New Orleans police say a man who refused to comply with their investigation into a 9th Ward death has been arrested.
An obstruction of justice of a death investigation warrant was issued and executed for 34-year-old Benjamin Beale at the home where a dismembered body was found.
Beale has not been charged with murder in the case.
Neighbors along Pauline Street in the 9th Ward said they were shocked by what unfolded in the area Tuesday. NOPD and SWAT teams were in the area for hours at a home.
NOPD police sources confirm with WDSU that the body of a woman who had been missing since November was found inside of a bus next to a home in the 2200 block of Pauline Street.
Police say the body was severely dismembered. NOPD sources said her head had been chopped off, and many of her body parts were wrapped in plastic. They were found in the freezer of the bus.
...
Kelley Kirkpatrick (aka Benjamin Beale, his real name; also aliased Jake Bake) is the currently accused murderer of Julia Dardar, the estranged wife of Micah Dardar, in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. Her brutally dismembered body was discovered stuffed into freezer inside one of two busses owned by Kirkpatrick on January 11, 2022. The motive for the murder is currently unknown.
For the purpose of this page, I will be using Beale when quoting news articles; and Kirkpatrick when referring to the killer himself.
Detectives found a woman’s headless torso stuffed in a freezer and a hidden power saw with bits of flesh on its blade Tuesday (Jan. 11) when they searched a Ninth Ward man’s residence as part of an investigation into a woman’s disappearance, New Orleans police said in court documents filed Wednesday.
The gruesome details were contained in an arrest warrant affidavit for 34-year-old Benjamin Beale, who was booked with obstruction of justice in a death investigation and several drug and weapons charges after refusing to answer questions about the dismembered corpse during an interview at police headquarters.
Dardar was reported missing Dec. 23 by her estranged husband, who told police she had addiction and mental health issues and had moved in with Beale in the Florida neighborhood.
Beale has not been charged with a homicide or with any crime related to the disappearance of 36-year-old Julia Dardar. But the court documents confirm what Dardar’s family members told WVUE-Fox 8: That the NOPD executed a search warrant of Beale’s property in the 2300 block of Pauline Street in hopes of finding clues about the missing woman who recently lived there with Beale.
[...]
Beale told an NOPD officer who visited the house that he had not seen the woman since Dec. 16, and that he believed she was suicidal, because she had moved out without taking her belongings or car. It was then that Beale suggested that he should report the woman as missing, the affidavit said.
Beale agreed to meet with police again Jan. 5, and told them this time that he had not spoken to Julia Dardar since Dec. 12. He said they had been in the process of ending their co-habitation “due to her drug habits,” and suggested that she might have committed suicide or overdosed in a part of the abandoned U.S. Naval Support station known to street drug users as “The End of the World.” Beale told detectives he had not reported the woman as missing sooner because he had lost his cellphone and had no way to contact police.
Six days later, on Tuesday, detectives executed a search warrant to seek clues to Dardar’s disappearance at Beale’s property. A padlocked bus sitting in the back yard with extension cords providing power to its interior drew their attention, the court document said.
The detectives entered the bus and found the power cords providing electricity to a deep freezer placed aboard the bus.
“Upon opening the lid of the freezer, investigators observed the headless torso of what appeared to be an adult human female,” the affidavit said. “A deep linear cut was visible along the left shoulder/upper arm area, which appeared to have been inflicted post-mortem.”
The court document said detectives also found nearby a Coleman ice chest containing a reciprocating saw, “which appeared to have bits of flesh and fluid on the blade surface. A plastic face shield, goggles and additional garbage bags were also located in close proximity to the freezer.”
Police also said in the affidavit that they discovered a makeshift methamphetamine lab in Beale’s kitchen, and a safe in the closet of a bedroom in which was locked a purse, a wallet “and the ID and credit cards belonging to the missing person.”
Turns out, this guy had TWO busses in his possession. This is the one that likely actually held the body. Kirkpatrick acquired this one in 2017.
A magistrate court commissioner increased bail to $1.4 million Saturday for Benjamin Beale, accused of beating and strangling Julia Dardar, dismembering her body and stuffing the parts in a freezer inside a bus at their shared New Orleans house.
