Tampa Bay Times21%
At 15, he watched his father die. Now he’s on trial for Pinellas murder 6%
By Alexa Coultoff14%
7/15/2026, 7:50:51 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Appeal to Emotion, and Primacy Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 13.7% saturation with 136 hits. Analysis detected 468 faulty-reasoning hits from 992 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 21.1% and a BS Rank of 6% (15,400 of 16,252 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.80% of the article peer group.
About a year before prosecutors say he broke into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and killed the man she was sleeping with, Stuart Beck tearfully testified at the murder trial for the man accused of shooting his father in front of him in 2017.
“Dad, I love you, man,” he said in a recording of the 911 call that was played in court.
“Don’t die!
Oh, my God!”
Beck was 15 when he and his dad drove to East Tampa to sell a dirt bike to a buyer they met through Craigslist.
When the buyer tried to rob them, Beck’s dad was shot 10 times.
Five years after his dad’s killer was convicted, Beck is in front of a jury again — this time to face trial on a first-degree murder charge.
Prosecutors say Beck, 25, killed 20-year-old Michael Conrad out of jealousy.
Attorneys for Beck plan to argue that his post-traumatic stress disorder from his father’s death caused him to act in self-defense.
Last summer, Beck’s attorneys argued that the killing was justified under Florida’s stand your ground law.
Pinellas-Pasco Judge Philippe Matthey rejected the claim, finding that Beck did not have a legal right to be at the apartment and Conrad did not try to harm him.
Although Matthey denied the self-defense claim, Beck’s attorneys are allowed to present the argument to the jury for their consideration.
What’s unclear is how much of Beck’s past the jury will be allowed to hear.
Prosecutors have asked Matthey to prohibit the defense from talking about the death of Beck’s father, arguing in May that it’s not relevant to Conrad’s killing and “presents a substantial risk of inflaming the passions of the jury.”
The judge will likely make a decision Thursday morning if Beck decides to take the stand.
A 2 a.m. shooting
For the 90 minutes she was on the stand Tuesday, Kaitlyn Nash-Koehler was soft-spoken and visibly nervous.
Nash-Koehler, 24, said she began dating Beck in January 2021.
He moved into her apartment shortly after and moved out in February 2022 after the couple broke up.
“I think at a certain point I didn’t want to be in a relationship, but I still cared for him,” she said.
She continued to spend time with Beck in the months that followed, she said, but they weren’t exclusive.
She also began hanging out with Conrad.
That summer, Nash-Koehler and Beck spent the Fourth of July together, and he slept over at her apartment.
She said they made tentative plans to get together the next day.
Instead, Conrad came to her apartment around 9 p.m., and the pair drank tequila sunrises and smoked marijuana.
Throughout the night, she said, she deleted texts from Beck so Conrad wouldn’t see them.
They went to sleep around midnight.
Nash-Koehler said she woke up around 2 a.m. to her dog barking.
Beck was calling her.
When she answered, she said, Beck said something to the effect of: “Let me in.
I know he’s there; I see his truck.”
She said she told him no.
Seconds later, she heard her front door being smashed in.
“I went to my hallway to try to stop him from coming in, and we get into my room and all I did was stand in front of him because I didn’t want anything to happen,” she said.
She heard someone say, “What the f---,” and Beck was gone, she said.
When she turned the light on, Conrad was on the floor with a bullet wound in his side.
She said she didn’t remember seeing or hearing a gun.
Two Clearwater police officers testified Tuesday that when they responded to the scene, the door latch was hanging off and appeared forcibly removed.
A neighbor who lived in the unit above Nash-Koehler’s testified that he heard three loud bangs that sounded like a door being kicked in, followed by a scream.
He hurried outside and saw who he believed was Beck running from the apartment and getting into a white car.
It wasn’t the first time Beck tried to confront Conrad, prosecutors said.
In April, Beck and Nash-Koehler planned to go to New York, but the trip was canceled when they broke up, Nash-Koehler said.
While she was hanging out with Conrad at her apartment, Beck showed up, asking “to fix things,” Nash-Koehler said.
Conrad’s best friend, Kyler Hession, testified Wednesday that he got a call from Conrad that night, saying Nash-Koehler’s ex-boyfriend was “banging on the window.”
Hession and his roommate showed up and told Beck they would fight one-on-one, Hession said.
After a 20-second fight, the men shook hands, and Beck “was very apologetic,” he said.
Hession said Beck was emotional because of how much he loved Nash-Koehler.
Then, Hession recalled, Beck said, “I would’ve had my fire if I didn’t have a flight to catch.”
Hession took that to mean Beck would have brought a gun.
After Beck was arrested in Conrad’s killing, he told investigators that he could show them where the gun was, Clearwater police detective Kevin McCann said Wednesday.
Two days after the shooting, Beck led them about 400 feet into the woods near Brooksville, where officers recovered a silver .40 caliber handgun.
What wasn’t shared at the trial was Beck’s interview with detectives.
A clip of the video was played at the stand your ground hearing.
In the recording, Beck broke down in tears and said he made a mistake.
“I didn’t want to kill anybody,” he said.
“You can’t have it both ways,” the judge said during the hearing last year.
“Either this was an accident or it was a justifiable use of deadly force.”
In addition to the self-defense argument, defense attorneys will be asking jurors to consider lesser charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
If convicted as charged, Beck would face a mandatory life sentence.
The trial is expected to last through Friday.
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