Murder on Songbird Road - 1. The Case

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

On December 5th of 2020, a blended family was ripped apart when police responded to a 911 call placed from a rural area in Marion, Illinois. At the scene, they would find an 11-year-old girl, brutally murdered and her hysterical 32-year old stepmother. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Criminalia podcast. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the

end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. What follows is a 911 call placed by a woman named Julia Beverly in December of 2020. Its content may be disturbing to some listeners. Hi, this is Julia Beverly. Okay, okay. Its content may be disturbing to some listeners. 1304 Songbird Road, a dairy in Illinois. Okay, okay, okay, listen. You said 1304 Songbird? 11304.

Okay. Sometimes you find a story. Sometimes the story finds you. The message request started coming in through Facebook, February 16th of 2023. The first one was a link to an article with the headline, Jury Finds Julia Beverly Guilty in the Stabbing Death of Jade Beasley. It was immediately followed up with a message notification,

which was immediately unsent. And then this text, Please, prayer hand emoji, If you can help, considering the prosecution's ending argument was, even though we have no physical evidence, dot, dot, dot, yet guilty. And so began a steady stream of missed video calls and links pertaining to this case. A jury trial for a Williamson County woman accused of murdering a young girl starts tomorrow. Julia Beverly is set to be in county court tomorrow morning at 9. She's accused of murdering 11-year-old

Jay Beasley in December of 2020. Beasley died from multiple stab wounds. According to investigators, Beverly pleaded not guilty in the wake of Beasley's death. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. That's Whitney Nicole, the woman behind my myriad of Facebook messages. I'm just a resident of this town, and I can't be quiet in this loving, innocent woman that I believe truly is innocent to just sit and waste more of her time behind bars. Whitney speaks the way she communicated on Facebook, a bit in bursts.

Marrying has always been a sweet stuff under the rug type of deal. Around here, they don't solve murders. They cover them up. And these journalists around here or Journalists around here or news reporters are ridiculous. They ruin lives. And it's not innocent to prove guilty around here. You're guilty. Her outreach seems sincerely motivated by her concern for Julia Beverly, a woman she says she barely knows. I've only met her probably a couple times,

but I've just seen all the wrongs. I just, this girl just needs help. I feel so sorry for her. Like, she does not deserve this. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is Murder on Songbird Road. The 911 call came in Saturday, December 5th, 2020, at 12.24 p.m. It was an unseasonably warm winter day in Illinois, sunny with a high of 54 degrees. You said someone had broken into your house?

Yeah, somebody broke in. I just said they were running out as I was coming home from my stepmother's. Okay. I think she said... Okay, listen to me. You're going to have to take a breath. I can't understand what you're saying. Okay. It originated from a somewhat rural section of Marion, Illinois, a flat area of former farmland peppered with modest, mostly ranch-style homes. You said someone came running out of your house? peppered with modest, mostly ranch-style homes. The stretch of Songbird Road where the murder occurred is dotted with Little League baseball fields,

some still playable, most overgrown by weeds and sectioned off by rusting chain-link fences, exuding an eerie air of time suspended and innocence lost. Which way did they go? I don't know. They just ran out. My eyes were all over the place, and I came in and took on Jade. The call lasts for nearly 12 minutes as a sobbing Julia Beverly struggles to speak.

Okay. Who is this in the bathtub? Okay. How old is she? Okay. Is she awake? Okay. Hold on. Was she awake? No, I don't think so. She's not moving. Okay.

Hold on. When that person left, did they leave in a vehicle or on foot? They were on foot. They just took off running. Okay. Could you tell if it was a male or a female? It was male. Okay. Could you tell if it was a male or a female? It was male. Could you tell what color shirt he was wearing?

He was in all black. Okay. Police arrived on the scene at 1235. Three-five. Okay, there's an officer. She's pulling in. arrived on the scene at 12.35. Okay, there's an officer. She's pulling in. Okay, Joy, I'm going to let you talk to them, okay? Thank you.

They would find a still hysterical Julia Elaine Beverly, age 29. Inside the house, in a bathtub with cold running water, they would discover 11-year-old Jade Marie Beasley. Jade would be pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of death was loss of blood from multiple stab wounds. Through existing media coverage, I could quickly piece together that Julia Beverly and Jade's father, Mike Beasley, had been a couple for nearly eight years. They both had a child from previous relationships who were about the same age. Jade was 11 and Julia's son, Jaden, was 10 years old at the time of the murder.