Beale was booked with second-degree murder late Friday, after an autopsy determined that Dardar has been beaten and strangled. The 36-year-old mother of two teenaged daughters split with her husband and moved in with Beale in 2021. Her husband reported her missing Dec. 23, three days after a friend said he saw Beale driving her car without her.
Police went to question Beale twice over the coming days. They said Beale told them Dardar had been the process of moving out of the house, and that she might have taken her own life or overdosed on illegal substances.
Officers say they doubted the story, so they obtained a search warrant and returned Tuesday at midday to Beale's property in the 2300 block of Pauline Street, in the Florida neighborhood. Inside a deep freezer, in a bus that was parked in the backyard, they found a woman’s headless torso, a head, hands and other body parts. The freezer was connected to the house's electricity. Nearby was a power saw, goggles, plastic garbage bags and a face shield.
Police then booked Beale, 34, who also is also known as Kelley Kirkpatrick, with obstruction of justice and running a methamphetamine laboratory at the house. Investigators said they found ingredients and equipment used to produce the highly addictive drug.
Authorities couldn’t immediately identify the corpse or determine the cause of death, however, because the remains had to thaw. By Friday that had happened, and they confirmed it was Dardar, as they had suspected all along.
[...]
Dardar’s survivors include two daughters, ages 13 and 17. Loved ones remembered the Slidell resident as an artistic person who loved working on cars as a mechanic and doting on her girls, before she developed a meth addiction that precipitated a split from her husband, among other things.
One of the things over which Dardar and Beale reportedly bonded was their affinity for Burning Man, the free-form art and music festival held annually in the Nevada desert. Last year, they wrote online that they went to California together to collect a bus that a fellow "burner" had left to Beale in a will. Dardar helped fix the bus before the pair returned to New Orleans some time after Hurricane Ida struck Aug. 29, according to neighbors and some of her writings online.
Late Friday, Dardar’s estranged husband, in a Facebook post, told Beale and another person to “burn in hell.”
“No matter who did it,” the post read, “I hold you two assholes responsible … in leading her down this path and not stopping it.”
A woman from Baton Rouge took to TikTok to describe a chilling encounter with Benjamin Beale, a NOLA man who is now in jail after police discovered mutilated human remains in his freezer.
Mia Holden says she met Beale at the Republic nightclub in 2017. He introduced himself as "Jakey Poo" and offered her MDMA.
"From first meeting him he was very confident and charismatic and chill and very effeminate so that brought our guard down," Holden said. "He just reminded me of a lot of people I would already hang out with."
As the night went on, Holden and her friend stuck with Beale, eventually ending up partying inside a bus on his property. Holden says she went outside and saw what appeared to be a shallow grave in his yard.
"It just looked like a grave. So we immediately started joking," Holden said. "I turned around and looked at this guy and was like, 'Are you gonna kill us? Are you a serial killer?'"
After that night, she never heard from him again. When she saw reports of his arrest, and the grim details surrounding it, she was shocked and thankful to have made it out of his bus alive that night.
"It just made me wonder how many other times I’ve narrowly escaped death," Holden said.
Micah Dardar was emotional Wednesday as he thought about his wife, Julia, and how he felt she would want to be remembered.
"She would want to be remembered as a good mother. She tried her best. We had our ups and downs but when she was healthy and especially before this, we worked really hard," Dadar said.
Micah Dardar reported his wife Julia missing in December. He and their two daughters had a feeling something was wrong.
Weeks later, the 36-year-old was named the victim in an unclassified death in the 9th Ward along Pauline Street, according to NOPD documents.
"I knew she was going down a bad road. But this gruesome way that this ended. It is beyond belief," Micah Dardar said.
[...]
"There is little doubt in my mind. She had been off the grid completely from about the time this would have occurred. She did not even contact the kids for Christmas, which I believe even in her state of mind, she would have," Micah said.
Micah Dardar said his wife was addicted to crystal meth. She had started to live with Benjamin Beale, who owns the home, months before she died.
Beale has since been arrested on several charges, including weapons and drug charges in the case. So far, no charges for Julia Dardar's death.
