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Broken Air 911. Broken Air 911. Hello?
Hi, where are you at? What address? Okay. Are you the only one there? Your dad is attacking your family? Hello?
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 98, The Broken Arrow Killings. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
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According to research, one of the most significant motives for serial killers is their twisted desire for fame and notoriety. Serial killers want the entire world to see their faces on the front of the newspaper for what they've done. They want to be crowned the, quote, most prolific serial killer in history. This was a dream shared by two teenage brothers from a small town in Oklahoma.
On July 22, 2015, at 11.34 p.m., police in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, received a chilling 911 call. The caller told dispatchers that his brother was attacking his family. Two police officers arrive at 709 Magnolia Court in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, within minutes of receiving the phone call.
On the way up to the front door, the two officers see blood all over the sidewalk and on the front step. The officers had no idea what they were responding to. All they knew was that this was some sort of domestic assault. More and more Broken Arrow police officers start arriving at the home. But when they bang on the front door, no one answers. It's locked.
So they decide that the only way that they're going to be able to get inside and figure out what is happening is if they break down the front door. Once inside, the police officers can hear someone saying, help me, save me. A few seconds later, they see a bleeding teenage girl lying on the ground. The victim is 13-year-old Crystal Bever.
As blood is pouring out of her mouth and neck, she manages to tell the officers that her brothers, Michael and Robert, stabbed her. One officer picks up the teenage girl and carries her outside to the front yard where paramedics are waiting. After being stabbed multiple times in the stomach and arms and having her throat slit, it was a true miracle that she was even alive.
At 12 of 7 a.m., more Broken Arrow police officers and detectives arrived at the home. They don't know if the killers are still inside the house or not, and the officers still aren't exactly sure what's happening.
So the officers start making their way through the home one room at a time. As they're investigating, they see blood everywhere, smeared across the walls, covering the floor. It was a horrific bloodbath. The police officers find the mother, 42-year-old April Bevers and 12-year-old Daniel Bevers, lying on the floor inside of one of the bedrooms.
Both of them had been stabbed so many times that the officers didn't even know if they were alive. A couple of officers carried April and Daniel outside, but the paramedics pronounced both of them dead after just a few minutes. April suffered blunt force trauma to her head and had more than 48 stab wounds to her neck, head, torso, and arms.
12-year-old Daniel suffered 21 stab wounds to his back, shoulder, and chest. The officers continued to search the home, still not sure if they were going to find any more victims or if they were going to encounter whoever did this. As they entered another bedroom of the home, they found the father, 52-year-old David Bever.
With over 28 stab wounds to his torso, neck, face, and left arm, David lay motionless with no heartbeat. Down the hallway, the police get to a bathroom door that is locked and closed. Initially, the officers speculate that maybe their suspects are the ones in the bathroom and that they have barricaded themselves in there.
But when one of the officers kicked down the door, they found two young children inside the bathroom. It's 7-year-old Christopher Bevers and 5-year-old Victoria Bevers. Unfortunately, like the rest of their family, the two young children are dead. Christopher was stabbed 21 times and his younger 5-year-old sister Victoria stabbed 23 times.
Upstairs on the second floor, the officers continued their search. It seemed like every room they were entering, they found another dead body. But then they find a survivor and it's two-year-old Autumn Bevers. When the police officers get to her, she's sleeping in her crib completely unharmed.
In all of the chaos and devastation, discovering two-year-old Autumn safe and alive gave the broken arrow police officers some hope. Downstairs, the police discovered the back door open. Thinking that this was the door the killers used to get out of the home, the police brought in canines. The dogs located a scent and led police officers to search the wooded area behind the Bevers' home.
The dogs and their handlers follow the trail. They find pieces of discarded body armor along the path. Officers have no idea what's happening. Why is there body armor? Are they about to be ambushed by a group of suspects all wearing body armor? What's going on? Within 10 minutes, the police dogs locate two young men hiding in the bushes behind the home.
The police drew their weapons and ordered the teenagers to come out with their hands up. The boys are covered in dirt, mud, and blood. They're also half-dressed in body armor. It's 18-year-old Robert Bever and his brother, 16-year-old Daniel Bever. The police realize they just found the brothers responsible for killing five members of their own family.
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Broken Arrow has always been considered a safe place to live and raise a family. The homicide and violent crime rates were nearly zero, and murder and violent crimes just didn't happen in this part of Oklahoma. The Bever family was a longtime resident of Broken Arrow. The father, David Bever, worked as a computer programmer, and his wife, April, worked part-time inside the home doing odd computer jobs.
