Terrible Pain - The Murder of Cherllyn Beardall

Episode #56 - Terrible Pain - The Murder of Cheryllyn Beardall

[Shaun]
Cherllyn Beardall was a devoted mother of three, known for her warm heart and dedication to her children, but in July 2020, she vanished without a trace, leaving her family desperate for answers.

At first, her boyfriend claimed she’d walked away from her life. His story didn't really add up, and her loved ones suspected something was wrong. She wasn’t the kind of person to abandon her children, and soon, troubling details began to surface.

[John]
Eventually, the truth of her disappearance would come out, but for her children and family that she left behind, the pain of what happened is a daily struggle. They are still searching for the closure that still feels out of reach.

(Music - Pause for 8 seconds)

[Shaun] 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I’m your host, Shaun, and with me as always, is the one and only John.

[John] 

I am the only John in the room.

[Shaun] 

This week we’re talking about the disappearance and murder of Cherilyn Beardall in the summer of 2020. This case reminded us a lot of the case of Tiffany Booth which happened around that same time during the “lockdown” part of the COVID pandemic.  

We weren't able to uncover much about Cherylyn at first until we discovered an interview with her sister whose name is Jessica Knuudila (K-newdilla), who spoke to true crime podcaster Jason Hebert. 

The interview was great and it allowed Jessica to Share more about her sister with the world. The interview was in the time after she disappeared, so at that time not much was known about what happened. She was missing, and her family was frantically searching for her, looking for any leads, at the time, they were working with her boyfriend Philip O’Reilly who seemed to be acting as if he wanted to be helpful in the investigation.

Do you want to start us off by talking about what we know about Cheryllyn?

[John] 

Of course. Cheryllyn Beardall (her family called her Cher) was born on March 7th, 1986, and was the oldest of 3 siblings (we unfortunately, don't know much about the third sibling, but as we mentioned she had a sister named Jessica)

She was 5’6” and weighed between 100 and 115 lbs, depending on what source you’re looking at, she had Brown / Hazel eyes and had a large easily identifiable tattoo on her chest which you can see in the photos of her.

She was born here in Las Vegas and went to Foothill High. That makes sense because she actually lived not too far from us in Henderson.

Jessica said she was very outspoken, kind, caring, and had a good sense of humor. She said Cherylln would describe herself as “the bad one” and Jessica as “the good one” probably because she seemed very much like she would tell it the way it was without mincing words.

Her mom was named Suzanne, and she had a cousin who lived in the same apartment complex as her, the Cascade Apartments near Lake Mead Parkway and Warm Springs.

Another nice thing we learned is that she was obviously very selfless and wanted to be involved with helping others. One example of that was her involvement with B.A.C.A., the “Bikers Against Child Abuse”. She apparently volunteered with them and helped them with seamstress work repairing clothing, and jackets, things like that.

Because of that, they gave her the nickname “Stitch”

I’d never heard of BACA, but I read up on what they do, and I find it awesome. I wanted to read you their charter

Bikers Against Child Abuse, Inc. (B.A.C.A.) exists with the intent to create a safer environment for abused children. We exist as a body of Bikers to empower children to not feel afraid of the world in which they live. We stand ready to lend support to our wounded friends by involving them with an established, united organization. We work in conjunction with local and state officials who are already in place to protect children. We desire to send a clear message to all involved with the abused child that this child is part of our organization, and that we are prepared to lend our physical and emotional support to them by affiliation, and our physical presence. We stand at the ready to shield these children from further abuse. We do not condone the use of violence or physical force in any manner, however, if circumstances arise such that we are the only obstacle preventing a child from further abuse, we stand ready to be that obstacle.

I find that really cool, and I love that she was involved with them.

[Shaun] 

Cherylln got married in 2007 to a man named Forest Simpson and had two children, a girl who was 14 in 2020 and a boy who was 11 in 2020. It isn't clear what happened with her first marriage, but we do know from that same interview that her ex-husband was not living in Nevada and seemingly wasn't in contact with her. 

Jessica said that the kids told her they felt abandoned by him, but again, unfortunately, we couldn't find out much beyond their marriage license telling us the date and her ex’s name.

Jessica said that Cheryllyn had worked at various places including as a security person at Harrah’s (a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip), but when the pandemic hit in early 2020, she got work where she could, working for Uber, and Lyft, and seemingly really leaning into the available gig worker opportunities delivering for Uber Eats, Door dash, pretty much whatever she could. She was also considering going into real estate before the pandemic, but here in Las Vegas at least, the real estate market took a serious hit for the first half of 2020 so that was on hold.

