A man got life in prison for fatally bombing a woman he met online. Here are his police interviews.
Evidence in trial documented Stephen Beal's obsession with Ildiko Krajnyak. Authorities also describe the death of Beal's wife in 2008 as 'suspicious.'
A 64-year-old Southern California man with no criminal history was sentenced to life in federal prison on Friday for fatally bombing a woman he dated 10 years after his wife died under what authorities say are suspicious circumstances.
Stephen William Beal proclaimed his innocence before U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton imposed the life sentence plus an additional 30 years that she said was mandatory but also “appropriate here as it accounts for the additional depravity of the method Mr. Beal used to murder” Ildiko Krajnyak.
“The cold, calculating nature of this crime is chilling,” Judge Staton said during the one-hour hearing in Los Angeles, adding that Beal murdered Krajnyak for “revenge” because she no longer wanted a relationship with him.
“The defendant did not kill her passionately in the heat of the moment. The defendant planned her murder over a period of time. He clearly decided that revenge was a dish best served cold,” the judge said.
Beal’s bomb also badly injured a woman and her daughter who were at Krajnyak’s spa for facials on May 15, 2018, when Krajnyak opened a box that Beal had placed in the spa, triggering a bomb he’d built inside. Beal was a longtime rocketry hobbyist who had keys to Krajnyak’s spa; the two dated for about two years after meeting online.
Beal told Staton on Friday, “I always have and I always will maintain my innocence.”
“I will accept your judgment. I feel sorry … for the pain that people suffer. I just wish that the person who actually committed this crime was sitting here and not me,” said Beal, who recently interviewed with Dateline NBC for an episode expected to air in February.
Judge Staton cited Beal’s claims of innocence as evidence of his current danger to society and said his crimes “are not ordinary, and and it greatly illuminates the true character of the perpetrator.”
“Because he expresses no personal remorse, the court believes that the defendant is likely to remain a danger to the public for the rest of his life,” the judge said.
In a recorded interview in 2018, Beal told investigators his new girlfriend, whom he began dating before he murdered Krajnyak, said their “immediate life goal is to get to the point where we look at this particular set of events and can joke about it because we think it’s funny, because it’s not.”
“She said, ‘You know, actually, when you get past all of this, you need to do a stand-up comedy routine about it,’” Beal said, according to video played in trial and obtained by Legal Affairs and Trials. “Because there’s a lot of really potentially humorous anecdotes that are just wrapped up in the most intense life situations. And, you know, if the audience can relate to what you’re going through and it’s delivered in a humorous manner, you know, you’re going to win.”
Beal said “even if I come out on the end of this and the jury says ‘he’s not guilty’ or whatever, you know, the court of public opinion is not going to be at least anywhere near 100 percent behind what their decision is.”
He continued, “And she’s right: A stand-up comedy routine would help out a lot. People love to be entertained.”
Beal’s sentence ends a 5 1/2-year effort by the U.S. Department of Justice that included an international investigation and two trials. The bombing investigation was a priority with Main Justice in Washington, D.C., and the complexity of the bomb brought in federal agents with decades of experience investigating bombings around the world. Prosecutors also traveled to Vietnam to take the deposition of a manufacturer knowledgable about the specificity of the battery used to power the bomb.
Beal purchased the 9-volt battery in cash from CVS Pharmacy a week before the bombing. Investigators believe it was used to power the bomb because remnants of the same type of 9-volt battery were lodged in the ceiling directly above the blast. At the time, the battery had only been on the market for two months, which prosecutors cited to show how unlikely it was that someone else bought the same battery and used it to make the bomb.
A day before buying the battery, Beal bought a box from a Staples store that matched the box that one of the victims said Krajnyak was opening when the bomb exploded. He also had a huge amount of bomb-making materials at his Long Beach home when investigators searched it. A federal agent testified that the 130 pounds of explosives “was the largest quantity of explosive precursors I have seen at any search I have been a part of.”
