AL AL - J.B. Beasley, 17, & Tracie Hawlett, 17, Ozark, 31 July 1999 #1

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Perhaps there were motorcycles cops in Ozark. I have a hard time seeing that. Dothan has had them, and it was a big deal when they got them. Dothan is quite a bit larger than Ozark. My town is a bit larger than Ozark. They had the patrol bicycle cops some years ago. Its been awhile. So I kind of lean towards Ozark having bicycles if they had any kind of bike patrol. But I could be wrong.

Its hard to discount the white truck, I suppose because we spent so much time sleuthing it. While the police announcing it was found and cleared just did not get much attention.

I suppose we need to move on. Which brings us to the truck stop, if the girls stopped there, and how they were taken by the killer.
 
killarney rose said:
I suppose we need to move on.
Click to expand...

Hold on a minute now hahaha


The vague explanation about the white truck only leaves me with more questions. I was under the impression that the driver came forward. He almost certainly had to for that truck to be id'd two years after the fact but it don't say this in the article it says was located. why not give him credit if he did come forward. its puzzling, maybe we haven't found the right article yet.

Also no mention of the driver submitting to a DNA sample, you go all the way to Delaware only to examine a vehicle which if involved probably wouldn't have had any evidence in it anyway? If they didn't acquire a sample while up there I sure hope there was a good reason. Maybe they did and it was not reported IDK. Ozark a long way from Delaware especially in a small truck, I'd love to know what it was in town for.

OK, we can move on now.
 
I think we don't have to move on from the white truck - but maybe focus on other angles that may be unclear to us if we keep trying to make it fit.

I'm not surprised the driver of the truck would take to years to come forward even if he was innocent. I'm not American but I do have a map and Delaware is indeed quite a way from Ozark and Dothan. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know about his truck being such a key piece of evidence until later. I also think an innocent person could be afraid of ending up being blamed. :twocents:

I don't know that they didn't get any DNA samples from the driver. They may have. If we believe the driver was involved, there's always the possibility that the DNA didn't match due to there being more than one perp or due to the DNA found being placed there later, two possibilities that have been discussed in other pages of this thread.

The fact that the man was there despite that being a long way from home could have so many explanations, like visiting friends or relatives, passing through on a road trip... so many explanations. That doesn't mean he didn't do it but by itself it's not enough to say he did.

It seems likely to me that the pick-up was a red herring, especially after what DD posted above. We don't have to move on but we can lay it aside for a moment and put aside our feelings about how much time we put into discussing it.

:twocents:
 
LR1 said:
Also no mention of the driver submitting to a DNA sample, you go all the way to Delaware only to examine a vehicle which if involved probably wouldn't have had any evidence in it anyway?
Click to expand...

Any evidence of involvement that may have been found on or inside the truck after the murders could have been lost/destroyed during the two-year search. On the other hand, if the owner of the truck was involved, he had ample time to get rid of the vehicle — yet, as the article implies, he did not. How much does this speak to the owner's innocence?
 
LR1 said:
A few things in this early article that I wasn't aware of or had forgotten about.

http://groups.google.com/forum/#!top...VfI/discussion

From a interview with JB's sister.

Quote:
Miss Beasley loved to dance and planned to study it in college, before
moving to New York, Chicago, or Atlanta - places where she could pursue a
career in dance, Ms. Beasley said. She had recently turned in her notice at
her office job to begin teaching dance.

If I'm reading this right JB was or had been employed in the days/weeks that preceded the murders. I wonder what her office job was.

also in the article, and I had forgotten about this damage.

Quote:
Police have determined that the two friends were shot while in the car's
trunk. There was damage to the car, but nothing that prohibited it from
being driven. Spivey said there is a good chance that the girls were killed
in one place and then driven to Herring Avenue, where the car was found

I can see no damage to the rear of the car in the footage they showed in recent videos on the anniversary. It shows several seconds of the rear of the car with people milling about. So the damage related or not must be towards the front of the car. I Would love to see this damage, the fact that its in the article tells me they think it did occur that night.

side note - also in the video is a shot from behind the car with both doors open, you can clearly see the drivers window is rolled down almost all the way and the passengers side is rolled all the way up. I believe some articles had the drivers window as being cracked or slightly opened.

Quote:
The two girls would have begun their senior year Tuesday at Dothan's Northview High School, which is on a year-round system.

I was under the impression that they had spent the past few months out of school, if I understand this correctly they possibly only had a few weeks of being out.
Click to expand...

BBM.

This is a very valuable post, LR1. The new — or at least different — information in the article you linked to illustrates that what we know as the facts may not be facts after all, whether due to misquoting/inaccurate reporting (very common, especially in the early stages of an investigation — and this was a very early article) or intentionally misleading information released through the media by LE as an investigative tactic.

