On the evening of November 6, 2011, a man walked out of the woods of Noble County, in the hills of southeastern Ohio, and knocked on the door of the first house he came to. It was around seven o'clock. He was pale and shaking, and his right elbow and his pant leg were bloody. The man inside, Jeffrey Schockling, called 9-1-1. While they waited, the stranger kept talking. He had come up from South Carolina for a job on a cattle farm, he said. He knew the men had meant to rob him. All the emails were on the dashboard of his truck. "I knew I was in trouble when I heard the click," he said.
His name was Scott Davis. He had been shot that morning, had hidden in the woods for seven hours waiting for dark, and was the only man known to have answered Richard Beasley's job advertisement and lived. Within three weeks, searchers following his account had found three bodies, and the advertisement, the farm and the man who called himself "Jack" had all been traced to an ex-convict and self-styled street preacher from Akron.
Richard James Beasley was born on June 15, 1959, according to Ohio prison records. His mother, Carol, testified at his trial that she was sixteen when she became pregnant. His father was married to someone else, so she moved to Washington, D.C., where Richard was born. She married his father at seventeen, but he was never around and gave no support, and she divorced him when the boy was about a year and a half old.
When Richard was nearly two, Carol met Jim Beasley, and they later married. She described her second husband as a mean drunk, a gambler and a jealous man who physically abused her and her son. Everyone in the house, including Carol's two daughters, was afraid of him and learned to lie to avoid setting him off. She told the court she had been sexually abused as a child and had recently learned that her son had been sexually abused by neighborhood boys when he was young. He was a hyperactive child and was prescribed Ritalin in fourth grade. Between the ages of about five and seven he spent summers with his grandparents in West Virginia, the one stable relationship the Supreme Court of Ohio later found in his childhood. A defense psychologist, John Fabian, measured his IQ at 115 and diagnosed attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, a history of depression, alcohol and opioid abuse, narcissistic and antisocial personality traits, and cognitive damage that he linked to a history of small strokes.
Beasley testified that about thirty years before his trial he had been convicted of burglary in Texas and given a four-year prison term. He was paroled in 1989 and moved to Akron, and he later served time in federal prison on a weapons charge before returning to Akron on parole again. The Akron Beacon Journal reported in 2011 that he had spent about fifteen years in prison over three stints in the 1980s and 1990s. The Associated Press reported that he came back to Ohio from Texas in 2004; the Beacon Journal put his return to Akron at about 2003.
He told people that prison had made him a Christian. Back in Akron, according to the Beacon Journal, he presented himself as a minister of sorts. He mentored drug offenders and other people in trouble, ran a halfway house, helped deliver food to the poor and appeared before judges to speak for defendants and vouch that they had changed. Police later said the halfway house was a front for prostitution, the AP reported. An Akron gang-unit detective testified that Beasley had worked as a police confidential informant on motorcycle gangs for four or five months starting in August 2010.
In early 2011 Beasley was arrested on drug trafficking and prostitution charges. A Summit County jail booking officer testified that he was held from February 9 to July 13, 2011; photographs taken on his booking showed him with a full gray beard. According to the Beacon Journal, a judge lowered his bond and a possible parole violation from Texas was dropped, which eased his release. He then stopped showing up for court. By August he was a fugitive, and the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force was looking for him, as a Noble County detective later testified, before anyone had been shot.
Brogan Rafferty was born in December 1994, according to Ohio prison records, and in 2011 he was a junior at Stow-Munroe Falls High School in the Akron suburbs. His parents, Yvette and Michael Rafferty, were divorced. They told the Beacon Journal that Beasley had mentored their son for nearly ten years through their church, The Chapel in Akron. Beasley's lawyer said in 2011 that Beasley had known the boy for years and took him to church regularly. Rafferty was sixteen during the crimes and was tall, about six feet five, as Davis later described him. Beasley introduced him to strangers as his nephew.
At his own trial Rafferty testified that he had not wanted any part of the violence and had gone along only because he feared for his life. His lawyer told the jury that the first killing came without warning for the boy and that Beasley had afterward reminded him that he knew where Rafferty's mother and sister lived. The jury did not accept that defense.
