Principal Pleads Guilty to Fleeing With Girl

By Sean D. Hamill, Tribune Staff Reporter
Originally published in the Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2002

A former Indiana church school principal accused of taking an 11-year-old female pupil on a cross-country odyssey and engaging in sex with her pleaded guilty today.

William "Andy" Beith, 30, who was to have gone on trial today in Hammond, told the court he was guilty of crossing state lines with the intent to engage in sex with a person under 12.

When U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano asked why Beith was pleading guilty, Beith replied, "Because I am, sir."

As he spoke, his mother, Rhonda Beith, wept in the visitor's gallery.

Prosecutors recommended that Beith, in custody since his arrest nearly 14 months ago, serve 12 years 7 months in a federal prison. Lozano set a sentencing date of Oct. 3.

Also at today's hearing were Beith's father, William Beith; the Gary girl the defendant fled with, and her parents. After the hearing, Beith's father said of his son, "He's a good kid who just made some mistakes."

Beith was accused of fleeing with a girl enrolled at his Liberty Baptist Academy in Lake Station, Ind.

Dressed in a black shirt and black pants and wearing a blue identification bracelet, Beith today recited the incidents leading to the cross-country flight. His voice breaking, he spoke of an April 25, 2001, school trip to a Michigan campground where he and the girl first had sex.

After returning home, the girl told her parents, who told the police. The girl then alerted Beith, and the two fled the state May 1, Beith said. Nevada police captured Beith and rescued the girl a week later in a Las Vegas motel.