Monte Seager found guilty....
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The Hawk Eye
8-17-00
By: Kameron Murphy
KEOKUK - Nearly 22 years after the shooting deaths of two Mount
Pleasant women, a South Lee County jury Wednesday found convicted
killer Monte Seager guilty on two counts of first-degree murder.
Seager, 39, showed little emotion as a court clerk read the first,
then the second, guilty verdicts.
Seager waived his right to a sentencing delay, and Judge David
Hendrickson sentenced him to serve two consecutive life sentences for
shooting Clementine Beavers, then raping and shooting her 16-year-old
daughter, Karol, in their Mount Pleasant home in October 1978.
Wednesday's verdict comes just two years after a Henry County jury
also found Seager guilty of the Beavers' murders. That conviction was
thrown out last fall when the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled that a
police officer's testimony about Seager's marijuana plants biased the
jury.
Seager first was charged in the murders in 1981. Charges later were
dismissed when the murder weapon, his .22-caliber rifle, was ruled
inadmissible due to an improper police search.
Seager had been held at the Henry County jail since February, when he
completed his prison sentence in an unrelated murder, the 1979
beating death of Susan Wheelock of Mount Pleasant.
The most recent trial was held in South Lee County District Court
after Hendrickson granted a defense change of venue request earlier
this year.
Jurors deliberated about four hours before reaching their verdict,
which despite Seager's earlier conviction kept family members in
suspense, said family spokesman Randy Beavers, 50, one of Max and
Clementine Beavers' eight children.
For him and the close to 20 other family members, many of whom sat
through all of the five-day trial, a palpable courtroom tension ended
in a collective sigh of relief and tearful hugs when the first guilty
verdict was read.
"Once it went to the jury, you can't anticipate what they will do,"
he said, his eyes brimming with tears. "We'd like to pass on our
appreciation to the jury."
The verdicts had scarcely been read when Randy Beavers, still in the
courtroom, placed a cellular phone call to his father, who attended
the trial only to testify.
"My dad is certainly pleased justice was done a second time," he said,
adding the emotional strain on his father was too much to sit through
the entire proceeding.
Max Beavers testified last week he slept through the murders, then
awoke to find a bloody trail leading to Karol's half-nude body in the
garage.
"He has his days," Randy Beavers said. "Sometimes emotions overcome
him. There isn't a day go by that he doesn't think about it."
Randy Beavers criticized the court system that granted an appeal
after the 1998 conviction because a police officer testified Seager
claimed to be watering his marijuana plants at the time of the murder.
"We thought the rightful murderer was behind bars," he said. "They
wield their decision from a law standpoint, not from the victims'
families' standpoint. I don't even think they considered if (the
reference to marijuana) biased the jury."
And though the family is pleased to see Seager convicted, he said
that can't erase 22 years of anguish.
"I've heard a reference that victims of violent crime have a life
sentence," he said. "That's the case. We'll never have our mother or
sister back."
Assistant Attorney General James Kivi said he was sure Seager's
attorneys, public defenders Tyler Johnston and John Logan, would
appeal the conviction.
Neither Johnston nor Logan was available for comment after the verdict
Wednesday. However, throughout the trial they repeatedly attacked
forensic lab results linking Seager's rifle to the bullets taken from
the Beavers' bodies.
Wednesday, Johnston asked for a mistrial as soon as jurors left the
courtroom for deliberation. Johnston claimed two statements Kivi made
during his closing argument -- in both of which he suggested the
defense produced no firearms expert to refute prosecution evidence --
biased jurors by convincing them the defense had the burden of proof.
Hendrickson sustained Johnston's objections to both statements and
later gave the jury an additional reminder that prosecutors had the
burden of proof; however, he quickly rejected Johnston's motion for a
mistrial.
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