Ralph Geiger had once run a successful construction business. By February 2011 he was homeless and staying at a shelter in downtown Akron. His friend Summer Rowley talked with him every day while he was there. In early August he left the shelter, telling the staff and Rowley that he had a job on a farm in southern Ohio and would not have cellphone coverage there, so he would not be able to call. She never heard from him again. Beasley later testified that he knew Geiger from the clubhouse of a motorcycle gang.
On August 8, 2011, Geiger checked into the Best Western in Caldwell, the Noble County seat, between Cambridge and Marietta. Three adults were registered to the room for one night. During that night and the early hours of August 9, a prepaid phone that had been calling Geiger, Rafferty and Beasley's acquaintances placed six calls from near the hotel, and the same phone traded ten calls with Rafferty's phone between August 7 and 9. The Noble County coroner put Geiger's date of death at around August 9. He was killed by a single .38-caliber gunshot to the head and buried in a shallow grave in the woods off Don Warner Road, on coal company land near a property owned by Beasley's longtime friends, the Hood family.
Geiger's death certificate, obtained by the AP, listed him as fifty-five, never married, and of Atlanta. Most news reports give his age as fifty-six and his home as Akron.
In the spring of 2011, Beasley had stayed for a few nights in the basement of a friend, Joyce Grebelsky, on Cramer Avenue in Akron. She testified that he later asked her to start calling him "Ralph Geiger" because he wanted to be a different person and did not want to go back to jail.
From late August he lived as Geiger. On August 31 "Geiger" applied for a job at Tech Center, Inc., listing the Cramer Avenue address; the next day he applied to Waltco Trucking, where a coworker later identified Beasley as the man he knew as Ralph Geiger. On September 19 "Geiger" opened a checking account at PNC Bank. The next day he went to a community health clinic seeking painkillers and was seen by a doctor who later identified his photograph. Acquaintances knew him as "Dutch," and two of them testified that they had seen him carry a driver's license in Geiger's name. When he rented a room in a house on Gridley Avenue in Akron, which he found through his own Craigslist ad headed "Quiet man needs quiet space to live," he showed the landlord, Penny Kaufman, identification as Ralph Geiger.
At trial Beasley said Geiger had given him the license and Social Security card earlier in the year to help him avoid being sent back to Texas, and that he had first used Geiger's name at the clinic in January 2011, while Geiger was still alive. The state answered with the jail records: from February to July, Beasley had been in the Summit County Jail.
In October 2011 an advertisement appeared on Craigslist for a caretaker on a 688-acre cattle farm in southern Ohio. The terms varied in the retelling: Pauley and Davis understood it to offer $300 a week and a two-bedroom trailer, while another applicant remembered a trailer, a credit card and $300 to $400 a month. Applicants were warned there was no cellphone service. Replies went to a Gmail address, rohandannaher@gmail.com, and the contact number was a prepaid phone. Investigators later found the account had been used from a computer in the house of Joe Bais, an Akron man who had rented a room to "Dutch," and from a laptop Beasley hid. The farm did not exist.
The man who answered the emails signed himself "Jack." He met applicants in the food court of the Chapel Hill Mall in Akron or at restaurants farther south, and several who were turned down testified at his trial. Daniel DeWalt was offered the job, then told "Jack" he would be bringing his pistol and that he could not find the farm on the county auditor's website. "Jack" said, "I'm the only one with a gun," and asked to take DeWalt's SUV and truck ahead of time. When DeWalt said he worried that someone might take his vehicles and shoot him when he got there, "Jack" told him, "You shouldn't have said that," and the offer was withdrawn by email on October 15. George Brown, a semiretired concrete worker, mentioned that he had done martial arts all his life and had worked in security; "Jack" took back his application and ended the interview. Dave LeBlond, who met a man calling himself "Richard Bogner," mentioned his fiancee and never heard back. All three identified Beasley in court. A woman in her twenties who answered the ad said she never heard back either.
