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Murder Sheet
Robert Eugene Brashers and the Yogurt Shop Murders: Chasing a Ghost with Kathy Sweeney
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I'm Anya and today we're going to hear from an investigative reporter who spent years tracking down an elusive serial killer.
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Content Warning this episode contains discussion of suicide, sexual assault, rape and murder, including the rape and murder of children.
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Robert Eugene Bershears is a ghost. This infamous serial killer who is recently linked to the horrific Austin, Texas yogurt shop murders, is quite literally dead. He died by suicide after a confrontation with police in early 1999. Unfortunately, that means he'll never be held accountable for his brutal, cowardly crimes. But even in his life, in the way he drifted from town to town, from state to state, killing and brutalizing women and girls and then moving on unseen, unobserved, uncaught. He was very much ghost like even when he was still alive.
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Kathy Sweeney would know. She has been chasing that ghost for years. She's an investigative reporter and anchor for KVVS in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She's also co creator of the podcast Chasing a Ghost along with Assistant Assignment News Director Caleb Phillips. Kathy has been on this story since before Brushears became well known. She's done extensive reporting on the murders of mother and daughter Sherry and Megan Shearer in Missouri, when that was linked to Brashears through DNA, she stayed on the case.
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Chasing a ghost covers his whole reign of terror. Kathy was kind enough to sit down with us to tell us more about Brashears. In this episode, Kathy's going to do more than just recount the case. She's going to give all of you, the listeners, the tools to get involved. We'll break down the windows of time that Brashears was free to commit crimes. We'll break down some of the places he was connected to, the ins and outs of his modus operandi, which often seem to change somewhat. But we're going to talk about the common themes with this information that we're about to get you. You can go out and potentially try to pinpoint other crimes that Brashears committed because Kathy and police investigators are adamant about one thing. There are probably more cases out there. There are probably more victims and survivors, and the detectives need your help to find those cases. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
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And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
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And this is the Murder Sheet.
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We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.
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And this is Robert Eugene Brashears and the Yogurt Shop Murders. Chasing a Ghost with Kathy Sweeney. Well, Kathy, we're so excited to have you here today on the Murder Sheet. Thank you so much for joining us.
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C
Thank you for the invite. I really appreciate it.
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A
Before we get started, tell us the name of your podcast because I think our listeners are going to really, really enjoy this. Maybe enjoy is the wrong word, but be fascinated by it because you'd go in depth on a case that I think deserves that deep dive.
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C
I appreciate it. It's called Chasing a Ghost and it is all about a little known serial killer, Robert Brashears. He has become much better known since he was identified as the prime and only suspect in the yogurt shop murders, which happened back in September of 2025. Before that, very few people knew about Brashears. I knew about him and knew him well because he is responsible for one of the most horrific CR to happen in my viewing area back in 1998. After our case was solved in 2018, people kind of forgot about him. And then flash forward to 2025 and boom, there he is again. And it was such a shock, honestly, that a single person could be responsible for that quadruple murder case. And so when we decided to go back into all the information, we had gathered about Brashears, we realized we had so much that we should share it. And so because Bershears had been dead nearly the entire time our investigators looked for him, chasing a ghost seemed really appropriate for the podcast, not only because people were looking for him while he was dead, but because he did so many things when he was alive to hide himself from authorities, to conceal his identity, to prevent himself from being caught, that he was never ever a suspect in any of his crimes until after long after he was dead. So chasing a ghost just seemed to fit the bill when it came to Robert Beshears.
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A
It really is very apt and on so many levels. I wanted to start out maybe if we could do a quick timeline of the crimes that we sort of know can be attributed to this man, to this ghost, in other words. And I think that would help to almost take the listeners through this almost really horrible tour of the country and emphasize how much he traveled and how much he did and maybe how some of his crimes look different from others, I guess. Can you start talk about Florida and this sort of first burst of violence that maybe kind of is a bit of a harbinger for what comes next.
