A tornado hits
The citizens of Parkersburg, Iowa (population: 1,900), had their lives turned upside down by a May 25, 2008, tornado that left a deadly gash across their quiet leafy streets. The EF-5 tornado (the most powerful designation on the Enhanced Fujita Scale for rating tornadoes) touched down in Parkersburg, leaving a line of destruction three-quarters of a mile across. Six Parkersburg residents were killed, over 200 houses were destroyed and, worst of all for a town that loves high school football, Aplington-Parkersburg High School (known to locals as A-P) was leveled and its pristine football field ripped to shreds. Coach Ed Thomas emerged from his cellar to find the rest of his home gone and immediately spearheaded the drive to rebuild both the field and the town.
To the people of Parkersburg, 58-year-old Ed Thomas was more than a football coach: he was the soul of the town. The man everyone referred to as “Coach” had been coaching A-P football since 1975, amassing a lifetime win-loss record of 292-84. Despite the school’s relatively small size (approximately 250 students), Thomas built a football juggernaut that went to the state playoffs 19 times — twice winning the state 1-A championship (1993 & 2001) — and sent several players to major colleges and beyond. In the 2009 season, A-P boasted four players in the NFL: Green Bay’s Aaron Kampman, Jacksonville’s Brad Meester, Detroit’s Jared DeVries and Denver’s Casey Wiegmann. Nominated by his former players, Thomas was named the NFL high school coach of the year in 2005.
But Thomas was renowned for more than his gridiron success, he was a tireless worker for the high-school. He served as athletic director, taught social studies and driver’s education — and always mowed the football field himself, with meticulous care. Around town, folks referred to A-P’s field as the “Sacred Acre.” And in restoring the field to its former glory, Ed Thomas garnered notice on national television and in major newspapers like The New York Times. When the newly-christened Ed Thomas Field opened for the 2008 football season, ESPN broadcast the A-P Falcons’ game live.
It was a great success for Thomas and the town of Parkersburg. Afterward, the cameras left and the townspeople went back to their everyday lives, thinking their town had recovered and their world had returned to normal.
From that moment of triumph before a nationwide audience, though, the community would be brought to its knees once more by a troubled young man who had lived some of the greatest moments of his life in an A-P jersey. Mark Becker, a 24-year-old alumnus who had been a star linebacker and offensive guard under Coach Thomas, had struggled with mental problems since his 2004 high school graduation. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental disorders, Becker began dabbling with drugs and alcohol. His erratic self-medication led him in and out of college and into increasing trouble with the law.
After his high-school graduation, Becker enrolled at nearby Wartburg College where he played football and declared a major in business administration. He withdrew after one semester. In 2006, Becker gave college another try, enrolling at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo. Again, he only lasted a semester.
As his academic record became increasingly spotty, his police record became longer and longer. In January 2005, Becker was convicted of OWI (Operating While under the Influence). On January 19, 2009, Becker was pulled over by a Black Hawk County deputy for driving with a burned-out headlight — the officer found a glass pipe and a digital scale in the car. Becker admitted to using meth, and was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia. He escaped with only a fine.
Becker had a few more serious charges that hinted at a propensity for violence. On November 18, 2008, he was arrested for assault causing bodily injury for punching a friend’s neighbor in a dispute between the two other men. Becker served 4 days of a 90-day sentence. A few weeks later, on December 9, 2008, Becker picked up a 4th degree criminal mischief charge for kicking in an apartment door. Again, it was after a dispute between a friend of Becker’s and another person. The man with Becker was charged with criminal mischief and possession of meth. Again, Becker served 4 days of a 90-day sentence — the rest was suspended.
On the night of June 20, 2009, Dwight Rogers, who had never met Mark Becker, but whose son had been a classmate, called 911 to report that Becker had smashed the windows and doors of Rogers’ home with a baseball bat, and tried to break down the garage door with his car. With police sirens audible, Becker sped away leading authorities on a high-speed car chase that ended when Becker hit a deer at 90 mph.
Becker’s explanation to police was bizarre. Dwight Rogers, he said, had been trying to hypnotize him since preschool with the use of a teddy bear. After booking, Butler County Sheriff’s deputies transported Becker to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo for examination early on June 21. Becker was placed in the hospital on a 48-hour hold. Psychiatrists there diagnosed him with paranoid-type schizophrenia and prescribed Lorazepam and Geodon to treat his hallucinations.