It seems apparent she was motivated to work and do whatever it took to help provide for her children.

She was also a podcaster. Her podcast was called the “Women Empowered Podcast”. It was an interview-style podcast where she would talk to women who had overcome adversity and achieved great things such as becoming MMA fighters, triathletes, doctors, etc.

You can listen to her podcast, and we’ll be sure to link it in the show notes.

Cherylln met her boyfriend Philip O’Reilly in high school but reconnected much later and started dating in 2014. They were together for a long while and ended up living together in Henderson at the Cascade Apartments as we mentioned, and had a baby together in 2019.

[John] 

You can tell that Cheryllyn was a very busy person, and Jessica confirmed that it wasn't strange for her to go through periods where she wasn’t communicating with her sister, mom, and cousin very frequently mostly because she was just that busy with work, having teenager, a tween and a baby. It makes sense, and Jessica also said she was a very devoted mom.

Jessica has said that her cousin (who lived in the same complex as Cheryllyn) sent her a Facebook message on September 1st, 2020, which she didn't read until September 6th, asking if she’d seen or heard from Cheryllyn.

Her cousin said that she last saw Cheryllyn on July 19th and that her friends also said they hadn't heard from her since about that same time.

When Jessica realized this, she started to worry. At the time, she didn't have Philip’s phone number and wasn't friends with him on Facebook so she really had no way of even contacting him or locating her nieces and nephew. 

Also, her sister and mom were very aware that Cherllyn’s relationship with Philip was potentially dangerous and abusive. Her family says they tried multiple times to help Cherllyn but she defended him or lied about things being okay at home. 

According to Jessica, Philip had repeatedly told her that if their relationship ended, he’s always going to take one kid with him, so she felt she couldn’t leave. 

O’Reilly was also controlling and minimized her contact with family and friends. According to Jessica, “She was permitted probably once or twice a year to go to my grandparents’ house for either a birthday dinner for the kids or a Christmas dinner, like a holiday dinner, but the moment she got a text message from him, she had to leave,”

She said “She did have some friends that were permitted to be around them but eventually they stopped going around either because of altercations between them and Philip, or they felt that she was not being treated right.”

There were also occasions when the older children had told family members that Philip had beaten them. The older daughter told Jessica once that she was whipped with a dog leash for not cleaning her room.

When Jessica heard that Cherllyn had not been seen for months, she knew she had to do something immediately. She called Henderson Police who came and knocked on the door of their apartment. There was no answer and unbelievably they said they had no probable cause to enter the apartment, and “had no way to enter the apartment”. 

She didn't give up though and asked the Police to come back and this time, she coordinated with the manager of the apartment complex so they could enter the apartment, this time they entered the apartment they found that everyone had moved out, and the keys were left on the counter. Neighbors said that they didn't know the couple well, but that they moved out sometime in August.

A friend of Jessica’s saw on Facebook that Philip said that he and Cheryllyn had broken up and he was staying with a friend with the daughter they shared.. But Cherilyn’s son seemed to also be there, so that was very confusing to the family, who had no idea where the kids were. 

Philip was finally located staying with a friend of his, and it turned out he had all three kids with him, including the older girl and the boy, who were not his biological children.

[Shaun] 

The story Philip told police was that he and Cheryllyn had broken up and that she had “left in the middle of the night”. It's unclear if he was saying she left for good or as he later claimed, that she was going out to work her rideshare job for Lyft and Uber.

Philip told an interesting and pretty unbelievable story about the night she disappeared which her son partially corroborated. He said that they gathered the children together told them that they were breaking up, and offered them the choice of who they wanted to live with. Philip claimed that they all said that they chose him over their own mother.

During this time, Cheryllyn was making “occasional appearances” on social media, specifically Facebook, and on August 13th, 2020, Philip’s adopted sister Catherine Pickett reached out through Messenger trying to determine if she was safe.

The following day she received a message back from the account that she just wasn't buying was from Cheryllyn. The message read

“Philip always said he only stayed with me for the kids. Now he has them and I'm with someone who cares for me more than he ever did”

Instead of replying on messenger, Catherine texted her brother Philip directly and said “You’re a fool…I know that is you. I’m not stupid.”, meaning that he was the one responding on her account.

He pretended not to know what she was talking about and in a profanity-laced rant said “Keep your conspiracies to yourself. I have to deal with enough with my kids worrying about their mom and I can’t even get her to respond about school stuff.”