The Supreme Court of Ohio later described the pattern in one sentence: Beasley interviewed multiple candidates "to eliminate those most likely to fight back or be missed." Prosecutors said the men chosen were older, single and out of work, with backgrounds that made it unlikely anyone would notice quickly when they disappeared.
David Pauley lived in Norfolk, Virginia. He was fifty-one, divorced and, according to a friend quoted by the AP, living with his brother and desperate for work; he had been unemployed for about two years. He had a twin sister, Debra Bruce, and he told her about a Craigslist job taking care of cattle on a 688-acre farm in Ohio, with a trailer to live in and room to bring everything he owned. He answered the ad on October 9, 2011. Some time later he told his sister he had been hired and would leave Norfolk for Ohio on October 22.
He drove his blue pickup, pulling a U-Haul trailer with all his possessions. On October 22 he talked with his sister twice: once to arrange payment for a hotel room in West Virginia, and again around 8 or 9 p.m. She never heard from him again. Phone records showed calls between Pauley's phone and a prepaid phone linked to the scheme on October 21, 22 and 23, including one on October 23 when both phones were near Marietta. Pauley died that day of a gunshot wound to the head.
At 1:09 that afternoon, Beasley called an acquaintance, Don Walters, and said he had won a storage unit at auction, like on the television program "Storage Wars," and that it came with a truck and a U-Haul full of things he needed to store until he could sell them. He arrived at Walters's house in a blue Dodge pickup pulling a U-Haul, followed by a young man in another car whom he introduced as his nephew; Walters later learned the young man was Brogan Rafferty. They unloaded bags and crates into Walters's garage. Beasley came back the next day for the laptop and other items and left the Christmas decorations as payment. On October 24 a U-Haul employee in Akron saw two men return a trailer that was supposed to go back in Marietta, and she identified Beasley as one of them. Debra Bruce later identified the pickup from a photograph as her brother's.
Scott Davis ran a landscaping business in South Carolina and wanted to move back to Ohio, near his family in the Canton area. He answered the farm ad on October 9 and got a reply from "Jack" on October 17 asking for a copy of his driver's license for a background check and whether he had a truck or tools. He was told he had the job, sold his business, according to the AP, packed some of his belongings into a trailer and drove north.
On the morning of November 6 he met "Jack" and a young man introduced as his nephew for breakfast at a Shoney's restaurant in Marietta. The restaurant's security camera recorded the two men waiting for a table. Afterward Davis left his truck and trailer at a store in Caldwell, because "Jack" said the road to the farm was blocked by a landslide, and rode with them in a white car. After about fifteen minutes, "Jack" told the younger man, "Drop me off where we got that deer last week." Davis and "Jack" got out and walked into the woods beside a creek. Then "Jack" said, "Forget this, let's turn around and take the roadway."
Davis turned, heard a click and a curse word, and spun around to see a gun coming up. He was hit in the elbow. As he ran, he heard the gun fire four times. He hid in the woods, bleeding, until dark, then climbed to the road and walked until he found Schockling's house. The bullet that wounded him was a .32 caliber, most likely from a revolver.
Noble County Sheriff Stephen Hannum answered the 9-1-1 call and at first did not believe Davis. He knew of no 688-acre cattle farm in the county. The only residence in the area Davis described was a farm owned by Jerry Hood Sr., known as "Country," and Davis's description of the two men roughly fit Hood and his son. But Hood had been in an Akron hospital since a fall in September, and the son still had his beard, which Davis said one of the men had recently shaved. Hood's wife, Lois, told the sheriff that Beasley had been friends with her husband for ten years and had once been married to her sister, and that she had seen him around Caldwell that fall with a young man. Davis's truck and trailer were where he said they would be. On November 8 investigators found his black leather ball cap by a creek on Don Warner Road.
As the shooting made the news, Pauley's sister called the police. Her brother had answered what sounded like the same ad and had not been heard from since October.
