March 9, 2022 • 34 mins
For more than forty years, Kim Parmer has been haunted by the prospect that someone murdered her cousin, Sandy Beal, in 1977. Award-winning reporter Melissa Jeltsen investigates the mysterious death of a teenage girl in Prince George's County, Maryland.
If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text "STRENGTH" to Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
- The story that brought Kim to Melissa
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh. Before we begin, please note this series includes talk
(00:04):
of suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening.
Do you remember this letter? I think I do. Mm hmm.
What do you want me to start? I'm writing to
(00:28):
you to request the following information in regards to the untimely, violent,
and unwitnessed death of my daughter Sanda and Bill. There's
not a day that goes by that I don't think
of her. This marks forty one years without her, with
no answers. A few years ago, Joanne Biale sent this
(00:56):
letter to the Maryland State Police. It was later given
into me by her distant cousin, who have since gotten
to know very well. I'm a reporter who covers violence
against women, and I get a lot of tips about
stories emails from people who were desperate for a journalist
to dig into what they believe to be the greatest
(01:18):
injustice of their lives. When this letter came into my possession,
I knew there was something important about it. It's kind
of weird in retrospect, but I immediately began storing it
next to my passport alongside all my most important documents.
This letter is the reason why I found myself sitting
beside Joanne in her living room a year into the pandemic,
(01:43):
talking about Sandy. And I haven't gone over any of
this because I figured was starting new here. So we'll
just go ahead and throw out the questions and I'll
give you what I can for the answers. Joanne is
eighty two and lives in rural Maynell, near the coast,
(02:04):
in a tidy house surrounded by wild blueberry fields. She's
short and sturdy, with thick white hair cropped around her ears,
and shiny blue, almost mischievous eyes. I come from a
long line of short, sturdy women, and I was immediately
at ease talking to her. These days, Joanne goes to church,
(02:25):
shops for clothes, visits with her family. Maine is where
she grew up, the place her family is from, but
back in the seventies she lived in seat Pleasant, Maryland,
in Prince George's County with her husband, Ronald, and their
four kids, Sandy, Michael, Stephen, and Ronnie. Caperani home from
(02:47):
school that day because he had a sore throat and
he didn't you know, And that's when the detective came
to the door and told me what what what happened?
He said, I've got some uh news that I don't
think the little fella should know, He said, could you
send him to your neighbors? And so he proceeded to
(03:11):
tell me. But where where? They found her? In this polelyard.
On the morning of February eleven, Frank Middleton arrived at
a utility pollard about twenty minutes away from Joanne's home.
To give you some context, pollards are where energy companies
store those tall wooden poles that are used to support
(03:33):
power lines. This yard was in a somewhat secluded spot
off the highway and surrounded by woods, which is why
it was odd that there was a car parked in
the lot when Frank arrived around nine am. And this
this fella had gone to work and found her, and
he thought she was asleep until he walked up to
the car and noticed that her glasses were up here
(03:56):
and she was disarrayed, and um, he knew that she
was gone. Sandy's car, one blue Ford Pinto, appeared to
be stuck in the mud. Cardboard had been shoved under
all four tires, and there were tire tracks all around
her car like she had been trying to drive away.
(04:17):
Sandy was in the driver's seat with her keys still
in the ignition. She had been shot in the right
side of her abdomen, with an exit wound on the
left side of her back. She was eighteen years old,
just a month shy of her nineteenth birthday. You know,
I asked that detective. I said, why wasn't Ronald and
(04:42):
I called to identify her? He said, but there was
Streem policeman there that knew who she was. And I said, well,
isn't that lovely? I'd like to know who the three
cops were at the at the scene, because when that
detective told me that, I was furious that we were
(05:08):
not called immediately to claim her in any way shape
of fall. We didn't get a chance to see her
until she was in the funeral Paba. I've never gotten
over that, and I was really rip shit about that.
(05:31):
Just a few hours after Sandy's body was discovered, Joanne
got a knock at the door. A detective told her
that Sandy was dead and that it appeared she had
taken her own life. In the short time between finding
Sandy's body and notifying her family, the cops had already
developed a working theory Sandy had died by suicide. I
(05:52):
didn't take any of their crap because I could tell
that they were hiding something. I says, you know something,
you can put any damn thing you want down. That
doesn't mean that happened that way. And I said, you
will never make me and my family and my friends
(06:13):
believe that. So I said, get the hell out of
my house. And uh. And I wasn't very nice to
him because I think they were skunking us all the
way around. From my Heart Radio, I'm Melissa Jolson, and
this is what happened to Sandy Beale an I Heart
(06:33):
original podcast, Chapter one, The Girl in the Pollard. This
is Michael. Yes, hi Michael, This is Stephen. Hi, Stephens,
how you going to hie? I wanted to meet with
the Beal family as a whole to learn more about Sandy.
(06:56):
When we first sat down, I didn't really know anything
about Sandy's case except for what was in Joanne's letter.
But I soon learned that the entire bill family shared
Joanne's suspicions. None of them believed Sandy had died by suicide,
not back then and not now. I met them at
Michael's house in the summer of to give you a
(07:20):
quick sketch of the family tree. Sandy was born first,
then a year later Michael, then Stephen. A year and
a half after that, Bang bang bang, as Joanne described it,
six years later, baby Ronnie was born. Joanne later asked
her husband Ronald, to get a vasectomy. All three of
Sandy's brothers live in Maine, within a thirty minute drive
(07:41):
of Joanne. Still, it's rare for them to get together
to talk about Sandy. What do we hope to gain
from all of this? I mean, I think that is
the question everyone might have. I'd love to hear your
own answers for it. Well, personally, I have no expectations.
These are people that's waiting on the sands of time
(08:01):
to run out on us. I don't expect anybody's gonna
serve it a day in jail, not even five minutes.
That's Sandy's youngest brother, Ronnie. He was only nine when
Sandy died, with almost a decade between them and age.
They had a special relationship. Sandy doated on Ronnie, buying
him presence and indulging him in games. In turn, he
(08:26):
idolized her. Now Ronnie is in his early fifties, and
he told me his recollections of her were beginning to fade.
