Mom’s ‘unwavering’ quest to find son lands man in prison, Colorado officials say

A mother’s search for her missing son helped send the friend accused of killing him and hiding his body in a crawl space to prison, Colorado prosecutors said.

Kyla Dubberstein called Aurora police in 2023 seeking her son, Karl Beaman Jr., whom she had not heard from since 2022, KCNC reported.

A tip to a Facebook page dedicated to finding her son revealed that he had been killed by a friend and buried in an apartment crawl space, the District Attorney’s Office for the 18th Judicial District said in a news release..

The tipster said he was slain because his friend feared he might be a police informant in an upcoming criminal case, officials said.

Officers later found the 36-year-old man’s body in a “clandestine grave” under the floor of an apartment, McClatchy News previously reported.

Haskel Leroy Crawford, 40, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case, will serve 30 years in prison, prosecutors said. A judge issued the sentence in a plea deal April 17.

“He murdered my only child,” Dubberstein said at the hearing, according to the release. “We may never know all the details, but the defendant does. I hope it haunts him every day for the rest of his life like it does me.”

Casie Bock, who said she helped hide the body, earlier pleaded guilty to accessory to a crime and received a deferred sentence, prosecutors said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristina Hayden credited Dubberstein’s efforts to find her son in the case.

“If it weren’t for her unwavering support and devotion to finding her son, the defendant’s actions would not have been brought to light,” Hayden said in the release.

Crawford will serve the 30-year sentence after he completes a 16-year sentence in an unrelated robbery case, prosecutors said.

Aurora is about a 10-mile drive east from downtown Denver.