The Explosive Enigma Murders - Naples, Florida

This week, in Naples, Florida, we go behind the curtain of a rich family with some grown children who just seem to want to waste the whole fortune. This family turns out to be victims of a massive explosion that causes carnage and chaos. Is this a long-standing feud, an act of revenge, or just pure greed? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder. This is a wild story. This is one of those, like, if this was a movie, I would watch it. It's just crazy. It's really great. I trust you. I can't wait to get into this. Just a crazy, crazy story. We will get to that. First, though, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get everything you need. First, all the merchandise you could possibly want. Anything that you've heard us say that you might think is funny, it's probably on a T-shirt or a skateboard or a coffee cup. But also, tickets to live shows. That's what's important here. Live shows coming up. Looks like Milwaukee is sold out at this point on September 18th. September 19th, though, Minneapolis State Theater. Still tickets left for that. Get them right now while they're hot. We have October 3rd in Dallas, October 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento, and Tarrytown, November 13th, almost sold out, and then Boston on the 14th. Actually, Medford, so you don't even have to bother going into the city. So, there you go. Can't wait to do that. Come on out. ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com is where you get all of that stuff. Also, listen to our other shows, Crime and Sports, and Your Stupid Opinions. If you like this, trust us. You'll like that, probably. And, again, get yourself Patreon. That's what you need. Patreon.com slash CrimeInSports. That's where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get every little last megabyte we put out. That's it. That's all you got to be. As soon as you subscribe, you're going to get almost 400 back bonus episodes immediately upon subscription. Then you're going to get new ones every other week. One Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder, and you're going to get it all, everybody. Incredible. It's great. This week, can't wait for what we're doing for Small Town Murder here. Donner Party. We've been wanting to talk about this for years. So, we're going to talk about the Donner Party. Tell me more. Obviously, famous group of people going across the country back in the day, got stuck in the snow, and ate each other. Is that one? So, we'll talk all about that. Yeah, those are the cannibals. So, we'll get into all of that, and I think we'll have a good time with that. So, Patreon.com slash CrimeInSports, just like the name of that show you should be listening to. Then, on top of that, we're going to talk about the Donner Party. On top of that, you get everything we put out. Crime and Sports, Your Stupid Opinions, both Small Town Murders, all ad-free with that Patreon as well. Not an ad among them. And then, you get a shout-out at the end of the show, too. You bet. Jimmy will mispronounce your name. So, there you go. I think that's a great deal. That said, disclaimer time. Yeah? This is a comedy show, people, everybody. Right. It's a comedy show. It's also a show about insane murder stories. That's the thing. And you go, well, how does that work? How do you mix those two things together? That sounds gross. It's not, though. See? It's not that bad. There's a tasteful way to do it. There really is. And the way we've chosen to do it is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But? But we're not scumbags. See how that works? It's pretty simple because there's plenty to make fun of. You can make fun of a small town. Who cares? We're all from somewhere that we make fun of all the time. Or, you know, we make fun of a police force that lets a murderer go free. We kill more people. That deserves to be made fun of. We make fun of murderers. Yeah. Because we're comedians. What else can we do? What are we going to do? Go down there and take the ramen noodles away? No. All we can do is make fun of them. That would be funny. That would be pretty funny. No, I'm sorry. You can't have this. We did a show about you, and we didn't like you, and we decided you're not allowed to have your beef-flavored ramen tonight. You have to have only the shrimp flavor. That's the only one you get. Sorry. There is shrimp in it. Oh, you're not going to get any shrimp. It's shrimp flavor. So, yeah. You can do all of that. But, yeah, do that. But either way, though, you know, that's what we're doing here. No complaining later. That's what it is. That's what it is, basically. So, if you think that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a wild story. If you think true crime and comedy should somehow never go together, give it a chance, but no complaining later. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Here we go. Yeah. Clear the lungs here. What do you say? Arms to the sky, and let's all shout. Up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Where are we going? Naples. We're going to Florida. Yeah. We're going to Naples, Florida. It's a big retirement joint, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, Florida in general, yes. I mean, there's a reason why it's known as God's waiting room, and it's right on the sign when you drive in there. Naples itself. Rich old people live here. This is rich old people with more golf clubs than years left to live, essentially, and that's what's going on. It's in southwestern Florida. It's about two hours to Miami. It's about two and a half hours to Tampa if you go north. So it's down pretty good in the southwest. A mere Fort Myers over there. Kind of, yeah. It's two hours and 45 minutes to Plant City, Florida, which is our last Florida episode, episode 673, the unluckiest winner. Remember the guy who won the lottery? And then horribly, that was awful. That poor guy never had an ounce of luck his whole life, wins the lottery, he's murdered for it. Too nice to everybody. Too nice. That's what it was. This is in Collier County, area code 239, and it has two nicknames. One is Naples on the Gulf, because it's called Naples and it's on the Gulf of Mexico. They're making it sound way more fancy than that actually is in real life, if you know anything about the Gulf. And then the Gulf capital. Of the world. Of the world. Of the world, Jimmy. Yeah. Fuck Scottsdale. Scott's going to say, Scottsdale's rolling up its sleeves going, what you saying to me, bitch? Fuck Augusta. There's nothing else here but golf. Nothing. It's just deserts and golf, goddammit. Yeah. History this town. I swore I've heard the other one. We misread this. I thought it said Napa. Yeah. So a little bit of history here. It was founded in 1886. By a former confederate general named John Stuart Williams. He was also a US Senator from Kentucky and him and his partner, who his partner was the guy who published the Louisville Courier Journal, which is their newspaper of record forever. Throughout the seventies, the 1870s and 1880s, magazines and newspapers ran all sorts of stories about the area's mild climate. It's hot as shit down there. Mild climate, abundant fish and likened it to. Italy, they kept saying it's, it's just like being in Italy, Naples, except for the swamps and the trash people, you know, just so Napoli, which is just a, like a Napoli, just a, like all the Napoli, like we all remember. Hey, um, so yeah, the name Naples caught on when promoters described the Bay as quote surpassing the Bay in Naples, Italy, much nicer. Um, yeah, really, really. Yeah. Uh, in 1888, they had approximately 80 people there and then they opened a pier and then a hotel and then it started going on here. Reviews of this town. Here we go. Here is five stars. Naples is one of those cities where once you explore everything in it, it either gets boring or it gets even more fun to live in. They haven't told us which one though. It's just either one. We're not sure which that's all review. Here is three stars. Naples is an upscale. City on the Gulf of Mexico, renowned for its white sand beaches, luxury living, and being the quote golf capital of the world with over 80 courses. It's a Haven for high-end shopping and dining, particularly along fifth Avenue, South and third street South Naples also serves as a gateway to the vast natural beauty and eco tourism of the Everglades and corkscrew swamp sanctuary. Oh, I know I'm, I've been saving up for years to take a big pilgrimage down to the swamp sanctuary there. Um, corkscrew swamp offering a mix of sophisticated culture and wild outdoor adventure. The historic Naples pier is an iconic spot for fishing and sunset views on the paradise coast. That's a three-star review. That sounds like 12 stars. That doesn't sound even five. That's way more. Yeah. Corkscrew swamp. Sounds like there's no exit. It sounds like a fucking corn maze. It's fucking brutal, man. Um, brutal. Here's three stars. It can be pretty. It's calm in the quiet parts and beaches can be amazing. However, there are many all caps, rude people who think they're entitled to do whatever they want. Retire here, I guess. Question marks, I guess. And, uh, here we go. One star don't like it at all. Too many young people on drugs. This is an old person that would expect to know young people there. Um, I worked with two Collier counties, Collier County. Let's pop a retail. puppy mill dog. be sold. I worked for one until I found out. No good jobs that pay enough for what they charge customers. Traffic is horrendous. People act like they're better than others. Town is waterlogged and moldy. Jesus Christ, I would say that is a lot. I assume that if I think of a puppy mill, I think 70% of them are run in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida. I imagine there would be no laws against it in Florida. People here, 19,187. It's not a huge place. Not small either. Way more women than men. That will get to why in a second here. It is 53.4% women, which is way out of whack of normal. That's because the median age here is 66.3. Women live longer than men. Hence, in a retirement community, you're going to get way more women than men. If you can live to be like 75, you're going to get way more women than men. If you can live to be like 75, you're going to And you're a widower or you got divorced or something and you're a guy, you are going to clean up. You can slang it. You are going to kill that shuffleboard court. You're going to go down there and just wipe up the floor with all those old ladies. Your doctor is going to be so impressed with the bacteria culture in there. Yeah. You just got to keep your dick in operating condition and you're fine. Yeah. Keep the game ready, babe. Yeah. 30% of the people here are over 75 years old. And 53% are over 65. So think about that. It's a lot of retired people. It's about it's over 62% married because they're all old and rich. So they're not going to get divorced. 