Investigators Link a String of Unsolved Murders to Online Job Posting | American Justice | A&E

On the night of November 6, a man walked out of a wooded area in rural southeastern Ohio. He had gone to a farm, knocked on the door and asked for help when our Sheriff arrived on the scene. Scott Davis tells the story of what had happened to him. He had met these people and they had shot him and then chased him for hours through the woods until he was able to escape under the cover of darkness. He had been in South Carolina for about 15 years when my mom said he could use some. a little help here in Ohio, so I started asking people in Ohio if they knew of any jobs.

I just wanted to have something to do. People kept saying, man, go on Craigslist, there are all kinds of jobs, that's why I went on there. I started looking and came across a job there that said taking care of 688 acres in southern Ohio 300 a week, furnished trailer, utilities paid, that's it, sounds pretty good so I responded to the Craigslist ad and started sending emails back and forth to this person named Jack we finally started talking on the phone, we were talking about motorcycles and I told them I had a nice Dyna Low Rider bike. He said there would be a place to park.

Enter the barn. She said just bring as many electronics as you can. she needed, like a television, her stereo, she wanted to make sure it was clear that it was just going to be me and I decided to go ahead and move to Ohio on the morning of November 6th. I think I probably ended up getting there. Around 8am I met up with Jack and a young man at Shoney's. He said she was his nephew. He said let's go inside and have something to eat after breakfast. The men get into Jack's white Buick to take a look at the farm.

That Scott will manage we head towards the farm. I'm paying attention. We started on a nice two lane country road, it was paved and then we made another turn and then the road got smaller. We continued driving down this country road and there. There was no cell phone service right there, there were no gates, she looks at his nephew and Jack says, Do you remember where I got that deer last week? He said, I want you to move out of the way so Jack and I can get out of the car. We started walking these trails and the father came back, we got the smallest trail there was and now it's getting to where there's no longer a path, it wasn't a second later, I heard a click, I knew that sound, a gun fired, hair shot The back of my neck went up and I turned around, I raised my elbow and that's when he hit me on the elbow, that's when he shot me and I looked at him, I told him what are you doing and I looked him in the eyes and his eyes were black as sharks, there was nothing in this man's eyes, nothing.

Scott runs for his life as Jack continues shooting in his direction. At that point I thought there was a misfire, so I assumed he had already gone ahead and fired all the bullets he had. I was running away, my hat fell off and I kept running and falling and running and falling. Scott stays hidden for hours when darkness finally comes, he runs several miles down the road until he finds a house, so I went and knocked on his door. these people and then they called the sheriff for me and the ambulance on the morning of November 7th.

I started my research. Scott had met with these new employers the morning of the shooting. I was able to request surveillance videos from the restaurant. I saw the video. I could clearly see Scott Davis in the lobby of the restaurant and he was with an older, bigger guy and I could see a younger person who was with him. Investigators believe they might know the older man in the video we had recently been involved in a case in US Marshals on a search for a fugitive, he had been in and out of jail and prison most of his life and after looking at the surveillance video of the same size and the same build we thought it was a good possibility that the person posing as Jack was actually that fugitive Richard Beasley Richard Beasley is a career criminal on the run, authorities in several states have been trying to track him down for months Richard Beasley is from the state of Ohio he was in prison in Texas on some charges related to weapons and theft he came back to Ohio and fled parole, ends up again in a life of crime involving robbery, drugs and prostitution.

I got a call from Deb Bruce, she had read the newspaper article about the Scott Davis shooting and then dad provided us with information that her brother David Paulie had very similar, almost identical details about how to apply for a job on Craigslist on a farm rancher she believed would be in Noble County. Deb told us that this had happened around October 22nd and 23rd and no one had heard from David since around the time he left. two weeks before the Scott Davis incident, so we were pretty sure at the time that there could be another potential victim.

I was able to get some cadaver dogs and we were able to find an area of ​​interest that one of the dogs actually indicated was in a very wet area and while the dog was digging, blood started bubbling up from the ground into the water on the surface. We dug the area and found a white male that had been very, very shallow, maybe 12 or 18 inches deep, face down, he had a wound. on the back of his head, which was consistent with what we believe was the gunshot wound, and we located a bracelet. I took it and made a phone call to Deb Bruce.

