Posts Tagged ‘ True Crime ’

FBI turns animal cruelty into top-tier felony – WHP CBS 21 Harrisburg – Top Stories

It is about time. The connection between the abuse of animals and abuse of humans has been known about for a very long time.

It won’t catch every twisted killer but it will help law enforcement keep an eye on the soon to be killers.

FBI studies show that serial killers like Dahmer impaled the heads of dogs, frogs and cats on sticks; David Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam,” poisoned his mother’s parakeet; and Albert DeSalvo, aka the “Boston Strangler,” trapped cats and dogs in wooden crates and killed them by shooting arrows through the boxes.

FBI turns animal cruelty into top-tier felony – WHP CBS 21 Harrisburg – Top Stories.

2014
10/05
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Death penalty upheld for serial killer William Suff

Another serial killer who really should have been stopped LONG ago.

In 1974 William Suff and his wife at the time beat their 2 MONTH old daughter to death. He was sentenced to 70 years but got out in ten.
>enter sarcasm: Isn’t parole a great thing for baby killers?<

 

There is very little that can be said about this guy that is ‘good’. I heard that he came across as

grandfatherly, a mild-mannered guy in the courtroom

but look at his track record:

Sept. 25, 1973 – Suff kills 2-month-old daughter, Dijanet. She dies of ruptured liver and numerous broken bones.
April 11, 1974 – Suff and his first wife Teryl convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 70-year prison terms. Teryl’s conviction later overturned.
Feb. 3, 1984 – Suff paroled from Texas to California.
Oct. 9, 1986 – Suff hired by Riverside County as a warehouse clerk.
March 9, 1987 – Suff discharged from parole but required to continue annual reporting. Jan. 18, 1988 – Body of Lisa Lacik, 21, of San Bernardino, found near Highway 330 in San Bernardino National Forest. Suff is prime suspect but not charged.
January 1989 – Prostitute Rhonda Jetmore attacked in Lake Elsinore. She escapes and reports attack to police, but crime wasn’t linked to serial killings until 1992, when she identifies Suff as her attacker.
June 28, 1989 – Body of Kimberly Lyttle, 28, found in Cottonwood Canyon area.
Dec. 13, 1989 – Body of Christina Leal, 23, found off Goetz Road in Quail Valley area.
Jan. 18, 1990 – Body of Darla Ferguson, 23, found in Cottonwood Canyon area south of Canyon Lake, a half-mile from where Lyttle’s body was found.
Feb. 8, 1990 – Body of Carol Miller, 34, found in Highgrove.
Nov. 6, 1990 – Body of Cheryl Coker, 33, found in northeast Riverside.
Dec. 21, 1990 – Body of Susan Sternfeld, 27, found in dumpster near where Miller and Coker were found.
Jan. 19, 1991 – Body of Kathleen Milne Puckett, 42, found northwest of Lake Elsinore.
April 26, 1991 – Body of Cherie Payseur, 24, found in Riverside.
July 4, 1991 – Body of Sherry Latham, 37, found in Lake Elsinore.
Aug. 16, 1991 – Body of Kelly Hammond, 27, found in Corona.
Sept. 13, 1991 – Body of Catherine McDonald, 30, found in Lake Elsinore.
Oct. 26, 1991 – Suff’s 3-month-old baby, Bridgette, suffers serious injuries in the home and is removed by San Bernardino County authorities.
Oct. 30, 1991 – Body of Delliah Zamora, 35, found in Mira Loma near Highway 60.
Dec. 23, 1991 – Body of Eleanore Ojeda Casares, 39, found in Riverside orange grove, a half-mile from a police station.
Jan. 9, 1992 – Suff is stopped for traffic violation in Riverside. He is questioned and later jailed for failing to report to authorities under Texas parole.
July 28, 1992 – Grand jury indicts Suff on 14 murder counts and one attempted murder count.

Timeline from this very detailed article.

Murderpedia with pictures of victims and more detail into their brutal deaths.

 

He did not just kill these women, he made them suffer. This is just an example of what he did to 1 of his victims.

