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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author.
Speaker 4: Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 6: The Killing Season is a true crime saga, the story
Speaker 6: of a double murder that went unsolved for more than
Speaker 6: thirty five years, and a chilling portrait of a small
Speaker 6: town up ended by unimaginable violence. In the summer of
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy five, the valley town of Grand Junction, Colorado,
Speaker 6: is stunned by the grisly double murder of twenty four
Speaker 6: year old Linda Benson and her baby daughter Kelly. For
Speaker 6: Jim Fromm and Doug Rushing, the two young detectives assigned
Speaker 6: to the case, the investigation is a chance to earn
Speaker 6: their stripes and prove their metal. At first, from and
Speaker 6: Rushing page the woman's mercurial husband, a pipefitter who works
Speaker 6: outside of town, as the primary suspect. But as their
Speaker 6: case against Steve Benson unravels, the detectives find themselves short
Speaker 6: on leads and running out of time. With the city
Speaker 6: on edge and anxious for answers, a notorious serial killer
Speaker 6: goes on the lamb, and yet another young woman and
Speaker 6: her children turn up dead. In The Killing Season, Acclaim
Speaker 6: journalist Alex French traces the story of the Benson murders
Speaker 6: from the night Linda and Kelly's bodies are found strewn
Speaker 6: across their second floor apartment to an improbable discovery made
Speaker 6: more than thirty years later that enabled a new breed
Speaker 6: of detectives to crack the case and bring closure to
Speaker 6: those who'd watched justice slip away. Writing in taught atmospheric prose,
Speaker 6: French has crafted at heart pounding tale of tragedy, resilience,
Speaker 6: and redemption set against the burning red vistas of the
Speaker 6: American Southwest. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 6: The Killing Season with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 6: Alex French. Welcome to the program and thank you for
Speaker 6: agreeing this interview. Alex French, thank you so much for
Speaker 6: having me.
Speaker 3: How are you tonight?
Speaker 4: Very good?
Speaker 6: Thank you Alex for joining us tonight. Incredible story and
Speaker 6: as we alluded to, a notorious serial killer. So people
Speaker 6: will find this very very fascinating, this book and this
Speaker 6: story that you have in the Killing Season. Now, just
Speaker 6: without giving anything away, I know that's my biggest cliche,
Speaker 6: but tell us how you came to want to write
Speaker 6: this book. So tell us how you came to write
Speaker 6: the Killing Season.
Speaker 3: So, you know, just about every day I kind of
Speaker 3: cruised through the you know, through the headlines on the
Speaker 3: ap wire, kind of looking for story ideas, and gosh,
Speaker 3: it was probably the spring of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine, I
Speaker 3: saw a news item about this story, you know that
Speaker 3: after thirty five years, interest had finally been made and
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't a long story, but it basically
Speaker 3: mentioned that these two detectives Jim Frahm and Doug Rushing,
Speaker 3: had worked the case back then and had you know,
Speaker 3: had never left town, and and you know, for a
Speaker 3: long time they were sort of known as the guys
Speaker 3: who weren't solving these murders that they were assigned to
Speaker 3: solve and and they they had both sort of you know,
Speaker 3: for years and years never really been able to.
Speaker 4: Get over.
Speaker 3: You know, these crimes and and and sort of you know,
Speaker 3: in in in nineteen seventy five, they had gosh, twelve
Speaker 3: homicides or eleven homicides in Grand Junction after not having
Speaker 3: a single homicide there for more than a decade. And
Speaker 3: so this community was really just really sort of on
Speaker 3: a you know, on a razor's edge in terms of,
Speaker 3: you know, the tension around town. And they were, you know,
Speaker 3: they were sort of widely viewed as the guys who
Speaker 3: were letting everybody down, and that was that was hard
Speaker 3: on them. They were both young, you know, in their
Speaker 3: early twenties, and I I contacted them immediately and they said,
Speaker 3: you know, gee, we'd love to tell our story, but
Speaker 3: you know, we've got to do this whole trial thing,
Speaker 3: and you know, there are appeals afterwards, and you know
Speaker 3: it's probably going to be a couple of years before
Speaker 3: before we can speak to you.
Speaker 4: So I waited.
Speaker 3: I waited six years and followed the story through the
Speaker 3: trial and then you know sort of you know, just
Speaker 3: waited and waited, and gosh, two summers ago, some guys
Speaker 3: from Amazon dot Com approached me about they and said
Speaker 3: to me, you know, if you could tell any story,
Speaker 3: what story would you tell? And I just couldn't stop
Speaker 3: thinking about rushing and from so I contacted them right
Speaker 3: around the time I contacted them, like I think a
Speaker 3: week after the perpetrator's final appeal was denied and they
Speaker 3: were able to speak to me.
Speaker 4: So I went.
Speaker 3: I went there almost immediately and spent gosh two and
Speaker 3: a half weeks in Grand Junction researching and reporting and
Speaker 3: knocking on doors and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: Now, before we talk about before we get into this
Speaker 6: incredible tale, let's talk about a little bit about the
Speaker 6: Benson family. Linda, Steve Benson, and Kelly take us back
Speaker 6: the research that you've done and who are these people?
Speaker 6: Start off with Steve Benson.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you know, there's not a you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, Steve wouldn't speak to me. I
Speaker 3: suppose for good reason. He's been he's been through some
Speaker 3: horrible things.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: He came from a tough family.
Speaker 4: You know, I.
Speaker 3: You know, uh, he had a brother, Bob, and and
Speaker 3: not much is known about them. I you know, I
Speaker 3: think he came from someplace in the Midwest, Indiana or something,
Speaker 3: and you know, they they they settled around uh, you know,
Speaker 3: Grand Junction. When he was in his teens, you know,
Speaker 3: he went to Vietnam sort of a he was sort
Speaker 3: of a sort of a bit of a hell raiser
Speaker 3: and you know, had sort of a you know, a
Speaker 3: bad history with women. Uh you know, big drinker, big partier,
Speaker 3: and for all sort of intense purposes. It seems as
Speaker 3: though Linda Benson was sort of this or her name
Speaker 3: was Linda Ketch him before she took his last name,
Speaker 3: really settled him down. She was a you know, I
Speaker 3: sort of spent a lot of time while I was
Speaker 3: you know, reporting this, trying to sort of get a
Speaker 3: hold on her personality, and she seems to have been
Speaker 3: a just a genuinely sweet young lady. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: she really had maybe the saddest life of anybody that
Speaker 3: I think I've ever you know, not that I ever
Speaker 3: met her, but encountered just hearing stories about her. You know,
Speaker 3: her father died when she was two, He dropped dead
Speaker 3: in a duck blind. They were from Nebraska. They moved
Speaker 3: to Colorado with Linda's stepmother, her mother, and I'm sorry
Speaker 3: her mother and her stepfather, a guy named Tim Right,
Speaker 3: who was a degenerate alcoholic and abusive to her. When
Speaker 3: she was sixteen, Lawrence paid, uh, you know, her mother
Speaker 3: an ultimatum, basically saying, it's either the kids or me,
Speaker 3: So she kicked the kids out of the house. There
Speaker 3: was abuse, you know, I mean, she just had her
Speaker 3: you know, a couple a couple of months before lind did.
Speaker 3: I her sister died of a you know, sort of
Speaker 3: a strange drug overdose. And I think she was just
Speaker 3: a you know, sort of a sweet, sad woman, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of twenty four year old stay at home mom.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think she was just a sweet, sort
Speaker 3: of a sad woman. And I think she and Steve
Speaker 3: were just doing the best that they could.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about their family life there
Speaker 6: and their daughter, Kelly, and you can tell us and
Speaker 6: tell our audience about baby daughter, but also tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about Grand Junction. Where where Grand Junction,
Speaker 6: Colorado really is geographically.
Speaker 3: Okay, So so I think there, you know, their life
Speaker 3: was pretty quiet. They lived in a sort of an
Speaker 3: upscale apartment complex known as the Chateau Apartments. There were
Speaker 3: a lot of young families and a lot of college
Speaker 3: co eds living around there. And they lived in a
Speaker 3: second floor apartment that Steve paid for by working at
Speaker 3: as a pipes that are at a power plant about gosh,
Speaker 3: four or five hours north in Craig Craig, Colorado. Grand
Speaker 3: Junction sits on the western slope of the Colorado It's about,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty five minutes from the Utah line. It
Speaker 3: is a really a striking place for much of the day.
Speaker 3: The the entire atmosphere there sort of glows vermillion. There's
Speaker 3: the Colorado National Monument is there, and it is it
Speaker 3: is sort of mesa and butte and high desert for
Speaker 3: as far as the eye can see.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: A uniquely beautiful but also sort of spooky kind of place.
Speaker 3: And it is, you know, historically been a boom town.
Speaker 3: There were you know, they mind minerals there, vandium, eventually
Speaker 3: uranium for the Manhattan Project, and there was a real
Speaker 3: sort of booman bust mentality where you have a lot
Speaker 3: of young men moving into town, getting rich and then
Speaker 3: getting poor again even quicker. And I think nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five in Grand Junction is sort of unique because you know,
Speaker 3: you've got guys coming home from Vietnam. It seems like
Speaker 3: sort of oddly, everybody I spoke to had some some
Speaker 3: story about a young man that they knew back then
Speaker 3: that died in a drunken wreck. You know, I think
Speaker 3: alcoholism was fairly rampant. It was also this sort of
Speaker 3: place where when men crossed each other there was a fight.
