Anatomy of Murder - The Van (Berit Beck)

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

A young woman heads out for job training and disappears before she arrives. Two decades pass with no answers but soon after, that would change. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

In cases like this, as you well know, you are reopening extremely deep wounds and bringing back hurtful conversations, pain, despair, and then at the same time, inadvertently, possibly giving them hope. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph. There is a universal question most, if not all, parents ask themselves on a regular basis. Have I done enough to prepare my child for the world?

Am I keeping my child safe? And it points to a fundamental dilemma of being a parent. You spend your life teaching your child to be independent and self-reliant. But when it's time for them to leave, you really hate to see them go. But leave they do. For college, first jobs, first apartments, and to raise families of their own, it can be exhilarating and terrifying. In July of 1990, 18-year-old Barrett Beck was a high school graduate from Sturtevant, Wisconsin. And like many other young people, she had secured a summer job to

help earn some money for college. For a lot of teenagers, a summer job might mean working at an ice cream shop or the local swimming pool. But Barrett was starting her first quote-unquote real job, one that entailed a professional wardrobe, a short commute to work, and even some out-of-town travel to attend a three-day job training seminar in Appleton, Wisconsin, roughly 130 miles away. Barrett had just taken on the new job

and was assigned to go to this conference, of which her parents were a tad reluctant for her to go, but of course it had to do with her job. So they provided her everything she needed, you know, helped her with packing and let her use the family van and even wrote down the mileage on the van because she was going to need to be compensated for with the mileage. So everything a normal family would do was sending their adult child who just just obtained their first job, out on her own to attend a work conference. Detective Nate Lamont of the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office

would come to forge a close relationship with the Beck family over the years, a relationship that started on July 17, 1990, with a call to 911. She had left earlier that morning from Sturdivant with her parents' conversion van, and by the evening they had realized she had not checked in, and nobody had seen nor heard of her by that evening. Her parents, Diane and David Beck, were overcome with worry. Did her car break down? Was she in an accident? Was she hurt?

And nobody had any information as to where she may be. Obviously, cell phones back then were nothing like we communicate now. So efforts had been made to see if they could track her down up there, but obviously all of them failed. So by the next morning, when she didn't show up to her training seminar, they knew something was terribly wrong. And that's when they decided to reach out to police and report their daughter missing. I think by nature, being 18 years old, there was some thought that, boy, we don't know exactly what she's doing and where she's at. Every family tends to know their children much better than most other people do. They were adamant that this would be completely out of her character to veer off a schedule, a path, an expectation that she would have had and most likely kept. So county law enforcement issued a be on the lookout or BOLO for Barrett's car, the family's 1987 GMC conversion van. And for those of you who don't know, like me,

I basically had to look this up. It is a cargo van that has been retrofitted to turn it into a camper van. Two days later, the call came in. Barrett's van had been spotted at the Forest Plaza Shopping Center in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, 100 miles north of her home and 30 miles short of her

destination. The family's conversion van was actually found at what was back then a Kmart. As they investigated the van, they located a receipt in the van for a Walgreens and it had the address and phone number of the specific Walgreens, which happens to be straight across the street from where the van was found. So they were able to piece together that obviously she had been at the Walgreens, which was dated July 17th, which is the day she left Sturdivant. Inside the van, there were also immediate and ominous signs that Barrett had been the victim of a robbery. The radar detector was missing and the radio was missing.

And obviously that looks like a robbery. It looks like somebody had ransacked the van is what it looked like. But as officers began to carefully catalog the contents and the condition of the van, it became apparent that something even more nefarious may have occurred. There was a couple general areas in the van that contained cigarette ash just laying around, and Barrett did not smoke. Even more concerning was the fact that the clothes that Barrett had packed were still in the van, but not in the condition they were when she left home. In the van, hanging up along the back, and as many conversions vans do,

the clothing bar, she had a pink dress hanging back there that she was going to change into at some point in time to arrive to the conference. When the van was found, the red t-shirt that appears the one she had been wearing was laying in the van, and a section had been torn out of it from like the collar down to the waist. The pink dress was kind of disheveled and down on the floor of the back of the van. And there was a set of nylons that were out and the nylons had a knot tied in them. And then the tennis shoes that she had been wearing were in the van also. The description of the clothes Barrett was wearing on the day she went missing had been provided by her boyfriend, who it seemed was the last one to see her before she left town.

