Hunt for ancestor’s grave led San Antonio woman to missing man’s remains
Going deep into the Texas Hill Country’s crowded brush and trees in search of forgotten gravestones, San Antonio resident Chelsie Fale stumbled upon a morbid discovery she wasn’t seeking — the remains of a young Schertz man missing for more than a year.
Jacob Dubois, who would be 23 now, went missing over a year and a half ago on March 7, 2021. His remains, found by Fale in the early afternoon of September 10, answered part of the mystery to the Texan’s disappearance.
“After finding out it was Jacob, I’m trying to understand what his mom must have been through not knowing,” Fale said. “I have seven kids myself.”
Dubois was last seen with his friend Ethan Beckman the same day he went missing. Dubois talked to his girlfriend that night and told her he was going to be with Beckman, but never returned home the following day. She reported the absence to Schertz police and on March 8, police found Beckman’s 2019 Volkswagen Jetta GTI, but with collision damage.
On March 9, 2021, Dubois was entered as a missing person.
The same day, Beckman recounted to police the two were by a construction site near Dubois’ home on Homestead Parkway and Somervell the night he disappeared. He claimed that Dubois told him he was going to walk home.
A day later detectives discovered Beckman had given conflicting reports and they seized his car. During an inspection, it allegedly appeared someone had tried to clean the car to the point where the floorboard was soaked with water.
A disturbing discovery
Fale began researching her family history while homeschooling her kids and she discovered an app that helped document and index local cemetery headstones that need servicing.
“I’m looking for those things for myself to tell me about where my great great-grandparents are, but I’m having a hard time doing that … If I can do that here, for people who have been looking and all it takes me a few minutes to just run through the woods, I’ll do it,” Fale said.
The day Dubois’ remains were found, Fale and her family had volunteered to help pick up trash at Canyon Lake. On the way home, her kids asked if they could document a cemetery.
She got to the area near where the cemetery was shown on her app and trekked alone into the woods in search of the grave site. Her husband stayed at the car with their kids after they fell asleep.
“I finally found the first cemetery, and it’s overgrown — it was not easy to find,” she said.
Then Fale noticed another headstone popped up on her app, but it was further back in the woods. Her husband called and was ready to go; the family needed to eat. At that point, her husband was asking her to head back to the car.
“I said a little prayer like ‘do I make my husband mad and just keep out in the woods. Or do I just get these photos?’ I just don’t know when I’ll be back out here,” Fale said. “This headstone is 200 years old, I just had a feeling to just go.”
Fale hopped over a fence to find the lone headstone before heading back to her family.
“As I was coming back out using my GPS during the follow up, there were human remains just sitting there,” she said.
She showed her husband the grizzly discovery and then found her way back to the car where she called the sheriff’s non-emergency line. After feeding her children, she went back out to the area to help lead law enforcement to the remains.
Fale said the remains looked like they weren’t originally located at the 12′ by 12′ open area near a stream of water where she found them. The cemetery with the single headstone was roughly 400 feet away from Grave Cemetery, and the remains were about 100 yards from the lone headstone.
“It’s really hard to fathom going through life without knowing what happened,” Fale said. “I just really want [Dubois’ mom] to know there was such a strong feeling for me to head that way.”
Beckman, who was arrested on March 29, 2021, for tampering with evidence remains in custody, and as of Monday, October 24, the Schertz Police Department was handling the investigation. The Guadalupe County Attorney’s Office was unable to provide comment for this story due to pending legal action.
A pretrial hearing for Beckman, originally scheduled for September, is set to take place at 9 a.m. on January 12, 2023. According to court documents, two retained attorneys for Beckman have left the case, one by substitution and another by withdrawal.
MySA requested comment for this story from Beckman’s listed attorney, Charles Fagerberg of West Lake Hills, but did not receive a response.
