Wife Killed Husband, Burned the Body and stuffed the remains in a Footlocker in Michigan, Accomplices also arrested
Lansing, MI: A wife killed her husband after striking a hammer on his head. Then, she burned the body and stuffed the burnt remains in a footlocker in Michigan.
The gruesome crime was committed in 2002. Identification of his remains took thirteen years, and apprehending her required five more. The wife is identified as Beverly McCallum and the victim of the gruesome murder was Roberto Caraballo.
The conviction of Beverly McCallum for the murder of Roberto Caraballo in their Michigan home’s basement came after a lengthy trial.
Michigan jurors have found a woman guilty of murder for beating her husband with a hammer, smothering him to death, and then, with the aid of two others, stuffing his body into a footlocker, burning him, and leaving his remains near a blueberry field.
When 37-year-old Roberto Caraballo died in 2002 close to Lansing, his body was disinterred and mutilated, and Beverly McCallum, 63 years old, was convicted of second-degree murder.
After years of failing to positively identify the corpse, the murder became known as the “Jack in the Box case” and perplexed law authorities. The real identity of the remains was not revealed to investigators until 2015, according to a tip from one of McCallum’s children.
Authorities subsequently learned that McCallum was traveling to nations like Jamaica, Pakistan, and Italy, so the next difficulty was to locate her.
When police apprehended McCallum at a hotel outside of Rome in 2020, her life on the run came to an end. Returning to Michigan in 2022, she was brought before a judge to face accusations.
Prosecutors said that McCallum wanted Caraballo dead due to their unhappy marriage, as reported by the Lansing State Journal. The mother-daughter duo allegedly plotted his murder with Ducharme’s friend Christopher McMillan, 45, and her daughter Dineane Ducharme, 43.
During the trial, McMillan stated that Caraballo was pushed down the steps by McCallum, and that Ducharme then hit him on the back of the head with a hammer. A baseball bat was supposed to be used to do the crime, according to McMillan’s testimony, but he accidentally smashed a pole.
McCallum allegedly took the hammer from her daughter and brutally murdered Caraballo at that moment, according to McMillan’s testimony.
According to McMillan, the trio proceeded to put a plastic bag on top of his head and a rope around his neck until he ceased to breathe. A footlocker was used to transport the corpse to an isolated blueberry field, where it was doused in gasoline and set on fire.
During her own trial testimony, McCallum implicated her daughter and McMillan. The woman made an effort to deny hearing Ducharme and McMillan murder her husband.
McCallum confessed to having disposed of the corpse.
According to Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd, who spoke to the LSJ after the judgment, “It’s like a made-for-TV movie, is what it seemed like,” particularly when she attempted to provide an explanation that was completely nonsensical while on the stand.
According to the source, during a six-day trial, the jury just took two hours to reach a verdict of guilty for McCallum.
It was already decided that Ducharme and McMillan were guilty. While McMillan received a term ranging from fifteen to forty years, Ducharme received a life sentence. On May 23, a court will hand down a life sentence to McCallum.
