Nobody Would Miss Them: The Craigslist Murders of Richard Beasley

0:00 There was a job on Craigslist, 688 acres of Ohio farmland, a furnished two-bedroom trailer, $300 a week, and a few cows to feed. Dozens of men answered that ad in the fall of 2011, most had been at a work for a while, some were even living out of their cars, three of them never made it back home. And the man behind that ad was not some faceless stranger. He was the large, friendly white bearded guy that everyone in Akron knew as "preacher rich." Today, we're talking about Richard Beasley and how deliberate every single part of it was.

0:40 [Music] Richard Beasley grew up in Akron after his family relocated from Washington, D.C. when he was just a few weeks old. Unlike so many serial killers that we talk about here, Richard's childhood was really rough, an alcoholic, physically abusive stepfather, years bounced between relatives, sexual abuse by neighborhood kids that he kept private for decades.

1:26 He graduated from high school in 1976, he learned to trade, he married, at a daughter named Tanya, and then he spent the following decades building a criminal record. He did time in Texas on a burglary conviction. He did six federal years on an illegal weapons charge and got out in 2004. In 2005, a dump truck hit his car. He had serious spinal injuries. He developed an opiate dependency and a $125,000 settlement followed. He used a cane to get around, sometimes a wheelchair. He told people that he'd put that settlement money that $125,000 into a halfway house on Yale Street in Akron.

2:09 He had, in fact, done exactly that. He also filled it with women that he was coercing into sex work through a combination of crack cocaine, meth, and the patient, practice psychological manipulation of someone who had been studying vulnerability his whole life. He posted their profiles on back page. He drove them to hotel rooms and then he took the money. On the outside, he was a large, bearded Santa Claus looking guy around Akron's faith community. He visited the county jail twice a week to do ministry. He would put money on inmates' commissary accounts and wrote letters to judges advocating for women's early release into his custody.

2:51 He had this whole strategy that he called the "God hook." Scripture, paternalism, promises of redemption, a father figure arriving right when someone needed one the most. The courthouse knew him by name. People called him "Pretcher Rich," Chaplin Rich. He genuinely looked like Santa Claus, which is either the funniest thing or the most unsettling detail in this entire story. Maybe a combination of both. Detective Pasco of the Akron Vice Unit had been building a human trafficking case against him since 2009. At late 2010, police executed a search warrant on the Yale Street House. Computer forensics, a cooperating witness, they had him.

3:34 And then a judge released Beasley on Bond. Out on Bond, mid-2011, and fully aware that the digital evidence against him was going to bury him at trial, Beasley needed a new identity, an actual different person's name and driver's license to pick up medication, open accounts, and evade the warrant stacking up against him. To get one, he needed to find someone who could vanish without the world immediately noticing. Enter, 16-year-old Brogan Rafferty. Beasley had taken Rafferty in when the kid was 10. His father worked long hours and was mostly gone. His mother was on the streets with a drug addiction. Beasley stepped into that father figure gap and never left.

4:17 At 2011, Rafferty was 6'5", 230 pounds, and still completely under Beasley's psychological control. They went everywhere together. The enormous teenager driving his white 1998 Buickless saber with Beasley riding in the passenger seat. The whole town knew them as a pair. His Craig's list ad, red, wanted, caretaker for farm. Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of Hilly Farmland and feed a few cows. You get 300 a week and a nice two bedroom trailer. Someone older and single preferred, but will consider all. Relocation, a must. Dozens of men responded to that ad.

4:59 And here's the thing. Beasley didn't pick the first name on the list. He conducted actual interviews. He met candidates at the Chapel Hill Mall Food Court and at restaurants near Caldwell. When one applicant mentioned a martial arts background, Beasley entered the meeting and walked away immediately. Another mentioned a fiancé. Beasley stopped returning his calls. Anyone with someone who would immediately notice they were missing got cut. He was building a profile of invisible men. People who could go missing and no one would really notice or care. Ralph Geiger was 56, a former construction business owner who had been staying at an Akron shelter since the recession dismantled his livelihood.

5:44 No close family contacts. Beasley actually knew him through mutual connections to a motorcycle club. On August 8, 2011, the three of them checked into a best western in Caldwell. The next morning, they drove to a wooded area off of Don Warner Road. Beasley told Geiger he was showing him the farm entrance. He was carrying a loaded 38 and mentioned something about coyotes. Geiger turned to follow the path. Beasley shot him once in the back of the head. Rafferty retrieved a shovel. He stripped the body, buried it four feet down and covered the grave with lime. On the drive home, Rafferty stopped at a rest stop and threw up.