On June 23, Becker’s 48-hour hold was up. His delusions seemed to have ebbed, and psychiatrists deemed him fit for release. Accordingly, hospital officials called Becker’s case worker at Cedar Valley Community Services. Coordinator Adam Taylor checked Becker out of Covenant and let him into the Waterloo apartment the agency had rented for him. Although he had been administered drugs at Covenant, Becker did not have any medication with him when he left. Taylor planned to take Becker to the pharmacy first thing the next morning.
Later that evening, Becker called his parents, Dave and Joan, at their home in Parkersburg and asked them to pick him up at a Burger King in Waterloo because he was locked out of his apartment. Becker’s car had been totaled in the accident and his keys were still in police custody. His parents tried to contact Adam Taylor immediately to gauge his reaction to the request (Taylor had earlier told them that contact with his parents could aggravate Becker’s schizophrenic episodes), but they couldn’t get in touch with him. Rather than leave their son to wander the streets of Waterloo, the Beckers drove to fetch him.
They had seen many manic episodes in the past, but Becker’s behavior that night struck his parents as normal, and they took him back to their home for the night. A message on their answering machine said their son’s prescriptions were filled and ready to be picked up. Joan Becker made a mental note to get the medication the next day.
Surely, a few more hours without medication wouldn’t make too much difference?
Mark Becker woke his father up at 4:30 am to have coffee together. Dave Becker worked as Butler County Equipment Superintendent of Secondary Roads (the department that maintained county roads) and kept early hours so it wasn’t unusual for him to be up at that time. Joan, a software instructor at Tyler Technologies, got up soon after and joined them. Breakfast passed without incident and Mark seemed happier than he had in a while. Both Joan and Dave left for work. Mark’s younger brother, Scott, preparing for his senior year as an offensive lineman on the A-P football team, was already at the high school for summer weight-lifting. Dave had planned to return shortly, right after he gave his employees their orders for the day, and had made a point of taking the keys to the Becker family’s extra car, a blue Chevy Lumina, so Mark could not drive off.
No one can tell for certain when or why Mark Becker decided he had to confront his former coach. Ed Thomas had been the focus of previous violent hallucinations in which Becker believed Thomas was sexually assaulting him. He had even defaced a poster of Ed Thomas and the four A-P grads now playing in the NFL that hung in the Becker home. Whatever the motive (or lack thereof), Becker began taking steps toward the goal as soon as his parents left the house. Becker broke into his father’s gun closet with a pair of antlers he found the basement.
Becker loaded a .22 revolver and shot a few practice rounds in the front and backyard of the Becker home. He fired a test shot at a birdhouse and missed. Becker later told police this led him to conclude he would have to shoot Thomas at close range.
Dressed in grey-blue coveralls with a freshly-reloaded gun, Becker found a spare set of keys to the Chevy Lumina and drove off to find Ed Thomas.
Perhaps thinking that Ed Thomas had temporarily moved to Aplington due to tornado damage, Becker’s first stop was at the home of Janice Stahl. Stahl recalled a young man asking if Ed Thomas lived in the home. No, Stahl told him, and Becker left.
Becker’s next encounter was with Brian Buseman, another social studies teacher in the district, who was jogging when Becker pulled up next to him on the road. Becker asked Buseman if he knew where Coach Thomas was. Thinking nothing unusual as people often looked for Thomas to help with tornado relief work, Buseman offered that he might be teaching driver’s ed at the elementary school.
A-P Elementary was all but deserted on this summer morning. Becker found custodian Susan Myers in the cafeteria kitchen. She sent him to another custodian Craig Kalkwarf, who was polishing hallway floors. Becker would later tell police that he stopped back at his car to stash his gun before going to find Kalkwarf.
Becker found Kalkwarf in a hallway and asked him about Thomas’ whereabouts. Kalkwarf had known Mark Becker his whole life, and didn’t think twice when Becker said he wanted to help Thomas with some rebuilding work. Kalkwarf made a phone call and found out that Coach Thomas was in the A-P weight room. Becker and Kalkwarf made some small talk about the shiny elementary school floors before Becker drove away. Kalkwarf had no idea what he had just done.