She was wicked smart. I mean, you know, he can
do anything she wanted, as as you got, always got
a good grades. David, that's Stephen, Sandy's middle brother. He's
sixty and runs a printing press for the local newspaper.
(08:47):
In his spare time, he plays the drums, though he's
had a hard time finding bandmates who want to play
heavy metal. When he thinks back to his time with Sandy,
he remembers himself as a typical, annoying young her brother
always butting heads with her. It's something that pains him now,
that wasted time spent fighting. Yeah. I always look at her.
(09:13):
Is you know the big sister is you know, which
is kind of weird. I mean because Sandy he was
she was no about five five something. Yeah, but the
mental image is larger than life. Yeah, Sandy seemed to
get along, Okay, I mean she for whatever reason, you know,
(09:34):
she I don't recall of her getting picked on or
whatever during that time frame. But then again, she regularly
kick my ass anyway. So lots of people I spoke
to about Sandy mentioned this element of her personality. She
was plucky, tough, and Sandy's toughness was an asset in
(09:55):
her community. Prince George's County, where the Beals lived, is
located just outside of Washington, d C. If you're in
downtown d C, all you have to do is drive
east along Pennsylvania Avenue and you'll eventually cross into Peg County.
Keep driving for about twenty minutes, and you'll find yourself
at the Bell's former house in seat Pleasant. A white,
(10:17):
lower middle class family, the Beals lived in a modest
home in a less than desirable part of town. The
family described the neighborhood as sometimes chaotic. Crime and poverty
were concerns for residents of Seat Pleasant, and you had
to keep your wits about you, they explained. Joanne stayed
home with the four kids, and Ronald supported the family
(10:39):
working as a long haul trucker and doing construction. He
was often away from home and money was pretty tight.
He had two jobs. Sometimes he went out he had
a long haul and the other job was construction. So
he was pretty busy, and so he did the work.
(10:59):
He paid the bills. I was to go grocery shopping,
and I was to take care of the kids in
the home, and that was it. Sandy, an outgoing girl
with a knack for making friends, navigated the streets of
seat pleasant with relative ease. But make no mistakes, she
would not suffer somebody being wrong to her or messing
(11:21):
with her. And then you know she was, you know,
very smart, very pristine in her own way. But you know,
she was very fierce. I guess it was the best
way to put it. She didn't like me trying to
break her hair. She hated that. And even when a
little girl, and I was so happy because I had
a little girl, like a bridge, you know, and she
(11:42):
would take it out and I'd take it back and
I so after a while, I just let it be straggling.
She was a queen. She was the oldest and she
lets you know about it, and she was the boss.
We all shared one room, but Sandy had her own room,
and no one was loud in her room but her,
and unless you had a special permission to get in there.
(12:03):
That's Michael, Sandy's oldest brother and the sibling who was
closest to her. He's in his early sixties now and
lives near the coast with his wife, Becky. When you
get to know Michael, he has a really gentle demeanor,
but from the outside he looks tough, like the kind
of guy whose foot you wouldn't want to accidentally step
on in a bar. I do remember she like an
(12:24):
easy bake oven, and we used to make a bunch
of junk and eat it. And she had a makeup
mirror and you know, different things as you know, as
a young girl, stuff like that. We really seldom ever
thought about anything. I mean, we were just really connected.
And actually when we were I think I was fifteen
(12:45):
or so, she might have been sixteen when we found
out she was actually adopted. Joanne got pregnant with Sandy
Young around her eighteenth birthday. Sandy's biological father wasn't interested
and become a dad, but Ronald, a suitor of Joanne's
who should written letters to while he was deployed overseas,
(13:06):
was up for the task. He married Joanne when she
was eight months pregnant and raised Sandy as his own child.
When my mom told us that, and I was like,
at first, I didn't believe it. I was like, what
are you kid me? All this time my dad treated
everybody equal. And then after that, I when I found
that out, I was just even more in love with her,
(13:27):
and you know, as a sister type, you know, it's like,
you know, wow, um. She She asked a lot of
questions like what happened, why, and different things like that,
but the answers she got were it was enough to
satisfy her. Is like, Okay, Well, I mean, you know,
I'm never gonna stop loving my dad. You know, whether
(13:48):
or not he's my real dad or not, he's He's
always been my dad and he always will be my dad.
So I think we kind of got tighter. If anything,
We've been through a lot in this family. I say,
the Good Lord was good to me to give me
a life to live this long. We know what we've
(14:09):
been through and it's been hell. I hope they we
find out something. For over forty years, the Beal family
has believed that Sandy was a victim of a violent crime,
a belief fueled by the suspicion that her death was
(14:31):
covered up. Here's Stephen, the guilty carry around over time
that ship turns a fucking anger. You passed you son
him a bit, she stole from me, You sold my family.
That's since it's put that category unforgivable ship, Sandy's sudden
(14:53):
death was disorienting to her family. She lived at home
and her family saw her every day. They were intimately
familiar with her behaviors, her moods, and her values. The
Sandy they knew was optimistic and ambitious, and, like many
teen girls her age, eager for her real life, her
(15:14):
adult life to begin. She was popular, she worked part
time at the mall. She didn't appear depressed or withdrawn
or hopeless. Suicide it didn't align with her personality. And again,
she had being you know, as passionate as she wasn't
(15:36):
fierce as she was. I just would not have thought
that she would want to do something like that, you know,
I just never got it. Could not wrap my fucking
head around her doing it. Suicide seemed completely out of
character for Sandy, and the crime scene, instead of bringing closure,
(15:56):
just raised more questions. Police said Sandy had shot herself
in the right side of her abdomen, but the teen
was left handed. The family told me how they tried
to put themselves in Sandy's shoes, imagining how she would
have shot herself. Sitting in the front seat of her
(16:16):
subcompact Ford Pinto with a steering wheel in front of her, chest.
The gun would have been too heavy for Sandy to
hold and fire with her non dominant right hand. Instead,
she would have had to reach across her body with
her left hand to aim the gun at her right side.
