Warrants in Missy Bevers' Murder Describe a Troubled Marriage and Online Flirtations

In the months before she was murdered in Midlothian's Creekside Church of Christ on April 18 while setting up for her fitness class, Missy Bevers was engaged in an online relationship that turned "flirtatious and familiar," Midlothian police said in a search warrant released Thursday.

Beginning in January, Bevers communicated on the internet site LinkedIn with a man police identify as a "person of interest" in the case. Less than three days before the murder, Bevers also received a "creepy and strange" message on the social network from a man she did not know, a friend of Bevers' told police.

Investigators also released a warrant to trace the activity of several cell phone numbers connected to members of Bevers' family and other "persons of interest." In it, Midlothian police say that communications already recovered from Missy Bevers' iPhones and iPad points to "an ongoing financial and marital struggle as well as intimate/personal relationship(s) outside of the marriage."

Police say that they believe the still-unknown killer may have been in contact with one of the phones identified in the warrant based on very specific tips received after the Midlothian Police Department posted video of the suspect walking around and vandalizing the church before killing Bevers with puncture wounds to her chest and head.

Brandon Bevers, Missy's husband, who was in Mississippi on a fishing trip the morning she was killed, has been making regular appearances at Midlothian police headquarters to verify information obtained by the police. Yesterday, he talked with reporters after leaving the police station.

"They didn't call me here, I just occasionally have things in my mind that I want to share with them and so I come up here and say, 'Hey, I'm coming up here — I've got this on my mind,'" he said. "If it wasn't for me leaning on God as heavily as I am right now, OK, there is no way — I would be melted just into this asphalt. There is no way the Brandon Bevers before this would be standing here today without me leaning on God, and his word and his direction, like, I find peace in it. It's very comforting. I obtain wisdom from it."