0:00

Before we begin, please note this

0:03

series includes talk of suicide and

0:05

sexual violence. Please take

0:07

care while listening. There

0:13

are things I know about Sandy

0:16

that I only know because she wrote them down

0:18

herself more than four decades ago.

0:21

She was a planner, a checkbook balancer,

0:24

and the type of teen who kept detailed

0:26

notes about her life. Among

0:28

the things that Kim, her cousin, gave

0:31

me to look through is a date book

0:33

that Sandy used to track the last two years

0:35

of her life seventy six

0:37

and ninety seven. On

0:40

the front of the date book is a picturesque winter

0:42

scene, and on the inside of the cover

0:45

is a poem. The final lines

0:47

read, as you close your eyes

0:49

in slumber, do you think that God

0:51

will say you have earned one

0:53

more tomorrow by the work you did

0:55

today. The

0:58

first entry in Andy's calendar

1:01

is in March of ninety six, when

1:03

Sandy was still a senior in high school.

1:06

Her entries are sparse in the beginning, but

1:09

by August the pages are filled with

1:11

her soft curse of handwriting. August,

1:15

I think, is when Sandy met her

1:17

boyfriend. She

1:19

wrote in her calendar, met

1:21

Doug. The fourth went out, the eleventh

1:24

and the twenty three. He got his new police

1:26

car. He

1:28

was twenty eight to her eighteen years

1:30

of age. She marked down

1:32

his birthday in both years of her calendar,

1:35

but she wouldn't live long enough to see him turn

1:37

twenty nine. Doug

1:40

had been married for a few years by the

1:42

time he met Sandy. In

1:45

her calendar, Sandy marked down the

1:47

days they met together, as well

1:49

as his absences, like when he

1:51

was going to be out of town hunting. She

1:54

described him as six ft a hundred

1:56

and sixty five pounds, blue eyes,

1:58

and brown hair. There's

2:00

a photo she kept where he's wearing

2:03

his Maryland State Trooper uniform.

2:05

He's holding his car door open, parked

2:08

in front of a McDonald's. The

2:10

picture is blurry, but he's smiling

2:12

and making eye contact with someone out of

2:14

frame. By

2:19

December of nineteen seventy six,

2:21

the tone of Sandy's calendar changed,

2:25

went to doctor, she wrote, and

2:28

then the next week set aside

2:30

money. By January,

2:33

number started appearing sixty

2:35

days, eight days. Sandy

2:39

drew a square around the date January

2:42

and wrote, eight am.

2:44

I've seen that date before. It's

2:47

on a receipt from the Women's Medical Center

2:49

of Washington, d C. That was found

2:51

in her purse on the morning of her death. The

2:54

receipt was for a hundred and twenty five

2:56

dollars and seventy cents. The

3:00

payment was for an abortion. I

3:03

think the running tab of numbers in her calendar

3:06

was her attempt to estimate how far along

3:08

in her pregnancy she was. The

3:11

following week, she scrawled forget

3:14

it in capital letters across one

3:16

of the pages of her calendar. Within

3:18

a month of having the abortion, she

3:21

was dead. From

3:25

My Heart Radio, I'm Melissa Jelson,

3:27

and this is what happened to Sandy

3:30

Beale an I Heart original podcast,

3:36

Chapter two. Dear Doug.

3:41

After a couple of days, when I try to

3:43

get my mind together, I called

3:45

the doctor. He said,

3:49

I cannot give you any answers, and

3:52

I said, Dr Boyle, I

3:54

said she's dead. I said,

3:57

she's gone. Can't you give me the answers

3:59

that I need to have? And what did he telling?

4:01

He told me that she had come to him,

4:04

that she had had the abortion, that

4:07

she was bleeding. This

4:12

was all new information to Joanne.

4:15

Sandy had kept her pregnancy and her

4:17

abortion a secret from her family.

4:21

Her mom learned about this for the first time

4:23

at the police precinct after Sandy's

4:25

death. But Sandy did

4:27

confide in someone, her family physician,

4:30

doctor Boyle. She went to him

4:32

in December when she would have been a few months

4:34

pregnant, and then again after the

4:36

abortion. Sandy was

4:38

experiencing some residual bleeding and wanted

4:40

to make sure she was okay, and

4:43

he said, I want you to go into the hospital

4:45

and I will take care of you. She

4:48

didn't want to. She was

4:50

scared too because she would have to tell us.

4:53

She would have had you know, everybody would

4:55

have known, and she was embarrassed.