It seemed like a clumsy way to shoot oneself. When
(16:38):
I was told what was happening, what had happened, I
was like, it's no way. It's just it's just no
way that it's gonna be. I couldn't believe it. Michael
was familiar with the gun found in Sandy's car. In fact,
all the kids in the Beale family knew about the gun.
It was owned by Sandy's father. Was a long barrel,
(17:03):
chrome black handle, black Hawk model. Very nice looking gun,
you know, like I said it was. It was long,
and it was always loaded with hollow point bullets. It
was actually white something to shoot. It was so powerful
that when I first shot it, had to hold it
(17:24):
with both hands because I didn't know what to expect
out of it. It was because of their strong familiarity
with the gun and it's large Cumberson quality that the
Bills were convinced Sandy could not have used it on herself.
It's got a lot of those three seven. Uh, you
know they have a lot of recoil, a lot largest
(17:46):
handguns you're gonna get. Yeah, you think dirty Harry mag
You know the old movie is like how pulls out
that it's about that length gun recoil with a senate fly. Yeah,
it's just physics and her left hand have never gone
over that far to be able to do that, And
the unbelievable part about her and committing suicide was just
(18:07):
too far out. The family also thought the location of
the wound was strange. Why would someone intent on suicide
shoot themselves off center in the stomach and as small
as she was in the in the size of that
gun on her non dominant hand would have been would
(18:28):
have been really hard. I mean, if if that's what
you plan on doing, was was killing yourself, that was
certainly you know, why don't you just slowly walk through
a fire and see if you'll eventually, you know, burn
the death. We don't know why Sandy had her father's
(18:49):
gone with her that evening, but her family is convinced
that whatever she was doing, she wasn't alone. When the
Bill's got her clothes back from police, they noticed that
she dressed up nicely, wearing brown gaucho slacks, a white blouse,
and calf high black suede boots that her mom had
given her for Christmas. Sandy's nails were recently manicured, painted
(19:14):
with pale pearlyzed nail polish. To the family, her choice
of outfit suggested she was meeting someone that night who
else they wanted to know could have been in the
Pollard with Sandy. Here's what they think happened. Sandy was
shot by someone else sitting beside her in the passenger seat.
(19:37):
This would explain the location of the gunshot and the
trajectory of the bullet from the right side of Sandy's
abdomen to the left side of her back. It was
the cardboard found under the wheels of Sandy's car that
solidified their doubts. The cardboard told a story of a
girl who was trying to leave the Pollard that night,
(19:57):
not one intent on suicide. My name is Kim Parmer.
I am a second cousin of Sandy Belle, and we
(20:19):
are in the home of where the origin of all
of our family began, and John's Port, Maine. I met
Kim at a hotel just up the street from Joanne's house.
Kim is a licensed therapist, and it comes through and
the way she communicates. She makes good eye contact and
speaks carefully, with kindness and warmth. She's the type of
(20:43):
person who makes you feel like you could tell her
anything and she'd never judge you. These days, Kim now
sixty four, lives in Texas and she's got a solid
tan to show for it. But she comes to Maine,
the place of her birth, whenever she can to see
the bells. See Andy has a grave marker here too,
and she visits it when she can. So this is
(21:05):
a map of um just Prince George's county, in the
area where she lived, and based on all the information
that I have of her date books or letters or
anything that had an address on it or that I
could identify, I plotted it onto the map. Where she lived,
where she went to school, where she died, where she worked.
(21:27):
This was just her little world. Kim showed me the
material she's gathered over the years, medical records, court documents,
freedom of Information Act requests, spreading them out on a
hotel bed for me to look through. She's the detective
of the family, inquisitive, diligent, and fixated on this idea
(21:49):
of justice. Joanne and I just stayed in touch intermittently
over the years, and they started sending me stuff. I
started I was asking so many questions there, like here,
just take it. And so that's you know, these files
of stuff that I have now. Kim is the entire
reason why I started looking into the story, why I
(22:11):
learned the name of Sandy Beale in the first place.
She's the one who gave me Joanne's letter, and I
just learned to keep Sandy's summary with me. I carried
it with me all the time, so if I ever
met anyone an investigator, whatever, I I just passed them out.
I first met Kim at a domestic violence conference in Texas.
(22:32):
I was there to moderate a panel with Lorraina Bobbitt,
whose experience of domestic abuse and marital rape had been
badly overshadowed by the act that had made her infamous.
If you don't know her story, I encourage you to
look it up. Something I said that night must have
resonated with Kim, because immediately after the panel she approached me.
Remember going up to you afterwards and almost running up
(22:55):
there and trying to get there before other people because
I knew you were going to get bombarded with people
asking questions, and I thought, well, who knows, maybe maybe
she would find this intriguing. I did. As a reporter,
I've written more stories than I can count about women
who have died violent deaths, and I've spent time with
their families as they've begun the grieving process. But usually
(23:17):
those cases had answers, however unsatisfying, they might feel. This
was a true mystery, one that had persisted for over
four decades. The Bell family was stuck in the unknown.
I kept finding myself looking at a photo of Sandy
that Kim gave me along with Joanne's letter. It's a
(23:39):
black and white portrait Sandy's high school graduation photo. She
has long, blonde, feathered hair with a middle part that
makes you think a fair faucet. Her mouth is poised
into a half smile, and she stares off camera like
something in the background amuses her. Almost everyone I spoke
to about Sandy mentioned how pretty she was, especially her
(24:03):
long blonde hair, and while she got attention for her looks,
it didn't seem to give her a big head. She
was just genuinely nice and friendly to those around her.
That's the Sandy Kim remembers. We didn't meet until we
were fourteen. The two girls were only six months apart,
and their friendship was a defining one. And we headed
(24:28):
off and went back to her bedroom like teenagers do,
and we sat on her bed and we just started
talking and just loved her from the start. Kim and
(24:49):
Sandy met for the first time shortly after Kim moved
to Maryland, to a neighborhood about an hour from the Bells.
The two girls spent their early teenage years going back
and forth to each other's houses and trading worlds. Living
in Maryland was you know, you would think that it's
this preppy, kind of wonderful place with Annapolis and preppy
(25:11):
clothes and everything. But I look back now and those
are some of the most traumatic, scarious times of my life.
