Law&Crime Sidebar - Obsessive Man Who Stalked His Ex-Girlfriend and Killed Her New Lover — Zachariah Anderson Case

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

From details of a brutal killing to secret courtroom messages to an upset judge, Law & Crime Network's Jesse Weber recaps the trial of Zachariah Anderson, the man who killed  Rosalio Gutierrez Jr.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Save 10% on your entire POM Pepper Spray order by using code LAWCRIME10 at http://bit.ly/3IGNFxv LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. After three weeks in the courtroom, the murder trial of Zachariah Anderson has come to an end. We recap all the key moments from court. Welcome to Sidebar, Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. I have covered a lot of stories at Law and Crime, but if there's one thing I can tell you throughout, it is that you have to stay safe.

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And always remember to call 911 if you see somebody in trouble. Bray the matter of Wisconsin versus Zachariah Joseph Anderson. As to the first count of the information, we the jury find the defendant, Zachariah Anderson, guilty of stalking Stacey Beachham as charged. As to the second count of the defendant, information we have jury finding the defendant Zachariah Anderson guilty of stalking Rosolio Uterras as charged as to the third count of the information we the jury finding the defendant Zachariah Anderson guilty of

intentional homicide who's to first degree as charge as to the fourth count of the information. We, the jury, find the defendant, Zachariah Anderson, guilty of hiding a course as charged. So as you just heard, Zachariah Anderson was found guilty on all counts. And the big one was intentional first degree homicide. But the other ones that you heard were two counts of stalking and one count of hiding a course. A lot to dig into here, a lot to talk about with this case. So let's actually start from the beginning. And what we are going to do is we're going to go back to May 2020, almost three years ago, and specifically May 19th, 2020. 40-year-old Rosalio Gutierrez Jr. is reported missing in Kenosha, Wisconsin after his

girlfriend, Sadie Beecham hadn't been able to reach him for two days. Now, Gutierrez hadn't reported to work, he had no contact with his children, his credit cards hadn't been used, nothing. So when Beecham goes to Gutierrez's apartment, what she and ultimately the Kenosha police discover, is very alarming. patio door is wide open. There are large amounts of blood on numerous items, including an end table, the door, the curtains, the walls, the ceiling, the carpet, the couch, the chairs, other household items. And they find Gutierrez's cell phone ID and wallet in the rear of his

freezer. That is strange. And so the police look at that and they think the worst, right? The police were confident that a struggle took place there. This resulted in someone being severely injured and Gutierrez is nowhere to be found. And what makes this particularly difficult is that there are no security cameras at the apartment complex. Now, one of the most chilling aspects of this whole case is that even today, at the time of this recording, Gutierrez's body has never been found. Now, you already know that a jury ultimately determined Mr. Anderson is guilty of this crime. But why? What was his connection to all this? Well, you remember when Anderson was found guilty on two counts of stalking.

One was for stalking Gutierrez, and the other was for stalking Gutierrez's girlfriend, Sadie Beecham, who just happened to be Anderson's ex-girlfriend. You see, the police immediately investigated Anderson because Beecham reported that Anderson had been stalking her ever since she started dating Gutierrez shortly after her breakup with Anderson. And what do they find when they look into the defendant? Well, they find a spot of blood in

Anderson's work fan. And that spot was a DNA match to Gutierrez. Here's prosecutor Michael Gravely explaining what else the police discovered in Anderson's van. When they go on the 19th and they look inside that minivan of the defendants, they find that the back is bleached. There's all sorts of bleach stains on the back carpeting. The seats are out. Just the front seats are in. And and the back third of the carpeting in that van has literally been cut out. So you're down to where the electronics is exposed. You're down to the plastic flooring under.

The carpeting from the minivan is missing, is cut out. Where on the 17th in the afternoon, his daughter said, yeah, it was in there. Nothing was cut out of there. And there was no bleach. Fresh smell of bleach. Carpet cut out in the last 48 hours. So it appears that Anderson may have missed a spot when trying to cover up the evidence.