4:59

I've thought a lot about how stressful

5:01

this unexpected pregnancy must have been

5:03

for Sandy. She was

5:05

already in a hidden relationship with

5:08

a married police officer. If

5:10

they were discovered, it could be catastrophic.

5:14

Now, at eighteen, she believed she

5:16

was pregnant with his child. Sandy

5:18

was living with secrets upon secrets

5:21

upon secrets. We

5:25

don't know how Sandy came to the decision

5:27

to have an abortion, or how long

5:29

she considered her options, or

5:31

if she was influenced by anyone else, but

5:35

ultimately she ended up at a clinic

5:37

in downtown d C. When

5:40

I first learned about this, I had so

5:42

many questions, what would

5:44

have been like to terminate a pregnancy in

5:46

nine, only

5:48

four years after Roe v. Wade made access

5:50

to abortion at constitutional right. How

5:54

did Sandy pay for it? How

5:56

did she get home? A

5:58

lot of these answers are lost to time, and

6:01

the Women's Medical Center of d C is

6:03

closed now. But I was able

6:05

to track down a former employee who

6:07

worked at the clinic at the time Sandy would have visited.

6:10

That's how I met Kathy. I will

6:13

share my story um.

6:15

When I was seventeen,

6:18

I was abducted and assaulted

6:21

and helped for a number of

6:23

days. Was horrific. Well,

6:28

I was abducted mid day from

6:30

a city street in blue jeans

6:33

and a pco, so straight up abduction

6:36

assault. It was not questionable.

6:39

I am well aware that police do not always

6:41

do the detective work they should be doing, because

6:44

they sure didn't. Kathy was abducted

6:47

and raped in St. Louis in nineteen sixty

6:49

nine. She was able to escape,

6:51

but it was understandably a life altering

6:54

experience. And my

6:56

grandmother, who was completely

7:00

uneducated, but escaped from the Warsaw

7:02

ghetto, and she

7:05

said in a very dear Eastern

7:07

European voice, Darling,

7:10

you have a choice. You

7:12

can hide, you

7:14

can get very sad, or

7:16

you can speak your truth and

7:19

teach something about

7:23

this. Those

7:25

words stayed with me

7:29

a very long time. There

7:31

with me still, Cathy

7:38

chose to speak her truth. She became

7:40

an activist involved in the women's reproductive

7:42

rights movement. She received

7:44

her PhD in counseling, and in the mid

7:47

nineties seventies began working at

7:49

the Women's Medical Center of DC. She

7:52

started as a mental health counselor working

7:54

with patients and later became

7:56

the director of the counseling center there.

7:58

So we were in a large office

8:01

building, was very

8:03

spacious, It was very comfortable.

8:07

One could come in for birth

8:09

control counseling, or

8:12

abortion counseling, or crisis

8:15

counseling. In stars counseling

8:17

wide array. Cathy

8:19

reminded me that this was all pre internet

8:22

and pre cell phones. She said, Sandy

8:24

likely would have heard of the clinic through word of

8:26

mouth or been referred by her doctor.

8:29

It was also before at home pregnancy tests

8:31

became widely available in the US,

8:34

so to confirm that she was pregnant, Sandy

8:36

would have had to have visited a doctor. If

8:39

it was determined she was pregnant and she was

8:41

in a reasonable

8:43

time frame for our work. She

8:46

would be sent to a counseling

8:48

room where she would meet with a council

8:52

who would have asked many,

8:55

many questions to

8:57

see if this sounded

9:00

okay, like someone who had

9:02

thought this through. Was

9:06

likely as best as we could determine

9:08

to handle the procedure and aftermath.

9:15

After speaking with Kathy, I was left

9:17

with the impression that Sandy could have received

9:19

really good care at Women's Medical Center. She

9:22

would have been evaluated by counselors before

9:24

the abortion, and they would have followed up

9:26

with her afterwards to make sure she was doing okay.

