Beverly Parker · the case that is not on the board

AUGUST 23, 1997

Beverly Parker, 47, worked for a Fort Wayne life insurance company and lived with her teenage son. On the night of August 23, 1997, she was killed in her own home. Her son, who had been out at an all-night skating party, came home in the early morning hours and found her. No weapon was recovered, and no one has ever been charged with her murder. Her case is the standing proof that the department's published board is not the whole of its cold-case work: as checked for this section, no 1997 homicide appears among the board's thirty-four listings, yet the department's detectives have worked Parker's case in the open. In 2025 the case was taken up on camera by the Cold Justice team working alongside Fort Wayne detectives Brian Martin and Mark Bieker, in an episode broadcast October 18, 2025. At its end, Detective Martin said on the record that the case was "moving in the right direction" and that he was hopeful charges would eventually be filed. As of the record reached, none had been, and Beverly Parker's murder remains unsolved.

Sources:

1. Oxygen, Cold Justice coverage of the Parker investigation (October 16–18, 2025) — the date and circumstances of the killing, the son's discovery, Detective Martin's and Detective Bieker's participation, and Martin's statement on the record. The program's theories about the killing are television's, not the department's, and are not carried here; no official statement naming any person as a suspect was reached, and none is implied.