Who Killed Missy Bevers?

Here's a case that's popular with online sleuths, but has somehow not become more well known in mainstream circles, which is frankly astonishing since it includes some of the creepiest video footage I've ever seen. We're talking about a murder mystery where we have extensive footage of the perpetrator at the scene of the crime, and yet the case remains unsolved more than three years later. If police have any leads, they have yet to inform the public.

Shortly after 5 am on the morning of April 18th, 2016, students of 45 year old Terry "Missy" Bevers arrived at the Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian, Texas, for a fitness class she was teaching. They found her on the floor, unresponsive and with puncture wounds to the head and chest. Paramedics declared her dead at the scene. Surveillance footage of the hours before Missy's death revealed something chilling: the apparent perpetrator, dressed in SWAT gear and wandering the halls of the church, carrying what appears to be a hammer. An examination of the building revealed that the intruder broke in through a side door. People who are familiar with police gear generally agree that the SWAT outfit is fake and may have been assembled via a combination of salvaged second-hand pieces and costume items (there are various reasons for this conclusion, but apparently the biggest giveaway is the helmet--it appears to be made of cheap plastic, as indicated by how shiny it is).

And that's all we know for sure. After more than three years, it doesn't seem like anyone is any closer to figuring out why this guy killed Missy Bevers, let alone catching him. Hell, we don't even know if the attacker is a man.

That said, there are some solid lines of enquiry we can go down just from the footage. Keep in mind however that what we have here is only part of the footage recovered; the police have kept the rest to themselves, as is common in cases like this. (If you're curious why, it's generally so they can weed out false confessions by keeping a lid on information only the real killer would know. Also, there's a possibility that they have actual footage of Missy being killed, which isn't going to be made public for obvious reasons). Let's start with:

The motive

Did the intruder enter the church with the intention of killing Missy? Or was this a robbery that went wrong? I'm leaning towards the former.

First off, the footage shows our SWAT enthusiast wandering aimlessly around the church, passing by some doors while half-heartedly checking others, seemingly at random. That doesn't seem like the behaviour of someone breaking and entering with intent to steal; burglars will generally try to get in and out as quickly as possible. What it looks more like to me is someone staging a robbery attempt and not doing a particularly convincing job of it.

Also, if this was a robbery, what's the point of the police get-up? Yes, it conceals the intruders identity, but it also draws a lot of attention. If I saw a single unarmed SWAT officer clumsily trying to break into a building, I'd probably get suspicious. The outfit is also cumbersome and heavy, which doesn't seem like optimal burglary gear.

On the other hand, if we assume this was a murder attempt from the start, it makes a lot more sense. Pretending to be a police officer would let the murderer get close to Missy without making her suspicious, and the helmet and padding, fake or not, would offer some degree of protection. Missy was taller than her killer and a professional fitness instructor; the murderer--who doesn't appear to be in fantastic physical shape for reasons we'll get into later--might not have been entirely confident in their ability to come out of the confrontation on top.

There's one more reason why I don't think the killer was a burglar: they don't seem to have been very good at it. Based on the physical evidence at the scene, they tried to pry off a window that they couldn't possibly have fitted through before trying the door, then wandered around for nearly half an hour without taking anything, and they didn't bring any bag or container to carry anything they did plan on stealing.

The Killer

What information can we glean about the murderer from the CCTV footage? Not a huge amount.

The killer appears to be between 5'2 and 5'7. Various estimations of their weight have been made, although I'm skeptical about the accuracy of the upper estimates because what some people are interpreting as a large belly looks more like the padding on the SWAT vest to me. They do seem to be on the heavier side--as in, heavier than you'd expect for a SWAT officer--but I'm really not sure how much we can glean about their body shape under all that gear.

At various points in the footage the killer's gait looks somewhat odd, as though there's something wrong with one of their legs. They tend to swing their feet quite wide when walking, which, speaking as someone with mobility issues, is the kind of thing people do when they're having trouble keeping their balance. Some people have zeroed in on a specific few frames as evidence that the killer might even have an artificial leg, although to me it just looks like light bleed from the reflection on the floor making their ankle appear thinner than it is.

And then we get to the gender issue. A lot of people are convinced the killer is a woman, to the point where entire articles about this case use female pronouns throughout. I do not find this theory particularly convincing.

Any time the perpetrator of a violent crime's gender is ambiguous or there's reason to doubt the usual assumption of a man, people will speculate that a woman did it. This is most likely because they've watched too many cop shows and don't realize that real life doesn't always provide exciting plot twists.

Moreover, the specific pieces of "evidence" people are pointing to are all extremely flimsy: the killer walks in feminine way, their ass looks big (yes, really), a woman would be more likely to feel they need protection when attacking another woman than a man would. This is just CSI: Gender Essentialism, as far as I'm concerned. There are any number of reasons why the killer might be walking like that, the trousers could be too small, not all men are going to automatically be able to take on any given woman in physical combat (Missy Bevers could definitely have kicked my ass, and I'm way taller than the killer).

Maybe the killer is a woman. We really can't tell either way based on what we have. But I don't believe there's anything in this footage that indicates it.

The Suspects

As tempted as I am to just leave this section blank, there are a few suspects in this case. None of them are particularly compelling, but we'll take a look at them anyway.

Missy’s husband was interviewed on TV the day of the murder and was unusually calm and unemotional given the circumstances. According to the expert behavioural analysts of the internet, if a family member of a dead or missing person doesn’t wail and rend their shirt on live TV, they were definitely involved. I know I’m being super subtle about it, but you may be able to pick up on the fact that I don’t find this particularly compelling.

Some people have analysed news footage of Missy’s father in law and noted possible similarities to the killer in the footage. This is marginally more compelling than analysing someone’s post-grief behaviour, but only slightly. The problem is that we’re working off of relatively small snippets of footage showing us both people’s movements under unusual conditions. Attempts to zoom and enhance a brief glimpse of the killer’s eyes and compare that to Missy’s father in law are, in my opinion, a dead end; there’s simply not enough information to go off of. Vague rumours of familial strife have been offered as a motive, but lots of families have drama without someone getting murdered.

One intriguing possibility is that a current or former student of Missy’s might be the culprit. The start time and location of Missy’s class was available via Facebook, but what wasn’t necessarily public knowledge was the fact that she’d arrive almost an hour before the start time to set the room up. The fact that the killer arrived at the church so early and seemingly felt that they had lots of time to wander around rather than hovering near the entrance to the main hall makes me strongly suspect that they knew Missy was going to be in the church well before the start of her class. In which case we can ask who would have known that: a former student, maybe one who had helped her set up before? A friend? A family member?

...Or maybe not! There just isn’t a lot to go on.

Are we going to see a conclusion to this case? The Midlothian police have admitted that they have almost no experience with murder cases, although they’ve reached out to other agencies (including, apparently, the FBI) for assstance. Is that going to yield anything positive? It hasn’t so far.

When you get down to it, the Missy Bevers case isn’t too much different from any number of unsolved murder cases, and therefore not eligible to be called spooky. 

But seriously, have you watched that surveillance footage?