9:29

If any of us

9:32

had any inkling

9:36

that this would be extremely

9:40

disregulating, emotionally,

9:43

extremely destabilizing,

9:45

she wouldn't have had the abortion at Women's

9:48

Medical Say. I told

9:50

Kathy about Sandy's story to get her

9:52

take. Sandy died just one

9:54

month after her abortion. I

9:56

wanted to know had Kathy ever

9:58

heard if any of the clinics patients dying

10:00

by suicide. I wondered if

10:02

it might have gotten back to them. I can't

10:05

remember a single

10:07

case like that. To

10:20

the family. The revelation that Sandy

10:22

had had an abortion provided a motive

10:24

for Doug. Sandy was a complication

10:26

in his life. The Bells

10:28

didn't necessarily imagine that Doug had an

10:31

elaborate plan to get rid of Sandy. Instead,

10:34

they thought that maybe there had been an altercation

10:36

of some kind. Kim's theory

10:39

as to why Sandy had the gun with her that night

10:41

is that maybe she was trying to scare Doug and

10:44

maybe things just got out of control. And

10:47

their fears that Sandy was murdered

10:49

by an intimate partner aren't

10:51

outlandish. In the US,

10:54

four women a day are killed by their boyfriends

10:56

and husbands and exes. While

10:59

it's uncomfortable to talk about, women

11:01

are at greater risk of violence at the hands of someone

11:03

they know than by a stranger. Here's

11:07

what the Beale family knew. Sandy

11:09

had been in a secretive relationship with a married

11:11

man. She had gotten pregnant

11:13

and had an abortion, and then

11:16

ended up dead one mile away from her boyfriend's

11:18

place of work, and found

11:20

with her body was a letter she had

11:22

made out specifically to him.

11:25

I'm going to read it now. Keep

11:27

in mind, this is all coming from her perspective,

11:30

and we don't know if everything in it is true,

11:33

but it gives us a great deal of insight into

11:35

how she felt around the time she died. Doug,

11:41

I know now it's over, and it has been

11:44

all along. I guess I'm

11:46

going crazy and nobody can see it. You

11:49

know you're right. I am trouble.

11:52

I lost my baby. I wanted so much.

11:55

I thought it would bring some kind of love

11:58

because I was looking for love of and never

12:00

found it from you. But you

12:03

didn't care. You never came when I

12:05

was sick. I only

12:07

wish I could start all over again. Then

12:09

you wouldn't have used me like you did. You

12:12

didn't care, and I guess you never will.

12:15

I never want another man to ever want me.

12:18

I just want to leave and forget the pain. You

12:21

see, I'll have to one day pay for the loss

12:23

of my baby, and when that

12:25

day comes, Douglas will pay for what

12:27

he did to me and his baby.

12:30

I love you, and I'm sorry for all of this

12:32

I've caused you. So

12:35

this letter was interpreted by police

12:38

as a suicide. What

12:41

do you see in this letter? She wasn't committing

12:43

suicide, but I just don't believe it.

12:46

That's Sandy's cousin, Kim.

12:48

Did you believe she wanted to get away from it and she

12:50

was going to have to go through a grieving process. I

12:54

see that she was in a lot

12:56

of pain, and she was a

12:58

kid. She's about to be

13:00

nineteen, and she sees the way the world

13:03

is, and she's recognizing

13:05

that she loved him and she

13:07

couldn't have any more than that. But at

13:09

the same time, this is where her fire comes out,

13:12

and I just want to leave

13:15

and forget all the pain. How

13:17

how do you hear that line? Now? That's when

13:19

she wanted to go to Maine. In

13:22

the last few months of Sandy's life, she had

13:24

started talking about moving. She

13:26

wrote to her grandmother in Maine and asked if

13:28

she could live with her. These

13:31

plans are a major reason why the Bell

13:33

family so vehemently rejected the theory

13:35

of suicide. Sandy was

13:37

hopeful about the future. Here's

13:40

her mom, Joanne. She wouldn't have

13:42

gone to the lengths of calling her

13:44

grandmother and talking with her. And

13:47

she loved a grandmother Beale. She didn't

13:49

like my mom.

13:51

She liked a grandmother Beale, and

13:56

that's why I don't think she

13:58

committed the suicide. When

14:01

I first read Sandy's letter, it

14:03

didn't seem to me like a suicide note.

14:06

Instead, I recognized it as a certain

14:08

type of writing specific to teenage

14:10

girls who had had their hearts broken

14:13

for the very first time, girls

14:15

who learned too early how men could

14:17

use and take advantage of them,

14:20

take their hearts and bodies and time,

14:22

and then just discard them like trash.

14:26

I recognized the letter because I had written

14:28

ones just like it. The

14:30

note could be interpreted manyways, though, depending

14:33

on the lens you read it through heartbroken

14:36

teen or as the cops read

14:38

it, girl on the brink of suicide.

