4 June 1 - 7, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents been from some sort of temporary injury or condition, police have said. It’s possible the killer was a woman. Some articles about the case claim that there was a gun discovered next to Bevers’ body. But police assert that a firearm found at the scene had actually belonged to Bevers, and that it was recovered from inside her ve- hicle. It wasn’t used in her death. The church’s outdoor surveillance cam- eras weren’t in working order at the time of Bevers’ murder. Law enforcement officials sent out notice that they wanted to talk with the driver of what appeared to be a 2010 to 2012 Nissan Altima, or a 2010 to 2012 Infiniti G37. Earlier that morning, the car had slowly snaked around the parking lot of a nearby business, its headlights turning off and on. Bevers’ husband, Brandon Bevers, was out of state on the day of the murder. Bran- don’s father, Randy Bevers — whose right leg purportedly had an outward pronation simi- lar to the culprit’s — was traveling in Califor- nia, the Observer reported in 2017. With ironclad alibis, the Bevers men were dis- missed as suspects by law enforcement. Still, speculation has flourished amidst a dearth of publicly available information. Websleuths ask: Could the husband have hired a hitman to do the deed while he was conveniently out of town? Could it have been a robbery gone wrong? Could the per- petrator have killed Missy in a jealous fit of rage? Police’s stance on the Bevers men didn’t stop social media users from pointing the finger at them — nor did it discourage ama- teur detectives from accusing other inno- cents in the broader Midlothian community. “They could gather everyone on Facebook groups into an auditorium and tell them the truth, but they don’t want the truth,” one former person of interest previously told the Observer. “They just want to crucify some- body.” If anyone gets that, it’s Brandon. Speak- ing with the Observer in early April, he said that, for whatever reason, some folks flat- out refuse to accept the truth. It took a couple of years to begin the pro- cess of grieving the loss of Missy, whom Brandon had known for more than two de- cades. After the murder, he was angry. He went into defensive mode. He knew that even though he wasn’t involved, others viewed him as a likely culprit. “I’ve always walked a fairly straight line in my whole life. You know, I was a Boy Scout,” Brandon said. “I’ve never really strayed outside of what was expected of me socially — or as a son, or as a father or hus- band — so, to be considered a suspect in your wife’s murder, through the interrogation and questioning process, it really, really put me in a dark place.” Murder certainly isn’t common in Midlothian. The most prevalent crimes are assault and theft, said Assistant Police Chief Scott Brown of the Midlothian Po- lice Department. Local law enforcement wants the community to know that the case hasn’t gone cold, and Brown cited several ways in which investigators are still hard at work. Thousands of tips flooded in after Missy died. Even in the past year the department has received more than 50 new ones, Brown said via email. But misinformation abounds online, and there are plenty of “outlandish theories” that harm the investigation. “We will continue to rely on help from the tips we receive with the hope that some- one with true knowledge of the crime — not theory or speculation — decides to come for- ward,” he continued. “I hope this helps you — and helps us.” S ome of the True Crime Broads’ listen- ers at the tree-planting ceremony re- semble fictional podcast fans in Only Murders In the Building, Hulu’s murder mystery series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. In the show, the three protagonists launch a podcast chroni- cling their efforts to solve a New York City murder. They sometimes interact with a cadre of concerned fellow citizens-cum-ea- ger armchair detectives who want to help out in any way they can. True Crime Broads supporters share that sincerity, that genuine interest in justice. Pepper Kuykendall has kind eyes and a bushy white mustache and wore a trucker hat on the day of the ceremony. His wife, Di- anna, has equally kind eyes and donned one of the custom black “Justice for Missy” T- shirts. The Kuykendalls have lived in Midlo- thian for some 30 years. They remember when there was just one red light in town; it’s grown a lot since then. Learning of Missy’s murder unsettled the couple. “It was very shocking, especially being in a church,” Dianna said. “That’s just wrong,” Pepper replied. “That’s just evil,” Dianna concurred. “That is just evil.” Before long, Midlothian resident Christi Bina joined in conversation with the Kuyk- endalls. The three chatted about another North Texas-area case, this one concerning a man who’d gone missing several years ago under suspicious circumstances. Dianna mentioned that her kids had lived in the city where the man disappeared. “So,” Bina quipped, “they know his wife did it?” That question got them talking excitedly, sometimes all at once. Pepper inquired: How did the missing man’s wife get a death certificate so fast with no body? Dianna asked: If your spouse went missing, would you have their cell phone turned off imme- diately after? It’s another curious case where part of the intrigue seems to stem from the vic- tim’s close geographical proximity. True crime buffs really hate it when things don’t add up. If something so terrible could happen to someone in their community, who’s to say that it couldn’t happen to them? It appeared that many of the tree planting ceremony’s attendees didn’t know Bevers personally. Her grisly murder has kept them on edge all the same. Midlothian residents are more cautious now, True Crime Broads’ Crystal Lawson explained during a video call in March: “There’s a homicidal maniac on the loose as far as most of the citizens in the area are concerned.” Some women won’t take out their trash cans alone at night. Rodden bought a gun and carries it wherever she goes. One social media user on the True Crime Broads’ Facebook group recently posted that she’s “constantly looking around” while going about her business, and that she won’t “feel safe in Midlothian until someone is arrested” or officially named as a suspect. Bina recalled that she’d watch her grand- kids play in the front yard of her home, near where Bevers lived. After the murder, Bina gave police a ring. “I’ve got my grandchil- dren out here playing. Do I need to be con- cerned?” she asked them. They assured Bina there wasn’t any rea- son to be alarmed. “Why? Why is there no reason for alarm?” she wants to know. “I’m still alarmed.” A pril 18, 2016, was a nightmarish day for Brandon Bevers. He was on a fishing trip in Mississippi when he reportedly got the call from a student in Missy’s class. He was told that there’d been a robbery, and that Missy was “no longer with us.” For the eight hours it took to get back home, Brandon was stuck in a car, virtually alone with his thoughts, he said in an inter- view with NBC-DFW two years after Mis- sy’s death. “Seven days into this, I thought that the person would be apprehended, and I never imagined it taking this long,” he said at the time, in 2018. “I have faith that this will be solved, the person will be apprehended; I just don’t know when. But the longer it goes on, the harder it is.” Lately, Brandon is simply “maintaining.” He told the Observer in early April that, all things considered, he and his three girls are doing relatively well. He describes the or- deal surrounding Missy’s death as frustrat- ing. Investigators have been tight-lipped for some time now. He also said he’s become more emotional these days — not necessarily because of hopelessness, but from “the feeling of just kind of living in a vacuum without any re- sults.” Brandon still struggles with the way that Missy has been portrayed by the media. Early on, the narrative crafted about the couple was that they were having financial difficulties, and that there’d been an extra- marital relationship. Yet they weren’t really having financial problems, Brandon said. There had been an affair “that came to light in 2014,” but they were working through it. To see cable networks run segments about Missy’s murder was surreal for Bran- don. Somehow, his family’s greatest tragedy had been twisted into a form of exploitative entertainment for countless faceless news viewers and true-crime consumers. Alicia Anthony Looking in at the lobby of Creekside Church where Missy Bevers was murdered by an unknown assailant. Unfair Park from p3 >> p6