Speaker 3: There was no sort of shoving, They just fought.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of you know, Steve Benson's dad
Speaker 3: and also Doug Rushing's dad for that matter, were World
Speaker 3: War Two vets and tough guys. You know, Doug Rushing's
Speaker 3: dad was in the eighty second Airborne and so you
Speaker 3: had that generation of men who had had combat training,
Speaker 3: and then you had you know, the next generation where
Speaker 3: young men who were you know, going off to fight
Speaker 3: in Vietnam. So there was that sort of that, you know,
Speaker 3: the the that sort of tension of like having been
Speaker 3: in war, having been a soldier, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: you know, kind of the widespread loss of like you know,
Speaker 3: white male privilege in terms of you know, we're talking
Speaker 3: about a generation of guys who had sort of been
Speaker 3: betrayed by or you know, felt like they had been
Speaker 3: betrayed by the the command structure in Vietnam, women's live
Speaker 3: was big, you know, sort of we were on the
Speaker 3: sort of the sexual revolution was sort of in in
Speaker 3: full progress, and around town, you know, there was a
Speaker 3: Chicano movement was sorting to sort of was starting, was
Speaker 3: beginning to sort of gather scheme. So It's Grand Junction
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five is sort of a town that
Speaker 3: is small and yet growing and also sort of seems
Speaker 3: to be a bit of a pressure cooker in terms
Speaker 3: of in terms of crime.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about Linda and Steve having they had
Speaker 6: a lot of friends in this chateau building, but they
Speaker 6: really did spend most of their time. They were especially
Speaker 6: close with the Grants, Maureen Grant and Gary Grant and
Speaker 6: Gary Junior, who was three years old, and they lived
Speaker 6: right above them in apartment three eleven. So tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about their relationship and how close they were,
Speaker 6: and tell us a little bit about Maureen.
Speaker 3: And really it was really, yeah, it was really Linda
Speaker 3: and Maureen. Maureen was nineteen when she moved to the chateau.
Speaker 3: You know, I think probably in the fall fall of
Speaker 3: seventy four, and Linda was really like a big sister
Speaker 3: to her. They you know, their kids were about the
Speaker 3: same age. Gary Junior was you know, three, Kelly was five.
Speaker 3: So they spent you know, their days at the park
Speaker 3: or you know sort of in the in the mornings
Speaker 3: they would go and they would take their kids for
Speaker 3: a walk, and then in the afternoon they would do
Speaker 3: yogan one of the apartments and they sort of you know,
Speaker 3: since they they lived sort of one on top of
Speaker 3: the other, you know, they would just keep their doors
Speaker 3: open and sort of run up and down the stairs.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: They sort of had a schedule. On Tuesdays they went
Speaker 3: to you know, Taco bell. At Wednesdays, you know, on
Speaker 3: Wednesdays they brought their kids to friendlies. You know, there
Speaker 3: was always some sort of activity with the kids, and
Speaker 3: you know, there was a strange a sort of a
Speaker 3: strange thing was was that these two women were very
Speaker 3: close and yet their conversations a lot of the times
Speaker 3: sort of revolved around motherhood. You know, there wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of there wasn't a lot of kind of intense
Speaker 3: intimate personal talk about about you know, sort of about
Speaker 3: their lives. It was you know about sort of their
Speaker 3: their lives beyond sort of the most the more quot
Speaker 3: hittying details, you know, when they had some other friends
Speaker 3: that that I think she filled the more in that stuff.
Speaker 3: But but more, Maureen is really the closest person to
Speaker 3: to Indo at that time. And and sort of Gary
Speaker 3: Senior worked out of town. I think he was a
Speaker 3: coal miner up north, uh, not far from where Steve worked.
Speaker 3: But they didn't really like Gary Senior. He was sort
Speaker 3: of abrasive, uh you know again, sort of a boisterous,
Speaker 3: a boisterous drinker. So yeah, they had they had a
Speaker 3: really they had a really lively social life there. You know,
Speaker 3: a lot of sitting out on the patio, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of beer drinking, and and
Speaker 3: and and and sort of soft drugs and having fun.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us about the situation where.
Speaker 4: Her husband is.
Speaker 6: Steve is not home when he works. He works a
Speaker 6: little bit out of town. So what's the situation there.
Speaker 6: They're not buried. But tell us how how it comes
Speaker 6: that he's not there all the time.
Speaker 3: We'll say, so, Yeah, so Steve works as a he
Speaker 3: was a union pipe fitter at a on a big
Speaker 3: construction job. They're building a big powerhouse up in Craig, Colorado.
Speaker 3: So every Sunday at around four am, he would get
Speaker 3: out of bed and uh he'd either and he would
Speaker 3: drive up to Craig with a guy named Harold Railey,
Speaker 3: and you know, they they'd work the week Steve would
Speaker 3: camp out and you know, when it was warm enough,
Speaker 3: he would pop a tent out by uh was it
Speaker 3: Otter Creek up up by the yamp or out by
Speaker 3: the Yamper River, and he would wake up in the
Speaker 3: morning and he'd fish for his breakfast, and then he'd
Speaker 3: go to work, and then he'd go back to his
Speaker 3: campfite campsite and fish for his dinner. And he saved
Speaker 3: a lot of money doing that. During the winter, he
Speaker 3: would share a hotel room with you know, eight or
Speaker 3: ten other guys and they would split the bill eight
Speaker 3: or ten ways. And you know, he was he was
Speaker 3: really sort of working for the weekend, if you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. You know, like his he had lending
Speaker 3: Kelly down down in Grand Junction, so he was sort
Speaker 3: of you know four days there, you know, three at
Speaker 3: home or or something like that.
Speaker 6: Now, was there any talk with Linda, with Maureen about
Speaker 6: Steve being a threat at all? Was there any I
Speaker 6: know they weren't. Some of the conversation was limited, But
Speaker 6: was there any conversation like that with Maureen that Maren has.
Speaker 3: You know, I not that I was aware of, you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of a picture of you know, it was interesting.
Speaker 3: The way my research sort of shook out was I
Speaker 3: got in touch fairly early with the Grand Junction District attorney,
Speaker 3: and they were really supportive. For my first three or
Speaker 3: four days in Grand Junction, they opened up a conference
Speaker 3: room in the courthouse building, and they just brought in
Speaker 3: all the all the files, all the photos that you know,
Speaker 3: the crime scene photos, the autopsy photos, all of the
Speaker 3: police reports, all the all of the notes that the
Speaker 3: cops actually took back in nineteen seventy five. You know,
Speaker 3: Doug Rushing still had his stuff too, and he allowed
Speaker 3: me to take a look at that. But I just
Speaker 3: had an unbelievable amount of you know, every time the
Speaker 3: police would would interview somebody, they would fill out sort
Speaker 3: of an interview report, and you know, all the sort
Speaker 3: of the stuff that I read about, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of Scheve's difficult history with women came from those police reports.
Speaker 3: You know, they came from ex's or from people who
Speaker 3: knew an X or something like that. By all accounts,
Speaker 3: you know, other than sort of from talking to Linda's family,
Speaker 3: I mean, they they they are sort of under the
Speaker 3: impression that Steve was still is still Steve is they
Speaker 3: think Steve is the killer.
Speaker 4: I do not, But.
Speaker 3: By all accounts, it was sort of a loving, gentle relationship.
Speaker 3: You know, they were sort of, you know, like I
Speaker 3: said earlier, like two kids who were really kind of
Speaker 3: doing the best that they could. And so now, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think that Maureen or Lind's other kind of
Speaker 3: close confident in the building there, her name was Pat Freeman,
Speaker 3: ever really thought of Steve that way, you know. I
Speaker 3: mean I think certainly Pat had seen Steve lose his
Speaker 3: temper kind of in a drunken rage one night. But
Speaker 3: but other than that, you know, he never you know,
Speaker 3: they never heard of him, you know, sort of touching
Speaker 3: Linden in a way that she didn't want to be touched,
Speaker 3: or you know, there were never you know, Bruce Marks.
Speaker 3: I know, the police didn't pull up any you know,
Speaker 3: hospital reports for her with with you know, a broken
Speaker 3: nose or a you know, a black guy or anything
Speaker 3: like that. So so sort of from what I gather,
Speaker 3: it was kind of a you know, kind of a quiet,
Speaker 3: gentle relationship.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's talk about July twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 6: Why is it that Steve doesn't have a key? Tell
Speaker 6: us the circumstances and the discovery that he made.
Speaker 4: So Steve.
Speaker 3: Steve was doing well enough at work that he wanted
Speaker 3: to buy a new al Camino and he put down
Speaker 3: a deposit at the Chevy dealership in Craig, Colorado, and
Speaker 3: you know, after work that night, he dropped his Chevy
Speaker 3: comment off at the dealership and caught a ride from
Speaker 3: Craig down to Grand Junction. About an hour outside of
Speaker 3: Grand Junction, he realizes that the keys that he'd left
Speaker 3: in the glove par the glove box of the car
Speaker 3: that he was trading in, also had his house key,
Speaker 3: so that when he arrived back to the chateau, he
Speaker 3: was locked out. And that sort of started a I
Speaker 3: think must have been the most horrifying sort of fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes of his life where he's sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: realizing something's wrong and isn't able to you know, get inside,
Speaker 3: and he you know, began to ask ask the neighbors,
Speaker 3: you know, have you seen Linda?
Speaker 6: Where is she?
Speaker 4: He is Ryan here? And I have a question for you.
Speaker 4: What do you do when you win?