6:26 Beasley started using Ralph Geiger's driver's license to pick up prescription pain medication that very same week. On the drive back, he reminded Rafferty that he knew where his mother and sister lived. He understood exactly what that meant. In October, David Pauley responded to the ad. He was 51 unemployed for two years living in Norfolk, Virginia. He loaded everything he owned into a U-Haul, hitched behind his blue Dodge pickup and drove to Ohio to meet Jack Gaylord at a Bob Evans. They told him to leave his truck at a nearby gas station. Then they drove him to Noble County. Beasley then sold the truck for $1,000 and told people that he had scored huge at a storage unit auction.

7:12 On November 6, Scott Davis, 49 years old from South Carolina, met Beasley and Rafferty at a show knees for breakfast. Beasley bought the meal. They then drove him to Noble County. Walking ahead through the trees, Davis heard the metallic click of a revolver cocking behind him. He turned. The gun misfired on the first pull. Davis shoved the weapon aside. The second shot hit him in the elbow. He ran into the woods and did not stop. He hit in the undergrowth for seven hours, bleeding, listening to Beasley and Rafferty crashing through the brush. When it was dark enough, he climbed to a hilltop, found a house knocked on the door. The homeowner called 911.

7:54 With Noble County now compromised, Beasley moved fast. Timothy Kern was 47, divorced, occasionally sleeping in his car. He had answered the ad. They met at a waffle house off I-77 and one week after Davis escaped, Leward Kern to a wooded strip behind the rolling acres mall in Akron, telling him they were looking for a lost watch. Kern was shot five times. Rafferty dug the grave. Then they went to McDonald's. Digital forensics traced the Jack Gaylord Craig's list account to an IP address linked to Beasley's email. On November 16, detectives pulled Rafferty out of class at Stowe Monroe Falls High School.

8:38 He protected Beasley at first. That evening, with his parents sitting in the room during a second interview, he broke. Items from Paulie's trailer turned up in his bedroom. He was arrested and eventually led investigators to the graves in Noble County. He's trial ran in October 2012. His defense argued duress and given six years of psychological conditioning by Beasley, it was not a baseless argument. The prosecution pointed to his computer search history. After the first murder, Rafferty had searched, first killed, and soprano's first whack. The jury convicted him on October 30th.

9:18 Life without parole. The death penalty was off the table only because he was 16 when it happened. Beasley's trial started in February 2013. He arrived in a wheelchair, playing the old frail man outmaneuvered by a conniving teenager. He testified that Scott Davis had pulled a gun first on him, claiming it was retaliation for Beasley serving as a police informant. Davis took to the stand and identified Beasley in open court. The jury convicted Beasley on 26 counts. He chose not to make a statement or ask for mercy at sentencing. April 4th, 2013. He was sentenced to death.

9:59 Richard Beasley's appeals have ground through the courts for over a decade. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld his convictions in 2018. His execution is currently scheduled for February 16th, 2028 at the Ross Correctional Institution. His daughter, Tanya, appeared on a show called Monster in My Family in 2017 and disclosed that she had been the one who taught her father how to post ads on Craigslist. She later sat across from David Polly's son and told him that she had been carrying that ever since. And that's not a burden that she deserves, but she carries it anyway. Ralph Geiger was 56. David Polly was 51.

10:39 Timothy Kern, 47. They simply answered a job advertisement. They trusted the man who bought them breakfast. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder. Binge will trigger my stories. I'm Joe. I'm the host. And at this point is where I would normally read an email, but as you can tell, I've got the hiccups. I know it sounds dumb. And I could just go back and re-record this, but if you had any idea how long it took me 10 minutes, a 10 minute story I just told you, I'm embarrassed how long it took me to record that because I kept having to go back and delete the hiccups out of it.

11:28 In almost 700 episodes of doing this podcast, this has never happened to me. I don't think. Allergies, I've had the cold. I've had a cold. I've had the flu. I've had all kinds of things. A lot of allergies, by the way. But never the hiccups. But tonight it got on me and it won't leave me alone. So this stretch right now that I'm talking, they've just disappeared all of a sudden. Like for the past hour, that's all I can do is just hiccup every couple sentences and now it...nothing. That's great. Alright, well, here we are. If you're new, make sure you subscribe. If you enjoy the podcast, share it with your friends and your family, and that's going to do it.

12:10 That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. See you next time. [Music]