, and
they seized the rifle. That rifle would later be suppressed

(38:49):
as evidence because it turned out the chief of police
lied according to the sheriff, he made up the whole
statement of the sheriff had never seen a heart shaped pendant.
No heart shape pendant was ever found him on his house,
and so courts later suppressed that othernce.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Let's get to the eventual conviction for Sue Wheelock's murder.
How they get to that? What was the again, you
write about the crucial evidence being the shoeprint, herringbone pattern
on the shoeprint. But tell us just a little bit
about this conviction. What is the sentence? And before we
get back to the police's interest, a new person enters

(39:31):
the story, interested in reviving the case and seeing what
they could do to convict him for the Beaver's murders
as well.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Sure, and so money kind of helps out the governmenting
convicting him. Because when he's in jail down and Brillington escapes,
did you not his little brother a haxaw blade into
the jail. He uses the axaw blade to cut through
the bolt to the door, pulling him in his cell.

(40:01):
He scales down the outside of the jail and he's
on the lamb for a month. Lee's steals a car
amidst a number of burglaries, ultimately caught in a high
speed chase down in Arizona. Heavily armed. He had stolen
firearms in the various burglaries he had committed, and that's
pretty good evidence of guilt. Flight, you know, to avoid

(40:22):
prosecution's good evidence of guilt. So when he comes back,
he's ultimately extra nited back to Iowa. The county attorney
cuts a deal with him and lets him plead to
second degree murder. It should have been first agree murder.
Any murder that occurs in the course of committing a
felony like a burglary, is automatically first degree Down the
attorney cut him a deal. He plays the second degree murder,

(40:43):
and he does. He gets a twenty year sentence, so
Monty's in prison serving twenty years. In the meantime, the
courts suppressed the evidence of the gun and the case
goes cold again. In the late nineteen nineties, new DCI
agent is assigned to the case, and Maure is kind
of a history of success with cold cases. He jumps

(41:06):
back into this case and starts developing new evidence, interviewing
more people. They try DNA that DNA exists by them,
but it's unsuccessful because there wasn't enough of a sample
preserved appropriately to allow a DNA testing, But he starts
launching back into the investigation. The interesting side note, the

(41:29):
word gets out that the investigations back on. Monty hears
about it. He has a meeting with his stepmother in prison,
and he instructs his stepmother to burn a parka that
she said had a brown stain on it. There was
some sighting of a man with the park of the
night of the beavers mur around the neighborhood. She ultimately

(41:52):
feels bad about that rule and tells the police about
burning the parka, but it's not recovered. Please also get
a letter from a guy named Dennis Cornell who is
doing twenty five years in prison in Illinois for having
murdered a stockbroker, and that letter says I murdered the Beavers.

(42:13):
So Maur and other agents go to Illinois and the
interview this Dennis Cornell. Cornell was kind of a friend
of Monty's back in the day. They interview with Cornell
in the prison and Cornell has all the facts wrong.
At the time of day that they entered the Beaver's
residence is wrong, where Carol was killed is wrong. He
didn't have any knowledge of the rape, and the officers

(42:35):
don't believe him at all. But there is at least
that attempt by Dennis Cornell to kind of throw off
the investigation, which turns out interesting. But in the end,
Mauer keeps going forward the main investigation and persuades the
state to charge Monty Segur with murders of the Beavers.

(42:58):
Goes to trial in two thousand. Monty is convicted by
a jury, but the Ice Spring Court reverses the conviction.
During the trial, the prosecutor had mentioned that Monty had
a marijuana grow out behind his house. It comes up
because Monty explained at one point that the only time
he left the house that night was to go out

(43:19):
to water is marijuana plants, and the prosecutor mentioned that
the I was spring. Court thought that that was too prejudicial,
and so they threw out the conviction. So Manty is
retried and reconvicted in two thousand and one of the
murders of Carol and Clementine Beavers was sentenced into life

(43:40):
terms of that parle where he is in prison now
serving those sentences.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Let's stop for a second to hear these messages. Now,
you went through this trial fairly quickly. He didn't testify,
but some things were very important in this trial to
be able to convict him. Things like his step mother
came forward and said that she had witnessed something in retrospect.

(44:08):
Now was quite suspicious with that after the Beaver's murders,
that he had burns what she thought looked like clothing
in a burn barrel. So just tell us some of
the things that really ended up being his downfall in
terms of convicted for the Beaver's murders before we talk
about your connection. You're connecting with Monty seekers to get

(44:34):
some resolution in your mind to what actually happened, because
throughout this entire process he denied killing the beavers.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
He did. Indeed, in both trials he did not testify,
never gave an explanation, and denied having murdered them. You know,
the key evidence in the trials really were a number
of things. One is his he he had some photographs
of Carol. One of the photographs he has of Carol
is of her wearing that necklace. Ironically, the yearbook ultimately

(45:08):
used that same photo that Monty took unbeknownst to them,
as a memorial page to Carol in the nineteen eighty yearbook.
But he had pictures of Carol. He had a firearm
that could match the shooting. He had checked out a

