DEER LODGE, Mont. -- A man whose 100-year murder sentence was commuted by Montana's governor walked out of prison still clad in the blue shirt of an inmate, shivering in the 25-degree weather that greeted him after three decades of incarceration.
Barry Beach, 53, fought to keep his composure Friday as he looked at the mountains in the distance and vowed never to return to Montana State Prison.
"Here I am for the last time," he said. "For the last time, because they can't bring me back."
Beach had learned of his release only hours earlier, when his attorney showed up at the prison. Word then spread quickly through the Deer Lodge facility, and the guards he had come to know over the years lined up to say goodbye.
Yet the end of his long stint behind bars left unresolved the emotional wounds still carried by the family of the victim, Beach's high school classmate Kimberly Nees.
The 17-year-old honor student's badly beaten body was found in a rural area of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, alongside a river where teenagers gathered to party.
"Something has to be proven to me, and it hasn't been proven yet," said Glenna Nees Lockman, the victim's older cousin. She said she grew up down the street from Beach's family in the small town of Poplar.
"Someone has to be held accountable," Lockman said.
Rumors swirled for years that Nees died in a fight among a gang of girls, and Beach was temporarily freed in 2011 when a retrial was ordered.
He was sent back to prison 18 months later. The Montana Supreme Court said in a 4-3 ruling that District Judge E. Wayne Phillips gave too much weight to testimony offered by new witnesses and failed to adequately consider forensic evidence that pointed to a single attacker.
Beach told reporters that having to turn himself back in was the worst experience of his life and that there was still "a lot of healing and a lot of tears" to come.
Beach confessed to killing Nees in 1983 after authorities in Louisiana picked him up on an unrelated crime. He later said the confession was coerced, and his long campaign for freedom drew support from hundreds, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, former Gov. Brian Schweitzer and former Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns.
Under Friday's clemency order from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, Beach will remain on probation for 10 years.
A Section on 11/22/2015