His name was Kurt Plath. They had been dating before she left that morning from Sturtevant to come up to the Appleton area. She did stop over by him and they talked and said their goodbyes. Many of you might already be thinking, ah, the boyfriend. But in this case, he did not stand out as particularly suspicious or defensive. He was cooperative. They spoke with him. He provided all the information he could remember from seeing Barrett that morning before she left. He too had not heard from her the rest of that day. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary there. Although in their relationship, he had given her a real nice ring that she would wear. When the investigators did a thorough review of the contents in the van, they actually found the ring that she would normally wear from her boyfriend.

The ring was found tucked under one of the floor mats. And the question was, did it fall off in a struggle or was it placed there on purpose? At that point, police really didn't know. The fact that the ring was still in the van and not stolen, like the CB and or radar detector, you would think a valued ring might be taken. But here it was tucked under a rug, almost as if it was put there purposely.

There were just so many little things that seemed off. For example, there was evidence that Barrett had likely stopped off at McDonald's, but there was also an empty cup from Burger King. Which was odd because it was a single cup, and it had been thrown into the passenger front seat compartment area down on the floor. So you had both McDonald's and Burger King. The question is, why would Barrett stop at two different fast food restaurants, perhaps to use the bathroom, but also buy a drink from each? Sounds a bit strange.

It certainly didn't make sense that in that shorter trip, a couple hour trip from Sturtevant up to Appleton, that you would stop a couple different times to eat, especially when you left at a time that you needed to check in by a certain time. It just didn't seem to allow for all that. It was becoming apparent that at some point there was someone other than Barrett behind the wheel of that van. The odometer had been written down before she left, and when the van was found in the Kmart parking lot, a person checked the mileage. There was 462 mileage different between what was written down and what was actually on the odometer. And of course, Sturtevant Racine to Fond du Lac is a little over 100 miles. So it's not anywhere near

460 miles. So we have to be thinking about 462 extra miles. That is hours worth of driving. As an investigator, I'm going to start with the worst case scenario, which is she was abducted or perhaps even carjacked. Or on a more hopeful note, was the vehicle stolen at some point and she is somewhere else? But the last thread is the least theory that makes sense. And the reason is the van itself. The signs of a struggle in the van, a torn shirt, her ring, which was left behind. And, you know, as we mentioned, that second soda cup.

And for me, there's more than enough reason to assume that this van is a crime scene. And Anastasia, I think it really needs a thorough, a forensic evaluation. So authorities were definitely thinking about what may have occurred. You know, was this someone that she knew or was it a stranger? And remember, she's 19 years old. And again, not knowing Barrett, some 19-year-olds might have taken a friend or someone they knew

with them on the trip and not told her parents. So that is a possibility that at least had to be explored. Or was this someone who she met along the way? Or did a complete stranger make their way in in a non-consensual way? So for investigators to figure out the who, they had to start to look at the what and the motive. So some of the next steps for investigators would be to start fingerprinting, cataloging evidence, maybe DNA. Back then, most of the forensics, DNA was obviously in its infancy, but fingerprints were a big deal. And they had recovered a number, I would say dozens of late fingerprints throughout the van after fuming the van and dusting the van. As a matter of procedure, those prints would first

have to be compared to anyone who may have had lawful access to the van, Barrett's parents, law enforcement, and Barrett herself. The goal, of course, is being able to find the print that doesn't belong. We know that there were some prints on the Burger King cup. We know that there was latent print on one of the items Barrett had purchased on the morning of July 17th. There were some unidentified latent prints on one of the inside windows of the van. But the clock was ticking. It had been 48 hours and no sign of 18-year-old Barrett. There was a growing fear that she may have met something or someone bad. Her family was not sitting still. There had been no sightings of Barrett. Her van had been processed. Nobody still knew where she

was, but the Beck's were vigorous in their attempts and committed to their attempts in the weeks that followed of involving the media as much and as often as possible to get Barrett's picture out, information out that they could release in hopes of finding her. Those efforts included the offer of a $75,000 reward for any information regarding their missing daughter. They also organized search teams, distributed flyers, and scoured the area from Sturdivant to Appleton and back. Local news media broadcast her picture across the state of Wisconsin, but weeks passed and there was still no sign of Barrett Beck. There are certainly leads that came in, but none of those leads ever checked out.

