True Crime
Why did his best friend and girlfriend commit such a vile crime?
The evening of July 14, 1982, started innocently enough. 33-year-old Robert Beckowitz and his girlfriend, 21-year-old Jeannine Clark, were on the sofa watching The Benny Hill Show on TV. Shortly before midnight, Beckowitz’s best friend, 37-year-old James Glover walked up and shot Robert in the back of the head with a .45 caliber handgun and then stabbed him more than 83 times.
Clark and Glover, who had been having an affair, then spent the next three days mutilating the body of Beckowitz in a drug-fueled sex ritual that included mutilating his corpse. They even took photos of themselves using a hacksaw to dismember him and posing his body in a variety of disgusting and degrading poses, some of a sexual nature which included them in the nude.
Though the photos have since been made public and many are available in various places on the web, they are far too graphic to post here. The sole photo I’ve included has been cropped to remove the disturbing crime being committed.
By the time they were done, Beckowitz’s arms, legs, and head had been removed from his torso. He had been further cut up into 14 pieces which were then hidden around the apartment in plastic bags.
On the third day, Clark phoned the Detroit police and reported the crime, telling them that she had been an unwilling participant — forced to participate by Glover. Police arrived to find a heavily sedated Glover still well under the influence of drugs and arrested him.
Glover was charged with second-degree murder, using a firearm during a felony, and mutilation of a corpse. He pleaded not guilty by means of mental incompetence, but a psychiatric evaluation disagreed. Glover was deemed fit to stand trial for the full charges.
Initially, Clark was not charged with her part in the crime. However, she was arrested for a parole violation from a previous conviction for assisting in a bank robbery. However, after photo evidence was uncovered of her smiling next to the victim’s body and mutilating the corpse, the district attorney decided to try her for desecration of a body.
Glover went along with Clark’s story that he had held her captive and forced her to participate in the gruesome crime. The story soon fell apart after neighbors testified they’d seen Clark leaving the house alone several times. The prosecution noted that she’d done so without seeking assistance or reporting the crime in progress. It was shown that she’d even purchased more film for the camera during one excursion.
Still, Clark cried on the stand as she claimed she could never hurt Beckowitz and had told Glover that she’d rather die than cut up his body. This was refuted by the prosecution, using the same smiling photos that had resulted in her being charged in the first place. They also noted that Glover had severe damage to his spine which required the use of a cane to walk, meaning Clark would have had to assist him to move the body of a man as large as Beckowitz.
Glover eventually decided to plead guilty in the case in exchange for the prosecution taking the life sentence he was looking at off the table. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, with a possibility of parole in 30 years. Clark was found guilty and received a six-year sentence for her part in the crime.