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Speaker 3: Everybody lost the terms conditions eighteen plus. You know, why
Speaker 3: is the apartment lock white? You know, why are the
Speaker 3: why are the why are the shades drawn?
Speaker 6: And you know?
Speaker 3: Eventually he was able to spring up on a on
Speaker 3: a sort of a swamp cooler that that hung kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, about halfway between the second floor balcony in
Speaker 3: the ground. It was easy to kind of boost himself
Speaker 3: up off the swamp cooler and onto a balcony, and
Speaker 3: he was able to slide. There was a sliding door.
Speaker 3: He opened that the sliding door was off the track,
Speaker 3: so he opened it, let himself in and found the
Speaker 3: bodies there, and then, uh, you know, went and called
Speaker 3: the police.
Speaker 6: And what what was the state? Not to get into
Speaker 6: every gory detail, but what was the state of the bodies?
Speaker 4: Where?
Speaker 6: Where were where were they in relation to each other?
Speaker 6: And what had happened to Linda and her little five
Speaker 6: year old her?
Speaker 3: So, uh, the the you know, the sort of in
Speaker 3: the in the in the in the hours that followed
Speaker 3: the discovery of the bodies, the Grand Grand Junction Police
Speaker 3: dispatched their crime scene unit to the apartment, and what
Speaker 3: they found was Linda had been stabbed and beaten pretty viciously,
Speaker 3: but she'd been stabbed mostly in the chest in a
Speaker 3: in a sort of a kind of a cluster pattern
Speaker 3: over her heart, and her body was gammed up between
Speaker 3: a mattress which they kept on the floor into bureau
Speaker 3: and the space was just a little bit too small
Speaker 3: for her for her to fit into, so she was
Speaker 3: kind of tinned up against the wall or against the
Speaker 3: the bureau a little bit. Kelly was in There was
Speaker 3: sort of a strange hallway in the apartment, and Kelly
Speaker 3: was in the the sort of the strange it was
Speaker 3: kind of there was the living room, and then you
Speaker 3: would walk through the living room into this hallway, and
Speaker 3: this hallway had doors for Stephen in his bedroom, and
Speaker 3: then for a bathroom, and then the bathroom adjoined to
Speaker 3: Kelly's Kelly's room, and Kelly was sort of halfway between
Speaker 3: the hallway and the bathroom, and she'd been stabbed in
Speaker 3: a in a sort of similar similar fashion, pretty brutally,
Speaker 3: and I think six times.
Speaker 6: Steve, like you say, is shocked and runs out of there.
Speaker 6: But what's his once police come there? What what do
Speaker 6: they do with Steve? What is his state? What is
Speaker 6: his demeanor at that time? And how do police initially
Speaker 6: assess the crime scene.
Speaker 3: Well, so Steve was brought down to the police station
Speaker 3: in question for quite a few hours. They did a
Speaker 3: physical examination, you know, they checking his hands and and
Speaker 3: he was eventually let go. You know, I think he
Speaker 3: was the I think the police sort of rightly assessed
Speaker 3: that he was just a complete and total shock and
Speaker 3: and was also at the same time a little bit
Speaker 3: aggravated that the police were really kind of you know,
Speaker 3: the the police were looking him at you know, at
Speaker 3: him as their primary suspect and and made very little
Speaker 3: secret of that. Now, the crime scene, there was a
Speaker 3: lot of blood and there, and there were there were
Speaker 3: blood in places that led the police to believe that
Speaker 3: the killer had cut himself. They found uh, sort of
Speaker 3: bloody handprints on the wall in the living room by
Speaker 3: a light switch. They found you know, drops of blood
Speaker 3: kind of all over the kitchen, and you know, they
Speaker 3: found you know, I mean sort of this is sort
Speaker 3: of blood in addition to kind of like your average
Speaker 3: kind of cast off spray. So you know, so they
Speaker 3: had a pretty good idea. There were sort of you know,
Speaker 3: two plump droplets on Linda's chests that you know, led
Speaker 3: the police to believe that, you know, the killer had
Speaker 3: sort of leaned down over her in blood on her.
Speaker 3: And so they you know, seeing that, they kind of
Speaker 3: immediately tried to type. You know, they took scrapings of
Speaker 3: the blood for for typing. So they also took blood
Speaker 3: from Steve Benson to to to match up to see
Speaker 3: if they could match it up with the blood test. Still,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm fairly certain that if you were to
Speaker 3: talk to Doug Rushing or with Jim from the two
Speaker 3: detectives that investigated, I think they would tell you that
Speaker 3: fairly early on they didn't think that it was Steve Benson.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, I know from from told me on a
Speaker 3: number I'm sorry, not from Rushing, told me on another
Speaker 3: on a number of occasions that you know. One one
Speaker 3: of the things that they learned at the police academy
Speaker 3: in Golden you know, years earlier, was that most of
Speaker 3: the time, when the bodies are just just sort of
Speaker 3: left at the crime scene, it's not a family member.
Speaker 3: Family members will try to or the theory that they
Speaker 3: were using were that sort of family members try to
Speaker 3: dispose of the bodies. They try to hide what they've done.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe it's out of shame, but you know,
Speaker 3: they thought, you know, kind of family members will will frequently,
Speaker 3: you know, take the bodies away and try to hide
Speaker 3: them someplace.
Speaker 6: Was there some element of you you alluded to the
Speaker 6: idea that it might be something on the chests of
Speaker 6: both Linda and her daughter. Was it a cross, as
Speaker 6: you mentioned.
Speaker 4: And determined it wasn't on.
Speaker 3: It wasn't on Kelly's chest, but there was there was
Speaker 3: a cross that looked like it was done with the
Speaker 3: tip of a very sharp knife, sort of carved into
Speaker 3: into Linda's chest, and you know, sort of at the
Speaker 3: at the autopsy, the friends, the forensic doctor noted that
Speaker 3: he thought she had been tortured.
Speaker 6: Now, what do police determine from Is there a robbery
Speaker 6: motive which she was Linda sexually assaulted? Does it look
Speaker 6: again we just talked about that it looks not like
Speaker 6: a family member because the bodies weren't covered up, and
Speaker 6: then there's this obvious overkill and now you're talking about torture.
Speaker 6: So what could the police deem from the crime scene?
Speaker 6: What was their earliest conclusions at least you know, consistently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, nothing was taken from the apartment. They did
Speaker 3: a walk through the Steve Benson days after the murder.
Speaker 3: They brought him back to the crime scene and he
Speaker 3: did a walk through, and they they basically determined based
Speaker 3: on you know, based on the condition of her body
Speaker 3: and you know that she had a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of material under a lot of skin, you know,
Speaker 3: skinny material under her fingernails. What they think happened was
Speaker 3: that it was an attempted rape, that the assailant had
Speaker 3: had entered the apartment, uh and and tried to rape
Speaker 3: her and she fought him off. And he ended up
Speaker 3: killing her. And you know, because this happened late at night,
Speaker 3: the struggle with the little girl who went out into
Speaker 3: the living room and saw this strange man in her
Speaker 3: house and you know, made a racket and he killed her.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: that's actually what happened, you know, and that for the
Speaker 3: most part was their theory sort of from this from
Speaker 3: the start, you know, nothing had been stolen Steve. Steve
Speaker 3: Benson's alibi was was really air tight. You know, there
Speaker 3: were time cards, there was not a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: there were time cards. There were witnesses who saw him
Speaker 3: up around Hidden Colorado kind of hours earlier. There was
Speaker 3: no real solid reason to think it was Steve Benson
Speaker 3: other than you know, sort of you know, what what
Speaker 3: people were saying about Benson around town, and just the
Speaker 3: fact that, you know, they always look at the spouse first,
Speaker 3: and so I think the polices or the you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of Grand Junction police's assessment of what happened
Speaker 3: in that apartment from the beginning was fairly consistent and
Speaker 3: to this day, I think is actually what happened.
Speaker 6: Now, tell our audience, as you point out in the
Speaker 6: book there's for those people that are not quite as
Speaker 6: old as I am in my fifties. So tell us
Speaker 6: about what the state of forensic technology was and science
Speaker 6: was in regards to DNA at that time. But regardless
Speaker 6: of that, what was police procedure in terms of preserving
Speaker 6: evidence at the crime scene?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, no DNA technology yet to speak of. I
Speaker 3: don't think that they actually, you know, the suspect that,
Speaker 3: you know, the guy they eventually get, they get him
Speaker 3: because of a blood test that he gives up in
Speaker 3: prison in nineteen seventy eight, and you know, I don't
Speaker 3: think sort of DNA testing was getting going, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of until around that time. The forensic science in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies, you know, I mean, I think they
Speaker 3: did a good job. The you know, the Grand Junction
Speaker 3: Police Department clearly did a very good job with the
Speaker 3: technology that they had available to them. So they were
Speaker 3: doing erology, which is, you know, blood typing, but that
Speaker 3: was kind of about it. You know, they could do fingerprints,
Speaker 3: but that was really you know, that was still a
Speaker 3: really time consuming and frequently fruitless you know sort of discipline.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean it was really just blood typing.
Speaker 3: You know, blood typing and kind of on the ground
Speaker 3: police work.
Speaker 6: Now with you say that Steve Benson has got an
Speaker 6: air tight alibi, despite what the city folk believe or
Speaker 6: despite what the media has conjured up and but then
Speaker 6: you also in this tale include other people and other
Speaker 6: victims as you introduce the rushing detective rushing and detective
Speaker 6: from and so let's talk a little bit about twenty
Speaker 6: four year old Denise all of us, oliverson and and
Speaker 6: tell us why you have included why her case is important.
