Hotel Check-in Trips Up Fugitive in 2002 Slaying

Online system showed an international arrest warrant for woman charged in husband's death
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 13, 2020 6:28 PM CST
Hotel Check-in Trips Up Fugitive in 2002 Slaying
Robert Caraballo was killed in 2002.   (Eaton County Sheriff's Department via AP)

An American fugitive sought in her husband's 2002 slaying was arrested in Rome after she checked into a hotel, when an international arrest warrant for her showed up on an online system tied to a police database. The body of Beverley McCallum's husband, Robert Caraballo, was dumped and burned in a blueberry patch in Michigan, NBC reports. The remains of Caraballo, 37, weren't identified until police received a tip in 2015. McCallum, her daughter and a Grand Rapids man faces murder and conspiracy charges in the case. Her daughter already is in custody, and the man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. US officials thought McCallum was living in Pakistan and were trying to win her extradition when she was found in Italy instead. She's being held in a Rome prison, police said Thursday, per the AP.

A detective testified in a 2018 hearing that McCallum took her two young daughters with her to dispose of her husband's body, per the Lansing State Journal. The younger girl later said she remembered hearing a fight in the basement, being put in her mother's van for a long drive, then seeing a fire, the detective said. A large metal box was in the van, and she remembered thinking that night that her father probably was in the box. (More fugitive stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X