Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner [March 26, 2003]

Put yourselves in the shoes of Jeff and Patti Winnie, parents, working people, long-time residents of Willits, property owners, no criminal history. One day about six weeks ago the Winnies' 18-year-old daughter Monica brought her new boyfriend home to meet the folks. “Dad, Mom, I'd like you to meet Neal Beckman. He's 35 and I just love him to death,” which turned out to be what happened.

Mr. and Mrs. Winnie worried that Mr. Beckman, at 35, was much older than their 18-year-old Monica. They also wondered about the devil's horns Mr. Beckman had tattooed onto his forehead. The man didn't seem to be upwardly mobile, but what 18-year-old listens to Mom and Pop about affairs of the heart? Besides, the Winnies reminded themselves, young people are different these days. Everything's different these days. Just because a 35-year-old man adorns himself with devil's horns doesn't necessarily mean he won't be wholesomely devoted to an 18-year-old girl. Heck, the two of them just might settle down and raise a bunch of little tattoos and live happily ever after.

The Winnies’ optimism about their daughter's boyfriend lasted about two days.

“I found out that he was not such a nice guy,” Mr. Winnie says. “He wasn't up here at our house hanging out, he was up here hiding out. I told him he had to leave, and that’s what my wife and daughter were doing that night, taking him to Ukiah and the hell outtahere.”

The Winnies live up in the hills south of town and are thus remote from the latest postings on Willits' social register. They had no idea that their smitten daughter's new swain was at the top of the Don't Go There roster. The Winnies' friends informed them that Mr. Beckman was a kind of a kamikaze, meaning he rests up in jail for those brief periods when he's not in jail for one man assaults on the outside world.. Although he's a little guy, the Winnies learned, Beckman was extremely violent, making up for what he lacked in physical heft with whatever weapons were available to him. If no weapons were available to him, he made some. Beckman was especially partial to the manufacture of homemade bombs.

How much 18-year-old Monica knew about Beckman, or could know about the Beckman personality type at her age and experience level is unclear. Whatever he may have lacked in social skills, he definitely wasn't boring, and the young do tend to gaudy excitements. Moreover, as most of us learn along the trail, usually the hard way, love is literally blind. Deaf and dumb, too. It is, therefore, unlikely that young Monica had her boyfriend pegged as a homicidal maniac.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad Winnie, now fully informed as to the psycho-social history of their house guest and prospective son-in-law, began to have visions of their home going up in flames as Monica's beau shot it out with the cops, using his hosts as human shields for his apocalyptic exit.

“We went out for dinner one night,” Mr. Winnie says, pain and woe in his voice. “That was it for me. I wanted him out. I’ve never seen a guy act so bad in public or in private. He had to go. I just didn't want him to take us with him.. I just want to go through life and not be in the limelight. And then this happens.”

Mrs. Winnie adds, “I knew he'd been in trouble before. But I thought it was minor stuff. Drugs. That kind of thing. And then after all this happened, we found out that he was legally 5150 and on Social Security disability for being anti-social and so forth. He behaved himself reasonably well while he was at our place. When we found out that he was wanted, that was it for me. He had to go.”

So, on Friday evening March the 7th, Beckman went. Mrs. Winnie and her daughter Monica got out the family car and drove him to Ukiah. Beckman said he wanted to be dropped off at a Ukiah motel where he'd be staying. Mrs. Winnie drove, Monica rode in the passenger seat, the man who came to dinner in the back seat.

Mrs. Winnie, still disbelieving of the wild events she was about to witness, won't forget what happened next.

“It was about 9pm when we got to Ukiah. My husband had asked Beckman to leave. We both wanted him gone. I was giving him a ride to a motel. I am the one who wanted to stop at Wal-Mart. I made two stops. I stopped at Albertsons and bought vanilla ice cream and jujubes for Jeff. then I went to Wal-Mart. After we left Wal-Mart we were going to take him to a motel and leave him there. He was in the car when I went into #Wal-Mart. Monica was in the front seat and he was in the backseat. When I came out of Wal-Mart after doing what I needed to do, he was in the front seat and Monica was gone. So I went back into Wal-Mart to find Monica and that’s when my two nieces handed me Monica’s purse and said that she was being arrested. My two nieces were coming out from shopping at Wal-Mart. They handed me Monica’s purse and said that Monica said to give you this because she was being arrested. Shock number one for me. So I put Monica’s purse in the car and I went to find where they were holding her in the store. And then it got worse from there — a lot worse. As bad as it can get. I had no idea that he had a gun. Or a knife.

“I was trying to find my daughter in Wal-Mart. None of the Wal-Mart employees would tell me that the police had already taken her outside to put her in a patrol car. She was in the back of the patrol car when the shooting happened. It was her patrol car that Beckman tried to get the gun out of. So everything happened right in front of her. In a small area. When the shooting started I was about three feet from the back of my car, walking towards it. I watched the first two shots from Beckman at the policeman, and then the guy from the store, Mike, who was escorting me out to my car, kind of grabbed my arm, and I turned around, and I heard two more shots. I ran back inside Wal-Mart to call 911.”