On November 14, FBI agents and local officers went back to search the woods. About 175 feet from the road, and 100 to 150 feet from where Davis's cap had been, they found an empty hand-dug hole about eighty inches long and a couple of feet deep. A state agent testified that his first impression was that it was a grave. The next day search dogs alerted on disturbed soil nearby. Under it was David Pauley's body. His sister identified him by a bracelet, according to the Oxygen series that covered the case.
Tim Kern, of Massillon, was forty-seven, divorced and the father of three sons. That fall he was working part-time at a gas station and staying at a friend's house or sleeping in his car. Despite his troubles, the court record says, he visited his boys every day. His former wife, Tina Kern, and his son Nicholas testified that he had been looking for work on Craigslist. He answered the farm ad on October 10.
On November 9, Nicholas drove his father to a job interview at a Waffle House off Interstate 77. Security video showed Kern meeting for about half an hour with a man who resembled Beasley, and phone records placed a call from a prepaid phone near the restaurant at the moment the video showed Beasley on the phone. A few days later Kern told his son he had the job, in Cambridge, and would leave right away. On the night of November 12, Tina notarized a transfer of title for his Buick, because he said he had to put the car in his employer's name. Kern's father told the AP that his son had been told to sign the car over in exchange for a truck. Kern left on November 13. His family never saw him again.
Soon after, Beasley asked Walters to help him with a broken-down Buick that he said he had bought, parked at a sandwich shop in Canton. Walters found a registration in the glove box in Kern's name. Beasley gave him the title and asked him to scrap the car under his own name, and on November 15 he left four voicemails urging Walters to move it before it was towed.
The phone number led police to Beasley. On November 15, Bais told investigators his girlfriend had found a note at their house asking them to call "Dutch," with a number. Cell tower data showed that phone had last been used near Gridley Avenue, and investigators separately traced Beasley there through his Craigslist messages with Kaufman. He was arrested on November 16, 2011. In his room officers found NASCAR trading cards, an ammunition box and a green cooler holding a model train and books on trains, all of which had belonged to Pauley, along with mail addressed to Ralph Geiger and four prescription bottles in Geiger's name. He was held in the Summit County Jail on $1 million bond. His lawyer said he denied any involvement.
Rafferty was arrested the same day and charged as a juvenile. In his bedroom police found a briefcase holding a sawed-off shotgun, an Iver Johnson .22 pistol, ammunition and shotgun shells. According to the Oxygen series, which interviewed the investigators, officers also found a poem on his computer dated August 16, 2011, describing a killing in the woods on a summer night, and Rafferty told detectives that the men who answered the ad were called "candidates." The poem was not part of the evidence described in the Supreme Court of Ohio's opinion on Beasley's appeal.
A few days after the arrest, Joyce Grebelsky received a letter from the Summit County Jail. It was addressed to "Joyce Grebowski," the misspelling on one of the job applications Beasley had filled out as Geiger, and signed with the name "Chris Star," which she did not know. Inside were three handwritten pages and a map of a backyard. "I need for you to go to the Gridley house where I lived at night," it said, and dig out two laptops hidden under leaves by the garage and a wallet in the front corner of the yard, destroy them and tell no one. She was to write back "sunny day" if it went all right. "It is very important this gets done, I mean, critical," the letter said. It was signed "R."
Grebelsky took the letter to the authorities on November 25. With Kaufman's consent, FBI agents searched the yard and found a wallet holding Ralph Geiger's driver's license, Social Security card and birth certificate under a downspout, and two laptops, an Acer and a Dell, under a pile of leaves. A state computer examiner found an account in the name of Pauley's brother, Rick, on the Acer. The Dell had been used to log into the rohandannaher account, and its browser history held the text of a new ad for a handyman on a secluded property in Ohio, posted on Backpage on November 1, 2011, from an email account whose activity stopped when Beasley was arrested. A handwriting expert testified at trial that Beasley wrote the letter.
