After arson near Olympia, he murdered a woman to try to cover it up. Here’s his sentence
Ingrid Phillips doesn’t think about her daughter’s killer. If she does, she says it’s with a smile on her face, knowing he’s whittling his life away behind bars, eating prison food.
“Justice did prevail,” Phillips said Tuesday morning outside an eighth-floor Pierce County Superior Court room.
Judge Michael Schwartz sentenced Michael Eugene Beauchamp, 59, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for aggravated first-degree murder in the 2018 disappearance and killing of Ginger Phillips, who went by Ginger Gover at the time. Beauchamp was also given a 60-month firearm sentencing enhancement to be served beyond his life sentence.
After a six-week trial that began in May, jurors last month found Beauchamp fatally shot the 41-year-old Olympia woman in a failed attempt to hide his guilt in another crime, trying to avoid prosecution for burglarizing and burning an unoccupied house earlier in the year. Investigators connected Phillips’ car to the fire, and prosecutors said Beauchamp overheard a detective approach Phillips for information about the arson. The defendant was furious with her for telling several friends about what happened, prosecutors said, so he decided she needed to disappear.
Phillips was reported missing by her father on July 31, 2018. In September that year, construction workers found her remains in a shallow grave on a South Hill work site, and a medical examiner determined she died of a gunshot wound to her pelvis.
“The victim was killed over suspicions that she was somehow going to, at some later date, implicate Mr. Beauchamp in another crime or crimes,” Schwartz said before handing down his punishment. “And that is sort of the penultimate way of interfering with our system of justice.”
Schwartz called the case “bothersome,” and said this kind of interference, whether it’s witness intimidation, harassment, threats or, in this case, murder, prevents the court from doing its job and prevents the community from having closure for the crimes.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Sunni Ko said little about the crime beyond the minutiae of the state’s sentencing recommendation and arguing over the probably moot point of how much time Beauchamp has already served. According to his defense attorney, he’s been in custody since late 2018.
Ingrid Phillips briefly addressed the court, telling Schwartz her daughter’s death left a void in her family. Phillips, 67, attended the hearing with her daughter’s sister, Heidi, and her brother, Tanner.
Beauchamp declined to make a statement. According to court records, he is a convicted rapist with a long criminal history, and jurors also made a special finding that he killed Phillips to try to escape being prosecuted as a persistent offender. He’d previously been convicted of two offenses that count as strikes under the state’s “three strikes law” — first-degree rape in 1989 and second-degree attempted rape in 1993. Prosecutors said Beauchamp knew he would face life imprisonment if Phillips cooperated with law enforcement in the arson case.
Arson, then disappearance
The fire Beauchamp was accused of setting occurred June 12, 2018, at a house northeast of Olympia in the 4700 block of Bellwood Drive Northeast. Its owners had been in Georgia since February, and prosecutors said the fire investigation found it was set using accelerants. Police found evidence of a break-in, and a car was stolen along with numerous firearms.
The investigation led to Phillips’ silver Honda, and detectives went to her Olympia residence to impound it on July 12, prosecutors wrote in a trial brief. A detective spoke to Phillips briefly about why her car was being seized, and he told her he knew she had information about an arson and burglary in Thurston County. He also asked for her cooperation in helping to recover the stolen firearms. Prosecutors said Phillips declined to make a statement.
Unbeknownst to the detective, prosecutors said Beauchamp was inside Phillips’ residence, watching and listening to the conversation. By July 29, Phillips’ communications with family and friends stopped, and her father soon reported her missing to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
Prosecutors said further investigation found Phillips visited her boyfriend at the Pierce County Jail between 8 and 9 a.m. on July 29. Afterward, she phoned a friend about needing a flat tire fixed, and they met at a gas station at 10918 Canyon Road at about 10:45 a.m., surveillance video reportedly showed. All of her tires were in poor condition, and the friend advised Phillips to pick up more tires at Beauchamp’s residence.
The only person who saw Phillips after that was Beauchamp’s then-girlfriend, according to prosecutors. Cell phone data showed after Phillips left the gas station, her phone was pinging off the cell tower that covered Beauchamp’s residence in the 4300 block of 293rd Street Court East in Graham. Phone activity stopped after 1:39 p.m. Beauchamp’s girlfriend later told police she saw her boyfriend helping Phillips with her tires in the garage after she got home from work, then went to sleep until about 8 p.m.
A week later, prosecutors said the green Honda that Beauchamp had been helping Phillips with was found destroyed nearly beyond recognition in an industrial parking lot. The top half was sawed off, and almost all of its parts were missing. One or two vehicle identification numbers were intact, and police traced the car back to Phillips.
Thirteen months after Phillips’ remains were found, police executed a search warrant at Beauchamp’s residence, according to the trial brief. Among the 11 vehicles on his property, in the bed of one truck, police found a tire with rims matching one of the front tires left on Phillips’ destroyed car.
Police also found a .25-caliber handgun and clothes belonging to women and young girls in Beauchamp’s garage and in a trash bag. Prosecutors said friends of the victim said she wore some of the clothing found in the garage, but investigators weren’t able to extract enough DNA for analysis.
Beauchamp was charged with Phillips’ murder in June 2020, almost two years after the victim’s remains were found. At the time, the defendant was already in Pierce County Jail awaiting trial in two separate rape and unlawful possession of a firearm cases. Both were ultimately dismissed.
In the Thurston County arson and burglary, charges were reduced to one count of first-degree malicious mischief. Beauchamp pleaded guilty to that offense in September 2019, and he was sentenced the next month to four years, nine months in prison.
In this case, jurors also found Beauchamp guilty of second-degree murder, first-degree assault and second-degree malicious mischief. The murder and assault charges were dismissed at sentencing because of double jeopardy. The defendant pleaded guilty to first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. He was given 116 months for that offense, and 57 months for malicious mischief, both of which he’ll serve at the same time as his life sentence.
This story was originally published August 22, 2023 at 4:48 PM.