The theory being that he killed Gutierrez at his apartment, investigators believe with both a blunt and sharp-edged weapons, of some kind and then moved and ultimately discarded the body, which speaking of which, the footage from a Walmart shows Anderson buying gloves, trash bags, and wipes the morning after he killed Gutierrez. Also, law enforcement apparently found burn pits at Anderson's property with what appeared to be the burning of a bleach bottle and his clothing. Now, Gravely continues his opening statement and points out a motive for Anderson to commit this crime. You'll hear Mark I, Washington say the defendant described the house that was raided as a

crappy house, but in a nice area. You'll hear Mark I, Washington, say the defendant told him when talking about murder, that murder takes a lot of work, that you have to figure out ways to track people and stalk them, learn their habits, learn what they are up to so that you can find your moment he suggested trackers from amazon would be something that would be worthwhile to consider mark one washington says the defendant told him that he wrapped the body up and took it away that he put the body in trash bags that he made sure the trash was gone and so it will never be found mark one washington will say well how did you lift that guy you know how did you lift him you know like however you got him out of there and the defendant told him I was working out at

that point I was so strong adrenaline he said I was like Superman the combination of adrenaline and my working out was what allowed him to do it solo Marquan Washington tried to get him to tell him why why did you do this and he said he never really had a real answer but that one thing that struck him that the defendant told him was my ex was getting serious with this guy and she was happy so as gravely points out Anderson became jealous that his ex-girlfriend was happy with this other man and he couldn't bear it and he was arguably quite obsessed with Beecham and didn't want anyone else to be with her for the defense though they say this isn't true attorney Nicole Mueller argues that the police

In this case, they didn't conduct a proper investigation. So where I had left off when I last was speaking with you all was about how law enforcement in this case failed to actually investigate the events the state assert transpired on May 17th, 2020, how they ignored leads, how they didn't follow up on things, how they failed to look in places that should have been looked into. So I'm going to go into some of those investigative failures now. You'll hear that law enforcement really did no searches of Mr. Gutierrez around the immediate vicinity of Wood Creek apartments where Mr. Gutierrez lived. That there's a wooded park area that is property of UW Parkside and that all that they did with that area was send some drones to look around. But you'll hear that it was forested at that point because we're in the middle of May and that they would not have been able to see the floor of that entire wooded area. So law enforcement looked nowhere close to Mr. Gutierrez's residence in an attempt to find potential evidence. Not only did they fail to do that, they failed to investigate legitimate crime stopper leads.

So people could call in with tips, anonymous or not, and there was this one tip where an individual called in and said, I saw a woman standing in front of Mr. Gutierrez's sliding door on that concrete slabbed patio on May 18th, 2020, and I remember this because she had asked me what time it was, and I knew it was Mr. Gutierrez's apartment because because his sliding door is right next to that exit door. Law enforcement got that information and ignored it. They did not follow up. The defense claiming the police immediately pointed the finger at Anderson that they didn't even bother to investigate any other persons of interest.

So that's the defense's opening. That was the prosecution's opening. But now let's get into the testimony, the real evidence in this case. And the first witness in this case to take the stand in Anderson's trial. was Officer Jeff Van Wee, who was the first officer to discover the crime scene. Could you approach this and simply point out for the jury the places you saw something you thought appeared to be blood? Yes. So all of these darker stains you see on the red door, all of these things here are, I suspected, were blood stains.

there's a number of those did you count them all I did not and is in this photograph were you attempting to depict them in a broad view no okay do you recognize based on your training and experience that type of blood stain yes okay what is that type of blood stain impacts better and if you could if I'm ask that you sit back down for just a second you're going to be doing a lot of this I apologize can you explain to the jury when you use the phrase impact spatter what do you mean so impacts batter is when there's some kind of force which impacts on liquid blood so force would hit the liquid blood and it would dispersants at small

blood drops and it would just scatter out onto a So what sort of object causes that sort of blood spatter? It's either blunt force trauma or gunshots. What is blunt force trauma, so that... Burt force trauma would be somebody getting struck with some kind of object, like a bat or a hammer or some sort. And would... What, if anything, can you say about whether those kind of impact... impact stains that you're talking about would occur when someone is originally struck,

