June 24, 2024 • 41 mins
Alan Beaman was 21 years old when his life was forever altered. Going into his senior year in college, he suddenly found himself ensnared in the Normal, IL murder investigation of his former girlfriend, Jennifer Lockmiller. Despite a total lack of evidence, Alan was arrested just weeks before his graduation. He was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to 50 years.
Through it all, his parents Carol and Barry fought for their son and did their best to keep his spirits high. Come back for part 2 and the conclusion of the Beaman’s incredible story.
Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Lauren Brei Pacheco. This new episode of Wrongful
Conviction covers the unbelievable case of Alan Beeman. Such an
epic story that we needed to release it as a
two parter, Part one right now and part two coming
next week. If you're listening in the Wrongful Conviction Feed,
stay right here. For those of you who've been listening
to these episodes in the Murder and Illinois Feed, you'll
(00:23):
need to head over to Wrongful Conviction for part two
and for the rest of my season With Wrongful Conviction,
tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the US have
been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for
crimes even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it
(00:47):
like to be one of those imprisoned people, and what's
it like to be their ally, the one outside committed
to fighting for their freedom. I'm Lauren Brighte Pacheco, and
this is Wrongful Conviction. Alan Beaman was twenty one years
old when his life was forever altered. Going into his
(01:10):
senior year in college specializing in theatrical lighting design, he
suddenly found himself ensnared in a police investigation into the
death of his former girlfriend. Twenty two year old Jennifer
lock Miller was found dead August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three,
in her apartment in Normal, Illinois. She had been strangled
with a clock radio cord and stabbed in the chest
(01:32):
with scissors, even though at the time, Allan was living
with his parents for summer break in Rockford, Illinois, over
one hundred and thirty miles away from the murder. The
following May, Normal Illinois police arrested Beeman on murder charges
related to the death of Lockmiller an hour after he
completed his final exam, just weeks before what would have
(01:53):
been his graduation. Despite the lack of any evidence of
his guilt, in nineteen ninety five, Beeman was con of
murder and sentenced to fifty years. He would serve thirteen
years before the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction and
the state opted to drop murder charges. It is my
pleasure to welcome Alan and his parents, Barry and Carol
(02:16):
to wrongful conviction. Thank you guys for joining me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thank you for having us, Thanks Lauren for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Now I want to take a step back and Alan,
let's go back a bit. Just tell me how you
would describe your upbringing and your family before all of
this happened.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I grew up in a household that was very conservative
and very involved in our community. I was raised to
take the high road, to treat my neighbors with respect
and dignity, and to withhold judgment until I've gotten to
(02:55):
know a person.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And what were your passions growing up? What were you
obsessed with?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We grew up out in the country, surrounded by pastures
and cornfields. You know, you hear people talk about Generation
X being the feral children, And I was exactly that
left the house at seven in the morning and didn't
come back until seven o'clock at night. And if my
parents saw me in between, it was because I was
(03:21):
either hungry or had to go to the bathroom or both.
From the age of four, I was swinging a hammer.
My parents and I and my brother built our house. Really,
I was driving floorboard nails, and if it wasn't something
that was safe for me to do, like a circular saw,
I was still being instructed on how to do it.
(03:43):
My mom was a teacher and used a very socratic
method and got me to explore the things that I
was curious about without trying to tell me what to think.
So you know, I'm certainly grateful to them for that upbringing,
for the support they've given me over the years.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Wow, I can't believe you guys built your house together.
That is definition of a hands on family with a.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Lot of help from our friends and family and Barry.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I know that Carol was a teacher, But what was
your profession by trade?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I started with a degree in physics from Illinois Wesleyan University,
and that led me into the Air Force. After I
got out of the Air Force, I ended up spending
the rest of my career as a quality engineer, both
in mechanical activities and in software.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, Allen, you have an engineer for a father, teacher
for a mother. How did you end up getting drawn
to theatrical lighting design?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
My mom told me that I was very dramatic, and
I started getting involved with the drama club in middle school.
I think getting involved in theater and just being naturally handy,
I got appointed to do things. Oh you know how
to do this? Okay, here you go. But as I
got even older, going into college, I just lost interest
(05:08):
in the performance side and really got sucked into the
technical aspects, especially lighting.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I've read that you were able to combine your love
of music with a vision you had for your ultimate
career in terms of working on design for concerts.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Eventually, by the time I was in college, that's what
I wanted to do. I wanted to do lighting design
for rock bands. Not that I wouldn't want to do
that for plays and other things as well, but I
think I always verged on the motion of lighting, so
I think I would have naturally gravitated towards lighting for music,
(05:47):
a feature of that that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Takes us really pretty much to write about. When your
family was abruptly altered by what ended up befalling Alan,
So you're twenty one years old and you're just weeks
away from graduation, about to start your adult life. How
prepared were you or your family for what you'd collectively
(06:13):
go through for the decades that would follow.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
We were not prepared at all to deal with the
legal conundrums that came upon us at all. Growing up
in that rural, conservative environment, I was raised to trust
law enforcement. We did not ever perceive it as a
hostile element that would overtake our lives and attempt to
(06:40):
destroy us.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
For me, my experience was just with the police officers
that served in my school, and they were my helpers
if I had difficulty in a classroom. It wasn't something
that even entered my mind in terms of entanglement with
the police.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So just to set then the stage, and just in
terms of your relationship with Jennifer, how long had you
guys dated? How long had you known each other? Were
you in contact at the time of her murderer?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
I met Jennifer, I want to say, in the spring
of my sophomore year in college, when we were both
going to Illinois Wesleyan and we were friends. Nothing romantic
occurred until the summer after that school year, and we
(07:34):
started dating later in that summer and then throughout my
junior year. We dated for about a year and we
broke up about a month before she was murdered.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
So just that circumstance probably made you a little bit
of an easy target in terms of a lazy investigation.
But how would you categorize your relationship and the way
it ended? Was it volatile or there was their animosity?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
What you're asking there is speaking to the initial suspicion
we had an on again off again. Relationship, we broke
up several times. There were a lot of public conflicts
that we had in front of other people, friends and
even family, and so I think it was only natural
(08:29):
for a police investigator to initially say, hey, we got
to talk to this guy, and if that had been
where it ended, it would have made perfect sense. Unfortunately,
as you mentioned, the potential for a lazy investigation with that,
you know, the statistics probably tell them that most of
the time it's the ex boyfriend, and that's great, that
(08:50):
gives you a lead to start with, but that is
not evidence. Is that should not be indicative of probable cause,
And so I think they just jumped to that conclusion
very early on and did not go through the steps
that are necessary to rule things out with scientific method.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Do you remember how you collectively found out as had
happened in the first place.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
At the time of the murder, how he found out?
