03-04-2011, 06:03 AM
Palm Beach Post
DELRAY BEACH — Clem Beauchamp walked to the end of his driveway on Tuesday night, passed his mailbox and headed for the church on the corner. As neighbors stood and stared, the troubled father fell to his knees and prayed. It was 11 p.m.
The scene was the first hint to the neighborhood that something wasn't right at the Beauchamp house, where just two weeks earlier four happy kids had tossed a football during a family barbecue.
In the days that followed, someone stuffed the bodies of two small children, a girl between 6 and 10 and a boy between 10 and 12, into plain black bags and dumped them in a canal on the city's south side. They were found bobbing in the water on Wednesday. A search for their killer on Thursday led detectives to Beauchamp's little tan house on Southwest Seventh Avenue.
By Thursday night, detectives had named the 34-year-old felon as a suspect in the slayings but declined to identify the victims, describe a cause of death or say whether they were children in Beauchamp's care. They hadn't arrested him.
Neighbors who ringed a police perimeter at Beauchamp's house on Thursday said they hadn't seen children around since the barbecue. It's been even longer -- weeks or months, depending on whom you asked - since they saw his former girlfriend, Felicia Brown. Police on Thursday still were searching for Brown.
It wasn't clear whether they had located Beauchamp's other girlfriend, and the mother of his children, Michelle Dent.
As investigators pursued leads in the case, his neighbors strained to know more about what was going on inside Beauchamp's home.
Court documents, state records, arrest affidavits and interviews paint a portrait of Beauchamp as perennially at war with his girlfriends - a violent, gun-toting drug-user who nevertheless fought hard for custody of his children and showered them with affection.
He shared the home with one girlfriend or another, but lately he always was surrounded by four kids. Staying with him were Jytra Allen, 6, and Jermaine McNeil, 10, children of his ex-girlfriend Brown, and his own kids, Keayana, 10, and Demetrius, 15. Police on Thursday wouldn't say whether all of the children were accounted for.
"He was very much into his kids. He loved his kids," said Beauchamp's friend and neighbor, Kenneth Marshall. Marshall said Beauchamp seemed like the kind of dad who could "work his kids like a drill sergeant" yet still clown around and play catch with them. He walked them to a bus stop near the corner of Southwest Seventh Avenue and Southwest First Street every school day.
During one hearing in a bitter, decade-long battle for custody of Keayana and Demetrius, Beauchamp described for a judge his thoughts on parenting.
"Being a mother means more than just having birthed the kids. Just like being a father means more than just making the kid. You actually got to be there for them. And I'm prepared to do all that," he said. "I'm there to make sure they do their homework. To give them proper guidance that they need to succeed in life."
"I've been nothing but a good father to my kids," he continued, describing the dirt bike and four-wheeler he had bought for them. "Every Christmas I'm there."
But despite his sense of responsibility, Beauchamp also was a man who stormed a fast-food chain with a pistol drawn, smoked pot and carried a robbery kit, according to arrest affidavits dating to 1995. Records show he was arrested five times in Florida on charges ranging from robbery to drug possession. He was convicted in 1996 of aggravated assault with a firearm.
On Thursday, as he was being questioned by Delray Beach police in the slayings, he was formally charged in U.S. District Court with possession of a silenced firearm, according to a complaint filed by an agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
In laying out the federal allegations, the ATF agent described finding, in the trunk of Brown's repossessed car a .22-caliber handgun fitted with a homemade silencer and a black bag filled with a green Halloween mask, ammunition, a black knit cap and a tube of crack.
The women in Beauchamp's life often were at odds, records show. Once, in 2008, Dent lured Brown out of Brown's Boynton Beach house using Beauchamp's daughter as bait. Dent put a knife to Brown's throat and threatened to kill her, according to an affidavit for Dent's arrest.
In recent weeks, Beauchamp split up with Brown, his girlfriend of four or five years, and Dent, whom he had been fighting for custody, moved back into his house, neighbors said. They said Brown disappeared after the breakup, but her kids remained with Beauchamp.
Then the kids, too, went away. During the past few days, Beauchamp had acted strangely, said Marshall and other neighbors. He cut his dreadlocks, he seemed pained, and he visited the church at night to pray on his knees in the grass.
Fearing the worst, Brown's sister, Margaret Gissome on Thursday made the short trip up Atlantic Avenue to the city police station, seeking to confirm the dead children were her niece and nephew.
Clutching photos of the missing children, she offered help but was turned away.
Police told her they were using dental records to identify the children, hinting at the poor condition of the bodies.
Seething, fearful and anxious at the same time, she returned to the neighborhood where detectives still were swarming and resumed her grim wait.
