Midlothian police and the Texas Rangers are stepping up their investigation into the murder of fitness instructor Missy Bevers, who was killed inside a church early Monday morning.
NBC 5 has learned police are going through Missy Bevers cell phone to see who she texted and called in the days before the murder, in the hopes of generating new clues.
Police are also reviewing the surveillance video of other nearby businesses -- including a local gun store -- to see if those cameras also recorded the same person recorded on surveillance video inside the church moments before Bevers arrived.
Police also returned Wednesday afternoon to the scene of the murder, inside Creekside Church of Christ.
As police investigate -- Missy's close friends are remembering her life.
"She was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met in my life," said Cammy Jackson. "She’s this tiny little thing, but she’s one of those people you can’t help but be drawn to. She always has a smile on her face. Always had a smile on her face. Just so friendly and genuine, and really she wanted to be your friend. That’s who she was."
Missy became a Camp Gladiator fitness instructor a little more than a year ago. She taught a 5 a.m. fitness classes five days a week, and twice a week she also led a 9 a.m. class.
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Twice a week she held the classes at Midlothian's Navarro College campus and three times a week at Creekside Church.
She generally had between 12-15 students in her classes.
"You could tell that she was friends with all of them," Jackson said. "If I missed a class she’d text me to make sure I was OK -- ask if I was going to be there for the next class. And it wasn’t just me, she was like that with everyone. They were there because Missy encouraged them to be there."
Close friends said Missy was a proud mother of three daughters and talked about her children often.
"She talked about her girls all the time," Jackson said. "She was a mom. She was a family woman. She talked about her family all the time."
She said she talked about Brandon less frequently, although it appeared to her that they had a very happy home life together.
"We talked about the girls a lot, but I could tell from the way she talked about creating the camps, and all that, that Brandon was very supportive of what she was doing. It was just a very happy family," Jackson said.
Jackson said she knew Missy for eight years and watched her transition over the last 18 months from stay-at-home mom with a growing interest in health products into a fitness guru.
"It was just neat to see that transition," she said. "When I first met her years ago she was not as outgoing as she is now, she was just a little more shy. I think this recent transition, her transformation, made her into a outgoing, vibrant person."
"It was her goal to reach as many people as she could and make them as healthy as she could, through her encouragement," she said.
Jackson said she's haunted by the surveillance video and by what Missy must have been thinking in her final moments.
"I think about in her last moments, what happened. How did she come across this guy, this person? What was she feeling? I can’t even fathom it," she said. "When I first heard about it, I was literally sick to my stomach."
"In my mind I think she was stalked, stalked-targeted, but I’m not an expert. But it seems clear to me from that video that they weren’t there to rob the church," she added.
The last time she and Missy spoke was Thursday morning. Missy stopped by the Chamber of Commerce to sign up for a May event and chatted with Jackson for several minutes.
"It was all about Camp Gladiator and how she was super excited for this conference she was going to down in Austin over the weekend. She was just so excited for everything that was going on," Jackson said. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Just her busy-ness and her getting stuff done."
"I hugged her. I said, 'love you, I’ll see you next week'. But then...," Jackson's voice trails off, choking back tears.
She said she hopes and prays that her dear friend didn't suffer in her final moments and that police make an arrest soon.
"I think they should remember her as a kind, loving friend, wife, mom. Someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Someone who cared about people. Someone who cared about people in a genuine way," Jackson said.