(45:29):
book out of the high school library on forensics police forensics,
including ballistics, and learned that how they matched bullets to firearms,
and so he had intentionally used a screwdriver to scratch
the inside of the barrel of the gun so that
it couldn't be used for matching the bullets recovered from

(45:52):
Carol and Clementine. It ended up not working because the
officers recovered other bullets that Monty and his little brother
had used when they had gone shooting practice, shooting down
in a park, and they had recovered those bullets and
then matched those bullets against the bullets from Clementine to
show that the gun that Monty had practiced with his

(46:14):
little brother was the same gun that killed Clementine, and
that was key evidence in the case. And as you mentioned,
his stepmother came forward and mentioned not only the parka
that she threw away at his request, but also mentioned
the day after the Beavers murder, she observed Monty burning
clothes in a burn barrel. By the time she had

(46:35):
told the officers that everything had been disintegrated, they did
find some buttons would have been consistent with some clothes
being burned in that burn barrel, but nothing otherwise of
evidentiary value. So those were the kind of the key
pieces of evidence that ultimately linked Monty to the murders
and led to his convictions. The defense, of course, focused

(46:58):
on Max, and they pushed the theory that Max had
killed had somebody kill Clementine because he wanted clept on
an insurance policy, and Kerl was somehow simply an accidental victim.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
In all this, you right. What's very dramatic is that
the idea that he was to be released for and
had done his time for the sue Weelock murder by
the time of the Beaver's trial finally getting to judication.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah, actually right between, so he's convicted in the first
case in two thousand that's overturned, as I mentioned, and
in between that reversal of his conviction in two thousand
and his retrial, he had completed serving his sentence on
Susan Weelock, so he was free at that point. It
could have been free. The government moved to detain him

(47:54):
pending trial the retrial, and the judge granted that. But
that's how close mind he came to getting out is
he had completed his sentence by the time of the retrial,
and only coret order holding him pending trial kept him
from being free.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
With this book, you write, as a federal prosecutor, you
prosecuted almost one thousand murder cases or involving a thousand
murder defendants. In your Like many people, you write, you
were always interested in the motivation for Monte Seegers to

(48:34):
commit the murders that he did. You decided to contact
him in writing this book. What was the question that
was most important to you to ask Monty Seegers the most.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
An important question, of course, is why you know, why
would you do this? You know, there was a lot
of speculation at the time, and one of the motives
for writing this book was to put to rest all
the speculation or speculation that Carol must have been sleeping
with Monty and there was some type of romantic thing,
or he spurned she spurned him, or maybe she was

(49:09):
a dope user like Monty was. There was speculation that
Susan Weelock was the same, was sleeping with mont hero
was a dope user, and I wanted to put the
rest and protect their reputations by getting to the bottom
line of why. None of that, of course, is true.
Monty didn't have a good answer for why. You know,

(49:32):
Susan Weilock she surprised him. He figured he had to
kill her, he said, because she was gonna turn him
in for burglarizing the restaurant. But for Carol and Clementine,
his explanation was, I was out shooting out street lights.
I'd like to see him explode. That night, I had
my twenty two. I was walking home from engaging in

(49:54):
that criminal mischief. When I was walking by Carol's house,
that occurred to me that maybe I should just kidnap her,
and I don't know what i'd do, but I'll go
in and kidnap her. And then I heard the TV
on in the basement, and I thought, well, that's going
to be a problem. So I went down and saw
Clementine there, and I thought, well, she's just going to
stand in the way, So I shot her. And then
I went upstairs and I just kind of ran into

(50:15):
Carol and accidentally shot her, and then you know, I
just had to put her out of her misery and
so forth. So his explanation was unsatisfactory, and as I said,
it doesn't match the forensics, which tells me, trained to
investigator and prosecutor, that this was well thought out, well
plotted out, and premeditated. And so I wanted to get

(50:38):
at the why. I kept trying to probe that with
him a little bit. I had, as I mentioned, three
interviews with him, and as a prosecutor, I used to
do is I used to when I first sat down
with criminals and they would talk to me, I'd let
them tell me their story, whatever it was. I wouldn't
press them too much, let them give me their BS story,
and then I'd go back and i'd investigate the case farther,

(51:01):
figure out the holes in their story, and then come
back and confront them. And that was my plan with
Monty tom Is he took me off a visitors list.
He can't just go talk to somebody in prison. They
have to agree to it. And he took me off
a visitor list before I could go back and confront
him with all the holes in his story. I've concluded

(51:21):
myself that the motive for killing Carol and Clementine was this.
Monty was the product of foster homes and group homes.
His father was blind, his mother basically abandoned him when
he was seven years old, along with his little brother
or little sister, and Monty was pissed off at the world.