4% single with children, which is way below the national average. And you don't find a lot of 75 year old single mothers walking around out there. So, you know, yeah, it's rare. It's rare. You don't get that as much. It's about 4% of the population. Yeah. Race here, 89.6% white, 5% white, 5% black, 0.4% Asian, 4.1% Hispanic. Religion, 35% religious. Either they've given up or they're so old they forgot they believed in anything, either one. But it's the highest one here appears to be Catholic, 15.6%. Usually Catholics are the Baptists of the North, but instead we flipped it here just from all the people moving from the North to the South here. 0.6% Jewish, just missed it. We just got to get rid of that. Yeah. Just missed our Havana Gila threshold there. The unemployment, close. Unemployment rate here, a little bit low. Median household income, very high. Median household income here, $125,306. It is. And you're going to need it when I tell you the cost of living because holy shit. Cost of living here, 100 is regular. Here it's 137. And the big thing is the housing. Median home cost here, $45,900. Yes. These people are not retiring to go live in trailers in Florida. They're retiring to huge fucking unbelievable homes. These are rich people that are moving to golf course condos and houses on golf courses and all that shit. These are wealthy people. And if let's say you've saved a whole bunch of money and you want to sweat for the rest of your days, we have for you the Naples, Florida real estate report. Your average two bedroom rental here goes for $1,890. So pretty steep, honestly. Here is house number one. And this is the cheapest structure that you can live in that I could find. And I'm looking for single family homes here because there's a trillion condos. And I was like, I'm not getting into that. So this is a three bedroom, two bath, 1,440 square foot trailer. It's a nice trailer with a carport. It's got a lot of stuff in it. And, you know, they tried to make it look like it's actually sitting in the ground and things like that. Built in 1974, $148,000 for that. A trailer. Wow. $150,000 for a trailer. Just had a price cut of $2,000. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 2,334 square foot single family home. It's nowhere near the water. It looks like it's kind of in the woods almost. You get 2.27 acres. in this as well, which is pretty big for this area. The house looks okay. It's not terrible. It's kind of Spanish style. $398,400. Very specific price. And they just had a $1,000 price reduction. That'll sell it. That was the problem. $399 instead of $398. It's a band high. And then finally, holy shit, a five bedroom, six bath, two rooms, a tea bowl for each and every b-hole. 5,277 square feet on the ocean or on the gulf or whatever the hell it is. I'm talking to your houses here. You have a wall that is beach in front of it on the ocean. 0.7 acre lot too on the beach, which is a pretty big lot. Almost an acre. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. If I had $39 million, the last place I'm going is Florida. Who is buying this? Pitbull? Who the fuck is buying this? You know what I mean? Who buys this house? Is the rest of the world on fire? Apparently so. Apparently it does not exist. If I want to spend $39, I'd buy a fucking chalet off the coast of somewhere. I wouldn't be buying this crap. I'll buy a boat and throw fucking anchor somewhere. $39 million. I mean, it's a nice place, but there's other houses on top of you. You're dealing with just trash at the beach and all this. $39 million, your ass. Are you kidding me? $39 million. It's $39 million. I'm having guard towers, not even with guns, with hot oil to dump on people. We're going old school. So things to do in this town. A lot of things if you're going to do in this town. The Naples Winter Wine Festival. This is a hoity-toity, snobby, upscale wine bullshit here. They call it the most exciting charity wine event in the world. Charity wine event? Yeah. That way you can write it off. You can go get shit-faced, spend tons of money, and just bill it to the government. Isn't that great? In the name of free money. Yep. And then the Naples Winter Wine Festival, truly one-of-a-kind experience from exquisite culinary encounters to a world-renowned auction that stirs both hearts and headlines. Wow. This festival brings together the very best in wine, cuisine, and philanthropy, all to create brighter futures for Collier County's children. All 12 of them, because everyone here is 100 years old. What kids live here? So the auction, step into the tent at the Ritz-Carlton Naples for heart-pounding live auction to bid on rare collectibles of some of the world's most sought-after wines, exotic travel adventures, limited-edition cars, and unique experiences. This isn't an auction where people spend $100. We have a bottle of 1947 blah, blah, blah that is $80,000. That's the type of auction this is. Unique experiences. What is there, like traffic children you can behead for $12 million? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thailand. Oh, yeah. There's Cambodian sex tours, I believe. Nine-year-old boy sex tours. Sex tours they have, things like that. Yeah, they call it the full-tie package is what it is. There's also the Everglades Seafood Festival, which is a little more our speed, I think. Okay, yeah. Enjoy, well, maybe not. Enjoy three days of live country music, which about halfway into that, you'd find me fucking with my wrist slit somewhere. It features continuous live country music, rock and roll, and swamp blues. Got me. I think you'd be surprised by how cool swamp blues is. I'd like that better than the country, I would assume. Yeah. So, they have a features opening, blah, blah, blah. Oh, they have a Creedence Clearwater revival tribute band called Fortunate Son, of course. There's also, what is this, country star Tyler Farr. Yeah, he's good. F-A-R-R, and then regional. Regional Southern Rock worship bands and high-energy tribute headliners, like the Meatloaf tribute band, Meatloaf, M-E-E-T, loaf. That's what's going on. Wow, okay. Oh, boy. Crime rate in this town, property crime right about the average, which if I had a $39 million house, I'd be really pissed if it wasn't pristine. Are you kidding me? That's super dangerous for $39 million. $39 million. $39 million. Then violent crime. Murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime, less than half the national average. So, that's about right. These old people aren't killing each other too much here. Who the fuck lives in that house now? That's what I want to know. Somebody. There's furniture in it. Well, it might be staged, but I don't know. Shit in there. I mean, who the fuck made that? The fucking asshole. Yeah, to begin with. That said, let's talk about some murder, everybody. Let's get into this here. Here we go. We're going to start out hot today. We're going to start out hot, and then we'll go back and talk. July 9th, 1985. This is about 9.17 a.m. All right. This is a home on, I won't give the exact address because I'm sure it's worth millions of dollars. I don't want to fuck up their. It's worth $40 million today. It's on White Violet Way is the street we're on here. It's a tree-lined street inside of Quail Creek, which is a gated golf course community with a guard at the entrance where there's a visitor log book. And basically, if someone comes, they have to call you and then they buzz them in. It's one of those places. So, pain in the ass. I used to be a process server. That was the biggest pain in the balls. Yeah. Biggest pain in the balls because it's like this guy's now got to call them to alert them to my presence, which now they're not going to answer the door. Thanks, Dick. Appreciate it. The annoying part is when there's, yeah, right. That's fun. I do enjoy the one that has a service entrance, like Desert Mountain, where you pull up to the residence entrance on accident and they treat you like you are a piece of shit. Why are you here? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know. I'd go in there. They really did. At least you were. Who I'm with. Yeah. At least you were going to do something that they wanted you to do. I'm coming in there to give them, tell them they're being sued or their wife doesn't want to be with them anymore. I'm giving them bad news probably, so they don't want me there at all. Like, it was bad. But I've got the company name on the fucking door of the truck. And they're like, can I help you? Well, you can open that fucking gate. You can do that. I'm showing them. I'm an officer of the court. And I have judicial shit I need. And they're like, I don't know, man. Like, that's what I'm saying. I'm not helping you. Cray, you have an electric company written on the side of your truck. It's the worst. This guy's literally paid to not let me in. Now, if we were super rich and lived in one of these places, we'd probably think it was the best. But just being someone who's trying to penetrate this. Yeah. It's bad. So let's start out. He's an idiot trying to do his job. Yeah. On this morning, there is the Benson. They consist of the matriarch of the family, Margaret Benson, who's 63 years old, and her three adult children. We have Carol Lynn, who's about 40 at this point. We have Scott, who is the youngest. He is about 21 at this point. And then we have Steven, who is in his early 30s here. And he's 31 at this point. So they're all loading into a Chevy Suburban owned by Margaret to head to a property. That they have purchased that their mother is building a house on. And by the way, she is building a fucking mansion, a $39 million type of house. She's building a crazy house. So it's a big family outing on a morning to go look at this property. And she's going to show them shit. OK, so they all load into the car. 21 year old Scott is assigned to be the driver for some reason, which is usually the youngest. He's in the back seat somewhere. So. That's strange. But he's driving. They're still exuberant to drive. Yeah. You're not driving mom around. And, you know, if I'm his older brother, I'm like, move aside. You're getting back there. So either way, Scott turns the ignition to the Suburban for this big family outing. And there is a massive fucking explosion. I mean, a massive kaboom car like a tin can that got blown apart. Open. The Suburban. I mean, the Suburban. Yeah. Kaboom. Huge explosion. So violent that bodies are thrown clear out of the vehicle onto the lawn. Wow. Kaboom. To launch a, you know, 200 pound person through the air, which is crazy. The explosion is heard for up to five miles. That's how loud this is. That's a long distance. Debris rains down over the yard and the adjoining golf course that the house sits on as well. So if you're on the 14th fairway, there is now. Debris coming down, spraying everywhere. Right. It's insane. There is. It's so bad. Pieces of the Suburban and other things would later be recovered from yards, multiple houses away on top of screen porches and shit like that. Now, in the backseat of the car was Carol Lynn. She is in the backseat. Carol is the oldest child. Oldest. She's in. Yeah, she was in the backseat. She had her door open at the time. The explosion. Didn't happen. That's good. So she is blown out of the car onto the grass. She is conscious and currently on fire. A flame. Okay. Yeah. She's rolling around on the lawn trying to get the flames off. Stop, drop and roll. Put them out. Trying to put a roll trying to get her burning shirt off. She's screaming. Yeah. Nearby. There's two golfers on the third hole. Okay. Literally two golfers named Charles Meyer and Fred Merrill. And. Fred Merrill knew the family. He was once Margaret, the mother's realtor. So he saw the blast, heard it and came running. He goes to Margaret's side and finds her on the ground beside the vehicle, which is fully engulfed in flames. And he grabs her by the ankles, the mother and drags her away from the flames. At some point, by the way, Carol was running around on fire, which is a imagine watching a woman run around with her clothing and hair, a flame. Screaming, running, jumping, I'm like, it's crazy. So that's what's going on. The other guy, Merrill goes to the driver's side and see Scott is still in the car. And then he sees Carol, Carol alive, conscious and burning right beside the car. And he tries to help her just as he bends down to help her. Another explosion goes off in the car. It blows up again. It blows up again. Okay. We'll get into what happened there, but let's