It started with a knock at the door. Alan had
just left to go meet some friends at Denny's who
were leaving for college the next day, and within the
hour of that knock on the door, we received a
phone call from the county jail, where they had Alan
(09:37):
for questioning and Alan said he had been allowed to
call us, and he told us he was being questioned
about something and he didn't know where his car was
and could we come pick him up. He had been
picked up on the road going into town to meet
his friends and question.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That was about two o'clock in the morning, as I recall, Yes, so.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
You thought your son was out with friends and he
was a actually at the police station. Alan, how did
you were just pulled over?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah? I was about halfway to the city limits when
I noticed that there was a squad car behind me.
I tried very hard to make sure I drove exactly
the speed limit while he was behind me, and then
crossed over into the city limits and was immediately pulled over.
So then I thought I have long hair, you know.
I thought it was the typical stuff that I had
(10:26):
experienced while in college. But this time the officer was
standing in front of me with his side arm drawn
and there was a police dog, and I was told
to get out of the car. They patted me down
and then maybe asked if there were any weapons.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What was going through your head?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I was in shock. I really didn't have a coherent
thought going on in my head, but when I was
placed in the squad car, I finally gathered up my
senses and I asked the officer, Hey, can you tell
me what the is about? And he said, some detectives
from Normal want to talk to you about a homicide.
So I'm in shock, sitting in the squad car, thinking
(11:09):
who do I know in Normal that could have possibly
been involved in a homicide to where they want to
talk to me? And I could think of a few people,
and then of course there was Jennifer. I stayed in
that squad car right there until a detective's car came
up and it had passengers who were Tony Daniels, a
(11:33):
detective from Normal, and Tony's partner. I got into that car,
I was still handcuffed.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So you're handcuffed. They've not told you why, what You've
been accused of? Nothing?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Nothing, I know. I'm in handcuffs and they want to
talk to me about a homicide. And I guess if
I were a little more street wise, I would have
realized that I was a suspect. But I didn't grow
up in the environment where I ever expected to be
a suspect. I didn't know what was going on. I'm
just supposed to speak when I'm spoken to, and respect
(12:10):
the police officers who are doing their job.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But even though you had long hair, you didn't exactly
have a long wrap sheet. In fact, you had no
criminal history, that is correct. When did they tell you
that Jennifer had been murdered? And how did they tell you?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
When I got into the squad car with Tony Daniels,
I asked him what is this about? And he simply said, well, Allen,
we want to talk to you about your friend. And
it seemed very cryptic to me. I felt like he
did not really want to answer my question yet, and
so I opted to be polite and again respect law enforcement,
(12:50):
and I did not press the issue. We rode back
to the police station in Rockford and I was placed
in an interrogation room with a couple of chairs and.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Questioned for how long before you could call your parents?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I want to say it was about an hour and
a half. And he gave me my Miranda rights and
all that, and I probably could have walked out right
then and there, but again, that's not something you do
when you've grown up to respect law enforcement and you've
got nothing to hide. And he started asking me questions
and most of the questions were either about my whereabouts
(13:26):
throughout the week or about Jennifer. And eventually I could
figure out from the line of questioning something was going
on with Jennifer, and they had told me there was
a homicide, and so I pieced that together. And he
challenged me, like, how come you haven't asked me if
she's okay? And I said, is Jennifer dead? And he
(13:49):
said yes. And I again still in shock, but now
even more so in shock and being accused of now
knowing something that I'm not supposed to know, just because
I can put pieces together. And so he did this
whole very sort of evasive and then accusatory, and then
evasive and then accusatory. And he would tell me one
(14:10):
thing and then he would change it and tell me, oh, no,
that's not really what it is, it's this. And so
he told me she was dead. He told me she
was alive in a hospital calling my name. After about
an hour and a half of this interview, where it
really didn't seem like he was interested in hearing what
(14:31):
I really had to say, but was just trying to
provoke me and wanted me to say what he wanted
me to say, I finally said, you said that I'm
not under arrest, so that means I don't have to stay.
So I'm leaving. And I got up and I left.
But I walked out of the police station and I
(14:52):
didn't know where my car was, and I could find
a payphone, and so I called my parents.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So all of this at this point early morning drama.
Did it ever occur to you, Barry or you Carol
that this was anything other than a horrible event and
a crazy misunderstanding. Did you think was it in terms
of what Alan had just been through.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
The next day, Alan was supposed to sing at church,
and we asked him when we got him home, what
are you going to do about that? And you want
us to call and cancel? And he said no, he
was going to go ahead. We went to church and
he did his solo and then we talked to our
pastor about what do we do next, and he got
(15:43):
us in touch with a lawyer, a family friend who
kind of advised Alan at that point and advised us
to just keep Alan away from the police at that time,
and they did show up at our house Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Sunday afternoon, my father and I were trying to move
a cabinet into the house that my parents had brought
from their home to us, and these two huge men
walked up and said, can we help you with that,
and picked it up and moved it in forrest, set
it in a corner, and then told us they'd like
(16:17):
to talk to Alan. And I said, I got some
concerns about this.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
And you all knew that, Allan, you were what over
one hundred and thirty miles closer to one hundred and
forty miles away from the scene of where this tragedy occurred,
and you're living at home for the summer, So I
should think that you all just thought, obviously it was
impossible that you were involved.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
We all believed in my family that the detectives would
do their job, investigate the case, and they are professionals
and they know what they're doing, and that at a
certain point they would realize, yeah, this is the wrong
way to go, and that they would move on. Unfortunately,
(17:06):
I think, you know, and I'm editorializing here, there was
so much pressure on the department and on the county
to find someone that when their investigation broke down and
their ability to properly investigate failed they just decided, we
(17:31):
got this guy here, he looks pretty crazy. We can
probably make him look bad, and that's our guy.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Alan. You mentioned having long hair, and your sense of
righteous indignation was also growing. How do you think that
combination could have made things worse for you?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I was a dirty hippie in college, and I think,
you know, it did probably add to the opportunity to
make me a target. But I was also really frustrated
that they were accusing me of something I didn't do,
and I was very angry about that, and I reacted poorly,
(18:10):
which should be understandable coming from an adolescent essentially who's
being accused of something.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And dealing with grief.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, it was denied that I couldn't grieve because I
learned about her death by being accused of murdering her,
and I never had the opportunity to experience a neutral
(18:38):
individual perception of her death, to say, you know, man,
somebody that I cared about has died and I'm really grieving.
And even though things didn't end great between us, I
didn't wish this on her, you know, I didn't have
the opportunity to do that, and under the circumstances with
the police scrutiny and the obvious perception that went along
(19:01):
with that. I didn't feel comfortable going to the funeral.
