A 79-year-old Arizona woman has been charged with killing her stepfather in 1975 and then living in his house for decades while allegedly collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in his retirement benefits, authorities say.
Prosecutors in Pima County have charged Carol Ann Beall with first-degree murder in the death of her stepfather, William Reginald Sipfle, whose remains were found at a county waste station in October 1975 but went unidentified for nearly 50 years.
Beall was arrested on May 28, 2026, after investigators used forensic genealogy and DNA testing in late 2025 to finally confirm that the remains belonged to Sipfle, according to local media reports citing the Pima County Sheriff's Department, according to People.
Investigators said that for decades after Sipfle's disappearance, Beall continued to live in his home in Pima County. During a recent court hearing, prosecutors alleged that Beall used Sipfle's pension and Social Security benefits as a primary source of income, estimating that she collected between $250,000 and $600,000 over roughly 50 years.
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Authorities said Sipfle's body was initially discovered in the desert area near a county landfill, not far from a museum where Beall worked at the time. At the time of the discovery, investigators knew only that the remains were male and could not identify the victim because of limitations in forensic technology in the 1970s.
The cold case was reopened when the sheriff's department partnered with a third-party laboratory specializing in forensic genealogy, which developed a DNA profile from the remains and traced potential relatives, Fox17 reported.
Detectives then linked the profile to Sipfle's family, confirmed the identity, and focused on Beall after learning of her longstanding residence in his home and her financial ties to his benefits, officials said.
Beall, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee with no prior criminal record, appeared virtually in court after her arrest and is being held on a $500,000 bond, according to jail records cited by local outlets.
The Pima County Sheriff has said the investigation remains active as detectives work to determine how Sipfle was killed and to gather additional evidence for prosecutors and for the victim's relatives, who have waited decades for answers, as per the Independent.