In addition, the couple shared two young daughters together. One was three at the time. The other was just one and a half years old. That Saturday morning, Julia Beverly and Jade Beasley were the only people in their one-floor modular home. Mike was at work as a cook at the local Cracker Barrel. Julia's son, Jaden, was visiting his birth father, and the couple's two young girls were spending the weekend

with their grandmother, Sheila, Mike's mom. Julia Beverly was working the morning shift from home as a remote customer service representative for Hyatt. Beverly initially told police she had left Jade alone to do holiday shopping at the local Walmart, but upon getting there, realized she'd left her wallet at home when she switched from her diaper bag to a smaller purse, so she returned back home to the house. That's when, according to Beverly, she encountered a knife-wielding masked man dressed

in black who tussled with her at the front door before fleeing on foot. She then discovered blood throughout the house and Jade in the bathtub before calling 911. Just five days later, the now former Williamson County State's attorney, Brandon Zanotti, held a press conference. A few hours ago, I charged Julia Beverly, age 29, of 11304 Songbird Road, Marion, with three counts of first-degree murder. The murder of Jade Marie Beasley, an 11-year-old girl.

An arrest warrant was issued, and Julia Beverly was arrested within the past hour and is being processed and held at the Williamson County Jail. She's being held on a $2 million bond. Zanotti would then hold up a photo of the victim, Jade Beasley. It shows an adorable young girl with bobbed strawberry blonde hair, accented with pink streaks and a pink bow. She's smiling broadly from behind pink-rimmed glasses,

dressed in even more bright pink. The cropped photo and the larger full-body original of the small, pink-clad girl would be utilized by the media throughout the duration of the investigation and trial. I recently was given a copy of the booking photo, and I have those here for anyone that may want them. In stark contrast, Julia Beverly appears haggard and drained in her booking photo. Her dark clothing and dark hair disheveled, the grainy shot drab enough to almost appear black and white. These first-degree murder charges carry with them possible penalties of 20 to 60 years in the Department of Corrections,

and if determined extended term eligible, up to 120 years. Jade Beasley's murder and Julia Beverly's arrest were both announced during that same press conference. But while no motive was given, Zanotti added this. When the incident occurred, the suspect gave law enforcement an initial report that an unidentified male ran from the residence upon her arriving home. She said that she left the residence with Jade alone in the home for a short time and returned home to find an unidentified male fleeing.

The investigation has proven this story to be false. Murder on Songbird Road will continue after the break. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition sign, Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to murder on Songbird Road.

What they had told us at the press conference was that they had arrested Julie Beverly, they charged her with murder, and had said that she had told them a story about a suspect that left the home and that that was later proven to be false. That was the first official word of that case. But they never explained how that happened. I should have asked, you know, looking back at it now in hindsight. That's Danny Valle, who was a reporter and anchor at local news station WSIL News 3 when the Beverly story broke. Every town has its crime. Marion's no different than any other towns.

Marion gets a lot of theft calls, burglaries. Very few times that we've covered shootings in Marion, but there have been, not to say that there haven't been. But to have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. Not at all. It's very rare. And by down here, by a means south. Marion is, so if you know Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,

it's about 30 minutes east of Carbondale on Route 13. If you're more familiar with highways, it cuts right by, in their state, 57. It cuts through Marion. And if you don't know any of the above, know that Marion, Illinois is in extremely southern Illinois, closer to Missouri than Chicago. Valle's recollection of Jade Beasley's murder remains extremely clear three years later. On December 5th, 2020, it was a Saturday. I was still the morning anchor. My shift was over by around 10, 11 o'clock a.m. So I went home, and I'm pure in rumblings that there's something happening in Marion. Joe Rejano was actually the first one to go over there. He was our photog reporter. He actually shot the initial footage of the police

response there. And he was just telling us, you know, that there was a big presence. He went to go eventually hear back on the scanner that they were calling a medevac helicopter to the home. But then later on, we find out that the call was rescinded, that the Aravac was canceled. Immediately, we were thinking someone died, but we just don't know who. We just know that there's a lot of police. There's so much activity going on. Like, this is a huge response. I mean, it was insane the number of cars were there.

I think there were five, but it seemed like there were more. Even in the days after, when we followed up, they were still there. But yeah, we first heard about it on Saturday. We didn't get much information officially. And we were slowly hearing little details on what may have happened. We were hearing that it may have been a little girl. We were hearing that it was the girl's mother. Then we're hearing it wasn't the mother, it was the stepmother.