(51:42):
He had started engaging in crime as a juvenile. He
was going to turn eighteen in the fall of nineteen
seventy eight. He had been held back a year in school,
even though he raided as a genius tested as a
Genius IQ. He had been held back here because of
his problems with juvenile authorities. And he was going to

(52:04):
turn eighteen. And in the first interview I had with him, well,
we didn't talk about the murders at all. In the
first interview, but he said something to me that stuck
with me. He said, because we talked about his past
mostly that first interview, and he said, I just figured
when I turned eighteen, I was going to take control
of my life. And so I think what happened was
he turned eighteen three days before he killed Carol. Carol

(52:27):
lived within six blocks of his house. Monty didn't have
a car. The only car his mother used. His stepmother
used to go to work that night, so he needed
to exert at his control. He was now eighteen. He
was tired of doing what the state told him to do,
living where the state gold him to live, following orders,
following instructions, living by the law. He was going to

(52:49):
do what he wanted to do, and he was going
to show people how much power he had. He had
to take power back, and he wanted to do it violently,
and Carol was a convenient victim. He was more fixated
on another girl in town. They had a lot of
photographs of her, but she lived well on the outskirts

(53:09):
of town. He needed to find somebody he could go
to rape and kill if necessary, and get back home
in time for his blind father to claim that he
was home the whole time, and so it had to
be quick. He had to be able to do it
before anybody would discover his absence from the house, and

(53:31):
so Carol, living six blocks away, became a convenient target
for him. And I think that's the only reason Carol
was targeted. She had nothing to do with Monty. They
had a class together, but she was pleasant to him,
but barely spoke with him, And so there was no
other motive for killing Carol other than she was a

(53:52):
convenient target for him to show that he was going
to be in charge and nobody was going to tell
him what to do with his life.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
I thought it was there might have been some sort
of connection with him briefly not being considered such a
loner and an antisocial character at high school when he
developed this hobby, this photography hobby, and had photographed Carol
and and other girls like you say, and nobody thought

(54:25):
it was creepy of him. I just thought it was
interesting that the brief moment that he came out of
his shell somewhat, that he took photos of Carol, many
photos of Carol, but there was no interest from Carol
as a result of what he thought was impressive this hobby,

(54:45):
this skill of photography.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, and I talked to him about, you know, whether
he had a thing for Carol or not, and he
said no, he didn't. He he did say at one
point that we exchanged looks to suggest to me that
he thought that she might be interested in him. But
there was no indication from any of the classmates. Nobody

(55:09):
observed him ever asking her out or trying to flirt
with her. He did come out of his show a
little bit, according to the teacher, when he got into
photography and gave a speech about his photography skills. None
of the classmates, none of her best friends, nobody mentioned
anything about him ever hitting on her, attempting to ask

(55:29):
her out. He didn't tell me he did, so. I
don't think it was a case where he felt spurned
by her, or that somehow she didn't give him enough
attention or something like that. I think it was just
that she lived conveniently close to him and somebody that
he could rape and kill and get away with it.

(55:52):
And nearly did.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
You write that this book has been out since February
and you have I just mentioned that the Beaver's family
had appreciated what you had written. I'll just tell us
the response from the book published from people that matter
to you, what their response has been.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Yeah, it was all the family that mattered to me.
So I really wanted to go into this focused on
the family. Wanted to write a book that made the
writer or the reader see who these women really were,
understand that they were totally innocent, did nothing to cause
their own demise, and so it was important for me

(56:33):
to have that tone to the book. And I expressed
that when I talked to the families about writing the
book and wanting to focus on the victims and the case,
not on the murder. I didn't want to focus on
the graphic details of the murders themselves. I wanted to
focus on the victims and the family, and I wanted
the reader to know who these women really were. Family

(56:56):
appreciated that and spoke with me at length, gave me
a lot of photographs and shared a lot of stories
about Clementina, Max and Carol, and we're very supportive about it.
I also learned after the book came out that Susan
Weilock had a daughter ends up. When she was in

(57:17):
high school, she got pregnant. Her own mother was then
remarried living in a small town near Mount Pleasant, had
children from that marriage, and her mother was dying of cancer,
and so she Susan Weilock, decided to give her daughter
up for adoption and went to Kansas, stayed there, gave birth,

(57:40):
gave her daughter up for adoption, came back, and then
cared for her mother, her dying mother, and her mother's
children through another marriage unbeknownst to me, and I only
learned about it after the book came out when I
got a call or email from a woman who said
that she was friends with Susan's and the daughter would

(58:01):
like to come visit with me. So she did and
shared her story with me. She didn't find out about
her true birth mother until after Susan was dead, but
she reconnected with Susan's mother's other family and so now
they've been kind of reunited as a family in that sense,

(58:22):
and she's been very supportive. Susan's daughter has been very
supportive of getting the word out and wanting everybody to
know about Susan.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Yes, you've definitely achieved your goal, more than achieved your
goal with this book.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
I believe good Good.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
I want to thank you so much for this interview.
I'm a Monster in Mount Pleasant, A story of murders
and justice For those people that might want to find
out more about this story. Do you have a website?
You do any social media that they couldn't prefer to?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
I'm afraid not, because I am a federal judge. I
keep I have no social media profile for my own security.
But A Genius Book is the publisher. They have a
website you can gain access there. I also am on
Amazon and so you can pick up the book through

(59:15):
Amazon as well.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Absolutely, thank you so much. A Monster in Mount Pleasant,
A Story of Murders Injustice. CJ. Williams, thank you so
much for this interview.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Dan, you have a great evening and good night.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Thank you too,