I didn't feel comfortable interacting with other people that loved her,
and so I was very much alone in my grief
and I couldn't really explore it with other people who
had the same feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Which also played into the narrative exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That was again further used against me, and so they
had a lot of opportunity to say, Oh, he's really fishy,
something's not right, and unfortunately, in the current state of
our legal system, that is what passes for evidence.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So you end up going back to school and Carol
and Barry, you have been staunch defenders of your son
and supporters of him and adamant believers in his enna sence.
Did the police ever try to manipulate your opinion of
your son or try to cast out on him or
(19:57):
his character.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
No, they did not. Lieutenant Daniels, who was the was
the lead detective coming to Rockford to talk to Alan,
concluded by the time he left Rockford that Allan probably
didn't do it, and he held that belief throughout the
trial as well. Wow and eventually through depositions and things
(20:23):
like that. Became one of Allan's top cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So the nightmare certainly didn't end when you went back
for your senior year. You go back and you're trying
to focus on finishing up your degree and the police
are continuing to pop in. How and when did they
show up and how invasive was it in terms of
your ability to be a student.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It was always a surprise when they showed up. They
occasionally would have somebody from campus security with them, sanctioning
and supervisoring their visit to the campus. But I think
the first time I met Tim Freiesmeyer was outside the theater,
(21:10):
and I think he kind of was lying in wait
for me to come out a door that I typically used.
So the first time I met him, he served a
warrant to collect biological samples from me. And my thought was,
this is good. They're collecting actual evidence. That means that
(21:32):
they have something to compare this to, and my worries
will be over. They will realize, Okay, it wasn't him,
and so you know, I didn't put up any fuss.
I just went with them and I was like, all right,
this is great. And they took me to the hospital
and had a technician take samples from me. Then after
(21:53):
those were taken, they took me back to the police
station and fingerprinted me and took the miss photograph of
me that eventually appeared in the newspaper, making me look
very rough and scruffy, I should add. They picked me
up in the middle of tech week for a show
(22:14):
that I was designing for, and I had not slept
the night before. I had not slept much that week
at all. I had not bathed very much that week
at all. I had not shaved, I had not brushed
my teeth that night. I was disgusting, even more so
than usual. And that's when they took the picture of
(22:35):
me that they later put in the newspaper.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
So are you looping your parents in about the frequent
visitors in your life at that point? Are you trying
to protect them?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, I'm just trying to protect not loop.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yes to protecting. I didn't believe it was really a
big problem because I was so confident that they were
going to to rule me out and move on.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Did you guys, though, pick up on the fact that
it was impacting Alan emotionally?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
We did not. However, we went down to campus one
weekend to see the show that he had been working on.
He wasn't there. He was over in Peoria at a
friend's wedding that weekend, and we went to the show
and one of Alan's faculty advisors said, do you realize
(23:32):
how often he's being questioned? And that's the first we
knew that he was being questioned frequently. And also on
that first we found out that he was being taken
out of classes from a professor who had a no
cut policy, which eventually impacted Alan's graduation as well.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
And then you get arrested. Can you tell me how?
And when that went down?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It was on my life last day, my last final
exam for my theater history class. And when I left
the final exam, I went to the dining hall and
while I was sitting eating my dinner, Tim Freiesmeyer came
into the dining hall, walked up to me and said, Hey,
can I talk to you for a minute, And so
(24:20):
I was like, fine, let's let's go talk. And so
I walked out of the dining hall with him, and
I was walking towards a door that I typically used
that would get us outside, and he was like, no,
we need to go this way. So I followed him
to the other side of the building, and when we
walked out of the door, there was like twenty squad
cars out there, just a whole bunch of cops out there.
(24:41):
But I just remember looking around and seeing cops everywhere,
so I thought, Okay, this is different. And he said,
I need you to come down to the station with me,
and I said, I don't think I want to go
down to the station with you. And he said, I'm
going to have to place you under arrest if you're
not going to come with me, And I said, then
(25:02):
you need to arrest me here. So he handcuffed me
right there in front of the student center, in front
of all of my classmates and professors and people coming
and going around the campus, put me in his car
and took me to the Normal Police department. And I
don't even know how that works with jurisdiction because it
(25:24):
was actually in Bloomington, but I think he just wanted
to be credited for the arrest or something. I don't know,
but he took me back to Normal and then booked
me there and I made my phone call.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Tell me about that phone call, You guys who answered
the phone Carol or Barry, as Carol did I did.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
I had just gotten home from my last graduate class
and found out that my thesis had been accepted. And
I honestly can't tell you right at this point whether
we spoke in person or whether you had left a
message on the phone, but it was get in touch
with Bill, my lawyer. I've been arrested. And that was
(26:08):
the end of my celebration of graduation. And Barry was
at a meeting at the public observatory. And I called
Bill right away, and I called Barry at the observatory,
and within an hour we were on our way to
normal to try to get Alan out. We couldn't. We
(26:30):
had to wait a while to get him out. But
that was a drastic change to life at.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
That point, In that moment of finding out that your
son had been arrested, when you got in the car
and you drove there, what was that reality like for you,
(26:58):
that kind of sense of helplessness to realize that you
can't just say you've made a mistake. He's my son
and he's coming home with us. What was that helplessness
like for you?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
How would you explain it?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Total frustration determination on my part. There had to be
a way.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
How long did they hold you there before I assume
that you posted bond.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I was in the county jail. I want to say,
maybe ten.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Days, yeah, probably until the arraignment.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
There was a bond hearing and several of my classmates
were called and some of my family members were called
to testify about what sort of person I was, to
help the court determine I guess, whether I was a
flight risk, or whether there was some risk that I
might harm some other person if I were out on bond,
and those sorts of things. The state's attorney, of course,
(27:59):
tried to get it to where there was no bond,
and my attorney asked for a bond, but the judge
set the bond at one million dollars. So at that
point I thought, well, this is not going to happen.
But my uncle owned several grocery stores, and he made
(28:21):
the decision to take money out of that business. If
you have a one million dollar bond, it means you
need to put up one hundred thousand dollars to be
able to bond out. And so he put up the
money from his businesses and risked those businesses, and he
wasn't a rich man. He had a good business that
(28:43):
he had built over many of many years and worked
very hard to build, and he did that for me,
and I'm forever grateful.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
It's the ripple effect of these injustices, how they impact.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
The uncle Alan was talking about as my brother. I'm
the baby sister. He's ninety three now. But he was
determined that he was going to help us whatever way
he could, And so I guess I knew family sticks together,
(29:18):
and if it's in God's will, it will happen. And
it takes a long time sometimes, but but yeah, a
lot of frustration and a lot of concern, but always
determination that this was going to be taken care of.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
What was the transition like for you, Alan, in those
ten days before you bonded out, What was it like
being held?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I reacted very irrationally to the confinement and probably rationally
to the injustice. I was very angry and terrified. At
the same time. I was desperately pleaded with anybody that
walked past my cell that there had been a terrible
mistake and that they had the wrong guy. I was
(30:07):
going through nicotine withdrawal and just absolutely beside myself about
the wrongness of my circumstances. I just panicked. Whenever I
talked to my parents on the phone. I was not
very nice. I demanded that they get me out of here.