The same day the letter was turned over, November 25, searchers found Geiger's body in a shallow grave about eighty feet from the empty grave in Noble County. A cadaver dog also found Kern's body, fully clothed, in a shallow pit in the woods next to the vacant Rolling Acres Mall in Akron. He had been shot five times in the head. The bullets could have come from the .22 found in Rafferty's room, a firearms examiner said, though he could not say so conclusively. In all, he concluded, at least three guns had been used.
Rafferty's case was moved to adult court, and he was tried in Summit County in October 2012 before Judge Lynne S. Callahan. Davis was the prosecution's main witness and identified him as the "nephew." Prosecutor Emily Pelphrey called Rafferty a "student of violent crime" who chose to take part. On October 30, after four days of deliberation, the jury convicted him of three counts of aggravated murder and of attempted murder, and acquitted him of an identity theft charge involving Geiger. The forewoman said jurors had found the decision hard because of his age, and had been skeptical of parts of his testimony.
Sentencing was delayed a week amid talks about a reduced sentence in return for testimony against Beasley. Rafferty's lawyer said the state had proposed thirty years to life; the prosecution said that had been a framework for discussion, not an offer. On November 9, 2012, Rafferty, then seventeen, told the court that his mentor was evil and deceitful and that he wished he had fled and stopped the killings. "There were many options I couldn't see at the time," he said. Kern's sister told him, "You know nothing of remorse, you know nothing of shame." Davis's sister, Lori Hildreth, read his statement: "It was only by the grace of God that I survived." Judge Callahan said she had weighed Rafferty's age, his broken home and his lack of any record, but that they were outweighed by "executions" that were cold, calculated and methodical. She sentenced him to life without parole. Because he was a juvenile, he had never faced the death penalty. Rafferty did not testify at Beasley's trial; the prosecutor said that was because he wanted a sentence reduction, which the state rejected.
Beasley's trial opened in Summit County in late February 2013, before the same judge. The prosecutor began her opening statement by calling him "a wolf in sheep's clothing" and started to explain that the phrase came from a sermon of Jesus, with the passage from the Gospel of Matthew on the screen, until the defense objected. The judge told the jury to disregard what it had seen. The defense pointed out that no physical evidence tied Beasley to the killings. The state called forty-two witnesses and relied on phone records, the laptops, the letter, the stolen property, the use of Geiger's identity, the restaurant videos and Davis's identification.
Beasley, who used a wheelchair because of back pain, testified. He said County Hood had wanted a caretaker for his family's farm after his father's fall and that he had only conducted the interviews. He said that on November 6 it was Davis who pulled a revolver on him, saying, "Brother, you are a weak link," because a motorcycle gang had learned he was a police informant; that the gun misfired three times; and that it went off as they struggled. He said Rafferty had the laptops and the phone Kern called. An Akron detective confirmed that Beasley had been an informant and had worried in early 2011 that his contacts with police were becoming known, but said he had never heard Geiger's or Davis's name connected to the gang. In rebuttal, County Hood denied asking Beasley to hire anyone or post any ad and testified that the Hood land was no longer a working cattle farm.
Beasley had also told friends different stories about November 6. He told his landlord he had been shot at by two men who tried to rob him of a storage unit's contents. He told Walters he had cut one man's arm with a Sawzall. He told Grebelsky he had been robbed of $3,000 and later that he had gone south to buy pills, and he had her drive him back at night down a secluded dirt road to recover his leather coat. Two days after the shooting he took a .22 Iver Johnson pistol to a gun shop for repairs under Geiger's name.
On March 12, 2013, after about twelve hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Beasley of the aggravated murders of Geiger, Pauley and Kern, the attempted murder of Davis, and every remaining count; the judge had already acquitted him of one grand theft count for lack of evidence. On the Kern killing, the jury found he had acted with prior calculation and design but not that he was the principal offender. Summer Rowley, Geiger's friend, said afterward that the possibility of a death sentence did not matter to her. "It won't bring him back," she said.
At the penalty phase the defense called Beasley's mother, a friend from church who visited him about once a week in prison, and Dr. Fabian. Prosecutor Jonathan Baumoel called Beasley "the worst of the worst." On March 20 the jury unanimously recommended death on all three murders. Sentencing was postponed once when a defense lawyer fell ill.
