 Ali Kostiel was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but had always dreamed of attending the University of Mississippi. When she was finally given this chance, in her eyes, life couldn't have gotten much better. But then things changed. Investigators say that there weren't any clues or evidence that could have tipped off Ali's friends before her life was tragically cut short on that July afternoon. Detectives who arrived at the scene of the crime couldn't understand how someone could have done such a thing to a well-behaved, easy-going student. But that's when they honed in on their primary suspect, another student who had a secret agenda that no one could have ever seen coming. Ali Kostiel was 21 years old in 2019, attending Mississippi State University in Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford, Mississippi is a relatively small town. There isn't a whole lot going on there. I was there just a couple of weeks ago and best I could tell, it was a town that didn't have much to offer outside of a few restaurants and outdoor stores like Tractor Supply. With the population of about 25,000, it's a quaint little town, very quiet, and certainly a great place for college students to live, as there's only so much trouble you can get into in such a small, lazy town. The University of Mississippi is really the main draw for the town, and I think it's safe to assume that the college is likely where the town gets most of its money as well. The University has an acceptance rate of around 90%, but the reason most people go here is likely because its tuition is relatively low, compared to other similar schools. And with the graduation rate of about 65%, it fits right in line with schools that may cost 10 times as much, while offering what's essentially the same exact education. This is likely why Ali Kostiel was so determined to attend the University of Mississippi, a great school, a great price, and usually great people. Ali was attending college with the plans of graduating with a degree in marketing. She was scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2020, much sooner than many of her friends and peers, as she'd been attending summer school on top of her regular college courses. Ali had dreams of getting a job in the fashion industry in some capacity, though she never revealed specifically what type of fashion marketing job that she'd been hoping for, at least not publicly. Ali didn't just attend the University of Mississippi, though. She wasn't just a run-of-the-mill student. She had a fierce passion that few people will ever match. Ali had helped found the Alpha Phi sorority and was even the president of the school's golf club. If this weren't enough, in her free time, she would also help teach fitness classes in the area as well. I don't know how she managed to find time to do all these things, but with summer school stacked on top of all this, it's pretty clear that Ali was a very busy person. But she always made sure to save time for friends and family. Her mother recalled Ali's dreams of attending the University and said that she didn't only have plans of carving out a great career for herself, but she also dreamed of meeting her future husband at the school. Ali felt confident that she'd be able to find a suitable partner and settle down with an honest man by the time she graduated. In the fall of 2016, Ali believed that she had finally met this man, when she ran across Brandon Beesfeld, a student that she fell ahead over heels for. But unfortunately, these feelings were not mutual. Ali's friends say that they did their best to warn her about Brandon, but she was blinded by his presence. For whatever reason, Ali was drawn to him with a magnetic intensity. She just couldn't keep her mind off of him, but unfortunately, these feelings were far from mutual, but Ali couldn't let him go. Over the course of the next few years, Ali would learn a lot about herself. After realizing how low she'd be willing to go to keep Brandon around. Oddly enough, Ali didn't actually meet Brandon Beesfeld while the two were on campus. She actually met him in Fort Worth, Texas back in 2016, but quickly learned that he was a student at the University of Mississippi. For Ali, this likely seemed like the stars were all finally aligning and their relationship was meant to be. But tragically, this simply wasn't true. Now, at the time, Ali certainly didn't know this. But everyone around her knew exactly the type of person that Brandon really was. Brandon was a part of the in-crowd. He was popular from the very beginning, at least with other guys' age. As far as women, well, as soon as they actually got to know him, they'd usually go running the other way, but that wasn't true for Ali. She couldn't get enough. According to various friends and acquaintances, Brandon was a terrible person. Now, I don't go around throwing insults like this very often, but I'm serious, Brandon was the very definition of a piece of human garbage. All of Ali's friends recall him as being a total tool. All he ever talked about was his father's money and how he could do whatever he wanted because his dad would always bail him out. It didn't matter if what Brandon was doing was illegal or simply immoral. He'd do whatever he wanted all the time, always, no matter who he heard in the process. One of Ali's friends spoke about Brandon, and while this friend rushed to remain anonymous, she described him as a pig. She said that he would use his family's money to do whatever he wanted, and that he'd have six different girls around him at one time, sitting back and laughing at them. She ended her remarks about Brandon by describing him as quote, super misogynistic. Other friends recalled Brandon in a similar fashion. They said that he was raised as a quote daddy's boy, and that he had no regard for women whatsoever. He viewed them as little more than property to be played with. One friend recalled that he would constantly badger every female that he came into contact with in the doors. He'd