On December 1, 1988, 27-year-old African American security guard Jeren Beeks was shot and killed while working unarmed at the main gate of Universal Studios in Universal City, California. Beeks and an 18-year-old fellow guard, Armando Torres, were in the guard shack when 43-year-old Nathan Nicholas Trupp approached after earlier being denied use of the studio phone. Trupp opened fire, shooting both guards in the head; Beeks died at the scene and Torres died the next day.

Trupp had arrived in Los Angeles after boarding a Greyhound from Albuquerque, where two days earlier he is alleged to have killed three people at a bagel shop: Richard Wilt, Jeanne Wilt, and Jeanne’s father Joseph Famiglietta. Witnesses and cab drivers in Albuquerque later identified Trupp as the man who bought a .38-caliber revolver and was seen practicing shooting. Trupp was wounded in an exchange with a sheriff’s deputy at Universal and taken into custody.

Court-appointed psychiatrists found Trupp legally insane at the time of the killings; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital in May 1990. Does anyone have additional information about Jeren Beeks, his family, or his time at Universal Studios?