THE LAKE COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT HAS ORDERED THE REMOVAL OF PREVIOUSLY APPROVED VIDEO CLIPS THAT WERE POSTED ON THIS STORY. A SPECIAL HEARING WEDNESDAY RESULTED IN THE DECISION.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A man facing two murder charges for the deaths of a Maine couple early last year appeared for the first day of his preliminary hearing Tuesday, when the main witness was his co-defendant in the case, who took the stand to testify against him.
Robby Alan Beasley, 30, sat beside his attorney Stephen Carter during a day of testimony in which 28-year-old Elijah Bae McKay recounted the events that led to the January 2010 shooting deaths of Yvette and Frank Maddox of Maine, as well as the gruesome circumstances of their deaths on the side of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake.
Beasley and McKay are each charged with two counts of murder, along with special allegations of committing multiple murders in the first or second degree, committing the offenses with the intent to inflict great bodily injury on the victims and using a 9 millimeter firearm. Beasley also is alleged to have had a felony conviction in Maine for criminal threatening with a firearm.
McKay – clad, like Beasley, in a black and white jail jumpsuit – remained handcuffed throughout his nearly two hours on the witness stand, as Deputy District Attorney Art Grothe and Carter took turns questioning him.
Looking on from the gallery was his attorney, Richard Petersen of Ukiah. Peterson watched but didn't interject in any of the proceedings.
McKay stated during his testimony that he was not offered a deal in exchange for his testimony and only was receiving limited immunity for his statements.
He said he had decided to testify in recent weeks after investigators showed Petersen an arrest warrant for McKay's fiancee. McKay also was told that his young son would be taken away.
The story McKay shared with the court Tuesday was one set against the background of an old friendship with Beasley, with marijuana growing and the large amounts of money it brought leading to tensions and, allegedly, the deaths of the couple, who Beasley had invited to come west to work for him trimming marijuana.
However, Beasley later came to believe they had been responsible for stealing from him several pounds of marijuana, which McKay testified led to Beasley planning to kill them.
Before McKay took the stand later in the morning, Grothe called to the stand two witnesses, Elvin Sikes and Tyreshia Celestin-Willis. Grothe had filed a motion regarding his intent to put on both witnesses, who offered certain amounts of hearsay testimony, which normally is not allowed in the evidence code.
However, Grothe said a new law allows the use of hearsay against a subject who was attempting to make a witness unavailable. In this case, he suggested Beasley had done so by killing the Maddoxes, who had made statements about Beasley to Sikes and Celestin-Willis.
Grothe noted the information could be stricken, and Carter agreed to go forward with the testimony.
Sikes recalled allowing the couple to stay with him after Yvette Maddox came to him in early December 2009, crying because they had no place to stay. “They wanted to go back home so I told them they could stay there for a little bit, until they got the means to go back home.”
Yvette Maddox told Sikes about mailing “packages” back to Maine, and Frank Maddox mentioned his plans to take Beasley to the airport, which Sikes advised against. Sikes said Yvette Maddox told him that she had her husband go get “the stuff that was owed to them,” meaning marijuana, but he didn't take it to mean they were stealing.
After Sikes was off the stand, Carter withdrew his support of going forward with the use of the hearsay, saying it would result in a potentially large body of information that would have to be stricken.
Judge Richard Martin said he wanted to hear all of the evidence before deciding whether or not it should be considered.
Grothe then called to the stand Celestin-Willis, who got to know the Maddoxes in late 2009.
She recalled an extremely upset Yvette Maddox coming to her house and telling her that Beasley had stated, “You're in my town, I'll make you come up missing,” and that her husband didn't protect her. Shortly afterward, Frank Maddox drove up to Celestin-Willis' house and Yvette Maddox ran and hid in the closet while Celestin-Willis told Maddox that his wife was not there.
Celestin-Willis said she had seen the couple with as much as a pound of marijuana, and was aware they were trimming it, noting that marijuana wasn't her “scene.”
Old friendship, new trouble
McKay followed Celestin-Willis to the stand, offering the information that set the stage for the couple's arrival in Lake County.
He recounted meeting Beasley about 15 years ago while they were in grade school and remaining friends throughout the years.
About five years ago McKay came to California, getting into construction in San Jose before trading in his apartment to live in tent and grow marijuana in Mendocino County. He later made two trips to Maine to sell some of his marijuana.
Last year he said he didn't go to the East Coast to sell marijuana, as he had 35 pounds to sell – at $2,500 per pound for product grown outdoors – and it was safer to stay in California and sell it.
He said Beasley was continuing to get in trouble with the law in Maine, and he invited him to come west and work with him about two and a half years ago, which Beasley eventually did. “He's a smart, hard worker,” McKay said of Beasley.
Beasley later split off and began doing his own indoor growing operation in Clearlake, and in 2009 – not long before McKay was set to go to New York state on a fishing trip – Beasley told him he wanted to have the Maddoxes come out and work for him.
“He discussed bringing them out to help them get on their feet,” said McKay, who had never met the couple before their arrival.
He said that Beasley vouched for the two, and told him he had been in prison with Frank Maddox and thought he was a good guy.
But when McKay returned from his trip and began working with the couple, he said he wasn't pleased with their work. He said Frank Maddox tried to claim he was trimming more marijuana than he did, they bickered with other trimmers and were asking McKay to help them get drugs.
McKay said he didn't find them very smart, and following an argument with Frank Maddox he fired them.
