by RJ Parker
On October 31, 2008, Mark was arrested for the murder of John Altinger. He was charged with first-degree murder. According to Mark, he pretended to be a woman online as a prank to promote his upcoming movie. He planned on luring men into the garage. However, when John found out that it was a prank, he became angry and attacked Mark, who claimed he murdered John in self-defense. After John’s death, Mark dismembered him in order to conceal his crime. However, police uncovered evidence which points in another direction.
Mark was obsessed with Star Wars, weapons, and he was a fan of the television series Dexter. The main character in the show, Dexter Morgan, worked for the fictional Miami Police Department as a blood spatter analyst by day and killed proven killers to prevent them from claiming other victims by night. It is believed that Mark was trying to bring that character to life and impersonate Dexter.
On Mark’s laptop, the police found a document titled “SKConfessions,” which had been deleted, but they were able to recover it. “SK” stood for serial killer. This document was presented as key evidence during Mark’s trial. The opening passage in the document is: “This story is based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer.”The author described how he planned to commit a murder, how his first attempt in killing failed, and then how his second attempt succeeded. The author lured a man to a rented garage by pretending to be a woman online, then killed him, dismembered the victim, and then disposed of the remains. During the trial, Mark admitted to the murder but retained the self-defense claim. He also stated that the document was based on fiction to dramatize the work and make it more appealing.
Indeed, Mark had actually tried to kill another man before John. That man, Gilles Tetreault, managed to escape. This was all described in the document, which was made a lot more credible as prosecutors were able to show that it was based on true events. Gilles testified at the trial that he had expected to meet a woman he previously met online on the dating website plentyoffish.com (the same one used to lure John). However, Gilles was attacked by a masked man with a stun stick.
Other disturbing entries were made in the “SKConfessions” file, including more details about the attack and murder. Mark wrote, “I grabbed his jaw with my gloved hand and moved it while making a funny voice to make it look like it was talking, and chuckled to myself at the total silliness of it all.” He also made mention of religious people, writing, “I have no place for them and I find the whole concept of religion detestable. It’s all a big, corrupt power grab designed to take advantage of simple-minded common folk.”
Mark also discussed his opinion about killing others. “Most people fantasize and it only ever stays a fantasy. They don't have the disposition or the stomach to go all the way with their dark urges. But I do,” he wrote. “I do not have any reservations about disposing of the negative people in this world who deserve a one-way ticket to the afterlife, if such a thing exits.” The author found it “fascinating” to cut his victim open and watch the organs as they collapsed. He also diagnosed himself as a psychopath, but this was not presented in the trial because even if Mark wrote the diagnosis as the truth, he was not in a place to make such claims.
Mark’s trial lasted three weeks and on April 12, 2011, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the chance of a parole for at least twenty-five years. The prosecutor has not yet decided if the attempted murder charge against Gilles Tetreault will be pursued, but even with another conviction, there would be no addition to the life sentence already received.
While in prison, Mark purchased a TV for his cell and began watching the episodes of Dexter he had missed since his arrest. This created an outrage because people felt like he was being allowed to relive and fuel his fantasies. Mark was also trying to retrieve his work on his Star Wars fan film so he could edit it and make it public. While others are trying to help him do this, the police are doing their best to prevent it.
Chapter 28: Miranda Barbour
Although the internet has brought so many advantages to the world as a whole, at the same time it has enabled many troubled people to fulfill their sick fantasies. Sometimes, nothing can be enough to stop people from taking lives.
Miranda Kamille (Dean) Barbour was born in December of 1994. She was born in Alaska and raised in North Pole with her father, Sonny, her mother, Elizabeth, and her older sister, Ashley. Her childhood was troubled. At age four, Miranda was molested by the husband of her mother’s sister who was later sentenced to fourteen years in prison for sexually abusing a minor.
At a young age, Miranda started using heroin and quickly became addicted to the drug. Her first experience as a runaway was at age twelve. After coming back home, Miranda told her mother that she had worked as a prostitute and that she had met a man called Forrest who was twenty-five years old and practiced Satanism. Miranda explained to her mother that this man now owned her and that he had made some carvings on her thigh and on the back of her neck as if he had branded her.
According to Miranda, her first experience with murder was when she was thirteen. By that time, she had already joined the satanic cult. One day, she went with the leader of that cult to an alley in order to meet with a man who owed the leader some money. There, the leader shot the man and then asked Miranda to shoot him again. When she couldn’t do it, the leader put his hand on hers and together they pulled the trigger. Miranda’s father says that this incident might have really happened because it was during the time when Miranda had run away from home.
By the age of fourteen, Miranda had run away from home many times and she had even spent some time in various treatment facilities for her heroin addiction. However, her father recalls later that Miranda was good at manipulation—she was intelligent and able to convince the doctors to let her out of the treatment.