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C
St. Lucie County, Florida. November 22, 1985, is his first known violent crime. And you've got a Robert Beshears who was living in Fort Myers at the time. And he finds finds himself a few hours away from home in St. Lucie County. And he picks a young woman up. She is violently attacked inside this truck that he's driving. He shoots her, he beats her. She gets out of the truck, he shoots her again, beats her some more. He turns to put the gun down in his truck and somehow she manages to get away. She does an amazing job of literally crawling through a muddy culvert to get away while he's circling this citrus grove. Find her. She fortunately finds a phone in a carport at a house that's used at the citrus grove. Calls police. Police are able to find him and arrest him. And that is his first stint in prison in 1986 for that attempted second degree murder. That was a 12 year sentence, but unfortunately he served just three and a half years of that 12 year sentence, which is one of many horrific strokes of luck, frankly, that Robert Beshears found himself rece receiving over the course of his criminal career. So he is out in May of 1989 and the next violent crime we know of is in April of 1990, and that is the beating and strangulation death of 28 year old Jenny Zatricki. Genevieve Zatricky in Greenville, South Carolina. Jenny's found in her own apartment. There had been a break in in her apartment. She was savagely beaten, strangled with a pair of her own pantyhose. She was left in her bathtub where the water had been turned on in an attempt to wash away some of what police believe was the biological evidence because she'd been sexually assaulted. Her purse had been dumped in the sink, her apartment turned upside down, and there was a message scrolled on her mirror, don't f with my family. And so that scene was presented in a way that law enforcement at the time felt that this was someone who knew Jenny, someone who had a beef with Jenny, someone who must have had some kind of relationship with her was a very personal crime. Next violent crime. And again, this is one of the newest crimes. Added to Robert Brashear's list of horrific acts is the December 1991 yogurt shop murders, which is the horrific quadruple murder of four teenage girls. And I can't believe it's yogurt. In Austin, Texas. Two of the 17 year old girls worked there and then a 15 year old sister and her 13 year old friend were visiting. Brashears killed all four girls, shooting them in the head, sexually assaulted three of them and set the business on fire. It was long thought that that crime was committed by more than one person because two guns were used, four victims were controlled. I'm sure you're aware of the horrific history involved in that case with four young men charged, two convicted, later released, very recently exonerated, and then In September of 2025, DNA and ballistics tying that case to lone and again, relatively unknown serial killer Robert Beshears on his list of crimes. The next violent crime jump is in 1997. The reason that is is because in 1992 he is arrested in Georgia for a variety of things, but mainly for having a stolen vehicle, for having a bunch of stuff in his motel room that gives you the impression that he was going to be impersonating a police officer. He had things to break into vehicles with. He had what could very easily be called a kill kit with him, handcuffs and a gun with the serial number scraped off of it. He actually went to federal prison because he had an outstanding warrant on a federal weapons charge. So he goes to federal prison and he actually bounces to a couple different prisons. I think at one point he's in Georgia, at one point he's in Florida. But anyway, he's in federal prison until 1996 and a month after he's released, or less than a month even after he's released, he finds himself in Memphis, Tennessee, where he talks his way into a home, this is in March of 97. Talks his way into a home with a family of women who had just gotten back, I believe from a funeral. And binds all the victims except for the very youngest, which was a nine and a half month old baby. He sought out the youngest of the female victims, a 14 year old girl. He sexually assaulted her. He did not kill them. He threatened to and he stole one of their vehicles and he left. There's some speculation that it was in the middle of the day, it was a close knit neighborhood, the homes were very close to one another. So there's been some speculation, well, maybe he didn't kill them because somebody would have hurt him, but who knows? But those victims were fortunate in that he did leave them alive, although horribly brutalized in that crime. Jump ahead to March of 1998. And that is where he is. Here in southeast Missouri, about an hour south of where I am right now in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He finds himself in Portageville, a small town in New Madrid County, Missouri, where a mother and daughter are simply doing yard work. On a warm Saturday evening in March, Sherry and Megan Shear. He finds them in their front yard, pulls a gun. It's long considered. He uses one of his ruses to talk his way into the house with them. He pulls a gun on one or the other, he shoots and kills both of them. Megan is horribly sexually assaulted. Law enforcement describe her as being posed in a way in which he wanted to show off what he did. A few hours later that same evening, he finds himself in Dyersburg, Tennessee, which is really not that far from Portageville, where he basically attempts to do the same thing. He finds a young mother, she's putting groceries from her car into her trailer with her young children. He pulls up, he claims he's looking for directions he's lost. The mother immediately senses something is off. He goes to his van, says he's getting a map. He comes back with a gun. She immediately lunges at him and next thing you know, they're fighting over this gun. He's trying to push his way into the trailer. She yells at her kids to get the rifle off the wall. He manages to get his hand into the door. He fires the gun, hits her in the shoulder, but she manages to slam the door and off he goes. And that is where we get our composite sketch and our description of Sherry and Megan's killer. And then this Is the crime we found out about most recently. It was alluded to at the Austin news conference in September of last year, but confirmed in January of this year. And that's the November 1998 murder of Linda Rutledge in Lexington, Kentucky. She's a 43 year old woman who worked at her parents hearing aid store and that's where she was found murdered. It was later described to me and has been described by Austin's cold case detective, Dan Jackson, that she worked at the hearing aid store, but also maybe worked as a local bartender and had gone back to that hearing aid store maybe to change clothes. But that hearing aid store was in a strip mall. Very similar to the layout of the yogurt shop in a strip mall with a back entrance door. But that business was also set on fire. Linda was found shot. She was found sexually assaulted. Less than two months later. Richears himself was dead. He took his own life in a motel room in Kennett, Missouri in what was originally a confrontation with police over a stolen license plate. He had a suicide note in his pocket. He had his wife and family with him, his daughter Deborah and Rose's two twin daughters. He was cornered. He had the suicide note in his pocket. He must have thought this is it. He had his.380 pistol with him. The same 380 that he had with him just two days after yogurt shop. It's very much believed that's the gun he used at yogurt shop and at Lexington. And then that's the gun he used to take his own life. So violent start, violent end. The biggest issue with Brashears is what in the world was he doing before 1985? What else did he do before he went to prison in 1992? And what else did he do from 97 to 99 this summer?