Deborah Bruce, his sister, knew instantly that that was something he wore all the time and never took it off, so she gave us a pretty good point that it was David Paulie in that shallow grave. . Investigators continue to comb the forest for additional evidence. The family of Ralph Geiger, 56, has their own concerns about where he lived. Akron, Ohio was homeless and then he saw an ad to be a caretaker on a farm, called the number and went to southern Ohio to interview and hopefully get the job. Ralph accepted the job in August 2011, but by November 2011, no one in the family had heard from Ralph for an extended period of time on November 15.

We were able to locate Richard Beasley's wife and her daughter when they were shown Shoney's surveillance video. They immediately identified that Richard Beasley was the largest man in the video and then said that I was also able to identify that young man and his name is Brogan Rafferty Brogan and Richard are friends they go to church together and she reported that Brogan Rafferty was approximately 16 to 17 years 10 days after the shooting of Scott Davis and one day after discovering David Paulie. Agency authorities searching for Richard Beasley trace his phone call to an address in Akron Ohio. I called the SWAT team and sent them to that location and Detective Mackie and I were going at breakneck speed to Akron at the same time they located Mr.

Beasley as he was walking and were able to take him down we arrived just after Richard Beasley was putting handcuffs on the street . This is the first time I've seen Richard and I'm face to face with this killer right in the middle. After all this business, we received another phone call from a woman identifying herself as Mrs. Kern. Tina Kern is the ex-wife of Tim Kern, 47, a father of three, who lives outside Akron, Ohio. Mrs. Kern informs us that he was missing and she. She last had contact with him on November 12. She told us that he responded to this ad on Craigslist for a job we were very concerned about.

Timothy Kern went missing around November 12 and Scott Davis was shot on November 6. It is extremely discouraging. Think that while you are trying to find these suspects and arrest them, they could have possibly had another victim. We now realize that we have four men with similar backgrounds who responded to what we believe to be the same advertisement for a job on a farm, a sixteen year old. Brogan Rafferty is finally coming clean about his role in a series of

murders

he is suspected of carrying out with Richard Beasley, 52. Brogan tells us during that interview that Richard Beasley does not own any property in Noble County, there was never a farm on which he had contacted Ralph Geiger and offered him this job which Ralph eventually said he would accept when Ralph arrived to his first day of work.

Beasley and Rafferty took him into the woods where they said the farm was located when I turned around. Mr. Gag was in front of Mr. Beasley and he easily pulled out the gun and with both hands he pointed it at the back of Mr. Geiger's head and uh I saw that and I closed my eyes and I heard a gunshot. I opened. The man was sitting in the stream. bed he's fine but he appears to be dead yes he was dead what we've learned from Brogan about David Paulie's murder is that this will be a source of income for Richard Beasley it's broken it's sad that they brought in David Paulie so that he could steal his possessions, steal everything he had, it was part of his plan that these people that they chose would come here with all their things and then after killing them, they would sell them, so David Pauley died simply because of the contents of his U-Haul truck.

When it came to Scott Davis, I learned that motivation was a motorcycle that consisted of different equipment and tools. He thought he could get him a lot of money. How much money do you think would be easy? He thought it would be worth it. maybe thirty thousand dollars this would have been a big payday for Richard Beasley and Brogan Rafferty when Scott survived they had to move on he just needs a little more money to get through the winter and now we have Tim Kern he told us about choose Tim. and Tim was really excited because he got the job they were taking at the place and Richard asks him how much money do you have on you and Tim was really out of luck, he basically had the clothes on his back and five dollars in his pocket, but they ended up murdering Tim Kern later that morning, it almost didn't seem like it was about the money anymore.

Tim Kerns was the most senseless murder he has ever been involved in in the months that followed, as prosecutors prepare for court, decide calls for death penalty for Richard Beasley Rogan Rafferty to be tried first judge rules he can be tried as an adult Brogan Rafferty is convicted of murder, robbery and kidnapping is sentenced to life in prison Richard Beasley is tried for the death of Three Men and the attempted murder of a fourth Scott Davis Richard Beasley is found guilty of 26 of the 29 charges indicted three weeks later he is sentenced to death abroad