The young woman was later identified as 23-year-old Michelle Yvette Gutierrez, a former resident of Corpus Christi, Texas.   An autopsy revealed she suffered severe trauma to the anal and vaginal areas and multiple stab wounds were discovered on her face, chest and buttocks.  Ligature marks on her neck suggested that she had been strangled as the gruesome mutilations took place.  In the end, investigators had a brutal murder on their hands and few clues to follow.

 

Sadly, this is in California so this piece of crap will probably die of old age before the sentence is fulfilled but at least he is locked up.

2014
04/30
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Still unpacking but had to share

Still unpacking but had to share

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (KTLA) — Richard Ramirez, the convicted rapist and serial killer known as the Night Stalker, died Friday morning.

ramirez

1984 arrest mug shot of Ramirez

Ramirez, who terrorized Southern California in 1984 and ’85 with a series of murders and rapes, died at Marin General Hospital of natural causes, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Satanic symbols were left at murder scenes by Ramirez, who entered homes through unlocked windows and doors.

He was captured Aug. 31, 1985, after being identified and severely beaten by an angry mob in East Los Angeles as he was trying to steal a car.

Police had to break up the mob to prevent them from possibly killing Ramirez.

He was convicted Sept. 20, 1989, of killing 13 people and was awaiting execution on death row.

Ramirez was 53 years old.

Read more: http://ktla.com/2013/06/07/report-night-stalker-richard-ramirez-has-died/#ixzz2Va5m3KjK

 

My happy thought for today. No more appeals, no more wild claims and no more even remote possibility of him getting out.

I hope there is a Hell, I am sure he would not enjoy it as much as he thought he would.

2013
06/07
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Heidi Balch murder connected to Joel Rifkin

 

 

Image

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57576616/severed-head-found-in-1989-identified-linked-to-serial-killer/

A woman whose severed head was found on a New Jersey golf course more than 20 years ago has been identified, and police say the trail leads to a notorious serial killer.

 Authorities say 25-year-old Heidi Balch likely was the first victim of Joel Rifkin, who is in prison in New York after admitting he killed 17 women in the early 1990s. They cite physical evidence and Rifkin’s statements in linking Balch’s killing to him.

 State Police Sgt. Stephen Urbanski says Balch worked as a prostitute in New York City and used numerous aliases.

 The severed head was found in 1989 in Hopewell, a town north of Trenton.

 State and local detectives found Balch’s aunt in New York, who identified her picture this month. DNA tests confirmed her identity.

 Hopewell Police Chief George Meyer tells The Times of Trenton that New York authorities have no interest in prosecuting the case because Rifkin is already behind bars.

 Rifkin, a former landscaper, was stopped by police on a routine traffic stop when a Long Island officer noticed his front license plate was missing, CBS New York reports.

 An odor in Rifkin’s truck led to the discovery of a body. Rifkin admitted to the 17 slayings after his May 1994 murder conviction in Nassau County. He also pleaded guilty to two murders in neighboring Suffolk County.

“Certain things are very hard to stop,” Rifkin said. “You think of people as things.”

 He said he disposed of the bodies in threes.

 “There were mini clusters, little sets of three,” Rifkin said. “Three were dismembered. Three were in oil drums. Some were in water. Some were on land. It’s like my own little nightmare scenarios.”

 Rifkin painstakingly covered up his crimes. He researched past crimes for details.

 “Water is harder to investigate than land because it washes everything,” he said.

 Throughout his trial and incarceration, Rifkin still could not explain one thing: why.

 “I don’t know. Why do people try to quit smoking for their entire lives?” Rifkin said. “As much as I say I wanted to stop, there probably would’ve been others.”

2013
03/28
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Why? How?

Recently 2 different people that were thought to be victims of John Wayne Gacy were found alive. I kept wondering how they could just go missing and not contact their families. Other have asked the same thing.

Oregon Live spoke with the most recent person to be found and although it did not satisfy my curiosity I’m going to share it here. It does answer in a shallow way.

 More than 30 years ago, Theodore Szal abandoned his car at a Chicago airport and didn’t look back.

“I threw my keys away down the sewer grate so I couldn’t change my mind,” Szal said, 59.