To focus on the damage to the car:

The sources I'd based my information on before seeing this post all said there was no damage to the car. Interestingly, a quick check back through these sources revealed that all those that reported no damage were television segments. I'm going to keep looking, but so far, it looks like a report of no damage has not, to the best of my knowledge, appeared in print.

If there was indeed damage to the car that was not there previous to the night of 7/31/99, that changes everything. Frustrating.
 
DimeDetective said:
Any evidence of involvement that may have been found on or inside the truck after the murders could have been lost/destroyed during the two-year search. On the other hand, if the owner of the truck was involved, he had ample time to get rid of the vehicle — yet, as the article implies, he did not. How much does this speak to the owner's innocence?
Click to expand...

It points to innocence to some extent. On the other hand if he knew he got away clean and in his mind there was no possibility of finding any links to the girls in the truck DNA or otherwise then getting rid of it could bring more suspicion than keeping it.

Whether he came forward or was located, as hard as it is to say I have to trust their judgement as to his involvement. Maybe he or someone he might have been visiting in the area watched the AMW episode that aired in Aug. 2000 or a re-air the next year and realized they were looking for the truck. I haven't seen the episode but the truck was likely shown in it.


DimeDetective said:
the damage to the car:
Click to expand...

When I came across that article and read about the damage I cant say it came as a new revelation when I read it, at least it didn't feel that way. It was more like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. I don't know when but it had to be an article or discussion I read years ago about the damage. The funny thing about it is the article itself. If somebody wouldn't have copied and pasted it in that group 14 years ago that reporting might have been lost forever. I doubt you could find it in the archives of the site it originated from.

The damage could be everything or nothing at all. I guess we're left to speculate about what might have caused it, its just hard to theorize not knowing what the damage is.
 
I don't think the truck driver would voluntarily come forward if he was guilty. He was far away enough that he could just carry on and nobody would randomly see his truck and put two and two together. The truck in the surveillance video is extremely blurry, the logo is really hard to see, etc. To me it just looked like a generic white truck in the beginning so IMO only the perp and people who knew he had that truck and had been in the area would be able to identify it.

Regarding the no damage thing, I remember a discussion about it a few pages back. The opinion I have now because of it is that the difference in reporting may be due to the damage being minor and on one side of the car only, the sort of thing that someone looking at the scene without guidance or just looking at pictures wouldn't notice but which would be relevant to LE.
 
It seems the white truck was cleared so I am reluctant to mentioned it again however.........I mentioned it before, the logo looks much like the Amtrac Railroad Contractors logo. They are incorporated in Delaware with the main? office in Hagerstown Maryland. I suppose that could possibly be their truck or not and if so it was cleared by LE?

Just a data point I find interesting along the theory of out of town suspect(s)
 
DH and I were talking about this case again. I've been thinking about it for the last few days.

I think Archangel's comment in the previous post could use some looking into. I wonder if LE made the same connection and checked it out?

I keep going back to Herring St and why the girls were left there. And I read in a blog about the the proximity of this site to the hospital parking lot, could the perp have left the girls on Herring St because he was parked at the hospital.....have we discussed this? Sorry, I wanted to post this but dont have time this morning to go back in the thread to check...I really, really believe that this was a crime of opportunity. So that leads me to believe the killer had ties to the neighborhood the girls were found in.

Unless there was more than one killer, and one parked at the hospital and waited for the other to leave the car and walk back to the hospital........then the hospital leads me to think more that it was a planned killing rather than a chance killing....
 
Very facinating case indeed-
I think it's possible,that the person that killed them,although not interested in them sexually, still got sexually aroused by the act of killing them,and may have masturbated at the scene, or in some fashion, depositing the semen.

I think it's possible, the person that killed them impersonated a police officer, and flashed his lights to pull them over, or maybe had some sort of EMT Blue light,etc. Their window was cracked,perhaps they cracked it to respond to the man walking up to the car,but felt uneasy about him, or might have thought he was not really a cop. I think he got them out of the car, and they made a break for it,which would explain mud and other debris on their clothes/shoes. I think he likely ordred them into their trunk, and then shot them when they got in.
 
Morph, that theory makes it sound more like an execution. So then we have to think who would want to just kill them, and for what purpose? Its almost like going in circles..... do you have any thoughts on that? welcome to the thread!
 
killarney rose said:
Morph, that theory makes it sound more like an execution. So then we have to think who would want to just kill them, and for what purpose? Its almost like going in circles..... do you have any thoughts on that? welcome to the thread!
Click to expand...

Killarney, I understand that it does sound like an execution. That's the whole problem with this case, is the apparent lack of motive. The girls were not robbed, they were not raped. Assuming they were not mixed up in drug trade, or other illegal activities, then there simply is not a motive.

My website deals specifically with the Zodiac Killer. The Zodiac did not rape his victims, he did not rob them. His only interest was in killing people. I think the murderer of these two girls was a similar type of killer. The only motive here seems, killing for the sake of killing. I am no FBI profiler, but in dealing with the Zodiac all of these years, and seeing the lack of motive in his crimes, this same thing seems to be at work here in the Beasley/Hawlett case,at least that is my take on it.

