Abducted Child Markell Beasley Dies In Missouri Murder-Suicide

Abducted child Markell Beasley, sought by Missouri police since Saturday, was found shot to death on Christmas Eve in Cape Girardeau after family members, for some reason, handed him over to the man who then kidnapped and killed him.

The body of Demetrius Beasley, 40, who police believe kidnapped the 6-year-old boy, was also found in the same residence, dead of a gunshot wound.

Police are treating the deaths of 6-year-old and the older man as a murder-suicide, but they either don’t know or won’t say what motivated the older man to kill himself and the boy, as the cops continue to investigate exactly what happened in the four days the two were together.

“We’re being vague for a reason,” said Capt. Doug Shoemaker of the police department in Jefferson City, the young boy’s hometown. “We do not want to jeopardize this investigation.”

Demetrius Beasley, who, according to the Dexter Daily Statesman, has several past criminal cases and sometimes spells his first name “Dimitrius,” was not the boy’s father or related to the abducted child in any way. Nor did he have any legal rights over the child. However, police speculated that Markell saw the older man as “father figure.”

Beasley was reportedly involved in raising Markell, along with the boy’s mother, Michelle Gelling of Jefferson City.

One of those court cases found by the Daily Statesman is a first-degree child molestation charge against Beasley. He has also served time in prison, according to the Jefferson City News-Tribune report, which also says that he had vowed never to go back into incarceration.

On Tuesday, before the bodies were discovered, police issued an Amber Alert for Markell Beasley.

On Saturday, Gelling placed Markell in the care of two family members who took the boy to St. Louis, supposedly for a Christmas gathering. Once in the city, the family members handed the boy over to Beasley for reasons that are still not clear.

Then the phone calls and text messages began, according to an account in the News Tribune. In those calls and messages, Beasley became threatening, refusing to return the abducted child to Gelling.

In one message, Beasley told the boy’s mother, “God would see Markell before she would.”

The News Tribune reports that investigations revealed the story of a Christmas gathering to be a sham, and that the family members always intended to hand the boy over to Beasley.

The boy’s biological father, Tarence Tullock of Crystal City, told KSDK TV News that he did not even know that he was the boy’s father until two years ago when he was required to begin paying child support.

Tullock said that he tried to involve himself in the boy’s life, but when Beasley got out of prison, all contact between the boy and his biological father was cut off.

Tullock said that, alarmed by Beasley’s behavior, he called Missouri’s Department of Social Services to try to separate Markell from Beasley. He says he never received a call back.

“If someone leaves a message, and they want you to call back to see if their kid is okay, why don’t you call that person back?” a stunned Tullock said. Now, time has run out for the abducted child.

“It should have been prevented,” his real father said.