Then, the unthinkable. The call that no parent ever wants to get. A body had been located off the side of the road in Waupin, Wisconsin. 18 miles from where Barrett's van had been recovered. On August 22nd, down at the town of Waupon, a local farmer had been driving his tractor kind of in a ditch area down alongside the road and noticed what he believed might be a human form and or clothing. So he investigated that, got off his tractor,

and located a body down in the ditch. Law enforcement responded to the scene and recovered the body of a woman with blonde hair. The advanced state of decomposition made it difficult to make a definitive ID, but her clothes matched the description of the missing teen. There were like a pair of stonewashed jeans, which were similar. There were no shoes on the body at all, just socks. And the body had like a greenish t-shirt on. And then there was what appeared to be almost like a red, some people might call it a bandana. Some people might call it just a cloth,

but it was tied around the skull and knotted in back. That piece of cloth that was tied around the skull was kind of between the bottom of the eyes and the upper portion of your top row of teeth. Detectives would eventually match that piece of red cloth with the torn shirt found in the back of Barrett's van, and dental records would confirm that this was indeed the body of 18-year-old Barrett Beck. Once Barrett was identified as Barrett, the case was transferred from the city of Fond du Lac Police Department to the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office detectives obviously had to get up to speed as to what had been collected and what was in the case file from the previous six weeks.

Still unknown was the exact cause of death. The medical examiner's office, after autopsysy could not find anything that would indicate gunshots, anything that would indicate that any of the bones had been cut like a stabbing. There was nothing to indicate anything other than possibly a strangulation or suffocation based on the evidence that they were able to collect. But due to the location of where the body was found and the presence of the blindfold, it was clear to investigators that Barrett had been murdered.

An entomology examination, which is when forensic pathologists use the amount of insect activity to determine time of death, concluded that Barrett's remains had been in the environment for at least 30 days, meaning that it was likely that she may have been killed on the very day she first went missing. Which meant that Barrett Beck's killer had a 30 trip but never arrived. Her ransacked van suggested that she had been confronted in a shopping center parking lot,

robbed and driven to the location where eventually her body was found. What wasn't known, obviously, was who did it or why. And Anastasia, with respect to what could be some of the first steps here in the investigation, we do have a lot of forensic opportunity within the van, as I mentioned earlier. So using the preliminary results you may get from that, you could begin a standard investigation, talking to people closest to your victim, who she's seen with last, and compare all of that potential evidence. You know, though, in thinking about the who, let's just think about the people that are swirling. And obviously, as I said before, people might be already thinking the boyfriend. We often do. Remember, he's the last person to have seen her. But also, just on its

face, it appears that she was abducted. And that seems more like stranger than anything else. And even, you know, Scott, this robbery, she may have been robbed, but based on the fact that she's missing and then found dead, that seems like a part and parcel, but that the abduction would be the motivator. If the potential MO of this was a homicide from the beginning, you may look at potential patterns of similar types of crimes within a few hundred miles. And if people have been identified, arrested, or recently released with those same type of markers, that would definitely be of interest. You just hit the nail on the head, and I think that's exactly what police were doing.

Back then, at about the same time, there had been some vehicle thefts that had taken place right along the same stretch of road in Fond du Lac where the conversion van was found at Kmart between Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office and the West Bend Police Department. They knew that they had a suspect that was floating around and stealing cars in that particular area, driving the vehicles and using the vehicles for other crimes. So that certainly was a lead that they needed to pursue. The suspect's name in those cases was Craig Roan. He is what law enforcement would call a known offender.