or does the surface already have to be bloody for this impact to occur? Does that make sense? Yes. If a person's not bleeding, would we see this? Hold on. Or is it after someone is bleeding? There would have to be liquid blood involved. So somebody would have to have blood on them in order to cause it. Now, there's something else that we have to point out as we talk about this case. Anderson, Beecham, they had a relationship, but they also had children together. And their relationship was on and off over the years, but by the end of 2019, Beecham was over it,

and she broke up with Anderson shortly after. In fact, here's Sadie Beecham explaining the end of her relationship with Anderson and the beginning of her relationship with Gutierrez when she took the stand. After communication had been reopened between you and the defendant, did you meet up with him in February of 2020? Yes, I did. And what was the nature of the discussion you had with him regarding how you were going to be moving forward together?

So he reached out to me and I agreed to have a conversation with him but only outside in my driveway. And so we had a conversation and in that conversation I expressed to him that I was done with the relationship and that I did not see it being repairable at that point based off of what had happened. So I kind of made it clear and wanted to kind of figure out, you know, what an agreeable, something agreeable to. for the kids, like to see the kids, because that's ultimately what he wanted. So I was thinking that that was fine to come up with something to do with the kids, but I was done with

the relationship. So. And did you take any affirmative steps to move on or potentially look for a new relationship moving forward? Um, I did. I kind of just dabbled on Facebook dating And did you meet someone named Rosaleo Gutierrez, Jr. on Facebook dating? I did. And approximately when in February of 2020, do you recall connecting with him over that app? February 13th. And did you then start exchanging messages with Mr. Gutierrez? Yes. We started chatting on Facebook, dating app for a little bit, and then we exchanged

messengers and started to chat that way. Since your relationship with the defendant, since I think you said, 2007, was this the first new relationship you had ever really attempted at that point? Yeah, yes. And Beecham also discussed how she found out that something was wrong with Gutierrez. So why on May 18th were you caused concern based on the lack of contact with Mr. Gutierrez? Because that morning I didn't get, well, actually the previous night, I didn't get a good night text. And so that was alarming, or just I wasn't sure.

And then that morning I didn't get a good morning text. And so I thought that was weird. And then I text him. And then I text him in the afternoon again. And I still didn't get a response. and that that started me kind of thinking that something was wrong or that maybe something happened so that's what it definitely was unusual that he didn't respond to me now as we continue the discussion into the trial of zachariah anderson why the jury ultimately convicted him for

the intentional homicide of rosalia gutierrez junior we have to talk once again about the children so as i mentioned anderson and his ex sadie beecham they shared custody of their children And apparently Anderson was so obsessed with his ex seeing another man, Mr. Gutierrez, that he would not only spy on the two, but he apparently brought in his own young daughter with him to do it as well. And guess what? She testified about it at his trial. Mr. Gutierrez, I guess. Okay. And I saw him sitting on the couch with my mother coming out of the bathroom.

and I don't think that is going to be this hard. They're listening to music and laying there together. And doing what together? Just laying there on the couch. Okay. This is, so what room are you looking into from where your vantage point is? The living room. There was a space in between the curtains.

Okay. And what window of your mom's place are you looking through to be able to see into the living room? What do you mean by that? Well, you're on the outside, correct? Correct. So which window? Is it a window that goes into the kitchen? Is it a window that looks directly in the living room?

So what? It's a window that looks directly in the living room. Okay. And where is the defendant during that period of time? Standing next to me. Okay. And after you look in and see that, what is the next thing that happens? We leave.

What? You leave? We got back in the car and we were on our way out. And he didn't grab the voice recorder at first until he pulled out and pulled onto the road. and he stopped. He stopped right at the second entryway to our driveway and got out, took his sandals off, and went to the house. So let me stop you. What footwear then was your...

He didn't have shoes on. Okay, cool. Keep going. He went into Mr. Gutierce's car and took his registration and took a picture of his license plate. Okay. And I'm sorry, you saw that from where you were in the car? Yes, I personally saw that. Then what happened?