Speaker 4: To this story.
Speaker 3: Well, so, nineteen seventy five in the Midwest, in the
Speaker 3: in the sort of in the West, you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of from you know, really from Oregon, Oregon to
Speaker 3: Arizona is terrifying. You know, girls were just disappearing left
Speaker 3: and right, and and nobody knew where they were going
Speaker 3: and you or what was happening to them. You know,
Speaker 3: occasionally some some jogger in a park would would find
Speaker 3: some you know, a skull or some bones, or you know,
Speaker 3: a girl would wash up on a river and she'd
Speaker 3: been you know, you know, tortured and killed or you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, just just a terrifying time to live in
Speaker 3: the West. And and Oliverson is this sort of she
Speaker 3: was gosh, twenty four and newly married, I think, and
Speaker 3: she'd had a fight with her husband, took her bike
Speaker 3: out and was last seen at a gas station where
Speaker 3: you know, kind of months later they discover Ted Bundy
Speaker 3: used his credit card there that afternoon. But you know,
Speaker 3: Bundy is really sort of a catalyst for just a
Speaker 3: feeling of you know, just this this sort of feeling
Speaker 3: of fear that you know, he was he was grabbing
Speaker 3: girls everywhere, and and there was just that, there was
Speaker 3: just that atmosphere people were scared. This was truly nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, truly kind of the era of the drifter.
Speaker 3: You know, there were there were no there was no
Speaker 3: real way of you know, people you know, kind of
Speaker 3: keeping cabs on each other. You know, there's no there
Speaker 3: are no cell phones, there are no you know, there
Speaker 3: are no real computers. It's not like the police are
Speaker 3: gonna you know, instantaneously be able to trace credit card
Speaker 3: receipts or you know, atm use or anything like that.
Speaker 3: And that's really what Ted Bundy was doing around that time,
Speaker 3: was sort of going on these hunting expeditions around uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Colorado and Utah, and so he's sort of
Speaker 3: he's sort of part of that Grand Junction also sits
Speaker 3: on on Interstate seventy. It's the largest city between Salt
Speaker 3: Lake in Denver. So it's a major thoroughfare for all
Speaker 3: sorts of sort of uh, you know, unsavory guys who
Speaker 3: were passing, you know, you know, passing through town. I
Speaker 3: think that year, was it, two or three of the
Speaker 3: ten of the fbis most wanted were caught around you know,
Speaker 3: we're caught you know, on or around I seventy. You know,
Speaker 3: there was a large transient population. I mean it was
Speaker 3: a really you know, like I said before, it was
Speaker 3: it was a small town that was bracing for an
Speaker 3: oil shale boom. There was sort of an influx of
Speaker 3: new money and just people started showing up in town.
Speaker 3: And nobody really knew who any of these new people were.
Speaker 3: They were transience, you know, like I said, there were
Speaker 3: sort of truck drivers and you know, and and all
Speaker 3: these people, you know, all these people sort of stopping
Speaker 3: off and mixing with the locals, and you know, every
Speaker 3: so often there'd be you know, a big barfighter, you know,
Speaker 3: a stabbing. You know, things were really sort of about
Speaker 3: to go bad there.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about in your book that the extent
Speaker 6: that the police in grand junction went to the extent
Speaker 6: that they went to try to find the perpetrators of
Speaker 6: these murders. And so they looked at peeping toms and
Speaker 6: flashers and stalkers and prank callers and sex offenders. Tell
Speaker 6: us what the police uh rushings and from and the
Speaker 6: police force do, what's their next what's their next step?
Speaker 6: And what is the extent as I alluded to, to
Speaker 6: try to find the perpetrators.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they they did hundreds of interviews. I
Speaker 3: mean they really left no you know, sort of no
Speaker 3: stone went unturned. They went as far as they had
Speaker 3: the Chief of Detectives food to Quantico to meet with
Speaker 3: the FBI, and they did a you know, they had
Speaker 3: the behavioral analysis Unit was a kind of a new
Speaker 3: thing in nineteen seventy five, and so you know, the
Speaker 3: chief of Detectives went to Quantico to meet to spend
Speaker 3: a week with the behavioral Analysis unit, and he came
Speaker 3: back with a sort of a you know, generic sketch
Speaker 3: of a you know, like a mannequin, horny seventeen year
Speaker 3: old with you know, like you know, associative disorder, you know,
Speaker 3: or an attachment disorder or something. You know, like they
Speaker 3: were looking for a young man who you know, did
Speaker 3: not like being in the in the in the boys
Speaker 3: locker room after Jim, and was into pornography and had
Speaker 3: maybe set fires and had maybe tortured animals, had you know,
Speaker 3: somebody would have tattoos or you know, they thought, gosh,
Speaker 3: you know, like they were looking for somebody who maybe
Speaker 3: worshiped Satan. You know, they sort of this laundry list
Speaker 3: of you know, kind of one of the investigators would
Speaker 3: later call it sad scientific, wild ass guesses, you know.
Speaker 3: And and so yeah, I mean, they they were they
Speaker 3: just didn't have the technology to solve this case. At
Speaker 3: at their disposal. There was really nothing that they could
Speaker 3: have done. You know, I'm not sure that I'm giving
Speaker 3: up too much by saying, like, you know, like one
Speaker 3: of those drifters that I was talking about was involved,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, I mean, you know, there there was
Speaker 3: literally nothing else that they could have done. I mean,
Speaker 3: they just were not getting an answer.
Speaker 6: Then there was the idea that you had mentioned that
Speaker 6: they thought that the perpetrator had cut himself and serious
Speaker 6: enough that they notified all the surrounding hospital us to
Speaker 6: be on the alert for somebody that might have wounded them.
Speaker 6: What was their progress or what was their success in
Speaker 6: that lead?
Speaker 3: Again? Nothing? I mean they there, you know, there there
Speaker 3: were there were you know, there was a you know,
Speaker 3: a guy who had cut himself building a you know,
Speaker 3: like a sort of an enclosure for his chickens. You know,
Speaker 3: I think on some roofing. He'd cut his hand.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: There was a young guy who cut himself working at
Speaker 3: a steakhouse. There was a guy who who got a
Speaker 3: pencil a pencil point through the sort of the outside
Speaker 3: of his hand when he was wrestling with a friend.
Speaker 3: You know, there was I mean, it was just they
Speaker 3: just had nothing. They just they you know, they they
Speaker 3: went after Linda's father in law, guy named Lawrence Hemrit,
Speaker 3: who was you know sort of you know, as I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, kind of a you know, a degenerate and
Speaker 3: an alcoholic, and he sexually abused Linda when she was young.
Speaker 3: And they couldn't, you know, they they couldn't get anything
Speaker 3: on him, like you know, he would lie about his alibi.
Speaker 3: But then there was just nothing. There was nothing that
Speaker 3: they could put on him, you know, Rushing said to
Speaker 3: me once, like, you know, you can't lock a guy
Speaker 3: up for just being an asshole, and they just had nothing.
Speaker 3: You know, they wanted him, they wanted it to be him,
Speaker 3: I think really badly. You know, he was a really
Speaker 3: good suspect, and they just they just didn't have the evidence.
Speaker 3: They just they had, you know, they had all this
Speaker 3: sort of blood evidence, this all that. You know, there
Speaker 3: was a droplet of blood from the crime scene that
Speaker 3: was on the outside of a checks box that was
Speaker 3: just a perfect sample of you know, perfect sample, perfectly placed.
Speaker 3: They found it, you know, they there.
Speaker 5: Was just.
Speaker 3: There was just no way to to match it. You know,
Speaker 3: I mean, this this case just really needed DNA.
Speaker 6: Now, in your book, you talk about young girls turning
Speaker 6: up dead everywhere in the Western United States Washington, Utah, Colorado,
Speaker 6: found naked, frozen out in the woods, raped, beaten, mutilated, strangled,
Speaker 6: skulls caved in, and the other women had vanished and
Speaker 6: so there was no body. So there was dozens of girls.
Speaker 6: So what is tell us about Agent Bob Perkins and
Speaker 6: the connection with Junction and what they do with this
Speaker 6: sort of information that they're getting from these other states
Speaker 6: about missing women and murdered women.
Speaker 3: So I think Bob Perkins had just noticed that all
Speaker 3: of these girls that were missing kind of looked alike.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: They were all you know, late teens, pretty long, dark
Speaker 3: hair that they parted down the middle. And he started,
Speaker 3: so this is actual sort of funny. When when I
Speaker 3: was reporting this, I would talk to Junction, to Rushing
Speaker 3: and from about law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Then and.
Speaker 3: Dug made it clear to me that even in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, the free serial killer wasn't really being used
Speaker 3: at all anywhere. And Perkins, Perkins just noticed that these
Speaker 3: girls all looked alike, you know, and they were all
Speaker 3: sort of you know, the ones who were recovered were
Speaker 3: you know, that all the same thing it had, you know,
Speaker 3: they had all died in sort of a similar manner,
Speaker 3: you know, brutally, and he just he started to formulate
Speaker 3: this theory that you know, all of these deaths were
Speaker 3: connected and that you know, that suspicion sort of links
Speaker 3: up with accounts of this guy named Ted who's driving
Speaker 3: you know, a tanned beetle around the you know, around
Speaker 3: the Western States, grabbing girls. You know, there had been
Speaker 3: a couple of Bundy's potential victims got.
Speaker 4: Away and gave.
