From Idaho roots to the national spotlight: The story behind Judge Justin Beresky’s journey

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PHOENIX — It’s not common for a judge to speak on the record with a reporter, so when I emailed Judge Justin Beresky requesting an interview, I knew there would be some conditions.

For one, I was aware he would likely not answer questions about the two Lori Vallow Daybell trials he presided over earlier this year. If he wanted to discuss them, I’d be more than happy to listen, but the Arizona Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits judges from making public statements about cases in their courtrooms.

However, it was the Daybell trials that made Beresky known worldwide. For a few weeks in April and then again in June, an untold number of people watched him conduct court as Daybell represented herself in the highest-profile trials Arizona has seen since the Jodi Arias murder case in 2013.

Memes featuring Beresky’s photo were shared on social media and phrases he said in court were printed on t-shirts and badges. Online commenters frequently wrote about Beresky’s good looks, giving him nicknames such as “Judge McSteamy,” “Judge McDreamy,” “The Court’s Finest” and “The Honorable Hottie.”

As Beresky sat day after day in a Maricopa County courtroom presiding over a case with Idaho ties, few knew that he himself has deep roots in the Gem State. That’s the story I wanted to tell, and after some time, Beresky agreed to sit down with me for his first-ever media interview.

Justin Beresky was born in Oregon and when he was in kindergarten, his family moved to Grangeville, Idaho, a rural farming town of about 3,500 people located 75 miles southeast of Lewiston. His father was a chiropractor and his mother was a homemaker.

“She got a Realtor’s license and did a little bit of that. She had a side business and would go into other people’s homes and give women consultations on what colors were good for them to wear,” Beresky recalls. “She actually put on a fashion show in Grangeville when I was in sixth or seventh grade with the local JCPenney providing all the clothes. … I think she has a picture in her living room where I have my sister on one arm and my sister’s best friend on the other, and we’re all dressed up going down the runway.”

Beresky’s small-town childhood was idyllic. He’d ride his bike with friends to the pool, play hide-and-seek on summer nights, ski in the winter, camp, visit the rivers and explore nearby forests.

In the fifth grade, a boy named Chad Hill moved to town, and he and Beresky became friends.

“He was very funny and active in sports. His best sport was probably baseball and he was our ace pitcher,” Hill tells EastIdahoNews.com. “He had a pitch with a curveball that we called the ‘hoop of fire.’ When he threw it, our whole team was excited.”

Hill says Beresky, who is now in his early 50s, was outgoing and “the girls seemed to like him.” The two of them, along with six other boys, formed a tight-knit friendship that still endures today. They keep up a running group text, and most of them recently took a fishing trip together.

Beresky excelled in school and, as a teenager, thought he might become a teacher.

“When I was in third or fourth grade, I took some sort of basic aptitude test, and it said I should either be a teacher, a lawyer or a garbage man,” Beresky says with a smile.

Beresky didn’t take much interest in the law until sixth grade, when brothers Mark Henry Lankford and Bryan Stuart Lankford — later known as the “Grangeville brothers” — were charged with the 1983 murders of Robert and Cheryl Bravence, a Texas couple vacationing near Grangeville. The case, which ultimately resulted in death sentences, caught his attention.

Beresky’s parents divorced when he was in high school, and his father moved to New Mexico.

“I felt like I needed to get out of town and find some new, exciting adventure. So I went to the University of New Mexico,” Beresky says. “I really liked New Mexico, and for me, growing up in Grangeville and then moving to Albuquerque, it was like this big adventure being in a big city for the first time in my life.”

Read the entire story here

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