When Theodore “Ted” Szal, then 24, disappeared in March 1977, his family did not report him missing to authorities because he had a history of disengaging from his family for periods of time, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

In November, Cook County authorities sought to identify serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s remaining victims. The circumstances of Szal’s disappearance matched the Gacy victim profile, authorities said.

Authorities interviewed the family, only to find that there were no matches between Szal’s parents’ DNA and the seven remaining unidentified Gacy victims. Authorities then performed background checks on Szal and located him in Beaverton.

On Monday, Beaverton police confirmed Szal’s identity. A Cook County detective told Szal that his family in Chicago was looking for him.

Man thought to be John Wayne Gacy victim found alive in BeavertonMan thought to be John Wayne Gacy victim found alive in BeavertonTed Szal left Chicago in March of 1977, abandoning everything, and his family suspected he was a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Instead his family found out this week he was alive, living in Beaverton.

Growing up, Szal said he felt like the “black sheep” of his family. While his three pretty sisters were cheerleaders in school, he was more of a class clown, he said.

After a family disagreement in which he felt betrayed, Szal decided to leave for good. 

“I just had to leave town,” Szal said. “I just had to go. ”

Szal rebuilt a new life, traveled through Colorado and lived in California for about a decade, working in construction.  In 1989, one of his jobs brought him to Springfield. He met and married a woman he met at a Safeway store that he was remodeling.

Szal and his wife, Debbie Szal, later moved to Beaverton and settled into an apartment near the downtown area. Szal worked maintenance jobs, while his wife worked as the property manager of their apartment complex.

john-wayne-gacyjpg-9389f1b8caa08d9e.jpgThe Associated Press John Wayne Gacy

During that time, he occasionally thought about calling or writing his family, but the pain of the betrayal was too great, he said. “Not just everyone writes their family off,” Szal said. “But I did.” He thought that with the advances of the Internet, his family could easily find and contact him.

His family didn’t forget about him. Szal’s father, Ted Szal Sr., carried a picture of his son in his shirt pocket since he left 34 years ago, he learned this week from a Cook County detective.

Szal relayed a message to his father from the detective: He was still fishing, just the way his dad taught him when he was growing up.

He has no other words for his family yet, he said. He’s still trying to digest everything that has happened. Yes, he left home, bitter and thick-headed, he said. But that’s changed. He didn’t know his family thought he may have been dead, and now he wants to make amends.

Give him a few days, he said, and he’ll call.

“I’ve forgiven them,” Szal said.

— Dominique Fong

I do not understand even still. I hope the disagreement was a doozy. I could never have done that to my family. If nothing else I would have called 1 a year or so just to try to piss them off. LOL

2011
12/28
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Ian Brady Continues to Cause Families Pain

HOW CAN IAN BRADY GET HIS DAY IN COURT WHILE MY BROTHER LIES IN AN UNKNOWN GRAVE?

By James Murray

The brother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett has launched an impassioned plea to stop serial child killer Ian Brady from having his day in the public eye because it would be a travesty of natural justice.

Alan Bennett says Brady’s human rights are being viewed as more important than his and today accuses the killer of mounting a macabre publicity stunt.

Keith was just 12 when he was taken to Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester, and murdered by Brady and his evil accomplice Myra Hindley in 1964.

“I see no reason why the system should pander to his whims when my brother still lies on Saddleworth Moor, having been abused and murdered by Brady in that lonely place,” said Alan.

Brady, 73, wants to be moved from Ashworth high security prison in Merseyside to a prison in Scotland, where it is thought he believes he would be allowed to take his own life. Astonishingly, Brady persuaded mental health tribunal Judge Robert Atherton to allow the public to see his face and hear his arguments.

It would be the first time he has been seen in public for 45 years after he was jailed in 1966 for killing John Kilbride, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17.

Alan’s mother Winnie, 78, has said she wants to attend the hearing to ask Brady why he killed her son and where he buried his body.

Alan told the Sunday Express: ‘‘Although this is a public hearing, I doubt very much whether I, or any other members of the victims’ families, will be permitted to attend.

