An encouraging word 30 years ago from an English teacher at Ulster County Community College has resulted in a new career for former state police investigator Wayne Beyea. He has authored three books about his life behind the badge and two others. Beyea, whose only previous writing experience was mundane police reports, was taking criminal justice and English classes at UCCC in 1976-77 when teacher Margaret “Peggy” DeStafano commented on his work. “My English teacher said I had some talent in writing,” recalled Beyea, who now lives outside Atlanta. “I guess that was the original interest.” Beyeais latest book is “The Day the Catskills Cried.” It tells the behind-the-scenes story of the 1977 kidnapping and murder of Trudy Resnick Farber, who hailed from a prominent Hudson Valley family. Farber, the daughter of millionaire industrialist Harry Resnick of Ellenville and the niece of former U.S. Rep. Joseph Y. Resnick, was kidnapped from her Monticello home by a masked intruder and later buried in a former dynamite storage pit in Wawarsing near the Rondout Reservoir. The man convicted of killing her, Ronald H. Krom of Grahamsville, had tried to coax a $1-million ransom from the family. Beyea was an investigator at the time for the state police in Kingston. “It was a horrific crime that always stood out in my mind,” said Beyea, a 25-year member of the state police. “I thought the story deserved writing. I told the story as completely and accurately as possible.” Beyea admits he was “on the periphery” of the investigation, but he interviewed several of those more directly involved. He said he tried to get comments from Resnick family members, but their attorney said they did want to be involved. When asked about any new information or surprises that may be revealed in his book, Beyea said Krom is alive and still serving time at Auburn Correctional Facility in upstate New York. “In the book, people will be surprised at what his reactions are,” he said. Beyea said he and Krom exchanged several letters and Krom even agreed to be interviewed, but Beyea eventually declined. He said Krom expressed several bizarre conspiracy theories. “He wouldn’t even focus on the crime,” he said. “I opted not to go speak with him directly, even though he consented, because I thought that he would not really participate in the telling of the story.” Beyea said he also contacted former Sullivan County District Attorney Joseph Jaffe; defense attorney Carl Silverstein; all of the living members of the state police involved in the case; witnesses who testified at Krom’s trial; members of the jury that convicted Krom; and the community. “It’s a pretty accurate portrayal,” he said. “The Day the Catskills Cried” was actually Beyea’s second book of 2008. He also released “The Captain of the Juniper,” the biography of Frank Pabst, a captain of a Lake Champlain tour boat he learned about while living in upstate Plattsburgh. “I was actually writing two books at the same time,” he said. After retiring from the state police in 1987, Beyea worked in the security department for New York State Electric & Gas. “I never dreamed I would write a book,” said Beyea, who previously had some of his poetry and short stories published. Beyea was driving to the NYSEG headquarters one day in 1998 when he heard on the radio that Juanita Broaddrick, a former campaign worker for Bill Clinton, had accused the president of raping her 20 years earlier when she worked on his first gubernatorial campaign in Arkansas. He used elements of the story as the plot for a work of fiction, published in 1999, titled “Fatal Impeachment.” In the book, a co-ed is found murdered on Interstate 84 in Orange County and the case is unsolved for 25 years. A state police investigator uncovers a rape-murder suspect who just happens to be the president of the United States. The president in the story, like Clinton, went to Yale. “It’s a fictional president,” Beyea said with a laugh. “After ‘Fatal Impeachment,’ I was encouraged by different people who were reading my book to write my autobiography from the state police,” he said. Beyea sat down and wrote 1,100 pages for the manuscript, which he broke into two volumes: “Reflections from the Shield” and “Reflections from the Shield III.” There is no “Reflections from the Shield II.” Beyea said the publisher printed the wrong numeral on the book and he didn’t complain. “Reflections from the Shield” covers his years as a trooper and “Reflections from the Shield III” his 10 years as head of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, in Kingston. Both were published in 2002. “The entire second volume is all Ulster County,” Beyea said. “It is actual cases, case histories and people in the country.” The book prominently features several law enforcement officials, such as former Ulster County Judge Frank Vogt, former District Attorney Michael Kavanaugh and Surrogate Judge Joseph Traficanti. He also wrote a fascinating chapter on his dealings with the local media. “There are some interesting things I write about in that book that people might not know, cases that were actually quite famous,” Beyea said. One of the cases involves the late 1970s murder of Carol Bosch, who lived in Hillside Acres. Police believe she was killed by a burglar who was never caught. “I tell in the book why I believe it was not solved,” he said. In the book, Beyea said the unsolved Bosch case “troubles my conscience to this day.” Beyea also discusses a fraud case from just prior to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The plot was actually uncovered by an assistant manager at Belleayre Ski Center. “If we had not uncovered that crime and solved it, it would have been a multi-million-dollar theft,” he said. The case, which covered three states, involved the printing of bogus ski-lift tickets. The phony ducats were then put in with normal sales and the money skimmed off the top. Beyea said state officials also got involved. Several plea deals were reached. “It just kind of melted into the woodwork, but it’s really interesting to read,” he said. “I also tell many of the humorous things that I did while I was in the county. A lot of Woodstock.” It was his career in the state police that brought Beyea to Ulster County. Born in Cortland, he joined the U.S. Navy and later tried working as an air traffic controller, but didn’t like the stress. He applied for the state police in 1961 and became a trooper the next year, serving in several upstate communities. Beyea was promoted to investigator and sent to Kingston in 1970. He was promoted to senior investigator in 1978 and supervised the BCI in Ellenville for a year. He was sent back to Kingston a year later to lead the BCI and remained there until his retirement in 1987. That’s when he began to think about giving the writing thing a try. Like a lot of writers, Beyea originally tried to get a mainstream publisher. After a year of submitting manuscripts and receiving rejection letters, he did some research online and discovered IUniverse, a Bloomington, Ind., self-publisher with ties to book giant Barnes & Noble. “I’m starting, finally, to turn a profit after all these years,” he said. “Unless you’re a well-known author, you don’t make a lot of money.” Beyea said his next book is a non-fiction work. “It’s about the connection between organized crime and politics, the lobbying, the payoffs,” he said. “When you investigate politics and organized crime, there’s a very close similarity.” Beyea lives 10 miles northwest of Atlanta in Mabletown, Ga. He and his wife, Kathleen, moved there so they could be close to one of their daughters and her family. “I’m just writing and playing golf and exercising and just having a grand old time here,” he said. All of Beyea’s books are available at
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. While the books may not be on the shelves, they can also be ordered at any bookstore. Beyea said the books can also be ordered directly from him at –[email protected]–. “They can probably get them cheaper from me,” Beyea said.