The lack of information, especially during the isolation of the pandemic, led to immediate speculation and concern. People were calling us for five days asking what was going on. People were wondering if the person was still out there. There were so many questions. People were wondering if there was a serial killer out there

because there was no hint of, we need to find a suspect. All we heard was that they were looking for surveillance video of the area. And that was it. They never gave out a suspect description. They never said whether the suspect was in custody or not. They never said if there was a person of interest until the days leading up to the press conference. We didn't hear official word until Wednesday. So literally five days later, after the fact, when something's happening, the press conference, that was the first official word of that case. And I was actually the one filming that.

Valle would go on to cover the case and the trial, reporting that would put him and the media in general at odds with Renee Hightower, Beverly's mother. Since the day of the murder, her belief in her daughter's innocence has not wavered. The daughter who close friends and family called Julie. That morning I was at work. Renee was working at one of the gas stations she manages.

I remember the ambulances going by my work because I was in work. Renee was working at one of the gas stations she manages. I remember the ambulances going by my work because I was in my Marion store. Nothing clicked. Nothing was like, oh my God, something's happened to one of my children, you know, one of my grandchildren. Nothing clicked. I was just watching

because they were going like an extra speed. So my coworker, I was like, oh my God, something really bad must have happened. Probably about 4.30 p.m. My niece called me, who lives in Salem, Massachusetts, and said she's seen something on social media. Nikki is the daughter of Renee's sister and lived in Marion with her family before they moved to Massachusetts after she graduated high school. I was just kind of doing my normal thing, chasing the kids around. And I had a few moments to pop on Facebook. And I still follow the local news station, even though I've not lived there for a while.

I still like to see what goes on in the community. And I saw a news story about murder in a rural area in Marion. And I was like, oh my God, that's so crazy because nothing really like that happens. At least whenever I was growing up there, I clicked on the article and the picture just, it looks so familiar. And I didn't want it to look familiar, but it did. And when I clicked on the article, it said Songbird Road. My heart sank because I knew that that's the road that Julie lived on. It was the tree in the front yard that did it because it's a very odd looking tree.

I called my aunt, Julie's mom, and I said, hey, we called Julie. And she was like, no. And I was like, there's been murder on her road. And I think it is her house. She sent me a picture. And sure enough, I recognized it to be Julie's house. You found out through a niece who lives halfway across the country who saw it on social media.

Yes, four hours later. So I raced out there. I was like 12, 15 miles away, and I think I got there in three minutes, it felt like. And sure enough, there's police vehicles everywhere, and it's taped off, and I'm in a panic, and there's an officer at the curb, and I get out of my car, and I'm asking, are the kids okay?

Ma'am, you'll have to go to the police station. I said, this is my daughter's house. Is she okay? He would not answer. You have to go to the police station. In the meantime, I'm calling Julie. No answer. I'm calling Mike.

No answer. I'm calling Sheila, Jade, and nobody's answering the phone. So my panic level is rising with every time I try to call somebody. Because at that point, anybody could have been dead. Yes, yes. And I finally get through to Sheila, Mike's mother, and I asked what's going on. And is everybody okay? You know, and I had a million questions.

And her response to me, if you hold on, I'll tell you. So I took a breath and she said to me, well, Jade's with our heavenly father now. And I just lost it, lost it. I was screaming no. And I quickly have to gather myself together again and ask what happened. And she said, do you want to talk to Mike?

I said, yes. So Mike tells me that she committed suicide. And I'm like, what makes an 11-year-old girl do it? What was going on? Was she depressed? No, not that I know of. But mom and Kim said she might have been feeling a little bit depressed. That initial confusion about the cause of death within the immediate family and the fact that police only informed one side of the family

were just two of the issues that would define the investigation of Jade's murder and the case against Julia Beverly, as would what Renee recalls as a notable disconnect between Mike and his fiance. I'm like, where's Julie? I don't know. Have you talked to her? No, he hasn't talked to her. He hasn't spoken to the woman he lives with who is the mother of two of his children. Yes. Why? How did he explain that? He didn't. He just said he hadn't talked to her. Now, I'm sure by this time they had taken Julie's phone

so she couldn't call or talk to anyone. But if you were down at a police station like her, I mean, did you ask about her? No, nothing. I don't know. But he didn't even know where she was. Didn't know where she was. So I figured, well, this officer was telling me

to go down to the police station, so I go down to the sheriff's office. Which is indeed where Julia was, having agreed to be questioned, initially waiving her right to an attorney. I was asking if my daughter was there, and he asked who Julia was, having agreed to be questioned, initially waiving her right to an attorney. I was asking if my daughter was there, and he asked who I was, and he said, we'll be down in a minute.