Investigators also looked at the death of Beal’s wife, who fell down the stairs while moving furniture with her husband in the couple’s home in Long Beach in 2008. After Krajnyak’s murder, Beal was prosecuted for failing to report in a previous bankruptcy the $350,000 he received after his wife’s death, as well as for trying to fraudulently obtaining insurance benefits and Social Security payments related to a claimed disability that prosecutors say he was feigning. He took a plea deal in November.
Court documents, however, reveal grimmer circumstances than the charges indicate: Beal’s wife had elevated levels of lead in her system when she died, and Beal had purchased two containers of lead tetroxide approximately six months prior to her fall. Beal also took out an accidental death policy six weeks before his wife’s death, and he wouldn’t cooperate with the doctor who treated her before she died, nor did he tell investigators he was moving furniture with her when she died.
Judge Staton excluded any mention of Beal’s wife’s death from his trial for Krajnyak’s murder, and she said Friday she didn’t believe “it would be appropriate to consider it” at sentencing. But she also said considering the suspicious death wasn’t necessary “to arrive at an appropriate sentence here.”
Beal’s attorney Meghan Blanco acknowledged he faced life in prison for his conviction for use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, and a mandatory additional 30 years for use of of a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence. But she said any sentence beyond someone’s natural life is excessive, and she said Beal has been “nothing but polite, nice and genuine” since she’s known him.
Blanco said Beal grew depressed over the death of his wife and “college sweetheart,” and “probably” needed more therapy than he got. But throughout the case, “he has been kind and a genuine pleasure to work with,” said Blanco, who defended Beal in the second trial with Anthony Solis. He was defended in the first trial by Craig Harbaugh, Amy Karlin, Joseph Trigilio and Michael A. Schachter of the Federal Public Defender’s Office.
Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said after the sentencing that he understands Beal’s lawyers “have a job to do, but polite, nice, thoughtful and kind also described Ted Bundy. Polite, nice, thoughtful, kind also described Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber.”
“Describing his character today does not negate his actions of yesterday,” Barnes said.
Prosecutors filed a 17-page memorandum that detailed Beal’s crimes and described Krajnyak as “the American dream.”
“She immigrated to the United States from Hungary to make a better life for herself. She worked hard. She established her own successful business providing esthetician services to those in Orange County. She had a family who loved her. She had clients who loved her. And at the time of her murder, she was taking care of her mother who had dementia,” prosecutors wrote.
The memo included dozens of photos of Krajnyak, including some of her and her son.
Beal’s 10-page defense memorandum said sentencing him to an extra 30 years beyond his natural life “serves no purpose under the Guidelines.”
It says his life expectancy “diminishes considerably” when his current health and family history are considered. Beal has had bladder and colon cancer, and he’s “currently being monitored by medical staff for colon cancer.”
“When these specific factors are taken together, then Mr. Beal’s actual life expectancy is less than a decade,” according to the memo. “This would make the mandatory consecutive sentence of 30 years on Count 3 the equivalent of roughly three life sentences for Mr. Beal.”
Prosecutors said Beal deserved the maximum sentence.
His crimes “are some of the most heinous that we see in this district and even the country,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Takla told Judge Staton on Friday.
“He murdered Ildiko with a victim-initiated bomb. The bomb dismembered her. … That is a horrible way to die,” Takla said. He called Krajnyak “a bright light.”
“She was intelligent, strong and loving. Her positive attitude and personality were infectious and contagious to all the people that had the luck of being in her life,” said Takla, who prosecuted Beal with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Annamartine Salick, Sarah E. Gerdes and Solomon Kim.
Takla also read from a victim-impact statement written by the woman who was with her mother in the spa when the bomb exploded.
“The events of may 2019 impact not my years, or weeks, or days. They impact my seconds. There’s not one second of mine that goes untouched by this event,” the woman wrote. She said she has “physical disfigurement and scarring” and her mother lost an eye.
“Fear has become my foundation, and worry is my reality,” she continued. “This is how I show up to my husband, to my child, to my family, to my friends, to my job. This is how I show up to take care of my mom, who also suffered the events of that day in ways much more worse, much worse than me.”
