1986 Finding Becky Beard (Freeport & Clute, Texas) – Part 1 – The Disappearance of Becky Beard

But first, Becky Beard was 22 years old. She lived in Freeport, Texas, was in the process of getting divorced, and she had a little one, a girl who was nearly three years old, She was a beautiful, as you can see from her pictures. Becky was a sweet girl by all accounts, and lots of young men wanted to date her, plus some that were too old for her…like on this night…3/1/86.

After she left to go out on March 1, 1986, Becky never came home and her family has lived a nightmare for years.

Her body is still missing. Someone is in jail for the crime … but there’s more coming, according to the family. (And yes, Texas EquuSearch has been involved! They have definitely done ALL the things.)

Let’s set the scene, now.

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The Freeport Clubs of 1986

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Freeport was really the only place to go to dance and meet people, if you didn’t want to buy one of those B.S. memberships you had to buy in other cities.

It was a time when dance music was the thing and girls just wanted to have fun (iykyk).

Some nights, I might have been one of them, but I’m pretty sure it was just one of my friends I remember a lot of this from.

Women in clubs were dressing up again, mid-80s style was fun … they had put away their roper boots, leather belts with their names on back, and tight blue jeans from the Urban Cowboy craze days for the dance clubs (but not the Armadillo Ballroom), shoving them to the back of the closet long before March 1986.

Ladies’ night was the bomb-boom, and ladies were channeling their inner Madonna (the younger version), even shocking themselves with the writhing-friendly little bitty clothes in black and clunky patent leather booties that put the icing on their cake (look it up – link is in the comments).

Not to put to fine of a point on it, but things were pretty crazy at the clubs … there were a few wet t-shirt contests or “best chest” contests that paid out cash to the winners … enough to cover half a month’s rent.

Some of the guys were wearing pastel polo-type shirts, jeans, and Docker (shoes), while others were wearing linen suit jackets like those guys on Miami Vice, edgy cotton and khaki pants, and loafers, no socks.

And let us not forget how tall the hair was on top … yeah, even the guys who kept it super-short had some height … don’t let them lie …and then, there was the mullet, a 1980s classic, which has its place next to the Elvis’ pompadour style from the 1950s.

Oh … and let’s not forget that girls and boys, alike, were wearing their very dark sunglasses at night.

And people weren’t just hitting hard liquor shots. Bartenders were setting up shots with names like “Sex on the Beach,” and there were drugs. C0k3, M0lly, and sp33d were dispensed to the pretty girls and sometimes they didn’t know it.

You gettin’ that picture? It was the wild, wild west in the mid-80s.

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What to know

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The raw material is at Finding Becky Beard on Facebook. That’s where I’m getting most of my information.

A sketch of the situation, if you haven’t heard about this crime before: Becky went into a club in Freeport … The Excalibur where she knew everyone and they knew her – that’s where this disaster night started.

She never came home and her family lived a nightmare for years. Her body is still missing. Someone is in jail for the crime … but there’s more coming, according to the family.

The man who caused her demise (I have to be careful on how I say things for social media) is serving time for that act.

His name: Paul Gayland Taylor. I actually met him once. That’s why this scares me so much. I think about my son and how he could have had to grow up without me if I had met him in a club. I’m really spilling too much of my own tea here, but that’s why this case has lived with me paying rent on it in my head for nearly 40 years. I’m part of the “We don’t care club” now … so I’m saying it like it almost was. LOL -for my part, anyhow.

Becky didn’t have a car that night. I’m definitely NOT saying she left with him, because while that’s the story, there is another one you need to know, and we will get there … it’s all so confusing, but we’ll get Rebecca’s sister  to help us figure it out.

The messy point I am making is I would not have been afraid to take a ride home from him. He knew my cousin and some other guys I knew. She was probably the same.

Years earlier, when my cousin knew him, Paul was nice and not a bad looking guy. But from what I have learned about him from doing a quick genealogy work-up on him, he was from a sad childhood in that his father was a serial husband and that doesn’t sound good. He married several times, if my research is right. Paul lived with his father; his mother was absent, I think. But I am not sympathetic.

I only said that to say, he had become an alcoholic and constant drug user by the time he got into this story. Bad news. But before that, he had worked at Dow Chemical and had a great job. He did well. He was buying property. But he was also drinking and running.

He didn’t have a solid role model. When a kid doesn’t have that, their layers aren’t glued down real tight. His were starting to fly apart when he was in his early 30s.

On the evening of March 1 and the early morning hours of March 2, 1986, at some point, he was with Becky, he crossed her path, and according to his story he took her life. We’ll lay it all out. The simple answer is he confessed to killing her and I will tell the story as the public records provide it for me.

Her family may have other facts or suspicions to share.

The whole story available right now is in her sister’s page, “Finding Becky Beard.” (Link in comments!) That’s where a lot of my research will come from. This is a long story, and I have never tried to tell one like this … in episodic parts. I write a book or I do a long tale.

This podcast-episodic type of writing will be a big challenge …. I’ll be learning as I go and sorting through it for the next few days, trying to organize it for the best story. And yes! I will definitely reach out to Carol Mize. (or Carol, reach out to me at vintagetexascrimes@gmail.com.)

I’ve run out of time for now, and this was just a short set up.

I’ll get Becky’s story out as I can. My #’s for this will be #vtcfindingbecky and #findingbeckybeard .

Have a great day, friends, and say a prayer for Becky’s fam.

Brenda @ Vintage Texas Crimes