One thing to note, if he wanted to kill just to kill, he also could have just shot them outside and left them there. Maybe he wanted to bring them someplace else, but for whatever reason,changed his mind.
 
DimeDetective wrote "The fact that J.B.'s driver's side window was down (according to different reports, the window was down a few inches to halfway to all the way down) coupled with the fact that her driver's license was found on the dashboard, as if she'd pulled it out to show someone, makes this a very strong theory"

I somehow missed that license part before, which makes me very confident in my theory that the perp pulled these women over posing as a cop. I would look for similar cases in the area in which women were pulled over, or attempts were made to pull them over by somebody posing as a cop. Again, a guy that has a EMT or fire Dept light inhis dash, one of those blue lights,etc. There's a good chance this guy has done this more than once, and possibly,before or after these murders, was arrested for it. I don't think this double murder was the perp's one and only attack
 
But why kill them this time? There have been no other murders with the same MO in this area. Yes, similar murders that possibly could be tied together, but different enough that I have never believed there is a connection.

So then, was it someone transient to the area? Dime Detective has brought that theory up. That would make it more likely the abduction did not occur in town, but out near hwy 231 commercial area as they headed back to Dothan. And if that was t he case, how would a transient know about Herring St? Circles....
 
Here's the kind of guy they need to look for-

From today's news no less:
Monday, February 10, 2014
"Prattville police have arrested a Millbrook man on charges of impersonating a police officer.
Police say Douglas Newton was impersonating a police officer at the Prattville Target.
At this time, police do not believe it is related to the police impersonater case on Interstate 65 - where a man tried to pull over two people, and even harm one of them before she got away.
Newton is being held in the Elmore County Jail"

Prattville is not real close to where J.B. & Tracie were killed, but, as you see, the article mentions an interstate 65 case that is not too far from where they were killed. I am not familiar with that area, maybe somebody that is can chime in here.

Here's the I65 incident,almost 1 year ago to the day-
http://www.wsfa.com/story/21117393/...icer-who-tried-to-pull-woman-from-car-on-i-65

The 2nd guy has to be considered a suspect in this case,I hope they find him and ID him

 
Prattville area Is 1-2 hours from Ozark. It is a straight shot though.

I think way back up thread a guy like this was brought up. I remember reading in the paper that a local was arrested for doing this, but didnt harm anyone. I just can't remember when it was in reference to the girls being killed.
 
I am from Dothan. Was born and raised there and didn't move away until 2007. I was a freshman the year they'd have been seniors. I remember the moments of silence we had for them at the DHS vs NHS football game that year. My cousin was 1 year older than them and best friends with them. A few insights from me:

1) ozark has and had no motorcycle gangs. Ozark is the kind of place you tip cows and go jugging on a river.
2) these cities shut.down.entirely at 9pm. You could easily ride around and not see a soul.
3). I worked at JC penny's in the men's dept my senior year of high school and it is in wiregrass commons mall directly on 231. In that year, not long after passing the mall headed north you were quickly looking at nothing but woods. It's very built up now. Not so back then.
4). If any students had cell phones at that point in time it would be NHS people. That school had zoned to it the much much more affluent areas. There could have easily been people at that party with a cell phone that they called.
5) ozark is a small town. Everybody knows everybody for generations back. If there was a crazy/sketchy person in the area that was capable of murder, everyone would point the finger. I got a ticket close to there once when I was 16 and someone recognized my car and called my parents and informed them before I got home. These are small towns.
6) I know this from experience: what if they did turn off somewhere and got stuck in mud. Boys of these towns have wenches on their trucks because they so go mudding so often and can unstuck their friends. Maybe they waved a truck down such as this and picked the wrong person. Pants and shoes are nasty from getting out of the car for it to be yanked out.
7) 231 is often traveled. It's the major highway connecting to Panama City and Florida beaches. People most often know of Dothan for reason. Would be easy for someone passing through to turn off towards ozark. Between Troy and Dothan ozark is the only other town/city.

Sorry if some of these points are redundant. Was trying to wait till the end to post but am on page 15 with no end in sight.
 
Welcome to the thread-and to Web Sleuths StitchingMama!

Thank you for the fresh insight on this case !I hope you will stay around to gives us a pair of fresh eyes!
 
I just talked to my friend who danced with JB and reiterated what I remember and don't see mentioned anywhere. People make comments about JB not living with parents because she "couldn't live by rules" but I believe the issue was with the mother and not JB. The mother is reported to be a long time alcoholic and very, very unstable. She's made a show of herself around town. Everyone I know that I've heard talk to JB hasn't said anything to make her seem like the "out of control" type. I know she'd teach some of the younger dance classes at the studio.

Just FYI.
 
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