And a police officer, Carl Gustantin, came down and talked to me. Remember that name. Carl Gustantin will play a pivotal role in Renee's issues with the investigation and Julia's arrest. At this point, what time is it? Probably around 5.30 p.m., going on six.

He come down and he said, we've got a lot of questions that we're talking to her. It's going to be a while. And I said, well, I'm not going anywhere. As he's going back upstairs, I said, what would make an 11-year-old commit suicide? And he looked at me strange and he said, who told you that? And I said, what would make an 11-year-old commit suicide? And he looked at me strange and he said, who told you that? And I said, her boyfriend, Mike. And he just said, oh. And he went on and finished questioning my daughter. It was crazy. It was crazy. So I'm talking to my oldest son, Michael, and he said, why do they still have her in there? It's been hours. And I was like,

I don't know. I guess they got a lot of things to talk, you know, trying to figure this out. And he's like, where's Mike? I said, I think he's at home. He's like, mom, they're looking at her as a suspect. Julie willingly submitted for questioning. Yes. Without representation because it didn't occur to her that she was a suspect. Correct. Now, Julia had told me later on that she could feel a change in the wind within 10, 15 minutes of being there, but then she's trying to brush it off. They're doing their job. They have to exclude family members before they find, you know, so this is how she's playing it in her mind. This is their job. They have to exclude family members before they find, you know, so this is how she's

playing it in her mind. This is their job. They have to do this. I'm reading too much into it. But she did say she could feel a change within 10 minutes of them being there. Of the police being at her home at the crime scene. Yes. Yes. Much of this case seems to hinge on the fact Beverly initially told police she had made it to Walmart before realizing she'd left her wallet at home. But surveillance footage established she had not completed that journey. Here again is Whitney Nicole. They arrested her so fast, you know, and so I'm like, she must have been drenched in blood and had all this evidence.

But come to find out, there was no bloody clothing of hers found. There was no blood found in her bedroom or in her bathroom or even in the drain. So if she even took a shower, where did that blood go? Where did her bloody clothes go? Where did the weapon go? No, like, witnesses, no nothing. And it's supposed to be beyond a reasonable doubt, you know? And there was nothing to even prove.

She should have even been arrested. Whitney Nicole also brings up something that makes those photos from the press conference with the Williamson County State's attorney more interesting. Oh, Jolie's side. Jolie was shorter than Jade, and she weighed less. Like, Jade was 130 pounds and 5'3". Jolie was 4'8 and 115 pounds. A quick clarification. Beverly is actually 4'11".

Jolie had never even been in a fight before. And it was actually said by the bio mother of Jade that she had taught Jade self-defense. So in that case, like, you know, Julia had never been in a fight. Why wasn't there more, like, defensive wounds on her? You know what I mean? The photo then-Williamson County State's attorney Brandon Zanotti

released to the public of 11-year-old Jade Beasley was actually several years old, giving the false impression that Jade was smaller than Julia Beverly at the time of her death. We begin tonight with breaking news. A Williamson County jury has reached a verdict in the Julia Beverly trial. Two years later, it would take a jury just a little over one and a half hours of deliberation to deliver a verdict. She was found guilty of murdering 11-year-old Jade Beasley.

But many, including the prosecution and the victim's family, believe justice was served. After the verdict, the special prosecutor, Jennifer Mudge, spoke to local news. Any child murder case means a lot, and there's a lot at stake and a lot of emotions involved. So you have to, in a sense, take it a little bit personally, but we did our jobs. As did Jade Beasley's mother, Jessica Bradley. Being able to be here for justice to be served to her was a good ending. The concepts of justice and injustice are intertwined with crime and punishment. But in the case of this murder, they played heavily into the divisive aftermath

that quickly seemed to split the city of Marion and its social media activity. According to Beverly's cousin Nikki, so did Race. Absolutely. I remember within hours of her being arrested, there were just people that had taken pictures from her Facebook profile because she had attended a black lives matter rally with mike a few weeks earlier and it was in the marion town square and they had a picture of her holding up a sign that said no justice no peace and they were using that picture to like talk better and then everybody was dashing the whole black lives matter movement um but they they did proceed to cut Mike out of the picture because he was standing directly behind her. But here's the pictures and her race and her social stances against her. I do feel that

