The Midlothian police are asking for smartphone data in the hopes of pinning down a suspect in the murder of Missy Bevers.
Three search warrants released Thursday in the Missy Bevers murder case reveal she was facing financial difficulty and marital discord and that in the days before her murder she had received a "creepy and strange" message from an unknown man on LinkedIn.
According to one of the warrants, messages recovered from the phones owned by Brandon and Missy Bevers "indicate and confirm statement and tips provided to officers of an ongoing financial and marital struggle as well as intimate/personal relationship(s) external to the marriage with identified 'Target Numbers.'" Police did not say whether any of that information was a factor in her killing.
The extracted data provided police with a list of potential persons of interest, the "Target Numbers," based on the communications (texts, messages, photos, videos and recovered deleted messages) between them and the victim. The "Target Numbers" referred to in the search warrant include 11 phone numbers for nine people.
"We don't have information that indicates the killer talked to any target numbers, nor do we have specific information to believe the killer video recorded the murder," said Midlothian Assistant Police Chief Kevin Johnson.
Bevers was killed early in the morning on April 18, by a person dressed in tactical clothing who broke into Creekside Church and fled before members of her Camp Gladiator fitness class arrived and found her body. She died of multiple puncture wounds to the head and chest, police said on Tuesday.
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Police said as with any investigation where a specific suspect isn't immediately identified, family and close friends were a part of the initial investigative focus. Family and friends initially investigated in the case are not considered suspects at this time, according to police. In addition, police emphasized the 9 people whose 'Target Numbers' were listed in the warrants, are not considered suspects at this time. Police have not narrowed down any persons of interest into a single suspect.
In another warrant, detectives said a friend of the victim's told them that less than three days before her murder Bevers showed her a private message on her LinkedIn account from a person neither of them knew that they both agreed was "creepy and strange." During her interview with police, the friend could not recall the name of the person who sent Bevers the message.
Detectives also identified another person who confirmed to police that he had engaged in a series of communications with Missy Bevers on LinkedIn starting around January 2016 and that the messages were "flirtatious and familiar." Police said a forensic data extraction was performed on both his phone and Bevers' phone and that the communications appeared "intimate in nature" and that they had been deleted after the conversation was ended.
In the third warrant, detectives requested a tower dump of cellphone data from around the time Bevers was killed with hopes that if the killer was carrying a phone it may have pinged a tower near the church where the fitness instructor was found dead. It is also not clear if the data requested has been received by police.
To date police have identified no suspects in the woman's slaying. The only public lead on a person of interest is the unidentified person recorded inside the church shortly before Bevers arrived the morning she was killed.
NBC 5's Jocelyn Lockwood contributed to this report.