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Those are the big questions. And you just described such a legacy of just carnage across the country. I'm hearing all these different states, I'm hearing different kind of circumstances, retail businesses, homes, victims ranging in age. But when you are looking at it as a journalist who's covered this in such depth for so many years, what are some of the, you know, so to speak, the modus operandi that you're looking at that maybe are some common threads between these crimes that when you're looking at maybe other cases. Okay, what hallmarks are we looking for to make this a Brashears case?
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C
Well, and the thing I've done, I will say is I have leaned very heavily on law enforcement to help guide the information that I shared in the podcast and that I continue to share about him and what to look for. Because he is a hard serial killer to pin down. Everyone has said that. We have said that repeatedly. But there are certain things that you can look at as hallmarks, if you will, of a Brashear's crime. The one thing that is consistent is that all his crimes have a sexual component. Every one of them. All his crimes have a female victim. We have no knowledge of him ever assaulting or killing a male victim. He almost always targets his youngest victim. Now are all his victims young?
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No.
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C
But if you think about the Portageville case, he murdered Sherry Shear, he raped and murdered Megan Shear. In the Memphis assault He raped a 14 year old girl, leaving a 17 year old, a 20 year old and a 40 some year old woman untouched. He very often binds victims with their own clothing and that is something that is fairly consistent throughout his cases. Even in the Jenny's a tricky case which stands out in a way. He strangled her with her own pantyhose. And the one thing I will argue is that the Jenny Zatricky case sounds very much like the Florida case. They were acts of rage and they were possibly acts of rejection because in the Florida police report that woman rejected his advances and paid the price for it. There's evidence putting Beshears in Greenville living close to where Jenny lived and working close to Jenny's apartment complex. There were a lot of bars in that area. There were A lot of young people who socialized a lot, especially in Jenny's apartment complex, according to law enforcement. So there's a really good chance they cross paths. Did she reject him, and did he go after her for that reason? So there's commonality in certain cases. He introduces fire. Sometimes he did at the yogurt shop. He did at the hearing aid store. Sometimes there are multiple victims. And, you know, when he was first named as the ogre shop suspect, one of the biggest pushbacks was, there's no way one guy did that case. There's no way. Well, yes, there is. Look at Memphis. Look at Portageville. He absolutely can control multiple victims. Something that Detective Dan Jackson from Austin told me, and it really stuck in my head. He said, how do two people keep a secret? They don't. One person keeps a secret. And from everything we know, Robert Beshears had no accomplice. He seemed to have no acquaintance, and he seemed to really have no friends. Nobody has presented themselves and said, hey, I knew that guy. I worked with that guy. I remember that guy. It would appear that he told nobody. And if he told anybody, it was either his oldest brother, who we know died in 79. So if he knew anything about Brashear's violent tendencies, it would have been way back. Or his father, who I will argue knew something. I don't know if he knew everything, but he knew enough to take certain actions to get his son out of jail, to get his son's.380 pistol back, and to possibly take other actions to cover up for his son. Don't know that for sure, but it really makes you wonder.
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A
It really does. And that segues nicely into what I want to know about next. This man is a ghost. He's literally dead. We can't introduce him. Profilers can't interview him. Law enforcement can't interview him. But you've done such an amazing job sort of piecing together his violent trajectory and the family members you mentioned his older brother, who, of course, killed Alabama State Trooper David Temple and died in a, you know, gunfire battle with. With law enforcement. His father is this mysterious figure who apparently worked for NASA at one point, but raised these violent sons. What are you able to piece together about this man's background? Not that anything would explain what he did, but are there any signs of something being wrong?
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C
It's really hard to say. And I have leaned into my relationship with his daughter Deborah, who is. I know you've talked to her. Fantastic person, huge resource for me, and has been since 2019. The first time I interviewed her. So she has shared a lot, not only of what she. She remembers, but she has also been kind enough to share a lot of documents with me, including his naval records. And those were really eye opening to me because when I look through his naval records, he started off real promising. You had a young man who graduated high school early. I don't know if he tested out. It didn't say. But he joined the Navy right after he turned 18 in March. He should have been in high school till May, but he had a letter that allowed him to join early. His test scores were above average. He was already on a trajectory to go toward an engineering focus or a mathematics focus in the Navy. He was quickly promoted. Things were, were looking good. And then all of a sudden he's like, nope, I don't like this anymore. I want out. And it's like, what about that? Did you not like, was it the structure? Was it, you know, was there? Did you have an interaction with somebody? And. And out he went. And then you don't know where he was. But you do know that in 1980, he thinks he needs to put his obituary in two newspapers. Now, who does that?
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A
I. Yeah. That is such a bizarre. Can you talk a little bit about.
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C
Digging into Robert Brashear's history is like a master class in pre Internet, pre social media. Like, what can I do to hide from police? So this guy put his obituary in two newspapers in New Orleans, where he was living at the time, and in Newport News, Virginia, where he was from. And randomly, he does it two days before his mother actually dies. Now, his mother died when she was 50, which is a real young age, and I don't know enough about him to know if that had some kind of an impact on him. I lost my parents at a young age. I'm not a serial killer. I'm not going to allow that to be a good enough excuse. I don't know if his father was particularly violent to he and his brother. Lots of people have violent parents, but he was doing things that I don't know if other people were thinking about back then, but putting obituaries in newspapers using other people's names. In the Florida case, he told police his name was Gary Beshears. That's his brother's name, his other brother's name. The brother who has done nothing wrong, who has been very helpful with police, he just decided to throw that name out there. He has used a bunch of different aliases to the point where he has had driver's licenses in those alias Names. When he was arrested in Georgia, in that hotel, they found birth certificates, driver's licenses. He had an ID for a liquor store with his picture and somebody else's name on it. So I guess so we could cash checks. I mean, he went to great lengths to hide himself. He, at one point was wearing wigs and dresses and robbing waffle houses. And this would have been like from 97 to 99, because Deborah remembers that, and Deborah remembers her mother telling her that. So who does these things, really?
