Woman worried, fearful after rapist’s conviction overturned

PALMER — Reading the headlines earlier this month brought to mind a whole lot of bad memories for at least one woman.

Jennifer — who asked that her real name not be used out of fear for herself and her young children — had a run in with convicted rapist Micah Beshaw 11 years ago. She believes only her wits and a baseball bat kept her safe.

Now she’s worried Beshaw may not stay in prison much longer.

Two weeks ago, a state appeals court overturned Beshaw’s convictions on kidnapping and attempted rape.

Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak, whose office prosecuted and won two rape convictions against Beshaw, said in an email Wednesday that “we will re-try him.”

Beshaw remained incarcerated at Cook Inlet Pretrial in Anchorage as of Thursday afternoon, according to prison records. And it seems unlikely, if Palmer plans to re-try him, that he could be released.

But Jennifer apparently isn’t the only woman who is apprehensive about that possibility. Since Beshaw’s case was overturned, three restraining orders have been filed against him in Glennallen.

The case that was overturned began in 2007 when Beshaw was living in Glennallen. Prosecutors allege he tried to drag a woman competing in a bicycle tour from Houston, Texas, to Anchorage into the woods. Trying to flee in a pickup, he hit another cyclist who tried to help.

The only charge that survived the appeal was an assault count for hitting that cyclist. The rest, Appeals Court Judge Joel Bolger wrote, had to be overturned because the prosecution violated Beshaw’s constitutional right to confront his accuser.

In his 2007 trial, prosecutors introduced evidence of Beshaw’s conviction on rape charges in 2001. That evidence got in, but there wasn’t a witness who testified and could therefore have been grilled by Beshaw’s attorney.

That Palmer case actually included four victims. One was snatched off the Glenn Highway north of Palmer. Beshaw was wearing a mask and his victim didn’t get a good look at him, but her bra and DNA were found in his pickup. Another was kidnapped from the Palmer McDonald’s and raped in the woods. Beshaw eventually pleaded no contest to one of those rapes. Two Anchorage cases never led to any charges, but also included an alleged rape in a parking garage and another in the downtown area.

Jennifer’s story begins before all of this, before even that Palmer case. She said she and Beshaw ran in similar circles and she always found him creepy.

He’d have guests at his apartment and, “He would get in the shower and have all his guns in there with him.”

She also recalls him handing her a drink that he didn’t tell her was spiked with alcohol. She was a teenager living in Palmer then, though she has since moved out of the area. One weekend when her mom was out of town she wanted to have a party, but didn’t have money for alcohol. Beshaw offered to go get money from a friend and bring her along.

Against her better judgment she went. What was supposed to be a short drive wound up taking them into the middle of nowhere in Sutton. Eventually, there were no other cars on the road, just four-wheelers and hunters.

Beshaw either got his truck stuck or pretended to, then either got lost trying to look for help or pretended to. By this time, Jennifer was freaking out. Eventually, with a lot of yelling and a few threats, she convinced him to give up on the plan to get money and just take her home.

On the way back to Palmer, Jennifer said, “I see that there’s a bra in his truck, some duct tape and some gloves, like surgery gloves.”

A bra and surgical gloves were later seized from Beshaw’s pickup as troopers investigated the Glenn Highway rape, court documents show. Duct tape comes up in a search of Beshaw’s apartment and as being used to close the ends of short lengths of rubber hose found in the pickup.

After the trip into the woods, Beshaw dropped her at home. She took a shower to get ready for the party and, in what she now thinks was a big mistake, left the door unlocked for one of her friends to come in.

When she got out, Jennifer said, the hallway light had been switched off. She could have sworn she’d left it on. She switched it back on and got dressed in her room. When she was done the light had been switched off again.

Now sufficiently scared, she grabbed a baseball bat. Then she saw a shadow in her brother’s room. Walking into the room she saw a man there, in a mask, looking like he was about to jump out and grab her.

“I said, ‘You have three seconds to get that mask off your face,’ and I was like, ‘1, 2,” and I swung,” Jennifer said.

Just before she connected, the man ripped off his mask. It was Beshaw, who pretended it had all been a joke and beat a hasty retreat from the house.

Later, she’d find a dead fish on her doorstep or see someone watching her house who walked and looked a lot like Beshaw. When the news of those two Palmer rapes broke, she said she called investigators to tell her story.

“If I wouldn’t have said the things I said to him and acted the way I did he would’ve raped me,” Jennifer said.

Leonard Wallner, now a sergeant in Anchorage, was the trooper who investigated the case. Reached Thursday, he said at first he didn’t really remember Jennifer. After thinking a while, he said he vaguely remembered her.

He said he didn’t remember much, though. She wasn’t the focus of the investigation and didn’t lead to any criminal charges. But he said the details — the ride out to Sutton, the mask — were “righteous” in that they fit Beshaw’s pattern.

Jennifer said that in the ensuing years she’s thought about that a lot. She finds herself being wary about trusting men and even treats male children differently than she treats female children. All the while, she said, she wondered where Beshaw was, if he was still a threat.

“I always wondered if he was out of jail,” she said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.