"I believe he is one of the people responsible. But I believe there is a larger network of people that may have had direct or indirect involvement with the situation, " Micah Dardar said.
"She fell down a downward spiral. We were trying since June to get people to listen and help," said Cheska Eymard, a friend of Julia and Micah Dardar.
Meanwhile, other family and friends of Julia said they were also devastated. The mom was known for being caring and creative with a love for working on cars as a mechanic.
But Micah Dardar said drug addiction was a soft spot that ultimately broke up the family.
"This is a big gap, emptiness in our lives. Because we always thought she would get better and come back," he said.
My name is Kelley Kirkpatrick, I am a 7 year resident of New Orleans, LA, where I came to love deeply my first and most influential friend in the city (I actually met first at the GSR in Reno 2014), roommate, employer, piloting mentor, and greatest artistic and stylistic inspiration, James Oroc. I was blessed to inherit Roc’s school bus, he willed to me only one month prior to departure from this plane.
Synchronistically, I was able to locate, travel to, and commune with the burn/adventure-mo-bile during the one-year-anniversary of my chosen father’s disappearance and death. Also interestingly in association with a destructive hurricane affecting Nola at the time of Burning Man, as Roc’s experience in 2005 being on Playa during Katrina, shaped his future via The Lady Sassafras’s origins.
I have been squatting in the bus on the property it has been stored the last eight years for two weeks now, and have little in terms of on site amenities. When I arrived I was disheartened to discover that vandals had stolen both marine batteries, the big side mirrors, the generator, and God only knows what else. In addition, all the tires were very low on pressure, and both of the outer back wheels were completely flat, and wasted due to being compressed for so long in this climate. Cracked beyond repair or use. I have been hard at work every day here, cleaning and organizing the infrastructure onboard, and problem solving and manifesting the many obstacles restricting the bus’s roadworthiness.
Subsequently, it has been much more involved than I anticipated to receive and remove the bus from the property, where it’s welcome has sadly expired. In an uncomfortable turn of events and discoveries, it appears that the property owners themselves may likely be responsible for some of the rape and pillage of this priceless gem, that has been making yearly voyages to Black Rock City since around 2004. They are busy selling many other tenants belongings after the absence of payments on their storage fees, and I believe already began the process on Roc’s bus parts and valuable belongings. Kenny had cut the lock off the back and replaced it with a very insecure lock of his own, in addition to many other clues that there has been shady internal affairs at play.
I traveled to the West coast on a hunch, and brought many of my most treasured belongings and implements with a sickening feeling that I may be gone a long time and may never see my home again. Sure enough hurricane Ida blows through town on a historically ominous day of 2005, and I am grateful my home is still standing, with only two trees on top of it, and that my mother’s home and life are alright.
Now the challenging understanding and reality that rather than keep the bus on the West coast, as originally planned, I must return to New Orleans in it, and utilize it there during this tumultuous time of tribulations, as we unite as a mutual aid centric community and rebuild, as well as build each other up.
I have already gone all in to make this happen (including pawning my two most precious guitars), and am so close yet so far. It became clear today I have little other options than to seek your support. Please share and donate, trusting that this venture will support many struggling New Orleans artists and light workers, cultivate peak experiences at transformational festivals, and support me in my intentions of carrying forward the legacy of our Beloved James Oroc through the burning man community, free flight community, and visionary arts community.
Funds I am expecting and have incurred thus far include:
Every little bit helps and is appreciated from the depths of my being. There is an urgency to this mission, as it is essential to complete the long journey home ASAP. Please also reach out if you have any means of supporting this mission in non-financial ways, such as places to park along the route home, advise, or hurricane relief resources upon return.
***DONATE & SHARE***
All Love,
~~~Kelley Kirkpatrick~~~
Updates: September 15, 2021
Great news, we are on the move and running smoothly. Was very fortunate to find a good deal on tires and changed them myself (with the help of my friends) for the first time. Wow, what a job. Feeling like a big rig tire expert!
After a few successful excursions and a ton of hard work and dusty weeks, excited to put some finishing mechanical touches on it, including replacing the belts, gear oil in differentials, and one more master reorganization.
