Beverly McColm

43m

After police discover a philanthropic entrepreneur shot dead in his home, a surprise visit from a stranger attending his funeral takes detectives down an unexpected path to reveal a sweet yet deceptive killer.


Season 26 Episode 02

Originally aired: September 8, 2019

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Transcript

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He was a suave businessman full of big ideas.

He was a wheeler and dealer.

He was always going somewhere, doing some, meeting some people, doing something.

To her, he was a visionary with a big heart.

He was very passionate about the second chance home for women.

I can see how she would be drawn to someone like that.

But a shocking discovery brings everyone's dreams to an end

look down and it was a spot of blood on the floor it appeared that he had been deceased for at least 12 plus hours

the truth behind this heinous crime will expose a ruthless killer hiding in plain sight

they was working on some kind of financial deal he had asked her for money There was no other exit.

It's almost like running into the track.

The devil doesn't always look like the devil.

Less than an hour from Oklahoma City, the quaint streets of Guthrie, Oklahoma provide a glimpse into the past.

100 years ago, when you come to Guthrie, it's exactly what it looks like today.

It's a place where people come for bed and breakfasts, for entertainment.

It's a wonderful small community.

Guthrie is like a Mayberry, Andy Griffin little town.

The crime is just like big city crime.

It's just in a lot smaller numbers.

The peace of laid-back Guthrie is shaken on Saturday, December 10th, 2011.

When Sergeant Michael Loya and Officer Jonathan Williams respond to an alert from Dispatch, A woman has asked police to check on her brother, 60-year-old Maurice Byrd.

She was really worried.

She said all the family is supposed to be meeting to decide what we're going to do about our mother.

That Maurice wouldn't miss that for anybody.

Mr.

Bird was supposed to be in Wichita, Kansas, because of his mother's failing health.

When he failed to arrive at Wichita, they phoned 911 in Guthrie and requested officers go to the residence and check his welfare.

Maurice Bird is a familiar name in the neighborhood.

I knew him.

He did a lot of working with young people.

And he used to live right across the street from the police department.

Officer Williams and Sergeant Lawyer attempt to gain entry to the house.

I went to the house, walked around, you know, checked it, looked through the windows, walked around the front, around the back.

Everything seemed in order.

I decided to check the door.

So I turned the doorknob and the door came open.

And with everything that the family was saying and what Officer Williams had checked before, we went ahead and decided to go inside the house and do a welfare check, which normally we do do that.

We announced ourselves, you know, got through police department.

As you enter the house, it was warm inside.

At first, everything appears normal.

until they notice something alarming.

I could see a chair was knocked over and there were some papers on the ground.

So that part right there seemed out of place.

As officers venture through the home, their suspicions begin to grow.

We was walking through the kitchen.

We looked down and there was a spot of blood on the floor.

You know the hair in the back of your neck stands up because you say okay this is okay so something maybe happened here.

I went toward the bedroom.

and had my flashlight out and looked in the bedroom and I was signing my flashlight and I signed it over to the left

and I could see a body laying on the floor.

We went in the room

and I knew Maurice Byrd

so I knew who he was when I seen him.

Born in Independence, Kansas in 1951, Francis Maurice Byrd shared a tight bond with his seven siblings and his many cousins.

They lived a block apart, so really close family.

All of the kids grew up together.

And then me and my cousins, we were all close to.

Maurice was just always very inviting, welcoming.

He was just a really nice guy.

And he was really good friends with my dad.

My dad and him.

were like best friends.

He was athletic when he was younger and through the college years, very in shape, basketball, that type of thing.

He was very young in spirit.

After graduating college with a business degree, Maurice married and had children.

Maurice had two wonderful children.

They're my cousins, Jamal and Layla.

He loved his children.

He really loved his children.

Spoke very highly of both of them.

To provide for his family, Maurice worked as a building contractor.

He could sit down and sketch it out, and in a few days, he would have the buildings drawn in, the streets drawn in.

He was just magnificent when it comes to drawing.

Though Maurice's true passion was his work as a director for the community building nonprofit, United Way.

