Church surveillance video helps convict killer of Maurice Byrd on See No Evil

This week See No Evil examines how some CCTV from a church near a crime scene helped solve the murder of Maurice Byrd.

Guthrie, Oklahoma, on December 10th 2011 and 60-year-old Maurice Byrd was found dead at home, after concerned family members called police when he failed to show up to look after his ill mother.

Byrd was found lying on his front and had been shot several times in the back. The youth counselor and real estate developer had few enemies that detectives could uncover but some video footage from the Macedonia Baptist Church a block away from Byrd’s home did give police a lead.

They noticed a woman talking to a church member and then leaving her car and walking in the direction of Byrd’s house. The woman then returned five minutes later but the same car comes back several times the same night and stops nears his home.

Police traced the car to 65-year-old Texas woman Beverly Rhea McColm and Texas Rangers arrested her at her home, where they also found a pistol and a box of ammunition with five rounds missing. She admitted to police that she had lent Byrd some $20,000 in the form of Walmart cards and that a few days before his death the pair had gone out shooting.

However, when detectives played her the CCTV footage showing her at his house on the day of the murder, she changed her story. McColm told them that she had gone to Byrd with a friend called Max whom she had hoped would scare Byrd into returning the cash. McColm said the pair then got into an argument and she heard shots, before fleeing the scene after seeing Byrd had been shot.

Police were unable to trace anyone called Max and the CCTV footage did not show anyone else in the area at the time. McColm was arrested and held in Texas until she could extradited to Oklahoma.

In April 2013 McColm changed her plea of not guilty and accepted a charge of second-degree murder. She was given a 40 year sentence, with the final 30 years suspended.

See No Evil episode Maurice’s Last Visitor airs at 8:00 PM on Investigation Discovery.