Getting dialed in, and more and more comfortable behind the wheel. Allowing each day to guide the process, trusting my path. With diesel prices as they are, I am now reevaluating the potential necessity and value to securing long term storage within west coast. Been saving receipts to have transparent expenditures records, as well as an updated budget showcasing money saved being hard working and thrifty on the tires.
Still rolling on a lot of trust and uncertain how to make all the ends meet, please catalyze my ability to revitalize, secure, and store this incredible dream manifesting platform. There are many available pathways to all manifestations, please don’t hesitate to reach out with non monetary offerings, care packages with a slice of your spirit, any advise, encouragement, or ideas may give me the boost of life force energy to meet the days demands.
Donate, share, love, collaborate
Interested to see what goes into operating a manual schoolie?! join me and co-create some adventure! Harvesting toad venom may just get checked off the ol bucket list hey. So many ideas and ideals, one bridge at a time.
Journalist, photographer, and artist James Oroc was born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa. Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe, his work appearing in magazines, films, and on MTV Sports. He has been a member of the Burning Man community since 1999, and he is also involved in the documentation and advancement of “Alternative Culture.” Oroc resides in the Dominican Republic.
Buying cannabis from a revolutionary poet in Guatemala. A visit by a midnight gunman in New Orleans. Three travelers left disabled and tripping at night in the crack ghettos of St Louis. A chance encounter with a Hell's Angel in Copenhagen. Being forced to sell hashish on the streets of Paris. An ancient Rastafarian's feud in Belize. Falling into the hands of the drug police in Colombia. A confrontation with the doormen at an Acid Test. A mushroom trip gone badly wrong in Thailand. 'Under The Influence', the long-rumored collection of short-fiction by contemporary psychedelic culture's bravest and most original writer, James Oroc, mines the underground of Argotia–the unvarnished world of pimps, pushers, drug-smugglers and users–with twenty dark and often hilarious tales (and a dozen poems) of Psychedelic Noir.
James Oroc defines the borders of 21st-century psychedelic culture through the influence of its three main architects-- chemist Alexander Shulgin, mycologist Terence McKenna, and visionary artist Alex Grey--before illustrating a number of facets of this “Second Psychedelic Revolution,” including the use of microdosing in extreme sports, the tech-savvy psychedelic community that has arisen around transformational festivals, and the relationship between the ego, entheogens, and toxicity. This volume also presents for the first time a “History of Visionary Art” that explains its importance to the emergence of visionary culture.
In Tryptamine Palace, James Oroc shares his personal experiences with 5-MeO-DMT, which led to a complete transformation of his understanding of Himself and of the very fabric of reality. Driven to comprehend the transformational properties of this substance, Oroc combined extensive studies of physics and philosophy with the epiphanies he gained from his time at Burning Man and his travels in India. He discovered that ingesting tryptamines unlocked a fundamental human capacity for higher knowledge through direct contact with the zero-point field of modern physics, known to the ancients as the Akashic field. In the quantum world of nonlocal interactions, the line between the physical and the mental dissolves. 5-MeO-DMT, Oroc argues, can act as a means to awaken the remarkable capacities of the human soul as well as restore experiential mystical spirituality to Western civilization.
* - Fairchild East: So the police aren't looking for you Anymore boo? We were all worried when we saw that!
* - Kelley Kirkpatrick: Micah Dardar and his delusional stalker harasser mania is the only thing you should be worried about. Fuck the police
* - Fairchild East: I'm just glad you're okay.
* - Ma Ryah: won't be for long. Gonna get what he deserves. murderer
* - Kelly Ann: Kelley Kirkpatrick sick f*ck!!!! Do that to a woman with young children?!?! You’re a mental case that needs to be decapitated! Your life is over! Kiss it goodbye [...] and don’t take the coward way out and kill yourself! J deserves justice and so do her innocent children who will never be the same! This is one person I don’t mind paying my hard earned tax dollars on keeping him in a 2ft x 2ft kennel for the rest of his life
* - Chelle Belle: Ughhhh jail is to good for you
* - Shannon Altmeyer: I agree. A whole dismembered body in that bus. I wonder what people think of him now.
