COLUMBIA, SC - Willa Beasley's daughters tried to protect their mother from her husband's beatings and the alcoholism that was jeopardizing their family's home and farm. They paid with their lives.
Court documents obtained after Alton Beasley's double murder-suicide this week in Aiken, South Carolina, paint a picture of a troubled man who alternately threatened and hit his wife of 39 years and pleaded with her to return to him.
The marriage of my parents Willa and Alton Beasley has been volatile all of my life," she wrote. "The bruises were noticed in April and never seemed to go away."
Willa Beasley left the couple's home in Aiken at the end of July and moved in with daughter Elizabeth Beasley in Townville.
By September, she started divorce proceedings and got an emergency restraining order against her husband, said her attorney, Thomas Dunaway. The daughters sold some of the family's land to pay the bills.
On Tuesday, the estranged couple were back in court for a divorce hearing. Dunaway said Alton Beasley pushed and shoved his wife and had "a verbal altercation" with the judge. Afterward, law officers had to escort Alton Beasley from the courthouse, the lawyer said.
Dunaway said he had a brief conversation with Willa Beasley and her daughters after the hearing. The three left to have lunch at the home of Alton Beasley's parents, William and Mabel.
Then he showed up.
Aiken County Coroner Tim Carlton said Alton Beasley shot Anna Loebsack twice, then wounded family friend Eddie Pruitt, whom Dunaway said hid Willa Beasley before her husband could shoot her.
Elizabeth Beasley, 47, tried to run away, but Alton Beasley followed her to a neighbor's yard. He shot her twice before killing himself, Carlton said.
Slain daughters tried to protect mom from abuse
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