He had a criminal record for grand theft auto, larceny, and while he didn't have a history of violence or kidnapping, robbing a van and stripping it of its radio and radar detector was definitely part of his M.O. As detectives pieced together his whereabouts around the time of Barrett's murder, they learned some incriminating facts about the man whose own friends described him as unstable. As investigators, you have to jump on the leads that stick out the biggest and the most. And knowing that there had been a rash of car thefts, extra miles driven on those vehicles,

those vehicles used for crimes, the person was a smoker, etc., Craig became a clear suspect that they had to check into. The good news was that Craig would not be hard to find. He'd actually been arrested and was serving time in a federal prison for an armed bank robbery. So now the question will come down to a timeline. Could he have an alibi? Was he already in lockup when the crime was committed? That question was easily answered, and it raised even more suspicions. Was the alleged bank robber a killer as well? He was arrested down in Madison, Wisconsin for the bank robbery, which all occurred about in this same week that Barrett would have been missing.

And when he was arrested, he actually was in possession of what at least appeared to be pretty incriminating evidence. He did have a duffel bag that he would carry around. They did look through that duffel bag as part of his arrest for that and shared the information with the investigators. And he did have a hairbrush in the duffel bag, which seemed consistent with a hairbrush that Barrett may have owned at the time she went missing. And there were blonde hairs in the hairbrush that while were not forensically linked, the actual hair was consistent in color to Barrett's. Without being able to match the hair forensically to Barrett's, this could not be considered definitive proof that he killed her or even really grounds for an arrest. But it was certainly enough to keep him on the top of the suspects list. Investigators would need to see if there was actual evidence to prove that Craig had committed

this crime or was capable of living up to his nickname. And eventually it appeared that's what they got. Even acquaintances of his basically all but pointed the finger at Craig Rohn, providing their own anecdotal evidence as to why it was him. In fact, this acquaintance of Craig claimed that he had gone so far as to confess to the murder and showing that friend Barrett's lifeless body inside her van. But there was still one major problem. Remember those latent prints had been pulled from items inside Barrett's van? None of those were a match for Craig Roan. So despite the mounting circumstantial evidence, including that bombshell that Craig had apparently confessed to this crime, detectives still could not definitively link him

as their prime suspect in this case. They were extremely cautious to make sure that they had their bases covered. And even with the information, it seems like enough. Their concern was it wasn't. Their concern was, is there any coincidence? It just was not enough that they felt if it would enter a courtroom that they would get a conviction. And so prosecutors advised against charging Craig with Barrett Beck's murder, instead choosing to continue to build their case against him while he remained in prison. And while as a prosecutor, I not only get it, I would have agreed and given that exact same advice, it must have been agonizing for the Beck family, who just wanted to see their daughter's killer face justice.

There certainly was some disappointment, frustration on their part. I think anybody has a reasonable expectation that law enforcement is going to continue pursuing as much as it possibly can. Unfortunately for the investigators, then, other than Craig Roan, there just wasn't any other viable leads that had exposed themselves that they had uncovered. And so as Craig's Roan portion of the investigation kind of went cold and no other information was gleaned, even though the sheriff's office used the resources of the FBI, of the state system, DCI, it just went cold. There was no more that came out of it. And that frustration for the family was real.

It's understood. And while there was an amicable relationship between the two, I know it tested the patience and the hope of the Beck family. Without an indictment, the case reached a standstill, and Barrett's murder remained unsolved for over two decades. But in cold cases, you never know when the next break will come or from where. So in 2013, we were contacted by the local media outlet here in central Wisconsin. They were going to be doing kind of a cold case review of a number of area cases, murder, etc., that were cold.

