In the summer of 2014, the life of 34-year-old Lindsey Morgan, a female from the small Michigan community of Mesick, was cut tragically short. On August 8th, she was shot and killed in a violent encounter that stemmed from a turbulent relationship. The man responsible was her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Erik Robert Beauchamp, with whom she shared two of her four children.
Their relationship had been described as rocky, marked by struggles with alcoholism and Beauchamp's jealousy.
In the days leading up to the fatal incident, the couple had been living in a tent in a friend's backyard. The situation escalated when Lindsey began seeing another man. On the morning of August 8th, Lindsey's mother received a chilling phone call from her daughter, warning that Beauchamp had threatened her. Just twenty minutes later, Beauchamp broke into the home where Lindsey and her four children were and shot her three times.
Following the shooting, Beauchamp fled, sparking a nearly seven-hour manhunt that put the surrounding community on edge. The search came to a dramatic end at Peterson Bridge, about 25 miles south of the crime scene. There, law enforcement officers located Beauchamp and, in the ensuing confrontation, shot him in the upper leg before taking him into custody.
Erik Beauchamp was charged with open murder. During his trial, his defense attorney argued for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, claiming that Beauchamp had originally intended to take his own life in front of Lindsey but lost control in the heat of the moment. Beauchamp himself took the stand, testifying that he 'just drove me nuts drove me over the edge' and that his memory of the actual shooting was blank. The prosecution, however, painted a different picture, presenting the killing as a methodical and premeditated act.
Ultimately, a jury convicted Erik Beauchamp of second-degree murder. On March 18, 2015, he was sentenced to a term of 37 and a half to 60 years in prison. In addition to the murder conviction, he also faced charges for felonious assault and animal cruelty. He is currently incarcerated with the Michigan Department of Corrections, with his earliest possible release date set decades into the future.
