With his parents watching tearfully from the back of the courtroom, Joel Beckrich recalled standing in front of a startled, but determined, Nancy Everson with a shotgun in his hand.

“I asked her, ‘Head or chest?’” he testified very matter-of-factly. “I was stalling for time. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Beckrich spent most of the day Monday on the witness stand as he testified against his friend Grant Everson. Beckrich has already pleaded guilty to charges of first- and second-degree murder for his part in the Jan. 15 murder of Everson’s mother Nancy. As part of his plea agreement, he is required to testify against Everson or risk having his plea deal revoked.

Everson faces charges of first-degree premeditated murder in the fatal shooting of his mother and second-degree attempted murder of his father Tom. He also faces charges of aiding and abetting murder in the first and second degree related to Nancy’s death. Everson is alleged to have been at the Everson residence with Beckrich at the time of the shooting. 

The defense will not argue that Everson is guilty of attempted murder, said public defender Christine Funk. Instead, they will be focusing their efforts on the charges of premeditated murder, maintaining that the plan to kill Tom and Nancy was abandoned and Nancy’s murder was the result of an impulsive act by Beckrich.

While the majority of the questioning Monday was done by the prosecution, the defense conducted their longest cross examination of a witness yet at roughly 30 minutes.  

Beckrich testified Monday that Everson was at the residence at the time of Nancy’s death and handed Beckrich the .20 gauge Mossberg pump shotgun, declaring, “I can’t do it. You have to do it,” referring to shooting Nancy. 

Beckrich said that he “didn’t know what else to do” and so, when after 20 seconds he still had no response to his question, he asked Nancy again, “Head or chest?” 

“She started to take a few steps towards me,” Beckrich testified. “I said, ‘Don’t do it’ and raised the gun to my shoulder and aimed above her head.”

That was a warning shot, according to Beckrich who would later testify on cross examination that he fired the shot to have Nancy stop coming toward him.

“She ducked,” Beckrich recalled on the stand. “Then lunged.”

And it was then that he admitted to shooting the gun a second time, this time hitting Nancy in the head.

“Did you aim?” Assistant County Attorney Peter Ivy asked.

“Yes,” Beckrich replied.

“Where did you aim?” Ivy continued.

“The center of her head,” Beckrich answered.

“She died,” he said. “She fell over forward and after she fell over, I turned around and went to the bedroom.”

Beckrich testified that he headed to the bedroom expecting to find Nancy’s husband Tom waiting for him in the bathroom, but hoped that he would be able to catch him off guard.

“I was going to shoot him if I saw him,” Beckrich said.

Beckrich testified during cross examination that he did not intend to kill Tom, but merely to disable him to keep him from running after Beckrich.

But when Beckrich turned on the light in the Everson’s master bedroom, he saw no one there and opted to run out of the house to the getaway vehicle parked some two miles north of the Chaska residence.

“I obviously was not making any right decisions at the time,” Beckrich told police in his video confession, of which the audio was played for the court Monday afternoon.

“I thought there was a possibility I could get off if I shot this witness who could identify Grant and knew he had an accomplice, and I knew Grant would implicate me.”

It was “one mistake after another” Beckrich said in his confession, as the plan to kill Tom and Nancy unraveled quickly.

Beckrich said that while the idea to kill Tom and Nancy came up two days earlier, it wasn’t until a half hour before Everson and Beckrich got in the van that they did any actual planning.

“There really wasn’t any planning,” said Beckrich. “It was, ‘What would the cops do and what would I do to keep them from catching me?’”

Beckrich said they made a plan to slit Tom and Nancy’s throats with Husky brand box cutters.

“They were the sharpest, deepest razor blade,” said Beckrich. “They would make the cleanest cut. We had been told that the cleanest cut was the least painful.”

They put in brand new blades before leaving Beckrich’s Burnsville townhouse. Then, with box cutters in their pockets – a wood-colored one for Beckrich and a red one for Everson – they took off toward Chaska in Everson’s Dodge Caravan, Beckrich testified.

They brought with them the Mossberg shotgun that Everson shared with his father. The gun was supposed to be their backup plan, with Everson being primarily in charge of it.

“If they woke up, Grant was then expected to pull the trigger,” Beckrich said.

The whole idea was to kill Everson’s parents to not only get them off of Everson’s back, but to collect the insurance money, he said. Beckrich testified that Everson promised him 50 percent of “whatever he recovered.”