And it was not my proudest moment. And I don't
(30:30):
know how much processing I did with any of it
at that time. There's a lot that I've gone through
in the last thirty years that I still haven't completely
processed as far as that's concerned.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Understandably, he was angry, he was scared, and we were
scared for him.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I was feeling like a failure as a father. I
couldn't do anything to get him out of there.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
I do remember that we were told we could bring
him some clothes, long underwear. You remember that we wanted
to make sure he was warm because he said it
was cold in the cell. Other than that's one of
those odd things you remember.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, no, because you want to provide whatever comfort in
a situation like that you can. What were some of
the realizations, the realities you had to come to terms
with as you headed into trial. What most surprised you
(31:33):
about that process? And Carol, why don't you start.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I'm not sure anything really surprised us, other than I
couldn't figure out why the logic of everything didn't make
sense to the jurors.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
It has been professionally compared to the Trial of the
Knave from Lewis Carroll, where everything that came up was
obviously suspicious. This is suspicious, and that is suspicious. And
oh my gosh, he's defending himself that is suspicious. And
(32:16):
he's angry about being accused. That is suspicious. And there
was a very a consistent pattern throughout the entire trial
that there was no evidence. It was entirely made up
of conjecture. They would take excerpts from letters that I
(32:40):
had written, and they would leave out the parts of
the letter that didn't fit with what they wanted, and
only present the parts of the letter that they felt
could make me look bad. They even had I had
been scribbling on the back of her address book. And
I don't even remember what when this was. It may
(33:01):
have been early on in our relationship, it may have
been later, but Pearl Jam's ten had just come out,
and I was trying to write down the lyrics to
the song. And you remember, back when you didn't have
the internet, you had to play the tape stop it
rewind it, play it again and try. And Eddie Vetter
is really hard to understand sometimes. And so I was
(33:23):
writing down the lyrics to the song black and they
found that at her apartment and they accused me of
writing it as a poem about her. And so I
probably should have been felt honored to be accused of
being Eddie Vetter. It was just it for me, capitalized
(33:44):
the ridiculousness and the ignorance that went into the developing
of their case in.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Terms of how how Alan was then portrayed. Am I
write in recalling that they actually compared you to Adolph
Hitler in the closing statements.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
You are correct?
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
During the closing arguments, Jim Suke not only compared me
to add Off Hitler, but also quoted scripture from the
Bible about how the devil is a roaring lion going
about to seek whomever he may be may destroy. There's
so much theater involved in the way this case was prosecuted,
(34:33):
and probably most cases involve some level of that, and
I understand that, but there was no evidence. And this
is the frustrating thing, is that you can get up
and you can just present nothing but conjecture and suspicion
and get everybody all upset with the comparisons, and the
(34:54):
jury will remove themselves from their responsibility to to actually
expect proof beyond a reasonable.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Doubt, because then it becomes emotional.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I did not expect that. I genuinely walked into this
trial believing that I was going to be vindicated because
the evidence did not point to me.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco. You
can listen to this and all the Lava for Good
podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So take me
(35:41):
to the moment of the verdict.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The trial was about three weeks and the jury deliberate,
deliberated for more than a couple of days, and I
think we were going into the Final four tournament.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
It was the weekend of the Final four tournament, April.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
First, and on April Fool's Day. I was a real
April fool for believing that our justice system was going
to vindicate me.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
When the verdict was read, I mouthed to the state's attorney,
which I should not have done. It's a wonder I
didn't get reprimited for it. How do you sleep at night?
But that's as they were handcuffing Alan back and taking
him out to where we would not see him again
(36:31):
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
What went through your body, Barry, when you heard a
guilty verdict?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I heard the judge reading it, and I could swear
to this day that as he started to read that,
he said this says guilty, as if to say, I
didn't expect that. And I will also point out that
all the women on that jury, we're crying is that
(37:01):
verdict was read. What's that tell you?
Speaker 3 (37:05):
I do remember after the verdict was read, there was
an audible gasp in the room collectively, and then it
was pretty quickly chaos after that, where bailiffs were moving
through the room towards me and people were standing up,
and I looked behind me, after collecting myself to encourage
(37:30):
my family and say, hey, I'm gonna be okay. Just
the motion, just the step I took towards my family
as I stood up, was too much for the police
officers in the room, and I was immediately affronted from
several directions by officers yelling move it and pushing me
(37:51):
out of the room. Into the bullpen, and of course
I had been coming in on my own recognissance throughout
that trial, and so this was very sudden change, in
a very drastic, almost violent interaction.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Immediately immediately, you're seen as an entirely different.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Human, not human.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I was in just a state of disbelief at that point.
But and I do remember walking out of there. We'd
been fairly willing to talk to the press during a
lot of this. We didn't say a lot, but we
talked with them, and they're standing there with their microphones
and everything, and they just wave and say, no, not now,
(38:37):
we can't talk now, and we walked on out.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You were sentenced to fifty years, yes, to life, which
at that point in your lives, Carolin Barry, was very
much a life sentence for both of you. Yes, I
can't even imagine how you processed that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I just felt my life's over. I have no right
to go, do anything or be anything from this point on.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And I can very much understand the struggle because, as
another mother told me, she served every single day with
her daughter in a different way, her life stopped.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Now for me, it was a little different. I got
my dander up at that point. I got angry, and
I was determined that I was going to do whatever
I could to help defend Alan and to get him out.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
And eventually they did, but it would take more than
a decade. Coming up on part two of Alan Beeman's
Unbelievable Wrongful Conviction, Alan's case attracts the attention of a
very famous criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Jeffer Dangen called my mom and told her I don't
like him, but I believe him.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Which leads to an equal the incredible opportunity to enlist
law students on his behalf.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Said, I've got a chance to go to Northwestern and
I can take along a case.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But even with all that help, Alan Beeman would still
sit in prison for thirteen years and fight for decades
more to clear his name, all ending in a headline
making settlement but not necessarily justice. Thank you for listening
(40:35):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Please support your
local innocence organizations and go to the links in the
episode description to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and
Kevin Wardis, as well as our producers Annie Chelsea, Kathleen Fink,
and Jackie Paully. This series is produced, edited, and hosted
(40:58):
by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer is Kara Kornhaber.
