Special education teacher accused of killing and dismembering her parents will face trial, Montco judge says

An Abington woman who prosecutors say killed and dismembered her parents in their Jenkintown home will face trial on first- and third-degree murder charges, a judge said Friday.

Verity Beck, 43, a special education teacher at a Main Line Catholic school, is charged in the deaths of her parents, Miriam and Reid Beck. Prosecutors say she shot them each once in the head in January, then cut their bodies into pieces with a chainsaw.

Beck’s brother, Justin, came upon the grisly scene when he went to the house on the evening of Jan. 17 because he hadn’t heard from his parents in days and grew concerned. When he arrived at the home on the 1100 block of Beverly Road, police said, his sister was there, and when he went to look for his parents, he found a body covered in a bloody sheet in a downstairs bedroom.

He called police, and when officers arrived, they found the dismembered bodies of Reid Beck, 73, and his wife, Miriam, 72..

Verity Beck, who lived in the home with her parents, was charged in their deaths and taken into custody.

In court Friday, Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman told Magisterial District Judge Juanita A. Price that all evidence in the crime pointed to Verity Beck.

“This is just a tragedy for what family remains and the victims,” she said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure justice is served.”

Days before the murder, Cauffman said, Verity Beck bought two guns, a hot pink Charter Arms firearm and a purple “Lavender Lady” revolver at a gun store in Philadelphia. Ballistics experts later matched one of those guns to the bullet that police say killed Miriam Beck. The bullet that killed Reid Beck was too deteriorated to match, they said.

Anthony Caso, a Montgomery County homicide detective, testified that judging by the odor police encountered when they entered the home, the couple had been “dead for a while” before their bodies were found. When police arrived, he said, at least seven scented candles were lit, but barely masked the smell. Officers also found about 20 bottles of cleaning agent, along with boxes of rubber gloves, trash bags, and rags.

Abington Police Sgt. Shane Larosa told the judge that when officers asked Beck where her parents were, she told them: “They’re dead.”

Days before the killings, Cauffman said, Beck sent a text message to an administrator at St. Katherine’s School in Wynnewood, where she worked. In it, Cauffman said, Beck spoke of a collarbone injury her mother had recently sustained, and she said she didn’t believe that her mother would live through the coming weekend.

Beck’s attorney, James P. Lyons, did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

In court, he pressed the homicide detective about whether investigators could pinpoint the exact date the Becks were killed and whether they knew how many bullets had been fired from the guns. Newspapers outside the home, unopened since Jan. 7, led investigators to believe the couple had been killed on that date, according to Caso. He said no other bullets were recovered from the home.

Price allowed prosecutors to charge Beck with additional crimes, including abuse of corpse and possessing an instrument of a crime and she ruled that the case should proceed to trial.

Beck, dressed in black, said little during the proceeding, other than occasionally whispering to her attorney.

Officials with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia did not return a request for comment Friday when asked whether Beck was still employed at St. Katherine’s.

Church officials have said Beck had passed a criminal background check before she was hired and had drawn no complaints during her “brief tenure” at the school, where she was last seen at work before Christmas break in December.

Beck will be arraigned in August.