On April 4, 2013, Judge Callahan imposed three death sentences in a courtroom crowded with the victims' families, along with consecutive prison terms on the other counts. Beasley declined to speak before the capital sentences were read. Afterward, before he was sentenced on the remaining crimes, he said he sympathized with the families but was innocent. "I have killed nobody, and that's a fact," he said, and predicted the case would be reversed, before the judge cut him off.
Davis told the court, "They didn't deserve what this animal did to them," and thanked God "for saving me from that beast." Debra Bruce told Beasley, "You took my best friend, confidant and my twin." She said she was sickened to hear him called a preacher or chaplain. "No true man of God would take lives," she said. "David's death has left a wound in my heart that will never completely heal."
Mike DeWine, then Ohio's attorney general, whose office helped prosecute the case, said there was no evidence of other victims but that he could not rule it out. "It would not surprise me at all if there's other homicides," he said. "But whether we will ever find them or prove them, I can't say that."
Death sentences in Ohio go directly to the state Supreme Court. Beasley's lawyers raised eleven propositions of law: that pretrial publicity required a change of venue, that the "wolf in sheep's clothing" remark and Bible reference were misconduct, that a juror who knew an FBI agent who testified should have been removed, that his trial lawyers were ineffective, that hearsay was wrongly admitted, that the evidence was insufficient, and that the sentence was improper. They argued that no physical evidence linked him to the killings and that it made no sense to go to such lengths to rob destitute men. The court heard arguments on September 26, 2017.
In a decision dated January 16, 2018, and released February 9, 2018, the court affirmed the convictions and the three death sentences. Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote that Beasley "methodically lured multiple victims through ads promising jobs," killed Geiger to steal his identity and Pauley and Kern "to steal their meager possessions," and had already posted a new ad when he was arrested. The court gave his childhood and brain damage some weight in mitigation but found them clearly outweighed. It did find one error: the trial judge had not made all the findings Ohio law requires for consecutive prison terms, so it sent the noncapital counts back for resentencing. Justice Patrick DeWine would have kept those sentences too. Justice William O'Neill, who had resigned before the decision was released, agreed with the convictions but dissented from the death sentences because he considered capital punishment unconstitutional.
Beasley then argued that Justice DeWine should have stepped aside because his father was the attorney general whose office argued the case. The court unanimously rejected that in May 2018, saying he had raised it too late. He took the same argument to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear his appeal in January 2019. The Beacon Journal reported, as cited by Oxygen in 2021, that Beasley was resentenced on the noncapital counts in 2020 and again received consecutive terms, with the death sentences unchanged. The Supreme Court of Ohio's opinion also notes that Beasley had filed postconviction proceedings in the trial court by 2014, when the court refused his request to remove Judge Callahan from them. How those proceedings ended is not clear from the published record.
On October 14, 2026, Ohio prison records listed Richard James Beasley, inmate A640970, as incarcerated at Ross Correctional Institution with an aggregate sentence of death. His name did not appear in the governor's reprieve announcements of June and October 2025 or August 2026. Gov. Mike DeWine, the former attorney general who watched Beasley's sentencing, has delayed every scheduled execution since taking office in January 2019, citing problems obtaining lethal-injection drugs, and has since urged lawmakers to abolish the death penalty, the Statehouse News Bureau reported in August 2026. His term ends in January 2027.
Brogan Rafferty, inmate A633123, was listed on the same date as incarcerated at Richland Correctional Institution. His life sentence is no longer without parole. Ohio's Senate Bill 256, effective April 12, 2021, barred life-without-parole sentences for offenders under eighteen and set special parole dates for them. Prison records show Rafferty's sentence as life with parole eligibility after twenty-five years, an eligibility date of December 18, 2036, a first hearing under the new law already recorded, and his next parole board hearing scheduled for November 2036.