“Brady’s human rights have long been regarded as more important than ours. I also suspect that this wish for a public hearing is nothing more than a publicity stunt. Let us not forget how he used the press before, and the system, in order to gain release from prison and into a secure hospital.

Now he wishes to do the same in reverse because he hasn’t found Ashworth an easy option.

“His disgusting whinging and repulsive ever-present complaints are being rewarded once more. In all the years that Keith has been missing, Brady has never genuinely tried to help us find his body.”

Terry Kilbride, 57, whose brother John disappeared in November 1963, said: “This hearing should be done behind closed doors and the public should be told about it afterwards. I think he will upset people again and I don’t think people want to hear it.”

Judge Atherton granted Brady’s request to have the hearing made public in October but the ruling was only revealed last week.

The date and arrangements are still being arranged but one possibility is that it will be held in a secure room at Ashworth with limited seating available to the public.

There is an option of having the proceedings filmed to allow journalists and the public to follow events in an adjoining room.

Under the terms of tribunal hearings the judge would sit with a consultant psychiatrist and a specialist lay member.

The psychiatrist would examine Brady and verbally report on his mental state to the judge in private.

At the public element of the hearing the judge would tell Brady’s lawyer about the findings of the psychiatrist.

Brady denied killing Keith Bennett for many years but eventually confessed to the murder and that of Pauline Reade, 16. Hindley died behind bars in 2002, aged 60.

Here 

I feel so bad for these families.

If it was up to me I’d just let Brady die. His only contribution to society is now to bring pain.

I doubt he will ever tell Keith’s family where his body is. Brady enjoys the control and power he gets from it.

2011
12/19
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Tex Watson Denied Parole

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The self-described right-hand man of cult leader Charles Manson, who was convicted of orchestrating the Tate-LaBianca slayings 42 years ago, was denied parole from a California prison Wednesday for the 16th time.

Charles “Tex” Watson, 65, was ordered to continue serving his life sentence after a hearing at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, in the Sierra foothills 50 miles southeast of Sacramento.

A two-member panel of the California Board of Parole Hearings ruled that he cannot seek a new parole hearing for another five years, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It was his 16th denial, she said, contrary to information previously provided by corrections officials that it was his 14th parole hearing.

Four relatives of Watson’s victims asked that his parole be denied for killing actress Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four others at her Beverly Hills home on Aug. 9, 1969. The next night, he helped kill grocery owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

“There’s no question these were some of the most horrific crimes in California history in terms of the brutality, the multiple stab wounds, the gunshots, the large number of victims over a two-day period,” Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Sequeira said. “For a group of people to just slaughter strangers in hopes of igniting a race war is extremely horrifying.”

Watson’s attorney, Cheryl Montgomery, did not return repeated telephone messages.

Watson read a statement but did not answer questions from the parole officials during the nearly five-hour hearing, Sequeira said, leaving them without enough information to decide if he is ready to be released.

“Basically the prison panel found they could not measure his true remorse or his measure of understanding of what caused him to become involved in these gruesome murders,” Sequeira said. “I think he lacks insight and understanding, I think he lacks true remorse. I think he has remorse for his being in prison all these years.”

Sequeira said he believes Watson still is a public safety risk because “he’s a man who is at the center of the Manson family. He was aware of all the crimes that all the Manson family members were involved in.”

Watson married and divorced in prison and has four children from conjugal visits, but his family did not respond to a request for comment that was left through the website that promotes Watson’s prison ministry.

The website says he was raised in Copeville, Texas, north of Dallas, and headed to California in 1967 after dropping out of college. A brief biographical sketch on the site said Watson believed Manson “offered utopia, but in reality, he had a destructive world view, which Charles ended up believing in and acting upon. His participation in the 1969 Manson murders is a part of history that he deeply regrets.”

A book he wrote while in prison is titled, “Manson’s Right-Hand Man Speaks Out!” In the past, Watson has argued that he is a changed man who has been a model prisoner and no longer is a danger to the public.

Like a killer would say anything else!

He did not attend his last parole hearing in 2006 but was portrayed in a psychiatric evaluation at the time as “a very devout fundamentalist Christian … a young, naive and gullible man (who) got into drugs and bizarre company without appreciating the deviance of the company he was keeping.”