hang out with them, get what he wanted out of them, and then move on to the next one. Unfortunately, this seems to have been the case with Ali as well. Ali was deeply infatuated with Brandon. In the early stages of their relationship, Ali was under the impression that the two were exclusive and that they had started dating. But according to Ali's family, she couldn't have been more wrong. Ali's mother recalled Ali coming home from college one day and announcing that she'd met a boy, specifically a boy from Texas. Her mother says that for whatever reason, Ali was always interested in Texas and the people from Texas. So when she met a boy from one of her favorite places, she couldn't have been happier. Ali initially described Brandon as nothing more than a crush, but it soon became clear that they were far more than that. Maddie Norris, one of Ali's closest friends, says that she never even met Brandon. According to Maddie, Brandon always had better things to do than meet Ali's friends and family. Maddie would later describe the relationship between Ali and Brandon as on and off again, but for Ali, Brandon was the only person she cared about. Ali's friends say that she was repeatedly crushed by Brandon. She would constantly make plans with him, then he would never show up. She'd invite friends over to meet him, but he'd disappear just hours before the meetup. She'd schedule dates or phone calls, but he was never around. This all reached a breaking point in the summer of 2019. By this point, Ali and Brandon had been involved with one another on some level for about three years. But then Ali dropped a bombshell on Brandon. She sent him a text message and announced that she might be pregnant. She also sent a photo showing a pregnancy test result that came back as inconclusive. At this point, Ali was a senior in college, planning to graduate in just a few short months in the following spring. She revealed her possible pregnancy to Brandon on the 14th of June at around 10.15pm. While Brandon always did his best to dip and run whenever Ali reached out to him, this time was different. He responded almost immediately by saying that she should just take the plan B pill and move on with her life. He added that he had no plans to keep a child, saying, quote, I do not want a kid at all. Just minutes later, this was followed by another text that read, I'm serious, no kid at all. It will ruin my life. I will not help at all. Immediately after these texts, Ali set up a time to meet with Brandon about this supposed pregnancy, but he never showed up, go figure. She scheduled multiple follow-up meetings as well, but he didn't show up to a single one of them. He would always concoct some sort of excuse in claiming he was busy or had other plans or simply forgot. It wouldn't be until July of that year that Brandon would finally get around to meeting without him. But he didn't plan on simply meeting up with her. He had much bigger plans and a much darker secret. Ali and Brandon had once again made plans to meet up on the evening of July 19th, 2019. At this point, Ali was expected to have been about three months pregnant, but interestingly, police found surveillance footage from that night showing that she'd been at a bar. She got an Uber after leaving the bar and was seen driving home alone, suggesting that she'd likely been drinking. This took place at 11.52 PM, just a couple hours later at 1.28 AM. Believe it or not, Brandon actually showed up for their planned meeting. He picked up Ali and the two drove down to a fishing camp at Sardis Lake. According to photos that were taken at the scene of the crime, the two had been drinking white claws and eating junk food throughout their drive to the fishing camp. Mind you, this was taking place while the two were operating under the assumption that Ali was pregnant. And for anyone that might not be aware, white claws are alcoholic and junk food ain't great for a baby either. The two arrived at the fishing camp at around 2.15 AM. And according to those who live nearby, around the same time, a series of shots rang out in the night. A woman who was walking her dog reported hearing the shots between 2.15 and 2.30 AM, pretty much the exact same time that Brandon and Ali would have arrived. By 10.30 AM, that same morning, a police officer was passing through the area while conducting his routine patrols of the camp. And that's when he came across a crime scene. Based on the crime scene photos and police officer testimony, when he arrived at the camp, he found Ali lying face down on the ground. Nearby, he found her purse, two cans of white claw and the aforementioned bag of snacks. There was also a jacket placed on a nearby picnic table. When he approached Ali, it became clear that she had lost her life after being hit by multiple rounds at a somewhat close range. The officer stated that upon closer inspection, Ali had been hit a total of nine times, though 11 shell casings were found nearby, leaving two rounds unaccounted for. The investigator said that in all of his years in the service, he'd never seen someone be hit so many times before. As soon as police confirmed the identity of Ali, they immediately got to work on the case, interviewing her closest friends and family members. In particular, they were interested in the testimony of Ali's friends. After speaking with multiple friends and acquaintances, detectives quickly noticed that there was one name that repeatedly came up in conversation, Brandon Thiesfeld. Brandon was a difficult person to track down, but police were eventually able to get in touch with him and they asked him to come in for questioning. They didn't reveal that he was a suspect as far as I can tell. They purely explained that they wanted to hear his testimony from the night of the crime, but Brandon treated the police in the same way that he treated all the women in his life with blatant disrespect. He told the officers on at least three occasions that he would meet them at a specific location at a specific time, but