Defense: Slain ‘house slave’ wanted beatings
Source: Theleafchronicle.com.
USA – CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — A roommate who watched while Shirley Beck was hit, kicked, choked and eventually killed testified Tuesday that Beck was a “house slave” who enjoyed being hurt.
But prosecutors say the dozens of blows that killed the slender 5-foot-4 woman on June 26, 2014, amounted to “murder, plain and simple.”
Assistant District Attorney Robert Nash led opening statements by telling jurors that Beck, 39, had 16 fractured ribs, a fractured sternum, bruises over 80 percent of her torso, contusions and abrasions on her legs, multiple lacerations to her liver and damage to her small intestine, among other injuries caused by four of her roommates.
“She passes out and they revive her,” Nash said. “They hang her up again and they beat her again. And then what? She passes out again. They revive her again only to hang her from the ceiling and beat her again.”
Derek M. Vicchitto, Matthew Lee Reynolds, Alphonso Richardson and Cynthia Dianne Skipper are all charged with murder, aggravated sexual battery and especially aggravated kidnapping in the beating death of Beck at the home they shared at 108 Wilson Court.
‘The house slave’
Nash said Beck died of blunt force trauma and strangulation but said BDSM (bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism) was not to blame. Although Beck was Skipper’s submissive, he said the attack on her was not part of a BDSM scenario. Instead, it was because she didn’t wash the dishes correctly, angering another roommate.
“Ms. Beck was the house slave,” Nash said. “She did all the chores for these people. Granted, she subjected herself to being a slave, but not to this extent.”
He told jurors in opening statements that if Beck’s death had been part of BDSM, there would have been no reason for the roommates to lie or run away.
“This is not ’50 Shades of Grey,’ ” he told the jury. “This is murder, plain and simple.”
Roach dust
Another roommate, Kristin Wilkerson, who was not charged in the case, said she watched with Skipper from a dining room table while the three men took turns beating Beck for almost four hours.
She said Richardson woke everyone the day before, June 25, saying he was supervising Beck as she did her kitchen chores and that he thought she was trying to kill him and his fiancee because he saw residue that might be boric acid on the rims of their cups.
Boric acid dust was being used to treat a roach infestation at the home.
Wilkerson said Beck was first suspended by her arms in the master bedroom but was then strung up in the living room so the bedroom TV and game system wouldn’t get damaged while Beck was being punished.
She said she watched Richardson, Vicchitto and Reynolds hit and kick Beck until she lost consciousness.
She said Richardson hit Beck the most times, even after Reynolds and Vicchitto stopped. One of the weapons used was a metal pole taken from a military cot that he used to hit Beck about 10 to 15 times, she said.
“He was swinging the pole as if it was a baseball bat,” Wilkerson testified. “At one point he had his hand around her throat. It appears he was choking her.”
She heard Beck moan but never say anything she could decipher.
After everyone else stopped, she said, it was Richardson who kept beating Beck, even as the two other men tried to make him stop.
She said she never tried to intervene. Eventually, Beck was put in a bath to revive her, and then Wilkerson helped dress her in different clothes and another roommate was wakened to attempt CPR.
She admitted she helped concoct a lie that she and Vicchitto were going to Wal-Mart to get snacks and saw Beck lying in the Publix parking lot already beaten. She later admitted she lied to police.
Wanted her dead
Chase Smith, who is representing Reynolds, said Beck moved to Clarksville from Illinois because she wanted to be part of the BDSM community and had been a “slave” before.
He said Skipper would not have wanted to “kill her property,” but Richardson kept up the beating because he was angry.
“He beat her like a pinata,” Smith said. “Mr. Richardson is the only one who wanted her dead.”
Richardson’s attorney, Eric Yow, argued that many of Beck’s injuries could have come from CPR the other roommate tried to perform after Beck stopped breathing or from earlier beatings that she consented to.
“This case is not about Alphonso Richardson,” Yow said. “This case is about Shirley Beck. She could have left, and she did from time to time, but she kept coming back.”
Testimony is expected to resume at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday with another dominatrix who kept Beck as a slave before Skipper took over that role.
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