The thanks I got exposed to it at that age.
While Kim was technically older by a few months, Sandy
often played the role of protector. And I'm like trying
to avoid it right now because i don't want to cry,
(25:32):
but I'm going to okay. Um. So, at fourteen, I'm
in this new school and it was exciting and everything,
and that um, my mom had to come pick me
up one night because I was at a friend's house
(25:53):
at a playground in the middle of a cold a
sack and I'm just like waiting for my mom and
this guy walks up and I recognize him because he's
on the football team. He's a senior on the football team.
And I, to this date don't know how it unfolded,
but before I knew it, he had his hands down
my pants and I I just remember freezing. I mean,
(26:17):
I hadn't even been kissed yet by a boy at all,
and I'm thinking all these people they're looking out their
windows watching this guy do this to me, and I
just associated. And so that weekend I went to go
see Sandy and I was telling her about it, and
I was really upset about it, and she got pissed
(26:37):
and she's like, I'm going to take care of this
for you. Kim told me that A few days later,
Sandy appeared out of the blue. She had driven an
hour to Kim's neighborhood to confront the football player who
sexually assaulted Kim. Sandy was ready for a fight, but
he was nowhere to be found. It didn't matter to
Kim though, the fact that Sandy showed up for her
(27:00):
it was enough. That's the part that I remember the most,
And I'm just I never had been around anybody like
that that protected me like that. She I knew she
was going to take care of me. It was a
very short relationship because she lost her life. A few
years later. Kim left Maryland to go to college in
(27:25):
Illinois while Sandy was still in high school. The distance
led the two girls to fall out of frequent contact. Still,
after police found Sandy's body, Kim was one of the
first people that joined called to let her know what
had happened. I just remember getting that call from Joanne
that Sandy had died, and I just remember being shocked
(27:47):
and like, what do what do you mean? You know?
Eighteen year olds don't die from a gunshot wound. Kim
tried desperately to get back to Maryland for the funeral,
but couldn't afford the journey. I remember looking into the
flights and they were way too expensive. So I looked
into the train, but it was ninety dollars from Chicago
to Washington, d C. And it should have it could
(28:09):
have just been ten thousand. I didn't have it She
missed the funeral, but kept in regular contact with Joanne.
She died on the eleventh, on a Friday, very early
in the morning. But she had gone out the tenth
Thursday night, so something happened like right at midnight. She
was probably alone for eight or nine hours, hurting and
(28:32):
shot and dark. She had to be scared to death.
Just that should matter happen to anybody. Joanne was notified
of Sandy's death when a detective came to her house.
He asked if she and her husband, Ronald could come
(28:53):
to the precinct later that day see when he came
into tell us, tell me what happened. He said, when
your husband gets home, will you guys come over to
the barracks. And everything was laid out on the table.
Sandy's personal belongings, items collected from her car were spread
(29:15):
out like evidence for her parents to see. And among
her things was a letter. It was written to a
man named Doug and addressed to his place of work,
the Maryland State Police Department. He had a uniform on.
He gave her a sweet talk, and it went to
the surprise of her family. Sandy was in a relationship.
(29:40):
Doug was ten years older than her and married with
a young child. This discovery agitated Sandy's grieving parents and
left them with a slew of questions, but at the precinct,
Joanna Ronald were left with the impression that the investigation
was basically complete, no more answers would be forthcoming. It's
calm for police to speak with the boyfriend in unnatural
(30:02):
deaths such as this. When women are murdered, it's far
more likely to be at the hands of a husband
or boyfriend than anyone else. But as far as Joanne knew, Dug,
the state trooper, was never interviewed in the course of
the investigation, which seemed particularly odd when you considered the
location of Sandy's death. The Pepco utility yard was only
(30:25):
a mile down the road from the State Police barracks
where Doug worked, and as the family soon learned, the
Pollard was a popular State trooper hangout. And then the
place where she died. Um, that was the most revealing
to see that literally there across the street from each other,
the Maryland State Police barracks of the man that she
(30:46):
was dating, and then the place that she died. That
was a well known place where police gathered to you know,
I guess have privacy for whatever reason. How police do
their jobs in the aftermath of an unexpected death can
(31:07):
have a profound and lasting impact on the families of victims.
Sandy's death was a defining moment for the Beal family,
but what came next, what they feel was an absence
of a proper investigation, compounded their trauma. Without confidence in
the police, the Beal family suspected a conspiracy. A guide
(31:32):
for investigators published by the Department of Justice in explains
how essential it is to ensure that the proper steps
and procedures are taken at the scene of a death. Quote,
A few things in our democracy are as important as
ensuring that citizens have confidence in their institutions in a crisis.
(31:52):
For many individuals, the death of a loved one is
just such a crisis. I wanted to understand how the
family and the police could have such starkly different interpretations
of the same events. This chasm, I felt deserved scrutiny.
One thing I was sure of the Bell family, even
(32:14):
after forty five years, was adamant that there was something
suspicious about Sandy's death, and because of that they had
endured decades of uncertainty, and to be honest, I sensed
it too. I thought it was strange that Sandy was
shot in the stomach, and I questioned whether she would
have been able to kill herself the way cops said
(32:34):
she did. It seemed like there was more to Sandy's
story than her family knew after so many years. I
didn't know what kind of answers I'd find. But tucked
away in the tattered stack of papers Kim collected were
clues to Sandy's past, clues that offered me a rare
glimpse into Sandy's private life, clues written by Sandy herself,
(33:07):
if she hadn't written that damn note to ship head.
On our next episode, we learned about Doug and his
relationship with Sandy, and I speak to the detective in
charge of Sandy's case. I would compare my skills as
a homicide detective against anybody in the world. Scotland Yard,
(33:34):
New York City, anywhere, Fraud, Atlanta where they're loaded, rhythm,
anywhere you go, there's nobody, there's nobody any better. It
turns out he had a lot to say. What happened
(33:56):
to Sandy Beale is hosted by Me Melissa Jolson. It's
written and produced by me and Katrina Norvelle. The podcast
is edited by Abu Safar. Sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistance
by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu A s
(34:20):
I M A d O. Thanks so much for listening.