he would never show up. Once he lied on this third occasion, police got much more serious and spoke with a judge and requested to obtain a warrant for his arrest, as well as gain access to his cell phone data. The judge granted this request and police began to trace Brandon's movements by using his cell phone. They quickly learned that he wasn't even in the state of Mississippi any longer. He had packed his bags and was heading towards Tennessee without ever notifying them. Needless to say, this wasn't going to fly, so police tracked him down after issuing a bolo for his truck, an $80,000 Ford F-150 that he'd purchased once again with daddy's money. About two hours after issuing the bolo, Brandon was arrested in Memphis. As soon as police searched Brandon's truck, things got much worse for him. They found a 40-caliber weapon that he had been hiding, a weapon that matched the one used at the scene of the crime. Brandon was immediately extradited back to Mississippi, but believe it or not, things would only get worse from here. When police were doing their best to tie Brandon to the scene of the crime, they requested access to Ali's phone records. While they obviously found the weapon that was used in the crime, they didn't have any sort of motive, and without a motive, it would be a bit more difficult for a jury to find Brandon guilty. Well, it wouldn't take long for them to uncover a mountain of evidence that simply couldn't be ignored. When they began looking through Ali's Apple Watch and iPhone, they were able to use her location data, her fitness data, and her text messages to paint a remarkably clear picture of when the crime took place, how it played out, and what role Brandon had played in things. They were able to confirm via Apple iMessage that Brandon was the last person to have seen Ali on the night that she disappeared. Not only this, but they were able to match their location data to the exact same location at the exact same time. But then came the most damning evidence of all. When looking at the contents of Ali's text messages, they learned that for three months, Ali had been leading Brandon to believe that she was pregnant and that the baby was his. Brandon, naturally terrified, refused to do the right thing and just meet up with Ali to talk it over and figure out what role she wanted him to play in all of this. Brandon pretty clearly didn't want a child, but Ali continued to push him to talk about the possibilities. In the end, Brandon made a rash decision that would change the history of his community forever. Police were able to prove that Brandon, terrified of, quote, ruining his life, decided to claim Ali's life and the life of her unborn baby. Or did he? Well, yes, he did claim the life of Ali, but a shocking revelation was announced when in autopsy was conducted on Ali's body. She wasn't pregnant, nor was there any indication that she had been at any point in the recent past. So what was with this strange pregnancy test that she showed to Brandon? Well, who even knows? There are a million reasons why a pregnancy test could come back inconclusive, but it seems that Ali was riding this train for as long as she possibly could, maybe just hoping to get a meeting with Brandon. But here's the thing. We have no way of knowing if Ali knew that she wasn't pregnant. We have no way of knowing if she really was just stringing him along. But what I find really odd is that for the three months that she believed she might have been pregnant, she never bothered taking a follow-up pregnancy test to confirm one way or the other. But the most crucial piece of evidence in my book that proves that she likely knew that she wasn't pregnant was her attendance at the bar that night and the white claws that were found at the scene of the crime. Ali was a smart girl. She almost certainly knew that if she was pregnant, then she shouldn't be drinking. To me, this seems to allude to the idea that Ali may have been so deeply in love with Brandon that she was willing to do almost anything just to get a few moments alone with him and try to hash things out. But Brandon was just too much of a coward to face the possible consequences of his actions and just sit down and have a talk with her. And the thing that bothers me most is that if Brandon had half a brain, he could have pieced all this together as well. But instead, he decided to put an end not only to their relationship, but to an entire life. Ali had been working so hard to get her degree so that she could begin her dream career. She tried so hard to love someone and begin a life with someone, but unfortunately, it was someone who just couldn't love her back. Ali had everything going for her, but this moronic monster stole all of that and more. After Brandon's arrest, police came across a handwritten note in which Brandon accepted responsibility for his actions. The note was addressed to his parents and he explained that he was sorry for what he had done and sorry for the pain that he had caused them. They explained that he'd been having dark thoughts for quite some time, years leading up to the crime. He said that he couldn't explain where these thoughts came from, but that he'd finally acted on them and deeply regretted his actions. At the end of it all, Brandon was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole once he turns 65. It would seem that at long last, Brandon had finally committed a crime that his dad couldn't bail him out of. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you wanna see more true crime documentaries like this, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. If you'd like to help support the channel, the best way you can do that is simply by leaving a comment below, any comment at all. It helps out the channel a lot more than you may realize. If you wanna help out financially, you can do that by clicking the blue join button below or by picking up a True Crime Stories mug from tieknots.com. But with that, my name is Tieknots and I'll catch you guys in the next video.