The Murder of Rose Goggins

I am often amazed by the lengths that not only people will go to ensure someone remains in their life, but the fact that they do not think of the consequences of their actions. Most often you see this in cases involving child custody. One parent, or even sometimes a grandparent, will murder the other parent to ensure custody goes their way. I recently blogged about the case of Joanna Hayes who murdered her soon to be ex-daughter in law thinking her son would get custody of their son. Reality was Joanna's son did not want custody and the couple had already made an agreement. In the end the young child lost his mother, basically his father and his grandmother. Any time a parent is murdered, especially if they have young children, the long term affects can be devastating.

Twenty-one year old Rose Goggins was living with her future in-laws, Steven and Sylvia Beersdorf in Beech Creek Tennesse, a small community about eighty miles northeast of Knoxville. In January of 2010 Rose's fiance, Steven Beersdorf Jr. was in Mississippi. He was in the Tennessee National Guard but was training to be deployed to Iraq. Rose and Steven Jr had a son, Aiden (sometimes spelled Ayden), who was almost a year old.

On January 15, 2010 a burned out car was found on an isolated logging road. It does not appear that the car, or the owner was identified before Steven and Sylvia reported Rose missing on the following day. They told authorities that Rose had left their home on January 14^th to go to an EMT training class in Lawrence County, about a half hour away, but that she had never returned. Something just did not seem right to authorities.

The Beersdorf's owned a trucking company that it appears they ran from their property that spanned forty acres. Over time three search warrants would be executed on the property. It is unclear when some evidence was exactly recovered so I will touch on all that was found in a bit. It is suffice to say that by the 21^st authorities believed Rose had never left the Beersdorf property alive and they were coming down hard on Steven and Sylvia. It was then that Steven confessed that he had “hit, slapped and then strangled” Rose to death in the driveway on the home on the 14^th. He told authorities that he then dumped her body in the river and burned her car. On the following day both Steven and Sylvia were charged with Rose's murder.

It appears that initially both were charged with first degree murder and criminal conspiracy to commit murder. Some time later investigators would say that they could not really prove that Sylvia had participated in the crime but that she knew of the plan. They were both set to go to trial in 2011 when they agreed to plead guilty.

So, here is what the investigation uncovered. Apparently it was believed by Steven and Sylvia that Rose was planning to leave their son and take their grandson with them. It is unclear how they came to this conclusion but apparently the couple and their future daughter in law obviously had issues. I cannot say just when those issues began. It may have been they always had issues but they just intensified with Steven Jr. gone. Authorities apparently never believed that Steven Jr. knew his parents had planned to kill Rose in order to prevent her from leaving. It is not even clear that Rose was intending to “leave” at all let alone leave the relationship. A man named Scott Lawrence, who worked for the Beersdorf's, told authorities that Steven Sr. and Sylvia did not think that Rose gave them enough time with their grandson. He would claim that Sylvia asked him at some point if he knew of anyone who could get rid of Rose. He also claimed that later Steven Sr. offered him a thousand dollars if he would bring Rose to him at gunpoint so that he could kill her and bury the body. He stated that Steven was convinced that nothing could be proven if a body was not found.

In his confession Steven had stated that he had murdered Rose and had dumped her body in the river. Whether it was from this information or another tip the result was several days spent searching the river. But, authorities would could to believe that the river was not where they should be looking and headed back to the Beersdorf property. One week after his confession and nearly a week after being charged, authorities found bone fragments scattered over a ten foot area of the property located in a wooded area. Investigators would come to believe that Steven had told the truth about murdering Rose in the driveway of the home. The GPS system on her car not only indicated that the last place it had been was the Beersdorf property but it had gone in the opposite direction than where she was due to attend a class. They believe that her body was then burned and then a backhoe was used to attempt to chop up the remaining bones, where they were then scattered in several places. They may have never found the bones had it not been with the help of cadaver dogs.

In March of 2011 both Beersdorf's accepted plea deals that were offered. Steven Sr. agreed to plead guilty to both charges of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was given a sentence of life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in the year 2070, which I suspect is long after his natural death. While I did not find anything to confirm this I suspect that by taking the life sentence Steven was likely facing the death penalty.

Sylvia ended up pleading guilty to the charge of criminal conspiracy to commit first degree murder. She received a sentence of fifteen years. She has a parole hearing in March of 2019. It looks as if her hearing fails she will still be released sometime in the year 2020.

It is not clear exactly what Steven Jr. was left to believe. It does appear that he was rushed back from his training in Mississippi to care for his son and that authorities did not believe he was involved or knew of the plan in any way. That of course has not prevented speculation from others that he was involved. The thing about small towns is while they are all riddled with rumors there is often quite a bit of truth those rumors much of the time. There seems to be a lot of talk about not only the elder Beersdorf's being abusive to their own children (it appears there was at least one other son), but of Steven Jr. being abusive to Rose. But again, keep in mind that it “talk.” There does not seem to have been any more information since the convictions of Steven Sr. and Sylvia. You will hear Steven Sr's name again later in an upcoming blog though. He testified in another interesting case from Tennessee for a fellow inmate. Really, what else does he have to do with his time?