And that had not been resolved yet. One of them being Barrett's. Nate, who had started his career in dispatch when the crime occurred, was now responsible for reviewing the cold case as its lead detective. So that was my initial assignment in 2013, was kind of to prepare for a cold case review that was going to probably also highlight an anniversary date. And as we have seen before, these kinds of lookbacks can unearth details that were missed in the initial investigation, especially when cold case investigators have new and more sophisticated forensic science at their disposal. I had two goals in mind at the time. One was to move the case style into a digital age, which had not been done yet. And anticipation also in conjunction with digitizing everything and organizing it was a review of the actual physical evidence that we still had in our possession within our inventory room. In 2013, 23 years after Barrett was killed, the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department

dusted off the old handwritten reports and the witness statements and pulled the fingerprints that were taken from the crime scene and officially reopened the investigation into Barrett Beck's murder. News that must have come both as a relief and also a reignited source of pain for Barrett's family. I met them at a sheriff's office substation down near Racine. I sat down across from the table from them, introduced myself, and let them know what it is we were working on and why. I don't think at that moment I perceived hope from them, and rightly so. It had been so long. I remember sitting right across from them, trying to talk through this with them and feeling their patience, but frustration.

So like being any good cold case detective, he went back to the beginning. So as I was researching the physical evidence, I made some contacts with the state crime lab here in Wisconsin to say, hey, this is what we have. This is what is in our case file. It was basically to compare notes and to see what it is we could do now, which would have been back in 2013, that we had not done yet. Specifically, he wanted to check to see if any of the latent prints recovered from the van had been cross-checked against recent offenders. Any time there are latent prints taken in an investigation such as this, they usually get entered into a statewide database, AFIS, that is pretty well known to investigators.

And that database keeps those prints, right? And they're always checked against convicted offenders. At that point in time, we had had probably close to 11 or 12 unidentified latent prints. And in talking with their analysts, they had realized while they had access to the latent prints lifted from the van, for some reason at the date and time that I contacted them, those prints were not in the APHIS system. The prints lifted from Barrett's van were not in the system,

which means that they hadn't been checked against any new prints in years. Initially, there was probably a dozen or so unidentified latent prints that I had requested the APHIS analyst to get back into the APHIS system. We know that there were some prints on the Burger King cup. We know that there was latent print on that cellophane cigarette wrapper. We know that there was a fingerprint gathered on what's called the mixing plate of that bleach kit, which was one of the items Barrett had purchased on the morning of July 17th. There were some unidentified latent prints on one of the inside windows of the van. All of the latent prints from inside of the inside windows of the van.

All of the latent prints from inside the van were sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab. Coincidentally, I would say within a few weeks after I met with the Becks, I was contacted by the State Crime Lab analyst. Basically said, are you sitting down? I have some good and bad news for you. So I said, well, let's start with the good news, right? The case could use it. And she said five of the unidentified latent prints all came back with a hit in the AFIS system and all came back to the same person. Five. That's one, two, three, four, five of the previous unidentified latent fingerprints lifted from Barrett's van had been matched to one individual. And his name was Dennis Brantner. Of course, that was a shock because I know that the name Dennis Brantner

was not something I ever read in that case file. And they confirmed the bad news is, on their end, with all the submissions over the years, latent prints, anything that had been done, Dennis Brantner was not a name in their case file either, other than they could provide me the information as to his arrest record, as to why his prints were currently in the convicted offender system. Dennis J. Brantner was a long-haul trucker who had previously been a resident of Green Lake,

Wisconsin, a town just 30 miles from where Barrett first disappeared. But before we make the leap to whether or not Brantner is a viable suspect, of Green Lake, Wisconsin, a town just 30 miles from where Barrett first disappeared. But before we make the leap to whether or not Bratner is a viable suspect, we have to eliminate some of the other possibilities. Like, was he a family friend of the Becks who possibly could have had access to the van, like being a mechanic as one example? There's a hundred things that go through your head. Is this just somebody that their family knew and had been in the van? But then again, why would the prints be on the newly purchased item that day she went missing? There were some clear question marks that certainly didn't make sense in terms of a family friend.

