PHOENIX — Jennifer Beede had a dog leash wrapped around her neck in the last moments before she became a murder victim.
That detail would be enough to turn the stomach. But it's one of many that investigators noted upon finding the 39-year-old's body near Cave Creek Road and the Carefree Highway on Sept. 17, 2022.
Beede's remains were stuffed inside a suitcase and dumped in a remote area. A cyclist found her remains during a tranquil morning bike ride. Beede had sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head, and that was somehow the least of the indignities.
You haven't heard of the case?
A man and woman were arrested about a month later and charged with a long list of felony offenses: kidnapping, aggravated assault, theft, armed robbery, bestiality and murder.
The crimes were so severe that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has recently decided to seek the death penalty against both defendants.
"The defendant(s) committed the offense in an especially cruel manner," an assistant county attorney wrote in its filing earlier this summer, explaining why the county attorney's office wants the suspects to be executed.
Beede was just one of the 438 people murdered in Maricopa County last year; the highest number of victims ever recorded since the county started keeping track in 1991.
But her death is not often the type that attracts ongoing media coverage. Information gathered by detectives indicates she and her alleged killers existed on the fringes of society, living a transient lifestyle out of Phoenix’s hotels.
Court documents show the crime all started as a chance encounter between three people at a Phoenix gas station and ended in a brutal act of violence – just one of many in the country’s fourth most populous county.
Once the victim’s body was found, it opened up a door to a complex case that is detailed in a 363-page report recently released by the Phoenix Police Department. The details in it drove prosecutors to ask for the state's highest level of punishment.
'We will get you'
The investigative report makes some allusions to the troubles Beede was experiencing in the months leading up to her death.
In the days following the discovery of the suitcase, Phoenix police began combing through the victim's phone data and uncovered some mysterious, threatening messages she had received in the spring of 2022.
"We will get you u little (expletive)," one message said.
"No one will miss you. Well, maybe us. Because you can't kill someone twice," another message said.
But police weren't sure who sent them.
The investigation took a turn a few weeks later after a stolen red Scion car was recovered in Las Vegas. The vehicle wasn’t Beede’s, but it contained evidence that would later be traced back to her death.
Sales receipts found inside the vehicle were for purchases made at Valley stores a couple of days before Beede's body was discovered. Phoenix police obtained surveillance video from these stores on the same day the transactions were made and spotted a man and woman.
Investigators would later identify them as Jose Jaquez and Crystal Hulsey, two suspects who would soon be connected to more than one violent crime in the Valley.
'Put him in a bag'
Detectives interviewed a man in October 2022 who claimed to have interacted with Hulsey and Jaquez on the same day that Beede's body was found in the discarded suitcase.
The man, who 12News will refer to as NM, told Phoenix police he met Hulsey online a couple of years prior and the two would periodically hook up.
During their most recent meeting, Hulsey allegedly asked NM to stay a bit longer. He did – and Jaquez allegedly showed up with a gun.
NM told police Jaquez threatened him while Hulsey started going through his belongings. She found pictures of his daughter and emails showing where the daughter attended school.
Scared for his life, NM gave up the numbers to his bank accounts. The suspects continued to try to find other ways to squeeze more money out of him. Jaquez threatened to shoot him, NM told police, to "put him in a bag" and dump his body.
The suspects allegedly told NM to not try contacting the police before taking off with his phone and his car – a red Scion.
'You're my pet now'
The crimes committed against NM allegedly occurred just a few hours after a cyclist discovered Beede's body near Cave Creek Road on Sept. 17, police reports show.
Police had enough to file charges against Jaquez and Hulsey for allegedly robbing NM in the fall of 2022. But there seemed to be something more to the property crime.
Investigators began obtaining search warrants to examine the Facebook, Google and cellphone data of the two suspects. More pieces of evidence surfaced that seemed to tie them to Beede's death.
Jaquez's phone allegedly contained images of Beede taken inside a hotel room that resembled the Hampton Inn near Sky Harbor Airport. This same hotel had surveillance video. It showed what appeared to be Jaquez, Hulsey and the victim walking into a room on Sept. 16.
A few hours later, the hotel's security camera captured Jaquez dragging a suitcase down a hallway.
By all accounts, it appears to be the suitcase Beede's body was found in.
What happened in between that time couldn’t be captured on the hotel’s surveillance cameras. But the suspects allegedly chose to record a video, which helped inform investigators of what happened to Beede inside that hotel room.
The details are graphic. They involve the victim being instructed to do things with a dog so severe that Maricopa County prosecutors brought a rare charge of bestiality against Jaquez.
In an interview with police, Hulsey allegedly said the encounter with Beede seemingly started out friendly. They had recently run into her at a local gas station and later made plans to meet up at a hotel.
But Hulsey claimed Jaquez suddenly snapped and started yelling at Beede.
Hulsey allegedly told investigators that Jaquez placed a dog leash around the victim's neck and ordered her to get inside a suitcase.
"You're my pet now," Hulsey recalled Jacquez saying before the victim was killed.
She told police she didn't try stopping Jaquez because she was afraid of him.
The suspects then allegedly loaded the suitcase into a car, drove north up to Carefree Highway and shot Beede. The suitcase would be found the following day.
Jaquez denied involvement in the murder and claimed to not be a violent person, according to the police report.
But investigators probably wouldn’t need Jacquez to verbally confess to them. They had scanned through the suspect's Facebook messages and found a conversation exchanged on the same day Beede's body was found that could potentially implicate him in the crime.
"I just killed a bitch shot her in the head," one of the Facebook messages allegedly stated.
By late October 2022, additional charges were filed against Jaquez and Hulsey that now included first-degree murder. Their next court date is on Aug. 21.