In the wake of the tornado, the A-P weight room had been temporarily moved to the “bus barn” — a steel shell of a building where the buses were usually stored. For the time being, a concrete floor was put down and the weight equipment was moved in.
There were two weight lifting shifts that morning — the older football players were in from 6 — 7 a.m. (including Scott Becker, who had already left the weight room for his job at a lumberyard by the time Mark arrived). The second shift consisted mainly of younger players and others, like the girls’ volleyball team. Coach Thomas was circulating, offering praise and advice to the 22 students working out at the time.
Mark Becker pulled up around 7:45 a.m. He parked his car and then walked to the door to check if Coach Thomas was there. When Becker saw that he was, he went back to the car, pocketed the gun and walked in toward the coach.
Fifteen-year-old Brandon Simkins was standing next to Coach Thomas, excited that he had just earned a coveted “Falcon Power” t-shirt after benching 250 lbs. That excitement turned to terror as he saw Mark Becker draw his gun. “I thought I was dead,” Simkins would later tell the jury.
Mark Becker shot Ed Thomas in the head. Thomas fell to the ground immediately. Becker pulled the trigger again and again even when the firing pin started to click harmlessly. Coach Thomas was struck by 3 shots directly to the head. Becker also shot Thomas in the chest, and in the knee so — he later told police — the older man couldn’t run away. The coroner would find a bullet had gone straight through Thomas’ hand leaving a defensive wound. It was determined that Thomas had been shot 6 or 7 times.
As the students shrieked and ran out, Becker began kicking and stomping Thomas’ body, screaming profanities at him.
Becker then walked back out to his car and was seen stomping around in circles before getting into his car and driving away. Sarah Dunegan, who was just arriving to work out when the shooting occurred, said she heard Becker yelling “Thomas isn’t God, he’s Satan. Get his carcass.” In his own interview with police later that day, Mark Becker said he yelled to some arriving girls, “Be free. Everyone from this day on be free. He’s done. It’s done.”
Several people called 911 to alert police to the shooting. Daniel Smith was one of the first adults at the scene. He had been waiting in the parking lot for his daughter to finish her work-out and ran in when he heard the commotion. He found Thomas lying on the floor in a growing pool of blood. Smith and another man tried to cover Thomas’ wounds with towels. Parkersburg police chief Chris Luhring arrived shortly after and realized Thomas was in grave condition, needing more help than local paramedics could give provide. An ambulance whisked Thomas to nearby Dike, where a chopper airlifted him to Covenant Hospital in Waterloo—the same hospital Becker had left about 14 hours earlier. Thomas likely died en route and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Ed’s wife, Jan Thomas, served as a town paramedic and was paged to respond to the shooting. When she arrived she was not let onto the scene. Luhring and others didn’t want to subject her to it in the immediate aftermath, but Luhring drove Jan to Covenant in his police car. Thomas’ sons Aaron and Todd were notified to come to the hospital. Todd was on a trip in the Caribbean at the time of the shooting — his beach vacation came to an awful, abrupt end as he frantically rescheduled his flight back to Iowa.
A 911 caller gave police the Lumina’s license plate, and DMV records showed it belonged to Dave Becker. Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson, who had helped arrest Becker a few days earlier, knew exactly where to go.
When Johnson pulled onto the Becker’s blacktop, he saw the blue Lumina had pulled in behind him. Becker had rolled down his window and was holding the gun out in a non-threatening manner—not pointed at Johnson. The lawman ordered Becker to drop the gun; Becker complied, then got out of his car and lay down on the ground. As Johnson and another deputy handcuffed the suspect, Becker told them “Ed is done, I am done with Ed.” When Johnson told the deputy to photograph Becker’s blood-stained boots, Becker told them “I stomped him for you cops.”
As is typical when a major crime occurs in a small Iowa town, local authorities called in the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI). Special Agent Chris Callaway sat down with Mark Becker and spoke with him for about an hour.