14:41

If she hadn't written that damn note,

14:45

ship head, I

14:48

wish she had a mail that son of a bitch instead

14:50

of leaving it in the gun, Joanna

14:53

Leaves. The police closed the case so

14:55

quickly because of the letter Sandy

14:57

wrote to Doug. Without

14:59

it, she thinks Sandy's death

15:02

would have been investigated as a murder,

15:04

and that those closest to her, including

15:06

her boyfriend Doug, would have faced questioning.

15:10

If you was going with a girl and

15:13

you got her pregnant and you was married,

15:16

and you told her to go get an abortion

15:19

and she did, and

15:21

then she still was hanging onto you, what

15:24

do you think you would do. You're

15:27

twenty eight years old, You've got a nice career with

15:29

the state police, and you've gotten a girl

15:31

pregnant. If Doug

15:33

was responsible, the Bills believed

15:35

that he would be uniquely adept at covering

15:38

up the crime due to his training as

15:40

a law enforcement officer. Here's

15:42

Kim again. He's then the ideal

15:45

situation. He's in the position of authority,

15:48

he has the skill set, um,

15:50

he has the trust within his department. They're

15:53

going to believe him over us,

15:56

so he's going to be able to cover up. He

15:58

just has all the resources available to them.

16:04

Kim suspicions of Doug kind of makes

16:06

sense given her line of work. She's

16:09

a therapist for domestic violence victims

16:11

and as a result, all too familiar

16:13

with the ways that men harm the women they claim

16:16

to love. Her passion

16:18

to help survivors and her desire

16:20

to solve Sandy's case a sort of

16:22

interwoven at this stage, feeding off

16:24

of each other, and honestly,

16:26

it's really impressive just how much energy

16:28

she continues to commit to Sandy.

16:31

For the last year, we've texted almost

16:33

every single day to compare notes and talk

16:35

about the case. And you have to remember

16:38

she's been working on this for decades now.

16:40

Her efforts over the years to track down

16:42

documents and navigate the maze of state

16:45

agencies and local police, it's

16:47

herculean. I'm kind of like gum

16:49

on people's shoes, and I ask

16:51

a lot of questions. Tenacious,

16:55

that's the word that I've been told

16:57

before, and it's really stubbornness.

17:00

And the people that I had to keep trying

17:02

to reach over and over again were

17:05

the law enforcement that there. They were really

17:07

just trying to cover their ass and be

17:10

cautious about what they gave me and what they

17:12

did. Kim had been researching Sandy's

17:15

case in some form or another since

17:17

nineteen but the

17:19

investigation took on a new urgency

17:21

in two thousand and six after Kim traveled

17:24

to Maine to see Sandy's parents. Ronald,

17:28

Sandy's dad, was nearing the end of his life,

17:31

and as Kim talked to him, she learned that

17:33

he was still preoccupied with what happened to

17:35

Sandy and all the unanswered questions

17:38

around her death. I

17:41

hate that Ronnie died not knowing just

17:46

m It's just not fair

17:48

that he would go to his grave and not now, that's

17:52

just not fair. We need to get those

17:54

answers, and I don't want Joanne

17:56

to leave this earth and not half them too. She

17:59

was overcome with a deep sense of injustice.

18:02

She told me, Oh my gosh,

18:04

you know, there's not enough time to get to

18:06

find out these answers and we know nothing,

18:09

and it's oh six, that's a lot of time, that's

18:11

what. Twenty nine years later, Kim

18:14

decided to track down the official police report

18:16

on Sandy's death, thinking it would be

18:18

simple to get not so. She

18:21

started by calling the Prince George's County Police

18:23

Department, where she was connected to a detective

18:26

in the cold case unit, Bernie Nelson.

18:28

He quickly referred her to someone else, another

18:31

detective who had a strange story

18:33

to share. He started

18:35

how humming along and

18:37

you know, I'm not sure that's a long

18:39

time ago. I don't think I can get those records.

18:42

And so probably three or four calls

18:45

and um then he told me,

18:47

well the buildings burned down. I'm

18:49

like what, So

18:51

he said, well, the probably

18:53

the only thing I'm gonna be able to get as a tickler file.

18:55

Well, I've been in marketing before, I know that's just

18:58

an index card, and it's jumped

19:00

from one month to another to follow up on people.

19:02

I'm like, I don't care what you have, Just get me what you have.

19:05

Okay, I'll work on it. Well, that was

19:07

the last communication I had with him, because he would

19:09

never return my calls anymore. So

19:12

I gave up on the police report. Actually,

19:15

instead, she focused on getting Sandy's autopsy,

19:18

which she eventually was able to acquire. It

19:20

added one very important detail,

19:23

Sandy had sperm inside her body, suggesting

19:26

that she'd recently had sex. Though it's

19:28

hard to know exactly when I

19:31

think what happened, and maybe I'm wrong.