This has to be a joke? Tex was a “good boy who just hung with the wrong people”??? No! Tex is a mass murdering, self centered, sociopath who robbed and killed people.

He was not some kid who accidently had a gun go off in a robbery or a drunken car accident.

Charles Tex Watson was, is and always will be a murderer.

Anthony DiMaria, a nephew of victim Jay Sebring, contested that view of Watson and other Manson disciples.

“They’ve often been portrayed as these victims of Manson, and they are killers. They’re mass murderers,” DiMaria said in a telephone interview before the hearing.

Agreed

He attended the hearing with his mother and sister.

Debra Tate also spoke on behalf of her late sister, Sharon, who at the time was married to film director Roman Polanski.

Tate said she was disappointed that Watson can seek parole again in five years.

“I was hoping for more than that, especially given the evidence that was laid out on the table,” she said afterward. “I was hoping for a minimum of seven.”

If he is truly repentant, Watson should provide what information he can on other crimes committed by the Manson family even if he wasn’t directly involved, she said.

Watson was convicted in a separate trial after Manson and three female followers were found guilty of the seven murders. Their death sentences were commuted to life when the U.S. Supreme Court briefly outlawed the death penalty in 1972.

DiMaria said his mother has considered it her mission to speak out on behalf of her brother.

“I know that our family, myself included, feel no hatred, anger or vengeance toward them. We actually go out of love for the victims, and we also go out of justice. This is calculated, cold-blooded mass murder in which bodies were desecrated,” DiMaria said. “We want to bring the memories of the victims into the room as the commissioners deliberate on whether to parole the inmate.”

Here 

Discovery Article

2011
11/17
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FBI to Search Lake for Ray’s Murder Victim

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Investigators think he could be one of the worst serial killers ever in New Mexico. Problem is, they’ve never found any bodies to prove it. But now the FBI says new tips, and the drought, have prompted a new search of Elephant Butte Lake.

David Parker Ray‘s toy box is infamous; his Butte trailer home was a little slice of hell, filled with sinister devices he used to rape and torture women. But there may be another place ray used to keep his victims.

FBI agents will search Elephant Butte Lake again next week, all on a new tip that Ray’s forgotten victims will be found. The FBI isn’t talking except to say it has new information, and a chance now with the drought to search caves and ravines once covered by water.

Ray was arrested in 1999 after a woman wearing just a dog collar and padlocked chains escaped his house of horrors he called his toy box, full of torture devices he called his friends.

He was convicted of kidnapping and sexually torturing three women, all of whom lived to tell their stories. From the start investigators have suspected he was a serial killer.

In 2002, shortly after Ray was sentenced to life, he dropped dead of a heart attack in prison. After his death police released audio tapes he played for his captives, where he hinted he was a serial killer.

“I’ve tortured girls in ways that I’m not very proud of. When I’m p***ed off, I don’t mind having blood all over the place, and sometimes they didn’t survive,” Ray says on the audiotape.

Investigators also found Ray’s diary in his home with a timeline of his abductions dating back to 1955, when he was just a teenager.

Investigators believe Ray may have killed up to 60 people. Ray’s girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped kidnap and torture the women. She accidentally left a set of keys out, that’s how the woman escaped, bringing Ray’s reign of terror to an end. Cindy Hendy is serving 36 years in prison.

Full Story

I do wonder if Hendy is trying to cut some new deals or get privileges. I doubt the police are just now acting on her previous statements. It does sound as if the leads that they were following fell through though.

No bodies were found during a search of a reservoir for possible victims of a man known as the Toy Box Killer, convicted a decade ago of kidnapping and sexually torturing women.

FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said federal and local law enforcement agents searched a canyon in New Mexico for three hours on Tuesday but found only animal bones.

“We plan to come back in the near future to do a more thorough search of a few points there,” Fisher told The Times. “There are some areas we want to take our time with.”

About 30 people fanned out on the southern end of Elephant Butte Reservoir on Tuesday after authorities received information about possible remains of the missing victims of David Parker Ray.