Oh. Before we begin, please note this series includes talk
(00:04):
of suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening.
Do you remember this letter? I think I do. Mm hmm.
What do you want me to start? I'm writing to
(00:28):
you to request the following information in regards to the untimely, violent,
and unwitnessed death of my daughter Sanda and Bill. There's
not a day that goes by that I don't think
of her. This marks forty one years without her, with
no answers. A few years ago, Joanne Biale sent this
(00:56):
letter to the Maryland State Police. It was later given
into me by her distant cousin, who have since gotten
to know very well. I'm a reporter who covers violence
against women, and I get a lot of tips about
stories emails from people who were desperate for a journalist
to dig into what they believe to be the greatest
(01:18):
injustice of their lives. When this letter came into my possession,
I knew there was something important about it. It's kind
of weird in retrospect, but I immediately began storing it
next to my passport alongside all my most important documents.
This letter is the reason why I found myself sitting
beside Joanne in her living room a year into the pandemic,
(01:43):
talking about Sandy. And I haven't gone over any of
this because I figured was starting new here. So we'll
just go ahead and throw out the questions and I'll
give you what I can for the answers. Joanne is
eighty two and lives in rural Maynell, near the coast,
(02:04):
in a tidy house surrounded by wild blueberry fields. She's
short and sturdy, with thick white hair cropped around her ears,
and shiny blue, almost mischievous eyes. I come from a
long line of short, sturdy women, and I was immediately
at ease talking to her. These days, Joanne goes to church,
(02:25):
shops for clothes, visits with her family. Maine is where
she grew up, the place her family is from, but
back in the seventies she lived in seat Pleasant, Maryland,
in Prince George's County with her husband, Ronald, and their
four kids, Sandy, Michael, Stephen, and Ronnie. Caperani home from
(02:47):
school that day because he had a sore throat and
he didn't you know, And that's when the detective came
to the door and told me what what what happened?
He said, I've got some uh news that I don't
think the little fella should know, He said, could you
send him to your neighbors? And so he proceeded to
(03:11):
tell me. But where where? They found her? In this polelyard.
On the morning of February eleven, Frank Middleton arrived at
a utility pollard about twenty minutes away from Joanne's home.
To give you some context, pollards are where energy companies
store those tall wooden poles that are used to support
(03:33):
power lines. This yard was in a somewhat secluded spot
off the highway and surrounded by woods, which is why
it was odd that there was a car parked in
the lot when Frank arrived around nine am. And this
this fella had gone to work and found her, and
he thought she was asleep until he walked up to
the car and noticed that her glasses were up here
(03:56):
and she was disarrayed, and um, he knew that she
was gone. Sandy's car, one blue Ford Pinto, appeared to
be stuck in the mud. Cardboard had been shoved under
all four tires, and there were tire tracks all around
her car like she had been trying to drive away.
(04:17):
Sandy was in the driver's seat with her keys still
in the ignition. She had been shot in the right
side of her abdomen, with an exit wound on the
left side of her back. She was eighteen years old,
just a month shy of her nineteenth birthday. You know,
I asked that detective. I said, why wasn't Ronald and
(04:42):
I called to identify her? He said, but there was
Streem policeman there that knew who she was. And I said, well,
isn't that lovely? I'd like to know who the three
cops were at the at the scene, because when that
detective told me that, I was furious that we were
(05:08):
not called immediately to claim her in any way shape
of fall. We didn't get a chance to see her
until she was in the funeral Paba. I've never gotten
over that, and I was really rip shit about that.
(05:31):
Just a few hours after Sandy's body was discovered, Joanne
got a knock at the door. A detective told her
that Sandy was dead and that it appeared she had
taken her own life. In the short time between finding
Sandy's body and notifying her family, the cops had already
developed a working theory Sandy had died by suicide. I
(05:52):
didn't take any of their crap because I could tell
that they were hiding something. I says, you know something,
you can put any damn thing you want down. That
doesn't mean that happened that way. And I said, you
will never make me and my family and my friends
(06:13):
believe that. So I said, get the hell out of
my house. And uh. And I wasn't very nice to
him because I think they were skunking us all the
way around. From my Heart Radio, I'm Melissa Jolson, and
this is what happened to Sandy Beale an I Heart
(06:33):
original podcast, Chapter one, The Girl in the Pollard. This
is Michael. Yes, hi Michael, This is Stephen. Hi, Stephens,
how you going to hie? I wanted to meet with
the Beal family as a whole to learn more about Sandy.
(06:56):
When we first sat down, I didn't really know anything
about Sandy's case except for what was in Joanne's letter.
But I soon learned that the entire bill family shared
Joanne's suspicions. None of them believed Sandy had died by suicide,
not back then and not now. I met them at
Michael's house in the summer of to give you a
(07:20):
quick sketch of the family tree. Sandy was born first,
then a year later Michael, then Stephen. A year and
a half after that, Bang bang bang, as Joanne described it,
six years later, baby Ronnie was born. Joanne later asked
her husband Ronald, to get a vasectomy. All three of
Sandy's brothers live in Maine, within a thirty minute drive
(07:41):
of Joanne. Still, it's rare for them to get together
to talk about Sandy. What do we hope to gain
from all of this? I mean, I think that is
the question everyone might have. I'd love to hear your
own answers for it. Well, personally, I have no expectations.
These are people that's waiting on the sands of time
(08:01):
to run out on us. I don't expect anybody's gonna
serve it a day in jail, not even five minutes.
That's Sandy's youngest brother, Ronnie. He was only nine when
Sandy died, with almost a decade between them and age.
They had a special relationship. Sandy doated on Ronnie, buying
him presence and indulging him in games. In turn, he
(08:26):
idolized her. Now Ronnie is in his early fifties, and
he told me his recollections of her were beginning to fade.
She was wicked smart. I mean, you know, he can
do anything she wanted, as as you got, always got
a good grades. David, that's Stephen, Sandy's middle brother. He's
sixty and runs a printing press for the local newspaper.