19:35

I think that

19:39

he met her, they had sex, and

19:43

she probably was thinking,

19:45

well, i've had the aboortion, everything's fine, we're

19:47

gonna stick together. And I think

19:49

he said, no, I'm

19:52

going back to my wife. The

19:54

family had already believed Sandy wasn't

19:56

alone in the Pollard that night. Maybe

19:59

the letter to Doug was supposed to have been given

20:01

to him in person. Fast

20:04

forward to seventeen,

20:08

and it wasn't until my niece introduced

20:11

me to her new boyfriend, and he was a Prince George's

20:13

county cop. And I said that

20:15

I've been looking for this police report for decades,

20:18

and um, they set

20:20

the building burned down and he goes, the building

20:22

never burned down. I'm work out

20:24

of it and it's about a seventy five year old building.

20:27

That building never burned down. And

20:29

so that got my you know, blood

20:32

boiling. So

20:34

Kim picked up the phone once again and dialed

20:36

the Pugi County Police. This

20:39

time though, she connected with a sympathetic

20:41

clerk who passed her requests along

20:43

to Cold Casse Detective Bernie Nelson,

20:46

the same detective she first spoke to in

20:48

two thousand and six. All

20:50

of a sudden, I got that emails dating Bernie

20:52

Nelson has found the police report.

20:55

He didn't tell me where he found

20:57

it. He just said he found it and that here

21:00

it is attached. Oh my gosh.

21:03

I like was nervous, and I was driving as

21:05

fast as I could to get to my computer so I couldn

21:07

print it out because I thought it was just going to go

21:09

away. And I couldn't believe that it was

21:11

twelve pages, which was just amazing.

21:14

But because they assured me that

21:18

there was there was no way that this was

21:20

going to be available. The entire

21:23

time that Kim had been looking for it. The

21:25

police file had been safe and sound in

21:27

the home of the cop who investigated the

21:29

case in nineteen seventy seven, retired

21:32

Detective at Selski. When

21:34

he left the force, he took his files home

21:37

with him. In

21:39

a full thirteen years after Kim's initial

21:42

request, cold case detective

21:44

Bernie Nelson went to Shechelski's house

21:46

and physically retrieved the file from his

21:48

boxes of papers. And

21:51

even Bernie said,

21:53

I don't even know why he saved it, but for

21:56

whatever reason, he saved it, and they found it

21:58

in his mouth. Bernie went up with men went

22:00

through the boxes to get this

22:02

report for me, but they probably

22:04

wanted me off their butt, And I said that when

22:07

I emailed, and I'm like, I'm not going away.

22:16

The full police report is actually a seventeen

22:18

page digital file filled

22:20

with details about what detectives found when

22:23

they arrived on the scene. Sandy

22:25

was sitting on a gold blanket in the driver's

22:27

seat, her white coat sat

22:29

on the seat next to her, and on

22:32

top of it was a gun, a three

22:34

seven Ruger revolver. The

22:37

police report also includes a

22:39

series of photocopies. There's

22:42

a copy of the letter Sandy wrote to Doug,

22:45

along with what looks like a rough draft and

22:47

an envelope addressed to his work. The

22:50

last page of the report is another photocopy

22:53

of something that was found in her car. But

22:55

it's really blurry, so I can't read what's

22:57

on it. All I can make out or

23:00

you faint lines of Sandy's handwriting. For

23:02

months, I assumed it was another note Sandy had

23:04

written the contents lost to time.

23:07

But then one day I found the original in the

23:09

stack of documents that Kim gave me. Turns

23:12

out it's not a letter, it's a photograph.

23:16

The police report only includes a copy

23:18

of the back, but what's on the front

23:20

is far more revealing. It's

23:22

Sandy's photograph of Doug standing

23:24

in front of the McDonald's in his state

23:27

trooper uniform.

23:30

I don't buy any of that ship. There

23:33

was a lot of things that they said and did that

23:35

I didn't that I argued with them

23:37

about. But they

23:40

looked at us, I think, as

23:44

well than nobody that little

23:46

class. According to the police

23:49

report, there were empty pill bottles

23:51

in Sandy's car and loose pills scattered

23:53

on her seat. Although this description

23:56

might give the impression that Sandy was trying to

23:58

overdose the autop She did not

24:00

find any drugs or alcohol in her

24:02

system at the time of her death. It

24:05

just staged me, like, oh,

24:07

we found, you know, pills underneath

24:09

her legs. Well they were they

24:11

were allergy pills and um.