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A
It's wild. And as you said, like, there wasn't any real. Well, we don't know about any real indications. As you said, he was a promising young man at one point.
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C
And then, and you look at him, he's. He's a very slightly built man. If you look at his younger photos, he could be considered a good looking young man. In fact, there is one photo of him, and I believe it's 1981. And when Deborah sent it to me, I. I remember staring at it and I thought he could be Ted Bundy's cousin. The hair and the face. And, and I say that because a lot of folks felt Ted Bundy was a nice looking young man. And so you have this nice looking young man who's offering women rides, who picked a woman up in Florida, offered her a ride, offered her some beer in his truck. How many times did he do that? And at that age, I bet he did it a lot. But then when you take all his photos and you line them up together and you look at them from decade to decade, it's like a different person. He looks totally different from 81 to when I first saw that Georgia mugshot, the 92 mugshot, which is the one we use for our chasing a ghost thumbnail, where he's got the real squared off glasses and the real short hair and the mustache. I'm like, well, who's that guy? He looks totally different.
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A
He's very chameleon like. He is.
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C
Yeah. Not only is he changing the way he looks, but with the name changes and the state changes, he's stealing a car in one state, stealing a license plate in another state, and then sticking them together. It's like he's always one or two steps ahead, and clearly he was, because he was never. And I verified this with every law enforcement agency. He was never a suspect in any one of those cases, not while he was alive. Never.
- [31:02]
A
He's really a nightmare from a law enforcement perspective. A mobile roving serial killer going through jurisdictions and changing up his modus operandi enough that it doesn't quite look identical. And I'm always the person in True crime where I'm like, guys, not everything's a serial killer. Like let, like, let's not attribute serial killers to everything. And then this is the case that this is the exception that kind of throws out that rule because he very much is, is living and a living embodiment of that. And I wanted to ask you, you know, you've been looking into this case for years. What has been the thing that has most surprised you in your reporting and in putting this terrific show together and in doing this deep dive?
- [31:48]
C
Oh my goodness, what has surprised me the most? Honestly, the biggest surprise might be how welcoming everyone has been to us. To be honest, this whole project stemmed from us deciding to do a new special report for my television station about Brashears and about his links to Texas now and about basically this new multi state effort to see what else he might have done. And so when he was announced as the yogurt shop suspect, that was, you know, late September 2025. So in early October of 2025, I found out that the Missouri State Highway Patrol was willing to allow me to speak to the two investigators who had been reassigned to the Shear case, our case. And I knew one of them, he was in my cell phone. And I famously have a cell phone filled with law enforcement. And they were assigned back onto it because they now needed to work with Dan Jackson in Austin with the yogurt shop case. Because Dan needed to know everything he could know about Robert Beshears. Because one of the big unanswered questions, and it's why Dan has told me that yogurt shop is still open, is because the families, the community, everybody wants definitive proof that Bershear's acted alone at the yogurt shop. And so our investigators in Missouri began sending him the massive sheer case file, which is like 2000 plus pages, along with attachments and documents, photos, you name it, recordings. I found out on October 10th, I think that I could interview them. And then we decided, basically we decided we would turn a special report in a 10 day time period which in, in local news is ridiculous. And so we did. Well then when I talked to our investigators and they are Chris Hamlet and Alex Lacey, who I am forever in their debt. They said, we would like to introduce you to Sean and Angie Ayers. We met them in Austin and they are wonderful people and they are so thankful to us for the work we did on Sherry and Megan's case because they feel that it is helping to solve their case. And so I was able to do a zoom interview with Sean and Angie, and I reached back out to Deborah. I don't ever give away a phone number. I still had Deborah Beshears in my cell phone. So I reached back out to Deborah, and we immediately reestablished our relationship. And so I threw together this special report. I had all my files. I'd kept everything. And when I put together the report, and it basically took up an entire half hour newscast, Caleb Phillips, my creative partner and the assistant news director here at our TV station, he literally said, we need to do a podcast on this. We have so much information. We shouldn't sit on all this. Well, then I started reaching back out and said, sean and Angie Ayers, if I came to Texas, would you give me an interview? Absolutely. Thank you for asking. In fact, Angie said, nobody ever asks us for an interview. I was shocked. Dan Jackson, he's in the middle of a yogurt shop case. Gave me an hour and a half of his time when we went to Texas, and then we ran into Cece Moore, who just happened to be in Austin while we were there. So what has surprised me the most is just how gracious and available and welcoming everyone has been. Because even on our level and what I like to call our little podcast, people see the value in sharing what we know about Robert Beshears. Because the more we talk about him, the more we put his picture out there, his crimes out there, everything we know about what it is he's done. As Dan said to me once, the more likely some hometown Internet sleuth is going to go, wait a minute, that reminds me of a crime that happened in my hometown. Because it's more likely that somebody's going to remember a crime in their hometown from 20, 30 years ago than maybe someone in law enforcement might. Which is a great point that brings
- [36:11]
B
up the question, do you think there are still other crimes that he committed that we may discover and learn about in the months or years to come?
