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Daniel Clark (Arvada police) and Chelsea Beadles (1st Judicial District Attorney”s Office).
A Colorado resident has received a ten-year prison sentence after confessing to concealing a woman’s corpse in a tote bin and leaving it near a dumpster.
Daniel Ryan Clark, aged 41, admitted to tampering with a deceased human body, resulting in his decade-long imprisonment, according to an announcement from the First District Attorney’s Office, which was detailed in a press release. On September 15, authorities in Arvada, a suburb of Denver, were alerted to a grim discovery at The Perch on 52nd apartment complex. A maintenance worker found the remains of 29-year-old Chelsea Beadles, which bore “numerous injuries,” near a dumpster.
The body was hidden inside a plastic bin and covered with bedding. Through cell phone data and Facebook activity, investigators established that Beadles had been in Clark’s company shortly before her death. Additional evidence linked Clark to the bedding and the tote bin.
Despite this, Clark was not charged with murder or more severe offenses due to the medical examiner’s inability to ascertain the cause and manner of Beadles’ death. The coroner reported these aspects as “undetermined.” Although the body showed no signs of significant trauma, the medical examiner noted that “a traumatic death cannot be definitively excluded” given the ambiguous circumstances surrounding her demise.
Ultimately, investigators were unable to conclude the exact cause of death or determine if any criminal actions were involved.
At sentencing, Beadles’ mother described her daughter as a “sweet soul” and lamented the way in which her body was discovered.
“No parent should have to collect their child’s body from the trash,” she told the court.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Brenna Zortman acknowledged the sentence “feels so abysmally low for what happened.”
“I’m so sorry we can’t provide the family with more information about what happened. It’s not fair,” Zortman said in a statement.
For his part, Clark told the judge he was “owning up to the stuff I did,” but denied killing the victim. Clark said he doesn’t remember much of what happened because of drug use.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by local NBC affiliate KUSA, Clark told authorities Beadles left his apartment early on the day in question after she got into an argument on the phone with “some dude.” Authorities haven’t described their relationship but he told authorities they would often hang out together.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed the tampering with physical evidence charge. The sentence for tampering with a deceased human body called for a sentence of between four and 12 years. Prosecutors and Clark’s attorneys agreed on a 10-year prison sentence which a judge imposed.