For example, even a family friend would not likely have left prints on items that Barrett had purchased from Walgreens on the same day that she disappeared. Of course, I'm wondering what if this guy had something in his past that might have made him more likely than other people to be someone capable of this crime. We spent a considerable amount of time and all hands on deck with the detective bureau to find out everything and anything we could about this Dennis Brantner. Certainly there were some alarming things as we learned of his history. We have a guy here that we really need to focus on. Nate and his fellow detective made a surprise trip to Brantner's home in Kenosha to interview him at his residence. According to detectives, at first Brantner

denied knowing anything about the murder from over 20 years ago. I would assume he knew why we were there once we laid it out for him. Let's just say his demeanor, how he handled himself, was completely changed once we slid Barrett's picture across the table in front of him. Dry-mouthed, stuttered, unsure of how to handle the abruptness of the picture. Once he gathered himself, a denial as many times as he could that he didn't know her. He certainly reacted in a way with us in the room that led us to believe there was certainly more. Brantner accompanied detectives to the Kenosha Sheriff's Office to sit down for a longer interview. Did that all on his own, I think trying to find out everything that we knew.

Nate and his fellow detectives wasted no time confronting Brantner with the evidence they had against him, his fingerprints inside Barrett's van. We weren't going to beat around the bush real long. We were going to go there and we were going to let him know what we know. And he needed to know that we're not stopping because something's

not right. That interview lasted about just short of two hours. And as they expected, Brantner continued to deny everything. His interviewers could see the panic in his eyes as Brantner sensed his world was crashing down around him. My overall impression was a person who just can't tell the truth, even telling us small things that you could disprove and then showing him that he wasn't telling the truth, he wouldn't accept. A person who clearly, in my mind, was trying to protect the last years of his life. But if you're building a narrative around Brantner being Barrett's killer, you would still want to know whether he had it in him even to commit this kind of crime. Did he have a violent past? Of course, in court, you don't have to prove motive.

But in a 23-year-old case, knowing why would go a long way. And so detectives began the big dig on his background. And boy, did they hit the jackpot, uncovering a criminal history dating all the way back to 1970. We had learned he had been in prison at least twice, one time for stealing cars back in his youth up in his hometown in northern Wisconsin. We learned that in 1989, he had driven up because he and his one wife were separated. He had broken into a house across the street from her and had basically stalked and watched her. Okay, so a history of breaking into cars, check.

A history of terrorizing women, check. We also realized that in the northern Milwaukee area, back when he was younger, he had been staying in a hotel and had broken into a female's room and had stolen her underwear, leaving her vulgar, sexually explicit notes. Yeah, and the stories about this guy's past just got worse and worse, culminating in an attempt to kidnap his own ex-wife. He had showed up before she was done with work. He had hidden in her car. She had come out to the car and he abducted her at knife point. Eventually she was able to escape him,

but he ended up going to prison for a number of years for that abduction. And at the time of that conviction, the prosecutor had even mentioned in his statement that he believed Brantner posed a significant threat of committing a homicide if released from jail. He clearly, clearly had some predisposition to these types of events, these types of circumstances, which certainly lended itself to possibly being involved in Barrett's death. After Brantner was publicly named as the prime suspect in the 23-year-old murder of Barrett Beck, the case against him just gained momentum. After his name hit the media, we had people from his current workplace call and say, oh, by the way, we remember seeing a photograph of Barrett in his toolbox. Another former co-worker told police that Brantner had shared his fantasies of kidnapping and assaulting her. And one last thing, it may seem insignificant, but it does

tie him to the crime scene. Brantner was a smoker. And in fact, when he was arrested for stealing a Cadillac a year before Barrett was killed, police found his cigarette ash on the floor and 900 extra miles on the odometer. So now it sounds like his arrest was not a matter of if, but really when. It was when did we feel comfortable that we had a strong enough case that if taken to court, we could win. Then on March 27, 2015, 25 years after the crime, Brantner was arrested for the murder of Barrett Beck. The arrest warrant was for first-degree intentional homicide.

As for the Beck family, who had endured a quarter of a century of pain and despair over their daughter's unsolved murder, the first light of justice was just over the horizon. The rapport between the family and the sheriff's office obviously only strengthened. I think they could see we were resolute in what we were working on and that we truly believed we have the right person. But how difficult it is to go back in time and put together a fingerprint case and circumstantial case in order to get the conviction that we all believe should occur. They knew that there were going to be obstacles along the way. Prosecuting any case from that long ago is challenging, to say the least. Yes, Brantner was in the area at the time of the murder. He'd left prints in the victim's car, and he had a history of violence against women.

