Small-Town Police Chief, Woman Charged With Murdering Their Mayor

The police chief and another resident of this small town have been charged with murder in the death of Mayor Herbert Beumer, whose body was found in his truck at the bottom of a ravine.

Police Chief Rudy Thomas, 33, was arrested last week in Dothan along with Patricia Phillips, 26, Dale County Sheriff Bryant Mixon said. They were charged with first-degree murder and were held Friday at the Houston County Jail in Dothan with no bond set.

Mixon declined to speculate on a motive, but he said the Alabama Bureau of Investigation was auditing the town’s financial records. Beumer, 69, had been mayor of the southeast Alabama town of 500 for two years.

Thomas reported finding Beumer dead in his pickup truck early Monday, Mixon said. The truck apparently had been run off a dirt road and plunged over an embankment into a ravine.

An investigation showed that the truck’s transmission was in park when it crashed, and an autopsy determined that the mayor died from blow to the back of the head, authorities said. Some money was taken from a cash box at a parking lot office where Beumer worked, Mixon said.

Thomas had been on the town’s police force for five years.