On February 13, 2012, police in Monte Vista, Colorado received a frantic 911 call at 4 a.m. A woman reported that her neighbor’s three young boys told her their mom had been shot.

Officers arrived and found a deceased John Salazar, 54, in the driveway. Inside the home, the remains of Sarah Beasley, 29, were found in a bedroom. Both victims had been fatally shot. 

“We have a double homicide, which is unheard of in Monte Vista,” Jack Roth, lead prosecutor for Colorado Attorney General’s Office, told Fatal Family Feuds, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen. 

Beasley’s boys, ages 8, 6, and 2, were brought to a neighbor’s house. Police observed the message “my drugs r not free” spray-painted in red capital letters outside and inside the house.

The oldest child told police they were awakened by gunshots and their mother’s pleas for help. At some point they saw a masked man wearing black put his fingers up to his lips, indicating “Don’t talk,” spray-painted the door, then left, according to James Moore, now a retired FBI special agent in Pueblo, Colorado.

Investigators were shocked by the brutality. “Whoever did this was very cold and calculating,” said Rick Needham, former police chief for the Monte Vista Police Department. 

Police eventually understood the meaning of the cryptic message, along with the killer’s motive, which was tied to an escalating family conflict.

Sarah Beasley and John Salazar were a “solid” loving couple

Beasley, a widowed mother of three, and Salazar, a custodian and crossing guard at a local school, became a couple in 2010. “He was a caring kind of guy, very hard-working,” said his son, Johnny Salazar.

“Sarah was a wonderful mother,” said Beasley’s brother, Adam Combos, adding that she and Salazar “had a solid relationship. He loved her children just like they were his.”

A flashlight and .22-caliber shell casings near Salazar’s body were collected at the scene. Inside the house, a trail of .22 casings led from the door to the bedroom where Beasley was found.

Autopsies showed that all of the rounds had been fired from the same weapon. Salazar was shot five times, while Beasley was hit four times. “The fatal one was a shot to John Salazar’s head once he was already on the ground,” said Roth, adding that Beasley bled to death after a bullet “tore up her heart.”

No drugs were found during the search of the residence or the victims’ vehicles, suggesting that the painted messages were staged. Investigators sought to figure out who would be upset that the victims were together. Salazar led a quiet life romantically, but Beasley had a more complicated past, according to Fatal Family Feuds. 

Beasley met her husband, Kenny Beasley, right after high school and had two sons with him before he drowned in a boating accident in 2007. After his tragic death, Beasley began seeing Daniel Bessey, a local truck driver with whom she welcomed her 2-year-old son, Edward. “It was a short-lived relationship,” said Combos. 

Bessey claimed that he and Beasley had split amicably and that he’d agreed to pay child support. On February 10, three days before the murders, he’d gone to her house to work on her car, leaving his flashlight at the house in the process. 

Bessey claimed that he’d left the Monte Vista area around 5 p.m. the night prior to the homicides and that he was in Montrose, 200 miles from the crime scene on the night of the murders.

Police relied on hand-written logs to confirm Bessey’s account of his whereabouts. His alibi appeared to check out, but that didn’t fully exonerate him.

Sarah’s Beasley’s ex-Daniel Bessey was bitter about custody arrangement 

After ruling out a former boyfriend who texted Beasley shortly before the murders, detectives dug deeper into her relationship with Bessey. Investigators realized that the cozy post-split relationship Bessey had described was not entirely accurate.

“It appeared that they had an ongoing feud over Edward in custody and parental rights,” Moore said. There were also tensions related to a fire that had broken out in 2010 at Bessey’s residence.

“Bessey was only allowed supervised visitation with his son,” said Moore. In addition, he was paying $390 a month in child support. 

“Sarah was adamant that she wanted Daniel in Edward’s life, but he didn’t prove himself as a dad,” said Beasley’s friend, Michelle Serface.

While Salazar wasn’t directly involved in the custody battle, Bessey resented his presence in Edward’s life. “Tensions were starting to boil over,” said Roth.

Beasley and Bessey’s strained relations made police question Bessey’s claim that he’d worked on her car on February 10. Security footage from a Walmart parking lot at the time Bessey was supposedly fixing the vehicle showed Beasley’s car parked 25 miles from her house.

Police also wondered why Bessey’s flashlight was at the crime scene. After getting a warrant to search Bessey’s house, they found hand-written notes echoing just what he’d told investigators when he was questioned. “It seemed like he had a plan written down, and maybe rehearsed it,” said Needham. 

Police also turned up a stash of firearms. Coincidentally, a gun case custom-fitted for a .22 Ruger handgun was empty. Bessey claimed that he’d gotten rid of the pistol because it was damaged in the 2010 house fire.

Bessey had raised enough red flags to become the prime suspect. Investigators counted on his cell phone records to check his whereabouts at the time of the murders. 

In December 2012, police received the results of Bessey’s cell phone analysis. Bessey said he had spent the night of the homicides in Montrose from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. But at 6:40 a.m. his phone was pinged off a tower in Gunnison, 90 miles from the crime scene.

“Based on the cell phone records, it was physically possible for Daniel to have committed the murders and then flee the scene,” said Anastasiya Bolton, former reporter for 9News Denver.

Daniel Bessey arrested and tried for the double homicide

On January 5, 2013, Bessey was arrested at a truck stop in Oklahoma. He was returned to Colorado and charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse.

Investigators focused on the missing .22-caliber Ruger pistol. They found its former owner who told police he’d sold it to Bessey. He said that seven years earlier he fired the gun for target practice in a remote meadow. 

Shell casings there could potentially be matched to the ones at the crime scene, but it would be a needle-in-a-haystack search. Nonetheless, investigators tried, though a first attempt at locating the shells was impeded by snow. In June 2014, investigators collected shell casings they believed were from the murder weapon. Ballistics analysis matched the shell casings at the crime scene with ones in the meadow.

Investigators concluded that the spray-painted messages at the crime scene were meant to confuse them. The motive for murder came down to custody and jealousy.

“Daniel was unhappy with not being able to see his son as often as he wanted to,” said Bolton. “He was resentful of John as a father figure to his little boy.”

In December 2014, the trial jury returned with a guilty verdict in the double murders. The jury also convicted Bessey of criminal mischief, three counts of misdemeanor child abuse and three counts of misdemeanor reckless endangerment of a child, according to a 2014 report from the The Pueblo Chieftan.

Bessey was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

“Sarah’s sons, Edward as well, went on to live with her first husband’s family,” said Bolton. 

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