A Pennsylvania woman and a conspirator are on trial for conspiring to have her mother killed.
Melissa Fox-Beacom’s ex-boyfriend testified Wednesday that she often spoke about wanting to kill Alice Robson, her 71-year-old mother, and even fantasized about how she would do it.
“I honestly didn’t know what to say,” Ace Vavrek told jurors, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “I kind of just thought she was crazy and didn’t really think much of it after that.”
Fox-Beacom, 51, and Matthew Jason Bates, 20, are charged with homicide, conspiracy, solicitation and abuse of a corpse.
Robson was shot to death on December 11, 2023, as CrimeOnline previously reported. Fox-Beacom, Bates, who was dating Fox-Beacom’s daughter at the time, and a third man — Robert Jack, 20 — were arrested and charged in the case. But Jack, who is alleged to have shot Robson twice in the head, has turned state’s witness and will testify against the other two.
Bates reportedly told detectives that Fox-Beacom and her mother had a difficult relationship because of custody issues surround her son, who requires around-the-clock care. The Westmoreland County Court granted custody of the boy and a daughter to her parents, and Robson had an order of protection against her daughter.
Bates allegedly said he was at Robson’s home on December 11 working on a car and that he and Fox-Beacom later left and returned, meeting up with Jack, the district attorney’s office said. At that point, Fox-Beacom asked the two of them to kill Robson, so they went inside and shot her to death. Then they put her body in a crawl space beneath the back porch and tried to clean the blood from the living room.
“We need you to put a fat cow down,” Fox-Beacom allegedly told Jack.
Prosecutors say Bates provided the gun, the Tribune-Review said. His father, Jason Bates, testified that he had noticed his 22-caliber revolver was missing. The gun was found months later by a dive team in a lake after Jack told them that’s where he’d thrown it.
Jack’s case is still pending, and it’s not clear if he made a deal in exchange for his testimony.
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[Featured image: Matthew Bates, Melissa Fox-Beacom, and Robert Jack/Westmoreland County Prison]
