Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Ohio Firefighter Set Cheerleading Coach on Fire: Prosecutor

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Peyton Beam, 22, is charged with aggravated murder and aggravated arson in the death of a woman he worked for and called his "second mother." Firefighters in Ansonia, Ohio found Ericka Kramer, 50, shot to death in bedroom on April 10. Prosecutors later said Kramer's body had been doused in gasoline before she was set on fire. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the case and questions surrounding it in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Eric Faddis https://www.instagram.com/e_fad/Dr. Naida Rutherford https://www.instagram.com/naidarutherford/CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Derrick County 911. Yes, I got a house fire going on here on Zumberham Road to my neighbors. A house fire leads to a gruesome discovery, a beloved coach and mother murdered. Now an unlikely suspect is accused of the crime. And he was one of the last to leave as he watched the property and the victim burn. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. I have kind of a mysterious case for you today, and it's mysterious because we have more questions. about it than answers. Erica Kramer had what looked like a wonderful, wonderful life. She was a loving

mother, a cheerleading coach in Ansonia, Ohio. That's a small village northeast of Dayton. Cramer owned a farm, where she also raised golden retrievers. Tragically, Erica Kramer's picture perfect life came to a tragic and senseless end on April 10th. A neighbor called 911. Dirk County 911. Yeah, so I got a house fire going on here on Zumbram Road to my neighbors. Okay, what's the address? My address is just right down the road from me. I don't know what the address is. What's that?

Are you, it's 2723? Possibly. How bad is it? Smoke coming out everywhere, but I see two vehicles home. I tried to call them. there was no answer, but I don't know if anybody's home, if they're in the house. I don't know. Okay, your name?

Phone number, see any flames? I don't see any flames, but there's smoke coming everywhere. Okay, we'll get them right there. When firefighters got there, there was a lot of smoke, and I mean a lot. On scene 24 was there as firefighters worked to put the flames out at this large home. The fire was burning on the second floor. But the sheriff would later say there was someone at the scene that stood out. Peyton Beam, a new volunteer firefighter at the Ansonia Volunteer Fire Department.

The prosecutor would later say that Beam got there quickly. His presence stood out because he arrived almost too quickly. Video shows just how much that fire damaged Erica Kramer's home. Prosecutors say Erica Kramer was executed. She was found dead in her bedroom on the second floor. she had been shot four times from behind. Two days after Erica Kramer was found dead and her body burning, Peyton Beam was arrested and charged with murdering her and setting her home on fire.

He appeared in court where prosecutors talked about their case against him. Your Honor, the state would note the defendant had an relationship with the victim in this matter. The defendant would describe the victim as like his second mother. The state would note that in this situation, there is evidence the state believes supports the fact that the victim in this matter was executed by the defendant. She was shot twice in the back and twice in the head. Her body was then drenched in what appears to be gasoline and the house set on fire to cover this crime. defendant then left, returned or went home, and then was called out as a firefighter to respond to this scene. Under the guise of being the firefighter, he was one of the first individuals to get to the property with a house on fire.

And he was one of the last to leave as he watched the property and the victim burn. because of the seriousness of this offense, and the state would understand he has no prior criminal history, and he does have a residence here in Dark County, but the seriousness clearly outweighs those things, and the safety to this community is paramount. Peyton Beam's attorney painted a much different picture of his client to the judge. Mr. Beam also feels a great lot. of a person that he was dear to him. We stand on the proposition that the presumption before you

is that he is innocent. And even though that there's facts in this case that are trying to be put on him, he insists that they're not true. He's a local young man. He's 22 years old. two years old. He has parents that are in the courtroom today that live in this community. He has no criminal record at all in any regard, and he had no interest in doing harm to the lady that was

dreadfully killed. We understand that this needs to be looked at. His family feels that the person that did this is at large and that he is not the one that did it. The fact that the facts are gruesome, perhaps, doesn't really go to what the court looks at. Is he a danger to community based upon past he was not? Will he show up for trial in all probability because he lives here and grew up here? I'm telling you that I think he'll show up and he's never been a danger to the community and he is not now. We've done some investigation in this case. We see some inferences, suggestions, so-called if you make the right combination,

If you're a police officer, it's circumstantial evidence. If you're an innocent person, it doesn't prove anything. So that's going to be sort of the way that's going to go back and forth so far. We'd be very interested in ballistics in this case, very interested in any evidence other than inference. So the prosecution, they asked the judge to set Peyton's beam at a whopping $20 million. In the end, the judge set the bail at $5 million. Payton B. A 22-year-old farmer and volunteer firefighter faces the most serious charges you can in the state of Ohio.

