Emerald Prison Guard Allegedly Murders Girlfriend

According to an article in the Midland Reporter-Telegram ("Official says shooting victim died instantly," September 10), an Emerald prison guard and the company's Sierra Blanca unit has been arrested under suspicion of shooting his girlfriend to death. According to the story,

A 26-year-old Midland woman did not suffer much, if any, when shot in the lower throat with a heavy caliber pistol in her mother's home last week, a Midland County justice of the peace said Tuesday.

While 30-year-old suspect Benjamin Franklin remains incarcerated in lieu of a $500,000 bond, funeral services are being held at 1 p.m. today for Monica Sandra Beasley at True Lite Christian Fellowship, which she and her three small children attended. ...

... he is charged with killing Beasley with one shot from the Smith & Wesson Sigma semi-automatic pistol that MPD SWAT officers and U.S. Marshals found in his car when he was arrested at 1:30 a.m. last Friday in a Motel 6 parking lot at Grant Avenue and Interstate 20 in Odessa, where he was sleeping.

Franklin told officials he was a prison guard in Hudspeth County near the Texas-Mexico border, according to jail records.

West Texas Detention Facility Warden Barbara Walrath of Sierra Blanca told the Reporter-Telegram Tuesday she was aware of Franklin's incarceration in Midland County Detention Center.

Walrath said her private prison houses 1,000 men and referred additional questions to Emerald Correctional Management Chief Operating Officer Steve Aspman in Scott, La., a Lafayette suburb. Efforts to contact Aspman Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Jauz did not know if any of the victim's children, 2 weeks and 1 and 3 years old, saw the shooting. She said it was not known if Franklin had fathered any of the children.

As we reported last month, Emerald has been expanding this west Texas facility using controversial tent-like structures, such as those damaged used at MTC's Raymondville facility which were damaged in Hurricane Dolly this summer.