Story editing by Hannah Bial, research by Shelby Sorels, mixing
and sound design by Nick Massetti, with additional production by
Jeff Clyborne. Our theme music is by Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us across all social media platforms at
Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
(41:21):
follow me on all platforms at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful
Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Hey, it's Lauren Brei Pacheco. This new episode of Wrongful
Conviction covers the unbelievable case of Alan Beeman. Such an
epic story that we needed to release it as a
two parter, Part one right now and part two coming
next week. If you're listening in the Wrongful Conviction Feed,
stay right here. For those of you who've been listening
to these episodes in the Murder and Illinois Feed, you'll
(00:23):
need to head over to Wrongful Conviction for part two
and for the rest of my season With Wrongful Conviction,
tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the US have
been wrongfully convicted and are being held in captivity for
crimes even as they adamantly maintain their innocence. What's it
(00:47):
like to be one of those imprisoned people, and what's
it like to be their ally, the one outside committed
to fighting for their freedom. I'm Lauren Brighte Pacheco, and
this is Wrongful Conviction. Alan Beaman was twenty one years
old when his life was forever altered. Going into his
(01:10):
senior year in college specializing in theatrical lighting design, he
suddenly found himself ensnared in a police investigation into the
death of his former girlfriend. Twenty two year old Jennifer
lock Miller was found dead August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three,
in her apartment in Normal, Illinois. She had been strangled
with a clock radio cord and stabbed in the chest
(01:32):
with scissors, even though at the time, Allan was living
with his parents for summer break in Rockford, Illinois, over
one hundred and thirty miles away from the murder. The
following May, Normal Illinois police arrested Beeman on murder charges
related to the death of Lockmiller an hour after he
completed his final exam, just weeks before what would have
(01:53):
been his graduation. Despite the lack of any evidence of
his guilt, in nineteen ninety five, Beeman was con of
murder and sentenced to fifty years. He would serve thirteen
years before the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction and
the state opted to drop murder charges. It is my
pleasure to welcome Alan and his parents, Barry and Carol
(02:16):
to wrongful conviction. Thank you guys for joining me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thank you for having us, Thanks Lauren for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Now I want to take a step back and Alan,
let's go back a bit. Just tell me how you
would describe your upbringing and your family before all of
this happened.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I grew up in a household that was very conservative
and very involved in our community. I was raised to
take the high road, to treat my neighbors with respect
and dignity, and to withhold judgment until I've gotten to
(02:55):
know a person.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And what were your passions growing up? What were you
obsessed with?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We grew up out in the country, surrounded by pastures
and cornfields. You know, you hear people talk about Generation
X being the feral children, And I was exactly that
left the house at seven in the morning and didn't
come back until seven o'clock at night. And if my
parents saw me in between, it was because I was
(03:21):
either hungry or had to go to the bathroom or both.
From the age of four, I was swinging a hammer.
My parents and I and my brother built our house. Really,
I was driving floorboard nails, and if it wasn't something
that was safe for me to do, like a circular saw,
I was still being instructed on how to do it.
(03:43):
My mom was a teacher and used a very socratic
method and got me to explore the things that I
was curious about without trying to tell me what to think.
So you know, I'm certainly grateful to them for that upbringing,
for the support they've given me over the years.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Wow, I can't believe you guys built your house together.
That is definition of a hands on family with a.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Lot of help from our friends and family and Barry.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I know that Carol was a teacher, But what was
your profession by trade?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I started with a degree in physics from Illinois Wesleyan University,
and that led me into the Air Force. After I
got out of the Air Force, I ended up spending
the rest of my career as a quality engineer, both
in mechanical activities and in software.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So, Allen, you have an engineer for a father, teacher
for a mother. How did you end up getting drawn
to theatrical lighting design?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
My mom told me that I was very dramatic, and
I started getting involved with the drama club in middle school.
I think getting involved in theater and just being naturally handy,
I got appointed to do things. Oh you know how
to do this? Okay, here you go. But as I
got even older, going into college, I just lost interest
(05:08):
in the performance side and really got sucked into the
technical aspects, especially lighting.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I've read that you were able to combine your love
of music with a vision you had for your ultimate
career in terms of working on design for concerts.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Eventually, by the time I was in college, that's what
I wanted to do. I wanted to do lighting design
for rock bands. Not that I wouldn't want to do
that for plays and other things as well, but I
think I always verged on the motion of lighting, so
I think I would have naturally gravitated towards lighting for music,
(05:47):
a feature of that that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Takes us really pretty much to write about. When your
family was abruptly altered by what ended up befalling Alan,
So you're twenty one years old and you're just weeks
away from graduation, about to start your adult life. How
prepared were you or your family for what you'd collectively
(06:13):
go through for the decades that would follow.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
We were not prepared at all to deal with the
legal conundrums that came upon us at all. Growing up
in that rural, conservative environment, I was raised to trust
law enforcement. We did not ever perceive it as a
hostile element that would overtake our lives and attempt to
(06:40):
destroy us.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
For me, my experience was just with the police officers
that served in my school, and they were my helpers
if I had difficulty in a classroom. It wasn't something
that even entered my mind in terms of entanglement with
the police.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
So just to set then the stage, and just in
terms of your relationship with Jennifer, how long had you
guys dated? How long had you known each other? Were
you in contact at the time of her murderer?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
I met Jennifer, I want to say, in the spring
of my sophomore year in college, when we were both
going to Illinois Wesleyan and we were friends. Nothing romantic
occurred until the summer after that school year, and we
(07:34):
started dating later in that summer and then throughout my
junior year. We dated for about a year and we
broke up about a month before she was murdered.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
So just that circumstance probably made you a little bit
of an easy target in terms of a lazy investigation.
But how would you categorize your relationship and the way
it ended? Was it volatile or there was their animosity?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
What you're asking there is speaking to the initial suspicion
we had an on again off again. Relationship, we broke
up several times. There were a lot of public conflicts
that we had in front of other people, friends and
even family, and so I think it was only natural
(08:29):
for a police investigator to initially say, hey, we got
to talk to this guy, and if that had been
where it ended, it would have made perfect sense. Unfortunately,
as you mentioned, the potential for a lazy investigation with that,
you know, the statistics probably tell them that most of
the time it's the ex boyfriend, and that's great, that
(08:50):
gives you a lead to start with, but that is
not evidence. Is that should not be indicative of probable cause,
And so I think they just jumped to that conclusion
very early on and did not go through the steps
that are necessary to rule things out with scientific method.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Do you remember how you collectively found out as had
happened in the first place.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
At the time of the murder, how he found out?
