Almost 30 years after the death of Ronald "Little Red" Beasley, jurors answered the mystery question of how a paralyzed man could shoot himself in the mouth. They decided he didn't.
Instead, they convicted his wife of murder. Frances Truesdale sat silently Wednesday as she was sentenced to life in prison for killing her husband in 1967.Beasley's relatives cried and hugged when the verdict was returned. From the beginning, Beasley's father doubted the initial ruling that his son's death was a suicide.
"I'm glad this is over with," K.C. Beasley, 80, said. "I know the family feels better knowing that Red's death was murder and not a suicide like they said."
Truesdale, 54, is already serving a 20-year sentence in Virginia for the 1988 murder of her second husband, Jerry Truesdale, whom she married about a month after Beasley died.
In July 1967, Truesdale told police her then-29-year-old husband loaded a .22-caliber rifle and fired at her, then put the rifle in his mouth and killed himself.
Her lawyer, Bob Fitzsimmons, told the same story to the jury Wednesday. He opted not to call Truesdale or any other witnesses to testify.
Beasley suffered a stroke a few months before his death. He could not walk or feed himself and wore diapers, and he required around-the-clock care. Friends said he had only slight movement in one hand.
"Shooting himself was physically impossible for him. How could he do it?" Fairfield County Sheriff Herman Young asked.
Truesdale's second husband was shot to death in 1988 while driving a van in Roanoke, Va. She said he was shot from a passing car, but a jury convicted her in 1992 of second-degree murder.
The Virginia investigation renewed questions about Beasley's death. When Young took office in 1992, one of the first things he did was reopen the Beasley case.
"Twenty-nine years is a long time to wait, but as long as justice is done, it's not too long," Young said.