Authorities have long believed that Ray, who died behind bars in 2002 while serving a life sentence, chose the reservoir as a burial site for some of the 40 people he claimed to have killed.

None of the bodies have been found there, however.

New Mexico police suspect that the remains of 22-year-old Jill Troia, who disappeared in 1995, may be buried near the reservoir in southern New Mexico, about 150 miles south of Albuquerque.

Ray wrote that he sexually tortured his victims in the trailer he dubbed his “toy box” in the New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences, within view of the reservoir, Fisher said. Ray said he then buried his victims, including an Asian woman investigators believe may have been Troia.

Ray was arrested in 1999 after a naked woman fled from his home wearing only a dog collar and chain.

The woman told police Ray had tortured her. Investigators who searched his home found a “Satan’s Den” sign on the wall, skull-shaped candelabra, surgical tools, video cameras, a makeshift coffin and a black box he apparently used to cover victims’ heads when he tortured them, the Daily Mailreported.

In 2001, Ray pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape charges in the case of the woman who had fled his home; he was also convicted of kidnapping and torturing a Colorado woman.

Ray’s girlfriend at the time of his arrest, Cynthia Lea Hendy, told police that Ray disposed of bodies in Elephant Butte Reservoir. Hendy was sentenced 11 years ago to 36 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to accessory and kidnapping charges, and agreed to cooperate with investigators to avoid a life sentence. She remains in prison, Fisher said.

Troia was last seen in October 1995 at a restaurant in Albuquerque with Ray’s daughter, Glenda Jean Ray, whom she had dated. Albuquerque police have long believed Ray and his daughter were connected to Troia’s disappearance, which remains the Albuquerque Police Department’s only known cold case related to Ray. But neither was ever charged in connection with the case.

In 2001, Glenda Jean Ray pleaded no contest to kidnapping charges and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, plus five years of probation in connection with her father’s sex torture case. She was later released, Fisher said.

Fisher said authorities are reopening other missing persons cases from the same time period to see if they might be connected to Ray. A new missing persons DNA database could help identify remains, he said.

From Here

I would think that decomposition in that type of condition (lake in the desert) would be quick and pretty complete. I wonder what would / could be left after all this time?

 

 

Investigation Discovery on Hendy

2011
10/14
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Serial Killer Trent Benson Gets 2 Death Sentences

PHOENIX — A convicted serial rapist and killer has received two deaths sentences for the slayings of two prostitutes during a Mesa crime spree.

A Maricopa County Superior Court jury on Friday found that Trent Christopher Benson, 39, qualified for the death penalty because of three aggravating factors: he had been convicted of other crimes that were punishable by life or death sentences; that the murders were committed in an especially heinous, cruel or depravated manner; and he was convicted of other serious crimes.

Benson was convicted Sept. 12 of the attacks which began in November 2004 when the body of Alisa Marie Beck was found in an alley one day before her 22nd birthday. She had been beaten and strangled.

Benson, 39, was arrested three years later after another prostitute, Karen Campbell, 44, was strangled and dumped in the street. In between the murders, two other women were attacked, but survived. One of them was choked and left for dead, but survived. The other ran for her life when her attackers were startled in the middle of the rape.

Benson went on trial in August on 10 charges in the four attacks: two counts of first-degree murder and four counts each of kidnapping and sexual assault.

Prosecutors said DNA evidence linked Benson to all four attacks, although he denied involvement in one of the rapes, while confessing to the other three attacks.

Tim Agan, Benson’s attorney, said that Benson was born in South Korea and was abandoned as an infant. He was adopted by a family in Minnesota and was about to flee there when he was arrested in May 2008.

Agan argued that the two fatal attacks were crimes in the heat of the moment and second-degree murders, not premeditated.

Benson was sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7 years to 28 years on the kidnapping and sexual assault charges.

Article

From an earlier article describing the killer.

The suspected serial predator accused of sexually assaulting four women, killing two of them, was known as a polite, soft-spoken car salesman, but he also kept his private life to himself.

“He was always somewhat quiet and subdued. He was a little bit mysterious. No one really knows what he did with his spare time,” said Mike Fraccola, a central Mesa used-car dealer.