(08:47):
In his spare time, he plays the drums, though he's
had a hard time finding bandmates who want to play
heavy metal. When he thinks back to his time with Sandy,
he remembers himself as a typical, annoying young her brother
always butting heads with her. It's something that pains him now,
that wasted time spent fighting. Yeah. I always look at her.
(09:13):
Is you know the big sister is you know, which
is kind of weird. I mean because Sandy he was
she was no about five five something. Yeah, but the
mental image is larger than life. Yeah, Sandy seemed to
get along, Okay, I mean she for whatever reason, you know,
(09:34):
she I don't recall of her getting picked on or
whatever during that time frame. But then again, she regularly
kick my ass anyway. So lots of people I spoke
to about Sandy mentioned this element of her personality. She
was plucky, tough, and Sandy's toughness was an asset in
(09:55):
her community. Prince George's County, where the Beals lived, is
located just outside of Washington, d C. If you're in
downtown d C, all you have to do is drive
east along Pennsylvania Avenue and you'll eventually cross into Peg County.
Keep driving for about twenty minutes, and you'll find yourself
at the Bell's former house in seat Pleasant. A white,
(10:17):
lower middle class family, the Beals lived in a modest
home in a less than desirable part of town. The
family described the neighborhood as sometimes chaotic. Crime and poverty
were concerns for residents of Seat Pleasant, and you had
to keep your wits about you, they explained. Joanne stayed
home with the four kids, and Ronald supported the family
(10:39):
working as a long haul trucker and doing construction. He
was often away from home and money was pretty tight.
He had two jobs. Sometimes he went out he had
a long haul and the other job was construction. So
he was pretty busy, and so he did the work.
(10:59):
He paid the bills. I was to go grocery shopping,
and I was to take care of the kids in
the home, and that was it. Sandy, an outgoing girl
with a knack for making friends, navigated the streets of
seat pleasant with relative ease. But make no mistakes, she
would not suffer somebody being wrong to her or messing
(11:21):
with her. And then you know she was, you know,
very smart, very pristine in her own way. But you know,
she was very fierce. I guess it was the best
way to put it. She didn't like me trying to
break her hair. She hated that. And even when a
little girl, and I was so happy because I had
a little girl, like a bridge, you know, and she
(11:42):
would take it out and I'd take it back and
I so after a while, I just let it be straggling.
She was a queen. She was the oldest and she
lets you know about it, and she was the boss.
We all shared one room, but Sandy had her own room,
and no one was loud in her room but her,
and unless you had a special permission to get in there.
(12:03):
That's Michael, Sandy's oldest brother and the sibling who was
closest to her. He's in his early sixties now and
lives near the coast with his wife, Becky. When you
get to know Michael, he has a really gentle demeanor,
but from the outside he looks tough, like the kind
of guy whose foot you wouldn't want to accidentally step
on in a bar. I do remember she like an
(12:24):
easy bake oven, and we used to make a bunch
of junk and eat it. And she had a makeup
mirror and you know, different things as you know, as
a young girl, stuff like that. We really seldom ever
thought about anything. I mean, we were just really connected.
And actually when we were I think I was fifteen
(12:45):
or so, she might have been sixteen when we found
out she was actually adopted. Joanne got pregnant with Sandy
Young around her eighteenth birthday. Sandy's biological father wasn't interested
and become a dad, but Ronald, a suitor of Joanne's
who should written letters to while he was deployed overseas,
(13:06):
was up for the task. He married Joanne when she
was eight months pregnant and raised Sandy as his own child.
When my mom told us that, and I was like,
at first, I didn't believe it. I was like, what
are you kid me? All this time my dad treated
everybody equal. And then after that, I when I found
that out, I was just even more in love with her,
(13:27):
and you know, as a sister type, you know, it's like,
you know, wow, um. She She asked a lot of
questions like what happened, why, and different things like that,
but the answers she got were it was enough to
satisfy her. Is like, Okay, Well, I mean, you know,
I'm never gonna stop loving my dad. You know, whether
(13:48):
or not he's my real dad or not, he's He's
always been my dad and he always will be my dad.
So I think we kind of got tighter. If anything,
We've been through a lot in this family. I say,
the Good Lord was good to me to give me
a life to live this long. We know what we've
(14:09):
been through and it's been hell. I hope they we
find out something. For over forty years, the Beal family
has believed that Sandy was a victim of a violent crime,
a belief fueled by the suspicion that her death was
(14:31):
covered up. Here's Stephen, the guilty carry around over time
that ship turns a fucking anger. You passed you son
him a bit, she stole from me, You sold my family.
That's since it's put that category unforgivable ship, Sandy's sudden
(14:53):
death was disorienting to her family. She lived at home
and her family saw her every day. They were intimately
familiar with her behaviors, her moods, and her values. The
Sandy they knew was optimistic and ambitious, and, like many
teen girls her age, eager for her real life, her
(15:14):
adult life to begin. She was popular, she worked part
time at the mall. She didn't appear depressed or withdrawn
or hopeless. Suicide it didn't align with her personality. And again,
she had being you know, as passionate as she wasn't
(15:36):
fierce as she was. I just would not have thought
that she would want to do something like that, you know,
I just never got it. Could not wrap my fucking
head around her doing it. Suicide seemed completely out of
character for Sandy, and the crime scene, instead of bringing closure,
(15:56):
just raised more questions. Police said Sandy had shot herself
in the right side of her abdomen, but the teen
was left handed. The family told me how they tried
to put themselves in Sandy's shoes, imagining how she would
have shot herself. Sitting in the front seat of her
(16:16):
subcompact Ford Pinto with a steering wheel in front of her, chest.
The gun would have been too heavy for Sandy to
hold and fire with her non dominant right hand. Instead,
she would have had to reach across her body with
her left hand to aim the gun at her right side.
It seemed like a clumsy way to shoot oneself. When
(16:38):
I was told what was happening, what had happened, I
was like, it's no way. It's just it's just no
way that it's gonna be. I couldn't believe it. Michael
was familiar with the gun found in Sandy's car. In fact,
all the kids in the Beale family knew about the gun.