* - Anne Evans: I believe the previous bus owner died tragically in a paraglider accident. (James Oroc: [Link]/[[Archive])
* - Bradley Gunnuscio: yes a good friend of mine, honorable, nice, and should not even be mentioned in this horrible tragedy.. He has nothing to do with this
...
* - Morgan Alsbrook: I believe she overdosed, and since he was running a meth lab, and probably under drug psychosis, he opted to try to hide the body in a fashion that he quite obviously has been idolizing, because calling the cops to report an OD would essentially get him arrested [...] Which does beg the question, why he was so willing to let the cops search the property, knowing that he was running a lab, but also at that point they had a warrent right? Not much you can do but stand back and watch his life go
* - Chelle Belle: Idk morgan, the second cut he cut her body up and put her in a freezer, his credibility is gone.
* - Cheska Eymard: I believe they got into an altercation under drug psychosis and he killed her the neighbors heard a woman screaming for her life a few weeks ago but didnt pay no mind to it
...
* - Chelle Belle: I'm hearing he may have something to do with the bus owners disappearance also...
* - Shannon Altmeyer: I heard that as well
* - Bradley Gunnuscio: please everyone stop stop spreading this rumor, the person missing was a good friend and Kelly had nothing to do with that..
* - Shannon Altmeyer: She isnt missing anymore. She was dismembered and found in a freezer in his bus. Facts. [...] She had kids. They are left suffering.
* - Chelle Belle: Mighty bold of you sir... your friend is going to prison for murder...
* - Darneisha Brown: you do know she was found dismembered in HIS bus!
* - Chelsie Rasmussen: Chelle Belle and Darneisha Brown Bradley was talking about The previous bus owner not the woman..
...
* - Baron LeBourgeois: Imagine a girl killing herself from a drug overdose and a bunch of suckers on the internet falling for misguided narrative pushed HARD by corrupt local media. Oh well, at least he seemed to live life to it's fullest while allowed to. Poor guy was super indoctrinated.
* - Jennifer DuRousseau: wowww talk about POS. I don’t care what she took or what went on he still chopped her body up and stored her in a freezer like she was nothing! You’re just as sick
* - Baron LeBourgeois: Sure thing, hun. Thanks for sharing. Penalty of Desecration of a Dead Body: Upon conviction, the violator of any provision of this section shall be guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for a term not more than seven (7) years, by a fine not exceeding Eight Thousand Dollars ($8,000.00), or by both such fine and imprisonment.
* - Jennifer DuRousseau: Why are you simping for HIM? ask your self that!!!
* - Baron LeBourgeois: Counter signaling is a hobby of mine. I have a lot of experience dealing with drug addicts while working in a rehab that essentially seemed to be the premise for the movie Body Brokers. I find it extremely likely that she trafficked herself for money, ask Micah for copies of her rehab treatment bills. He blocked me. People like her are flown around the country meeting guys like this in detox, php, iop and halfway houses generating between 1-2 million dollars a year in fraudulent insurance billings (per client, per establishment). Any more questions, woman?
* - Brian Ershaw: Baron LeBourgeois - you are demented.
* - Laura Ashlee Webb: Clearly he has a personal interest in this guy. Probably one of his booty buddies from the cult. Baron is so obsessed he’s posting on his personal page about the victim’s family. I hope someone tags the detective in this post.
* - Jennifer DuRousseau: Baron LeBourgeois Clearly you have issues and no need to write books. I’m not reading them for one and for two I DONT CARE ABOUT HER PAST HE HAD NO RIGHT TO CHOP HER UP!!! You’re a sick f**k
* - Laura Ashlee Webb: Baron LeBourgeois Sounds like you were either there and are an accomplice or maybe you were sleeping with him too for meth and trying to cover for him
* - Baron LeBourgeois: Haha, y'all are ridiculous. A dead body isn't a person. If he didn't kill her, all he did was desecrate a body. Laura, please stop fantasizing about me that's really weird.
...