And I saw him run, ring the doorbell, and then run back to the car and drive away. Whose doorbell did he ring? My mother's, but he also had grabbed the phone while he was, somewhere in the time period from when he rang the doorbell, the phone was grabbed. And which phone are you referring to now? I'm the one that was put, placed in the air conditioner. Okay. So after the defendant goes to Mr. Gutierrez's truck, takes a picture and takes an item out of the vehicle or takes registration,

grabs back the phone and he rings the doorbell, what does the defendant do next after he does those three things? Comes back to the car with the phone. All right. And then what happens? Places, plays the phone, of course. The plays a recording on our way home. Okay.

And what, if anything, can you say about what you could hear on that phone recording? Nothing. Okay. So where do you guys go next? Back to my dad's house. Okay. When you get back, what happens next? I walk in.

He tells me to get some sleep. I then was sitting downstairs. downstairs and thinking about what just happened because I was a little, like, did I really just see what I saw, what I just witnessed? Truly disturbing that she had to experience that and be roped into it, and I think she was only 11 or 12 years old at the time this happened. By the way, authorities also claim that Anderson used a burner phone and GPS tracker to follow Beecham and Gutierrez and talking about phones for a second, prosecutors say that it was

awfully convenient that Anderson's phone showed no activity at the precise time when they believe he killed Gutierrez, possibly as a way to conceal what he was doing. And we know that defendants in the past sometimes don't turn their phone on or they don't bring it with them when they commit a crime to not track their location. Now, just staying with the daughter for a second, there was a bit of back and forth and some drama when she testified, because there was a question about whether Anderson was signaling to his daughter an open court to keep quiet. And what has become a viral clip, you can see him putting his hand to his mouth, making a gesture maybe to zip up, not say anything more. The defense, I believe, suggested that, well, you know, his daughter maybe was mouthing

something. So maybe that's why that happened. The defense also accused Beecham, the girl's mother, of using sign language to communicate with her while she was testifying an open court. Just chaos. Just absolutely crazy there. But we moved on from that. The trial ultimately moved forward. And as I previously mentioned, the DNA, huge part of this case, Gutierrez's DNA was found at Anderson's work van.

And to give you kind of an idea of how DNA played a role in this case, here's DNA analyst Ronald Wattuckie. Did you take a look at it? an item that is described as item AU, a piece of clothing described as genes? Yes. And was that something that you were asked to determine whether there was the presence of blood? Yes, it was.

And did you, were you able to figure out whether the presence of blood were located on that pair of genes? I looked for blood. I could not identify any blood on those pair of genes. And were you able to identify DNA on those genes? There were a couple of stained areas that I extracted for DNA, and I did find DNA in both those stains. And ultimately, were you able to compare that to a profile of a particular individual? I compared it to several profiles.

There was one matching profile for six of, I'm sorry, for the genes. I compared it to several individuals, but none of those were matches. They were all exclusions. So as to the match, was that an individual identified you as Zachary Anderson? Yes. Now, another piece of crucial evidence came from Anderson's former cellmate, Marquan, Washington. Anderson apparently shared a cell with him in jail while awaiting trial, and it seems that he maybe became a little too comfortable sharing details of his life.

life before all this happened, and Washington explains why Anderson in particular had a certain nickname. Did the defendant talk about why people were calling him Houdini and describe, you know, what that was about to you? Yes, he said they called him Houdini because of his case, basically because he made a body disappear, they say, and everybody called him Houdini because of it. And what can you say about how he was acting when he described that to you? Was he sad, regretful, just neutral?

Was he proud? Describe his reaction as he had that discussion with you. Me? I think he was kind of like proud but not really showing it. Like he kind of smiled it off. I mean, in jail, like you, when you're around people, you got to have like this kind of name for yourself. I don't know.