His personality was excellent.

He always had a positive mood about him.

And we're always trying to do something to help humanity.

Maurice was not a greedy person.

He was a sharing person.

Maurice, he had lots of good ideas on

upward mobility and building.

He was a young, energetic guy that had lots of drive, lots of plans for the future.

He was a soft,

soft soul.

He wasn't a fighter.

He was a lover.

He wanted to make things better.

Though professionally he was thriving, the demands of Maurice's busy schedule took a toll on his marriage.

And after more than 35 years together, Maurice and his wife divorced.

Now in his late 50s, Maurice found himself alone and in need of a fresh start.

He moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, and instead of looking for love again, he threw himself into starting a real estate firm called Blackstone Global Management.

He was single as far as I know of.

In fact, he was with a group and they had built several houses.

So he was very instrumental and very active in the construction area.

Mr.

Bird was a wheeler and dealer, you know what I'm saying?

As far as investments and stuff like that and getting people to invest money into whatever he was doing.

We became partners in 2009.

He was the one that was looking for the funds.

for us to move forward.

And Maurice was always dedicated to what he was doing.

And Guthrie, we had plans on building a school here, a technology school.

We did build a few houses together here.

While he built his business, Maurice continued to volunteer with youth organizations and became a well-known figure in Guthrie.

Yet, during this period of prosperity, Maurice was dealt some terrible blows.

We just had a lot of deaths real close.

My grandmother died, my grandfather died, my father died, and my father's sister died, all within two years.

Through it all, Maurice kept his focus on work and his charity.

My uncle's very passionate about like a second chance home for women who have lost their children due to drugs or crime.

I looked at the pictures that he had drawn up.

He saw a need.

for humanity and females seemed like they had one of the greatest problems because discrimination that was practiced against females in America.

But on December 10th, 2011, Maurice's dream is torn apart when Guthrie police find him covered in blood in his bedroom.

We could see the body of Maurice Burton on the floor next to the bed.

He was kind of on the side, face down on the carpet.

Initial appearances, it was unclear what had happened.

There was some blood on his back in a couple of different areas.

So at that point we backed out of the house, called our investigative unit, and actually we ended up calling OSBI and set up a crime scene.

When homicide detectives and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation special agents arrive, they work quickly to piece together what happened.

Directly from the kitchen going into the bedroom, you could see the deceased laying face down next to the bed between the dresser and the bed.

It appeared that he had been deceased for at least 12 plus hours.

The individual appeared to have been shot four times.

He had a bullet wound to his back, which that was the blood that was on his back, and he had a wound on his chest.

A.38 caliber bullet is also found embedded in the carpet.

And a projectile was found under his body, under his chest, which showed he was in that position when he was shot.

Coming up, evidence at the crime scene points to a desperate attack.

It looked like it was defensive, and it seemed like he ran.

And police catch an important break.

To have a vehicle stay in the area once it's committed a crime is unusual.

It's a strange situation.

Nobody knew who it was.

On Saturday, December 10th, 2011, Guthrie, Oklahoma police officers find Maurice Byrd lying dead in a pool of blood inside his home.

Homicide detectives and OSBI special agents quickly determine that Maurice had been murdered and fought for his life.

When we came inside the dining room, we looked to the right and we saw the chair knocked over and saw blood on the floor.

And the first indicator on my mind is like, okay, I'll fight.

The chaos appears to be concentrated in the dining room, suggesting the struggle began there.

You have items that are knocked over, things that are thrown.

There was a larger binder with papers with the pages strewn about.

It seemed like he ran.

He's fighting.

He's running.

He was shot definitely once.

in the kitchen because of the blood that was on the floor.

Detectives believe Maurice likely likely ran to the bedroom, hoping to defend himself.

Mr.

Bird did have a handgun in his bedroom, and it might have been that that's where he was trying to get to.

He was even maybe shot in his back and running into the bedroom.

Maurice never reached that weapon and was shot three more times.

There was no other exits out of his bedroom.

It's almost like running into the trap.

