Another Birthday for Beth Buege – and Still Her Murderer Has Not Been Brought to Justice

Ever since I first ran across the name, “Beth Buege,” back in 2014, I have had a sense of being haunted by her and by the lack of justice in this case. It’s a rainy morning and I awoke first with images of Beth in my head. I never got to meet her and I don’t know anyone in her family or any members of the community in which she lived and in which she was murdered. Yet, she was in my head, again, this morning. Then, suddenly my thoughts turned to rage as I remembered what happened to her and the now decades-long effort to cover it up and I was suddenly fully awake. Then, I remembered that today is her birthday!

This blog started out as my “therapy blog,” where I just wrote about things that bothered me – it’s cheaper than a professional therapist and highly effective. Then, it evolved into a blog solely about chicanery on the part of amateur writers conning the public, using dodgy marketing schemes, and making a mess of Amazon.com, thus making life difficult for honest writers and sellers there. A website called Zonalert was erected to discuss some of the unethical activity. I was verifying the truth of the information at that site for myself when I first ran across Beth’s name. In particular, I had looked at a list of what they considered the most outrageous offenders, which you can see here and was observing activity surrounding some of these people just at random. I don’t know any of those people on that list, either – nor would I care to.

I have since removed some of my posts here about these activities, some of which were (and probably still are) associated with a group of writers who hang out and self-glorify and self-promote at Writer’s Cafe Kboards. This is a site I wish to warn any serious writer, publisher, or graphics artist to stay far away from, although you will see it often recommended. It is a virtual cesspool of self-absorbed con artists and all you will learn there is how to con people, which they like to call “marketing.” Based on my own experiences there a few years ago, there are very few, if any, successful writers there and if you have had any measure of success, yourself, you can attract a lot of trouble from the “writers” who post there, who seem to have nothing else better to do. Furthermore, some of the people on the ZonAlert list do or have hung out there and have been protected by the moderators at that site whenever evidence of their wrong-doing has been brought up.They will simply lock the threads and dismiss anyone questioning dodgy marketing activity as a troll.

Some things have changed for the better at Amazon since Zonalert got involved in exposing all the fraud and shady marketing schemes hack authors get up to. At one point, a very famous American author (famous for her vampire novels set in New Orleans) got involved and apparently, she’s one of the worst self-promoting, no-talent narcissists in the world world of writing and publishing and has her own teams of people who do her bidding on Facebook and Twitter, whether they are paid or not, it’s difficult to say. But, they appear to be fiercely loyal fans who spend a lot of time online promoting and defending the author – and, for the first time, it came to the attention of many of us that this was a practice (“street teaming”) among talentless hack writers. There were lots of independent bloggers talking about the fake reviews at Amazon and it was getting a lot of attention in mainstream press. So, Amazon finally acted to do something about a lot of the fake reviews, especially the paid ones from sites life Fiverr, which were addressed by Zonalert.

So, some of these very bad authors, who cannot sell a book on its own merits, resort to “street teams,” which in effect turn into online gangs, who are usually compensated for their loyalty to the author. They promote her work and denigrate the work of her competitors. (When I was writing about this, I ran into cases of authors who even hired people to kill their critics or competitors.) As far as I know, this is still going on. I have no reason to believe that it has stopped and that is why I am being very careful with my words here. And, this is the thing that really enraged me. Not all loyalty is good. For instance, loyalty is not good when it’s being paid for and it’s not good when it is protecting evil-doers.

The murder of Beth Buege is particularly frustrating because there are details, available in the links below, of what happened to her that night that seem to point squarely to one man. It’s one thing that we have a so-called justice system that favors the criminals over the victims and their families. We can all look at that and say that there is a problem with a system that is in place and maybe there needs to be some changes – and I think this is very true. But, it is a whole other thing when there are people – women! – who have to know who the perpetrator is and they are protecting him and, in fact, have formed a protective shield of loyalty around him.

What I see is not just one woman protecting this killer for years now, a woman who brought a cold-blooded monster into this world and has no sense of responsibility for that. But, there is a whole network comprised mainly of women who are supporting this effort of protecting a killer. Before a lot of information was deleted online (and information about this case disappears almost as fast as it appears online, but I managed to see quite a bit of it!), I saw excuses given for this, for example, that it all happened so long ago that it’s not important and no one cares!

It is important and people do care. A lot of Beth’s family have passed on. As far as I can tell from online reports, her only living relative is her brother and he cares very much about her. There are friends of Beth and people in her community who care very much about her still and want to see her killer brought to justice. Then there are people who never met Beth, but who have run across this story – and not just the story but the unbelievable harassment of her one remaining relative and those who are seeking justice on her behalf – and I am one of those people.

What I saw disgusted me and enraged me. Furthermore, it is my opinion that innocent people who have nothing to hide, who are not protecting a murderer, don’t behave this way. I would, also, remind those people who are protecting the suspected perpetrator and downplaying his role that there is no statute of limitations on murder.

So, the problem here isn’t just a failed justice system, but a whole lot of failed human beings who rally support around someone like the suspect -and I don’t know if he’s an official suspect or not – but, he certainly looks suspicious from my point of view.

It’s interesting how the police classify criminals. For instance, there are con artists and there are murders and these are considered to be two different classes. Yet, I find that whenever I see people involved in unethical behavior that more often than not they have a few more skeletons in their closet. This has been a lesson in my life – people who will commit one type of offense will commit another and birds of a feather really do flock together.

It is my hope that, at least, one of the people who know something about Beth’s murder will somehow evolve into an actual human being, grow a conscience and come forward with whatever information they have.

It is, also, my hope that more people will become interested in this story. I know there are lots of cold cases and beautiful young blonde women being deprived of their civil rights by criminals in this country has become something of a fait accompli. Every day we read about such people being abducted, raped and murdered, it is glorified and romanticized in movies, and the list of similar cold cases in the state of Wiconsin alone is very long. Yet, I hope that someone who has the power to bring greater attention to this case will come along and take up this story. This is not just the story of another valuable life being snuffed out by another criminal, but there is an entire tale of subterfuge that surrounds it and the truth needs to be ferreted out.

If you know anything about this case or anyone involved, there are some different ways you can report what you know. You can contact the detective on this case (last one I know of was Kathy Spano) at 414-935-1212. You can, also, contact her brother, Bruce, at his Facebook and there you will, also, see an email address where you can correspond with him, if you have any information that could help bring Beth’s killer to justice so that her spirit can finally be at peace.

A Witch Rants