Over the years, David and April had seven children together. First was Robert. Next was Michael, followed by Crystal, Daniel, Christopher, Victoria, and then finally Autumn, for a total of four boys and three girls. All seven of the Bever children were homeschooled by their mom, April. When April wasn't working part-time in the home, she did all of the kids' schooling.
The Bevers' neighbors described them as a quiet family. They typically stayed to themselves, and it was even rare to see any of the children playing outside. They were an extremely religious family who described themselves as profoundly Christian.
Because the kids were homeschooled by their mother, they didn't leave the house. Both David and April were highly protective of their children. Neighbors described April as the family's, quote, mother hen.
So they simply stayed inside, which was a little out of the ordinary for the residents of Broken Arrow. Broken Arrow was a town where people got to know their neighbors. Everyone kind of looked out after each other. But the Bevers, the Bevers were different. No one saw them outside the house, despite having a big yard and a play set out front.
The two Bever children who seemed to be the closest were the two older brothers, Robert and Michael. Robert, the oldest, was described as being your typical teenage boy. His biggest hobby was running his weekly YouTube channel where he posted videos talking about all sorts of things from video games to computer stuff. And Michael is the second oldest.
Michael shared a lot of the same interest as his older brother did. He idolized his brother and wanted to make him proud, a typical relationship that many brothers share. As they grew into teenagers, they became each other's best friends.
Because the Bever family spent so much time inside, the only link to the children's outside world was through the Internet. They spent a lot of time online, especially the older brothers, Robert and Michael. Now, the parents didn't seem to know what exactly the kids were looking at on the Internet.
The kids had connected devices with real no parental supervision at times. And the Internet provided the children with a whole new world, a world that they knew nothing about. These sheltered kids could finally see what the rest of the world was like. And it was through the lens of the Internet. One of the things online that seemed to interest the two older Bever children, Robert and Michael, was mass shooters.
They watched dozens and dozens of YouTube videos about the 1999 Columbine High School shooters. Robert and Michael started to look up to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They thought that what they did was interesting. It was fascinating to them. Even though they took their own lives during that shooting, they
Robert and Michael were fascinated by how much attention that these two teenager boys received after what they did and how much they continued to receive all of this attention. Even all of these years later, we all remember that shooting.
As sad and twisted as that is, we still remember Eric and Dylan's names even again after all of these years. And this is what really intrigued the two brothers. They saw a heinous crime like the Columbine shooting get all of this fame and notoriety for years to come. And they were fascinated by that.
They were also fascinated by the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting. They also watched countless videos online of how James Holmes went inside of a Century 16 movie theater during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and how he shot and killed 12 innocent people, injuring 70 more.
Just like with Columbine, they saw James Holmes as some sort of celebrity in their eyes. They started to idolize him. And after months and months of watching these videos online, Robert and Michael considered what it would be like to become one of these people. What it would be like if they became James Holmes or Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold, one of these mass school shooters.
They wanted to become someone who went down in history. They started to want to become infamous like the Aurora and Columbine shooters.
So as Robert and Michael watch these videos on the Internet and immerse themselves in this culture, their parents are entirely in the dark. They're completely oblivious to what they're reading about on the Internet, what they're watching on YouTube. No one in the family seems to know what these two boys are doing.
But their obsession with mass shootings doesn't stop there. In the summer of 2014, just one year before the murders, Robert and Michael started stockpiling weapons of their own. 18-year-old Robert worked at Micah Tech. It was a religious call center where people could call in and have someone on the other end of the phone pray with them.
By the summer of 2014, he started using money he was making at Micatech and started to buy body armor. Then he started buying full body armor and body shields, and he even bought helmets with face masks on them. Then he started buying knives. After that, well, after that, his killing plan officially began.
Over several months, Robert's desire to kill intensifies. He's purchasing more and more knives. He's purchasing more body armor. And he's growing obsessed with the movie Rampage, a movie that talks about getting rid of an overpopulated world.
Robert starts to come up with a plan. He sets a goal to kill 500 people. But to achieve this massive goal of killing 500 people, well, he's going to need some help. So he recruits his younger brother, Michael. When Robert shares this plan about going on a killing spree, killing 500 plus people with Michael,
Well, when Michael hears this plan, he seems just as excited as his older brother is. The idea of killing 500 random and innocent people is thrilling. He wants to join and help his brother become this prolific serial killer. Because Robert is the older one, he was 18 years old at the time. He was the person in charge of purchasing the guns and knives, and then Michael would help him hide all those weapons in a shared bedroom.
No one in the Bever family, including their parents, know that these two boys were stockpiling firearms and knives, except for their 13-year-old sister, Crystal.