* - Magen Hearn: She was liking his posts up until December though so she must've still been alive atleast to that point Lol I might have gotten too investigative with it today. .. I went down a whole rabbit hole
* - Shannon Altmeyer: December is the last time her daughters heard from her.
* - Jimmy Haithcock: the police said that he had her phone he mite have been liking his own post from her phone
* - Christopher Lesley: but they reported her as missing in November
* - Shannon Altmeyer: Yes they did, and again December 23.
* - Cheska Eymard: they reported her missing in November then the kids spoke with her after the welfare check and the last time they spoke to her was December 9 she called her daughter after that her friend heard from her dec12 then on dec20 her husband saw Benjamin beale driving her car around and asked him where was she he said she dissapeared her husband called for a welfare check again then on dec 23 he filed a missing person then on jan 5 Benjamin beale contacted her husband and told him to come get her car and belongings because he feared the worse for julia that he still hadn't heard from her so her husband picked up her car and drove it straight to nopd like the detectives instructed
* - Chasity Travis: He told the police he lost his phone. I bet that’s why he didn’t delete all of this. He made a different account [...] He probably ‘lost’ it on his trip to Texas …btw check out the tape on cooler
* - Beth Guinta: she’s up in there isn’t she. Damn
...
* - Shannon Altmeyer: They confirmed that the mutilated body is indeed Julia Dardar. [...] He's also been charged with 2nd degree murder. She was beaten and strangled and THEN mutilated. I guess there goes the "she did it to herself" theories. There is only one penalty for 2nd degree murder in Louisiana.
* - Micah Dardar: The only thing good that can come out of this is that he will never be able to hurt anyone again. I want to thank the New Orleans Police Department and volunteer K9 search team for bringing this domestic terrorist's reign to an end and getting justice for our families and our children.
* - Shannon Altmeyer: I guess it will take a little more investigation for a murder charge?
* - Micah Dardar: they'll probably use it as a bargaining point for life instead of the death penalty, but either way, justice will be served.
* - Shannon Altmeyer: I hope the rest of his life is spent in a cage.
* - Micah Dardar: I would prefer for me and my family to watch the life leave his eyes from behind the glass, but that would be enough, I guess. This is what the death penalty is made for, though.
* - Shannon Altmeyer: His "friends" are actually defending this dude. I stood up for you and your kids. Those people are nuts.
* - Micah Dardar: Into the mind of a psychopathic murderer consumed by meth and desperately trying to manipulate impenetrable targets (graphic language, recorded summer 2021 before the west coast expedition)...
* - McCalla Ann Saturnweb: Kelley Kirkpatrick admitted to sexually harassing people and is proud of it. Please don't let this predator into the community anymore [...] This some entitled white boi shit and honestly it's disgusting. Kelley, stop sexually harassing women and calling yourself a gangster for it and maybe I'll take ya seriously next time. Your ass has been called out in public forum more than once.
* - Kelley Kirkpatrick: I sexually harass everyone, I'm not prejudice in my attractions. Call me a pervert, I'll take it. Pretty sure I've never harassed you tho hey
...
* - Katie Brown: I've honestly never had a good vibe from them for this exact reason. Which is why I never got close with them. They sure have tried with me. And barely respected my boundaries.
* - Aleesha Gambrell: They threatened to spit in my face and drop kick me...
* - Nolan Beaver: And that time they dosed a bunch of folx at Engulf...
* - Lorien Phoenix Von Brontide: Won't go into details here but I've had a negative experience with this person. Glad to know it's not just my perception.
* - Lauren E. Lee: Wow. Good to know. Not on my list anymore. Tho I think I barely knew him to begin with.
* - Sarah House: Once years ago we were out on a cart roll through the quarter. We surrounded a pedicab with tourists in the back. Kelley started licking one of them while she screamed "STOP STOP". She was pinned in the back and squirming to get away. Kelley kept going. I saw this happening, came over, and yelled at them to stop. This was assault. ...
* - Mariensus Martenius Maurstad: I'm not really sure why I didn't unfriend this person when they feigned calm while I was attempting to be a good buddy and keep them from escalating a tense situation to actual violence. They did escalate to violence the minute I turned around and then there I sat outside of a bar with a face full of mace. I have a distaste for public airing of grievances, but this is a particularly egregious case.