Aggravated murder. Aggravated arson. That's the second charge. The grand jury also indicted him on charges of tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse this week. Erica Kramer's body, according to the prosecutors, had been doused in gasoline before she was sent on fire. Beam pleaded not guilty to those charges. But the question remains, why do prosecutors believe that? Peyton Beam committed this crime murdering a woman he considered a second mother. Okay, so to break down this case, I want to bring in two great guests. We have Dr. Neda Rutherford. She is the coroner in Richland County, South Carolina and Eric Fattis. He is a defense attorney based in Colorado. Neither one of them are affiliated with this case whatsoever. Thanks to both of you for being with me. Dr. Rutherford, I want to start with you. This would quite obvious,

on autopsy, not be a natural death. This woman, according to the prosecutor, is doused in gasoline, and she has four gunshot wounds. So how do you make such quick work of this in tying this from a coroner's perspective to this guy, to this Peyton beam? Well, you have to remember that the coroner's office or the medical examiner's office, their job is not to make charges. Their job is, to determine the cause of death and the manner of death. And so I'm really grateful that you all had this type of perspective for this case because what's really important about the autopsy is that number one, people think that if you burn a body that an autopsy cannot be performed, and that's just not true, you have to really do some pretty intense thermal damage in order to

not be able to do an autopsy. But even with bones, we're able to determine sometimes even stab wounds because it often interrupts the bony areas that you're stabbing through. But in this case, we have a gunshot wound and we have not one, but four of them. And so we know that this person would not probably be able to shoot themselves in the back or in the areas that were listed in the limited reports that we have. And so we know that this was a homicide more than likely. So we can already rule manner of death. Also, when there is a fire investigation,

and I'm sure Attorney Eric Fattis can speak to this, but when there's a fire investigation, they look for the origin of the fire and the fact that the thermal injury probably started with this body and spanned outward, lets them know that someone intentionally doused this woman with fire. And so I think it's very important that from an autopsy perspective, there are things that we're able to glean right away.

Now, how they tied it directly to him, I'm sure Attorney Fattis can speak to that. Yeah, I'm sure you can. You know, as a coroner, though, you're often involved with talking to the investigators, and you would be able to tell, I would assume, pretty quickly, would you, as the pathologist or the coroner, doing the autopsy, that an accelerant had been used? Because gasoline, I mean, that's no joke. That is going to cause the fire to spread rapidly. That is going to go to do massive amounts of damage. Yes, and we look at the origin of the fire. So where did the fire start on the body? There's a difference in someone being dowsing gasoline versus a fire starting near them. And so when you see the focal point of fire starting on the actual body, you're going to see intense thermal damage. You're going to see full thickness burns that go all the way down to the bone. And I'm pretty sure that if the autopsy report on this or if this goes to court and we get to see the medical examiner's report, those are the things that we're going to see is that this fire was all the way down, full thickness to the bone, but they could not hide the projectiles. Now, the bullet wounds, I would be very interested to know if they recovered projectiles from her body and if they had a caliber of gun associated with the suspect that matched that

caliber of gun. And I think, again, this is where the attorneys will fight it out in court and say, well, is it his gun? Where did this gun come from? how did you all obtain this gun and be able to ask those questions. But as the coroner, our job is to say, we believe the fire started here on the body because of this full thickness damage and we believe that the thermal injuries contributed to the death. But in this case, again, we're waiting for that autopsy report.

Was there stood in her lungs? Was she laying there burning on fire while she was still alive even with these bullet holes? I don't believe so. I think they would have said that, but that's something that will be able to also determine an autopsy if she was alive with these bullet holes, you know, bleeding out and laying there basically burning alive. And I hope that's not the case. Yeah, let's hope to God that's not the case. My God, it's horrific enough. Eric, I want to turn to you now. You're a criminal defense attorney in court. John Ryan, the defense attorney for Peyton Beam said that, you know, his family says they do not believe he did this. And he said he wants to. to see evidence. He wants to see things like ballistics aside from, he wants to see things like that, not just inference. So this happened on April 10th, and they arrested him in the afternoon of April 12th. So they made pretty quick work of this, as I mentioned earlier. So they are saying like he was

right there on scene first. He was there very quickly. He worked for Erica Cramer. He worked for Erica Kramer. He was considered her a second mother, apparently. This is how he referred to her. So how were they able to tie this, do you think, the prosecutors, to him so quickly? I'm thinking to myself, there had to be more there there than just what we're hearing, that he was there on scene quickly, that, you know, he was a volunteer firefighter, and he had only been a volunteer firefighter for a short time. So what do you think of this? Yeah, answered that. I mean, they turned these charges around in very short order, especially considering the circumstances in this case. You know,

based on the defense counsel's statement, it seems like ballistics analysis had not yet come back. And so what else did the prosecution perhaps have to connect this event to this defendant? You know, first they're going to look at opportunity. Who had the opportunity to be there, to be within the house, who had access to the house, who had access to this person, who had regular contact with the decedent. Those are all important considerations, and it appears the prosecutors concluded that this defendant fit that description.