A further sweep of the house seems to rule out at least one motive for the crime.

They assumed just a break-in occurred.

A robbery is usually the number one thing, an in-and-out type deal.

But the more and more it went on, realized this was not a robbery.

It was not a ransack.

Only the living room and the kitchen was a little bit, you know, in disarray, other than the bedroom.

As detectives scour the inside of Maurice's home, outside, officers speak with his landlord.

Mr.

Wallace Owens showed up on scene, actually, and stated that he had known Mr.

Bird for about two years.

And in speaking with him, he had some information for us.

According to Wallace, Maurice was a well-known entrepreneur in the community who had various business ventures.

We were wondering, is this a business deal that had gone bad?

You know, there obviously had been some type of altercation inside the house.

A lot of things go through your mind.

Why a chair is knocked over?

Why is there papers?

Though he can't be certain, Wallace doesn't know of any bad deals that might have landed Maurice in hot water.

He was a very good tenant.

Maurice paid his rent on time, and as far as I know, he didn't owe anybody.

He was a very nice guy, and I think he took care of business.

I couldn't figure out who could have done it or why.

Hoping for more information, investigators canvass the neighborhood.

We started being dispatched to canvass the neighborhood, start talking to neighbors, start talking to see if there's any witnesses, if anybody heard gunshots or any movement.

The thing about that house is the way that house sits, there's not a lot of houses around that,

you know, you can look out and see anything.

Though Maurice's neighbors may not have witnessed anything unusual, there may be another way to know what happened.

I immediately began looking in the area for any type of cameras or surveillance equipment.

It is a huge, huge tool.

A lot of them at time are running 24-7 and some of them are motion activated.

We did look at the church next door, which was south of his residence, and that had cameras on it.

When we found out where the cameras were facing, oh, yeah, now we got something going.

Detectives obtain the tapes and soon realize that their big break is also a big job.

When you find video surveillance of a particular area that you want to review and you're not 100% sure of when the crime occurred, you have to start at the very beginning and you start watching frame by frame, waiting for anything to develop.

You're actually scared to blink, scared that you're going to miss something.

Investigators work backward from the time Maurice's body was discovered.

Hours and hours of video show no activity at Maurice's home.

Quality of the video was kind of poor.

He couldn't really

see a whole lot.

Finally, when detectives scroll to December 8th, two days before Maurice's body was discovered, someone approaches his front door.

At approximately 10.30 a.m.

The landlord arrived at the residence.

You can see him go and he rings the doorbell.

There's no answer.

Though it's not much, it does give law enforcement a critical data point.

I believe he was deceased at that time.

Then authorities rewind to the evening of December 7th at 7.18 p.m.

I was able to observe a gold-colored vehicle pull up to the church on the south side.

You couldn't see license plates.

You couldn't see a whole lot, you know, just enough to make out that this was an elderly lady.

A unknown white female, appeared to be elderly, gets out

and walked around the church to Mr.

Byrd's residence.

She was in there approximately five minutes.

came back out and went back out to her car.

Then the vehicle appears in the alleyway.

It pulls up and you can see it on the north camera

and it's there for approximately 18 minutes.

After the vehicle drives away from the church, over the next 10 minutes you can see the vehicle drive past Mr.

Bird's house two more times.

On its third pass, the vehicle goes directly to Maurice's home.

At 20-30 hours, a set of headlights appears and pulls into Mr.

Bird's driveway.

This time, the car sits parked for more than an hour until it finally drives off at 9.45 p.m.

The driver's strange behavior sends up red flags for detectives.

Could they have caught their killer on tape?

In my investigative experience, to have a vehicle stay in the area once it's committed a crime is unusual.

It's a strange situation.

Here's a, you know, a mature female lady that's walking into this house.

And you might think to yourself, hey, this person couldn't be capable of committing a heinous crime.

Though they doubt the elderly woman is Maurice's killer, authorities believe she may be a valuable witness.

We thinking that this lady knows something.

We immediately thinking she knows something.

Because the timeline of the murder and the timeline of her coming and leaving.

