The gun jammed. That single malfunction was the only reason Scott Davis was still alive. He had answered a Craigslist ad offering a caretaker job on a 688-acre farm in rural Ohio. The pay was modest—$300 a month—but for a man down on his luck, looking to return to Ohio to be closer to his ailing mother, it sounded like a fresh start.
He packed up everything he owned, drove his truck and trailer to a grocery store parking lot in Noble County, and got into a white car with two men who were supposed to show him the property. They drove him deep into the woods. As they walked along a path, Scott heard a sound behind him—the unmistakable click of a firearm being cocked. He turned around and saw a gun pointed at his head.
The trigger was pulled. The gun jammed. The bullet hit his arm instead of his skull. Scott ran.
Bleeding heavily, he crashed through the dark forest with no idea where he was or if the men were hunting him. He hid all night, terrified, listening for footsteps. By morning, he stumbled to a rural residence and begged them to call the police. He had lost so much blood that he was airlifted to a hospital in Akron, over a hundred miles away.
When Noble County Sheriff’s Detective J. T. Townsend spoke to Scott, he learned about the Craigslist ad. Scott described meeting two men for breakfast that morning.
He said he was wearing a Harley-Davidson ball cap when he was shot, and that it had flown off his head as he fled. “If you can find the ball cap,” Scott told him, “then you’ll find the scene. ”
Townsend spent two days searching the dense woods before finding the cap just at dark on the second day. Nearby, he found two sets of footprints going in, and two sets coming out—much deeper and farther apart, as if the men had been running.
There were bullet strikes on the trees. He knew he had found the scene. The investigation quickly pointed to an IP address in Akron. A search warrant led police to a house where a tenant went by the nickname “Dutch.
” When shown surveillance photos from the breakfast meeting, the residents identified Dutch as Richard Beasley—a man who called himself “Chaplain Rich,” a street preacher who claimed to have found God in prison and dedicated his life to helping the downtrodden. But the second man in the photos was the real shock. He was a 15-year-old named Brogan Rafferty. Six-foot-five and 230 pounds, Brogan was a lonely, troubled kid who had latched onto Beasley as a father figure.
Beasley took him to church, mentored him, and slowly molded him into a criminal. Brogan had become his sidekick, his muscle, his killer-in-training. The case exploded when Scott’s attempted murder made the news. Soon after, David Polie’s twin sister called the sheriff’s office.
Her brother had answered the same Craigslist ad, told her he was going to meet the farmer the next morning, and then vanished. Without her call, they might never have found his body. With cadaver dogs, the search team returned to the woods where Scott was shot. A golden retriever led them to a grave that had been dug—but it was empty.
It had been intended for Scott Davis. They found David Polie’s body nearby. And then they found more graves. The killers had dug them in advance.
Detectives discovered that Beasley would leave a $20 bill near each grave site, telling Brogan, “If we come back and that bill’s missing, we’ll know somebody’s been here. ”
The investigation revealed a chilling pattern. It had started in August, months before Scott was shot. Richard Beasley was a fugitive, wanted on warrants out of Texas.
He needed to disappear, so he targeted Ralph Geiger—a 55-year-old man living in a homeless shelter, estranged from his family, with no one who would report him missing. Beasley knew him, and they had similar builds and ages. He offered Ralph a job at the farm, drove him to a hotel, had dinner with him like they were old friends, and then shot him in the woods the next morning. He buried Ralph in a pre-dug grave, assumed his identity, dyed his hair, and used Ralph’s Medicaid card to get doctor’s appointments.
After that first successful kill, the motive shifted. Beasley had hundreds of responses to his Craigslist ad. He and Brogan would vet the applicants, specifically choosing men who were alone, estranged, desperate—men nobody would miss. They would ask questions about family: “The farm has poor cell service.
Will anybody be concerned if they don’t hear from you? ” They would ask what kind of property they were bringing—tools, motorcycles, anything valuable. They scheduled their “candidates,” as Brogan called them, about one a week, timing the kills so they could move the victim’s belongings and cover their tracks. Timothy Kern was another victim.
A divorced man in his 50s, down on his luck, who took the job hoping for a new start and a chance to help his sons. His body was found buried in a wooded area behind an abandoned shopping mall in Akron. With three murders and one attempted murder, the hunt for Beasley became an all-out press. He knew the FBI was closing in.
He was turning his phone on and off to avoid detection. Law enforcement surrounded a neighborhood on the east side of Akron, covering every street, waiting for his phone to ping. On the morning of November 16th, it turned back on. An agent sitting next to Detective Townsend elbowed him, pointed, and said, “I think that’s him.
” Beasley was arrested without incident, not even armed. Brogan Rafferty was taken into custody at his high school. He was called to the office and arrested in front of everyone. He cooperated, confessed, and showed no fear.
At his house, police found a briefcase under his bed—a killing kit, containing a pistol and an assault shotgun. They also found a poem he had written, describing conducting a killing on a hot summer night. Brogan rejected any plea deal and went to trial. His defense claimed he was an innocent juvenile who fell under the misguided influence of a family friend.
But the prosecution argued that Brogan was just as evil as Beasley. He had two hours in the car after Ralph Geiger’s murder to think about contacting someone, and he never did. The courtroom fell silent as Brogan’s recorded confession played, his voice cold and empty as he described the murders. The jury saw through his act.
He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Richard Beasley, the performer, took the stand in his own defense. He smiled, slumped in his wheelchair, playing the frail old man. He claimed he was an informant against a motorcycle gang and that Scott Davis had actually been sent to kill him.
None of it made sense. The evidence showed that Beasley and Rafferty had created the ad; Scott had merely responded to it. The jury deliberated, and when they returned, the judge read the first verdict: guilty. The jury recommended the death penalty, finding that the aggravating circumstances—the premeditated murders of multiple victims, carried out with cold calculation—far outweighed any mitigation.
These were all good men who just met an awful fate. They were desperate, isolated, and trying to do something good for their families. They were picked off because they were presumed to have nobody.
And at the center of it all was Richard Beasley—a con man, a predator, a wolf in sheep’s clothing who used religion, charm, and a lonely teenager to lure innocent men to their deaths.