Speaker 3: You know, police police reports, and I think it was
Speaker 3: one of gosh, one of Bundy's ex girlfriends that had
Speaker 3: first you know reported uh, really really bizarre activity. I
Speaker 3: think maybe it was in Washington State or Utah maybe,
Speaker 3: And so they knew about they knew sort of in
Speaker 3: theory about this guy Ted and he was I mean
Speaker 3: he was really I think the you know, kind of
Speaker 3: the harbinger, the harbinger of bad things.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: In junction he uh, he grabbed Dennis oliverson on on
Speaker 3: on April twenty fourth.
Speaker 6: Now, what was the rushing and From's reaction to you know,
Speaker 6: Ted Bundy being a potential culprit in in Linda Benson's
Speaker 6: murder her and her daughter Kelly. How far did they
Speaker 6: go and and tell us about their Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean investigation that yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Know Linda's you know, the it's it's strange, you know,
Speaker 3: the the Bundy Bundy struck in Grand Junction in in April,
Speaker 3: and they concluded, you know, as as the as the
Speaker 3: as the Bundy investigation wore on as they sort of
Speaker 3: started collecting good intelligence on him, you know, after he
Speaker 3: was stopped in Salt Lake, Uh, kind of I think
Speaker 3: that was in the fall, maybe August or September, and
Speaker 3: they sort of started put the you know, there was
Speaker 3: a a.
Speaker 4: Kind of a.
Speaker 3: A kind of regional call to arms amongst police departments
Speaker 3: about this guy Ted and where he'd been and what
Speaker 3: he'd done. And as they started to look for him, Bob,
Speaker 3: you know, Rushing and from remembering that Bob Perkins had
Speaker 3: had sort of like pointed to all of these girls
Speaker 3: who sort of looked the same, like you know, Linda Benson,
Speaker 3: like Denise sulliverson you know, uh, you know, pretty brown hair,
Speaker 3: long that they parted in the middle. But uh, From
Speaker 3: and Rushing definitely checked on Bundy's whereabouts on the night
Speaker 3: of the on the night of the murders, and there
Speaker 3: was just no way that it could have been it
Speaker 3: could have been Bundy. He was another one that was
Speaker 3: actually fairly easy to eliminate. I think it was based
Speaker 3: on credit card records.
Speaker 6: It is incredible though, that that that's where Bundy was
Speaker 6: on April sixth, and yet he was not the killer
Speaker 6: of these two women. That is, and you're talking about
Speaker 6: a place that's what twenty thousand people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was about twenty twenty five thousand people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's just you know, I mean and he
Speaker 3: you know, he I think he struck in what was
Speaker 3: it and tell your ride and Aspen. I think he
Speaker 3: grabbed a girl in snow Mass which is not far
Speaker 3: from from Grand Junction at all. Yeah, he was definitely
Speaker 3: that that area. You know that I seventy corridor. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's Denver to Salt Lake in a couple hours.
Speaker 3: And and there's really not much you know, there's Grand
Speaker 3: Junction and there's sort of a couple resort towns along
Speaker 3: the way, but really really not much. Aspen, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: Telly Ride is not far. But yeah, it's kind of amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean just all the all, all just the concentration
Speaker 3: of evil around that time in that place is really staggering.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 6: Absolutely so rushing and from are again hard at work
Speaker 6: and trying to find who is the culprits, how do
Speaker 6: police proceed? We're talking about a lot of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're they're they're actually and they're actually really
Speaker 3: sort of interesting characters, you know, sort of in the
Speaker 3: tradition of you know, true crime or sort of I was,
Speaker 3: you know, I had been reading a lot of I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned this to you earlier. I had been
Speaker 3: reading a lot of Cormick McCarthy at the time, and
Speaker 3: and and also a lot of sort of hard boiled writing.
Speaker 3: So I was sort of like really thinking about like
Speaker 3: two traditions and sort of you know, the Western and
Speaker 3: or you know, sort of the Border trilogy books, and
Speaker 3: also sort of you know, old detective novels. You know,
Speaker 3: I was reading the David Piece I read They read
Speaker 3: the David Piece trilogy right around that time too. And
Speaker 3: the thing that I love about rushing in from as
Speaker 3: characters is that they're both you know, when this happened,
Speaker 3: they you know, they were both detectives, but they were
Speaker 3: still both like twenty three and twenty four years old,
Speaker 3: so they were really you know, they were kids. They
Speaker 3: were children, and they were you know, you know sort
Speaker 3: of and I was sort of trying to operate in this,
Speaker 3: you know, the tradition of like you know, the hard
Speaker 3: boiled detective novel. But these guys were just like the
Speaker 3: softest boiled guys. The boiled guys.
Speaker 4: There ever were you know, like.
Speaker 3: You know, Jim, Jim was like a wealthy kid who's
Speaker 3: you know, whose dad belongs to the local golf club,
Speaker 3: and Doug, you know, was sort of had a dad
Speaker 3: that was, you know, a bad alcoholic and really violent,
Speaker 3: and Doug really sort of depended on his mom and
Speaker 3: his sisters, and you know, to this day, he's a
Speaker 3: really soft spoken, very sweet, very sensitive guy. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, they it was sort of fun to interact
Speaker 3: with those characters and sort of like try to understand
Speaker 3: how to completely innocent twenty three year old kids are
Speaker 3: dealing with this, you know, with these murders, and I
Speaker 3: and I and I really truly believe that they were
Speaker 3: really trying to just get by, you know, they were
Speaker 3: I think they were. They were really just trying to survive.
Speaker 3: They ran down you know, really every lead there was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, I think that they
Speaker 3: were two very different guys. You know, Doug is sort
Speaker 3: of soft spoken and from his sort of to this
Speaker 3: day sort of as a real chip on his shoulder,
Speaker 3: and they were, you know, they complimented each other. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, from is the first guy to sort of
Speaker 3: like knocked down the door, but Rushing wants to hang
Speaker 3: around a lot longer and sort of like look at
Speaker 3: evidence or he always wants to do the extra interview.
Speaker 3: You know, he was really thorough, very thoughtful, very analytical
Speaker 3: cop and they really, you know, they ran it out.
Speaker 3: They ran it out to the end. From told me
Speaker 3: the day that he knew that they weren't going to catch.
Speaker 4: Him was the day that.
Speaker 3: They were given a new you know, a new profile
Speaker 3: of the killer. And they were they were interviewing men
Speaker 3: between the ages of eighteen and forty one who got
Speaker 3: pornographic materials sent to their house. And on the top
Speaker 3: of the list was like From's best friend, who was
Speaker 3: just this really you know, gentle guy who there was
Speaker 3: no way that he had killed Linda Benz in just
Speaker 3: no way, and he knew it, and he you know,
Speaker 3: that was just sort of the endpoint for them, you
Speaker 3: know that that that that was was that afternoon that
Speaker 3: they realized they were never going to catch this guy,
Speaker 3: that he was just gonna walk free and get away
Speaker 3: with it. And yeah, that went cold. It went it
Speaker 3: really went cold kind of about a month and a
Speaker 3: half after the bodies were discovered, or so, you know,
Speaker 3: a month month and a half after that, you know,
Speaker 3: Jim and Doug sort of stopped working you know, eighteen
Speaker 3: hour days and you know, started playing golf again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now, tell us briefly about the ken Botham trial.
Speaker 6: Who's Ken Botham?
Speaker 4: And why is?
Speaker 6: Why is this part of the story as well?
Speaker 3: And how well you know? I mean so Ken ken
Speaker 3: Botham was a really intelligent, super intelligent fellow who lived
Speaker 3: in town, you know, kind of uh, you know, by
Speaker 3: all you know, by all accounts, sort of a super intelligent,
Speaker 3: really arrogant guy who worked as a film producer, I believe,
Speaker 3: and he lived with his wife, Patricia and their two boys.
Speaker 3: The younger one is Dad, I can't recall the name
Speaker 3: of the older boy. And they lived across they lived
Speaker 3: on Uay Avenue, not far from the Chateau apartments. They
Speaker 3: lived across the street from a young woman who was
Speaker 3: in her early twenties and had two boys. Her name
Speaker 3: was Linda Miracle. And I think it was in mid August,
Speaker 3: about a month or so after the Benson gals turned
Speaker 3: up dead, pat Botham, along with Linda Miracle and the
Speaker 3: Miracle boys vanished and just you know, nobody knew where
Speaker 3: they went, I mean sort of. It was clear that
Speaker 3: they were snatched from Linda's house. Uh you know, there
Speaker 3: was food still on the table, and you know, I
Speaker 3: think one of the burners on the stove was still going.
Speaker 3: But they just they didn't know where those two women
Speaker 3: had vanished too. They sort of thought, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: Pat Botham is you know, very unhappily married. Maybe they
Speaker 3: all took off, But you know that there were weird
Speaker 3: things like Pat Botham's kids were still there, and so
Speaker 3: were her glasses and her cigarettes, and one of her
Speaker 3: shoes was still there. You know, like things that people
Speaker 3: presumably would take with them if they were, you know,
Speaker 3: bailing on an unhappy marriage were still in the house
Speaker 3: and so missing. You know, there was never ruled a homicide.
Speaker 3: You know, nobody's you know, nobody, no homicide until the
Speaker 3: bodies were found gosh, I think six or seven weeks later, maybe,
Speaker 3: you know, like I think late October, right, and uh yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean there was just a sort of an orgy
Speaker 3: of evidence pointing to can Botham blood on his car,
Speaker 3: you know, wire, you know, the the when the bodies
Speaker 3: were recovered, they were the hands were bound with a
Speaker 3: sort of a pretty heavy age wire. Yeah, and so
Speaker 3: they you know, they found matches on wirecutters and wire.