On top of that, you know, there are some unique characteristics about this case that are tied to the defendant's identity. He is a volunteer firefighter. The body was doused in gasoline and set on fire, according to the prosecution. And then the people who are the person who was first at the scene, after that fire had been ablaze is the defendant. And so, you know, you look at sometimes, it's kind of cliche, but sometimes the suspect does return to the scene in some former fashion. Here, the prosecution is saying that happened in a matter of hours or less, I think.

So there are some characteristics that could tie this defendant to this event, but there are still some questions and very limited details being disclosed at this point. And I want to go back to what you mentioned about the ballistics. I don't think there's any way they turned those ballistics around in two days or a day and a half. I don't think that happened. Maybe they were able to remove those shell or the bullets, pardon me, on autopsy, take them out. I don't know. Would they possibly be able to see what caliber they were and they know that he has this type of gun?

I don't know. You know, Neda, would they be able to take those out and depending on how damaged they were and what type of ammunition where they were, would they be able to tell what caliber they were? Absolutely. So whenever a fire death happens, we typically do a full skeletal survey, which means that we get an x-ray from the top of the head all the way down to the bottom of the feet. And we're looking for any signs of injury that may be present on that x-ray. And so if they showed that these projectiles were still in the body, they're able to focus that autopsy around removing those projectiles in the safest way possible to be able to preserve them for later ballistics surveying and comparing it to whatever gun they think

may have contributed to this. But I'd also like to take this time to mention that when a coroner does an investigation, remember, they're doing this in tandem or in collaboration with law enforcement, but it still must be independent. And so the coroner's line of questioning is going to fall on when was this person last known to be alive? Who did they last speak to? Who was last seeing coming to their house? Who did they last have contact with? We're going to look at their cell phone records. Who did they last speak to? Text messages. Down to their shopping list, if they had groceries ordered, I remember one time we were able to help the police tie someone to a fire case because they had left a chick filet bag at the scene and it was outside of the house, but it had a receipt on

And so it showed us that they picked up this order and that it fell in line and in alignment with the timeline that we had in terms of them being in contact with this person who had asked them to go to Chick-fil-A for them. So there are so many little things that we can look at as the coroner's office in collaboration with law enforcement to help put together a timeline because in this case that's going to be imperative. Eric, let's talk a little bit about what Neda just said. she's talking about the timeline here. Who was at the house? Who last had contact with Erica Kramer? Those are all very important things. And I think cell phone evidence could be key here.

They would not have had that back in one to two days to file the initial charges. But now a little bit of time has gone by and a grand jury has indicted Peyton Beam on these additional charges of tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, things of that nature. So they may have some more information about his location back now. How do you defend this? If you look at everything, and let's say he was the last person to have contact with her, and he was the only person on the property. What do you do with this? Well, you know, from defense perspective, you have to survey all potential defenses and try to ascertain, hey, are any of these potentially applicable? Do we need to investigate these defenses more? So, you know, one question is, does the defendant have an alibi? Was he somewhere else?

Is there someone else a witness who can attest to that? But if he was assuming that he was the last person in contact with her and he was the only person at that scene when this incident occurred, that's going to be tough. You know, was there some kind of struggle inside? Was there some sort of physical altercation? Was there some sort of accident in terms of an accidental discharge? Now, four accidental discharges would be phenomenally implausible. Yeah. I don't think there's four accidental discharges in the back and in the head, but you know, go on. Not going to happen. So, so yeah, was there some, like I said, some kind of altercation within the house, you know, was there a possible alternative suspect who defense might look at? These are questions. Defense are going

to be asking their client. and investigating in these early stages. No doubt here. You know, the motive here, though, while prosecutors don't have to prove motive, Eric, I am at a loss. We don't have enough information here. But this guy, even the prosecutors and the defense say this guy considered, Peyton considered Erica Kramer, a second mother, a second mother.