The men who were killed had been looking for a new start. Geiger had lost a business and was living in a shelter. Pauley had packed everything he owned into one trailer. Kern was trying to earn enough to help support his sons. The AP reported that Kern's family held a memorial service in Massillon in December 2011, and that his father raised a thumb when Rafferty was convicted. Pauley's twin sister, Kern's former wife and son, Geiger's friend and Davis all testified.
Davis survived with a wounded arm. In the statement his sister read at Rafferty's sentencing, he reminded the teenager that they had shared a meal before he was shot and said Rafferty had a chance to "stop what was about to happen." "You took from me a chance to have a normal life," he wrote.
Proven: Beasley's convictions for the aggravated murders of Ralph Geiger, David Pauley and Timothy Kern and the attempted murder of Scott Davis were upheld on direct appeal. Rafferty was convicted of the same murders and of attempted murder as his accomplice.
Who fired which shots is less clear. Davis identified Beasley as the man who shot him. Geiger and Pauley were each killed by one shot, and the record does not say which man fired. In Kern's case the jury found Beasley guilty of acting with prior calculation and design but not as the principal offender, and the gun that could have fired the bullets was found in Rafferty's bedroom. Rafferty told his family in 2011 that he had not directly witnessed any shooting.
Motive: prosecutors called it robbery, and the Supreme Court of Ohio found Beasley killed for an identity, a truck, a trailer of belongings and a car. Unnamed police sources told the Beacon Journal in November 2011 that the real motive might simply have been murder. That remains an opinion, not a finding.
Unproven: there is no evidence of other victims. The suggestion that there could be more rests on DeWine's 2013 remark and on the unused grave and the new ad posted before the arrest, which show only that the scheme was continuing. Beasley's account that Davis was a gang hit man and that the Hood family or Rafferty ran the scheme was heard and rejected by the jury, and County Hood denied it under oath.
June 15, 1959: Richard James Beasley born (Washington, D.C.).
1989: Paroled on a Texas burglary sentence; moves to Akron. Later federal prison term on a weapons charge.
About 2003 to 2004: Returns to Akron; presents himself as a minister and mentor; runs a halfway house.
August 2010: Begins several months as an Akron police informant on motorcycle gangs.
February 9 to July 13, 2011: Jailed in Summit County on drug and prostitution charges; released on reduced bond, then fails to appear.
August 8 to 9, 2011: Ralph Geiger checks into a Caldwell hotel; killed on or about August 9.
August 31 to September 2011: Beasley lives and works as "Ralph Geiger."
October 2011: The farm caretaker ad runs on Craigslist; several applicants are interviewed and turned away.
October 22 to 23, 2011: David Pauley drives from Norfolk; killed October 23; his truck and trailer appear in Akron that afternoon.
November 1, 2011: New handyman ad posted on Backpage.
November 6, 2011: Scott Davis shot in Noble County; escapes after seven hours in the woods.
November 9, 2011: Timothy Kern interviewed at a Waffle House.
November 13, 2011: Kern leaves home and is not seen again.
November 14 to 15, 2011: Empty grave found; Pauley's body found.
November 16, 2011: Beasley and Rafferty arrested.
November 25, 2011: Grebelsky turns over the "Chris Star" letter; Geiger's body found in Noble County and Kern's in Akron.
October 30, 2012: Rafferty convicted.
November 9, 2012: Rafferty sentenced to life without parole.
March 12, 2013: Beasley convicted.
March 20, 2013: Jury recommends death.
April 4, 2013: Beasley sentenced to death three times.
September 26, 2017: Supreme Court of Ohio hears his appeal.
January 16, 2018 (released February 9, 2018): Convictions and death sentences affirmed; noncapital sentences sent back.
May 2018: Reconsideration denied.
January 2019: U.S. Supreme Court declines review.
2020: Resentenced on noncapital counts (Beacon Journal, as cited by Oxygen).
April 12, 2021: Ohio Senate Bill 256 takes effect, ending juvenile life without parole.
October 14, 2026: Prison records show Beasley under sentence of death at Ross Correctional Institution and Rafferty at Richland Correctional Institution with parole eligibility in December 2036.