But prosecutors are also dealing with juries that have the expectation of more forensic evidence. They are used to hearing now about DNA matches, security footage that catches the suspect at the scene, cell phone data that blows up their alibi. And the fact was, prosecutors in this case did not have that kind of evidence. It was a difficult case. I think some of us knew that first-degree intentional homicide

was going to be difficult because you kind of had to make a leap from the prince being in the van, shouldn't be in the van, something around her head, right? She's in a ditch. So you kind of had to make that leap that it was intentional. And in the end, it proved to be a leap too far for the jury to make. My thought was that was going to be a difficult charge to prove. And ultimately it was, but only by one juror. It ended up being a mistrial where 11 voted to convict on that particular charge and one did not. A mistrial.

As a prosecutor, I can tell you that hung juries are painful. Because not only have you not convinced an entire jury, you're now faced with the dilemma of whether it is in the best interest of the state and the crime and the family of the victims to start over and try the entire case again. Roller coaster is probably an understatement. All I could think at the time, not even for myself, was the difficulty the family was going to have to go through with the gut punch at the end of a trial as a mistrial. Ultimately, they decided to proceed with a second trial, but this time they had the advantage of actively correcting any mistakes or miscues that may have negatively affected the state's case. I think you always need to learn from the experience you've just had. And the best way to learn was to see if those 12 people would sit down with you,

which you're allowed to do. We sat with the jury after the mistrial, collected information from them and talked with them and got some pretty good insight as to what the hurdles were probably still going to be. The issue came down to intent. The jury had been convinced that Brantner had killed Barrett Beck, but they didn't think that the evidence proved Remember the Standard beyond any reasonable doubt that he had assaulted her with the intention of murdering her.

We needed to understand their perspective. And their perspective was basically this. There just wasn't the evidence to say it was intentional. And I'm not going to try to go too far down the legal rabbit hole, but just to explain it a little, is that just think about the various possibilities. Is that the motive here, it could have been, or the intent, I should say, could have been to abduct her. It could have been to rob her or something, one, both, or something in between. And then maybe she was killed accidentally during that. Again, I'm not saying she was, and certainly with this piece of cloth over her face, that seems very intentional to me.

But again, every juror has to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. So they can easily, you can see, start to think about, well, we know he was committing a crime, but we're just not sure about that one element that the judge makes very clear must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So you can start to see the legal wrangling that prosecutors were faced with after this mistrial. And they did have some witness testimony about something that he may have said to something else about a fantasy of tying somebody else up and killing somebody. So ultimately, while that is some type of evidence of what his intent may have been, clearly, Anastasia, you know, it's just really difficult to prove that at the position

that they were in at that moment. Right. Because, again, they know that she's killed. She knows that her van is gone so they can see evidence of other crimes. You know, there is that ring that Nate talked to you about, Scott. Her ring, I think it was her boyfriend had given her. It's found kind of hidden or pushed away underneath a seat, almost like she knew she was about to be robbed or that something bad was happening. So those other crimes seem more readily apparent than the absolute proof of the intention to murder her. And I'm not saying that isn't what happened, because I do believe he probably did, but the jury has to be convinced of that incredibly high legal standard before they

can come back with that conviction. So now prosecutors had to think about what the possible outcomes were if they're to go to trial again. So maybe we should talk about the fact of what you consider in the actual charging document. When you make a decision on what the top charge should be, how difficult is that a process knowing that it could turn against you with a jury? Again, you don't want to ever overcharge, but we should leave all options open and charge for every crime that we believe

there is evidence to show was committed. And I certainly do understand why prosecutors chose to charge this, at least in the initial indictment. But now they're faced with this. They had this crime that's very old. They go back to trial a second time. And again, I don't want to get too deep into it. However, this crime that's very old. They go back to trial a second time. And again, I don't want to get too deep into it. However, this crime happened in 1990. That also means that there is a