It started with a knock at the door. Alan had
just left to go meet some friends at Denny's who
were leaving for college the next day, and within the
hour of that knock on the door, we received a
phone call from the county jail, where they had Alan
(09:37):
for questioning and Alan said he had been allowed to
call us, and he told us he was being questioned
about something and he didn't know where his car was
and could we come pick him up. He had been
picked up on the road going into town to meet
his friends and question.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That was about two o'clock in the morning, as I recall, Yes, so.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
You thought your son was out with friends and he
was a actually at the police station. Alan, how did
you were just pulled over?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah? I was about halfway to the city limits when
I noticed that there was a squad car behind me.
I tried very hard to make sure I drove exactly
the speed limit while he was behind me, and then
crossed over into the city limits and was immediately pulled over.
So then I thought I have long hair, you know.
I thought it was the typical stuff that I had
(10:26):
experienced while in college. But this time the officer was
standing in front of me with his side arm drawn
and there was a police dog, and I was told
to get out of the car. They patted me down
and then maybe asked if there were any weapons.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What was going through your head?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I was in shock. I really didn't have a coherent
thought going on in my head, but when I was
placed in the squad car, I finally gathered up my
senses and I asked the officer, Hey, can you tell
me what the is about? And he said, some detectives
from Normal want to talk to you about a homicide.
So I'm in shock, sitting in the squad car, thinking
(11:09):
who do I know in Normal that could have possibly
been involved in a homicide to where they want to
talk to me? And I could think of a few people,
and then of course there was Jennifer. I stayed in
that squad car right there until a detective's car came
up and it had passengers who were Tony Daniels, a
(11:33):
detective from Normal, and Tony's partner. I got into that car,
I was still handcuffed.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So you're handcuffed. They've not told you why, what You've
been accused of? Nothing?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Nothing, I know. I'm in handcuffs and they want to
talk to me about a homicide. And I guess if
I were a little more street wise, I would have
realized that I was a suspect. But I didn't grow
up in the environment where I ever expected to be
a suspect. I didn't know what was going on. I'm
just supposed to speak when I'm spoken to, and respect
(12:10):
the police officers who are doing their job.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But even though you had long hair, you didn't exactly
have a long wrap sheet. In fact, you had no
criminal history, that is correct. When did they tell you
that Jennifer had been murdered? And how did they tell you?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
When I got into the squad car with Tony Daniels,
I asked him what is this about? And he simply said, well, Allen,
we want to talk to you about your friend. And
it seemed very cryptic to me. I felt like he
did not really want to answer my question yet, and
so I opted to be polite and again respect law enforcement,
(12:50):
and I did not press the issue. We rode back
to the police station in Rockford and I was placed
in an interrogation room with a couple of chairs and.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Questioned for how long before you could call your parents?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I want to say it was about an hour and
a half. And he gave me my Miranda rights and
all that, and I probably could have walked out right
then and there, but again, that's not something you do
when you've grown up to respect law enforcement and you've
got nothing to hide. And he started asking me questions
and most of the questions were either about my whereabouts
(13:26):
throughout the week or about Jennifer. And eventually I could
figure out from the line of questioning something was going
on with Jennifer, and they had told me there was
a homicide, and so I pieced that together. And he
challenged me, like, how come you haven't asked me if
she's okay? And I said, is Jennifer dead? And he
(13:49):
said yes. And I again still in shock, but now
even more so in shock and being accused of now
knowing something that I'm not supposed to know, just because
I can put pieces together. And so he did this
whole very sort of evasive and then accusatory, and then
evasive and then accusatory. And he would tell me one
(14:10):
thing and then he would change it and tell me, oh, no,
that's not really what it is, it's this. And so
he told me she was dead. He told me she
was alive in a hospital calling my name. After about
an hour and a half of this interview, where it
really didn't seem like he was interested in hearing what
(14:31):
I really had to say, but was just trying to
provoke me and wanted me to say what he wanted
me to say, I finally said, you said that I'm
not under arrest, so that means I don't have to stay.
So I'm leaving. And I got up and I left.
But I walked out of the police station and I
(14:52):
didn't know where my car was, and I could find
a payphone, and so I called my parents.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So all of this at this point early morning drama.
Did it ever occur to you, Barry or you Carol
that this was anything other than a horrible event and
a crazy misunderstanding. Did you think was it in terms
of what Alan had just been through.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
The next day, Alan was supposed to sing at church,
and we asked him when we got him home, what
are you going to do about that? And you want
us to call and cancel? And he said no, he
was going to go ahead. We went to church and
he did his solo and then we talked to our
pastor about what do we do next, and he got
(15:43):
us in touch with a lawyer, a family friend who
kind of advised Alan at that point and advised us
to just keep Alan away from the police at that time,
and they did show up at our house Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Sunday afternoon, my father and I were trying to move
a cabinet into the house that my parents had brought
from their home to us, and these two huge men
walked up and said, can we help you with that,
and picked it up and moved it in forrest, set
it in a corner, and then told us they'd like
(16:17):
to talk to Alan. And I said, I got some
concerns about this.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
And you all knew that, Allan, you were what over
one hundred and thirty miles closer to one hundred and
forty miles away from the scene of where this tragedy occurred,
and you're living at home for the summer, So I
should think that you all just thought, obviously it was
impossible that you were involved.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
We all believed in my family that the detectives would
do their job, investigate the case, and they are professionals
and they know what they're doing, and that at a
certain point they would realize, yeah, this is the wrong
way to go, and that they would move on. Unfortunately,
(17:06):
I think, you know, and I'm editorializing here, there was
so much pressure on the department and on the county
to find someone that when their investigation broke down and
their ability to properly investigate failed they just decided, we
(17:31):
got this guy here, he looks pretty crazy. We can
probably make him look bad, and that's our guy.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Alan. You mentioned having long hair, and your sense of
righteous indignation was also growing. How do you think that
combination could have made things worse for you?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I was a dirty hippie in college, and I think,
you know, it did probably add to the opportunity to
make me a target. But I was also really frustrated
that they were accusing me of something I didn't do,
and I was very angry about that, and I reacted poorly,
(18:10):
which should be understandable coming from an adolescent essentially who's
being accused of something.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And dealing with grief.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well, it was denied that I couldn't grieve because I
learned about her death by being accused of murdering her,
and I never had the opportunity to experience a neutral
(18:38):
individual perception of her death, to say, you know, man,
somebody that I cared about has died and I'm really grieving.
And even though things didn't end great between us, I
didn't wish this on her, you know, I didn't have
the opportunity to do that, and under the circumstances with
the police scrutiny and the obvious perception that went along
(19:01):
with that. I didn't feel comfortable going to the funeral.
I didn't feel comfortable interacting with other people that loved her,
and so I was very much alone in my grief
and I couldn't really explore it with other people who
had the same feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Which also played into the narrative exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That was again further used against me, and so they
had a lot of opportunity to say, Oh, he's really fishy,
something's not right, and unfortunately, in the current state of
our legal system, that is what passes for evidence.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So you end up going back to school and Carol
and Barry, you have been staunch defenders of your son
and supporters of him and adamant believers in his enna sence.
