Rebecca Kasper holds her cat as she poses for the camera. Kasper was murdered by her boyfriend earlier in May, and the case is still ongoing.(Photo Courtesy of the Kasper family)
On the evening of April 23, Dan Kasper received a phone call that every parent dreads.
Police officers from his hometown of Northfield, Minn., called to tell him that he needed to call the Tempe Police. When he did, he reached the answering machine for the Tempe Police Department homicide unit, and he knew something was terribly wrong.
“I called my wife immediately to see what was going on, and she gave me the bad news,” Dan said.
The bad news: his 19-year-old daughter Rebecca Kasper, an ASU business junior, had been brutally murdered.
“She had over 7,000 days that she spent on this earth and one tragic day that ended it all,” Dan said. “Hopefully we can remember the 7,000 good days as opposed to one bad day.”
The Good Days
Becky, a proud Sun Devil who loved cats and was on track to graduate a year early, volunteered at a cat shelter and was a model student with a 3.5 GPA, Dan said.He said she found it ironic that ASU was such a big party school, yet she and her roommate frequently spent Friday nights at home talking and joking.
“She said that she was doing her part to lower the image of ASU as a party school,” Dan said. “She was going to college not to party but to further her career.”
Her older sister, Alyssa Sell, said she fondly remembers winter afternoons when the sisters would wait for the snowplow to come and make a large mound at the end of the driveway.
“We loved it, and we would have dad make us an igloo out of it,” she said. “We always had aspirations to spend the night, but it never happened.”
Sell said she was proud of Becky, who would have graduated before her sister despite being two years younger. She said Becky was “fiercely independent” and mature beyond her years.
“Becky liked to scare me and tell me stories that freaked me out, even though she was younger,” Sell said.
Dan said Becky’s commitment to personal growth and her unwavering need to challenge herself were her greatest qualities.
He said he remembers her transformation from nervously cheerleading with her head down to being the nominated cheer captain and cheering in front of thousands at the Minneapolis Metrodome in just one year.
“We’re hoping she set an example for people on how to live by the fact that she was always pushing herself out of her comfort zone,” Dan said.
Discomfort
On April 23 at around 10:30 a.m., Luis Soltero, Becky's ex-boyfriend, went into the Tempe Police Apache substation and told officers that he needed to speak to detectives, Tempe Police Sgt. Mike Pooley said.“He was very panicked and very agitated,” Pooley said. “He told the officer that he wanted to report the death of his girlfriend and told the officer where she was at.”
Tempe Police and Fire went to Becky’s apartment near Lemon Street and Rural Road and found Becky’s body in the bathtub, wrists handcuffed and ankles bound with tape.
“It appeared that she had been dead for several days, and she was very brutally killed,” Pooley said. “He wrapped her head in plastic and put coffee grinds and baking soda on the body to mask the smell of decomposition. It was a gruesome scene.”
Pooley said Police are still waiting for the medical examiner to confirm the cause of death. He said there was a note in the apartment, which read, “I killed her because I had to end her life,” and included other “disturbing” phrases as well.
Soltero was charged with first degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault, and his bail was set at $1 million, Pooley said.
He has since pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, according to the Maricopa County Superior Court.
Dan, who met Soltero over Christmas break when he and Becky visited the family in their Northfield home, said Soltero came off as a bright young man who was quiet, easygoing and not at all “clingy or possessive.”
He said Soltero joined the family for a night out at the theater, exchanged Christmas gifts with the family and cooked them an authentic Mexican dinner.
“He was on the phone with his mother making sure he had the recipe right, and he just seemed like a really nice young man,” Dan said.
He said Soltero was Becky’s first serious boyfriend, and when the family found out about their break-up in mid-April, they took it to heart.
“We knew it might be tough, so we offered to fly her home so she could get away from things for a few days,” Dan said.
He said Becky declined the offer. When asked how Luis was handling the break-up, Becky said it didn’t bother him much and that the two were “bored with the relationship,” Dan said.
Becky’s neighbors and friends alerted the family that there may have been a domestic incident and that Soltero began showing up at her work unannounced, but only after the murder, Dan said.
“So from our point of view, we could not see anything happening until all of a sudden we get this call out of nowhere,” he said. “We asked and we prodded, but Becky kept the abuse that may have been happening from us.”
Darling Becky
Louann Withers owns Romancing the Bean, where Becky worked from October 2012 until her death. She said Becky was a hard worker who never called in sick and was always on time.“She was darling, absolutely darling,” Withers said. “She was beautiful, she was sweet and everybody adored her. I don’t know what else to say except that it’s just tragic.”
Withers said Tempe Police came in asking about Becky but could not tell them what condition Becky was in. She said she knew Becky had just broken up with Soltero and feared for her safety.
“My first thought was, 'Oh my gosh. Did he hit her?'” she said. “It never dawned on me that it could be something this tragic.”
Withers said she found out later on the news that a 19-year-old ASU student from out of town had been killed. She said her heart grew heavier until she heard Soltero was arrested in connection with the death, and her fears were confirmed.
Romancing The Bean is working on setting up a scholarship in Becky’s name, Withers said.
“She was just as sweet as could be, and it’s just a crying shame that this could happen to someone who had so much going for her and so much left to do in her life,” she said.
Soltero and Kasper did not live together, despite many media outlets reporting to the contrary, Dan said. He said the family has been upset by this inaccuracy because it “gives a different image of who Becky really was.”
However, he said he has been willing to talk to the media because sharing her story helps the family with their grieving process.
“This is our daughter, and she is not going down as just a statistic or as another murder victim,” he said. “This is not just about a murder. It’s about Becky Kasper. She has a story to be told. She had a life, and she was a great person.”
Reach the reporter at npmendo@asu.edu or follow him on twitter @NPMendoza