So we thinking that, you know, she may not have did it, but she knows something.

Authorities put a bolo on the woman and her car, but identifying her won't be easy.

You know, to be on the lookout for maybe a white female driving a golden-colored four-door sedan, you know, we would be stopping a lot of people.

Coming up, a family's grief turns up a lead.

Family members noticed a lady at the funeral, and she told them that she had loaned Mr.

Bird several thousand dollars.

And an unlikely interview shines new light on the investigation.

I then placed a picture from the surveillance camera in front of her.

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Detectives in Guthrie, Oklahoma are eager to identify an elderly woman seen on security footage walking toward the home of murder victim, Maurice Bird.

You wanted to talk to her to find out if she knew anything.

Not that she was necessarily the suspect, but maybe she knows something.

Police asked the public for help identifying the woman.

Authorities are looking for the person who killed 60-year-old Francis Maurice Byrd.

Tonight, they're asking anyone who might know something to speak up.

But days pass with no reported sightings.

Investigators are looking for those clues, and of course, the public is trying to figure that out, too.

People are looking for this guy vehicle.

People are on social media asking for ideas, but days have gone by.

There's still no answers.

Then, one week into the investigation, Maurice's family lays him to rest and contacts detectives with a strange new lead in the case.

The funeral was in Kansas, and one of the family members contacted law enforcement saying that something strange happened there.

Some family members notice a lady at Mr.

Bird's funeral.

She She speaks with family members about Mr.

Bird.

She told them that she had loaned Mr.

Bird several thousand dollars and she was inquiring about the money.

She wanted to know if the family could pay her that money that Mr.

Bird owed her.

They thought that it was real strange for her to be contacting trying to get money like that.

The woman's behavior raises a red flag for investigators as well.

First thought is brazen.

You know, I'm going to show up to the funeral of the family who's grieving and then ask them for money is shocking.

Why would she be at the funeral

saying that Maurice owed her money?

I mean, what kind of dealing were they doing?

I asked him if he happened to have gotten her name, and he said, yes, he did.

And her name was Beverly McComb.

Mr.

Bird's phone records were retrieved and looked at, and there was a message or a phone conversation with Ms.

McComb at 8.02.

The call took place a half hour before police believe Maurice was killed.

That was extremely important.

I also got tower information on Beverly McComb's phone showing she was in Guthrie, Oklahoma at the time she made that phone call.

Is Beverly McComb the elderly woman from the security video?

I researched and contacted Texas Department of Public Safety.

They in turn searched for Beverly McComb

and they found that she lived in Forney, Texas and she did own a gold Toyota Avalon.

So investigators run this information and it comes back to a 65 year old lady with no prior criminal history and you're like

Dead end.

This can't be this can't be a murder.

This is a dead end.

Even if Beverly is not the shooter, investigators still need to find out what she witnessed.

I contacted the Texas Rangers, and I requested their assistance in locating Beverly McComb at her residence in Forney, Texas.

Rangers make contact on December 20th, 10 days after Maurice's body was found.

I requested that she go to the Forney Police Department and speak with me voluntarily, and she agreed.

All right.

How do you know Maurice?

I went with his cousin, Tommy, back in 87.

Okay.

When you say you went with him, as it dated?

Yes.

Okay.

For Beverly McComb, Maurice's cousin Tommy was the one that got away.

When my mom and dad got divorced, we went to dad's on the weekend.

And his girlfriend was this tall, skinny, pretty redhead named Beverly.

She was very nice.

Between the eighth grade and ninth grade year, dad was dating Beverly.

Beverly and dad were living together.

She was kind of shy, just quiet and so soft-spoken.

And

I don't think she knew an enemy.

Though Beverly always believed she and Tommy were meant for each other, the relationship didn't last.

They were together through some of my high school years, and then they weren't together anymore.

My dad said him and Beverly broke up.

Beverly was heartbroken.

And as the years passed, she never found the same spark she shared with Tommy.

I don't remember her ever talking about being married or having a boyfriend or anything.