24:13

So they made it look like she committed

24:16

suicide. But I don't think they

24:18

did a thorough investigation. They

24:20

didn't do their due diligence. I

24:23

don't think they investigated anything. It

24:25

was more than forty years after Sandy's

24:28

death before her family would get a copy

24:30

of the police report and be able to read it.

24:33

They had hoped that there would be some kind of

24:35

in controvertible proof in the report

24:37

that could settle their questions. The

24:39

family felt that with more information that

24:42

have a clearer picture of how and why

24:44

Sandy died, but the

24:46

new information just muddled the story.

24:49

The police report provided a detailed

24:51

account of this scene and reminded

24:53

the family of the cardboard shoved under the

24:55

wheels of her car and the tire

24:58

tracks that seemed to indicate she was trying

25:00

to get her car out of the mud. The

25:02

report also noted that the gun had been

25:04

collected and dusted for Prince. It

25:07

had none. If Sandy had

25:09

used the gun on herself, wouldn't

25:11

they find her Prince? And

25:14

crucially, why was there no

25:16

mention of Doug in the written police report,

25:19

even though his name, his work address,

25:22

and a photo of him were found in her

25:24

car. Certainly they as far as

25:26

we know, they didn't investigate dog

25:28

because there's no mention of that in the police

25:30

report either. Here's Sandy's

25:32

brother, Stephen. Well, what I

25:35

say is, if she committed suicide,

25:39

somebody's going to have to do some holl acious

25:41

proven to me, some how acious

25:43

proven to me, has even that's

25:46

what they say, fucking proven. Hi

26:00

is his head? He Hi?

26:02

It's Melissa. Can you hear me? Okay? That's

26:05

retired detective at Sheelski. He's

26:07

the one who wrote the police report and investigated

26:10

Sandy's death all those years ago, the

26:12

one who stored the police report at his house.

26:15

I tracked him down on Facebook. He

26:18

was somewhat surprised to learn Sandy's family

26:20

was still uncertain about the events surrounding

26:22

her death. He was willing to answer

26:25

their questions and mine in order

26:27

to put the issue to rest. It's

26:29

the time that I wrote them aside. It

26:32

was kind of a sought after job to

26:34

press stige. I'm a homicide

26:37

dick, you know what I mean. But let me tell

26:39

you it had to ye the

26:41

police department well angling

26:44

well over a hundred murders

26:47

a year. I mean they put

26:50

us like, don't. Shelski

26:53

speaks with the brash confidence of a lifelong

26:56

police officer, and he's an

26:58

experienced storyteller. A

27:00

few years ago, he wrote a novel that

27:02

touches on his time working homicide, called

27:05

in Cheep's Clothing. The

27:07

book is dedicated to the quote finest

27:09

group of police officers found anywhere

27:12

the past and present members of the Prince

27:14

George's County Police Department. So

27:17

I had declare I was in my afe,

27:20

which is only a few holes away

27:22

from where her body was. Arriving

27:25

on scene, he recalled what he noticed,

27:28

a young woman slumped over in a car

27:30

seat alone, with a gun close

27:32

to her right hand. Her

27:35

hands were coated in gunpowder, which

27:37

indicated to Shashlski that her

27:39

hands were on or very close to the

27:41

gun when it was fired. Upon

27:44

further inspection, he saw that the

27:46

gunshot in her abdomen was a contact

27:48

wound, meaning that the gun

27:51

had been touching her body when it fired.

27:54

She was made up from

27:58

there, said, I kept very

28:01

attractive. I

28:03

asked Selski what he made of some of

28:05

the more unusual details of Sandy's

28:08

case, like the location of the gunshot.

28:11

He told me something a lot of people have said

28:13

to me as I've reported the story,

28:16

that women, especially young

28:18

attractive women, don't like to

28:20

shoot themselves in the face because of vanity.

28:23

I tried to fact check this claim,

28:25

and there's not much research, but I

28:28

did track down one study from

28:30

that found that men were almost twice as

28:32

likely as women to use a method

28:34

of suicide that disfigured their head

28:37

or face. But researchers

28:39

dismissed the theory that women were driven

28:41

by vanity, calling it an empirically

28:44

unsupported explanation that characterizes

28:47

the suicidal behavior of women as

28:49

motivated by selfish or trivial

28:51

concerns. While

28:55

Shachlski had a fairly good memory of Sandy's

28:57

case, he didn't remember one of the

28:59

d tells that the family latched onto

29:02

the cardboard under Sandy's tires.

