Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators by Jarrett Hallcox, Amy Welch

Beckham said, hanging his head down low. Linda proved immediately that Beckham could not tell the truth even on the simplest of things, like being close friends with Stacy. Close friends know each other’s birthdays. Beckham’s inability to tell the truth was a pattern that continued throughout her examination.
    As Linda’s cross-examination continued, Beckham’s mouth became obviously dry. The nauseating sound of his lips and tongue sticking together was noticeable as he tried to wiggle through Linda’s bulletproof examination. Sometimes he would go off on rants, telling stories to the jury that no one had ever even heard before, while Linda allowed him to dig his own grave—although from time to time she would jab Beckham almost sarcastically when what he said contradicted something he had said earlier. At one point the defense asked for a recess, in order to get their client off the stand and hush his mouth. Beckham was a liar, a fact that even he had to admit while on the witness stand, saying once that he “was no angel.” Linda concluded her cross-examination by walking the court through what she believed Beckham had done, proving him as the culprit in the murder of Stacy Beals. Linda relied on the facts of the case, and not the ruminations of a known liar, as her guide to proving the commonwealth’s case.
    The defense and the prosecution were both given an hour for closing statements. The defense’s only real argument was to claim that although Beckham was admittedly a liar, he wasn’t lying now. Not much of a defense. Linda’s closing was powerful, teary, and theatrical. She likened what she and her team had done to working a jigsaw puzzle. They had provided the border and some of the pieces inside of the frame; and just as with a puzzle, you don’t have to have every piece in place to know what the picture shows. Linda told the jury that indeed, although she would not be able to provide them with every piece of the puzzle, there was enough. And with that, closing arguments concluded. It was up to the jury to determine whether Beckham was a liar or an angel.
    In only an hour and a half, the jury came back to the courtroom to present the judge their decision. Rodney Beckham was found guilty of murder in the first degree. With the verdict rendered, the judge moved to the sentencing phase, whereby the jurors would be allowed to hear Rodney’s other transgressions for the first time, including his two previous felony convictions. In less than an hour, the jury found Beckham a persistent felony offender and sentenced him to life in prison. He now sits in the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. He will be eligible for parole on January 11, 2026, when Stacy would have been only forty-eight years old.
     
    As we began to say our good-byes with Linda and the guys, we realized just how much justice means to the people here in Boone County. Linda certainly knows, and she takes it all to heart. Her life is really one of juxtaposition—Republicans and Dixie Chicks, pink shirts and blue blazers, babies and killers. Yet she juggles it all effortlessly. And she’s very successful at her job; no one even ran against her in the last election. But success doesn’t come without a price. When your job is to go after the criminal element, and you take that job seriously, it is easy to make enemies. And threats are par for the course. “Are you ever scared?” we asked Linda as we gathered our belongings to end our final day in Boone County. “Yes,” she told us, mentioning one particularly nasty thug whose case didn’t go quite as planned. “Not all cases turn out that well, no matter how hard you work or how good the evidence is,” Linda went on to say. Sometimes, juries simply make poorly informed decisions. “If you see a man on video writing a bad check, you don’t need a handwriting expert [to prove it]; or if a detective sees a dealer pulling a rock of crack from his mouth, you don’t need to run a DNA