- [36:20]
C
Absolutely. Absolutely. I sure do. And everyone I've spoken to in law enforcement absolutely agrees. There's no way. There's no way that St. Lucie county attempted murder was his first. There's no way. You don't shoot a woman twice, and that's your first. All of a sudden, that's just your first foray into violent crime. There's no way. And what's really troublesome about him is we're not just looking for murders. Think about cases like hers, she Lived. Or what about a robbery, an Armed robbery at a business where he didn't kill the employees, where he maybe got spooked or he didn't get to finish the job, or maybe he pulled up to someone's house and didn't get to talk his way in. You know, Sherry and Megan shouldn't have been alone on that day in March of 1998. Her husband and son should have been home. They got stuck behind a tractor and they were half an hour late coming home. And he had a half hour window. And that's the only reason why they're gone was because he lucked into that stupid half hour window. So who else's door did he knock on? Who else's driveway did he pull into? There's no way this is it. And the windows of time are too big. You know, what did he do in 78 or 79 or 80 that caused him to put his obituary into newspapers? Something. He did something, or he was planning to do something, and then what was it?
- [38:01]
A
One thing that I've been thinking about is, you know, in your work, are there cases that you're looking at now that are possibilities? Obviously you're. If you're working on them, we totally understand if you can't go into detail. But are there some maybe things that you're like this, this might be it.
- [38:15]
C
But, you know, I'm aware of a couple cases that law enforcement is looking into, and I have done some poking around. You know, I, unfortunately, I will say, you know, have a full time job as a news anchor. And so I don't get to spend as much time as I would like to just digging into cases that I think he could have done. I've run across a couple that I really think are him. I've talked to law enforcement about them, and they also have that same feeling. The problem is we're talking about cases that go back so far that you're like, well, what? What kind of evidence do they have? What can we compare? Now, one of the best things to ever happen in the Robert Brashear's saga was the exhumation of his body in 2018 by Southeast Missouri law enforcement. Getting a court order because they took a lot of his DNA. There is a lot of his DNA available for test, and there's ballistics. And, you know, right now, as Detective Jackson has said, he's going around the country to conferences to talk to law enforcement to say, this is what he did, this is what he does. Check your files and then come back to us. Because we have DNA, we have ballistics test away. We've got enough to test with. You know, it used to be that things were so degraded that you needed so much. Well, now testing has advanced itself to a point. And of course, you know, genetic genealogy has played a role already in identifying brashears. In our case, you know, who knows? But there are absolutely other cases out there. And, you know, the focus is on the states that he has had contact in. But I've added them up and we're at least at 12 states that he has contact with. Where he lived, where he worked, where he went to prison, where we know he had some contact, where he got a part. You know, he got a tick ticket in Michigan one time when he was living in Indiana. What was he doing in Michigan? Now, I'm from the south suburbs of Chicago, so I know that there's a lot of travel between, you know, Midwestern, upper Midwestern states. You're, you're in Indiana, you know that.
- [40:29]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [40:30]
C
But, but just randomly in his naval records, you know, they, they look through his criminal history and he had two tickets. One was in South Bend where he had been living, and then one was in north, some random little town in Michigan. It's like, wonder what he was doing there.
- [40:48]
A
It's so uncontainable.
- [40:50]
B
Yeah. And I'm curious. Unfortunately, there's no shortage of unsolved crimes or unsolved assaults. If I'm looking at unsolved crimes in my area for a particular time, what sort of thing should I be looking for about the crimes that might make it more likely that he may have been involved?
- [41:13]
C
The things I look for when I am looking into, when I stumble across a case that fits, first of all, look into the windows of time where he could have done something so late 70s to mid-80s, 89 to 92, 97 to January of 99. Those are the only windows I've had some people reach out to me and say, oh, this sounds just like him, but it's 1993. No, he was in prison. 94, no, he was in prison. So from 86 to 89, he was in prison. From 92 to 97, he was in prison. But the things I look for are female victims, sexual component, binding with own clothes, shot with a small caliber weapon. Those are kind of my main things that I look for when I'm doing a search and I stumble across. Those are the questions I begin to ask. Now, it's not always going to be those things. Like Dan Jackson said, He loves a.380 pistol. That seemed to be, as Dan put It his trophy. He had that.380 pistol from 1991 to 1999. We don't know when he got it, but he had it for that long. So he loved that small caliber pistol,22s and 380s. Now, we know that he beat and strangled at least one victim. We know that he beat his victim in Florida, so there's that. But there was a sexual component to both those cases. They were female victims. And in Jenny's case, she was bound with her own clothing. So those are kind of some of those benchmarks I try to look for. And if none of those things is true, then to me, it's not him.