rewind. Okay. So that's about as chaotic of an opening as you can have to anything. All right. The only way it could be worse is if it happened in the realtor's backswing. Yeah. Well, I think it might've actually, he actually asked for a mulligan on that one because he said, I, I was coming, you know what I'm saying? I'm in the trap. Yeah. I need concentration. I was on my downswing and you know, I at least get something and the, yeah, there was definitely some scoring made up for there. Yeah. And I think that's, that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Lancaster Leaf. And he said, yeah, good deal. And he said that he looked around and he saw a gap in the market here. He said, everybody else in tobacco is trying to sell the fanciest tobacco they can. This is the best tobacco. This is the Cadillac of tobacco. Like that's everybody else's strategy. He said, it's funny when I look around the road, I don't see a lot of Cadillacs. So I see a lot of Chevys, see a lot of Fords, don't see a lot of Cadillacs. So it doesn't look like that many people are looking for a Cadillac. And he goes, a lot of people are looking for something cheaper. So he basically said, I'm going to bid my tobacco as not the best tobacco, but just a decent tobacco that's affordable. It's the same strategy. It's the Bel Air Cadillac. Bel Air tobacco. Yeah. It's the same strategy that he did with selling it in the first place. Like, I don't know much about it here. He's like, I mean, you can afford it. Isn't that, isn't that the number one thing you should be looking at? He said it was a dark air cured leaf for everyday cigars and chewing tobacco. And this is coming out of the great depression. So value turned out to be a really good thing to bank on rather than quality. And it became Lancaster leaf grew and eventually became the largest trader of dark leaf tobacco in the world. Holy shit. All because of him. Cause he had this idea by being honest. Yeah. By the way, the Benson thing in this story, it's not Benson and Hedges. Cause people are going to hear Benson and they hear cigarettes and tobacco, and they're going to think Benson and Hedges. This has, they have, this whole family has nothing to do with that. And it's a totally separate thing just so they know. So, but a lot of people later on when we're, this story is being reported, they call people a Benson and Hedges heiress, which they're not actually a Benson and Hedges heiress. So, um, now Margaret here, um, is the heiress to Lancaster leaf. I mean, that's, she's the, she's the, her and her sister are the daughters. Harry's on the road constantly up and down the East coast going to Texas. So he doesn't see his kids a lot growing up building this brand, babe. No, but he does make a shit load of money, a shit load of money. And he's not a greedy guy and he doesn't care about money. That's the other thing about Harry. He's not one of these guys that controls people with money or to him. He doesn't give a shit. He gives away tons of money, gives away to charity, just to people he knows that need it. Just a nice guy. He's a big Methodist and he organizes prayer breakfasts and pays for everything. And just the way he is. Um, he, he likes to live more modestly too. Then he likes to live below his means and that sort of shit. He really, really likes church and his flower garden. Those are the two things he's super into. Yeah. He's a really exciting guy. Harry. Very exciting. I mean, flower garden is fun though. He likes his church flower garden and the titty bar. Those are the three things he's super into. No, he doesn't like that. Are you being honest? No, I'm kidding. It was a joke. Jimmy's face was like, Oh no. So yeah. What an interesting fella. So Harry didn't want his family to have to wait for him to die to enjoy money. He was one of those people. Okay. Most people use their money their whole life to control people. And it's so if you piss me off, you're going to get cut out of the will and I won't give you this or that. He doesn't think like that. Yeah. That's how most people do it. That's, I mean, especially rich people control their family, use the money to their own expenses. And then at the end, they're like, you're going to have what's left. Isn't that the idea? Yeah. But at most, if you have a lot of money, you put aside this much money for this and this much money for that, because you know, you're going to have that. If you have millions and millions of dollars, it is way different than, Hey, you can have my couch when I die. Whatever's left over, I don't owe to the IRS. You can have, cause that's our families are, you know, we're not getting anything, but Oh, I got a $2,500 motorcycle from my dad. I got nothing. I was going to say, didn't you buy that motorcycle for him to begin with? I think you, you, what I did is bought him a more expensive one. He didn't have to get his leg over this bike. Cause he had fucking bone cancer. And then, so he rode that one. And then when he died, his new wife got that bike. And then I get his old one. That makes perfect sense. So this guy, he wanted to give everybody something. Lancaster leaf was a small privately held company. Um, Harry took all of his shares and divided them his wife, Charlotte and his two daughters, Margaret, Janet, that was it. You take off, everybody's got the shares and that's that. So they have them from the beginning. Um, and it expanded into an international operation in 1967, the parent company converted that stock into publicly traded blue chip shares. So this stock, he's giving them so much money blows up because it becomes part of the main company there. Right? So it is a huge deal and makes them all insanely rich. All of them. Yeah. So this is what's going on now. Margaret grew up comfort, comfortable, but not what, like I said, wasn't lavish. Harry's a Baltimore guy. Like he's not a lavish guy. He's a, he considers himself a blue collar kind of cat. So he doesn't like to live lavishly. Um, I'm sure he spends on things, but they're like, when I say spends, like he buys the $12 rose seeds rather than the $8 rose seeds. Yeah. Or when they buy like, like a couch, they buy a very high quality, very nice piece of furniture. They'll get passed down through the generations, but they don't buy, you know, some big giant house that needs six couches. You know what I'm saying? It's quality old timey type shit. Um, so they didn't flaunt anything, but the kids have everything they could possibly need as well. They're not being denied anything. Um, Margaret went to Goucher college, Jesus in Baltimore and majored in biology. So she's in college and her junior year, Margaret meets, a man. She meets a man named Edward Hewlett Benson. He's born in 1920, about two years older than her. And he goes by Benny, even though his name is Edward Hewlett, Benny Benson. He goes by half of his last name, half of his last, Benny Benson. Now, Benny Benson was born in Baltimore as well. His parents were Roland and Marie Benson. Um, now she met him. He's a dashing figure here. He's going to be a captain in the U S army air core during world war two, which is pretty cool. He graduated from Baltimore city college in 1940. And, um, now Benny is not from this world, by the way. He is not one. No, he is not a private school guy. He's not no country club guy. None of that. He's a real blue collar, make your own way kind of guy. Um, sure. Yeah. Uh, Benny wasn't poor, but he had a hard time growing up. Uh, he had polio as a child, which left him bedridden for a long time. And as a result, he's now a man of his word. He's a man of his word. As an adult left him smaller than he should have been. And just less physically imposing than he could have been. Basically stunts your growth. It's that's a wild ass disease. It's a hard, horrifying, fucking disgusting disease that people are now. Nevermind. I'm not going to get into it. Okay. Uh, they're willing to roll the dice. Yep. He, uh, my ex-girlfriend's uncle had it, James. He had one leg shorter than the other. And this poor man had to buy two dead legs. He had to buy two different shoes. He had to buy two pairs of shoes every time he bought shoes because he needed an eight and a 10. Yeah. And sometimes their legs wouldn't be the same length either. So they'd have to get one that was high. And so he would buy, he would get the eight and the 10 and then he would take the eight to his doctor who would put this giant fucking Frankenstein soul on it. And the poor bastard would limp around with that. And then he came out with the new deal and now we're here. It's good. Here we are. Anyway, he had to, he started college and he had to because his own father became disabled. So he had to help the family. Now, on top of all this, Benny's father, and he's in addition to being sick and disabled is also a severe alcoholic as well. Um, so Benny is the family caretaker. Yeah. He's got to deal with all this shit. Basically he has to take care of his dad. He has to come home from college. He has to do all this type of shit. Um, so Benny would take, this is what he would do. He'd take Margaret out on a date when he met her, drop her off at home, unmolested, like a gentleman, you know, drop her off with her tits still in her bra and everything. Then he'd get on their family. He'd go get on the phone and start calling around to figure out which bar his father was drinking in that night. Oh no. So he could go find him and get him and take him home before he passed out in the street or crazy. Yeah. And then he'd go and get him and take him home before he passed out in the street into a telephone pole or some other way. So he's always the guy that is responsible and cleaning up after other people's messes. That's kind of his job here. Um, December, 1942, Margaret and Benny get married in Texas. Lovely. This is after Benny joined the army air corps. And, uh, that seemed like a good deal too. Do you get married and then you get more money back then? I'm still to this day. So because of this, uh, the lingering effects of polio, they never shipped them overseas. He never went overseas to fight. because he had polio. Instead, he was a trainer. He trained these people to go over and fight, which is just as necessary, I would assume. They move around a lot during the war all over the U.S. Margaret had been offered a full scholarship to pursue a master's degree, but turned it down to be with her new husband. No interest. Which, I mean, for her, if she wants to get a master's and do whatever she wants, that's fine, but it's not like she needs this because she is very wealthy. It doesn't really matter. She doesn't need a job. Just if she's interested in it, she could do it. But she chose marriage. On July 8th, 1944, here at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, Margaret and Benny have their first child, a daughter named Carol Lynn. Carol Lynn Benson, July 8th, 1944. Now, the war ends. Benny's discharged. So Harry brings his son-in-law into the family. business. Oh, yeah. Why not? At Lancaster Leaf. And Benny turns out to be a goddamn good businessman. I mean, pretty good at it. Yeah. Yeah. This guy thought he was just, you know, giving his bum son-in-law a job or whatever. And it turns out his son-in-law is the fucking best employee he has. He's like, this guy's great. So he can't win, can't lose there. He climbs up the ladder really fast. Everybody's in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Margaret's sister, Janet, and her family settle right around the corner from them. And so, you know, just they have like a kind of a little families all live on the same street type of deal. All right. A little enclave. 