DELRAY BEACH — Clem Beauchamp walked to the end of his driveway on Tuesday night, passed his mailbox and headed for the church on the corner. As neighbors stood and stared, the troubled father fell to his knees and prayed. It was 11 p.m.
The scene was the first hint to the neighborhood that something wasn't right at the Beauchamp house, where just two weeks earlier four happy kids had tossed a football during a family barbecue.
In the days that followed, someone stuffed the bodies of two small children, a girl between 6 and 10 and a boy between 10 and 12, into plain black bags and dumped them in a canal on the city's south side. They were found bobbing in the water on Wednesday. A search for their killer on Thursday led detectives to Beauchamp's little tan house on Southwest Seventh Avenue.
By Thursday night, detectives had named the 34-year-old felon as a suspect in the slayings but declined to identify the victims, describe a cause of death or say whether they were children in Beauchamp's care. They hadn't arrested him.
Neighbors who ringed a police perimeter at Beauchamp's house on Thursday said they hadn't seen children around since the barbecue. It's been even longer -- weeks or months, depending on whom you asked - since they saw his former girlfriend, Felicia Brown. Police on Thursday still were searching for Brown.
It wasn't clear whether they had located Beauchamp's other girlfriend, and the mother of his children, Michelle Dent.
As investigators pursued leads in the case, his neighbors strained to know more about what was going on inside Beauchamp's home.
Court documents, state records, arrest affidavits and interviews paint a portrait of Beauchamp as perennially at war with his girlfriends - a violent, gun-toting drug-user who nevertheless fought hard for custody of his children and showered them with affection.
He shared the home with one girlfriend or another, but lately he always was surrounded by four kids. Staying with him were Jytra Allen, 6, and Jermaine McNeil, 10, children of his ex-girlfriend Brown, and his own kids, Keayana, 10, and Demetrius, 15. Police on Thursday wouldn't say whether all of the children were accounted for.
"He was very much into his kids. He loved his kids," said Beauchamp's friend and neighbor, Kenneth Marshall. Marshall said Beauchamp seemed like the kind of dad who could "work his kids like a drill sergeant" yet still clown around and play catch with them. He walked them to a bus stop near the corner of Southwest Seventh Avenue and Southwest First Street every school day.
During one hearing in a bitter, decade-long battle for custody of Keayana and Demetrius, Beauchamp described for a judge his thoughts on parenting.
"Being a mother means more than just having birthed the kids. Just like being a father means more than just making the kid. You actually got to be there for them. And I'm prepared to do all that," he said. "I'm there to make sure they do their homework. To give them proper guidance that they need to succeed in life."
"I've been nothing but a good father to my kids," he continued, describing the dirt bike and four-wheeler he had bought for them. "Every Christmas I'm there."
But despite his sense of responsibility, Beauchamp also was a man who stormed a fast-food chain with a pistol drawn, smoked pot and carried a robbery kit, according to arrest affidavits dating to 1995. Records show he was arrested five times in Florida on charges ranging from robbery to drug possession. He was convicted in 1996 of aggravated assault with a firearm.
On Thursday, as he was being questioned by Delray Beach police in the slayings, he was formally charged in U.S. District Court with possession of a silenced firearm, according to a complaint filed by an agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
In laying out the federal allegations, the ATF agent described finding, in the trunk of Brown's repossessed car a .22-caliber handgun fitted with a homemade silencer and a black bag filled with a green Halloween mask, ammunition, a black knit cap and a tube of crack.
The women in Beauchamp's life often were at odds, records show. Once, in 2008, Dent lured Brown out of Brown's Boynton Beach house using Beauchamp's daughter as bait. Dent put a knife to Brown's throat and threatened to kill her, according to an affidavit for Dent's arrest.
In recent weeks, Beauchamp split up with Brown, his girlfriend of four or five years, and Dent, whom he had been fighting for custody, moved back into his house, neighbors said. They said Brown disappeared after the breakup, but her kids remained with Beauchamp.
Then the kids, too, went away. During the past few days, Beauchamp had acted strangely, said Marshall and other neighbors. He cut his dreadlocks, he seemed pained, and he visited the church at night to pray on his knees in the grass.
Fearing the worst, Brown's sister, Margaret Gissome on Thursday made the short trip up Atlantic Avenue to the city police station, seeking to confirm the dead children were her niece and nephew.
Clutching photos of the missing children, she offered help but was turned away.
Police told her they were using dental records to identify the children, hinting at the poor condition of the bodies.
Seething, fearful and anxious at the same time, she returned to the neighborhood where detectives still were swarming and resumed her grim wait.