I was always hopeful that she would meet someone and have a married life and all that.

But finding a husband would always take a back seat to Beverly's family.

She had her sister and her mom, but that's not a husband.

One day her mom had this devastating stroke that left her unable to even take care of herself.

They looked close and her mom was just an absolute doll.

After the stroke, Beverly helped care for her mother until she passed away.

Now alone again.

22 years after they broke up, Beverly found herself longing for Tommy.

I guess it was maybe like six, eight months ago.

I just felt the urge to contact him.

I finally went on the website 411

and it had his name and over at the side it had deceased.

I tried to find out what happened

and I contacted Maurice.

That's how I reconnected with Maurice.

We just started talking like we'd been talking all along for years.

We just, that's how our renewed friendship, I guess, started.

Maurice was going to build a woman's shelter, and I think that Beverly was just a caring

person in the first place.

So I can see how she would be drawn to someone like that.

Beverly tells detectives that she wanted to support Maurice and and his mission.

They was working on some kind of financial deal

and he had asked her for money to help him.

Beverly sold her jewelry and then went to the bank and got loans and gave it to him.

So what time of relationship did you and Maurice end up having?

Were you guys boyfriend, girlfriend?

No, no, no, no.

We were very good friends.

She was the kind of person that would do anything for a true friend.

And she trusted him.

If you had to guess at a total dollar amount that you gave him over the past three months.

I think it came out to 17,000 and something.

Beverly explains that she planned to move to Oklahoma for a fresh start after her mom passed, and Maurice was going to help her just like she helped him.

If it was deep enough for her to move in, I think that's a pretty deep relationship.

He was going to help me move.

I was trying to find a job in Edmond.

So you've been up there looking for jobs since?

Yes, yes, several different times.

We talked about it, that rather than me making so many trips since it was so far, that I should just set aside some time.

Gotcha.

I decided I would do like seven days.

According to Beverly, she last saw Maurice a few days before he died.

I confronted Beverly McComb about being in Guthrie, Oklahoma on the evening of December 7th.

She had stated that she was not in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

You stayed there all seven nights?

I didn't stay there the last night, so I decided to leave, leave early.

I then placed a picture from the surveillance camera in front of her, asking her if that was her.

And she at that point did state, yes, that's me.

Do you know how Maurice died?

That he was shot.

Let me help you out for just a moment.

The worst thing that you can do is lie to me about something.

Okay.

I'm going to ask you straight out.

Were you in the house when he died, got shot?

Backed into a corner, Beverly admits she hasn't been entirely truthful with detectives.

Beverly admitted that she had lied, that she had been to Mr.

Bird's house that evening.

Coming up, Beverly points to a killer.

While she was in the bathroom, she heard a pop.

And an outrageous revelation catches investigators off guard.

While interviewing 65-year-old Beverly McComb at the Forney Police Department, Beverly shocks investigators when she reveals that she knows who killed her friend and business partner, Maurice Byrd, because she was there when it happened.

She stated that it wasn't her that had shot Mr.

Byrd, that it was an individual by the name of Max.

Is he your boyfriend?

He's just, he's just someone that I had met.

How did you meet him?

In Guthrie.

Who is he?

You know, I don't know his last name.

Beverly says that before long, she and Max grew close.

And when she told him about her business plans with Maurice, he said it sounded like Maurice had taken advantage of her.

Beverly stated that Max had told Beverly that Bert would never give her her money back.

He brought it up that, you know, that he thought that I needed to do something to try, you know,

to get some of the money back.

Beverly agreed and asked Max to go with her to Maurice's home so they could share their concerns with Maurice.

She thought that he would help her maybe try to recover her money that Mr.

Bird owed her.

So she brought him along, as I would imagine, I believe she said to intimidate Mr.

Bird.

Beverly says that on the evening of December 7th, she drove Max to Maurice's house.

You guys go up to the door.

And what happens?

Maurice lets us in.

I asked him if, you know, if he really intended on paying me back.

And he said, yeah, but he did.

I went in to use the bathroom.