1951, they have a son named Stephen Wayne Benson. July 26th, 1951, Stephen is born. Okay. He was one of the people in the car that morning. Now, Benny and his grandfather, Harry, both want, basically, they hope Stephen will be the guy who's going to carry on. the company forward. He's the heir apparent of he's going to run this thing because it's the 50s and they're not even thinking about a daughter running anything. They're thinking about the son running something, even though he's a baby. So he's going to do it. That's what it is. So by 1959, Benny is in charge. Harry retires and Benny takes over the company by 59. 1963, they have a son, here, Margaret and Benny, have a son named Scott Roland Benson. He's the 21-year-old who was driving, who started the ignition. 1967, Benny expanded Lancaster Leaf internationally. And he was the guy in charge when the privately held stock converted into this great blue chip stock that was going public. And so he helped make everybody even richer. Benny does. He really, he really does. Ups the value of the company. So Benny, not only here is he accomplished at work, he's got a bunch of shit he does. This is a busy man. Okay. They say he resided in Lancaster since 1945, was associated with the tobacco company. He was on the board of directors of Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, also out of Richmond. Some Paraguay tobacco company, an Indonesian tobacco processor. He's the director of the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company. He's also the past president of Lancaster Philippines and Viroqua Leaf Tobacco in Wisconsin. He's also a member of the Cigar Institute of America and the Cigar Association of America. The past director of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association. I don't know where that fits in, but he was on the board of directors of the American Bank and Trust Company. He's a member of the board of trustees of Lebanon Valley College. He's a member of Lancaster Association of Commerce and Industry and the National Association of Manufacturers. He also goes to church. He's got a country club, the Lancaster Country Club, Lancaster Riding and Tennis Club. He founded a club called the Quadril Club. He belonged to the Port Royal Club of Naples and the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Club. Oh, and he's the past commander of the Lancaster. He's a member of the Lancaster Association of Commerce and Industry and the National Association of Commerce and Industry and the Lancaster Flotilla 52 U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and a former member of the Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks 134. So he's a wonderful man. He does tons. The problem is he spends no time with his kids. Yeah, none. Yeah. Not a great, not a great father, though. That's the thing. A nice father and a whatever, but he's just never around is the problem. Yeah. Gray role model, but he's just never there. Um, with Stephen, by the way, um, like they said, Stephen, the oldest son, he was too busy to like play catch with them or take him fishing or do the normal father son type of shit here. Um, by the way, Stephen always called his parents mother and father, not mom and dad. The other kids said mom and dad. He called them mother and mother father. Yeah. We're weird shit here. Um, so they said even when Benny was home, Steve, he didn't make it. He didn't make it. He didn't make it. He didn't make it. He didn't make a lot of effort to get close to his son, Stephen at all. Um, so this, this, this hurt Stephen's feelings a lot. Everybody said it was, he was always kind of pissed off about that, that he could have whatever he wants, but he can't hang out with his dad. Um, yeah, not your father. So Margaret felt bad. So what do you think she did? Uh, mother really hard. Yeah. Spoiled the fuck out of these kids because she felt bad. So Christmas time, it's described in this book, I'll give you the book title later. This is from a book quote became an orgy of gift giving as Santa lavished present after present on the children, an orgy of gift giving to say that. Yeah. Wow. She just would buy them everything. I mean, they were like the fucking gemstone kids at Christmas Kelvin open in his double dragon machine. So late 1970s here, Benny bar, uh, Margaret and the boys kind of do a part-time Florida thing. They go down there, they buy a house and they live in Florida. Sometimes they keep multiple homes. They have a big place in Lancaster that they built with a pool and a cabana. They have spots on the Jersey shore. They, uh, they have a place in ski country up by Montreal. This is they're wealthy. Um, they winter places, they summer places. They're those people. Oh, we're, we're summering here. This is yeah. Yeah. Wow. When, when a season becomes a verb, that's crazy summering and wintering. Like that's a lot, dude. That's rich. I've never used, I've never used a season as a verb before because I would enjoy it immensely if I could. Yeah. We were lucky to have one place to live, you know, like this is, this is a different thing. I'm thankful that I forevered somewhere. So the kids, Steven, Carol, up inside this just, you know, they're spoiled rotten. Yeah. Wildlife of money. And really they all know there's a lot of money in the future. And so they don't really have a lot of, doesn't feel like they're that ambitious. Um, well there's, it's interesting concerns. Yeah. No, uh, November 5th, 1980 dad dies. Okay. So dad's dead. Um, yeah. The big guy. Um, yeah. He's dead after three months. He dies. Okay. Now Margaret has the money. So Benny's dead. Benny Benson is no more. Margaret has all the money and that's, that's it. Now, Benny, by the way, would tell people, no, when they wanted money, if the kids wanted some exorbitant amount of money for something crazy, he'd say, no, I'm not giving you that. That's stupid. Okay. Margaret does not do that. Margaret, whatever you want, indulges the kids, indulges them. Um, she ends up, selling the big house they had in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with the big pool and all that for, and this is a 1981, $475,000 in 1981 in land. That is even with inflation, not even the fact that real estate's way more expensive than it was back then. Like if it was four 75, then, you know, just the market, it would be, you know, 800 now, but with inflation, that's like, you know, millions and millions of dollars. Right. Yeah. Millions and millions of dollars. It's a crazy house. Um, so they moved down to Florida full-time to Naples. Here we go. So, uh, first they were in Port Royal and then about 18 months, uh, and then, uh, about a year and a half later, yeah, 18 months, they built a brand new home inside Quail Creek, which is the one that, you know, the car exploded in front of them. So, um, they never really work. They summer, they winter, they have, you know, sweaters and tight around their waists and they play tennis and, you know, they're just like, they're like the guy across the street from, uh, from the rain Bronco and Goodfellas that Henry Hill beats up with the butt of the gun. That's what these guys are. Um, yeah. Uh, except way richer than that. Even now there's an accountant named Wayne Kerr and he has to have a conversation with Margaret about her spending at one point. She's going too hard. Yeah. much. After about a year and a half after Benny died, she'd burned through over a million and a half dollars in a year and a half. In a year and a half. In 1981, which is hard to do. It's difficult. Now, she had plenty of money. She had over $10 million, so that's not really a factor. But they tell him, like, look, at the rate you're spending, you're going to spend all your money before you die. You're only 63. Yeah, you're only 63. You're going to have nothing to leave your kids. This is going to be crazy. So Margaret here, she also does stuff. She does a lot of volunteer work. She's a former chairman of the American Red Cross Volunteers and a past president of the Quadril Dance Club. Oh, boy. So as of 1985, which is when the explosion happened, let's do a roll call here and find out what everybody's up to, shall we? All right. Oh, boy. Let's start with the oldest and youngest, sort of, as we'll get into. OK. Carol. Carol Lynn. Very beautiful. Blonde. Pretty. Does beauty contests. Is a runner-up for Miss Florida. The second one. Yeah. Yeah. Second hottest chick in Florida, which means she's only missing two teeth. No, I'm kidding, actually. There's plenty of attractive women in Florida. Joking. So she's a Miss Florida runner-up. After all this, though, she ends up moving to the. Boston area and and getting married and having children. OK, this is in the early 70s. She has kids and then she ends up being divorced, but still lives in the Boston area with just teenage sons up there now. OK, so that's Carol. Now, Scott is an interesting fella. He's the 21 year old here. Oh, he would like to. He's the youngest, the 21 year old. He would like to be a professional tennis player. That's his goal. He's a total slacker. He's a good. He's a decent tennis player, but not. He's not going to be a pro tennis player. It's not Roger. He's he's good for the country club, but not going to be on a pro tour or anything like that. But he would tell his friends that he's a pro tennis player. And this is pre Internet. So you could tell your friends. Right. You could lie. He would tell his friends. I'm ranked like 60th in the world. You know, I'm not I'm not at the top or anything, but I'm hanging in there. And that's 60th is such a lie that you'd go. No one would lie and say they were 60th. You'd say you were like a 60th. That sounds like a truth. So they'd all believe him. And compared to them, if he was like, yeah, yeah. And if you're playing him, he's going to smoke you. So you go, yeah, he's a pro. But I mean, yeah, you don't know the difference. Problem is the Association of Tennis Professionals. The ATP had never heard of him. He wasn't rated. He wasn't ranked. He's not even a pro. He's just a guy who's at the country club. Now, he's good. A tennis pro at the Quail Creek Country Club described him as one of the most promising students in the area. You know, he practiced a lot every day. And, you know, he would hit with the pro whenever he could and all that kind of thing. But that doesn't make you a professional tennis player. You have to have a certain. Sure doesn't make you 60th either. Yeah. No, you have to have a certain athletics. There's so much that goes into being a top tier professional athlete. It's not just whether you try hard or are sort of talented. So the other thing he's really into is anything that spends a lot of money. He likes to piss money away. He is. He is like. Yeah, dude, he's having a blast. He loves buying expensive sports cars. He gets a Lotus. He gets all this crazy. These, I mean, high end. Yeah. Supercar type shit. He was issued six traffic tickets on speeding charges and careless driving and also trying to elude police. This is from November. He won to December 83. He had all these problems, loves expensive cars and drives them like shit, drives them like an asshole. Yeah. Oh, maybe the reason for that is because he's always on a shitload of nitrous. He loves nitrous. Real. Okay. To the point where he's like, like an addict at nitrous, which I didn't even know you could become an addict at nitrous. When you're a teenager, every four months or something, somebody has a bunch of them at a party. And you do a few and that you don't be like, yeah, I got to go do that. The next day is your scratch. And that never happens because you're like, whew, that took a lot of my head hurts. Steve, Steve Martin and little shop of horrors. That's the only person that's ever like had a problem with it. No shit. I'm sure there's dentists that just take a hit off. And let me get a point for