So what's going on? What's going on? We know most of the time motives come down to things like. money, you know, love, greed, things like that. So, so what's going on here? You don't just up and kill somebody. Plus, I am very suspicious because, you know, let's look at this from the prosecutor's lens for a moment. We don't have a prosecutor here. But I'm thinking to myself, this guy became a volunteer firefighter in March, according to the post from the Ansonia volunteer fire department. He's a volunteer fire department. He's a volunteer fire.

firefighter. And so he did that in March. April 10th, Erica Kramer is dead. So is it possible he did that in preparation for this homicide? Well, as Neda was saying, the timeline of the, not only the specific incident, but also what led up to the incident can be very critical. It can give us clues we can piece together from this information how this may have escalated into this incident. And so, and Jeanette, yeah, I mean, in looking at it from prosecutor's perspective, and I used to be a prosecutor, you would see a person who just volunteered for the fire department and then, you know, less than a month later or so, there is a body that is doused in gasoline and set ablaze. And then, lo and behold, this gentleman is the first one to respond back.

to the scene almost like he knew there was a fire there or he was anticipating needing to go back. So those things are all really critical in terms of telling the story, how this could have played out. And I agree with you. So the jury's going to want to know, what's the reason that a guy would have done this? Even though the prosecution doesn't have to prove it, that's in the jury's mind. And so as a priestry, you've got to give them some plausible reason for that. Like you said, is it money? My understanding is he was doing some work for this person. I don't know if he was being paid. I imagine the amount of controversy couldn't have been so compelling to cause somebody to murder somebody else, but I don't know. Was there some sort of additional relationship going on?

These are all important questions. Yeah, they are. And, you know, we're not trying to be smirched the dead here, the deceased, but everything has to be looked at. We don't, we have very little information. We know there is a 50-year-old cheerleading coach, a beloved mother, somebody who was loved by her family who was shot four times in the back in twice in the head twice in the back and doused in gasoline and she's dead and so we have more questions right now than we have answers and right now his family is standing behind him so NATO what what goes on now as far as the medical examiner is concerned because or the coroner because obviously the initial autopsy is done but toxicology, it's going to take six to 12 weeks. Yes, this is not TV. And I have to also remind

families and our community of that on TV, you get a, you get a murder, you get the case solved, and it all happens within a nice, neat 60-minute time frame. That is not the reality of real ballistic testing and real toxicology and real autopsy reports. Just because the gross examination of the body was done, it does not mean that the reports are ready. They still must look at the micro- Cosettes that they take from those scenes the slices of the organs that they're going to look at they're going to look at her lungs extensively to see if there's any soot or any sort of thermal damage to those lungs that would indicate that she was alive prior to To him shooting her or to him putting her on fire once he set this fire did she burn alive? That's going to be very important Especially as they look to make more charges possibly against him but I'd also be interested in the relationship between the decedent and the suspect because death often tells us

the secret lives that people were living. We don't know if this is something that, you know, is some salacious affair that they were having. I would hope not. But again, we're not trying to besmirch the the decedent. But we also have to look at every single angle. And sometimes death gives us those secret lives that people were living. The other part is that it was there like an insurance policy because she was like a second mother to him that he knew that he could possibly get some money he learned how to set fires or learn how to possibly interfere with a fire scene maybe to get insurance money we will have to look at all of those angles yeah we have to look at all of that eric there's so much we don't know i was looking at Peyton beam's facebook he was a football

player when he was in high school for the same high school where Erica Kramer was the cheerleading coach. So they may have known each other for many years. And who knows what the possible potential motive is here? There's just so much, so much right now that we don't know. Oh, 100%. And yeah, that motive piece is huge. What could that be? You know, he's in his 20s and like you said, yeah, and had called this person a second mom. And so very puzzling on that side of things. I've got to imagine the prosecutors may have some information they're holding close to the vest because just in the publicly disclosed information, it almost seems like there wouldn't be enough to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. So I'm wondering,

do they have some information in their back pocket that has not been made public yet? on which they are relying and on which this prosecution is based in part. Yeah. We will learn more. Hopefully, as the weeks and months go on, really sad case. This poor woman, Erica Kramer, beloved cheerleading coach, had a daughter, beautiful daughter who loved her. The family is grieving. Hopefully we'll get some answers.

Thank you both so much. Thank you, Angelina. Thank you, Eric. Erica Kramer's funeral was held last weekend. Her obituary described her as having an unbreakable bond with her daughter. a love so deep that it defined her entire world. She was remembered for her warmth and generosity and her work as a cheerleading coach, which inspired young people.

Peyton Beam is being held in the Dark County Jail. So we'll keep an eye on this case and let you know if we find out any more about why prosecutors believe Peyton Beam committed this crime. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. Thanks so much for being with me. Remember, you can always watch us on YouTube and you can also watch and listen to us on Spotify. so check us out there. I'll see you back here next time.