He continued making accusations about Cheryllyn, like that she had started using hard drugs and had left to be with another man.

That was also the story he told her children, which has to have been extremely traumatizing.

[John]

Her car was seen in various locations in August and was finally recovered on September 21, 2020 about 25 minutes away from her apartment, near Boulder Highway and Desert Inn, on Fiesta Way, but there was still no sign of Cherllyn nor any additional clues to where she might be. 

On that same day, Cheryllyn’s Facebook account was deleted, and ironically that was an important break in the case for the police. 

Investigators were able to track down the computer that was used to delete the account and traced it back to a home in North Las Vegas where O’Reilly was staying, with the children.

When police seized and searched his computer what they found was extremely shocking. Around the time O’Reilly’s sister had originally contacted the police about Cheryllyn’s disappearance about two months earlier, police found that He had been searching the internet for terms like “torture chamber,” “longest torture sessions,” “CIA torture,” “slowest historical torture” and “broken ribs”

When they confronted him he said that Cheryllyn had left him because she “wanted to know what it would be like to be with a man that was more endowed.”

The search for Cheryllyn dragged on well into the following year, but with the evidence the Henderson Police Department collected from her social media and family members, it was becoming apparent that it was likely that Philip O’Reilly was responsible. 

[Shaun] 

The chilling thing was, this wouldn’t have been the first time that Philip OReilly had inflicted violence on a romantic partner. 

In 2008, OReilly’s 19 year old girlfriend, who we’ll call Ruby, broke up with him over the phone. Just two weeks earlier, Ruby had decided to pursue an order of protection against him, and she had already asked the court to extend it because she was afraid of him. 

She hung up the phone with O’Reilly and refused to answer when he repeatedly began calling her back. She left her home to drive to one of her college classes at the College of Southern Nevada at the Henderson campus. I think from Ruby’s point of view, there wasn’t anything else to say to him. 

[John] 

O’Reilly, on the other hand, apparently did not think the conversation was over. When she refused to answer his calls, he drove to her place and noticed her driving away in her Chevy pickup. He started following her, and almost immediately, Ruby noticed a blue Honda tailgating her. It swerved into the lane next to hers, and she saw that it was OReilly - and he was furious and screaming at her through the closed window. 

Ruby continued on to the 215 highway, and OReilly pulled up behind her and struck her truck with his car several times. She called 911, and Las Vegas Metro said they would dispatch officers. Ruby exited the highway at the first exit she came to – which was Saint Rose Parkway – and as she drove off the highway, she drove past a Henderson Police officer. 

The officer saw the white pickup and the blue Honda zip around him, and they were both speeding. He said that the blue Honda was so close to the Chevy, that he thought at first the pickup was towing the Honda.

Ruby must have been terrified as OReilly pulled into the lane alongside her and T-boned her car. She spun out, crossed the center of the road, and crashed into a light pole. OReilly’s car crashed into a concrete barrier. 

[Shaun]

The Henderson officer had witnessed the entire accident, and there were several others who had seen what happened. According to the officer’s report, OReilly had tried to run her off the road and ended up colliding with her. 

Both cars were so severely damaged that neither was drivable. The Henderson officer placed OReilly under arrest, and shortly after that, the Las Vegas Metro police arrived. 

The Henderson officer declared that since OReilly had willfully and with malice used his car against Ruby, causing a serious accident, where serious injury or death could have occurred – he was charged with attempted murder. He was also charged with violating the protection order and with domestic battery. 

Ruby was experiencing back and neck pain, and she was transported to a local hospital after she gave her account of the ordeal to the officers. 

OReilly claimed that it was an accident – that he had looked down at his phone and “tapped” her car. He later admitted that he had followed her and that their vehicles had “jackknifed” but he said he didn’t know how it happened. 

[John] 

O’Reilly was indicted for attempted murder and stood trial in Clark County for the crime. After a brief trial, the jury found him guilty of Attempted Murder. He was sentenced to 4 to 10 years, plus 2 to 8 years for the deadly weapon enhancement.

He was incarcerated until 2014 and while he was in prison he attempted to appeal the conviction. One of his arguments as to why his conviction was unlawful was that the Court erred when it prevented him from having an expert witness to testify that when young people are in love they crave attention from the person they love. This appeal failed. 

This argument gives a lot of insight into how Oreilly viewed his behavior. He characterized this crime as being reasonable in some way, or justifiable because he was young (22 years old) and “in love” and was “craving” Ruby’s attention. 