maybe that could have also impacted the police from the get-go because that stuff was in her house as well. I think she still had her sign from that. So when responding officers came to the house, they would have seen Black Lives Matter signage. Right, yes. I think the poster board that she had at the rally, I'm pretty sure it was in her living room. No justice, no peace. Her booking photo wasn't the only thing that appeared black and white. Julia Beverly is mixed race. For context, according to the most recent census, Marion, Illinois is 86% white. While Renee Hightower, Julia's mother, is white, Julia and her three

brothers are all mixed race. Julia's cousin, Nikki, is the daughter of Renee's sister, and when she lived in Marion, part of that white 86%. That's one of the reasons why we relocated. I don't want to badmouth where I'm from and where we grew up, but it is very much a predominantly white community, very heavily religious. Some of the things that I have witnessed growing up are a bit ridiculous. I remember an incident in our high school. There was during Hurricane Katrina, there was a family that had been relocated.

And there was a Black boy who had been relocated to our school. And within a day, somebody had picked a fight with him. They got into a physical altercation and his family left. It is not a very inclusive community, I would say. Whitney Nicole is also part of that white 86%, but her children are not. Do you think race played a role in this? Oh, yes, and sex. Why? Because I witnessed it firsthand. I witnessed the racism. I witnessed the sexism. So, okay, if me being a white female, and if it was a dispute against a black individual,

they'd probably take it my side. But say if it was between me and another white male individual, they're going to take his side, which I have witnessed and I have experienced. Whitney attended every day of Julia Beverly's trial, which unfolded in Marion. Do you think that Julie was judged by a jury of her peers? Oh, no. I think it was set up just the way they wanted it to be set up. Like, it was all white, all white individuals. There was nobody of color. Renee Hightower is extremely aware of racial issues in Marion, having raised four mixed children into adulthood there. It's also interesting to

note that two of Renee's three sons are active military. In addition, the man Julia considered her stepfather, Renee Hightower's ex-husband, Angelo Hightower, was a sergeant and longtime officer of the Marion Police Department when he alleged discrimination due to his race when passed over for promotion in 2014. That's the same police department that assisted the Williamson County Sheriff's Office in the investigation of Jade's murder. Another thing that I thought of before I forget is when you're talking about the shitty investigation here. When I was trying to get Julie's things out of the house that were left after the investigation was over, I called Carl Gussentine and I was talking to him. They did not even know that Julie owned that house.

That's how deep that investigation went because he told me you're gonna have to talk to the owner and i said i did she's sitting in jail right now and i've got the longest pause from him and then he said well they both own it and i was like no julie owns it and he's he's just sitting there i'm not gonna help you then i'm not gonna to help you then. I'm not going to help you. That's still a matter. You're going to have to talk to him.

And he hung up on me. Murder on Songbird Road will return after the break. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to murder on Songbird Road. Could Julia Beverly have been wrongfully convicted? While there does appear to be issues of possible injustice worthy of revisiting,

there are also facts that remain problematic. Why did Beverly initially say she went to Walmart when her phone location and surveillance camera footage apparently show she turned around well before completing that trip. Why was there a significant delay, according to the prosecution, 31 minutes, between the time Beverly returned home and found Jade before she called 911? It turns out I wasn't the only person with questions or getting DMs about Julia Beverly. I just want to ask you how this case came on your radar. Yeah, it's a funny story, really, because it was Renee.

And Renee, I think, had run into, I don't necessarily know if she listened to my Gacy season or she was listening to my Garcia season. That's Bob Mata, former criminal defense attorney turned prolific podcaster. Best known for his work as the host of the podcast Defense Diaries, where along with his wife Allison, also a defense attorney, he discusses high-profile criminal cases and the legal system from the perspective of his two decades practicing law. I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't done that. As miserable as I was at the end of my legal career, because defense lawyering is a gut-wrenching profession, you're fighting the power of the government, like nonstop, never-ending, and you're constantly losing, it's disheartening in a really fundamental way because you go into that profession

wanting to really protect the rights of all of us, which is really what defense attorneys do. Turns out Mata and I were drawn into the Beverly case in a fairly similar fashion. Renee had reached out to me via email simultaneous to that. Whitney and Nicole was hitting me up in my DMs. They were both sending me the same things. Mata and I had initially connected in February of 23. Because you and I were talking about Christopher Vaughn. So you and I had this thing going on completely separate

and apart. His active community of Defense Diary listeners wanted his take on my take of Christopher Vaughn, who was sentenced in 2012 to four consecutive life sentences for the 2007 shooting deaths of his wife and three children. The case was the focus of the Murder in Illinois podcast, which was released in 2021. You hit me up on Twitter, and I thought, oh, good God, here comes somebody wanting to attack me again for my support of Vaughn.