that. There you go. So this is what it is. He loves it. He loves nitrous. A Naples psychiatrist named Dr. Jose Lombilo. Uh, was or Lombio treated Scott for drug dependency. And he said that he inhaled nitrous. Like you might drink Pepsi. That's what he said. It's just constant. Um, he had tanks delivered to his house all the time. Tanks. We're not talking, go to the head shop and buy a, a box of 24 of those things. And, you know, have a little party with your friends or go get a bunch of ready whip. Yeah. Yeah. Tanks. Full tanks. He would rig scuba. Setups and his vehicles. So he could hop while he drove around. He had a set up in his car where he just put the tank up. It's fucking insane, dude. I want to Google though. Is that, is that illegal? Fuck. Yeah, it's illegal. Absolutely. Yes. Intoxicants while driving. Yes. Very illegal. I guess there's that, but is it illegal to own that though? It should be. If you're not a doctor, you can put it in your car. You can, you can use it as that. You can use it as other things, but it's not a legal like that. It's just illegal to be doing it while driving, I think is the main issue here. Um, so they said that, uh, you know, he would, he loved this. He would stash five foot tanks. We're not talking, it's a five foot fucking, it's a huge tank, like a welding tank. He would put them in his bedroom. He kept just tanks of nitrous in his bedroom and no one ever questioned that. That's just fine. Some of these kids could do anything. Um, every night he would inhale shit loads of this. And before he goes to sleep, also smokes a shit load of weed and drinks like a fish. So he is loving his life. Um, one, uh, uh, psychiatrist, the Lombilo guy said that Scott told him in 1983, how he first began using nitrous. And he said, eventually Scott used the gas routinely and heavily. He said that it was about 14 when Scott. Scott was about 14. He didn't like school when his family lived in Lancaster. And then he discovered that the little 50 cent canisters that his mother bought to supply nitrous to a whipped cream machine she had in the kitchen. So that's what it was for. So he realized you could do that. Someone told him that and he went, oh, this is fun. So this is the best again. And so he started using those canisters and then he would ask his mother for money. And so she would just give him money. And then he would buy more. And as this, as it grew, he told his friends about nitrous and started buying the small canisters by the case from specialty food stores. This is before they had them in head shops, you know? And so he would then resell them to the other kids at a profit. And obviously he'd go do it. So he got really into that. And, um, then he realized these small ones, these little canisters suck. The doctor said, yeah, the doctor said even. The case of these weren't enough for him. So he needed more. Uh, so he started buying them from his mechanic on the pretext that he intended to use it as a high performance booster for his Datsun two 80 Z the little tiny fucking Datsun Z car. I don't even know where you'd put a giant nitrous. Where, where would you put it on the back? Like a fucking parachute. I think those are a two gallon that you get for that. Anyway, it's a small tank, but to get the fucking. Five footer, 10 gallon tank. That's you can't fit that in that car. No. Well, eventually the scuba tanks he got from like the scuba size tanks, cause that's how big they are, were too small. They were too small for him. So then he started buying five foot tanks. Holy shit. I've never heard of this before. He's he's then obtained masks. He obtained masks from his dentist to attach to the hose to make it easier to breathe the gas. So he had like a. A real dentist's office set up going on the full mask and everything full mask. That's wild. His psychiatrist said that Scott was quote, extremely resourceful in the way he filled his growing drug habit. Like he was almost impressive when he was like, wow, he's, he is smart. I'll give him that. He also, the psychiatrist said he was very proud of it. He was telling me how he got it. He was bragging because people used to pay a lot for drugs while. He got this drug relatively cheap. So yeah, if you buy it by the five gallon tank, it's way cheaper than buying it by the canister. I would imagine he's the original cost going bulk. He was building out. That's crazy. Yeah. No ridiculous. He's also building out a 30 foot cigarette style boat. He's putting together a cigarette racing boat. This fucking guy. Why? Come on. Because he's rich. that's what rich fucks do yeah yeah i'm building a speedboat um 30 foot and he had a nitrous yeah he had a nitrous tank plumbed into it what so you know he could basically he didn't have it so it would boost the performance of the boat though it was for him but if he had it on there it looked like it was for the boat yeah yeah he um he he had he had a red fucking lotus a red lotus dude i mean that's i'm not buying my kid a red lotus no matter how money i have how much money i have a porsche 928 okay a porsche and a lotus and a pair of dots and 280z's oh yes two he has four fancy sports cars including one like high-end supercar basically and a porsche too which is pretty goddamn nice too so he would have he would have champagne lunches with don perignon and i mean this is the type of lifestyle he's like he did anything in his life this fucking guy he's 21 he's 21 and he's done nothing nothing he's just living it up um he has a hot girlfriend a blonde chick who's everybody says works as a stripper here and there uh throws money around all over the place his friends describe him as a very generous good time guy yeah yeah fuck it he doesn't give a shit does he care there's an incident with scott and a dog here in 1983 scott's about 18 and this is an ugly incident here um this is what ends up getting him into having a psychiatrist talk to him all the time okay scott had a big dog a big like a guard dog basically he kept in the house i think it was a rottweiler in one of the versions the dog shit on margaret's expensive white carpet as they do they know exactly where to shit and it's on the on the expensive white carpet not on the tile in the kitchen yeah yeah think of a giant dog's giant shit exactly where you don't want it to be and whenever your dog goes to throw up they run to a carpet and you're like get on you're on the tiles to get off the rug stop go move over here stop doing that stop doing that and they can't they're making faces you're like please stop you're begging them so margaret ordered scott to get rid of the dog entirely i want that dog out of my fucking house okay so scott reasonable enough to get rid of the dog entirely i want that dog out of my fucking house okay so scott reasonably and just obviously what one does here threatened to kill his mother as one does obviously yeah physically dragged her across the floor and then beat up his sister carol with his fists okay what he snapped um in one of the accounts about this scott grabbed margaret shook her and told her that on his command his dog would eat her basically he'll she'll tell my dog will tear you apart if i tell him to yeah yeah there's a tape recording of one of these incidents that oh we know what for sure stays around stuff yeah yeah and one of the scott is like he's called cold and controlling and telling margaret that just because it's her house doesn't mean she got to do whatever she wanted with his dog and then he's asking her over and over if she understood that oh be like you get no more money enjoy yeah enjoy working to keep a fucking one bedroom apartment bye yeah i know out of my house kills brain cells but does it uh kill him so much that you don't understand normal daily uh conversations anymore i just think this kid has never had one consequence in his entire life that's just like a moronic thing to say it is it doesn't even it's not even logical in the course of that conversation it's crazy so the police were called and scott was held for five days uh by the police and then margaret had him taken to a drugs treatment center where that is where he met the psychiatrist that he's going to work with here for a while um it was a september 12th 1983 when he was admitted against his will to the psychiatric ward of the naples community hospital his condition was acute psychotic organic mental disorder the psychiatrist said that scott was in acute distress from his laughing gas intoxication he seemed disoriented and was sad fearful and depressed um now he explains that nitrous causes chemical changes in the brain like every drug here okay he said though in scott's case it was temporary and didn't last more than five or ten minutes during that time he could become violent or paranoid experience memory loss and lose touch with reality um he said prolonged use like that could lead to severe neurological effects including long-term loss of coordination and uh tremors yeah i'm i'm worried about getting nitrous for an hour and a half when i'm getting a fucking root canal for christ's sake you know i'm like oh this is gonna hurt i do it anyway because i need the dentist but they they it's very safe cloudy the rest of the day right it's very safe in that application what's the dangers of it being used daily at like mass quantities where you have a five gallon tank in your bedroom that can't be good for you that's right he's just hitting it all the time every night before bed he hits it in his head and he's like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die it's and then he just passes out he goes to bed um that's it's so dangerous like the the inhalants like that are really scary like uh the guy from the wild and wonderful it is the i mean that gasoline did that to him yeah there's a story i can't remember what a band told a story back in the day and i can't fucking remember what band it was like in the 90s his band told a story about a bunch of their friends who had a fucking nitrous tank in their car and they were hitting the nitrous tank and they were like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna in their car and they the tank leaked and filled the thing and so they both passed out and they ended up fucking crashing the car and killing themselves because they both passed out from the the tank was leaking and it was filling the car with nitrous and they didn't realize that they both passed out and crashed and died yeah it's like yeah that's yeah that shit's wild man dangerous they said scott showed no permanent effects though they said that maybe because he's got he's really physically fit that might have helped him basically um so margaret when he gets out of this goes right back to kissing scott's ass right back to it there's no consequence from this it's you went to the hospital you're all fixed now here's as much money as you want do whatever you want so just doing whatever here buy a lotus enjoy so and they said it's kind of weird they said like it didn't seem like anybody ever followed through on anything in this family like it would be oh you know we're gonna get this one help and we got to do that and then nobody would do anything they just give more give them more money and shut them up and they're like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and they're like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and everybody kind of did their own thing like a typical kind of like in a movie the way a rich family operates you know um so two former employees uh of the of the house here said they saw scott at the edge of age of 19 pull his sister's hair and violently push her naked against the back of a couch she was naked which i am not going near my naked sister number one yeah put some clothes on like a titty to