Sgt. Marcus Young of the Ukiah Police Department and a Ukiah High School police cadet named Julian Covella had driven to Wal-Mart to take Monica Winnie into custody. Mrs. Winnie, thoroughly fed up with Beckman and Beckman-related events, which now included her daughter being marched off in handcuffs to a Ukiah PD cruiser, began to walk back to her car, reconciled to a long night of retrieving Monica from the County Jail. As she approached her car in the Wal-Mart parking lot, she saw Beckman, his hands in his pockets, walking towards Sgt. Young.

Young yelled at Beckman to stop and to take his hands out of his pockets. Beckman took his hands out of his pockets but in one hand he had a pistol and in the other hand he had a knife, a big knife. Beckman then emptied his pistol at Young from a few feet away. Young, shot several times, fell.

Brett Schott, a Wal-Mart security guard, rushed to Young to help him. Beckman tried to shoot Schott but he'd emptied his Smith and Wesson six shooter at and in Sgt. Young. His gun was empty so he grabbed Schott and stabbed him numerous times before Schott too fell

Beckman then opened the police car door where his Monica sat handcuffed in the back seat and tried to wrench the shotgun from its rack. The police cadet, 17-year-old Cavella, jerked Young's handgun out of Young's holster and placed it in Young's still functioning left hand. Young rose to a crouch and emptied his gun into Beckman, who was still trying to get Young's shotgun loose.

Beckman's body remained in the cop car for nearly an hour while a small army of cops and emergency services people tended to Young and Schott. Monica, seated a foot from Beckman's corpse, sat silent vigil.

Monica and her mother were taken into custody. Mr. Winnie was at home in Willits, oblivious of his family's big night in Ukiah. Wal-Mart shoppers came and went. Mrs. Winnie, as astounded as everyone else at these events, was finally allowed to go home, although she had to get a ride back to Willits because the family car had been impounded by the police.

The following Tuesday, a task force consisting of a dozen or so officers, arrived at the Winnies home in the hills southwest of Willits.

“They came in with guns pulled,” Mr. Winnie recalls, “after banging on the door. There must of been a dozen of them. It looked like a SWAT team coming into my house. City of Ukiah Police Department with the district attorney’s investigator. Frank Rakes. Once they got in they were pretty civil. They locked me in handcuffs because I have swords and stuff in my living room and that made them nervous. My wife was home. So was my son. They said they found bomb making supplies in my house, but I reload my own shells so that accounts for the so-called bomb making materials. I also had a sawed-off shotgun in my locked safe. What can I say? It was in there, but a friend had given it to me and I thought I'd use it for spare parts. It was inoperable anyway. I had a hose clamp holding the stock to the barrel of the thing. And they took an SKS rifle I had because it's now illegal. Which I did not know. It was stolen from me once in fact and I got it back from the police department. And they took me off to jail.

“They put me into a holding tank at the County Jail about 11 am. I got out at 9 that Tuesday night. although I posted bail at 7:15. My bail was put at $15,000. I was charged with possession of a sawed-off shotgun the SKS, which is not legal anymore, I guess.I was storing the sawed off shotgun for a friend. We had it be locked in my safe. Neither one of us knew what to do with it. and that’s where it was. I opened the safe for them. Ordinarily, nobody gets in my safe except Patty and me.

“The Ukiah paper had it all screwed up. We cooperated fully with the police, but the paper said the police had to have a search warrant to search my car. That’s not right. I was down at the evidence building where they had my car where I signed a paper saying that they could check my car. I walked around my car and told them what property was mine, what was my daughter’s, my wife's, what was my sons, what was Beckman's. There was this little bitty black bag on the seat. Detective Rakes asked me who the bag belonged to. I said I didn’t know, ask Monica. Monica said she didn't know, and they opened it up and apparently there were some M-80s or something taped together with a fuse down them. Rakes said that the things were considered to be pipe bombs. I said whatever you guys need to do. A little while later Rakes came out and said that they had to call in the bomb squad from Chico or some place and we could leave.The next morning they came pounding on our door.

“Monica has been charged by the Ukiah Police Department with shoplifting and theft. They took her over to the Sheriff’s Department and booked her for grand theft and burglary. We don't know what the additional charges are about; something that Beckman arranged, probably.”

Beckman had been in trouble much of his life. At age 17, he busted into an old man's house in Willits, stabbed, beat and robbed the old guy who soon afterwards died of a stroke. Beckman was sentenced to the California Youth Authority for that one and from YA went on into adult prison where he is alleged to have been affiliated with the ethnic discussion group called the Aryan Brotherhood.

Mr. Winnie looks back at the week that was.

“It was dumb of me to keep the sawed-off in my safe. I should have stripped it for parts a long time ago. That’s why I kept it. I was stupid to have hung onto the thing. I was gonna strip it for screws and parts, then put the barrel at the bottom of my burn pile. I never got around to it.”

Mrs. Winnie sighs. “It was a pretty scary week.”

* * *

Ed note: A Willits man wrote in to say he'd been Beckman's teacher. “He was dangerous even as a kid, but there were at least two other kids who were at least as psycho as Neal.”