It was owned by Sandy's father. Was a long barrel,
(17:03):
chrome black handle, black Hawk model. Very nice looking gun,
you know, like I said it was. It was long,
and it was always loaded with hollow point bullets. It
was actually white something to shoot. It was so powerful
that when I first shot it, had to hold it
(17:24):
with both hands because I didn't know what to expect
out of it. It was because of their strong familiarity
with the gun and it's large Cumberson quality that the
Bills were convinced Sandy could not have used it on herself.
It's got a lot of those three seven. Uh, you
know they have a lot of recoil, a lot largest
(17:46):
handguns you're gonna get. Yeah, you think dirty Harry mag
You know the old movie is like how pulls out
that it's about that length gun recoil with a senate fly. Yeah,
it's just physics and her left hand have never gone
over that far to be able to do that, And
the unbelievable part about her and committing suicide was just
(18:07):
too far out. The family also thought the location of
the wound was strange. Why would someone intent on suicide
shoot themselves off center in the stomach and as small
as she was in the in the size of that
gun on her non dominant hand would have been would
(18:28):
have been really hard. I mean, if if that's what
you plan on doing, was was killing yourself, that was
certainly you know, why don't you just slowly walk through
a fire and see if you'll eventually, you know, burn
the death. We don't know why Sandy had her father's
(18:49):
gone with her that evening, but her family is convinced
that whatever she was doing, she wasn't alone. When the
Bill's got her clothes back from police, they noticed that
she dressed up nicely, wearing brown gaucho slacks, a white blouse,
and calf high black suede boots that her mom had
given her for Christmas. Sandy's nails were recently manicured, painted
(19:14):
with pale pearlyzed nail polish. To the family, her choice
of outfit suggested she was meeting someone that night who
else they wanted to know could have been in the
Pollard with Sandy. Here's what they think happened. Sandy was
shot by someone else sitting beside her in the passenger seat.
(19:37):
This would explain the location of the gunshot and the
trajectory of the bullet from the right side of Sandy's
abdomen to the left side of her back. It was
the cardboard found under the wheels of Sandy's car that
solidified their doubts. The cardboard told a story of a
girl who was trying to leave the Pollard that night,
(19:57):
not one intent on suicide. My name is Kim Parmer.
I am a second cousin of Sandy Belle, and we
(20:19):
are in the home of where the origin of all
of our family began, and John's Port, Maine. I met
Kim at a hotel just up the street from Joanne's house.
Kim is a licensed therapist, and it comes through and
the way she communicates. She makes good eye contact and
speaks carefully, with kindness and warmth. She's the type of
(20:43):
person who makes you feel like you could tell her
anything and she'd never judge you. These days, Kim now
sixty four, lives in Texas and she's got a solid
tan to show for it. But she comes to Maine,
the place of her birth, whenever she can to see
the bells. See Andy has a grave marker here too,
and she visits it when she can. So this is
(21:05):
a map of um just Prince George's county, in the
area where she lived, and based on all the information
that I have of her date books or letters or
anything that had an address on it or that I
could identify, I plotted it onto the map. Where she lived,
where she went to school, where she died, where she worked.
(21:27):
This was just her little world. Kim showed me the
material she's gathered over the years, medical records, court documents,
freedom of Information Act requests, spreading them out on a
hotel bed for me to look through. She's the detective
of the family, inquisitive, diligent, and fixated on this idea
(21:49):
of justice. Joanne and I just stayed in touch intermittently
over the years, and they started sending me stuff. I
started I was asking so many questions there, like here,
just take it. And so that's you know, these files
of stuff that I have now. Kim is the entire
reason why I started looking into the story, why I
(22:11):
learned the name of Sandy Beale in the first place.
She's the one who gave me Joanne's letter, and I
just learned to keep Sandy's summary with me. I carried
it with me all the time, so if I ever
met anyone an investigator, whatever, I I just passed them out.
I first met Kim at a domestic violence conference in Texas.
(22:32):
I was there to moderate a panel with Lorraina Bobbitt,
whose experience of domestic abuse and marital rape had been
badly overshadowed by the act that had made her infamous.
If you don't know her story, I encourage you to
look it up. Something I said that night must have
resonated with Kim, because immediately after the panel she approached me.
Remember going up to you afterwards and almost running up
(22:55):
there and trying to get there before other people because
I knew you were going to get bombarded with people
asking questions, and I thought, well, who knows, maybe maybe
she would find this intriguing. I did. As a reporter,
I've written more stories than I can count about women
who have died violent deaths, and I've spent time with
their families as they've begun the grieving process. But usually
(23:17):
those cases had answers, however unsatisfying, they might feel. This
was a true mystery, one that had persisted for over
four decades. The Bell family was stuck in the unknown.
I kept finding myself looking at a photo of Sandy
that Kim gave me along with Joanne's letter. It's a
(23:39):
black and white portrait Sandy's high school graduation photo. She
has long, blonde, feathered hair with a middle part that
makes you think a fair faucet. Her mouth is poised
into a half smile, and she stares off camera like
something in the background amuses her. Almost everyone I spoke
to about Sandy mentioned how pretty she was, especially her
(24:03):
long blonde hair, and while she got attention for her looks,
it didn't seem to give her a big head. She
was just genuinely nice and friendly to those around her.
That's the Sandy Kim remembers. We didn't meet until we
were fourteen. The two girls were only six months apart,
and their friendship was a defining one. And we headed
(24:28):
off and went back to her bedroom like teenagers do,
and we sat on her bed and we just started
talking and just loved her from the start. Kim and
(24:49):
Sandy met for the first time shortly after Kim moved
to Maryland, to a neighborhood about an hour from the Bells.
The two girls spent their early teenage years going back
and forth to each other's houses and trading worlds. Living
in Maryland was you know, you would think that it's
this preppy, kind of wonderful place with Annapolis and preppy
(25:11):
clothes and everything. But I look back now and those
are some of the most traumatic, scarious times of my life.
The thanks I got exposed to it at that age.