Eventually Miranda’s parents divorced. Sonny left town and moved to Florida while Elizabeth stayed in Alaska with Ashley and Miranda. During this time, Miranda claimed that she became pregnant while she was a member of a satanic cult. She told her mother the members of the cult had performed an in-house abortion because they did not want her to have the baby. However, when her mother took to a doctor, they could not find any signs of an abortion.
In 2011, Miranda did become pregnant. She later claimed in an interview that the father was Forrest, the second leader in the cult, but he had been killed soon after they conceived. Miranda’s mother later confirmed that the man named Forrest was not dead and she was trying to determine if he was the baby’s father. In March of 2012, Miranda was ordered by a court in Alaska to live under the custody of her mother’s brother, Arlin, in North Carolina. She moved to her uncle’s house and tried to change her life. She gave birth to a girl, started taking college courses, and got a job working at a grocery store.
Miranda now claims to have murdered at least twenty-two people in different states over the span of six years. However, although her father said that the first murder in Alaska when she was just thirteen could have really happened, he believes that other claimed murders in California and Texas are lies his daughter has made up. When she was in California and Texas, she was always with her father. Still, Miranda insists that she has killed this many people throughout her life and that she can lead the authorities to the places where the bodies were dumped. Miranda also claims that she only killed bad people, a story that echoes the plot of the TV show Dexter.
While some of the local authorities and FBI are investigating these claims, there is no evidence that Miranda has actually committed these murders and there are not any unsolved murders in those states. One thing is for sure: Miranda did commit at least one murder, one that could have brought death penalty charges.
After moving to Coats, North Carolina, Miranda began working at a local grocery store. There, she met Aimee Vaneyll, who was also pregnant, and her twenty-two-year-old boyfriend, Elytte “Elf” Barbour. The three of them quickly became friends. Elytte was
into Satanism, just like Miranda. In March 2013, Aimee and Elytte broke up. A few months later, in June 2013, Miranda and Elytte started a relationship.
On October 22, 2013, Miranda and Elytte got married. Just three days later, they both quit their jobs and moved to central Pennsylvania with some friends. In order to pay the bills, Miranda was working as a ‘companion,’ meeting her clients on Craigslist. For each encounter, she would earn between $50 and $850. According to Miranda, she only had conversations with her clients—she wasn’t a prostitute.
On November 1, Miranda used Craigslist to post an ad in which she offered some companionship for any man who “hated” his wife. Forty-two-year-old Troy LaFerrara answered the ad. They agreed that they would meet in the parking lot of a local mall. The date was November 11, Elytte’s twenty-second birthday. Miranda was in the car waiting and Elytte hid in the backseat under a blanket. The couple agreed on a signal—when Miranda asked, “Did you see the stars tonight?” Elytte would get up and strangle Troy.
When Troy got into the car, she claimed she told him that she was sixteen years old (she was actually nineteen). When Troy said that he did not care, she knew that he was the one to kill. Miranda drove the vehicle to a secluded area, where she put it in park. She gave the signal to Elytte two times, but it wasn’t until she hit him on the leg that he jumped up and began to strangle Troy using a cord. While Troy struggled to breathe, Miranda used a knife to stab him twenty times. Then the couple took his wallet, dumped the corpse in an alley, and headed to a Wal-Mart where they purchased items to clean up their car. To celebrate Elytte’s birthday, they went to a strip club afterwards. Later, the couple told the police that they had been planning to kill someone together as a couple for some time, thinking that it would bring them closer and strengthen their relationship. They had tried to kill a few times before, but Troy was the first person to actually show up after they placed an ad. After the murder, Miranda and Elytte continued their lives normally. She started posting happy updates on Facebook. On November 19, she posted a picture of her new wedding ring. Her posts were cheerful and about the happy holidays.
During that time, the Sunbury police were investigating the murder of Troy. There were many leads to follow. Some texts messages on the victim’s phone led them to Miranda. On December 3, 2013, Miranda was arrested. Elytte was arrested a few days later, after surveillance footage showed him buying cleaning supplies with her after the murder. Social services immediately took her baby away and gave custody to Miranda’s father, who is fighting for custody against Miranda’s uncle Arlin.
Initially, prosecutors indicated they would seek a death penalty sentence for the couple. But in August of 2014, both Miranda and Elytte pleaded guilty to second-degree murder charges. They face mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole, and they will both be sentenced on September 18, 2014, the day this book publishes. Miranda still claims that she actually committed more than twenty murders in her lifetime. Miranda says that she is ready to show the FBI and the authorities where the dumped bodies are, but tells them they will find only parts of the victims. According to her claims, some parts are dumped in Mexico Beach in Florida where she had worked as a go-go dancer when she was 15; other parts are dumped in Big Lake, Alaska; and one body was dumped at the Interstate 95 near Raleigh in North Carolina. However, any truth behind Miranda’s claims has yet to be proven.
Chapter 29: Richard Beasley
Over the years, Craigslist has been a useful tool to help people find work. But if a person responding to an ad is not careful, he or she can end up a victim.