Krajnyak’s cousin Eva Boni told Judge Staton “was the one who got me to United States from Hungary to have a better life.”
“She was my only family in this country,” Boni said. “She was a beautiful, ambitious woman who worked very hard to be a successful career and good life.” More importantly, Boni said, Krajnyak loved her son “more than life itself.”
“After five years of wondering the outcome of this trial, I can have peace in knowing that you’ll finally get what you deserve. You have lost all your power,” Boni said, adding that Krajnyak’s “love and life is shining bright today.”
Krajnyak’s friend and longtime customer Nicole Barnett said Krajnyak’s murder “forever changed my life as a friend, but it destroyed so many others.”
“Her amazing son that she loved more than anything in life,” Barnett said. “Everything changed. All due to one person: Mr. Beal.”
Prosecutors filed victim impact statements under seal, including one Takla described Friday as “absolutely heartbreaking.”
Krajniyak’s husband of 22 years, Ronilo Vestil, told Judge Staton on Friday that he “can’t even can’t even imagine” what his son is going through.
“I am hoping that he is in therapy and getting the help dealing with this loss of his mother,” Vestil said.
Krajnyak and Vestil were separated but still close and and had traveled to Nevada for a concert and to see their son perform with the University of Washington marching band a few weeks before she was murdered.
Beal was initially arrested on an explosives possessions charge shortly after the blast, but prosecutors soon moved to drop the charge, and he was released from jail. He was arrested again almost a year later, in March 2019, and has been in jail ever since. He was tried in Los Angeles instead of Santa Ana because Judge Staton moved her chambers to L.A. after she was assigned the case.
Beal’s first trial in summer 2022 was 10 weeks, and jurors deliberated eight days before Staton declared a mistrial because they couldn’t agree. His second trial in summer 2023 was three weeks, and jurors convicted him on all counts after deliberating for about two hours.
The explosion that killed Krajnyak ripped apart her spa, Magyar Kozmetica, in a suite at 11 Mareblu in Aliso Viejo, about 1:05 p.m. on May 15, 2018, and badly damaged surrounding offices, including a mental health clinic, where Rebecca Radomski and her staff were so jolted by the blast that some fell out of their chairs. They saw human remains in the parking lot, and “most of us will never forget the sights, smells, sounds and sheer fear of this near-death experience,” Radomski said in court on Friday.
“As a therapist, and my team of therapists, we now have a greater insight into PTSD, thanks to our lived experience,” Radomski said. “To this day, it remains truly challenging to rationalize” how Beal, believing his former lover had scorned him, “reacted with cowardly violence and zero regard for human life.”
Beal graduated from Pepperdine University and worked as a management consultant for much of his career and was an amateur actor involved in local theater groups in Southern California.
“He attempted to use these skills as an actor during the criminal investigation of the present offense,” Staton said Friday. But prior to his arrest, the judge said, “by all outward appearances, he was an ordinary person leading an ordinary life.”
Beal has three grown children. None spoke at his sentencing, but Judge Staton said a probation officer interviewed his daughter “who remains steadfast in her support of her father even after his conviction.” His defense memo says he “remains extremely close to all his children, who continue to support him through these proceedings.”
Beal called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department shortly after the explosion and identified himself as the co-signer for Krajnyak’s spa lease. When investigators asked if he could come in for an interview, he told them he had “poured myself a nice stiff vodka,” so they went to him instead.
Here are the recordings prosecutors played in the second trial:
Later, in a recorded, in-person interview, Beal told FBI Special Agent Rafik Mattar and Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Jack Ackerman that Krajnyak had been “not just lying” but building complicated stories. He also told his now ex-girlfriend in a recorded jail call, “Don’t ever date anyone of Hungarian descent” because “that would eliminate the dating of this rather lying and deceitful person.” (This article has been updated to correct the context of that statement. It was made in the call, not the interrogation.)
Here are most of the video clips that prosecutors played in the second trial:
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Yikes. This case had not been on my radar. What a sick, demented man.