The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole heard from one woman who said her sister-in-law, Maude Grayhawk, acknowledged being present during Nees' brutal murder in a 2004 telephone conversation.
“She said ‘All I did was kick her in the head a few times,' ” Judy Grayhawk said, referencing the conversation. Grayhawk added that her decision to testify this week almost resulted in a divorce from her husband.
Beach, 45, was convicted at the age of 22 on the basis of a confession he and his defense team say was coerced by detectives in Louisiana. He was given a 100-year prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
Kim Nees graduated as valedictorian of her high school class just two weeks before she was bludgeoned to death near the edge of the Poplar River, a crime that went unsolved until Beach confessed in 1983.
However, one detective who obtained Beach's confession denied allegations of coercion and refuted earlier testimony that he perjured himself at Beach's trial.
Paul Kidd, who represented Beach in Louisiana, testified Wednesday that he was never present for Beach's interrogation by detectives, though former Louisiana Detective Jay Via said at trial that Kidd was in the same room.
“I have absolutely no doubts whatsoever about the strength of Barry Beach's confession,” Via said.
Former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, who was a special prosecutor in Beach's case, also took the stand at the Montana State Prison on Thursday, adamantly denying charges of prosecutorial misconduct.
Beach's defense team has accused Racicot of misleading jurors about the forensic reliability of a pubic hair found on the sweater Nees was wearing when she was killed.
The hair was inadmissible as evidence at trial because, shortly after the murder, Officer Steve Grayhawk, Maude Grayhawk's father, was reprimanded for breaking into the evidence room, calling into question the hair's “chain of custody.”
Still, Racicot told jurors in his opening statement that “on the jacket of Kim Nees ... found laying outside that vehicle there was a pubic hair belonging to the defendant,” according to trial transcripts.
No other forensic evidence has ever tied Beach to the crime scene, including a bloody palm print left on the door of Nees' pickup truck, which did not belong to the victim or to Beach, analysis has shown.
But prosecutors have opposed Beach's appeals for clemency through the years, and to this day maintain they incarcerated the right man, noting that Beach's signed confession has been upheld all the way to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“There has not been one moment of doubt ever in my mind, since I have looked at this confession and been a part of this case, that Barry Beach is in fact guilty as charged,” Racicot said.
However, Beach's attorney, Peter Camiel, argues that this week's testimony hasn't been allowed during previous hearings, mainly because expired legal deadlines have barred appellate courts from hearing the more substantive issues.
An investigation into Beach's case was resumed in 2000 by Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based advocacy group that works to free innocent convicts.
Centurion has since helped Beach appeal to Gov. Brian Schweitzer for executive clemency, which means a pardon or commutation of his sentence.
Assistant Attorneys General Tammy Plubell and Mike Wellenstein lean on Beach's signed confession as the most tenable example of his guilt.
But on Thursday, another defense witness testified he overheard a woman's claims that she participated in Nees' killing with two other women.
Carl Four Star of Wolf Point testified that he worked with Sissy Atkinson, who Beach's camp has worked to place at the crime scene.
Shortly after Beach's conviction in 1984, Four Star says he heard Atkinson confess to the crime.
“She said that they got the wrong man, that Mr. Beach didn't had nothing to do with it,” Four Star said. “She looked right at me and said, ‘We got away from the perfect capital crime.' ”
Four Star also said Atkinson demonstrated how she'd bent over and struck Nees with a tool.
The man said he never reported the information to authorities because he believed them to be corrupt and feared retribution, though he did talk to his priest about the incident.
On Wednesday, Sissy Atkinson denied knowing anything about the murder, although discrepancies in her alibi did not clear the suspicions of Beach's supporters.
Additional testimony came from Ron Kemp, a former investigator with the Roosevelt County Attorney's Office, who said he questioned Maude Grayhawk in February 2004 after a man named Calvin Lester told Centurion investigators he'd witnessed the murder as a young boy, naming Grayhawk as one of the assailants.
Although Lester later retracted his statement under questioning from prosecutors and in the face of a lie detector test, Kemp said Grayhawk told him she believed a group of girls had lured Nees to the river bottom.
“Maude said there were girls jealous of Kim, but that Maude and Kim were friends,” Kemp said. “She said she believed someone else was involved, that she was lured down to the bridge by another female because she couldn't imagine Kim being lured to that area by Barry Beach.”
Another witness testified that Maude Grayhawk had confessed her role in the murder to her ex-husband, Dana Kirn.
However, Dana Kirn was murdered in 2003, two days before a scheduled hearing to settle the couple's divorce and custody battle.
Kirn's sister, Maria Decker, took the stand on Thursday, and said Maude Grayhawk's boyfriend at the time was eventually convicted in Kirn's death.
Assistant Attorney General Plubell then produced a restraining order that Grayhawk had filed against Kirn, calling the man's credibility into question.
“He wasn't very happy about that was he?” Plubell asked.
The most emotional testimony came from Barry Beach's older sister, Barb Salinda, who provided an alibi for Beach, who has said he was at home in bed on the night of Nees' murder.
Salinda said she saw her brother in bed on the night in question, and described what he was wearing in detail.
Plubell wondered why it has taken so long for such a valuable piece of information to come out into the open.
Salinda replied that she had in fact told Beach's defense attorney at trial, Timer Moses, but was told she wasn't a credible witness due to her relation to Barry.
Despite a subpoena, Grayhawk will not appear at the clemency hearing because she has checked into a pyschiatric hospital in Colorado.
Testimony will continue Friday as Beach himself takes the stand, this before the state calls its last few witnesses.
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