Everybody fighting the same battle in there, so everybody fighting different cases. And he kind of like know his case is big. Because of it, everybody knew him, so he kind of like wear that jacket a little bit. He doesn't admit it to everybody, but he does wear the jacket, in my opinion. What did the defendant tell you about how he committed the case that he's charged with and what the circumstances were? He said that he had seen this person, and he said he stabbed him, and he blacked out.

He said he stabbed him, he stabbed him, and I just blacked out. And he said, he eventually wrapped the body up in garbage bags and got rid of the trash. He threw the trash out. And I asked him, what did he mean by that? And he said, I said, what, like dumpster or trash? And he said, once it's gone, it's gone. Now, after all the evidence was presented, it was time for both sides to wrap up their case and make their closing arguments. Here's part of the prosecution.

Sadie Beecham was more than harassed by what the defendant was doing because he wasn't just watching her. He was taunting her. He would watch something. He would then contact her about it. Every moment she had from April 1st on with Mr. Gutierrez was always clouded in, is he also watching this? Is he listening right now? No moment between the two of them was ever their own because the defendant was always there. And that was the point.

He was interfering with her relationship, even if he was. wasn't there. That is stalking. The question was then asked, was Mr. Gutierrez really being stalked because he had some anger towards him. But I submit to you, on the night of May 17th, when this defendant showed up at his house and blitz attacked him and struck him with a blunt object at least six times, that Mr. Gutierrez, without a doubt, felt harassed, felt tortured, felt fear for his life, and it's something he ultimately paid for with his entire life. So to say that he didn't have these experiences of these emotions is disingenuous, but also not based in reality. He was murdered by this guy simply for having the misfortune of being the first

guy that his ex-girlfriend moved on with. And here is part of the defense's closing argument. And by the way, I heard, I think about 25 times Mr. Gray, say, if somebody's out there saying, I'm not jealous, I don't care, how can you believe that? Well, the testimony was, and you heard some of the recordings, that Mr. Anderson was honest about his feelings for Sadie, and he did admit that he had jealousy. He said that, yes, I admit it. And he was talking about that in the context of sending her flowers, telling her he loves her,

and all of the other things that might happen when a long-term relationship is not on its highest level. discussing where their future is in the context of their kids. So would it be surprising in that context when somebody goes on one of the easiest search sites that you can do, CCAP, the Wisconsin Circuit Court access program, when you figure out the mother of my children is going to be spending time with this person, my children eventually are going to end up having contact with this person, let's check him out. What's he all about? Does he have a criminal record?

Is there anything going on? Is there anything that would cause concern, and it's an easy, it takes, you know, three minutes to do that. And also, just checking this person out because it's somebody who, as we heard, we're going to call her OA, you know her name, but OA is what we call it because she's minor, and because, of course, this is being broadcast everywhere. There had been problems going on with OA, with some problems, with parenting type problems. parenting type issues that they were having. There was some discussion about that. And Mr. Anderson was concerned about who she was hanging out with, what she was doing,

what kind of influences were going on in her life. And this is all part of his effort to basically make sure that his daughter wasn't in a dangerous or bad situation by checking it out, by investigating, by looking. And while they made their points, as we know, the jury of seven women, five men, after deliberating for about 10 hours, convicted. Anderson across the board, intentional first-degree homicide, stalking, hiding a corpse. This was a long time coming for the friends and family of Mr. Gutierrez. In fact, here is his mother talking about what this means. It feels wonderful. It feels that God is good and that God is watching over us and watching over my pocho and that some justice, the justice that I was waiting for for these three years has come true it's here we we just heard it a few moments

ago and you sat in court about four weeks straight watching the man who killed your son how difficult was that so composed and so thoughtful brought this whole trial I did it because I respect the court for one thing but I'm representing my son And I don't want to let him down, not even in death, you know, when he's gone. I think I got my strength from him trying to represent him to the best, because he was such a wonderful son. Amen. And father and friend. And people showed up.

Bocha was loved. Amen. Bochua was loved. And so I think that helped. As for Mr. Anderson, he's scheduled to be sentenced on May 16th, nearly three years to the day of the killing. And during that sentencing, this is where he faces the possibility of life in prison. And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.