Fraccola and his staff were shocked Thursday after Mesa police identified Trent Christopher Benson, 36, as the man they arrested the day before in the series of brutal crimes, in which women described as prostitutes were found strangled in Mesa and a Phoenix woman was dumped unconscious, apparently left for dead.

He is a father of a 7 year old son. I feel so bad for the boy and can only help that he is getting therapy. I can only imagine what the children of these monsters go through.

I know that his victims had children as well and again I am hoping that they are getting love, understanding and therapy.

Benson was not new to the police as he had been arrested before.

He pleaded guilty in 2001 in Mesa Municipal Court to public sexual indecency and loitering, charges that prosecutors say are consistent in prostitution cases. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, paid a $555 fine and was placed on probation for three years.

In May 1997, Phoenix police arrested and booked Benson into jail on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute.

The rest of the article here

Benson did not have a large ‘body count’ but his crimes were still very brutal:

On Oct. 31, 2004, Benson told police that he picked up Alisa Marie Beck, a prostitute, after visiting a strip club and that he became angry when she complained about how long he took to have sex. Benson strangled her, slammed her face into the steering wheel, tore her genitals and then dumped her body.

A family of seven found her the next day, naked from the waist down, face-up and on the gravel. She was one day shy of turning 22.

It would take three years before police made an arrest in her murder — after another prostitute was strangled and dumped in the street and two other women were sexually assaulted. On Oct. 14, 2007, Karen Campbell — a 44-year-old prostitute — went to Benson’s house to have sex with him. Benson said she wanted more money and that she became violent when he refused.

………………………………

Benson also was accused in the kidnapping and rapes of two women. On the afternoon of Aug. 16, 2007, a 48-year-old woman was walking in Mesa when two men jumped out of a white car and put a chemical-soaked rag over her face.

She passed out, according to Valenzuela, and awoke to a man raping her while the second man filmed them. She reported seeing herself on large-format TVs as she was being raped. The two men were distracted by a sound in the house, and the woman grabbed her clothes and fled.

Benson denied any part in the incident, but his DNA was found on the woman’s body. The second man was never identified, and some of the details the woman gave about her attacker did not match Benson.

The other sexual assault was on Nov. 4, 2007, when Benson admitted to snatching a 34-year-old homeless woman off the street in Phoenix, dragging her to his car, raping her and choking her until she lost consciousness. Police said Benson tore the woman’s genitals and left her, but a taxi driver who saw her lying in the street called police and she survived.

Benson said the woman was a prostitute and that they had quarreled over the deal. Valenzuela said the woman was not a prostitute.

Much more here

Benson did live with his brother but police say that he was not the second man. As far as I can find that guy is still a mystery.

We will have to see if Benson dies from his sentence or old age.

2011
10/10
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Serial Killer Ted Bundy Not Linked to Murder of 8 Year Old

Investigators were unable to link notorious serial killer Ted Bundy to the disappearance of an 8-year-old Tacoma girl, Ann Marie Burr, who vanished from her home some 50 years ago. Evidence from the unsolved case was sent to the Washington State Crime Laboratory for analysis back in August. Tacoma police reported this week that forensic scientists failed to develop a DNA profile from the evidence that could have potentially linked the girl’s disappearance to Bundy. Speaking of the DNA link, Police spokesman Mark Fulghum said, “This avenue hit a dead end, but the investigation itself is not over.”

Ann Marie was reported missing by her parents on August 31, 1961. Police believe the abductor entered the house from the back door and exited with Ann Marie out the front door. Many have speculated over the years that the girl was Bundy’s first victim. Bundy had a paper route near where Ann Marie lived, and an uncle he would visit in the neighborhood. Despite the DNA setback, detectives are determined to continue the investigation into the disappearance of Ann Marie.

Ann Marie Burr went missing August 13, 1961. Many believe she was the first victim of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
Continue reading on Examiner.com 

 

Charley Project Page

I had hoped that there would be a link so that her family could find some sort of closure.

 

2011
10/09
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Child Killer
Death
Forensics
Killers
The FBI
True Crime
United States True Crime
Unsolved Murder
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