He said he told Beasley, “I didn't think they were working out and they should go home. He let them stay in his apartment instead.” Previously, they had been staying in a tent on an outdoor grow site McKay had.
But McKay testified that the relationship between the couple and Beasley started going bad. The couple were fighting and appeared to have become hooked on methamphetamine, causing Beasley to throw them out. But they didn't want to return to Maine and ended up living with another friend – Sikes had testified to taking them in.
On Christmas Day of 2009, Yvette Maddox was arrested for public intoxication. McKay said that the pair was angering people, with a woman pulling a gun on them at one point.
“They were making enemies as well as friends with the locals,” McKay said.
He said it was his policy not to get involved with local residents. “I kept it as a rule to stay out of everybody's business.”
McKay was on a trip to Boston in early January 2010 when Beasley called to tell him that the Clearlake apartment where Beasley grew marijuana had been robbed.
Someone small had used a screwdriver to force open a window, remove an air conditioning unit and crawl through, leaving small, muddy footprints that appeared to belong to a woman. Those footprints led to a sliding door where it appeared that it had been opened for two larger people, who also left muddy footprints.
The kind of indoor pot that was stolen from Beasley sold for about $3,500 a pound, McKay said.
When Beasley told McKay he planned to stay at the apartment to guard his marijuana, McKay told him to go to his home and get an unregistered, black 9 millimeter handgun that McKay had purchased in San Francisco. It had a 15-round clip and, in McKay's opinion, would be better for Beasley to use to defend himself than the six-shot .357 he had.
During his testimony McKay stated that the gun in question was one he carried with him in the marijuana grow because a mountain lion stalked him as he watered the plants.
He testified that the couple had held the gun that killed them, as he had left it with them for protection against the mountain lion, too.
McKay returned home on Jan. 19, at which time Beasley told him he had dug a hole and planned to kill the couple, who he suspected were responsible for the theft of his marijuana.
It was a plan McKay said he didn't think Beasley would carry out. “We talked about killing people before and never done it.”
Beasley also had talked about pulling out all of their teeth to prevent identification. McKay said he had commented to Beasley that it would be easier to cut their heads off. He also noted during testimony that Beasley offered him $20,000 to kill the couple during a lengthy and heated discussion. McKay turned the offer down.
He said Beasley planned to ask the couple to drive him to the airport on the pretense that he had to fly to see his family because his grandmother's death. McKay said Beasley acted out how he would tell the story, even making himself cry.
McKay said he tried to talk Beasley out of the plan. “They're from Maine, I'm from Maine. Everything seemed bad about it to me.”
He continued, “He told me he had dug a hole and was going to kill them, I figured anything was better than that.” McKay said he suggested that Beasley instead shake the couple down and get them to confess that they had stolen his marijuana.
Then on the night of Jan. 22, while he was at his brother's birthday party, McKay received a call from Beasley asking for him to come pick him up. McKay found him walking along Morgan Valley Road, near where the couple's pickup was parked.
“He had blood on his clothes,” said McKay.
Later in testimony, as McKay recounted picking Beasley up, he said his friend “looked really distressed and said he was going to hell.” When McKay asked where the gun was, Beasley responded that no one would ever find it.
McKay took Beasley back to his home, let him shower, burned Beasley's clothes and backpack, and both of their phones, before taking Beasley back to his own home. Afterward McKay returned to his brother's birthday party, trying to pretend nothing had happened and having birthday cake.
“It was probably the hardest piece of cake I ever ate,” McKay said.
The next day Beasley showed up with two new cell phones, one for each of them. Beasley was dressed in a full set of rain gear so he wouldn't leave traces, and they took the Maddoxes' truck and left it on Jerusalem Grade Road near Middletown, with a full tank of gas and the keys in it. McKay said they hoped someone would take the vehicle.
In the days after the murders, McKay said Beasley recounted that he had asked them to take him to the airport, but they didn't realize that going down Morgan Valley Road wouldn't take them there.
At one point Beasley asked them to pull over in a turnout so he could urinate, and Frank Maddox got out with him to do the same, McKay said.
While the two men were out of the truck, McKay testified that Beasley allegedly pulled the 9 millimeter out and cocked it, holding Frank Maddox at gunpoint and pulling Yvette Maddox from the truck.
During the confrontation that ensued, the couple wouldn't admit to stealing the marijuana, and McKay said that Beasley shot Frank Maddox in the leg, and Yvette Maddox fainted or was “playing opossum.” Frank Maddox then reportedly told Beasley he had better finish him off because he was going to kill him if he didn't.
McKay said Beasley then shot Frank Maddox in the head, doing the same to Yvette Maddox. Beasley then allegedly dragged their bodies down the nearby embankment. When the couple still showed signs of life, Beasley allegedly shot each of them in the head a second time.
As McKay left the stand, he looked toward Beasley and said testifying was “the last thing I ever wanted to do.”
After McKay left the stand the court heard briefly from Beasley's girlfriend, Kim Vanhorn, who said that during a jail visit he wrote on his hand, asking her if they found the gun.
Lake County Sheriff's Det. Tom Andrews also testified about computer and cell phone evidence extracted from equipment found at Beasley's apartment during service of a search warrant.
Grothe stated previously that the District Attorney's Office was waiting to make a decision about how to pursue the prosecution, whether it would be a death penalty case or life without the possibility of parole.
His new boss, District Attorney Don Anderson, will be involved in that ultimate decision. Anderson sat in on a portion of the afternoon portion of McKay's testimony.
The preliminary hearing will continue Wednesday morning, and is expected to last through Thursday afternoon.
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