Police Arrest Richard Beasley and a 16-Year-Old in the Ohio Craigslist Farm-Job Killings
A search turned up belongings of two men lured by a fake farm-job ad. A man shot on November 6 after answering the ad had escaped and alerted police.
Published
A Craigslist ad for a farm caretaker had lured men to southeast Ohio, where three were killed and one was shot. On November 16, 2011, police arrested Richard Beasley in the case.
Officers arrested Beasley, 52, at a house on Gridley Avenue, where a search turned up items belonging to David Pauley, 51, whose body had been found the day before in Noble County, along with mail and pill bottles in the name of Ralph Geiger. The same day police arrested Brogan Rafferty, 16, who was charged as a juvenile with complicity to attempted murder in the November 6 shooting of Scott Davis, a landscaper who had answered the ad. Davis was shot in the arm and hid in the woods for seven hours before finding help. Beasley, who had jumped bond in August while awaiting trial on unrelated drug trafficking and prostitution charges, was held in the Summit County Jail on $1 million bond.
By late November, Beasley had not been charged in the killings but was considered the source of the ad and the primary suspect, the Akron Beacon Journal reported; his lawyer, Rhonda Kotnik, said he denied any involvement. On November 25, searchers found Geiger's body in Noble County, and the body of Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, was found in woods next to the Rolling Acres Mall in Akron. A Summit County jury later convicted Beasley of the aggravated murders of Geiger, Pauley and Kern and the attempted murder of Davis, and he received three death sentences, which the Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed in 2018.
The Akron Beacon Journal reported that the fake ad promised $300 a week, while the Supreme Court of Ohio recorded an ad offering $300 to $400 a month.
Sources
- State v. Beasley, 153 Ohio St.3d 497, 2018-Ohio-493, Supreme Court of Ohio
- Prime Craigslist Suspect Proclaims Innocence, Officer.com (Akron Beacon Journal)