According to Beverly, that's when things escalated.

While she was in the bathroom, she heard a pop.

At that time, she heard screaming.

Startled and worried, Beverly says she ran from the bathroom.

She came out and she saw Max shoot Mr.

Bird.

And she stated she couldn't remember much after that.

She just remembered she was screaming.

According to Beverly, instead of being scared for his life, Maurice was angry.

I heard Maurice say something about,

you have a gun, I have one, two.

I hurry up and

go out.

I wanted to get out of there.

I was on my way out the door and I heard some more shots.

She goes on out to the car and she gets in the passenger seat.

A couple of moments later, Max comes out and gets in the driver's seat and they leave.

Why didn't you call police?

I guess I was scared.

Though Beverly appears genuine, to detectives, there's one fatal flaw in her version of events.

I confronted her with the fact that there would be video showing who was driving the vehicle.

She in turn then changed her story again.

This time, she was the one that got in the driver's seat and that Max had never gotten back in the vehicle and that he had left walking on foot and that's why we wouldn't be able to see him in the vehicle on the video.

With Beverly's story changing by the minute, detectives are skeptical of her account.

Is Max even real?

And if so, can he fill in the missing pieces in her story?

You know his phone number?

I've got it written down.

Where's it written down at?

He wrote it down on a piece of paper.

She had his phone number written on on a piece of paper at her residence.

As Beverly waits at the police station, investigators perform a search of her home.

They did, in fact, find a piece of paper where she said it would be with a phone number on it.

I in turn contacted the Guthrie Police Department and had them begin searching for who owned that particular phone number.

The phone number is not all they find.

She indicated that she did have a.38 caliber pistol in her closet and there was also a box of ammunition with five rounds of ammunition missing.

When I asked her what happened to the five rounds of ammunition, she stated that she had thrown them away and she couldn't remember where.

Obviously this puts more pieces to the puzzle together.

Mr.

Bird was shot four times.

A lot of times when you see multiple ones it's like a revenge type of shooting.

Investigators need to determine if if this is the gun that was used to kill Maurice and if Max wielded it.

Luckily, it won't take long for them to find out.

A search of the phone number that Beverly provided for Max came back to a Marion Maxwell from the Guthrie, Oklahoma area.

It appears Beverly wasn't lying about Max.

For Guthrie police, Marion Maxwell is a familiar name.

When investigators do run Max's name, he does have a criminal history.

We were looking for him.

And, you know, I know him.

Everybody know I know him.

I've arrested Maxwell a few times myself.

Officer Williams drives around the small town and finally spots Max in a store parking lot.

I didn't arrest him.

I took him in for questioning.

You know, I told him Maxwell, they want to talk to you about this.

You know, he's, I didn't do it.

I didn't do it.

And then he started telling me about him and this lady.

Sitting down with detectives, Max explains how he met Beverly in the first week of December.

He said he was just walking and this lady stopped and started talking to him.

Max claims Beverly picked him up and took him back to her hotel, where they spent the next few days together.

He ended up at the motel with her.

He just had a sexual relationship with this lady.

When pressed about the murder, Max claims he has no idea who Maurice Bird even is.

He was cooperative.

You know, he would say he don't know nothing about what happened to Maurice.

Max tells investigators he was not at the house and that he was at a different location at the time of the murder.

Max tells them at the time that he's given that he's at a grocery store.

So investigators...

smartly enough, go to videotape once again at that grocery store.

I go talk to the manager in in the grocery store and he showed him the video and there's Maxwell.

Max was at the homeland store in Guthrie at the time of the murder and so the video cleared Max of the murder.

He was telling the truth of where he was at.

So that proved that she was lying to us.

Coming up, investigators finally piece together the truth.

She just builds up frustration of getting more upset, more upset.

And an unlikely scenario plays out in court i'm just really really shocked at a story i heard we're like

no she would never do that nobody thought she was the one that did

Having caught 65-year-old Beverly McComb in a series of lies, homicide investigators are now convinced that she killed her friend and business partner, Maurice Byrd.

