On a summer day in August 2020, Mary Schaffer, a 32-year-old Caucasian woman, drove to Spokane, Washington, with the simple and familiar goal of picking up her two children from their father's home. Having spent the summer with their dad, Nathan Beal, the children were expecting their mother's arrival. Schaffer, who resided in Oregon, had an uneasy feeling about the custody exchange, a premonition that tragically proved to be justified.
She had expressed her fears to her boyfriend, even sending him a picture of her rental car and its license plate "in case things went south." Around 12:30 p.m. on August 8th, she texted her daughter to say she was outside their father's apartment in the Browne's Addition neighborhood. It would be the last communication anyone would receive from her.
Hours later, a passerby noticed a woman slumped over in her car near the corner of Elm Street and Second Avenue and called 911. Police arrived to find Mary Schaffer deceased in the driver's seat of her rental car, which was parked directly across the street from Beal's apartment. She had been shot once in the head. The position of her purse, still on her shoulder, suggested she was in the process of getting out of the vehicle when she was killed. A 9mm shell casing was discovered on the ground next to the car.
The investigation quickly focused on Schaffer's 35-year-old ex-husband, Nathan Beal. Family members informed police that Beal had a history of making threats against Schaffer's life since their separation in 2017. A neighbor reported hearing a gunshot around 12:30 p.m., the same time Schaffer had texted her daughter, and saw a man matching Beal's description running from the scene. When initially questioned, Beal claimed Schaffer never arrived. However, a search of his apartment produced a 9mm handgun that ballistics testing would later match to the shell casing found at the scene. Police also found a shirt in a nearby dumpster that matched the witness's description of the fleeing man's attire.
Nathan Beal was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. During his trial, it was revealed that he had a deep-seated animosity towards his ex-wife. Schaffer's brother testified that Beal had previously stated she "needed to be shot." Despite Beal's denial of the crime, the evidence against him was substantial. In March 2022, a jury found Nathan Beal guilty of the first-degree murder of Mary Schaffer. He was later sentenced to more than three decades in prison for her death. In a chilling development, the investigation into Schaffer's murder also linked the same handgun to the unsolved killing of a homeless man, Andrew Michael Bull, months earlier, for which Beal was also subsequently convicted.