During that same summer, the summer of 2014, Crystal went to her parents and she told them, she says, I don't like that my brothers have so many knives in their bedroom. I don't like that they have body armor in their bedroom. What are they doing with all of this stuff? She told her parents that it was all starting to scare her.
But when 13-year-old Crystal came forward about her concerns about her older brothers and what they were doing, the parents seemed to brush her off. They chalked up Robert and Michael's interest in firearms and knives and body armor as just boys being boys. The fact they had over a dozen knives in their bedroom didn't seem to bother them. It was boys being boys.
Now, from a forensic psychology perspective, Michael and Robert's behavior might be difficult for parents to know what's going on. They know their sons have a collection of knives, but they seem to think that this is normal behavior for young teenage boys.
Now, before you say anything, the Bever family is kind of out in the country and it isn't uncommon for teenage boys, 18, 17, 16 year old boys to carry around and collect knives in this part of Oklahoma.
If Michael and Robert display psychopathic traits, the parents might not be able to detect those traits. Psychopaths tend to lie a lot and can easily manipulate the people around them.
So even if Mr. and Mrs. Bevers questioned their sons about their intentions with the knives, they could have easily lied and manipulated their parents. They could allow their parents to fully believe that this is just boys being boys. They're out in the country. And in this part of Oklahoma, it's completely normal for a couple of teenage boys to maybe carry around a knife or two.
But if they were questioned again with this by their parents, if they're psychopaths, they could have easily lied and manipulated them. That's expected behavior of psychopaths. So it's entirely possible that as individuals who may be labeled as psychopaths or have psychopathic traits, then Michael and Robert manipulated their parents into thinking that nothing was wrong. And in the end,
They believed them. When the police arrested Michael and Robert in the woods on suspicion of killing five family members, they seemed to be proud of what they did. On their way into the patrol car, Robert even looked over his shoulder to his younger brother and said, It's been a pleasure. I'm proud of what I've done. They weren't emotional. They seemed completely calm, even after what had just happened.
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At the police station, the police separated the brothers and gave each of them a separate interrogation room. In the rooms, the police also photograph the boys. They're covered in mud and dirt with blood all over themselves. Their shirts are ripped, and one of them is still wearing part of their body armor. Detective Eric Bentz of the Broken Arrow Police Department is assigned to interview the younger brother, Michael.
Right from the get-go, Michael doesn't deny what happened. He tells Detective Bence that he and his older brother had planned the murder of his family for about two months. They started planning and getting serious about the murders when they figured out that Robert could buy firearms without a permit in Oklahoma. At the time, it was easy to purchase guns online or at gun shows.
So when they realized just how easy it was to get their hands on guns and knives, they got excited about what they could do with that. And besides guns, they also started buying thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition for these weapons. They purchased ammunition for the Glocks and about 20 to 300 shotgun rounds.
They were essentially creating their own stockpile of as many guns and knives that they could get their hands on and that they could afford. And because this is in Oklahoma, these two teenage boys purchased everything legally. According to Michael, they started buying guns because they talked about murdering their family.
At first, the plan was to kill everyone in the house. Then, the next day, packages full of ammunition and guns would arrive at the home. Once they had the ammunition they needed, they would take the Yukon to get out of state. Then, their bigger plan would begin. After killing their family, they would go on to kill as many people as they could.
According to Michael, they wanted to kill five people at a time, like places like gas stations, and then drive away and do the same thing in another city with the ultimate goal of murdering 500 people.
When Detective Bentz asked Michael why, why they needed to start by killing their family, he said it was because they had those guns and ammunition coming to the house the following day. It was coming in the mail and that if their parents saw just how much they bought, they would try to stop them from going on this 500 person killing spree.
So to prevent that from happening, they came up with this plan that before the ammunition would arrive at the front doorstep the next day, that they would kill everyone in the house, hide out for a night, and then leave essentially the following morning after all the guns arrived. Michael said that the goal was to go through the house like ninjas, stabbing and killing each family member.
Now, throughout the interview, Michael downplays his role in the murders. He sort of portrays himself as the innocent one in all of this. It seems like at this point, he's trying to blame his brother. He tells detectives that his older brother, Robert, was the one who did all the stabbings. In his own words, he said that he just stood there watching his brother do all the killings.
So the detectives decide to go into the other interrogation room and speak with the older brother, Robert, to get his side of the story. When detectives spoke with Robert, he was anxious to talk to them. He was pretty eager, for lack of a better word, to tell his story. He had no problem telling the police all about his plans to become this prolific serial killer.
