Police seek LinkedIn private messages, other phone data in slaying of Texas fitness trainer Missy Bevers
A popular fitness coach killed inside a Texas church last month was enduring financial hardship and marital discord at the time of her bizarre death, according to three police search warrant affidavits made public on Thursday.
The social networking service LinkedIn and AT&T are the search targets of detectives, who are seeking email records and mobile phone data to help solve the case. The affidavits also reveal that authorities have identified several “persons of interest” in the murder probe.
Missy Bevers, a married mother of three girls, was slain before dawn April 18 inside a North Texas church where she was preparing to teach a group boot camp class. Her students in Midlothian, a small community 25 miles southwest of Dallas, discovered the 45-year-old’s body.
Surveillance video shows Bevers’ alleged killer walking the church halls in a bizarre and bewildering getup, dressed head to toe in police tactical gear and wielding what appears to be a hammer. Previous search warrants indicate Bevers died after being beaten in the head and chest.
One of the search warrants seeks in-depth cellphone data from March and April for “target phones” belonging to Bevers, her husband, Brandon Bevers, father-in-law, Randy Bevers, and two men and women identified only by their first initials and last names.
A detective writes that he believes the unknown killer had cellphone contact with the “target numbers” at the time of the slaying for the following purposes:
(i) confirming through public social media sites and/or applications the updated workout times and locations as posted by Ms. Bevers; (ii) communicating in the nature of calls, messages, texting, emails, data, push-to-talk, and walky-talky; (iii) using smart phone capabilities to photograph, record, and/or video the victim and the murderous act; and (iv) using functional applications and tools such as map locator applications, clock or timing capabilities, GPS locating applications, and flashlight.
Brandon Bevers, the victim’s husband, has said he was on an annual fishing trip in Biloxi, Miss., at the time of the slaying. Randy Bevers recently told Yahoo News that he was vacationing in California when his daughter-in-law was killed.
In the 34 pages of new records, detectives state evidence found on the personal electronic devices of the victim and her husband point to trouble in the couple’s 20-year marriage.
“A portion of these messages (as well as deleted messages) recovered indicate and confirm statements and tips provided to officers of an ongoing financial and marital struggle as well as intimate/personal relationship(s) external to the marriage with identified ‘Target Numbers,’” detectives wrote without providing specifics.
Less than three days before her death, investigators wrote, Bevers showed a friend a private message she’d received via LinkedIn, the business-networking site used by hundreds of millions of professionals.
“The message was from a male unknown to them both, and they both agreed that the message was creepy and strange,” a detective stated in his affidavit.
Bevers’ friend, police said, could not recall the sender’s name.
A judge’s order seeks to have California-based LinkedIn share all information that was sent to Bevers through private messages, chats or email between April 14 and April 16.
“We have reasonable grounds to believe that the killer, who is still at large and poses an immediate danger to other human beings, communicated with the Decedent in this manner in that time period,” a detective wrote.
Police also want LinkedIn to share all electronic messaging between Bevers, who frequently used social media to promote her entrepreneurial endeavors, and a 33-year-old Dallas healthcare executive who is connected to the victim on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Court documents don’t identify the 33-year-old as a suspect or the source of the “creepy” message, but do cite him as “another person of interest” based on evidence and interviews.
“This person of interest confirmed that they had engaged in a series of communications with the decedent while on the LinkedIn social media service some time starting around [January 2016] until her death that ultimately turned flirtatious and familiar,” a detective wrote.
According to the warrant, investigators located messages between Bevers and the healthcare executive on both of their phones, but want LinkedIn to locate any that were deleted.
“The content of the recovered communications appears intimate in nature,” a detective wrote.
Police have made no arrests and declined to address the search warrants.
“At this point, and in the interest of staying focused on the investigation at hand, we are not providing any additional information related to the affidavits,” Midlothian assistant chief of police Kevin Johnson said in a written statement.
Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).