Speaker 3: But again, you know, I mean, what I really wanted.
Speaker 4: To do.
Speaker 3: With this book and with the you know, with Bundy
Speaker 3: and with the Botham, the Bothroom cases, I'm really just
Speaker 3: trying to create atmosphere, you know, and and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of it's it's atmosphere. It's it's sort of you know,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of there was a lot of
Speaker 3: talk around town that all of these murders were linked together.
Speaker 3: You know, why else would all of these young women
Speaker 3: be going missing, you know, they it you know, they
Speaker 3: have to be connected. If it's not, if it's not Bundy,
Speaker 3: it's got to be somebody else. And and and what's
Speaker 3: going on that all of these all that all of
Speaker 3: these women are disappearing, And so somehow from and Rushing
Speaker 3: end up investigating this, this this Botham case, you know,
Speaker 3: and to this day, you know, Botham has since been
Speaker 3: mister Botham has since been twice convicted of these murders,
Speaker 3: and to this day, there are just there's a you know,
Speaker 3: a large faction of people around town that are are
Speaker 3: absolutely sure that he's innocent. You know, that it was
Speaker 3: somebody somebody else.
Speaker 4: To do the killing.
Speaker 6: Now, just to throw even more of a monkey wrench
Speaker 6: into this story, and to add sort of again, I
Speaker 6: think part of your story is too that nobody knows
Speaker 6: who anyone really is, and that's why when people point fingers,
Speaker 6: it looks like there might be a logical suspect, but
Speaker 6: it turns out that they're not at all.
Speaker 3: So there is everybody's a red Yeah, everybody's a suspect,
Speaker 3: and nobody has done it, you know. I mean, it's just,
Speaker 3: you know, there there are there are sort of a
Speaker 3: number of other young women around town who after the
Speaker 3: Botham disappearances, and you know, after all that's going on,
Speaker 3: more women are disappearing, and and you know, there another
Speaker 3: girl sort of in December is found strangled in her
Speaker 3: bathtub and they don't know and they never find that
Speaker 3: guy either, you know. I mean, it's just there was
Speaker 3: just sort of there was no relief even sort of
Speaker 3: you know, I sort of often feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: like an arrest, justice is something that frequently will offer relief,
Speaker 3: and there was just no relief like that either, you know,
Speaker 3: And and sort of I think the police department really
Speaker 3: really almost lost control of the town. The people. People
Speaker 3: were so scared, and I think in a lot of
Speaker 3: ways that's what I really wanted the first half of
Speaker 3: this book to be about, as sort of a town unraveling,
Speaker 3: you know that that certainly happens, you know, and and
Speaker 3: sort of that that real feeling of fear around town
Speaker 3: sort of pervades until the middle of like nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: six or sort of a fall of seventy six when
Speaker 3: when mister Boffam is convicted.
Speaker 6: One other thing is that a guy named Steve go
Speaker 6: in nineteen seventy six or so. And this doesn't come
Speaker 6: up till little bit later, but he sees something about
Speaker 6: Ted Bundy on TV and sees Bundy's face and at
Speaker 6: that time says later on, he says, I recognize that guy,
Speaker 6: and I saw him at the Chateau. So tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about just this little part of the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's funny. So Steve God was this
Speaker 3: sort of he's still a character. He was one of
Speaker 3: the guys I found. And he had a he had
Speaker 3: a roommate. And these guys were sort of they're making
Speaker 3: a lot of money tending bar at a local at
Speaker 3: a you know, sort of at a local local club,
Speaker 3: and they were really into like racing hot rods. Uh
Speaker 3: and and they Goad and his buddy Clint were in
Speaker 3: the parking lot at the chateau one night and they
Speaker 3: saw a guy, you know, the night that when the
Speaker 3: bench is murdered, they see a guy sort of like
Speaker 3: leave the apartment building, and you know, it looked like
Speaker 3: he was sort of like, you know, sort of clutching
Speaker 3: at his hand or something, and God got it, gave
Speaker 3: him a good book in the eye. And and the
Speaker 3: way God put it to me, he said, I thought
Speaker 3: we were gonna rumble, Like the guy just was scary
Speaker 3: looking and looked at him very aggressively. And yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think I think he waited like what like six
Speaker 3: six months or eight months to contact the police with this,
Speaker 3: and he was sure that it was Ted Bundy. The
Speaker 3: funny thing was that, you know that that testimony was
Speaker 3: largely dismissed because there was some information that Steve was
Speaker 3: sort of like God was the phrase for this, like
Speaker 3: visually unreliable, like he had once he had once claim
Speaker 3: to see an airplane crash on a golf course and
Speaker 3: swore that he saw this airplane crash on the golf course,
Speaker 3: but no airplane ever crashed on the golf course in
Speaker 3: grand junctions. So they were just sort of like, you know,
Speaker 3: this guy's this guy's fruit loops. You know, he's sort
Speaker 3: of nuts, so that you know, his testimony was eventually dismissed.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean they ran down everything. I mean,
Speaker 3: and it seemed like the mess In case, which was
Speaker 3: officially closed in seventy six, every every couple of years
Speaker 3: somebody would come forward and claim to know something, and
Speaker 3: they would, you know, there was a you know, one
Speaker 3: of Linda's mom or Linda's mom, Barbara had had a husband.
Speaker 3: She had several husbands. I think she'd been married like
Speaker 3: eight or nine times, but she had a you know,
Speaker 3: one of her sort of many husbands came to the
Speaker 3: you know, the police and like, you know, seventy nine
Speaker 3: or eighty and said, I think Barbara did it. You know,
Speaker 3: I mean it was always sort of you know, it
Speaker 3: was always sort of being opened and shot and you know,
Speaker 3: they look into it or you know, they'd be a
Speaker 3: lead and they'd go and get the boxes. But yeah,
Speaker 3: sort of strangely, they yeah, they just never they never
Speaker 3: got their guy.
Speaker 6: Now let's talk about the change of guard at the
Speaker 6: Grand Junction. Colorado Police in terms of the reinvestigation, are
Speaker 6: they going to reopen They get some money from Colorado
Speaker 6: from the state of Colorado to open up some cold cases.
Speaker 6: And who opens up the cold cases? And how do
Speaker 6: they proceed? Tell us about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was. I think it was essentially,
Speaker 3: you know, federal federal money that had been given to
Speaker 3: the state during during the stimulus during during the Great Recession,
Speaker 3: and it was money. It was money that the department
Speaker 3: could never actually figure out a way to spend it.
Speaker 3: So they they gave it to the departments for to
Speaker 3: open up cold cases. And so what they did was
Speaker 3: they called in you know, a lot of these old
Speaker 3: cops had stayed around, guys that had had you know,
Speaker 3: sort of headed up the department in the seventies, had
Speaker 3: stayed around Grand Junction, especially a guy named Ron Smith
Speaker 3: who was kind of the chief of detectives, and he
Speaker 3: he ran a kind of a private detective agency after retirement,
Speaker 3: and and you know, all these guys talk. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a really small, really tight knit community as is.
Speaker 3: But they came to him and they said, you know,
Speaker 3: we've got this, we've got this spedual money, and we're
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, we're looking for a cold case
Speaker 3: to investigate. Do you does anything sort of strike you
Speaker 3: as as appropriate, and he said, oh, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: the Benson case. They asked you know, they asked another
Speaker 3: the police asked another retired detective. He gave them the
Speaker 3: same answer. You know, they got to rushing and from
Speaker 3: and they gave him the same answer. So it was
Speaker 3: very clear early on that there was gonna be a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of evidence that maybe they could use.
Speaker 3: I think it was right around Thanksgiving of two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight or so they called in a guy named
Speaker 3: Larry Bullard. And if there was ever a gentleman who
Speaker 3: is like sort of made and crafted by the Lord
Speaker 3: to be a law enforcement agent, it was this guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, he is, you know, sort of big strawberry
Speaker 3: blonde guy with you know, sort of fists like hammers
Speaker 3: and huge forearms and the thundering voice and the you know,
Speaker 3: gigantic mustache. And he had been you know, the head
Speaker 3: of forensics and you know, at a police department and
Speaker 3: in gosh, New Mexico for years, years and years before
Speaker 3: retiring and moving to Grand Junction and starting a second
Speaker 3: career in law enforcement. And they thought, and he would
Speaker 3: just ended up being the you know, sort of the
Speaker 3: perfect person to spearhead this thing. You know, he took
Speaker 3: all these boxes of evidence, you know, all the exhibits,
Speaker 3: all the notes, and you know, organized and digitized things
Speaker 3: and really recreated that the the investigation from nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five that from rushing in this sort of other small
Speaker 3: team of detectives that worked with them put together for
Speaker 3: the Benson case. Eventually, you know, his his uh, I
Speaker 3: think sort of as he was getting it sort of
Speaker 3: happened as he was getting to the end of his
Speaker 3: own investigation, but they got that's when the the DNA
Speaker 3: match came back, and so it's sort of it sort
Speaker 3: of really worked neatly for them in terms of, you know,
Speaker 3: the timing that you know, Bullard finishes his investigation, he
Speaker 3: sort of has he sort of has come to the
Speaker 3: same conclusion that the cops in seventy five did you
Speaker 3: know that there was just nobody. It didn't make sense
Speaker 3: that anybody around town did this. You know, everybody had
Speaker 3: sort of these buttoned up alibis. You know that finally
Speaker 3: they get sort of you know, they get the result
Speaker 3: from the DNA test and it was just somebody they
Speaker 3: never suspected.