Did the police ever try to manipulate your opinion of
your son or try to cast out on him or
(19:57):
his character.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
No, they did not. Lieutenant Daniels, who was the was
the lead detective coming to Rockford to talk to Alan,
concluded by the time he left Rockford that Allan probably
didn't do it, and he held that belief throughout the
trial as well. Wow and eventually through depositions and things
(20:23):
like that. Became one of Allan's top cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
So the nightmare certainly didn't end when you went back
for your senior year. You go back and you're trying
to focus on finishing up your degree and the police
are continuing to pop in. How and when did they
show up and how invasive was it in terms of
your ability to be a student.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It was always a surprise when they showed up. They
occasionally would have somebody from campus security with them, sanctioning
and supervisoring their visit to the campus. But I think
the first time I met Tim Freiesmeyer was outside the theater,
(21:10):
and I think he kind of was lying in wait
for me to come out a door that I typically used.
So the first time I met him, he served a
warrant to collect biological samples from me. And my thought was,
this is good. They're collecting actual evidence. That means that
(21:32):
they have something to compare this to, and my worries
will be over. They will realize, Okay, it wasn't him,
and so you know, I didn't put up any fuss.
I just went with them and I was like, all right,
this is great. And they took me to the hospital
and had a technician take samples from me. Then after
(21:53):
those were taken, they took me back to the police
station and fingerprinted me and took the miss photograph of
me that eventually appeared in the newspaper, making me look
very rough and scruffy, I should add. They picked me
up in the middle of tech week for a show
(22:14):
that I was designing for, and I had not slept
the night before. I had not slept much that week
at all. I had not bathed very much that week
at all. I had not shaved, I had not brushed
my teeth that night. I was disgusting, even more so
than usual. And that's when they took the picture of
(22:35):
me that they later put in the newspaper.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
So are you looping your parents in about the frequent
visitors in your life at that point? Are you trying
to protect them?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, I'm just trying to protect not loop.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yes to protecting. I didn't believe it was really a
big problem because I was so confident that they were
going to to rule me out and move on.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Did you guys, though, pick up on the fact that
it was impacting Alan emotionally?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
We did not. However, we went down to campus one
weekend to see the show that he had been working on.
He wasn't there. He was over in Peoria at a
friend's wedding that weekend, and we went to the show
and one of Alan's faculty advisors said, do you realize
(23:32):
how often he's being questioned? And that's the first we
knew that he was being questioned frequently. And also on
that first we found out that he was being taken
out of classes from a professor who had a no
cut policy, which eventually impacted Alan's graduation as well.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
And then you get arrested. Can you tell me how?
And when that went down?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
It was on my life last day, my last final
exam for my theater history class. And when I left
the final exam, I went to the dining hall and
while I was sitting eating my dinner, Tim Freiesmeyer came
into the dining hall, walked up to me and said, Hey,
can I talk to you for a minute, And so
(24:20):
I was like, fine, let's let's go talk. And so
I walked out of the dining hall with him, and
I was walking towards a door that I typically used
that would get us outside, and he was like, no,
we need to go this way. So I followed him
to the other side of the building, and when we
walked out of the door, there was like twenty squad
cars out there, just a whole bunch of cops out there.
(24:41):
But I just remember looking around and seeing cops everywhere,
so I thought, Okay, this is different. And he said,
I need you to come down to the station with me,
and I said, I don't think I want to go
down to the station with you. And he said, I'm
going to have to place you under arrest if you're
not going to come with me, And I said, then
(25:02):
you need to arrest me here. So he handcuffed me
right there in front of the student center, in front
of all of my classmates and professors and people coming
and going around the campus, put me in his car
and took me to the Normal Police department. And I
don't even know how that works with jurisdiction because it
(25:24):
was actually in Bloomington, but I think he just wanted
to be credited for the arrest or something. I don't know,
but he took me back to Normal and then booked
me there and I made my phone call.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Tell me about that phone call, You guys who answered
the phone Carol or Barry, as Carol did I did.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
I had just gotten home from my last graduate class
and found out that my thesis had been accepted. And
I honestly can't tell you right at this point whether
we spoke in person or whether you had left a
message on the phone, but it was get in touch
with Bill, my lawyer. I've been arrested. And that was
(26:08):
the end of my celebration of graduation. And Barry was
at a meeting at the public observatory. And I called
Bill right away, and I called Barry at the observatory,
and within an hour we were on our way to
normal to try to get Alan out. We couldn't. We
(26:30):
had to wait a while to get him out. But
that was a drastic change to life at.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
That point, In that moment of finding out that your
son had been arrested, when you got in the car
and you drove there, what was that reality like for you,
(26:58):
that kind of sense of helplessness to realize that you
can't just say you've made a mistake. He's my son
and he's coming home with us. What was that helplessness
like for you?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
How would you explain it?
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Total frustration determination on my part. There had to be
a way.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
How long did they hold you there before I assume
that you posted bond.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I was in the county jail. I want to say,
maybe ten.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Days, yeah, probably until the arraignment.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
There was a bond hearing and several of my classmates
were called and some of my family members were called
to testify about what sort of person I was, to
help the court determine I guess, whether I was a
flight risk, or whether there was some risk that I
might harm some other person if I were out on bond,
and those sorts of things. The state's attorney, of course,
(27:59):
tried to get it to where there was no bond,
and my attorney asked for a bond, but the judge
set the bond at one million dollars. So at that
point I thought, well, this is not going to happen.
But my uncle owned several grocery stores, and he made
(28:21):
the decision to take money out of that business. If
you have a one million dollar bond, it means you
need to put up one hundred thousand dollars to be
able to bond out. And so he put up the
money from his businesses and risked those businesses, and he
wasn't a rich man. He had a good business that
(28:43):
he had built over many of many years and worked
very hard to build, and he did that for me,
and I'm forever grateful.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
It's the ripple effect of these injustices, how they impact.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
The uncle Alan was talking about as my brother. I'm
the baby sister. He's ninety three now. But he was
determined that he was going to help us whatever way
he could, And so I guess I knew family sticks together,
(29:18):
and if it's in God's will, it will happen. And
it takes a long time sometimes, but but yeah, a
lot of frustration and a lot of concern, but always
determination that this was going to be taken care of.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
What was the transition like for you, Alan, in those
ten days before you bonded out, What was it like
being held?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I reacted very irrationally to the confinement and probably rationally
to the injustice. I was very angry and terrified. At
the same time. I was desperately pleaded with anybody that
walked past my cell that there had been a terrible
mistake and that they had the wrong guy. I was
(30:07):
going through nicotine withdrawal and just absolutely beside myself about
the wrongness of my circumstances. I just panicked. Whenever I
talked to my parents on the phone. I was not
very nice. I demanded that they get me out of here.