Unfortunately, this police interview with Robert is sealed under court order, so they are not available. But if you are interested in watching Michael's interview with the police, this interview is available online.
So after speaking with Robert and getting his side of the story, the police felt pretty confident that Michael wasn't exactly telling the truth. He played a much bigger role in the murder of his family than he was admitting to.
Once they find this out, the police go back to Michael and confront him about what Robert said. They basically say, look, Michael, we know you're lying. We know you participated in the murders with your brother. So after being confronted about his story, his story started to change. Now Michael says that he had to go along with it because if he didn't, Robert told him that he would kill him too.
He said that Robert was going to go through with the killings anyway, and that if Michael didn't help him, then, well, he would have to die like the rest of his family. But then his story seems to fall apart again. Eventually, Michael admits, he admits to stabbing his mom. After a little more persuasion by the police, he tells the entire story about what happened that night.
According to Michael, he and Robert were in their shared bedroom that night and that they decided tonight was the night. They knew the guns and ammunition were coming in the mail the next day, so tonight had to be it. Before executing their plan, Robert wrote in his journal that his only fear is that he won't be able to hold the knife steady because of his excitement.
The boys knew that their 13-year-old sister Crystal and mom would be on the couch watching TV like they did almost every night together. The plan was for Michael to tell his sister that he had something to show her on the computer inside of the bedroom. Then, once she was in the bedroom, they would silently kill her and then kill everyone else in the house one by one, like ninjas.
But their plan didn't go as expected. As soon as they got Crystal in the bedroom, she started screaming and fighting back. So their mother, April, started to hear the screams and ran into the boys' bedroom. That's when Robert began stabbing his mom, and Michael went behind her and slit her throat.
While the boys are stabbing April, 13-year-old Crystal tries to get away and collapses in the home's front yard. At this point, 12-year-old Daniel heard and saw what was happening and tried to run to his bedroom. But as he tried to get away, Robert stabbed him. Daniel ran back to his bedroom and was somehow able to lock the door. He managed to grab the phone and dial 911.
While he's on the phone with 911, Michael tricked Daniel into letting him inside the room. He told Daniel to open the door because Robert was trying to stab and kill him also. But when Daniel opens the door, Michael and Robert take the phone and stab him to death. Here's the complete 911 call.
Broken Air 911. Broken Air 911. Hello? Hi, where are you at?
They opened out Oklahoma 7411. What address? 709 Magnolia Court. Okay. Are you the only one there? No. My dad is attacking my family. Your dad is attacking your family? No, my brother. Oh, okay.
Okay, who's attacking your family? Who's attacking your family? Who is it?
Are you there? Hello? Hi, what's going on there? What's going on there? Hello?
Hello? Hello?
Hello?
After Daniel was dead and they hung up the phone with 911, there were still three more children in the house. The two younger Bever children, seven-year-old Christopher and five-year-old Victoria, heard what was happening and barricaded themselves in an upstairs bathroom. The kids were able to lock the door and put as many objects in front of it so that the brothers couldn't break in. But that didn't stop them.
Michael also tricks his seven-year-old and five-year-old siblings. He started pounding on the bathroom door, telling them to open it because Robert was stabbing him. They thought they were saving their older brother. So they decided to open up the bathroom door and let him inside. They thought Michael was going to protect them and save them.
But when they open the door, both Christopher and Victoria are stabbed to death over 20 times. David, the father, was the last person to discover what was happening. He was upstairs sleeping the entire time. He eventually woke up and made his way downstairs. But as soon as he got downstairs, Robert began stabbing him. He was stabbed over 28 times.
After killing their father, they notice that their sister Crystal somehow during all of this managed to get outside and is lying on the front yard. They decided they need to go get her and bring her back inside before any of the neighbors either saw or heard what was happening. So they go outside, they drag her back in, and at this point they're just thinking she's dead.
Now, this is the part where the only Beaver family member who is still alive is two-year-old Autumn, the youngest. Now, Michael and Robert knew that they needed to kill her too. She needed to die just like the rest of the family. That was the plan. But before they could go back upstairs to her bedroom, they heard the bang on the front door. It's the broken arrow police. Now, well, now they have to get out of there.
So the boys decide to run out the back door, but were ultimately discovered by the canine search dogs in the woods. In their terror, they left behind five dead family members, including their mother, father, two brothers, and a sister.
However, their 13-year-old sister, Crystal, who they dragged back inside the house, survived. And their two-year-old younger sister, Autumn, was found unharmed inside of her crib. Crystal and Autumn were the only two members of the Bever family to survive.