Speaker 6: Now, let's talk about Jerry and Neemnich, because that's who
Speaker 6: they get through Cotis and it's a match. And you
Speaker 6: alluded to that his DNA was in the system since
Speaker 6: seventy eight. Tell us what his illustrious career criminal life,
Speaker 6: and then and then tell us who Sandy Higgins is
Speaker 6: and how they came to speak to Sandy Higgins.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Jerry was just a just I mean, a bad guy.
Speaker 4: I mean just you know, like.
Speaker 3: I think, I think wicked is really the only the
Speaker 3: word for him. You know, got caught for his first
Speaker 3: rape when he was fifteen. I think he did, you know,
Speaker 3: like five or six years for that first offense. And
Speaker 3: on the on the on the very day that he
Speaker 3: was released, he was picked up again and brought to
Speaker 3: and extradited to Colorado for a rape that he committed
Speaker 3: like a day or two after his after his first assault,
Speaker 3: and he pled, he played, you know, he pled guilty
Speaker 3: and went went away again for you know, another seven years,
Speaker 3: and then you know, sort of drifted around and ended
Speaker 3: up in Grand Junction and was passing bad checks and
Speaker 3: did another four years. And it was just sort of
Speaker 3: he was just in and out over and over again,
Speaker 3: and just yeah, I mean I can't think of anything
Speaker 3: to say about it other than he was just a
Speaker 3: real like just a really rotten character. You know, during
Speaker 3: during my research, I actually uncovered a really sort of gosh,
Speaker 3: probably a three or four hundred page stack of letters
Speaker 3: that he had exchanged.
Speaker 4: With a woman.
Speaker 3: After he was put back in jail in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight for a rape and attempted murder. And he I mean,
Speaker 3: these letters are just I mean, I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: sort of kind of like a map of a psychopath's mind.
Speaker 3: They're they're sort of fascinating. You know that he's got this.
Speaker 3: Here's a guy who's sort of in his life, has
Speaker 3: never really done anything and has a really you know,
Speaker 3: high opinion of himself and nothing of it, nothing is
Speaker 3: ever his own fault, and you know, there are sort
Speaker 3: of all these really bad sexual innuendos, and I mean
Speaker 3: just really a guy who's clearly not comfortable with who
Speaker 3: he is, and he's you know, you can tell he's
Speaker 3: you know, he's lonely and he's desperate, and you know
Speaker 3: you can sort of every once in a while you
Speaker 3: sort of like he'll write something and it gives you
Speaker 3: a glimpse of sort of like you're sort of reminded, like, oh,
Speaker 3: this guy is a serial rapist.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean he was.
Speaker 3: Just a yeah, I mean, a really bad guy. I
Speaker 3: think in seventy four he was released from prison for
Speaker 3: passing some bad checks and he met a woman in Denver,
Speaker 3: UH named Sandy Higgins. Sandy was a divorcee who had
Speaker 3: moved to who had moved to Grand Junction I think
Speaker 3: from like around Chicago maybe, and she had a waitressing job,
Speaker 3: and she met Jerry at a nightclub and they just
Speaker 3: sort of fell in together. She lived really hard, you know,
Speaker 3: and I think they were sort of, you know, they
Speaker 3: were sort of a mess together. You know, I think
Speaker 3: they were in a lot of ways. It seems like
Speaker 3: they were kind of perfect for each other, and just
Speaker 3: that they really were kind of a mess together.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: There was you know, like a lot, a lot of
Speaker 3: boozing that went on. So, you know, they found Jerry
Speaker 3: found a job at a print shop in Grand Junction,
Speaker 3: and then after Grand Junction, they were in California for
Speaker 3: a while and they were back in Denver, and then
Speaker 3: they were sort of I think he went up to
Speaker 3: work in the oil patch and like Wyoming or Idaho,
Speaker 3: she went with him until eventually they broke up. And
Speaker 3: then he committed another rape and he was in jail
Speaker 3: and from fessionally think it was from seventy eight to
Speaker 3: like ninety eight or so, or seventy seventy seventy six
Speaker 3: to ninety eight. Yeah, when he was released.
Speaker 6: So was crucial tell us about how hard it was
Speaker 6: or not hard it was getting the information from Sandy
Speaker 6: Higgins about the night that despite this DNA evidence, they
Speaker 6: need a little bit more evidence. And this certainly is
Speaker 6: a lot more evidence in terms of him coming to
Speaker 6: the home and what she witnessed. So tell us about
Speaker 6: that and how hard or easy it was to get
Speaker 6: that information from Sandy Higgins.
Speaker 3: Sure. So the Grand Junction police they they can mean
Speaker 3: a sort of a little cold case unit to work
Speaker 3: on this case together and the and the and besides
Speaker 3: Larry Bullard, you know, Larry Bullard sort of took the
Speaker 3: case to the conclusion that he could, which was that
Speaker 3: nobody in Grand Junction committed the murders. Then they had
Speaker 3: the d in evidence that that came in. It proved
Speaker 3: that this guy, Jerry Nemnic, who was this drifter, was
Speaker 3: the culprit. And what the police that needed to do
Speaker 3: was they needed to figure out if Jerry Nemnic was
Speaker 3: ever in Grand Junction at that time where he lived,
Speaker 3: to see if there was any sort of proximity to
Speaker 3: the Bens in place, if he had known Linda Benson,
Speaker 3: and what was the connection. Because they didn't have a
Speaker 3: murder weapon, so they needed all this they you know,
Speaker 3: and and they also needed a DNA sample to test
Speaker 3: against the sample that they had from nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: anti test against the samples that were taken from Underling
Speaker 3: when his fingernails and from the bread on the on
Speaker 3: the cereal box. And so they dispatched these two detectives,
Speaker 3: Crockett and Bennett, both really great guys from Grand Junction.
Speaker 3: And these guys start traveling in the United States tracking
Speaker 3: down people who were friends with Jerry in the seventies.
Speaker 3: And they got these those names through looking at the
Speaker 3: visitor's logs at the prisons where Jerry had done time
Speaker 3: and just sort of then by word of mouth, so
Speaker 3: they you know, and and they sort of worked in
Speaker 3: these circles. So at the center of the circle was Jerry,
Speaker 3: and since they didn't want to they didn't want to
Speaker 3: tip them off about the investigation, they started on the
Speaker 3: outside of the circle, which is a sort of a
Speaker 3: common device or sort of a common strategy that a
Speaker 3: lot of journalists like wood Word would use. And so
Speaker 3: they sort of started circling Jerry, and so the first
Speaker 3: round of people that they wanted to talk to were
Speaker 3: the ones who were sort of farthest from him. So
Speaker 3: it was actually they started by talking with the women
Speaker 3: that he had raped in the past and sort of
Speaker 3: figured out what was his mo and then they eventually,
Speaker 3: you know, eventually, you know, they talked to some other
Speaker 3: people that sort of knew Jerry in the seventies, and
Speaker 3: then just when they thought that they were getting a
Speaker 3: little too close, that's when they got their arrest warrant
Speaker 3: and brought nemnic in. So after they brought nemnic in,
Speaker 3: they and they had him in custody. That's when they
Speaker 3: got on the road and they started talking to people
Speaker 3: that they knew were really close with nemnic in the seventies,
Speaker 3: and eventually they they get to this sort of little town,
Speaker 3: was it Winnetka? Is that where Sandy's from, Yeah, sort
Speaker 3: of on the border of Illinois and Indiana, And she
Speaker 3: lives in this sort of scrapy old house and she's
Speaker 3: clearly a very field lady. They could you know, they
Speaker 3: could smell the cats from outside, and she just had
Speaker 3: just very little memory. I mean, I think it had
Speaker 3: sort of been erased by a, you know, a life
Speaker 3: of boozing, and she she just was not really able
Speaker 3: to recall anything at first. And then you know that
Speaker 3: they thought. I think Bennett and Crocker going into that
Speaker 3: interview had thought that that was going to be the
Speaker 3: one that sort of wrapped it up for them. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we knew Linda Benson from X or you know,
Speaker 3: Jerry took an a leg to her because why or yeah,
Speaker 3: we used to have threesomes with the Bensons or there,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. There would be something, some
Speaker 3: some recognition of the name. You know, this interview was
Speaker 3: gonna was going to yield some results for them. And
Speaker 3: Sandy didn't remember anything until the next morning when she
Speaker 3: calls Bennett on his cell phone and says, you know,
Speaker 3: I do remember having an injury. He came home one night,
Speaker 3: and I remember because he was wearing my favorite He
Speaker 3: had these Sherbert yellow Sherbert yellow nylon pants that I
Speaker 3: used to love on him, and they were covered in
Speaker 3: blood and then she says, you know, and then the
Speaker 3: next day we took off to Denver, and so they
Speaker 3: you know, I think Crocker and Bennett then go to
Speaker 3: Rhode Island and they find the guy that Jerry and
Speaker 3: Sandy had stayed with in Denver, and it turned out
Speaker 3: that you know, Sandy could never remember the adjust where
Speaker 3: they lived in right, because they were trying to establish proximity.