brush up against me 19 this isn't 10 or 8 this is 19 and he's the baby so she's older she's much older we'll talk about it don't worry so dorothy i got a big one there dorothy mccormick a former bookkeeper for margaret and mrs benson uh so i'm sorry for margaret said mrs benson was afraid of scott and his friends and had installed deadbolts on the hallway side of his bedroom door to lock him in deadbolts on the outside of the door um yeah they said he had his own door to the outside so he could leave to go to the outside of the house but private i couldn't get into that she also had yeah she also had big heavy locks on her bedroom door to keep scott away is what the friend said she recalled one day this is the fight with carol when scott fought with carol um here carol uh here was wearing a mask and he was wearing a mask and he was wearing a mask and he was wearing just a towel when the fight began and by the time it was over she was nude and had been knocked to the floor jesus she's she said that about margaret that margaret quote always had to control everything and tried to make her children do what she wanted by controlling the flow of money exactly um scott here uh had a quote they said a rather peculiar relationship with margaret uh noting that scott was a quote rather spoiled young man which i could have told you that just by the cars they said that scott was more or less a uh steven was more or less a father and a pacifier in the family he took over the father's role of keeping the peace that was always benny's job remember he was the that kind of guy um they said carol often spent long hours on the phone with steven discussing her problems with scott that was a thing okay with the little brother another woman ruby caston who worked as the a housekeeper here from 84 to 85 recalled seeing the same incident where scott attacked carol and said there was a lot of screaming and shouting she also recalled seeing the large tanks of nitrous that scott kept in his bedroom two more things about scott two more crazy things one uh there's a woman named tracy mullins that by june of 85 this is a woman from northern california Indiana, files a paternity suit against Scott, claiming he fathered her two-year-old daughter wow she says she met Benson when he lived in Clearwater and she was there so there's now a paternity scene so Scott has every just cliche of spoiled rich kid every single one doesn't care about work it's snotty driving cars doing drugs and he's every rich kid that you that sucks is Scott pretty much then there's the big secret the big family secret that is held forever okay Carol Carol's born in 1944 okay Scott's born in 1963 when Carol was 18 she got pregnant Scott is Carol's son not Margaret's Scott never knows that ever they never know never tell anybody that that's fucked up that's again some weird rich people shit yeah that goes against our image incredibly poor people or incredibly poor people exactly one of the two yeah but not it's with the poor people it's not about image it's about I can't take care of them she's 12 I guess this is yeah they he she Carol could have had the baby they could have taken care of it it would have been fine but they didn't want the scandal because Carol is this beauty queen and she's running you know doing all this shit so they hid her away she had Scott and Margaret illegally adopted Scott and never told Scott that she was actually his grandmother not his mother so when he's punching this 40 year old naked lady he's punching his mom he's beating up his naked mother and he doesn't even know which is so fucked up and he thinks yeah he's just beating up his sister sister because in 1962 teen unmarried teen pregnancy that's yeah scandal if you're rich you know what I mean oh my god you're and in church also they're church people and all that my own is that scandal so you can't have that yeah this is what a story mark so yeah that Wow. Now, the father, Scott's natural father here, was a water skier. A water skier associated with Cypress Gardens, which is a central Florida tourist attraction famous for its water ski shows. She hooked up with some water ski guy. Apparently that's hot to some people. Oh, look at him go. I guess he's, you're shirtless. Maybe he's got a, maybe he's jacked. I don't know. So, yeah, she would, he grew up thinking that, you know, my fucking, my uncle is actually my brother. My grandma's my mom. My grandpa's my dad. That's how he grew up. So he hung out at Stevens a lot. As a teen, by the way, Scott did. He would run to Stevens' house when he was about 14. He would show up glassy-eyed and incoherent all the time. Apparently, Stevens told him, stay away from drugs because he didn't even say you're going to get, it'll hurt you. He just said, you're going to get caught. You're going to get in trouble. So stop doing drugs. Yeah, it's just, you know, interesting. Now, Stevens, by the way, here. OK, Steven, we'll talk about now. Here's the middle child, the family peacemaker, as it would be thought of here. He's a failed everything. He's a complete failure. As competent as his dad was taking things over and being thrown into the mix. He is as incompetent. It's just he's the air that just is going to bumble through it. He doesn't have it. He doesn't have it. It's just he's. We're going to call him the brawny of this story. Like he wants to be that, but he's not quite. He doesn't quite get so hard. He's putting a lot of effort in and that's great, but he's not quite. He's never going to be that. Boy, is this awful to watch? Yeah. Jesus, this is hard to watch. So Steven obviously had all the money in the world, but just had no internal drive to do shit. His own father, by the time Steven became a teenager, confided in a few people that he didn't know. I didn't believe Steven would ever amount to anything because I think I got a dud here and my son here. Firstborn. I think he's a dud. He enrolled in Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster to study business. Never graduated. Now, he's a he's a big, tall, heavy set guy. He's about six foot two, two hundred thirty pounds. So he's a big guy, big, imposing guy. Clean cut glasses, mild mannered looks intellectually, you know, randomly. You know, whatever. Generally intellectual here in 1975, when he was twenty four, he had a landscape company and he ended up that went under. Oh, funded by his parents, of course, that went under. Oh, no. So I don't even know how you go under off the ground, James. I don't know how you go under with a landscaping company, especially if you're rich, like you have all the equipment it was bought for. It's not like you're making payments on it. So you got to make a certain amount. So what are we talking about here? Nobody calls. You just close the door. I don't know what you you could run that business forever. Just have lawnmowers in a shed. And if someone calls you, you cut the lawn. It's weird. So anyway, so he joined Lancaster Leaf. He had no choice because dad said, why don't you just work here? And he said, no, no, I want to do this. And then when he failed, his dad was like, and he was like, OK, fine. So his father was thrilled. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, now that you're free of the bullshit and the distractions, maybe now you can buck down and, you know, take he said, literally, take hold of your birthright of this company, which is your birthright. As part of his apprenticeship here, Stephen was assigned to the purchasing department, then to the technical side. And he ends up he gets basically he advises the company on how to best streamline its computer system and how to get rid of tobacco beetles in Lancaster Leaf's warehouses by installing an elaborate fogging system. Oh, so he has some ideas that are actually modernizing things. He comes in with a fresh with fresh eyes and goes, why don't we just do this and this and fix all that? What the fuck are we doing? But Stephen said he felt the co-workers all resented him because he's the boss's son. It does. So it's hard. Yeah. He had basically he had a lot of big shoes between him and his grandfather, his father and his grandfather. He's got big shoes to fill and everybody's looking at you like this guy's not going to be as good as his father and grandfather, you know, no matter what he does. We all like his father and his grandfather. So he's got not not just the shoes to fill for success, but personality. If we don't fucking like you, we don't fucking like you. That's it. It's a lot to fill. One of the guys who worked there said that he didn't like Stephen never liked working at the tobacco place. He said Stephen wanted to do something that he could say he had done on his own. He didn't want to follow in the family footsteps. He wanted to break away. Um, now, but he does, he stays at Lancaster leaf for a while. And as a reward, Margaret and Edward offer to buy, uh, Stephen and his first wife, a house, a bigger house because he's been doing so well, Margaret insisted on accompanying them house hunting, of course. And there was one house that Margaret really loved, but Nancy, who is Stephen's wife, didn't like it. Now, this is a house for Nancy and Stephen and their children. Not for Margaret, but Margaret liked it. And Nancy was like, nah, I don't really like it. And so Margaret said, quote, you don't like this house, this beautiful, expensive house. Maybe you forgot who's paying for it, Nancy, dear. She's that lady. I'm going to control the situation. It's my money. And I want to make you understand that it's my money. Um, yeah. So anyway, she purchased a house. So they purchased a house that Margaret ended up buying. She ended up picking out, of course, uh, that was $77,655, which back then is a good fucking house, especially in Florida. That's a lot of money. It had a stonewalled first floor, a nice address on Ridge road, directly across the street from, uh, Benny and, uh, and Margaret here. So in the same neighborhood, by the way, later on, they will buy a house around the corner for Carol and her two sons as well. Okay. So they want to come down there. Yeah. So when Margaret calls, Steven only has to go 50 feet across the street. Yeah. That's how that's going to work. Um, Margaret told Nancy what old pieces of theirs would be retrieved from the attic and the family warehouse to furnish their home, where she's going to put all the furniture. Margaret decides how Nancy's going to decorate her house and exactly where the couch goes and shit. Margaret decides how Nancy's going to spend Margaret's money. Yeah. Yeah. But that's wild to be honest. You have to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to arrange the furniture the way I like, even though I don't live there because I paid for it. Like, cause that's just weird. Yeah. Now back to Steven and his failed fucking. Yeah, it's exactly totally. Yeah. So back to Steven's failed life here. Um, he keeps trying to do landscaping, the tobacco thing. He does import export for a little while. He does real estate, which is the landscaping. of the lost. We've discussed this before. It's only because I know realtors that have said this to me. Nobody when they're 12 says, I'm going to be a real estate agent when I grow up. It's a job you end up in because you find out that you have the skills that apparently work for it. So you end up doing it after a while. Burglar alarm sales, graphic design, advertising. This guy can't figure out where he is. Now, all of these are his own businesses he starts, which are all funded by Margaret. She would write a check. A lot of times she would co-own the venture, obviously, here too, and give him the money. His business would fail. It would kind of die. And that, start another one. She'd pay him money. That's