Becker behaved erratically in the booking room, fidgeting as if he was seeing apparitions , and the statements he made were grotesquely strange. Becker told Special Agent Chris Callaway that he shot Thomas because he believed Thomas was evil. “He’s a devil tyrant and he’s been suppressing the children around here and my family since I’ve been a little kid… I couldn’t put up with it another second. We can hardly breathe at night because of that man,” Becker said. “He turns us into fish and he turns us into animals and he turns us into dead people, but he won’t let us be our true heavenly selves.” Later, Becker recounted voices telling him what to do: “They just told me to take him out because he was being a devil. He was being Lucifer. The only way for the children to be free is if he was gone. I could see that visually.” Becker went on: “I literally minimized a huge Satan tyrant… I’m kind of in awe at the power I have.”
Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of the interview was that the hallucinations seemed to be occurring right there in the police station. At one point Becker told Callaway, “The devil’s amongst us right now. I can see him right now.” The video from the booking room shows Mark Becker fidgeting and spontaneously yelling about Ed Thomas and the devil — even when no one else is in the room. Later, when Becker was alone in a holding cell, he was caught on video fighting an imaginary supernatural opponent, stripping off his clothes and throwing them into the shower and then washing himself with toilet water.
DCI agents sent Becker’s urine sample for toxicological tests. The tests showed no evidence of illicit drugs.
Becker was charged with first degree murder for the killing of Ed Thomas, a charge which carries a mandatory term of life imprisonment. Becker’s counsel Susan Flander reportedly approached the State to see if there was any potential plea to be worked out. Flander recalled prosecutors said they would check with the victim’s family and get back to her. They never did.
Unsurprisingly, Mark Becker’s defense attorneys would put forth an insanity defense. It would be a hard question for any jury to contemplate.
After Coach Thomas’ untimely death, more than 2,500 people came to Parkersburg to pay their respects at the memorial service, lining the streets as the funeral procession passed. All four of A-P’s NFL players came back to serve as pallbearers. Once again, Parkersburg had made the national news.
Due to the tremendous coverage of the story, Judge Stephen Carroll called for an unusually large panel of 220 prospective jurors to begin jury selection on February 10, 2010. Since there was no space big enough in the courthouse in Allison, the seat of Butler County, jury selection was held at a bigger building in nearby Shell Rock. Lines trailed out the door and Porta-Potties were installed as many feared the process would take a week.
Butler County is small, and virtually everyone had heard something about the case. Prosecutor Andrew Prosser announced that there had been three husband-wife couples in the original pool—although none made the final panel. And yet the court was able to seat a final panel of 8 men and 4 women in only two days.
The fact that a jury was picked so quickly was something of a surprise because Butler County is home to just 15,000 people. In fact, there isn’t a proper stoplight in the whole county —just a few flashing red-lights. There was much speculation that it would prove impossible to find an impartial jury in such a close-knit community. Prosecutors filed a conditional change-of-venue motion, to take effect if they couldn’t find a jury in Butler County, so Becker’s speedy trial rights would not be violated. Just in case, Judge Carroll had a jury pool of 200 ready to go in nearby Wright County, but released them when a Butler County jury was selected.
Aside from rebuilding from the tornado, nothing gripped the attention of Butler County residents more than the Mark Becker trial. The courtroom was generally full of townspeople, law enforcement agents and high school students who had been given leave by teachers to attend the trial.
Reporters from Waterloo, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines television stations attended the trial throughout, as did print reporters from all over the state. When the trial began on February 12, 2010, it was the biggest story in the state of Iowa.
With so many witnesses to the crime and the nearly immediate capture and confession of Mark Becker, making a murder case on the facts posed no problem for prosecutors. The only question the jury would really have to grapple with was the question of Becker’s mental state. In answer to that question, prosecutor Scott Brown would repeat over and over during his arguments: “Mental illness does not equal insanity.”
The State called two psychiatric experts who agreed that Becker suffered from paranoid schizophrenia but opined that Becker had understood what he was doing when he shot Ed Thomas and known that it was wrong.
Dr. Michael Spodak conceded the defense’s contention that Becker was at times psychotic and suffered from hallucinations, but pointed to Becker’s rational behavior on June 24. For example, Becker had practiced shooting before heading out and had spoken to several people in his quest to find Thomas, and had easily processed the information they had given him. Becker, the State emphasized, never mentioned to any of those people that Ed Thomas was Satan or that he planned to free the town’s children by ridding them of a “devil tyrant.”
