A Parker man was arrested last week after telling police he had killed his wife with a sledgehammer, according to an arrest affidavit.
James Beeker, 73, was arrested by the Parker Police Department on April 4, and charged with first-degree murder, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by The Denver Post from the 18th Judicial District courts on Wednesday.
His wife, Angel Beeker, died less than a month before her 79th birthday.
Officers responding to requests for a welfare check found James Beeker at about 2 p.m., sitting in his car at an intersection in his neighborhood, according to the affidavit. It states that Beeker, with blood on his clothes and chin, told the officers, “I think I killed her. I hit her in the head with a hammer.”
After an officer radioed that information to other units, Beeker said, “I guess I need to go to jail,” according to the affidavit. It reports that police forced entry through the couple’s front door in the 8400 block of Wheatgrass Circle, and found Angel Beeker in the kitchen with “obvious signs of trauma.” She was pronounced dead at the scene and an officer found a bloody sledgehammer in the garage.
James Beeker told a paramedic during a medical evaluation before he was brought to Parker Adventist Hospital that “he murdered his wife,” according to the affidavit. Detectives wrote that they heard him speaking “coherently” with medical staff, who cleared him, but Beeker started to “claim that he could not remember anything” when police questioned him.
Parker police previously responded to the Beekers’ house the day before the arrest when they received a 911 call from a friend. Angel Beeker asked her friend to call police because James Beeker was exhibiting “psychological issues” and trying to take unprescribed medication, according to the affidavit.
When officers arrived, all three individuals were gathered at the house, which police described as cluttered. James Beeker paced and “appeared disoriented,” according to the affidavit.
It reports that the friend said Beeker had a reserved bed at Pine Grove Crossing Assisted Living & Memory Care in Parker, but wouldn’t go, even though he’d been released from a psychiatric facility on April 2. The friend requested a mental health hold, so he could be moved to the memory care unit, according to the documents. Angel Beeker described her husband as “upset and mad with her” for pressing him to go.
South Metro Fire Rescue Paramedics evaluated James Beeker and couldn’t determine any immediate health concerns. Officials decided “he could not be placed on a mental health hold because there was no indication that he was an immediate threat to himself or others,” the affidavit states.
A Pine Grove Crossing employee told police that the facility needed additional documentation to house Beeker that day, and officers were told by the Department of Human Services that “there was nothing further that adult protective services could do,” the documents report.
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When the friend who had been at the home during the April 3 visit was contacted by officers after Angel Beeker was found dead, she described James Beeker as sometimes “controlling” of his wife and said he had “gotten worse and worse over the past few months,” the documents show.
She told police that after officers left the scene April 3, Angel Beeker decided to move James Beeker to the memory care facility. The friend could not reach her after that point, the affidavit states.
James Beeker — a retired U.S. Postal Service worker, according to his LinkedIn page — is in custody at the Douglas County Detention Facility. He is due in court on April 29, said Eric Ross, spokesperson for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.