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NORRISTOWN — An Abington Township woman was facing financial struggles and when she was confronted by her elderly parents about stealing from them she fatally shot them and then dismembered them with a chainsaw in the home they shared, prosecutors alleged in court papers, hinting for the first time at the motive for the slayings.
“She was 43 years old, bankrupt, living with her parents, and wanted their money and when she got caught taking it without their permission one too many times, she decided to kill them so she could have their money and avoid the consequences of taking it,” Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman wrote in a pretrial motion, referring to accused double-killer Verity A. Beck, providing a hint about what prosecutors will allege at trial as the motive for the January 2023 slayings of 73-year-old Reid Beck and his 72-year-old wife, Miriam.
Cauffman and co-prosecutor Gabriella Glenning filed pretrial court documents in which they alleged Beck had a financial motive to kill after a recent bankruptcy filing and “getting caught making unauthorized purchases on her father’s bank card and potentially being arrested by police.”
“All of the victims’ friends and family consistently said the victims had no known enemies or anyone that would try to harm them. Defendant is the only person who had a motive to kill Reid and Miriam Beck,” Cauffman alleged in the court document. “With them dead, her financial difficulties would be a thing of the past, because she would have their money, without the threat of being turned over to the police for spending it.”
Prosecutors are seeking to admit evidence of Beck’s alleged so-called “prior bad acts” and text message communications between Beck and her parents when Beck’s trial begins on Feb. 5, 2024. Cauffman and Glenning argued the evidence is necessary to explain “the history and the full motive about why defendant murdered her parents.”
“Defendant wanted money that she didn’t have (as demonstrated by her recent bankruptcy filing) but her parents did, so she took it, and when she got caught by her father, instead of facing the music, she called a gun store and then drove there to buy two guns,” Cauffman alleged. “Defendant’s own actions reinforce the fact that her motive was greed.”
Judge William R. Carpenter will rule on the prosecutors’ request after holding a pretrial hearing on the evidentiary matter.
Defense lawyer James P. Lyons, the chief homicide lawyer for the county Office of the Public Defender, represents Beck, who remains in custody without bail pending her trial. Lyons has not revealed any potential defense strategies in the case or if he will wage a mental infirmity defense on behalf of Beck.
Beck, now 44, faces two counts each of first- and third-degree murder and abuse of corpse and two counts of possessing instruments of crime, specifically a firearm and a chainsaw, in connection with the deaths of her parents inside their home in the 1100 block of Beverly Road in the Jenkintown section of Abington.
Beck will face life imprisonment if she’s convicted of the first-degree murder charges at trial. A conviction of third-degree murder, a killing committed with malice, carries a possible maximum sentence of 20-to-40-years in prison.
In court papers, prosecutors revealed they believe Beck killed her parents during the overnight hours of Jan. 7 and that she began using her parents’ cellphones beginning on Jan. 9 until she was arrested on Jan. 17.
The bodies of Beck’s parents were discovered by their son in the Abington home on Jan. 17 and Beck, who had been a teacher at the Saint Katherine School of Special Education in the Wynnewood section of Lower Merion, was arrested.
At the time of the arrest, District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said, “There were signs of extreme trauma and a chainsaw was found and both Reid and Miriam were found in different stages of dismemberment.”
The autopsies revealed that Reid and Miriam, a former Lower Moreland High School nurse, each suffered a single gunshot wound to the head.
ALLEGED PRIOR BAD ACTS
During the investigation, detectives learned that Verity Beck filed for bankruptcy for a total of $114,059 on May 5, 2020, including about $89,000 owed to the Department of Education and about $25,000 owed to credit card companies, according to court documents. The bankruptcy was finalized on Aug. 17, 2020.
Detectives learned that just days before the victims were murdered their Wells Fargo Bank account was compromised with alleged unauthorized debits totaling more than $2,000, according to court documents. Bank records allegedly showed that Reid Beck filed a dispute claim report and that a large majority of the disputed unauthorized debits pertained to Amazon.com purchases and that the unauthorized Amazon transactions began before the murders and continued after the victims’ deaths.
Detectives allegedly uncovered Amazon purchases under Verity’s name but purchased with a Wells Fargo debit card in the name of Reid Beck. Included in the records was a purchase for a $1,097 necklace, according to court documents.
On Jan. 5, at 8:43 a.m. Reid Beck sent a group text message to his wife and Verity saying, “I just got an alert my bank balance is over drawn.” At 8:52 a.m. Reid Beck sent another text to his wife and Verity saying, “Call me. 5 purchases today. One for $1097.00.”
According to court papers, at 8:47 a.m. on Jan. 6, Reid Beck sent a text to Verity saying, “Call me. I reported the Amazon purchases as fraud. The police will be contacting you. Dad.”