It sounds to me more like he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and didn’t care at all about Ruby’s boundaries or her safety. 

Abuse and controlling behavior like this is a pattern for most batterers and abusers, and we aren’t sure if Cherllyn or anyone in her circle was aware of his past actions. Behaviors like this won’t just go away with punishment or time, and based on what we now know about Philip OReilly, his time locked up didn’t change his behavior. 

In January, for Stalking Awareness month, we are going to have a special bonus episode on the trope of stalking for love that we see so often in movies and tv shows, so make sure you’re subscribed so you dont miss that!

[Shaun]

On September 2, 2021, a grand jury was convened to examine the evidence against O’Reilly. CherlLyn’s sister, her two oldest kids, and OReilly’s sister all testified.

Jessica, Cherllyn’s sister, said that O’Reilly was controlling and that he would take her phone occasionally and prevent her from contacting anyone.

Cherllyn’s two oldest kids testified in detail about OReilly and their mom’s relationship. They told the grand jury that OReilly regularly beat Cherylyn when they would argue. The kids also said that he had abused them as well.

They said that on the last day they saw their mom, OReilly had beaten her severely. The last place they had seen her was in the corner of her bed. She was alive.

They said that when she was gone, Philip told them that she had left in the middle of the night. She was using drugs and she didn’t want to be there with them anymore. She left everything behind when she left. 

A Henderson police officer testified and explained that the day after what they presumed to be Cheryllyn’s murder, OReilly rented and packed up a UHaul with his things, and the kids’ things, and moved to North Las Vegas.

On the way from their old apartment to the new one in North Las Vegas, he stopped at an apartment complex and threw away his and Cheryllyn’s mattress and box spring in a dumpster. He made the kids wait in the car while he did that. 

The three children stayed with O’Reilly for weeks after that. 

Later,  the older daughter told Channel 8 News that she “wasn’t stupid” and she knew that OReilly was cleaning the whole house with bleach; that he had thrown away his mattress. He wouldn’t let anyone upstairs, even the daughter, whose bedroom was upstairs. 

This testimony, together with the other evidence collected from social media that we discussed, resulted in the Grand Jury indicting OReilly, with the estimated date of CherlLyn’s murder being between July 20th and July 23rd 2020. 

Later that same day, September 2, 2021, he was arrested and charged with Murder with a Deadly Weapon and two counts of Child Abuse/ Neglect / or Endangerment. The State would be seeking the death penalty. 

[John] 

This wasn’t OReilly’s first grand jury indictment that year. He was also indicted earlier in 2021 for 27 counts of lewdness, sexual assault with a minor, child abuse, neglect, and endangerment in connection with abuse, and sexual attacks on two children. This indictment had to do with events that had happened a decade earlier, and our research shows this was unrelated to Cheryllyn and her family.

OReilly remained incarcerated, pending the resolution of both of these cases. As we’ve discussed before, the justice system often moves very slowly. it can be several years before a jury is even selected and a trial starts, due to continuances, scheduling issues, and pretrial motions and hearings. 

In March of 2023, shocking news came out of the Clark County Detention Center. OReilly had approached another inmate and offered to pay him $20,000 to kill Cheryllyn’s sister and brother-in-law, Jessica and Michael, and her two older kids. He even drew up a map that showed where the family lived.

The inmate said that OReilly “needed the witnesses to disappear to beat his current charges.” 

The inmate approached guards and detectives with this allegation, and according to the arrest report, the detectives were able to obtain a recording of OReilly telling the inmate details of what he wanted to happen. 

OReilly had provided information on where Jessica and Michael worked, and suggested that it would be best if the crime occurred at night because that would be when the 4 of them would all be home together. 

He also claimed that he had tried to hire someone before to do this but that person had stolen his money. When the inmate asked OReilly if he was sure this was what he wanted, he replied “100 thousand percent.” 

The detectives questioned OReilly about making threats and trying to hire someone to kill Cherllyn’s family, and he said he didn’t want to say anything without his lawyer present, but he denied making threats. 

Of course, the detectives told Jessica and Michael about this right away, and CherylLyn’s son had a chilling reaction to it. He said that he knew something like that would happen. OReilly had tried to manipulate the kids years earlier, and he told them that if he went to jail, he would hunt them down. 

Jessica told reporters, “We’re not scared of him and we don’t ever want him to think that we’re scared of him because he has no power over us.” 