Richard Beasley was born in the year 1959. His mother, who worked at a local high school, and his stepfather, raised him in Akron, Ohio. As an adult, he married once and had a daughter named Tonya. He was working as a mechanist, but spent many years in and out of prison. Between 1985 and 1990, he was in a Texas prison on burglary charges. He spent 1996 to 2003 in another prison for a firearms crime. A few years after getting out of prison, Richard was hit by a dump truck. He suffered injuries on the chest, head, and spine. After that accident, he stopped his steady work and started taking pills for his back and neck pains. He also began to claim that he had found God and started spending time at the local church. Richard did not smoke, nor did he drink, and he seemed to be a good and nice man who did not lose his temper.
During this time, the Rafferty family was living in the same neighborhood as Richard. Michael, the father, knew Richard from a local motorcycle circuit. Richard became a close friend of the family—so much so that he took care of Michael’s son, Brogan, and often took the eight-year-old boy to church with him. For eight years, Richard took Brogan to church every Sunday, sometimes taking along his daughter Tonya and Brogan’s half-sister, Rayna. Brogan had a tough childhood. His mother was a drug addict and was hardly around. His father, Michael, was always working and when he was at home he would easily lose his temper; he was hard on his children. That is why Brogan saw a father figure in Richard.
In 2009, Richard founded a halfway home hoping to provide support for runaways, addicts, and prostitutes. He often picked these people up from the streets at night and let them stay at his house. One woman, Amy Saller, was living on and off in that house between 2009 and 2011. She later recalled that Richard had a dark side. She stated that he claimed to want to help the girls get off the streets and get back on track, but once they were in the house he acted as their pimp, featuring their services on the internet. He could do anything to keep them in the house, and that included giving them drugs. Although he was never violent, Amy was afraid of Richard.
In February 2011, Richard was arrested on drug charges. While in jail, authorities were preparing prostitution charges against him. In July, Richard was released on bond, but when he didn’t check with his parole officer, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Richard needed to disappear and had an idea on how to do just that. He told Brogan that he would need his help.
Richard was searching for a new identity. At a homeless refuge home, he looked for a person that resembled him. Soon he found the perfect match: fifty-six-year-old Ralph Geiger. To lure him, he would present a great job opportunity of being a concierge of a farm. Ralph was searching for work and had spent his early years on a farm, so he jumped at the opportunity. It is not clear if Brogan knew that Richard would kill Ralph. On August 9, Richard and Brogan drove Ralph to a secluded area in the woods, where Richard shot him in the back of his head using a pistol.
Brogan didn’t inform anyone about the murder of Geiger, but on August 16, 2011, he described it in the form of a poem that was discovered on his computer’s hard drive. The poem was titled “Midnight Shift” and read:
We took him out to the woods on a
humid summer’s night.
I walked in front of them.
They were going back to the car.
I did’nt turn around.
The loud crack echoed and I did’nt
hear the thud.
The two of us went back to the car
for the shovels.
He was still there when we returned.
He threw the clothes in a garbage
bag along with the personal items.
I dug the hole.
It reached my waist when I was in
it, maybe four feet wide.
We put him in with difficulty,
they call them stiffs for a reason.
We showered him with lime like a
Satanic baptism
it was like we were excommunicating
him from the world
I thought there would be extra dirt,
he was’nt a small man.
There wasint. I don’t know how.
We drove out of there discarding
evidence as we went
felt terrible until I threw up
in the gas station bathroom where
I was supposed to throw away the bullets and shell.
I emptied myself of my guilt, with
> my dinner, but not for long.
When I got home,’ took a shower hotter than hell itsself.
prayed like hell that night.
Brogan was a changed teen after that night. He started drinking heavily and wishing he would die, even thinking about wrecking his car. But still, he didn’t tell anyone about the murder. He stayed alone in his room and waited for Richard to contact him. In the meantime, Richard was assuming the life of Ralph Geiger. He colored his hair, rented a room, and found a job as a quality inspection officer. However, his back was still hurting and he was still on prescribed painkillers, so the job didn’t last long. Richard was afraid that he would get caught and he needed money. That is when he had another idea for income.
Richard must have felt invincible when no one suspected that he had committed a murder, so he thought he would go on killing and stealing from his victims. However, he needed to find his victims outside shelters so they would have something of value to be stolen. To cover for the sudden influx of income he was expecting, Richard decided to pretend that had been bidding on abandoned storage units that contained valuables, following the reality TV show Storage Wars. Then he posted a Craigslist advertisement to lure middle aged white males. The ad read:
Wanted: Caretaker For Farm. Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of hilly farmland and feed a few cows, you get 300 a week and a nice 2 bedroom trailer, someone older and single preferred but will consider all, relocation a must, you must have a clean record and be trustworthy—this is a permanent position, the farm is used mainly as a hunting preserve, is overrun with game, has a stocked 3 acre pond, but some beef cattle will be kept, nearest neighbor is a mile away, the place is secluded and beautiful, it will be a real get away for the right person, job of a lifetime—if you are ready to relocate please contact asap, position will not stay open.