Detectives alleged that at 10:33 a.m. Jan. 6 Verity Beck called a Philadelphia gun store and at 11:40 a.m. she purchased two .38-caliber Charter Arms handguns at the store.
Authorities alleged that a bullet specimen later recovered from the body of Miriam Beck was fired from a Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver.
During the investigation, detectives also uncovered an online purchase order with the Abington Township Public Works Department, made in the name of Reid Beck on Jan. 13, for an additional trash pickup consisting of a large area rug, two mattresses and three trash bins, according to court documents. The order was made approximately five to six days after detectives believe Verity Beck murdered her parents, prosecutors alleged.
Though the trash pickup order was under Reid Beck’s name and paid for using his Wells Fargo debit card, the email address entered during the transaction belonged to Verity Beck, according to court documents.
Detectives alleged a review of Amazon purchases made by Verity Beck after the alleged murders included numerous Yankee Candles, pillow cases, bedding sets, towels, hydrogen peroxide, multi-purpose cleaners, deep stain removers, laundry detergent and carpet cleaner.
When detectives processed the murder scene, they discovered numerous lit Yankee Candles, trash bags, rubbing alcohol, rubber gloves and numerous Amazon boxes, court documents revealed.
Reid Beck’s decapitated body was found wrapped in a cloth sheet/comforter, court papers indicate. Detectives allegedly found additional severed body parts at the bottom of a trash can covered with pillows in an attached garage.
Additionally, when detectives processed the crime scene they found a large safe mounted on a wall of the master bedroom.
“There were tools nearby and drill marks on the safe indicating someone, without the key or combination, had been attempting to access the safe. DNA swabs were taken from the safe handle and DNA analysis indicated defendant’s DNA was on the handle,” Cauffman alleged in the court document.
“Again, defendant’s own actions support a financial motive in this case. She was having financial difficulties, had already stolen from her parents, and was trying to break into the safe to steal whatever valuables were contained inside,” Cauffman argued.
In court documents, prosecutors alleged Beck continued to use her father’s cellphone after the murders “responding to text messages from friends and family and deleting incriminating text messages from the phone after she’d killed him.” Friends and relatives reported the messages had a different tone and were not consistent with their relationships with the elderly couple to the point they grew concerned as days passed and their voice calls to the couple went unanswered.
The text messages are important evidence, prosecutors argued, and relevant to establish the timing of the murders, “such that it was no longer the victims using their phones after January 7 because they were dead.”
Ultimately, it was the unfamiliar messages that led the victims’ son to go to the Abington residence to check on them on Jan. 17, prosecutors contend.
THE INVESTIGATION
The investigation began shortly after 10 p.m. on Jan. 17 after the victims’ son notified Abington police that he had gone to his parents’ home to check on them, because he hadn’t spoken to them by phone since Jan. 7, which was unusual, and he observed a deceased person lying on a floor, covered with a bloody sheet and a chainsaw near the body, according to the criminal complaint.
The son told police he spoke to his sister and when he asked if something bad had happened to their parents she responded, “Yes.” Beck allegedly told her brother that things at the home had “been bad.”
Abington police arrived at the home around 10:30 p.m. Jan. 17 and attempted to make contact with Verity Beck but received no answer.
At 12:10 a.m. Jan. 18, police entered the residence through a side door.
“Officers immediately noticed a strong odor of decomposition in the residence,” county Detective Anthony Caso and Abington Detective Robert Hill Jr. wrote in the arrest affidavit.
When police announced themselves and asked Beck to make her whereabouts known she followed commands and entered the kitchen. When police asked Beck about her parents she allegedly replied, “They are dead.”
Detectives found Reid Beck wrapped in a cloth sheet and determined he was decapitated, according to the criminal complaint.
“In close proximity to the male’s body detectives located a 55-gallon trash receptacle. This receptacle was filled with white trash bags and these trash bags were filled with assorted severed body parts,” Caso and Hill alleged.
“An electric powered chainsaw with biological material in the chain portion indicated this chainsaw had been used to sever, at least some, of the body parts,” detectives added.
Detectives found additional severed body parts in a trash can in an attached garage, court documents indicate.
“There were marks on the carpet in the bedroom, indicating at least some of the body parts had been severed while in the bedroom,” authorities wrote in court papers.
Newspapers, dating from Jan. 7, were found outside the home leading detectives to theorize that the victims were likely killed on Jan. 7, which was when the victims’ son last had voice contact with his mother.
Detectives found a pillow that contained powder burns and a hole, consistent with a firearm projectile having been fired through the pillow, according to court documents.
In Beck’s bedroom detectives found the two Charter Arms .38-caliber handguns, one containing one spent round and four live rounds and the other containing two spent rounds and three live rounds, according to the arrest affidavit. Both firearms were registered to Beck, detectives said.
Additionally, detectives recovered a third .38-caliber handgun, a Smith & Wesson, containing two spent rounds and three live rounds.
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