Another psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Taylor, spoke with Becker two months after his arrest and came away with the same basic conclusions. Taylor said Becker told him he considered killing Thomas’ entire family, but dismissed the idea. He also pointed out that Becker took care not to shoot any of the kids in the weight room. Taylor cited those details as evidence Becker could distinguish right from wrong. Taylor called attention to one crucial exchange with the defendant — he asked Becker what he would have done if a police officer had been standing outside the weight room that morning. Becker allegedly told Taylor: “I would have put my gun in my pocket and gotten in my car and gone home.”
Defense attorney Susan Flander argued that if ever a defendant had met the threshold of not guilty by reason of insanity, it was Mark Becker. And there was no shortage of evidence that Mark Becker suffered paranoid delusions and hallucinations and that he had behaved strangely in the days before and the hours after shooting Ed Thomas was beyond dispute.
The prosecution conceded that Mark Becker had no motive to kill Ed Thomas (of course, the State didn’t have to prove motive), and that Becker had made no attempt to hide his identity nor had he made any serious attempt to flee authorities after the shooting. On their face, Becker’s actions were not those of a competent mind. In his interview with Agent Callaway, Becker claimed that he had committed the murder to help police end a perceived reign of terror by Ed Thomas. And it seemed clear during the interrogation that Becker was at times hallucinating.
The issue at hand was Mark Becker’s state of mind at the time of the shooting — and the defense presented experts who argued Becker was criminally insane when he pulled the trigger. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a renowned psychiatric expert who has worked on high-profile cases like those of Andrea Yates, Ted Kaczynski and Jeffrey Dahmer, told the jury it was not uncommon for psychotic people to behave somewhat normally, to show “rationality within irrationality.” Thus it is conceivable that an insane Becker could have carried out a methodical plan to kill Coach Thomas, even if his rationale (i.e., that Thomas was Satan and turned children into fish and animals) was utterly mad. Furthermore, Resnick attacked the idea that Becker was in his right mind when released from Covenant on June 23, “Clearly he was psychotic… I think he minimized his symptoms to get released from the hospital.”
Another expert, Dr. Dan Rogers, agreed with Resnick’s medical opinion that Becker did not appreciate the nature of his actions or know right from wrong when he shot Coach Thomas. Rogers believes that Becker confused the voices in his head that told him to do things with the “coaching” that Ed Thomas gave him at A-P — and that this confusion led Becker’s diseased mind to conflate Thomas with Satan.
Becker’s jury would then be given a full account of his many mental breakdowns and commitments to psychiatric hospitals, and what they heard was shocking.
Mark Becker did not take the stand in his own defense, so the bulk of information about his psychiatric state came from the testimony of his mother. According to Joan Becker, Mark changed from a happy, friendly boy into someone darker and more solitary during his high-school years — so much so that she began to keep a journal dedicated to Mark’s mood swings. After graduation, when he attended Wartburg College, Mark would call his parents at night sounding depressed and only lasted a semester. Mark tried college again at another local school but became so withdrawn that his roommates called the Beckers and told them their son wasn’t eating and would not leave his room. Mark moved home once more.
Mark had experimented with marijuana and alcohol in high school — he was twice suspended from the A-P football team for violating the conduct policy. But it was after high school that he started to experiment with methamphetamine. Becker’s defense attorneys and psychiatrists would characterize this as an attempt at self-medication for his burgeoning mental illness.
Mark Becker moved to South Dakota to live with his older brother Brad in 2007. Becker lived out there for over a year, working in the bakery of the local Hy-Vee supermarket. However, Becker’s hallucinations worsened during his time there. He would call his parents to tell them he was fine and ordered them to quit trying to get into his head. Brad reported that he was puzzled at his brother’s increasingly erratic behavior: Mark began to use loud vulgar language and started to pick fights with people. A month after the tornado hit Parkersburg, Becker came back to Iowa.
By the fall of 2008, Mark Becker’s outbursts had evolved from puzzling to dangerous. Joan recounted a night when she and her husband were awoken by Mark’s screams. “Get off me,” he was shouting — as if he was being attacked by unseen forces. Joan recalled her son looked different, “His eyes looked right through you.”