Speaker 3: And so the guy that they were staying with in
Speaker 3: Denver was this guy named George who had worked in
Speaker 3: the liquor store, and Jerry had passed two bad checks
Speaker 3: in this liquor store. And the guy George, who walked,
Speaker 3: you know, works behind the counter and was putting Jerry up,
Speaker 3: had saved these checks for thirty four years just because
Speaker 3: he was positive that he was going to encounter Jerry
Speaker 3: Nemnic at some other point in his life and wanted
Speaker 3: to be like, I want my fifty bucks, so I
Speaker 3: mean and and on these checks, Jerry had scribbled out
Speaker 3: their address in Denver and had written on the checks
Speaker 3: twenty eight to fifty Texas Avenue, Grand Junction, Colorado, and Crockett,
Speaker 3: seeing that, immediately knew that twenty eight to fifty Texas
Speaker 3: is about is a little is a little it's a
Speaker 3: little trailer on a sort of on a corner and
Speaker 3: a pretty nice little development, like a pretty nice little
Speaker 3: trailer park.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like it's clean, you know, and it's about a
Speaker 3: mile and a half from the chateau, and Crockett knew it.
Speaker 3: That was sort of like one of the big moments
Speaker 3: for them that they they had proximity. It's it's sort
Speaker 3: of about a you know, maybe like a mile a
Speaker 3: mile and an eighth. You know, that the the Nemnic
Speaker 3: residence in the in the chateau, and that was that
Speaker 3: was really one of the things that I think sealed
Speaker 3: the deal for those guys was was getting that address. Coincidentally,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of some of the the the the police.
Speaker 3: One way one place where sort of the police department
Speaker 3: had failed was there was an old cop named Wilcox
Speaker 3: that lived right across the street from from Jerry and
Speaker 3: and Sandy, and he said that you know, they were
Speaker 3: screaming and fighting and sort of labored noises coming from
Speaker 3: the Nemnic residence all the time, and Wilcox just never
Speaker 3: looked into Jerry. I mean, it never never occurred to
Speaker 3: him even after he saw him with a you know,
Speaker 3: with the bandage on the hand to look into him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, incredible. Now, what we will we have to talk
Speaker 6: about the trial a little bit, and which is very
Speaker 6: very unusual, as you know, is that Neminich takes the stand.
Speaker 6: So tell us just a little bit about the trial,
Speaker 6: but especially Nminich taking the stand.
Speaker 3: Well, Nemnic or Nemnic, I'm i'm I always sort of
Speaker 3: saying Nemnic. I think that the the pronunciation goes either way.
Speaker 3: But he was he was represented by a really really
Speaker 3: skilled defense team from Denver, and you know, Doug Rushing
Speaker 3: said to me sort of years later that he thought
Speaker 3: Nemnic was gonna get off, you know, that his defense
Speaker 3: team had created just enough doubt that he he thought
Speaker 3: that the jury might buy it. And then Nemnic takes
Speaker 3: the stand and gives just sort of the most outrageously
Speaker 3: really just the most outrageous testimony in the history of perjury.
Speaker 3: I mean, just you know, really just unbelievable. He claims that, like,
Speaker 3: you know, he's at the bar one night and he
Speaker 3: gets talking to what is it, like a six foot
Speaker 3: seven Indian and he can't tell if this this you know,
Speaker 3: this Indian is male or female, and the Indian says, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, well, you take me to get a little marijuana.
Speaker 3: And so they go to the chateau and then the
Speaker 3: guy disappears and he waits around and he's got a piece.
Speaker 3: So he goes into the chateau hallway to look for
Speaker 3: this six foot seven Indian, but you know, like he
Speaker 3: doesn't see him, but he does see that there's a
Speaker 3: door open, and it happens to be the door where
Speaker 3: Lindon and Kelly are and just as he walks in,
Speaker 3: he sees he sees a figure who he can't tell
Speaker 3: if that figures male or female coming at him with
Speaker 3: a knife raised over his head, and Jerry's got to
Speaker 3: fight the knife out of his hand, and he does.
Speaker 3: The guy drops the knife and runs out of the apartment,
Speaker 3: and Jerry picks up the knife and throws it in
Speaker 3: the kitchen. That's how the blood got everywhere. And then
Speaker 3: he can see, you know, the bodies from from sort
Speaker 3: of that kitchen area, which is actually an impossibility because
Speaker 3: of because of the weird hallway that I was talking
Speaker 3: about earlier, the bodies were walked from view. And so
Speaker 3: he has this just I mean just really the most
Speaker 3: porous testimony ever and and is convicted. You know, I
Speaker 3: think that was convicted fairly quickly. You know, I think
Speaker 3: that that jury spent a lot of time sort of
Speaker 3: going over things.
Speaker 4: And and.
Speaker 3: And and and kind of reviewing all of the evidence
Speaker 3: because they wanted to get get it done right. But
Speaker 3: in me end I don't think there was ever much
Speaker 3: question that his testimony was just ridiculous.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now, what would you say in terms of you know,
Speaker 6: you you write in the epilogue about about the story itself, Well,
Speaker 6: what did you come away from from this story the
Speaker 6: killing season? What was the most profound I guess effect
Speaker 6: or what really struck you? I think after writing this book.
Speaker 3: What struck me was you know, for me, it's all
Speaker 3: about from and rushing for some reason, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: like so in the years and so in the years,
Speaker 3: in the years since those murders, Steve Benson disappeared and
Speaker 3: and sort of has lived his life entirely off the
Speaker 3: grid's He exists largely as kind of a hermit around
Speaker 3: the Gilah Wilderness in New Mexico. And and so, you know,
Speaker 3: what struck me is just the way that these murders
Speaker 3: thirty five years ago, have just utterly destroyed lives, you know,
Speaker 3: like Jeeve Benson has has been on the has been
Speaker 3: sort of hiding from this. And I don't think hiding
Speaker 3: and I'm not saying that he's been hiding from it
Speaker 3: because he's guilty of it. I think that what happened
Speaker 3: to him find finding finding those people who were, you know,
Speaker 3: the two people in the world that he loved the
Speaker 3: most so utterly wrecked him that he had to run away.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, uh Lindes, Linda's family, you know,
Speaker 3: Linda's Linda's stepsister and her little brothers. Like Linda's stepsister
Speaker 3: was just absolutely ruined by this. She went, she she went,
Speaker 3: She lost her mind, you know, she she had problems
Speaker 3: for years and.
Speaker 6: Years and years.
Speaker 3: Linda's mother too, who I also, I mean, she lost
Speaker 3: two daughters, like I feel for her. Not a great impact.
Speaker 3: She was not a woman who had a really profoundly
Speaker 3: positive impact on her daughter's life. But nonetheless, no parent
Speaker 3: deserves to to lose somebody that way. And then for
Speaker 3: rushing and from who I think. You know, Doug told
Speaker 3: me that he went to one of those Dale Carnegie,
Speaker 3: one of those Dale Carnegie Conferences. They had one at
Speaker 3: the holiday and I think in Graham Junction or in
Speaker 3: Golden a couple of years back, and he got to
Speaker 3: thinking about you know, there was a question that he
Speaker 3: had to answer during one of the exercise, which was,
Speaker 3: you know, if you think really honestly with yourself, what
Speaker 3: is the most profound thing that has ever happened to you? Like,
Speaker 3: what is the thing that has changed your view of
Speaker 3: the world most? And he thought and he thought and
Speaker 3: he thought, and rushing couldn't think of anything that had
Speaker 3: happened to him that was more important than that case.
Speaker 3: You know, same same with from you know, he he
Speaker 3: quit the force, or was sort of you know, asked
Speaker 3: to leave the force shortly after those shortly after those murders,
Speaker 3: or not too long after those murders, and he you know,
Speaker 3: opened up and has had a pretty success full run
Speaker 3: as an accountant. But again, you know, he would find
Speaker 3: himself thinking about that case. What did we do wrong?
Speaker 4: What did we miss?
Speaker 3: You know, what didn't we find what could we have
Speaker 3: done better? Over and over again for thirty plus years,
Speaker 3: and then finally there's some relief, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: for me, it was always about sort of that kind
Speaker 3: of redemption.
Speaker 4: You know, Like.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, I'm not sure Steve Benson's ever going
Speaker 3: to get better or he's ever going to feel better
Speaker 3: about what that would happen to him, but like, at
Speaker 3: least it's at least that part of his life is
Speaker 3: over now, you know, at least he can do something else.
Speaker 3: And the same thing with rushingen from you know, at
Speaker 3: least those guys can can rest easy on that now,
Speaker 3: you know. I think the thing that I got most
Speaker 3: out of it was just sort of that feeling of
Speaker 3: relief and that redemption for those people.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a it's an incredible tale of how much
Speaker 6: misery and tragedy one small area can endure and be
Speaker 6: touched by this, I don't know, just incredible evil for
Speaker 6: such a small area, for a time that we again
Speaker 6: we don't think of nineteen seventy five as a good
Speaker 6: old days, but it was a more innocent time. And
Speaker 6: yet the evil that was present in this area over
Speaker 6: a good period of years and then, like you say,
Speaker 6: a thirty five year cold case cast a poll on
Speaker 6: a neighborhood and a community as well too. So an
Speaker 6: incredible story for those that might want to contact to
Speaker 6: do you do Facebook? Do you have a website?
Speaker 3: Tell us how facebooker, I'm on Twitter. If you want
Speaker 3: to reach out to me directly, you can reach me
Speaker 3: on my email as French dot Alex dot M at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to thank you very much Alex for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about the Killing season. Incredible story
Speaker 6: and thank you for this interview.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 6: Well, I hope to talk to you again sometime soon,
Speaker 6: and thank you and have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Good night to God.
Speaker 3: I