'Honey, How was Your Day?' I Think I Caught a Killer;' Alert Reader's Digest Reader Spots Murder Suspect At Stardust Casino.

Business & Feature Editors

FEATURE...

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Jan. 19, 2000

Casino restaurant cashier Jenny Schueneman wasn't too thrilled about spending her day off at the auto-repair shop. But as she leafed through her new Reader's Digest in the Midas waiting room, the day suddenly became one she would never forget.

It was the photo on page 69 that shocked Jenny to attention -- the face of Grant Beaucage, suspected Canadian wife-slayer. "I know that man," Schueneman thought. The mustache was gone, "but I'd know those eyes anywhere."

Spurred into action, the 36-year-old Las Vegas woman convinced police she was right -- and helped them corral one of the "World's Most Wanted" fugitives. Reader's Digest magazine tells her gripping story in its January 2000 issue.

Last October, Reader's Digest profiled six of the world's most wanted fugitives. And in an unprecedented partnership with law enforcement agencies around the globe, the magazine enlisted its almost 100 million readers to help track them down.

Grant Beaucage was one of the infamous six. His ex-wife Aileen had been found slumped in her car, in the parking lot of an Ontario mall, stabbed in the back at least 20 times. Police believe it was Grant, increasingly in debt, who killed Aileen in a jealous rage when she refused reconciliation.

But days before his 1997 trial, Beaucage was last seen boarding a bus for Niagara Falls. His trail had been cold ever since -- until Jenny Schueneman spotted his photo. "A slick, gregarious talker" who "spent most of his time gambling," the magazine's description read. And it fit; she knew Beaucage as a regular in the Stardust sports-betting room.

Schueneman had seen many faces pass through the Stardust Casino in her nearly five years on the job. Could she be wrong about this one? "No," she told herself firmly. "I know it's him."

When her husband came home that September night, a worn-out Jenny was drifting off to sleep. "How was your day?" he asked. "I had to get the brakes fixed on my car," she mumbled. "And I think I caught a killer."

With her Reader's Digest in hand, Schueneman revealed her discovery the next morning to Stardust security. The officers were skeptical, but Schueneman was determined. And at about noon, in walked Beaucage. Her heart began to pound as she returned his cheery "Hi, Jen!" -- and as she waited to quietly summon security.

Getting Jenny's message and quietly sizing up the suspect, the officers' skepticism quickly vanished. They called William Cage, Stardust's chief investigator.

"Someone read about an ax-murderer and they're having nightmares," Cage groused to himself. But as his security cameras zoomed in on Beaucage, silently clicking off close-up after close-up, his doubts began to vanish as well. The chin scar and forehead mole seemed to match. The distance between the eyes and the bridge of the nose -- a characteristic police often lock in on -- looked just right.

"We might have your guy down here," Cage phoned a stunned detective at Halton Regional Police in Ontario, 3,000 miles away.

As an armed security team unobtrusively surrounded Beaucage, the casually dressed Cage sat down next to the suspect, at a 25-cent slot machine. A few minutes later, he had slapped on the cuffs. "OK," Beaucage soon admitted, after trying to give a phony name. "I'm the man you're looking for." The fugitive gambler's luck had finally run out.

"One measure of any magazine is its ability to move readers," says Christopher Willcox, Reader's Digest Editor-in-Chief. "As Jenny Schueneman's story makes clear, the Digest not only moves our readers' hearts and minds, it spurs them to action as well."

Thanks to long-time Reader's Digest subscriber Jenny Schueneman, Grant Beaucage will soon stand trial for murder.

Smugglers, murderers, vicious drug kingpins -- they're still out there, so keep your eyes peeled for more of Reader's Digest's "World's Most Wanted." Get information and updates at www.readersdigest.com.