how it would work. It would just go over and over again. Wow. She's so. This whole series of fuck-up businesses that didn't amount to shit. Acquaintances describe Stephen as a loner who doesn't have any close friends. They said his adult life was dominated by his parents, and that was that. I mean, he was just in there, whatever. A friend of his said, he struck me as a typical rich man's kid. Just kind of a fuck-up, never had to do anything on his own, doesn't really know how to do it. Imagine the blessing. That that must be, to be able to start business after business, fail all of them, and it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter. I mean, it's great, but I could see why you could fail, because you don't have to have this. Right. You got no passion in this, because you got no skin in the game. No. When I started stand-up, it was because I had to do this. This was all I had. It's all I had, yeah. If I didn't do well. No, you had a job, though. You had a job with benefits and a pension. I didn't have that. Like, I had nothing when I started. You were actually fucking your career up by doing stand-up. You were fucking your real career up by doing that. Yeah, it was the last ditch effort to not. Because you'd be, like, on call, and you'd come. Exactly. You know? It's true. I had no other talents at all to speak of to make any sort of money that could get me out of a corporate career. Otherwise, I was going to be getting. I was going to be getting fired from every job for the rest of my life. And I was looking up at your corporate career with wide-eyed fucking envy, because I was serving goddamn papers and shit, like, waiting for someone to shoot me at their front door. Like, it was horrible. Yeah. So, when I started stand-up, and when you started stand-up, it was like, this shit was for real to me. Like, people would show up, and they'd fuck off, and they'd be drinking beer and hanging out with their friends. I'm like, I'm doing my set list. Fuck you. I'm going to fucking. I'm working. You know? I need this. This is. This isn't a fun night out of the house for me. This is, if I don't do this well, I'm going to fucking die at someone's doorstep, and I don't want to do that. So. And you were the same way with your thing. It's. Yeah. Just working in the heat. And then we did this, and it was like. Yeah. Thank God. And then we realized stand-up, you have to have something before you can be anything in stand-up. You can't just be funny and actually make a career off of that. You actually have to have a thing. And so then we dove into this. And it was like, this has to work. Period. Has to. We got no choice. These shows have got to work. They're no choice. We are making them fucking work. And comedy has gotten even harder now, being that you have to be something else. It's impossible now. Yeah. Just to get booked as a feature. I don't understand how anybody starts now. I don't understand what the start is. No. What is it? The start is. The start is. Start doing TikTok shit, hope somebody notices, and then put together five minutes, once you're booked somewhere. That seems to be the way people are doing this now, which is terrible for comedy, but good for their careers, I guess. I don't know. It's good for them, I have a doubt. Now, Stephen, he's married. Yeah. Stephen's married twice. First to Nancy Ferguson, who's the wife we're talking about, saying, hey, you know, you better like that house because I'm buying it. He's married to her first. From 72 to 79. All right? Now, Nancy, every night, would beg Stephen to break free from his parents. Oh? Please. Yeah. Well, she's. Her furniture is arranged in the way that her mother-in-law wants. That's not cool. Right. So, that's what they. You know, they'd say they'd sit there, they'd be watching TV, and Nancy would tell him, you know, I really need you to do this. It's like, our future depends on. And she said he would just turn up the volume on the TV, basically. Just, I'm not listening. No, thanks. There you go. That's amazing. That is fucking amazing. So, one time here, she asked him if he was happy. She said, I'll try a different approach. Rather than attacking him, saying, hey, do this, do that. Maybe I'll ask him. Are you happy? Final jeopardy. Shut up. Yeah. Are you happy? What is. Fuck, no. He said, quote, I've never even known what happiness is. And then she said, then, Stephen, what would make you happy? Really happy. Now, she thinks she's broken through, and he's going to sit and say his true desires and what he wants to just do in life and whatever. And he paused, and he sat thoughtfully for a minute, and she expected something emotional. And he said, to make a million dollars before I'm 30. She was like. That's not what I was looking for. Never mind. He said, never mind. That's all he cares about. Two chicks at the same time. Two chicks in the same bed, baby. That's what I'm talking about. What am I fantasizing about? Two chicks, one bed. Two chicks, one dick, and it's mine. Woo, let's do it. High five. And Nancy's not high-fiving him. Wow. So, then, there's another thing that comes up. I guess. When. Even when they're fighting, Nancy and Steven, she never thought that Steven would cheat on her, because he's kind of a dork, and he's a homebody. So, he never shared his feelings, so, you know, she knew that. Whatever. She thought that he was having a hard time or whatever, but she didn't know what he was exactly doing about it. He did a lot of traveling, though, to the Lancaster Leaf Processing Plant in Wisconsin, where he was. And when he was in town, he commuted to the Mount Joy Operation, which is another place, which is a half hour away. He would also go out at night. So, one evening, she followed him when he went out at night. Yeah. Where'd he go? To the apartment of a young brunette who worked as a secretary at the warehouse for one of the company's warehouses. All right? Nancy was distraught. Distraught. She does not confront Steven at the moment. She puts that in her pocket and waits for later. No, no, no. She goes back home, goes across the street to his parents' house, and tells them about it. Because that's the only way it's ever going to get solved. If mom tells him he can't do it, then he won't do it. If she tells him, it doesn't matter. So, she said she's crying, and she goes over and says, She's seeing another woman. And Margaret says, quote, We know. We know. Oh, we've met her. We knew all about it. Yeah. Yeah, we know. That's it. And Nancy said that Margaret said it with a real self-satisfied look on her face. Like, I don't know why, but Edward's dad then says, We had him. Yeah. Jesus, you're a little slow on the uptake, aren't you there, Nance? Then, Dad, Edward, said, We had him followed some time ago. We know who she is. So, Nancy was like, What the fuck? So, then, Dad there, Benny, said, Oh, don't worry, Nancy. These things happen. It's just a fling. He'll get over it. Oh. So, they tell her, Ignore it. Okay. It's fine. So, she tries to follow their advice and just ignore this affair that she knows is going on. Oh, my God. Which I have no idea how you do that. I guess you just count on it failing? Is that what she's hoping? Yeah, they said that this happens. It's a fling. He'll be over it. But then he said, He's going to move on to some other young chick he's banging. Yeah. He can't keep lawn mowing going. Don't worry. Yeah, it's fine. Well, I think he's like, I used to bang around a lot, too. Don't worry about it. He'll get over it. It's fine. But she noticed in the weeks, as this goes on, he's becoming even more and more brazen to what she calls rubber nose in this whole thing, basically. So, it's just like, What the fuck? Then, at one point, he began telling Nancy to wrap up the dinner she took, she cooked. Okay? Wrap them up so I can take them with me when I go out. No, this is after he already ate. He'd eat and then say, Wrap up more food, and he'd say, I'm going to leave. He was taking his wife's dinners to his girlfriend to eat. No. That is wildly brazen. Imagine doing that. Cook for my. Would you please cook for my skank? Would you please? Yeah. My skank would love these. You know who's going to love these? The chick that sucks. my dick god the chick whose drool is going to be on my balls by 10 o'clock tonight that's so um wow so then finally nancy after one of these took her apron off and said fine steven i'll go along i'd like to meet her she's gonna eat my meatloaf she's gonna look at my face i'd like to see the look on her face when she takes a bite see that way i know if she really likes it you know yeah i'm gonna hide somewhere you'll want to have a seat right there and chris hansen the fuck out of this so nancy's got her arms crossed like what do you think of that and he goes all right come on let's go two chicks at the same time let's do it two chicks one dick baby let's do it he thinks he is a salesman i'll tell you that much so when nancy walks into this apartment this small apartment where this other woman isn't even flustered by the fact that this guy brought his wife over calmly introduces herself they shake hands and politely offers nancy a drink can i get you something to drink i mean that's mature i guess so we're all sophisticated adults here so nancy said she only allowed herself to cry once uh while she was behind the wheel of her car and driving home after she's had a couple of drinks uh and after you know she said that chick's not bad at going down on you she's not bad i gotta be honest with you i didn't expect her to be any good at it but it wasn't bad no just kidding man so she said that she thought that like this would be like a big moment where everybody would feel bad and she would say look how fucked up this kid but everywhere this is and but everyone was just like yeah that's cool you want to drink i'm gonna bang your husband like what do you what do you want from me no one cared um now the affair soon fizzled out just like dad said because that's just how affairs go but he uh but she was over the whole thing by this now they'd agree to get a divorce nancy and steven okay steven's gonna be the one to file for the divorce because nancy couldn't afford the legal fees she said she would not contest it nor would she ask for alimony or a property settlement she just wanted out of the marriage which this guy could not be luckier no she could yeah nail his balls to the fucking wall on this shit and clean his ass out and she just wanted out of this shit okay so steven testified thusly and i quote and this is from a book that i'll give you the title of at the end here the problem with our marriage began approximately two years ago when suddenly it seemed that nothing i did satisfied my wife she constantly criticized me the way i dressed my friends relatives just everything okay i'm looking for i'm looking for the standout thing here this all sounds like a wife i believe that's a good thing that's in the vows to criticize to you know to criticize friends relatives just everything dress and all that yeah your dumb pants yeah it's just kind of and sometimes we need it too because we're fucking idiots we can't be we can't be trusted to our own devices yeah often her criticism was vicious in nature and was performed in front of friends and relatives this was extremely humiliating and embarrassing to me and when i would ask my wife to please stop criticizing me in front of my friends she would go into fits of rage wow yelling and swearing at me she used extremely vile language against me quote son of a bitch fucking asshole bastard those are the vile ones those are the vile that's as vile as she got son of a bitch often her fits of rage and after her fits of rage she would give me the quote silent treatment and this would last