- [43:01]
B
Him.
- [43:02]
C
Now, again, he could prove me wrong. But so far, there are those running components in the cases we know are tied to him.
- [43:12]
A
Right. And we have to draw the line somewhere at some point as. As prolific and as all across the board, he. He was. I mean, it becomes meaningless if we're not narrowing it down.
- [43:21]
C
You can drive yourself crazy if you start diving in and going, yeah, but maybe he was, you know. Yeah, you've really got to. To try to focus in on, you know, what makes a Robert Beshear's crime. And even though at one point I said he literally was all over the map, and it's true. Another point that Mindy Monford made, and she was with the AG's office and with the prosecutor's office before her in Texas, was also a really good point. He sounds like he's everywhere, Right. But then when you really look at it, he's driving just over state lines or just a few hours away from maybe where he lived. So, you know, like in our case, he's living in Perigold, Arkansas, and then he's just over the border into Portageville, Missouri. So he did cross state lines, but if you think about it, he didn't drive all that far, did he? So even finding, you know, this is where he was. Okay, so there was a period of time where he lived in Huntsville, Alabama.
- [44:21]
A
Up.
- [44:22]
C
So are you seeing things maybe just outside of Huntsville or within a driving area of that that fit into his M.O. that that might match some of those things. Female victims, sexual component, bound with their own clothing, shot with a small caliber weapon. And he always shot his victims in the head. I don't think in any case he ever shot a victim anywhere else.
- [44:47]
A
Also, I will point out this is something for people. I think I've seen people propose cases where it involved abduction in the sense it's taking a person from one place to another. And I don't think I've seen anything like that in the cases you've described. He's targeting them in a location, and it's contained within that location.
- [45:05]
C
Yeah. The only person he took anywhere, for lack of a better would be the Florida case. And in that instance, he, you know, picked her up. Up and had beer in his car. According to him. If you read through the full police report, he says they were riding around, drinking beer, and. And then they got in a fight over sex. His words.
- [45:25]
A
And.
- [45:25]
C
And then, you know, she grabbed my gun, which we know is not true. But, yeah, that's the only case in which he was driving. But I have heard, and I won't say where, but I have heard that there was a young woman who believes that he could have approached her in a parking lot setting around that time, give or take a couple of years, offering a ride. So it is possible that he was maybe doing some early hunting, for lack of a better word, in parking lots, in rest stops or truck stops, parking areas where you might find foot traffic or, you know, back in the late 70s, early 80s, you might have folks hanging around looking for a party or whatnot. But it was more him talking his way into someone's home or hanging out in a business until he found the ability to take control of the employees in that business.
- [46:29]
A
Absolutely. But, wow, that does expand it a bit. You're absolutely right. With the Florida case and with perhaps some of these, you know, luring incidents, I do want to ask you. You said something earlier that really intrigued me. The idea that, you know, they're still looking at yogurt chop as far as maybe an accomplice. But what's your view on that, do you think, based on your understanding of bershears and his M.O. in terms of in 1991, the possibility of him having help with that, in your view, seeing all his other crimes, is that likely, or is that something that you tend to not believe?
- [47:03]
C
I don't believe he ever had an accomplice. I don't. It's possible that he ran around with his criminal brother way back in the day. That doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to me, but I don't think he. No, I think he worked alone. I think he absolutely controlled his victims from, you know, the way Deborah has described recollections. As a child, he could get real angry real fast. You have a man who talks his way into your house or comes out from the back room of a yogurt shop, and he's got two Guns. You can absolutely control as many people as you see fit. No, there's no evidence. There's never been any evidence that he had anyone with him. And I will stand on Dan Jackson's words. How did two people keep a secret? They do not. There's never been anyone speak to any of his crimes, ever.
- [48:00]
A
I just want to add to that. You know, I think people tend to think, well, you know, one person could never control me if I were in a group. It's kind of a story we tell ourselves, like, I would fight or whatnot. But I think we all have to remember when you're in a situation where you're not expected to be accosted at gunpoint, I think one person often can take control of that if they're. Especially if they're experienced with doing so. And we have a detective friend who often says, you know, the 911 hijackers took control of multiple airplanes with box cutters. You know, and these are huge groups of airplanes full of people. And, you know, when you have someone with a weapon and others do not have that weapon, I think some people comply and hope that this is just a robbery and it's going to be over and then it's too late. So, I mean, you've seen this with plenty of serial killers. I do want to ask you. I mean, these are such heavy, dark cases. This is such a dark case. Any murder is obviously. But there's something about this that's just so heinous. These victims did nothing wrong and are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this person comes in and does horrific things to them. How does that. You know, as you've kind of talked with the people who've been affected by this and the investigators, what's the legacy of that darkness and how. How are people kind of working through that?