On February 23rd, 2016, a preliminary hearing was scheduled to determine what criminal charges would be brought against the boys. At the prelim, Dr. Jason Beeman, a forensic psychologist, was called to testify. Now, I think many people were hoping to hear was that Michael and Robert were mentally ill.
They decided to stab and murder their entire family because they suffered from some serious mental illness. No one wanted to believe that two teenage boys from a small town in Oklahoma were capable of something so evil. Surely they had to be mentally ill. They had to be psychopaths or sociopaths. But according to Jason Beeman's testimony at this prelim, that wasn't the case.
He interviewed Michael a few weeks after the murder and said that almost everything he told him was in fact consistent with what he told the police and that after his interviews, Dr. Beeman was left speechless.
Like many other people, he was also hoping to find some sort of mental illness that could explain these murders and why they happened, or at least find some sort of forensic psychology explanation to it all. But after hours and hours and weeks and weeks of evaluating Michael, he didn't find anything.
According to Dr. Jason Beeman, there's a saying in forensic psychiatry, and the saying is, you don't always have a diagnosis, you don't always have an answer.
When we see these types of violent crimes, we usually just say that the offender was mentally ill. But in reality, you don't need a mental illness diagnosis to do something evil, or in this case, extremely violent. Michael and Robert were both charged with five counts of first-degree murder, an additional count for assault and battery with intent to kill.
Because Robert was 18 years old at the time of the murders, he was also eligible to receive the death penalty in Oklahoma. And although Michael was a juvenile at the time, he was only 16 years old. Under Oklahoma law, he was charged as an adult because the severity of the crime. But after consulting with Crystal, the Tulsa County District Attorney decided to not pursue the death penalty against Michael.
Several months after the preliminary hearing, the Tulsa County District Attorney offered Robert a plea deal. In exchange for a guilty plea, Robert would receive a sentence of five life sentences. He accepted the plea deal through his attorney and decided that he did not want to go to trial. On the other hand, his brother Michael didn't want to enter a guilty plea and decided to take his case to trial.
Michael's defense attorney planned to seek an insanity defense. Finally, one year after Robert's guilty plea, Michael's criminal trial begins. The trial lasted six weeks, and over that time, dozens of forensic experts testified. The main issue at trial was whether or not Michael should be held criminally responsible for his role in the murders.
But the biggest obstacle was the testimony from the forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Michael. The one that said he couldn't find a mental illness. He couldn't find any diagnosis. In his professional opinion, Michael does not have a mental illness. Michael simply commits heinous acts.
Another forensic psychologist testified that in cases where two people are accused of working together, it's rare that it's spur of the moment. This points to premeditation. This forensic expert also testified that in the vast majority of cases where children kill their parents, they are under the age of 21.
So after six weeks of testimony, Michael was found guilty of five counts of first-degree premeditated murder. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. The jury in the end believed the forensic psychiatrist's testimony that Michael wasn't mentally ill. He was simply a disturbed kid who committed a horrific deed.
Robert and Michael Bevers are currently serving their life sentences at separate facilities. As co-conspirators of a violent crime, they are not allowed to be housed in the same prison. Robert is currently housed in the Joseph Harp Correctional Center and Michael is in the Lexington Correctional Center. The only two members of the Bevers family to survive were 13-year-old Crystal and 2-year-old Autumn.
After Crystal testified at Michael's trial, she's maintained a quiet life. Same thing with Autumn. After the murders, the Bevers' home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, remained empty until it mysteriously caught on fire and burned to the ground about a year later. The city of Broken Arrow bought the land, and in March of 2019, the city reopened Reflections Park in memory of the family.
The murder of the Bever family is the most violent crime ever recorded in Broken Arrow. Before the murders, there was no criminal history at that house. Michael and Robert had no juvenile criminal records. Killing their family was their first and only crime. You don't always have a diagnosis. You don't always have an answer.
When something really, really bad happens, we look to forensic psychology to tell us why it happened. For my master's degree, I wrote countless research papers on why and how people become mass murderers. Sure, there's data to suggest what certain risk factors might be,
But sometimes there is no research. There is no data points. Some people just end up doing really, really bad things. Things that not even forensics can explain. To share your thoughts on the Broken Arrow killings, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales.
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Remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. For a small monthly contribution, you can help create new compelling cases for the show, help fund research, and assist with production and editing costs.
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A true crime friend of yours is a true crime friend of ours. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers, Tony A, Nicole L, William R, David B, Sammy, Paula G, Selena C, Nicole G, and Christine B.
If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you so much for listening. Your support means the world to me. See you next week.
Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.