[Shaun]

Approximately 1 month later, OReilly must have finally seen the writing on the wall, because he accepted a plea deal to life in prison without parole, to spare him from the death penalty, and the 27 counts of child sexual abuse would also be dropped. 

District Judge Michelle Leavitt asked O’Reilly if he was admitting to killing Cherylyn and he said, Yes Ma’am. 

One of the conditions of the plea deal was that he agreed to reveal to authorities and CherlLyn’s family where her remains could be found. 

The location he provided was never published. There were some later statements that what OReilly told them was that he had left her remains in several dumpsters in the southeast part of town. 

Her remains have never been recovered. 

When OReilly was formally sentenced to life without parole in May of 2023, Susanne Beardall, Cherllyn’s mother, said that he had “worked to destroy” her family when he lied to police and family members about the location of her remains. 

“Knowing what a deceitful, dreadful person he is, I do not believe that he has even told the truth about what he did with my daughter’s body. I guess I’ll never know.”

Jessica also read a letter that CherylLyn’s youngest daughter had written. At the time of sentencing, she was only 5 years old: she wrote, “I want him to always stay in jail forever so he can’t kill any more people, so he can’t hurt me anymore. He was a very mean daddy to us, but now he’s not our daddy anymore.”

Her son, who was now 15 years old, said that many good memories he has of his mother have been “stripped away.” “All I can remember is the terrible pain we had to tolerate,” he said.

[John] 

Philip OReilly is incarcerated in the Ely State Prison. The most recent reporting we have about the family is from about a year ago, the summer of 2023, when Jessica told reporters that the family has still not been able to obtain a death certificate for Cheryllyn as no remains have been located and there hasn’t been a court order declaring her dead.

However, there is some comforting news about CherylLyn’s three children. They are still happily and lovingly being raised by Michael and Jessica. Her oldest daughter is now 18, but the couple strongly wishes to adopt the 2 younger kids. 

Jessica has told reporters that the adoption process might have gone easier for them if they had put down in the paperwork that the children had been “abandoned” but Cheryllyn never would have abandoned her kids, so to Jessica, it just didn’t feel right to put that in the paperwork. 

It’s also important to point out that the father of Cheryllyn’s older kids is in the picture and he did not want to give up his rights to allow for the adoption. 

Cherylyn’s older daughter has said in interviews that she sees her mother all around her: “I just see her everywhere. You know, I’ve lived in this town my whole life. So I see her when I go on a walk or I see her, all these memories, you know?” 

“And I feel like she came back to the earth after she was gone and I see her everywhere.”

During one of the interviews, the reporter asked her, “you and your brother seem so strong, how do you do that?” her daughter replied, “I think we get it from our mom actually. Because she was so strong.” 

[Shaun]

Today, Cherllyn remains listed as missing and endangered on sites like the Charley Project and Namus. Since OReilly admitted to murdering her, she is likely deceased, though her remains have never been found. 

John and I hold out hope that maybe some day she will be located to give her family some peace.

CherlLyn was last seen alive in July of 2020. She drove a 2011 silver Ford Fusion. She was 34 years old when she disappeared. She is a white woman, standing about 5’6” inches tall and weighing around 100-115 pounds. She wore her brown hair short in a bob style hair cut and had green eyes. She also had a large tattoo on her upper chest and shoulders that was a colorful and distinctive design with flowers and an anatomical heart. 

Cherllyn lived in the Cascade Apartments with her 3 kids and OReilly. At the time they lived there, the kids were 14 (a girl who looked a lot like her mother) 11 (her son) and a 1 year old baby girl. For their privacy, we are not sharing their names. 

The Cascade Apartments are located at Lake Mead Parkway and Warm Springs in Henderson. They are across Lake Mead from the new large Smiths Marketplace, near Brown Middle School and CT Sewell Elementary.

As always we will include photos of CherlLyn on our social media this week, you can find us at @sinsandsurvivors on Facebook and Instagram.

If anyone has any information that may be helpful to the detectives, you can contact the Henderson Police Department at (702) 267-5000 or cityofhenderson.com/police. 

The holiday season is in full swing and coming up in two weeks we will be bringing you our annual “Missing at the Holidays” episode where we will share the stories of missing people from around the country in hopes that someone out there may be listening who has information that can help give a family answers.

Please make sure you are subscribed and following the show on social media. You never know if your share could get the information in front of the right person and families will finally have answers. 

Thanks again for listening and remember what happens here, happens everywhere.