- [49:18]
C
Boy, that's really. That's really hard to say. You know, what I try to do is follow the lead of the person I'm talking to about it as best I can. And it's something that Stephen Shear said to me in 2017 about the murder of his mom and sister. And this was before his case was solved. And he said, when something like this happens to your family, you blame yourself for what happened and why you didn't stop it. But then at some point, you realize there's nothing you could have done about it. And so you make a choice to go on with your life. And so that's what I did. And I feel like I've met a lot of really resilient people who have done that. Not without, of course, the collateral lifelong damage that they carry from something like this. Everyone I've met in law enforcement who's worked these cases have all internalized the pain into purpose. I've talked to them, and you can hear the emotion in their voice. You can see it on their faces, which is one of the reasons why in the podcast, I wanted to go back and speak to some of the old investigators on Sherry and Megan's case case, because I know how profoundly impacted they were by that case, but it caused them to never stop working it, and it gave them the sense of purpose that that could have been their wife, their daughter. For some of them, it was their friend, their neighbor. I mean, that case hit so close to home for so many people that it just became such a driving force for them to solve it. And so for me, it became a driving force for me to responsibly tell their story and make sure it was out there, and it stayed out there and stayed out there, and people didn't forget that it was still out there because we owed it to them, you know, because, I mean, I have a daughter, and I can't help but think that could have been me. Me. It could have been any one of us. And. And in all his crimes, it could have been any one of us. He could have. He chose people seemingly at random for no reason. They did nothing to him, maybe. Rejected him, maybe, but for the most part, did nothing. And. And I will stand on something I said in. In the podcast. Robert Beshears was a coward. He preyed on younger victims that he perceived as weaker than him. He threatened children in front of their parents, and that's how he controlled people. You know, that's how he controlled his victims. He pointed guns at children. He. He raped a child in front of her family. You know, that's a coward. And then he went and hid behind fake names and his family and fake whatever. I mean, and that makes him so much more difficult to find, right? Because he was hiding all the time because he's a coward and because he's not man enough to stand up to what he did. So. And I think it's going to continue to make it difficult, which is why it's so important to continue talking about him and what he did and share his pictures, because of all the different versions of his face that you can see every time you look at him,
- [53:05]
B
you clearly know this case backwards and forwards. I'm just curious, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you first came to cover this case?
- [53:15]
C
Well, I have worked at this TV station for now, 32 years this month, actually. I have always had a strong interest in hard news. I'm not your fluffy kind of feature news reporter. I happen to be married to a retired Kentucky state trooper. Our television market covers portions of southeast Missouri, western Kentucky and southern Illinois. And so I actually met my husband on a story. I had to interview him.
- [53:41]
A
Okay, wait, we need to hear this story.
- [53:43]
C
Well, and it's honestly, I had to interview him about a woman who blindfolded her 12 year old son, took him to a cemetery and tried to stab him to death.
- [53:52]
A
Death.
- [53:52]
C
The child escaped, thank goodness. So woman was arrested. But yes, that is how we famously met back in 2002 and have been married since 2004.
- [54:05]
A
I thought our story was morbid. We both met investigating the Burger Chef murders online. But I feel like you, you kind of have. You get it?
- [54:13]
C
Yeah, it. So, so I have, I mean, I have long had an interest in these kinds of stories. And so, so I was able to earn the trust over time with law enforcement and particularly with the late Master Sergeant Bud Cooper with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was the lead investigator in the Scheer case. And Bud introduced me to the Scheer family. And I'll never forget the first time I sat down with him on the Scheer case. And I wanted to do a special report which for us in local news, instead of a minute 30 story, it's maybe a five minute story. Or in my case, sometimes I'll take up an entire show because I have the clout to do that. But I sat down with Bud and he was giving me all this great information, but then he didn't want to be interviewed. He's like, well, I'm not going to be on tv. And I'm like, but you have to. It's your case. And so I think the first big story I did with him was 2000, 2004, maybe. So, you know, I was here at the station when the crimes happened, but I was actually based over in our Southern Illinois office, focused on news specifically in that portion of our viewing area. So I knew the crime happened. And actually at the time was a single mom of a young daughter. And so the crime itself hit me really hard, but I wasn't physically covering it until I then came over here to our, our biggest, what we call the big TV station, met Bud, earned his trust, and then he was the one who kind of led me. And then when they got the DNA link To Jenny's a tricky that he shared that with me when we were working on a huge half hour special report on the shear case in 2017. He called me and said, we've got another DNA link. It's to Memphis, Tennessee. So I was able to follow them through that, which again, was my honor to do so. And then when we decided to embark on this podcast project, I realized I had hours and hours of video and audio. So it's really an honor for me to be able to share with listeners Master Sergeant Bud Cooper, as he worked the case, folks will get to hear from him. And I reached out actually to his son Ethan, who's an assistant prosecutor here in Cape county, just to kind of get his blessing on bringing his, his father into the podcast posthumously. And he was thrilled. The case was really his father's legacy. And so it was my honor to do that. So that's kind of how it started and how it continued. And when I decided to do the project, I still had everybody, everybody's still in the cell phone. So I just reached out to everybody and said, hey, I'm doing this project. Would you be a part? And I just really fortunate that everybody agreed to hop right back on.
- [57:05]
A
It's wonderful. I, I mean, you've done an amazing reporting on this. You've done an amazing podcast on it. And is there any possibility that maybe we could expect a book from you at some point?