The more and more investigate it, the more and more put the pieces together, maybe this is our suspect.

On December 22nd, 2011, 12 days into the investigation, authorities in Texas place her under arrest.

Beverly McComb was extradited back to Guthrie, Oklahoma.

to stand trial for the murder of Mr.

Byrd.

As detectives work to solidify their case, they uncover that Beverly had secured the gun just prior to the murder.

She had bought it in Gainesville, and it was determined that she bought it the day of the murder.

Ballistics analysis run on the gun confirm that it is indeed the murder weapon.

She did have a.38 caliber pistol, and it was a.38 caliber projectile that was found under him.

Preparing for trial, prosecutors begin laying out the events of December 7th.

They speculate that Beverly went to Maurice's home that evening alone.

She went up to Mr.

Bird asking for her money back, $20,000 back, and didn't get the answer she was looking for, became frustrated, left.

Instead of accepting Maurice's explanation and heading back to Texas, Beverly circled the block as captured on video.

That built up in her head of being frustrated that she's out this much money and she just builds up frustration, frustration, drives around the house, getting more upset, more upset, and then ultimately trying to decide, what do I do?

When you look at that, it's like you're building up your courage to do what you think you're going to do.

And especially somebody that's probably, in her case, not having criminal history, maybe she was building her courage

eventually beverly returned to maurice's home and maurice let her in once again and they continued their argument the paperwork that was on the floor he probably had it in his hand you know maybe the paperwork was trying to show her what he did with the money prosecutors believe beverly's anger boiled over and they tussled I believe that looking at the evidence, it appears that it started right where the and where I saw the chair knocked over area.

When she pulled the gun, he turned to flee.

He was shot in his back, running into the bedroom.

He was trying to get to his gun, but I think that she probably chased him in there and shot him again.

Beverly shot Maurice three more times, point blank.

and watched him die.

Then she left and drove home to Texas, where she stashed the gun in her closet as if nothing had happened.

I don't think nobody thought

at first that she was the one that did.

You know,

it was kind of a surprise when we figured out it was her.

Was it greed that drove the lonely 65-year-old to murder or something more?

I don't believe that this was motivated by money.

I believe that it was motivated by Beverly wanting to have some some relationship or hold on to some relationship.

It was believed that that was a portion of what caused the emotional aspect, caused her to drive up, caused her to take care of this.

At her arraignment on January 5th, 2012, Beverly looks nothing at all like a cold-blooded killer.

Ms.

McCall made a court appearance in Logan County and pleaded not guilty to the charge of first degree.

During her court proceedings in the courtroom, it was weird to me to see a 65-year-old lady in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by other people who commit crimes with the chains around her ankles, chains around her wrists.

You would never ever guessed her as a murderer.

Then at another hearing in March 2013, the now 66-year-old Beverly proves that looks can be deceiving.

Several months later, she comes back and pleads guilty to second-degree murder.

Having had time to think about the evidence against her, Beverly now admits she shot Maurice, but claims there was no premeditation.

She admitted to doing the murder and explained the reasons why,

and

we were all shocked when that happened.

Beverly's plea comes with a lighter sentence than a first-degree charge.

Beverly took the plea of second-degree murder and was given a sentence of 40 years.

30 years of that is suspended for good behavior.

So that means that

10 years and she's out.

I know a lot of it had to do with her age.

The light sentencing comes as a final blow to Maurice's loved ones.

I can't believe that this woman creeped back into my life somehow and

killed my cousin's dad.

Like, it's unbelievable.

No one should get 10 years for murdering someone.

No one should get 10 years for taking someone's life.

This woman showed up at the funeral, at his funeral, asking for money.

She killed somebody.

She should have gone to prison for the rest of her life.

This was a bizarre case just because of Miss McComb being a 65-year-old lady.

It just shows you that anybody at any time can commit a crime.

The devil doesn't always look like the devil.

Following her trial, Beverly McComb was transported to Dr.

Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Oklahoma.

After maintaining good behavior, she was released on parole in 2020.

She was 73 years old.

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