“Why did you go along with the plan?” Ivy asked.

“Out of sympathy for what he was going through,” Beckrich testified.

When they arrived at the Everson’s Chaska home, Beckrich recalled being in the Everson’s lower garage and asking Everson if he really wanted to go through with the murders.

“He said he was 80 percent sure,” Beckrich testified.

Everything went smoothly as the two made their way upstairs, avoiding creaky steps, to the master bedroom. They stopped in the mud room down the hall to don ski masks and grab a towel to “cover the victim’s throat,” Beckrich said.

“Grant opened the (bedroom) door and stepped inside,” said Beckrich. “I was right behind him.” Beckrich recalled having his box cutter out and in his hand.

And then Nancy began to stir in the bed.  

“We froze, unable to move, for five or six minutes,” Beckrich recalled.

Eventually the two retreated back to the mud room, Beckrich said. In cross examination, Beckrich testified that they were going to give up on the plan at that point, and were talking about leaving the house when Everson heard a noise.

“He brought the gun up and leveled it down the hall,” Beckrich recalled. “He took the safety off.”

A light went on in the hallway, Beckrich said, and shortly thereafter a surprised Nancy confronted Everson while Beckrich stood hidden in the mud room.

“Grant asked her to turn around and please sit down,” Beckrich said. “Nancy asked if they could talk. She didn’t know I was there at the time.”

As Nancy walked toward the kitchen, Everson addressed Beckrich, he testified.

“We were whispering back and forth,” he said. “We both said we couldn’t do it and argued about it.”

But Everson pushed the gun into Beckrich’s hands, he said, and Beckrich took it to “keep it from falling to the floor.”

“It was a reflex,” he said.

With the safety still off, Beckrich began to walk toward the bedroom when Everson directed him to, “Turn around. She’s behind you,” Beckrich said.

Beckrich confronted Nancy keeping the gun down at his side and not intending to kill her, he testified.

Beckrich said he believed that Nancy addressed him as “Grant,” telling him to get out of the house, to signal to Tom that that was who was in the house.

“She looked me in the eyes,” said Beckrich. “She knew I was not Grant.”

When she lunged for the gun, he said that he shot the shotgun “impulsively and instinctually.”

As Beckrich made his way toward the bedroom, he lost track of Everson, he said. The two would not meet up again until they were almost back to the van, Beckrich testified.

Meanwhile, he left the gun near a tree by the railroad tracks north of the house, he said.

Once in the van, Beckrich began to peel off his outer layer of clothing and stuff it into the gun case to later be disposed of in a dumpster behind a strip mall on Penn Avenue. The majority of the car ride was quiet, Beckrich testified.

“Grant said, ‘I think a chunk of her brain or something hit me,’” Beckrich testified, adding that Everson also told him that he had a “lot of respect” for him.

“‘Don’t ever let me call you a pansy,’” Beckrich said Everson told him.

They arrived back at the Burnsville townhouse and discussed an alibi with friends Christopher Fuhrman and Michael “Dip” Gulden.

“We came up with a very weak alibi actually,” Beckrich told police.

He said that they agreed to tell any cops that they had all spent the night at the townhouse, including Beckrich and Everson. Beckrich testified that he reminded everyone not to tell but did not admit to threatening anyone’s life.

When officers arrived to question Beckrich, Fuhrman and Gulden, Beckrich said he was able to persist with the alibi for about an hour, but then began to change his story out of “remorse.”

“I know what I did was completely unacceptable,” Beckrich told police during his confession. “If there is any comfort I can provide to anyone, let me know,” he told officers at the time.

Beckrich stepped down from the witness stand around 3:30 p.m. The prosecution began questioning a man with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension shortly before court recessed for the day.

Judge Kevin Eide informed the court that they were still looking at handing the case to the jury on Wednesday, perhaps by lunch. The jury will be sequestered as it considers its verdict.

Testimony continues 9:30 a.m., Tuesday.

Follow this trial from the beginning by clicking on the links below:

Everson trial: Day 7 [1]

Everson trial: Day 6 [1]

Everson trial: Day 5 [1]

Everson trial: Day 4 [1]

Everson trial: Day 3 [1]

Everson trial: Day 2 [1]

Everson trial: Day 1 [1]