In the early morning hours of December 9, 2016, a grim discovery was made in the 5500 block of Etzel Avenue in St. Louis. Responding to a report of a 'suspicious auto' at 2:32 a.m., police found 31-year-old David Michael 'Slim' Bewig Jr. inside a car, deceased from a gunshot wound to the head. Bewig, a resident of Pevely, Missouri, was known as a music promoter and was also involved in lawn care. On the day before his death, he had traveled to St. Louis to make arrangements for his upcoming birthday party, planning to pay a DJ and others.
For nearly two years, the case remained without an arrest, a period of anxious uncertainty for Bewig's loved ones. Investigators, however, were piecing together a narrative suggesting the person responsible was someone known to David. This belief was built on a series of crucial witness accounts. The breakthrough came in December 2018, when 33-year-old Darin Schmidt, also from Pevely, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in connection with Bewig's death. The foundation of the case against Schmidt rested on the testimony of four individuals who told detectives that Schmidt had confessed to them on three separate occasions that he had killed Bewig.
The legal proceedings that followed took a winding path. In 2019, a jury convicted Darin Schmidt for the murder of David Bewig Jr. However, the legal saga was far from over. An appeals court later overturned this conviction due to a specific question asked by the prosecutor during the trial. The prosecutor had asked the witnesses who heard Schmidt's confession if they believed he was telling the truth. The appeals court deemed this question and the subsequent testimony to be 'plain error,' leading to the reversal of the conviction.
Following the overturned conviction, the case faced a new set of challenges. Prosecutors encountered difficulties in bringing the original witnesses back to testify for a new trial. With the witnesses reportedly unresponsive, the prosecution considered a plea deal for Schmidt on a lesser charge of manslaughter. Such a deal would make him eligible for parole in a significantly shorter time frame, a prospect that deeply concerned Bewig's family, who publicly urged the witnesses to come forward and testify once more to ensure justice for David.