requirement that they have to use the rules of law from 1990. So if the jury maybe came back, again, not coming back with intentional murder, but something less, remember there is this other charge of a second degree reckless homicide. Well, there's such a thing as a statute of limitations, which means that you only have a certain amount of time or years before you're kind of out of luck of charging certain crimes. So if the jury were to actually bypass first degree reckless homicide and convict him on second degree reckless homicide, the lesser him on second-degree reckless homicide, the lesser included, the statute of limitations would have passed, he would have walked out of

court. While he would be found guilty on it, there would be no punishment for it. So it gets really sticky, tricky, and everything in between, and prosecutors need to try to figure out what's best, not only for the case and society, but for Barrett Beck's family. How can they receive any form of justice? And that's exactly what they started to look at here. So they were in a very difficult position to decide how to move forward. The combined effects led Brantner into taking a plea deal for second-degree reckless homicide but waiving the statute of limitations. And prosecutors decided that the best bet

taking all these factors into consideration was to allow him to plead guilty to the lesser charge to ensure that Barrett's family would at least receive justice in some form. But they also ultimately let him take what's called an Alford plea, which basically means that someone is able to still maintain their innocence while also acknowledging that the state does have the proof against them that would ultimately likely result in a conviction.

The result, in 2018, Dennis Bratner was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which after factoring in his time spent during the trial, left him with just seven years. And for Barrett's family, it was a tough pill to swallow. Obviously, we had their blessing on the plea deal, but certainly disappointed. Disappointed that after all of this, that was kind of where we had to settle. And it certainly seems unjust for someone to be responsible for the ending of somebody's life and at the most get seven years. As you can imagine, the sentencing received pretty widespread criticism from the community and those close to the case, which led to some people raising serious questions about sentencing laws specifically pertaining to the statute of

limitations. The fact was that Barrett's killer had been caught and punished, and cold case investigators did their job and brought some level of peace to a grieving family. It's one thing for me to say, yeah, I've worked this case for five years, and it was night and day and traveling to Arkansas and Mississippi and just trying to figure everything out and the time spent away from my own family. But it's nothing in comparison to what the Beck family went through. It's a drop in the bucket compared to that. Barrett Beck was only 18.

We know what she endured. We also need to remember what the decades that passed and this outcome did to her family. It was 28 years until conviction, and then a 10-year sentence was received. Her brother, only 17 when he lost his sister, summed up the family's additional pain in the process with this, and I quote,

this was a slow, horrible torture no family should endure. And he said that after Brantner's conviction. But Nate and other investigators did not give up, and we applaud them for their efforts to give Barrett's family the answers they needed and try to get the justice for Barrett that she deserved. Brantner will serve 10 years for taking the life of a 19-year-old girl. As a prosecutor, I fully well understand why pleas can be necessary and are agreed to. And I can't put myself in these prosecutors' shoes because I don't know all the facts, but as I step back and think of it from Barrett's family's perspective, and quite honestly from my own, that time for a life is not nearly enough. Barrett's last words to her father

Dave as she left home for that conference were this, don't worry, dad, all the people up north are good people. Well, they weren't all good people. But Barrett, it is clear that you are to this day very much missed and very loved. Shortly after her death, the parents of Barrett Beck established the Barrett Beck Musical Memorial, music scholarship at her high school where each year students compete for the honor with musical performances. Barrett was a rising star playing violin in the Case High School Orchestra. Music was certainly her passion. In 2018, on what would have been Barrett's 46th birthday, her mother Diane penned a letter to her, which was released to the media. In it, she wrote, and I quote, we have not publicly celebrated Barrett's birthday since 1990, but this year is a reason to celebrate again.

Finally, some justice and some closure has come to our case, though not nearly enough and clearly not soon enough. After 28 years of praying and waiting, the man responsible for Barrett's death was finally sentenced to a maximum of 10 years due to a statute of limitations. This is a law that needs to be changed. Murder is murder, regardless of the time gone by. End quote. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer.

This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?