29:05

He insisted that I was mistaken until

29:07

I showed him his own police report, where he noted

29:09

it this detail. It

29:12

doesn't fit neatly into the police narrative

29:14

of suicide. If Sandy

29:16

went to the Pollard to end her life, why

29:19

did it seem like she was trying repeatedly

29:21

to leave. You don't ruar

29:23

anything now, So I said,

29:25

you don't want to be a tunnel vision. You

29:28

want to go in there with an open line

29:31

homicide, suicide, natural

29:33

or whatever. But I mean, I got a gun on

29:36

a truck seat and a build and a

29:38

bank seat or wherever it was. It's

29:40

not a natural thing. Though I

29:42

can eliminate that. It's not an

29:44

accident, Singer, I can

29:46

eliminate that. So we

29:49

lets for frost is a homicide or a suicide.

29:52

And then there was the letter to

29:54

Doug what I interpreted

29:57

as a suicide night Yes,

30:02

yes, I mean, but again, it doesn't

30:04

say good bye a queer

30:06

world. Either. Sends to me

30:09

like she's kind of talking together a

30:11

little bit. She's rejected. There's

30:14

nothing to live for. She lost

30:16

her baby, she lost her lover. She

30:18

probably told her thousands

30:21

of times he was going to leave his wife,

30:24

you know what I mean. She

30:26

didn't get that. She loses her

30:28

baby, what does their love

30:30

for? That's what I

30:33

can see in that letter I

30:36

could think of a lot of reasons Sandy had to

30:38

live. She was eighteen years

30:41

old to start, she

30:43

had family, a job, friends,

30:46

ambitions. I

30:49

have no doubt that Sandy was despondent

30:51

over what sounds like the breakup of her

30:53

very first love. But the

30:55

jump to having nothing to live for it

30:57

seems quite far, And

31:00

I wondered if these intimate details about

31:02

Sandy's personal life, which were

31:04

on display in her writings, colored

31:06

the police's interpretation of her death. What

31:10

if there had been no letter, What

31:12

if there was no receipt from the clinic. Back

31:15

then, much like now, there were a lot

31:17

of myths around abortion. One

31:20

is that women who obtain them are more likely

31:22

to be depressed or suicidal afterwards.

31:25

We now know this to be untrue. The

31:28

most comprehensive research project on

31:30

the effects of unintended pregnancy on women's

31:32

lives, called the Turnaway Study,

31:35

has found that abortion does not increase

31:37

the risk of having suicidal thoughts

31:39

or the chance of developing depression or anxiety.

31:42

In fact, women who are able to get an abortion

31:44

when they want one are more likely to have a positive

31:47

outlook on the future. Could

31:49

hit me as a suicide right after bat

31:52

I do what I was supposed to do, and

31:54

it is it was a suicide. I'm

31:57

not even gonna say, in my opinion

31:59

it was a suicide. It was

32:02

a suicide. That's

32:05

a simple maybe, but it was

32:07

a suicide.

32:11

I don't think any suicide is simple. But

32:13

Sandy's case did have an added layer

32:15

of complication for police the

32:17

fact that her boyfriend was a state trooper. Doug's

32:21

name was all over the scene. The autopsy

32:23

revealed that Sandy had sex before her

32:25

death. I thought her boyfriend

32:27

would be high on the list of people to interview,

32:31

and in fact, it's standard procedure in cases

32:33

like this. The Department of Justice

32:35

recommends that death investigators should try

32:38

to quote document when, where,

32:40

how, and by whom the decedent was

32:42

last known to be alive. I

32:45

asked Detective Schellski if he ever considered

32:47

Doug a person of interest, or if

32:50

he thought to speak to him to learn

32:52

more about Sandy's mental health or to help

32:54

recreate the last forty eight hours of her

32:56

life, not as I was concern

32:59

to. He was not aspect than anything.

33:02

Shelski told me that he didn't have any qualms

33:05

going after a fellow officer if it was warranted.

33:08

It's worth noting that Selski didn't know

33:10

Doug. State and County Police are

33:13

different entities and operate independently,

33:16

and while Shelsky didn't interview Doug,

33:18

he did do something. He notified

33:20

the state Police that the trooper may have

33:22

had an inappropriate relationship with an eighteen

33:24

year old girl. I filed the

33:26

public information request with the Maryland State

33:29

Police to see if I could find records of

33:31

an internal investigation into Doug after

33:33

Sandy was found dead, but I was

33:35

too late. Internal affairs records

33:37

are maintained for only thirty years. There

33:41

was no occasion of anything

33:43

in that car, then a suicide.