- [57:15]
C
You know, I would love to do that. I don't really know exactly yet how I'm going to do that. And so, you know, any guidance you'd like to provide me on that, it would, would be, would be much appreciated. I am a writer at heart. I went into television news because my oldest brother, who I lost many years ago, who was a writer, said maybe she could be one of those TV news chicks. And I was like, okay, I'll go do that. But this podcast has been a joy for me because it is. I got to write 30 minute long form pieces once a week, which is what I would love to do with my, my next life, whatever that's going to be. So I would love to take everything we've done and to be able to do that because I would like this information to stay out there. And again, it's also honestly a living, breathing tribute to the work that was done here. You know, oftentimes you hear about big city departments and there are times where, you know, law enforcement gets a bad rap, deservedly so in some cases. But here you had local, county and state law enforcement work together for 20 years nonstop to solve this case. It never went cold. It never sat on a shelf. And I don't know that that happens very often. And they allowed me to go along with them for most of the ride, which apparently is unheard of. And so I would like for people to be able to, to see that, to read that, to, to experience it, even as, as a tribute to the work everyone's done and to be able to keep everything we know about Brashears out there, including all the photos. It's something honestly, I, I've talked to Deborah about and she's all about it. She gave a wonderful, wonderful interview. We dedicated an entire episode to me sitting down and talking to Deborah about her experiences. So here's hoping that I can do that. I would love to do that.
- [59:23]
A
I would love for you to do that too. I is. So before we wrap up, where can people listen to the podcast? How can people find it if they are interested?
- [59:32]
C
So it is, as they say, wherever you find your podcast, it is on Apple, it is on Spotify, it is on YouTube. And because we're in television, I was not going to get away with just an audio podcast. So this podcast has a video version for every single episode. Not to brag on my editing skills and Caleb's editing skills and, but I think we did a really nice job of presenting a video version of this podcast. You can also find it at our station's website, which is kfvs12. So King Frank Victor, samthenumber12.com chasingagost I will warn you because each episode is about 30 minutes long, but for some reason, when you go online, either to YouTube or on our website, it splits each episode into 15 minutes. Minute, two, 15 minute pieces. I don't know why, but they're there. And. And when you watch, you will see all our Robert Brashear photos, all of them. And if you go on the website too, you'll also see if you'd like all our past reporting on him, which we have done a lot. I would like to think most of it is contained in the podcast. But there are little bits and pieces of reporting we've done over the years, you know, dating back to his identification here in October of 2018 to present day.
- [60:50]
A
So people check this out. I will be including links to the show to Chasing a Ghost, Robert Beshears in our show notes. I strongly recommend this show and I also recommend, I think this is where Internet sleuths, or true crime sleuths can actually do some good. I know sometimes we kind of criticize the sleuths on this show. But I think this is a case that absolutely could benefit from people combing through their own communities records and then comparing it to the timeline we've mentioned in this episode, to the modus operandi we've mentioned in this episode. This is where I think true crime can actually help, as you mentioned, Kathy. But Kathy, thank you so much for joining us. Is there anything we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention?
- [61:31]
C
No, I think we've covered everything. I really appreciate it. And yeah, you know, something that Dan Jackson had said is, yes, they're asking for your help. Authorities want Internet sleuths to dive into Robert Brashears. And if they think they have found a local case to notify the Cold case unit at the Texas Attorney General's office. If you go on their website, you will see on their homepage, I think it's down in like the right hand corner, there's like a link right to their cold case and you can contact them directly. He thought that was a good clearinghouse for folks in case they didn't know where to go. But you can also email me me. It's very simple, Kathy Sweeneyfes12.com and I'm happy to take anything and get it to Dan or get it to the guys here in Missouri. The more we can do, the more we can share, the more we can get his picture out there. And one thing I'll note too is, you know, look at all the pictures because, you know, Dan had a good example of a woman who knew him in the early 80s. And the only picture she had seen of him, the most famous picture that you'll see of him is his 1997 Arkansas driver's license photo. And he doesn't have glasses on and is him and his mustache and he's just kind of staring at the camera. Well, she saw that photo and she's like, I don't know if it's him. Well, then she saw the 1981 photo and went, oh, yep, it's him. So you've got to look at all of them because he looks so different from year to year and decade to decade. If you think you had any contact with him, depending on the decade, make sure you look at the photo that closely associates with that decade because again, this is a man who changed names, who changed license plates and vehicles and somehow managed to change his appearance.
- [63:21]
A
Absolutely. And Kathy, thank you so much for joining us. You've been a delight to talk to you and we really appreciate all appreciate all the work you've done.
- [63:27]
C
Thank you guys. You do great work. Really appreciate the opportunity. And again, we're going to share this with our viewers so we can make them aware of your podcast if for some odd reason they are not. We've got a lot of true crime fans here in the heartland and so we will be sure and share this with them.
- [63:45]
A
Thank you so much to Kathy for talking with us. We encourage everyone to check out Chasing a Ghost. It's a great true crime deep dive that I think you'll really love. We'll include a link to the podcast and to Kathy's reporting in our show notes. And if you have a suggestion on cases that Brashears might have done, please get in touch.
- [64:04]
B
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [64:25]
A
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [64:48]
B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web at kevintg.
- [64:58]
A
If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.