Share and Follow
A trial is underway in Pennsylvania involving a woman and her alleged accomplice, accused of plotting the murder of her mother.
On Wednesday, Melissa Fox-Beacom’s former boyfriend took the stand, revealing that she frequently expressed desires to kill her mother, 71-year-old Alice Robson, even detailing her disturbing fantasies about the act.
“I really didn’t know how to respond,” Ace Vavrek recounted to the jury, as reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “I just thought she was crazy and didn’t give it much thought beyond that.”
The defendants, 51-year-old Fox-Beacom and 20-year-old Matthew Jason Bates, face charges including homicide, conspiracy, solicitation, and corpse abuse.
As previously reported by CrimeOnline, Robson was fatally shot on December 11, 2023. Arrested in connection with the murder were Fox-Beacom, Bates—who was dating Fox-Beacom’s daughter—and Robert Jack, 20. Jack, alleged to have fired two shots into Robson’s head, has agreed to cooperate with authorities and testify against the other defendants.
Bates reportedly told detectives that Fox-Beacom and her mother had a difficult relationship because of custody issues surround her son, who requires around-the-clock care. The Westmoreland County Court granted custody of the boy and a daughter to her parents, and Robson had an order of protection against her daughter.
Bates allegedly said he was at Robson’s home on December 11 working on a car and that he and Fox-Beacom later left and returned, meeting up with Jack, the district attorney’s office said. At that point, Fox-Beacom asked the two of them to kill Robson, so they went inside and shot her to death. Then they put her body in a crawl space beneath the back porch and tried to clean the blood from the living room.
“We need you to put a fat cow down,” Fox-Beacom allegedly told Jack.
Prosecutors say Bates provided the gun, the Tribune-Review said. His father, Jason Bates, testified that he had noticed his 22-caliber revolver was missing. The gun was found months later by a dive team in a lake after Jack told them that’s where he’d thrown it.
Jack’s case is still pending, and it’s not clear if he made a deal in exchange for his testimony.