33:46

Again, the biggies on

33:49

her her

33:52

father's glad is the biggest

33:55

one. I'm

33:57

not going to drag somebody or over to Claris

34:00

another every

34:03

day guy. Detective

34:06

Shochelski didn't think it was worth talking

34:08

to Doug, but I did. Since

34:11

I began this podcast, I've tried repeatedly

34:13

to make contact with him, sending

34:15

him emails and messages on LinkedIn. I've

34:18

also mailed handwritten letters to his home,

34:21

and in one I included a photo of Sandy.

34:24

To this day, I've yet to speak with him,

34:27

Doug, if you're listening, I still want

34:29

to talk. Over

34:34

the years, Doug has turned into

34:36

somewhat of a mythic figure for the Bell

34:39

family. He's an enigma,

34:41

a mystery man who played a pivotal

34:44

role in Sandy's life and then

34:46

just disappeared. After

34:49

Sandy's death, Joanne tried to

34:51

track him down. She told me that she

34:53

called the Maryland State Police in hopes of speaking

34:55

with him. When I called

34:58

the State Police marks, the

35:00

man was not very friendly. He

35:03

said, well, you don't have to worry

35:05

about that, ma'am. He's been transferred.

35:08

Well, he's been wanting to go to Baltimore

35:11

for a long time. We finally got an opening

35:13

when we sent him along. And

35:16

I'm thinking, yeah, right, so,

35:20

uh, I didn't get anywhere

35:23

with the state place. Maryland

35:25

State Police informed Joanne the

35:27

dog had been transferred. I

35:30

wasn't able to verify this with the state Police.

35:33

However, they did confirm that he was assigned

35:35

to a barracks in the Baltimore area. Two

35:39

get that cup transferred right

35:42

away. They covered

35:44

everything up, I thought. I thought

35:46

at the time, I thought they're

35:49

just telling me that ship because they know And

35:54

I still think that up

36:00

until now, I've held back a single detail

36:02

in Sandy's case. I wanted

36:04

you to get to know Sandy in the way her family

36:06

knew her as a daughter, a

36:09

sister, and as a civilian.

36:12

But one of the major reasons why I held onto

36:14

Joanne's letter for so many years was

36:17

because Sandy wasn't just a regular teenage

36:19

girl who worked at the mall. Sandy

36:23

she wanted to be a cop, and not

36:25

just in some idle day dreaming kind of way.

36:28

In the last year of her life, she was training

36:30

to become a police officer, going on

36:32

ride alongs with pg County Police and

36:35

even taking the written test for the academy.

36:38

So Sandy wasn't a stranger to pigg County

36:40

police. She was actively trying

36:42

to become one of them. Well, I'm

36:45

old enough and worked in organizations

36:47

long enough to know that you're

36:49

going to want to protect the people that you work with

36:52

or the reputation of the agency.

36:55

Sander could have been retired by now, she's

36:58

doing a life sex underground. So

37:01

I give a ship about these people. I hope they were at

37:03

now. Well,

37:07

it's just you know, there was dirty cops

37:09

back then, just like the dirty pops cops

37:12

now you just never know where they're

37:14

at and who they are, you know. On

37:21

our next episode, we learn more about

37:23

Sandy's gold to become a police officer.

37:26

Yeah, I know, she really talked

37:28

about want to become a cop. At

37:31

first, I was a little surprised, like really, yeah,

37:34

So she was talking about these ridlongs

37:37

and how she enjoyed them. That's what I do. We

37:39

call. She's saying, yeah, and Jesse, guys, get

37:41

away with ship. You know. I'm

37:46

Melissa Jelson and this is what Happened

37:48

to Sandy Beale. What

37:54

Happened to Sandy Beale is hosted by me,

37:56

Melissa Jelson. It's written

37:58

and produced by me and kittre In and Norville. The

38:01

podcast is edited by Abu Safard,

38:03

sound designed by Aaron Kaufman. Jason

38:06

English is our executive producer. Research

38:09

and production assistance by Marissa Brown.

38:11

To find out more about my investigation, follow

38:14

me on Twitter at quasimado. That's

38:17

qu a s I am

38:19

a d O. Thanks so much for

38:21

listening.