...
* - Kelley Kirkpatrick: I am an erotic being. A pansexual Scorpio. I am not a predator, nor a rapist. Your opinions of my character are of little consequence to me, I could care less about my reputation. I know who I am and I am beloved and supported by a multitude of communities I serve. I show up in more ways in more people's lives than you would believe. Happy to trim the fat out of my life, kindly have nothing to do with me and talk all the shit you please.
ive known this "guy" for awhile now.. used to go by Jake...then he turned into kelley...changed his pronouns and wanted to mutilate his genitals...was going to kill himself...his parents wanted him committed to a mental institute and they had him in one for a while but then he got married to avoid.. a lot of woke libs encouraged his insanity.
he was fairly normal ~5 years ago...then just steadily lost his mind.
[...]
we did acro yoga together...
but hes around my age and nola isnt big so if youre social youre going to run into pretty much everyone eventually
[...]
yea he was an outgoing sociable guy but this was like peak 2017-2018 nola? he didnt have any face tats then.
he lost it about 4 years ago. started believing he was smarter than elon musk; would write stories about he was going to contact elon and give him guidance and needed someone to put them in touch. lol
just a downward spiral. never thought he would be violent towards another person though
On Monday, a day before police arrested Benjamin Beale after finding a severed torso in a school bus on his property, Beale invited a neighbor over for a visit.
Beale “had nice artwork, abstract things, old parts, lots of it hanging in his house,” said Mike Major, who lives across the street.
“He was walking me around that bus, talking about doing upgrades. He was looking to the future, talking about how he needs to go to rehab. That was his next move.”
Major said he told Beale on that visit that he’d recently seen Julia Dardar, the woman police now believe was the beheaded victim, walking down the block.
“He’s like, ‘You didn’t. She’s been missing. Unless you saw a ghost, bro,’” Major recounted.
Major said he told police the same thing when detectives first showed up on the block last Friday.
“I wasn’t the only one who saw her. That’s what kind of sickens me,” Major said, standing in his backyard on Wednesday. “She looked skinny as f**k.”
Major and other neighbors said Beale went by a different name: Kelley Kirkpatrick. Now they’re getting an idea that Beale concealed a lot more.
[...]
Police describe Beale as male, but acquaintances say Beale preferred the non-binary pronoun "they."
Beale already faced questions from police last week over Dardar's disappearance, telling an investigator she may have taken her own life or overdosed on illegal substances, according to the police records.
Dardar’s estranged husband went to police on Dec. 23 and reported her missing, saying she had left him and moved in with Beale.
Neighbors said Beale had only lived in the house for about a year. Dardar arrived more recently and lived in the school bus near the rear of the property, straddling an empty lot, said Tracy Pearson, who lives next door.
“She was a nice girl, always tried to work on the house,” Pearson said.
Pearson said Beale and Dardar often walked their small black mixed-breed dogs together in a neighborhood now specked with blue roof tarps from Hurricane Ida damage.
Signs reading “no trespassing,” “keep out” and “camera in use” adorn the front yard of the two-story house, which is protected by a makeshift fence of metal and loose stacks of cinderblock. Beale erected it, neighbors said.
Beale “just wanted to keep people out,” Pearson said.
Beale spun fire, was into tooth gems and yoga and played loud rave-style drum music, neighbors said.
“The only thing I heard was a lot of funny music,” said another neighbor across the street who declined to be identified. “Boom, boom, boom. No real music.”
Another school bus was parked Wednesday on the other side of Beale’s house. Pearson said Beale and Dardar went on a trip to California last year to pick it up.
“She went out there to help him,” Pearson said.
Dardar returned from the trip after Hurricane Ida and Beale followed later, she said, adding that she last saw Dardar a few weeks ago.
Though police stopped short of calling it a murder, Major said he suspects the invitation over to the house last weekend was less than neighborly.
“Now I know he was using me as a tool,” Major said. “He wanted an alibi.”
I'm not saying that he's guilty, I'm just saying that Benjamin Beale aka Kelley Kirkpatrick appears to be quite proficient with a knife.
