Tennessee jury convicts John Edward Bean IV in 2021 murder of Trasbin Campbell

A Montgomery County jury convicted John Edward Bean IV, 44, of first-degree murder in the 2021 killing of Trasbin Campbell after five days of testimony and about two hours of deliberation, siding with prosecutors who said the case was driven by fixation that turned lethal. The verdict came in the Eagle’s View Drive case, where jurors also found Bean guilty of first-degree murder in perpetration of a crime, employing a firearm, aggravated assault, theft under $1,000 and the lesser-included offense of attempted electronic tracking of a motor vehicle.

District Attorney General Robert Nash told jurors, “This is a case of obsession that led to murder.” Prosecutors said Bean had been in a 14-year relationship with Erica Lee and shared a daughter with her, placing the killing inside a long, tangled personal history rather than a random act of violence. That theme ran through the trial: control, pursuit and escalation, all building toward the March 27, 2021, shooting.

Jurors heard from Bean’s daughter, Jonae Bean, who testified that on Feb. 28, 2021, her father asked her to place a tracker in her mother’s car. They also heard emotional testimony from the victim’s girlfriend, who said Bean threatened both her and Campbell before the shooting. Those allegations helped prosecutors frame the killing as the culmination of a broader pattern of pressure and surveillance, not a sudden confrontation.

Police responded to a panic alarm around 4 a.m. on March 27, 2021, in the 1200 block of Eagle’s View Drive in Clarksville. Inside the residence, officers found 40-year-old Trasbin Campbell dead. Clarksville police later said Bean was located and arrested in Nashville, and investigators described the killing as not random because Bean and Campbell knew each other.

The trial also turned on digital and forensic evidence. Jurors saw DNA results, cellphone data, deleted searches and a hotel surveillance timeline that mapped out the hours surrounding the killing. Taken together, the evidence gave prosecutors the structure they needed to argue that Bean’s conduct had crossed from personal conflict into first-degree murder. With the jury’s decision now in place, the case moves to sentencing after a conviction that rested on obsession, surveillance and a violent end to a relationship-driven dispute.