Jul 17, 2009 5:59 pm US/Eastern
DeFede: Inside The Jason Beckman Interview
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
One of my favorite television shows was the Nineties detective series on NBC, "Homicide: Life on the Streets."
But what happened on the streets wasn't nearly as interesting as what took place in "the box" – the term the detectives used for the interview room where they would extract a confession or at the very least a few incriminating statements from a murder suspect. It was almost always the highlight of the show.
Rarely does the public get a chance to see the real thing. Until now.
This week, the interview conducted by veteran Miami-Dade Police Detective Ray Hoadley of 17-year-old Jason Beckman was released. The teen is accused of first-degree murder, charged with killing his father with a shotgun while the elder Beckman was taking a shower.
Jason claimed the shooting of his father, South Miami City Commissioner Jay Beckman, was an accident. Jason said he took the shotgun into the bathroom to ask his father how to aim and fire it and it accidentally went off.
Without ever raising his voice or growing confrontational, Detective Hoadley acted more as a source of support for Jason rather than his interrogator. His questions were methodical and designed with a purpose: to show that Jason felt threatened by his father, that his father beat and abused him, and that Jason knew exactly what he was doing when he loaded that shotgun and took it into the bathroom on Easter Sunday.
"You were afraid of your father; is that correct?" Hoadley asked.
"Yes," Jason responded.
"Why?"
"Because he was very violent and unstable," Jason answered. "I don't think he meant to be but he clearly was not in control of his actions at times and I was afraid that one day he would hurt me badly."
The detective spent most of the interview exploring the tension between Jason and his father.
"How did you characterize your relationship with your father?"
"Overall we had a pretty turbulent relationship, a love/hate relationship you might say," Jason said. "Perhaps a bit more aggressive than, you know, than the average father/son love/hate relationship."
"Okay," Hoadley said. "Has there ever been any physical violence between you and your father?"
"At times he would get very mad and he would hit me," Jason explained, "not with a closed fist but a slap. Sometimes he would hit me with a belt or a stick a few times, but not recently."
He had Jason discuss how he felt powerless to defend himself.
"I have never hit him maliciously because he would hurt me if I did," Jason said.
The detective returned to this theme time and again, establishing Jason knew the only way for him to stand up to his father's abuse was with a gun.
"You couldn't just strike your father," the detective asked, "because he's a much stronger man than you, is that correct?
"If I did fight him, you know, even if he -- even if I did, you know, get the upper hand and submit him, he probably would kill me," Jason said. "He's the type of person where if he was in danger he would, he would not hesitate to bring down his opponent."
"Now are you his opponent?
"At times I was," Jason admitted.
The detective sought to develop a bond with Jason, sympathizing with many of his problems. The detective told Jason how surprised he was to learn the teen only had one pair of shoes, that his father wouldn't let him have a cell phone, or even a driver's license.
He expressed sympathy for the fact that Jason's mother died when the child was six and that Jason and his father lived in a house without air conditioning or even a working kitchen.
He said it appeared that Jason and his father lived "like hermits."
But the detective paid special attention to Jason's perception of himself. Jason reportedly has a form of autism and Detective Hoadley played on his possible feelings of inferiority by repeatedly complimenting his intelligence.
"You are very bright, I mean your IQ is high," the detective said. A few minutes after that he said, "you're seventeen, your very bright" and then later he said "you have an exceptionally high IQ" and called him "a very bright young man."
All of which led to this moment in the interview, when Hoadley asked: "What were you thinking when you put the bullets into the gun?
"I wasn't really thinking at the moment," Jason said.
"There's one thing I know from you Jason," the detective interrupted, "because we spent a lot of time together, you're thinking all the time. You're not, your not one of these slugs at that D school you go to; right?
"Right."
"You plan, you analyze, and you think about everything you do and say; correct?"
"Well, you know, not that well today though," Jason said.
"Didn't work out so well?" the detective agreed. "But the reality is you think a lot, and you plan a lot, and you consider what you do; right?"
"Uh-hum," Jason said nodding.
After Jason made a comment about not respecting his father, the detective asked him Jason how he felt about his dad being dead.
"Well I feel very bad," he answered. "I killed him. And that's a horrible thing. No matter how bad of a person he was he didn't deserve this.
"But you didn't deserve to be treated the way he treated you," the detective said in a reassuring voice.
"Uh, no, I didn't," Jason said.
Finally, more than an hour into the interview, Detective Hoadley asked the question everyone was waiting for: "Did you intentionally shoot your father today?"
"No, I did not," Jason said matter-of-factly. "It was an accident."
An hour and eighteen minutes after it began the interview was over. And while there was no confession, detectives had what they needed to make an arrest. Today, Jason Beckman is charged with first-degree murder. His trial is slated for early next year.
As Detective Hoadley stood up to leave, Jason asked, "Will you bring me back?"
He was asking if the detective would now release him and take him home.
Hoadley seemed somewhat surprised by the question.
"Here?" Hoadley asked. "When you mean `back here,' you're here now."
Jason was booked into jail where he remains without bond.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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