While Kim was technically older by a few months, Sandy
often played the role of protector. And I'm like trying
to avoid it right now because i don't want to cry,
(25:32):
but I'm going to okay. Um. So, at fourteen, I'm
in this new school and it was exciting and everything,
and that um, my mom had to come pick me
up one night because I was at a friend's house
(25:53):
at a playground in the middle of a cold a
sack and I'm just like waiting for my mom and
this guy walks up and I recognize him because he's
on the football team. He's a senior on the football team.
And I, to this date don't know how it unfolded,
but before I knew it, he had his hands down
my pants and I I just remember freezing. I mean,
(26:17):
I hadn't even been kissed yet by a boy at all,
and I'm thinking all these people they're looking out their
windows watching this guy do this to me, and I
just associated. And so that weekend I went to go
see Sandy and I was telling her about it, and
I was really upset about it, and she got pissed
(26:37):
and she's like, I'm going to take care of this
for you. Kim told me that A few days later,
Sandy appeared out of the blue. She had driven an
hour to Kim's neighborhood to confront the football player who
sexually assaulted Kim. Sandy was ready for a fight, but
he was nowhere to be found. It didn't matter to
Kim though, the fact that Sandy showed up for her
(27:00):
it was enough. That's the part that I remember the most,
And I'm just I never had been around anybody like
that that protected me like that. She I knew she
was going to take care of me. It was a
very short relationship because she lost her life. A few
years later. Kim left Maryland to go to college in
(27:25):
Illinois while Sandy was still in high school. The distance
led the two girls to fall out of frequent contact. Still,
after police found Sandy's body, Kim was one of the
first people that joined called to let her know what
had happened. I just remember getting that call from Joanne
that Sandy had died, and I just remember being shocked
(27:47):
and like, what do what do you mean? You know?
Eighteen year olds don't die from a gunshot wound. Kim
tried desperately to get back to Maryland for the funeral,
but couldn't afford the journey. I remember looking into the
flights and they were way too expensive. So I looked
into the train, but it was ninety dollars from Chicago
to Washington, d C. And it should have it could
(28:09):
have just been ten thousand. I didn't have it She
missed the funeral, but kept in regular contact with Joanne.
She died on the eleventh, on a Friday, very early
in the morning. But she had gone out the tenth
Thursday night, so something happened like right at midnight. She
was probably alone for eight or nine hours, hurting and
(28:32):
shot and dark. She had to be scared to death.
Just that should matter happen to anybody. Joanne was notified
of Sandy's death when a detective came to her house.
He asked if she and her husband, Ronald could come
(28:53):
to the precinct later that day see when he came
into tell us, tell me what happened. He said, when
your husband gets home, will you guys come over to
the barracks. And everything was laid out on the table.
Sandy's personal belongings, items collected from her car were spread
(29:15):
out like evidence for her parents to see. And among
her things was a letter. It was written to a
man named Doug and addressed to his place of work,
the Maryland State Police Department. He had a uniform on.
He gave her a sweet talk, and it went to
the surprise of her family. Sandy was in a relationship.
(29:40):
Doug was ten years older than her and married with
a young child. This discovery agitated Sandy's grieving parents and
left them with a slew of questions, but at the precinct,
Joanna Ronald were left with the impression that the investigation
was basically complete, no more answers would be forthcoming. It's
calm for police to speak with the boyfriend in unnatural
(30:02):
deaths such as this. When women are murdered, it's far
more likely to be at the hands of a husband
or boyfriend than anyone else. But as far as Joanne knew, Dug,
the state trooper, was never interviewed in the course of
the investigation, which seemed particularly odd when you considered the
location of Sandy's death. The Pepco utility yard was only
(30:25):
a mile down the road from the State Police barracks
where Doug worked, and as the family soon learned, the
Pollard was a popular State trooper hangout. And then the
place where she died. Um, that was the most revealing
to see that literally there across the street from each other,
the Maryland State Police barracks of the man that she
(30:46):
was dating, and then the place that she died. That
was a well known place where police gathered to you know,
I guess have privacy for whatever reason. How police do
their jobs in the aftermath of an unexpected death can
(31:07):
have a profound and lasting impact on the families of victims.
Sandy's death was a defining moment for the Beal family,
but what came next, what they feel was an absence
of a proper investigation, compounded their trauma. Without confidence in
the police, the Beal family suspected a conspiracy. A guide
(31:32):
for investigators published by the Department of Justice in explains
how essential it is to ensure that the proper steps
and procedures are taken at the scene of a death. Quote,
A few things in our democracy are as important as
ensuring that citizens have confidence in their institutions in a crisis.
(31:52):
For many individuals, the death of a loved one is
just such a crisis. I wanted to understand how the
family and the police could have such starkly different interpretations
of the same events. This chasm, I felt deserved scrutiny.
One thing I was sure of the Bell family, even
(32:14):
after forty five years, was adamant that there was something
suspicious about Sandy's death, and because of that they had
endured decades of uncertainty, and to be honest, I sensed
it too. I thought it was strange that Sandy was
shot in the stomach, and I questioned whether she would
have been able to kill herself the way cops said
(32:34):
she did. It seemed like there was more to Sandy's
story than her family knew after so many years. I
didn't know what kind of answers I'd find. But tucked
away in the tattered stack of papers Kim collected were
clues to Sandy's past, clues that offered me a rare
glimpse into Sandy's private life, clues written by Sandy herself,
(33:07):
if she hadn't written that damn note to ship head.
On our next episode, we learned about Doug and his
relationship with Sandy, and I speak to the detective in
charge of Sandy's case. I would compare my skills as
a homicide detective against anybody in the world. Scotland Yard,
(33:34):
New York City, anywhere, Fraud, Atlanta where they're loaded, rhythm,
anywhere you go, there's nobody, there's nobody any better. It
turns out he had a lot to say. What happened
(33:56):
to Sandy Beale is hosted by Me Melissa Jolson. It's
written and produced by me and Katrina Norvelle. The podcast
is edited by Abu Safar. Sound designed by Aaron Kaufman.
Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistance
by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu A s
(34:20):
I M A d O. Thanks so much for listening.
Host
Melissa Jeltsen
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