And then it very quickly became obvious that you were intrigued. And that's when I just sent you everything, the trial transcripts, and just said, come on, you know, let me know what you think. That gave me the answer. And like the parallels between Julie's case and Christopher's case in terms of like most people that kill have a reason. A motive. Something. There's always a motive.

And it doesn't exist here. You know, the outreach from Whitney Nicole when she started blowing up my DMs started over a year ago. I didn't know what to think, but there was a very real thread of wrongful conviction red flags. Right.

The tunnel vision, the trial by media, the confirmation bias, and in this case, racism. Racism, for sure. But while race didn't play a role in the Vaughn case, in addition to the tragic loss of young life, there are some other striking similarities with the case against Julia Beverly. Julie's case and Christopher's case, the things that they said initially that were not truthful are always the hardest things to overcome in your own mind. Because then when you start looking at the facts, especially with Julie's case in particular, they just don't add up. Murder in Illinois remains the most polarizing case I've personally covered. Questioning the integrity of the investigation and conviction that landed Vaughn in prison prompted some people to wish death on my children.

That wasn't lost on me when I weighed looking into Julia Beverly's conviction. I was really wary of it because of my experience with taking on a family annihilator case in Illinois. So when I realized, oh, no, it's Illinois again, and that this is a stepmother who has been arrested and ultimately convicted of the murder of a stepdaughter, I said, you know who you should call? Bob. Yeah. I didn't know that you were already on Renee's radar. Renee hit me up and she's like, oh, I'm talking to Lauren.

I'm like, what? Her and I have been like working on Christopher Vaughn and me doing something on Vaughn for months and I can't believe that this never came up and I just thought things are meant to be a little bit. Bob and I share a sense of pragmatic skepticism, but also recognize the timeliness and responsibility of discovering issues with this conviction before Beverly was even sentenced. You and I both know the stuff that we typically cover, especially you with your wrongful conviction work.

I mean, defendants that are in 15, 20 years trying to get somebody to take a look at their case, knowing just how clogged the system is. You know, with this case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head and I'm like, man, something stinks about it. Something's just, something's not right, you know? Then you add the extra layer of the fact that, yes, she's a stepmother, but she's also a mother. Yes. To, at the time, three other children. Yes. Two of them toddler age. Yes. She's been taken away from all of her children.

And if she's innocent, I can't think of a more horrifying thing to experience. Me either. As a father of four. Me either. As a father of four. Julia Beverly has not seen the two daughters she shares with Mike Beasley since Jade Beasley's murder nearly four years ago. And there's an additional layer. Within weeks of her arrest, Julia Beverly discovered she was pregnant with her third child by Beasley. A pregnancy that ended in unfathomable cruelty,

especially if the conviction of Julia Beverly proves to be a wrongful one. But there's another reason driving Beverly's supporters. If Julia Beverly is not the person who took Jade Beasley's life, there has been no justice for Jade. Here's Beverly's cousin, Nikki. It's scary because the person who did it is still out there and nobody seems to care. Well, that's not true. We seem to care. What happened to Jade Beasley is unfathomable and indefensible, and it is not our intention to disparage anyone, living or dead, but rather to re-examine this case with integrity and sensitivity

while exploring whether Julia Beverly was justly charged, tried, and convicted, or whether pertinent facts and later developments that could have been utilized in her defense were intentionally overlooked or ignored. On the next murder on Songbird Road, the ripple effect of Jade's murder rips apart relationships. I said, Jade is no longer with us. You could see him kind of trying to swallow those tears.

And siblings. He went from living with his mom and his two younger sisters to, you know, get to see his siblings. But did the investigation end before it even began? Within an hour and a half, they were knocking at our back door. They said they were there for Julie, and they had a warrant for her arrest.

Murder on Songbird Road is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Taylor Chacon and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Research, writing, and hosting by Lauren Bright Pacheco. Investigative reporting by Bob Mata and Lauren Bright Pacheco. Editing, sound design, and original music by Evan Tyer and Taylor Chacon. Additional music by Asher Kurtz. Archival elements courtesy of WSIL News 3. Please like, subscribe, and leave us a review

wherever you're listening. You can follow me on all platforms at Lauren Bright Pacheco and email the show with thoughts, suggestions, or tips at investigatingmurder at iheartmedia.com. For more iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. Thanks for listening. and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

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