And it was not my proudest moment. And I don't
(30:30):
know how much processing I did with any of it
at that time. There's a lot that I've gone through
in the last thirty years that I still haven't completely
processed as far as that's concerned.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Understandably, he was angry, he was scared, and we were
scared for him.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I was feeling like a failure as a father. I
couldn't do anything to get him out of there.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
I do remember that we were told we could bring
him some clothes, long underwear. You remember that we wanted
to make sure he was warm because he said it
was cold in the cell. Other than that's one of
those odd things you remember.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, no, because you want to provide whatever comfort in
a situation like that you can. What were some of
the realizations, the realities you had to come to terms
with as you headed into trial. What most surprised you
(31:33):
about that process? And Carol, why don't you start.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I'm not sure anything really surprised us, other than I
couldn't figure out why the logic of everything didn't make
sense to the jurors.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
It has been professionally compared to the Trial of the
Knave from Lewis Carroll, where everything that came up was
obviously suspicious. This is suspicious, and that is suspicious. And
oh my gosh, he's defending himself that is suspicious. And
(32:16):
he's angry about being accused. That is suspicious. And there
was a very a consistent pattern throughout the entire trial
that there was no evidence. It was entirely made up
of conjecture. They would take excerpts from letters that I
(32:40):
had written, and they would leave out the parts of
the letter that didn't fit with what they wanted, and
only present the parts of the letter that they felt
could make me look bad. They even had I had
been scribbling on the back of her address book. And
I don't even remember what when this was. It may
(33:01):
have been early on in our relationship, it may have
been later, but Pearl Jam's ten had just come out,
and I was trying to write down the lyrics to
the song. And you remember, back when you didn't have
the internet, you had to play the tape stop it
rewind it, play it again and try. And Eddie Vetter
is really hard to understand sometimes. And so I was
(33:23):
writing down the lyrics to the song black and they
found that at her apartment and they accused me of
writing it as a poem about her. And so I
probably should have been felt honored to be accused of
being Eddie Vetter. It was just it for me, capitalized
(33:44):
the ridiculousness and the ignorance that went into the developing
of their case in.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Terms of how how Alan was then portrayed. Am I
write in recalling that they actually compared you to Adolph
Hitler in the closing statements.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
You are correct?
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
During the closing arguments, Jim Suke not only compared me
to add Off Hitler, but also quoted scripture from the
Bible about how the devil is a roaring lion going
about to seek whomever he may be may destroy. There's
so much theater involved in the way this case was prosecuted,
(34:33):
and probably most cases involve some level of that, and
I understand that, but there was no evidence. And this
is the frustrating thing, is that you can get up
and you can just present nothing but conjecture and suspicion
and get everybody all upset with the comparisons, and the
(34:54):
jury will remove themselves from their responsibility to to actually
expect proof beyond a reasonable.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Doubt, because then it becomes emotional.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I did not expect that. I genuinely walked into this
trial believing that I was going to be vindicated because
the evidence did not point to me.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Lauren Bright Pacheco. You
can listen to this and all the Lava for Good
podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to
Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So take me
(35:41):
to the moment of the verdict.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The trial was about three weeks and the jury deliberate,
deliberated for more than a couple of days, and I
think we were going into the Final four tournament.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
It was the weekend of the Final four tournament, April.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
First, and on April Fool's Day. I was a real
April fool for believing that our justice system was going
to vindicate me.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
When the verdict was read, I mouthed to the state's attorney,
which I should not have done. It's a wonder I
didn't get reprimited for it. How do you sleep at night?
But that's as they were handcuffing Alan back and taking
him out to where we would not see him again
(36:31):
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
What went through your body, Barry, when you heard a
guilty verdict?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I heard the judge reading it, and I could swear
to this day that as he started to read that,
he said this says guilty, as if to say, I
didn't expect that. And I will also point out that
all the women on that jury, we're crying is that
(37:01):
verdict was read. What's that tell you?
Speaker 3 (37:05):
I do remember after the verdict was read, there was
an audible gasp in the room collectively, and then it
was pretty quickly chaos after that, where bailiffs were moving
through the room towards me and people were standing up,
and I looked behind me, after collecting myself to encourage
(37:30):
my family and say, hey, I'm gonna be okay. Just
the motion, just the step I took towards my family
as I stood up, was too much for the police
officers in the room, and I was immediately affronted from
several directions by officers yelling move it and pushing me
(37:51):
out of the room. Into the bullpen, and of course
I had been coming in on my own recognissance throughout
that trial, and so this was very sudden change, in
a very drastic, almost violent interaction.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Immediately immediately, you're seen as an entirely different.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Human, not human.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I was in just a state of disbelief at that point.
But and I do remember walking out of there. We'd
been fairly willing to talk to the press during a
lot of this. We didn't say a lot, but we
talked with them, and they're standing there with their microphones
and everything, and they just wave and say, no, not now,
(38:37):
we can't talk now, and we walked on out.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You were sentenced to fifty years, yes, to life, which
at that point in your lives, Carolin Barry, was very
much a life sentence for both of you. Yes, I
can't even imagine how you processed that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I just felt my life's over. I have no right
to go, do anything or be anything from this point on.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And I can very much understand the struggle because, as
another mother told me, she served every single day with
her daughter in a different way, her life stopped.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Now for me, it was a little different. I got
my dander up at that point. I got angry, and
I was determined that I was going to do whatever
I could to help defend Alan and to get him out.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
And eventually they did, but it would take more than
a decade. Coming up on part two of Alan Beeman's
Unbelievable Wrongful Conviction, Alan's case attracts the attention of a
very famous criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Jeffer Dangen called my mom and told her I don't
like him, but I believe him.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Which leads to an equal the incredible opportunity to enlist
law students on his behalf.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Said, I've got a chance to go to Northwestern and
I can take along a case.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
But even with all that help, Alan Beeman would still
sit in prison for thirteen years and fight for decades
more to clear his name, all ending in a headline
making settlement but not necessarily justice. Thank you for listening
(40:35):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Please support your
local innocence organizations and go to the links in the
episode description to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and
Kevin Wardis, as well as our producers Annie Chelsea, Kathleen Fink,
and Jackie Paully. This series is produced, edited, and hosted
(40:58):
by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Our senior producer is Kara Kornhaber.
Story editing by Hannah Bial, research by Shelby Sorels, mixing
and sound design by Nick Massetti, with additional production by
Jeff Clyborne. Our theme music is by Jay Ralph. Be
sure to follow us across all social media platforms at
Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also
(41:21):
follow me on all platforms at Lauren Bright Pacheco. Wrongful
Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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