Joan said Mark believed he was turning into the family coonhound, Chief. Becker ranted about a ring of people in town (including Ed Thomas) who were ruining children. More worrisome was that he had taken a bat and begun smashing walls and doors in the Becker home. Ultimately, they called Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson to the home. Johnson suggested the Beckers commit their son to a mental hospital or he would be arrested.
Mark Becker was checked into the psychiatric unit at Mercy Hospital in Mason City on September 8, 2008. Doctors there diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, but said the symptoms could also support diagnoses of depression and schizophrenia. He was given anti-psychotic medication while in the hospital and was supposed to continue taking it after his release, but he did so only sporadically. His psychotic episodes became more frequent. Joan recalled a time when Mark called her awful curses and broke her cell-phone in half, but later came home crying and apologetic: “It wasn’t me, Mom,” he told her.
After another serious episode in late November 2008, Mark Becker was committed to Mercy once more. Doctors found Becker’s paranoid delusional thinking and hallucinations were getting worse. His diagnosis was listed as either a generic psychotic disorder, methamphetamine-related psychosis or both, although a drug screen at the time showed only traces of marijuana.
After his release from Mercy, Mark Becker’s case was transferred to Cedar Valley, where he became a client of Cedar Valley Community Services (CVCS). The organization helped Mark live independently and taught him life skills like money management, but, since Mark was an adult, they could not force him to take his prescribed medication. CVCS helped Mark get an apartment in Waterloo and found him a job at Old Chicago, a pizza restaurant in Cedar Falls, where Mark worked as a dough maker from April until his arrest for murder. Although Mark continued to suffer psychotic episodes, he would not be hospitalized again until June 21, 2009, after his attack at the Rogers’ home and subsequent high-speed police chase.
Throughout the trial, both the Becker and Thomas families filled rows of seats with their supporters. At breaks, everyone filed out respectfully, as if they were leaving church: the Thomases would walk out first, then the Beckers would leave, and then everyone else emptied out by row starting from the front. Even though the two families had been extremely close for decades, they never spoke a word to each other in the courtroom.
Joan Becker had moved to Parkersburg as a teenager the same year Ed Thomas came to coach football. Dave Becker was a captain of the first Parkersburg High School football team that Ed Thomas ever coached. The families would remain connected throughout the next three decades. The Thomases and the Beckers worshipped at the same church, First Congregational Church of Parkersburg — where Ed served as an elder, and Dave as a deacon. Ed Thomas taught the Becker parents in Sunday School and at the high school. All three of the Beckers’ sons would go on to play football for Coach Thomas. With such a strong foundation, the families remained close even after the unthinkable circumstances of June 24, 2009.
One of the reasons the goodwill endured, according to Joan Becker, is that she never hid her son’s struggles with schizophrenia. On June 21, 2009, Joan spoke with Jan Thomas for an hour about Mark’s latest hospitalization, voicing her frustration with the mental health system and her grave concern for her son. Within hours of the shooting, Jan called Joan on the phone. When Aaron Thomas spoke to the media that day, he told everyone to pray for the Becker family as well as his own. A few days after the shooting, the Beckers were invited to view Ed Thomas’s body in private, along with the Thomases.
Both families still attend Sunday services; sometimes the Thomases sit next to the Beckers. “For them, going back to the history of their families, it’s kind of a double whammy,” said Brad Zinnecker, a pastor at First Congregational. “You lose someone who was a great friend, and you lose a kid.”
Ed Thomas was truly gone. Now it was up to an Iowa jury to decide whether his killer, Mark Becker, would be sent to a psychiatric hospital or a penitentiary.
Testimony and arguments were completed just before lunch on Wednesday, February 24. To no one’s surprise, the jurors did not reach a verdict by 5 p.m. On Thursday, the jury asked to see a snippet of Becker’s police interview in which he mentioned “a deep-seated animosity.” Shortly before 4 p.m., they sent a note reading: “We are at a stale mate [sic] at present with much discussion. Can we go home and sleep on our decision? Start fresh tomorrow a.m.?” Judge Carroll assented.
Around noon on Friday, the jurors sent a surprising note to the judge asking, “What would happen to Mark Becker if we find him insane?” Judge Carroll sent back an answer in writing: “You need not concern yourself with the potential consequences of a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity… In the event of a guilty verdict or a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, you have nothing to do with the consequences. Those are issues for the court, not for the jury.”
At the end of the day, the jury sent yet another note emphasizing their division: “We have voted 4 times today and are still dead-locked (Same vote ratio)… How should we proceed? Thank you.” The judge dismissed them for the weekend, and on Monday sent back a response pointing them to the instruction on jury room procedures (they had been given a copy of the jury instructions to take back to the jury room), adding simply: “Please continue your deliberations.”
With the jury’s struggles and fruitless votes, many court-watchers assumed a hung jury was the most likely outcome. They were wrong.
After 25 hours of deliberations over 5 days, the jury sent out a note announcing they had reached a verdict at 9:35 a.m. on Tuesday, March 2, 2010. It was the longest jury deliberation Butler County, Judge Carroll or any of the attorneys involved had ever seen.
At 10:50 a.m., Judge Carroll announced the verdict: guilty of first degree murder. Mark Becker stood seemingly emotionless as his fate was pronounced. Widow Jan Thomas sobbed quietly as Becker’s mother, father and brother held hands.
Both families spoke out after the decision. The Thomases professed satisfaction, but no great happiness, with the verdict. “There are no winners in this case,” said Ed Thomas’ younger son Todd. “No verdict it going to replace Dad, but we do take comfort in knowing he’s in a better place,” added brother Aaron. The Thomases made sure to thank everyone involved with the trial and asked for prayers for both their family and the Beckers.
Joan Becker spoke emotionally of her family’s deep sadness. She thanked the jury for their hard work and painful decision, but heaped some scorn on the State’s mental health system. In an artful turn of phase, she maintained, “Ed Thomas was the victim of a victim… The system failed miserably… Our son Mark would never have taken the life of another person in his sane mind.”
After the statement and before Becker was taken out of the courthouse in shackles and a bulletproof vest, the Butler County Sheriff allowed the Becker family a private visit with Mark in a nearby conference room. For Joan Becker, it was the first time she was able to hug her son in 8 months. She said Mark had no memory of the crime but was horrified by the accounts of that day.
Jurors chose not to hold a post-verdict press conference, but talked to local newspaper reporters in the days after the trial. The initial jury vote was split 7-5 in favor of murder. According to foreman Doug Schueler, the jury “bounced back and forth” throughout the deliberations until reaching a final decision.
Judge Carroll set the sentencing of Mark Becker for April 14, 2010, but the judge had no discretion — first degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole. After denying a defense motion for a new trial, Carroll imposed the life sentence along with a series of fines: $150,000 to Ed Thomas’ estate, $16,600 in lawyer fees and $53,000 for expert psychiatric witnesses.
Ed Thomas’ family gave emotional victim impact statements. “Every day as you live in jail, I want you to reflect on what you stole from us,” Todd Thomas said. “No one else, like a coward, murdered my father on June 24 in front of over 20 innocent kids.”
Todd’s brother Aaron added: “It’s too bad you made the choices you made… Your worst punishment is still to come when your time on Earth is over and you have to answer to God for the murder of my father.”
The tragic death of Ed Thomas inspired a change to Iowa law that might have saved the beloved coach had it been in place in June 2009. Covenant Hospital was not obligated to notify law enforcement when Mark Becker’s 48-hour psychiatric hold had elapsed. In Becker’s case, he was released to his case worker — and not police, who were still waiting to charge him with the attack at Dwight Rogers’ home. The next day, Becker killed Ed Thomas.
Soon after the shooting, the Iowa legislature proposed a bill that would close this loophole and allow magistrates to order hospitals to notify law enforcement before discharging a patient with an outstanding warrant. If such a bill had been in effect in June 2009, Thomas’ murder might well have been prevented.
The so-called Ed Thomas Bill was signed into law on March 24, 2010 — the same month Mark Becker was convicted of murder. Upon signing the bill into law, Governor Chet Culver declared it a statute “that’s going to save lives and prevent tragedy and get people the help they need before they commit such a horrific offense in the future.”