for days on end yeah it's called fighting you idiot you're in a fight that's what it is yeah that sounds like my bitch during the last year of my marriage uh my wife refused to do anything with me i would ask her to go places to dinner to parties she would just simply refuse she told me that she couldn't stand me anymore and didn't want to be married you took her to your girlfriend's house bro what do you expect what do you expect you fed your girlfriend your wife's cooking without her knowing that oh now you're gonna give me the silent treatment great perfect yeah wow wow although we did not need the money she got a job and when i asked her why she was working she told me simply to get away from me that's honest during the last six months of our marriage before our separation she completely refused to have marital relations with me no fucking again stating because she simply couldn't stand me i can't believe she was fucking me the previous six months before that that's impressive wow uh also during the last few months before our Okay, there you go. Yeah, it sounds like you're on the road to divorce and you should move on. That sounds great to me. So they get a divorce and in 1980 he finds another woman, Deborah Franks Larson, which this is the craziest thing of all. Here, Deborah, her family is also a big tobacco family. Oh, which is weird as fuck. It's strange. Very strange. This was on one of his trips to Wisconsin that he first encountered, as the book describes it, the buxom young tobacco sorter at the Lancaster leaf plant there. Debbie, the comely blonde daughter of a dairy farmer, moved in with Stephen across the street from Margaret and Benny just three months after Nancy. Nancy's departure from the scene, despite the fact that Debbie was still very much married to someone else. Great. This is all just great. This is all fine. But if your daughter gets knocked up, we have to pretend the kid's grandmother is their mother. Right. Rich people are fucking whack, dude. You get a divorce three months later and go fuck a big-titted blonde that's married to somebody else in another state. It's fine. I think buxom brunette is how they describe it. Oh, brunette. No, blonde. No, Debbie, the comely blonde. Yeah, blonde. Buxom young. Big-titted blonde that's married to somebody else. Yeah, that's right. A quick Dominican Republic divorce would prove a neat solution to this problem, and Stephen and Debbie married on June 7th, 1980. Yeah. Okay. Now, so he's going to end up having three children across all these marriages, and it's a mess. So by 1985, I've given you the whole story. It's a delay of the land, of the kids, of the family. Fuck. Betty's dead. Margaret's controlling people with money. They're fucking up. Scott can do whatever he wants. No one pays attention to him. Yeah. He does nitrous and drives around in a Lotus, and, you know, it's crazy. You can understand why Margaret's trying to control everything, because everybody's a fuck-up. Yeah, but she doesn't control Scott. No. And he gets whatever he wants and lives in the house, and she's afraid of him. But this one has to have his furniture arranged a certain way. Right. Because you can control. You can control this one, whereas Scott, he'll take off if you try to control him. Well, there's that, but there's also, that's almost like getting back at Carol Lynn. Is it Carol Lynn? Yeah. Carol Lynn, yeah. For having this child at such a young age and leaving him to my responsibility, I'm not really even going to care for him. Oh, also, that's also how you treat your grandchildren. Your grandchildren can do no wrong. Yeah. And that's what it is. They're allowed to do anything. He's a grandchild. Yeah. Yeah. Which, yeah, you go. What the fuck? I wouldn't have been able to be allowed to do that. It's not my responsibility. Yeah. It's my grandkid. I don't care. Let them do what they want. I'm sending them home with you at the end of the night. So have some more pixie sticks. Go ahead. You want them to behave well, why don't you jump into a towel and get to fist fighting them? Yeah. Do it up. So by the summer of 85, because remember, the explosion was July 9th, 85. By the summer, there's so much money that's been put out. Stephen owes his mother tons of money, close to $300,000. And shit, his sister, Carol Lynn, owes over $100,000 as well. But it's just how it goes. They're always borrowing. No one's ever paying back. And Stephen figured, if you're going to open a business that might fail, it's way better to borrow it from mom than the bank. The bank wants it back. Yeah. So, yeah. The bank also wants to take other shit. Yeah. So then also, Stephen figured out, if you had the checkbook and mom wasn't reading the statements too closely. You could just write yourself checks and get as much money from them as you want, from your mom as you want. So she did. And her personal secretary, Joyce Quinn, pulled the numbers here at one point on who owed what, because she liked to lord that over people. She could give an allowance. She could take an allowance away. She could tell you she's going to cut you out of the will. She's very much using her money as strings here. She is the family's, the bank of the family. Nobody else makes any money any other way. So she started doing this. And then she started getting into the books. Now, Wayne Kerr, the accountant who told her to slow down a couple years ago, he's on the scene as well. He's a family attorney out of Philadelphia and Margaret's lawyer, tax man, investment advisor, money man, basically. Now, Wayne Kerr was such close friends with Stephen that Stephen was best man for him. at Wayne Kerr's wedding. Oh, fuck. So that's not great that her money man's all mixed up in that. Now, Kerr flew down to Florida in 85 to handle Margaret's taxes, and he was like, holy shit, the businesses you own with Stephen are a fucking disaster. A disaster. Missing entries, checks that are just missing entirely, have no idea where the fuck they went. No balances carried forward. He has no accountant in the company, so the books aren't done to where I can figure them out and know what the fuck to do. So they said Stephen, not a good bookkeeper, basically. Not a good bookkeeper. So the mess was so bad, he couldn't even do Margaret's taxes for 84. He had to file for an extension and said, Stephen's got to get his shit together, and basically I'm going to be back in a couple months. We have to figure this money out. In the meantime, have Stephen clean all his shit up, and then when I come back, we'll do it again, basically. So how many accountants fly to you to do your taxes? That means you're rich. Yeah, that's a good one. We couldn't even get our fucking accountant to call us back for business shit. Not rich enough, apparently. We have a problem. That they caused, for fuck's sake. They caused. They didn't file something and almost killed us both. So anyway, it all worked out, by the way. So it's a lot. So basically this Kerr guy basically said that Margaret needed to stop being the bank for the kids. Listen. You need to worry about your other shit. If you want to leave them inheritance is great, but either give it to them now and get it over with or don't give them shit till they have it. But don't let them manage it. Stop being in the middle of it. If they fall on their face, they fall on their face. Let it happen. Can't just be bleeding this whole time. Just hemorrhaging. So July 1985, I guess Carol comes down to Naples to visit her mother. Now, I know she has a house down there, too, that she bought for her. So I don't know what's up with that, but she's still in Boston. Then this is from early July. This. Same week. The first week of July, 1985. It's getting bad here. The Wayne is in town and they're talking about the money and they're trying to figure out where the money went with Stephen and all that kind of shit. At this point, Stephen is president of Meridian Security Network, Inc., which is a company that installs burglar alarms in Naples. And he's the he runs this. Yeah. Yeah. He's been had a bankrolled by mom. He's being sued. Locally by creditors claiming he owes them money as well. So not good. So Margaret and Wayne Kerr are piecing this all together. Stephen had been given blank checks by his mother that she signed and left for him. Some while she was away on a cruise to cover payroll for the security business that they co-own. Margaret figured a few thousand dollars here and there is needed. Instead, he was using these checks for a lot staggering accounts of money. Just moving them. Into his own accounts. Oh, God. Huge amounts. The exact figure. There's a couple of different figures here. There's a federal auditor later that would talk that Stephen appeared to have diverted the on the order of one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in his own personal accounts. Not even for the business. Just stole it. But wait, I don't get payroll going. Yeah, that ought to do it. But they said the misappropriation of everything over time between all the businesses, everything he stole. Probably in the range of two to two and a half million dollars. Million dollars. Just drained from his mother. Stole it. Drained it. Oh, my God. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter because it's fucked. Stephen had just bought a big new house in Fort Myers somewhere between two hundred and fifteen and two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. Has a swimming pool and a tennis court and everything. He started the Meridian Marketing Company near his new house as well. And Stephen told his Meridian employees not to let anyone from the Naples based company, the security firm, know the name of the new business or what it did. That looks good. That looks great. He's building all this secret money that July 7th is when Wayne Kerr flies into Naples and he's an overnight guest at Margaret's home in Quail Creek there in the golf community. And, you know, Margaret takes. Kerr to view the land she's buying. It's a lot where she's building a mansion that, by the way, originally was going to be seventeen thousand square feet. That's the original plan. But she had to make some corrections and fixes. And now it is up to twenty eight thousand square feet. She's building a house in the square foot out twenty eight thousand square. That's that's ten big houses. Yeah. Insane. It's a normal family homes like a good size family. Oh, yeah. Like doing OK. Family homes, upper middle class family homes. It's ten of them. It's acid. That's what that's this. I think it was twenty six thousand square feet is that unfinished mansion that Evander Holyfield was building with bowling out. Remember that old crazy shit? And then that was what he was doing. And they were like, what an idiot. For one old lady. One old lady. Thirty thousand. Twenty seven thousand square feet as fucking she is planning on growing a giant Florida ass huge twenty seven thousand square foot of ass which she's going to grow. Wow. Now, the outing plan for January 9th is going to stake the site, measure it, figure out what the best view is, where the house should be, all that kind of shit. So that's where they were all going on July 9th that morning, July 8th, nineteen eighty five. And then they're going to stake the site. Please give me THC-free weed. I'd like that, yes. Which some people do. They do that, and I don't get it. A hundred percent, what? They do the shit that's like CBD only, or like shit like that. Only? Only, I don't get that, because that doesn't do anything, really. Yeah. Like in reality. I don't know. Free, THC free. There's some shit like that, yeah. Wow. Not common, obviously, but. Yeah. So, Steven here sees Kerr looking for coffee, and he's like, there's instant decaf, and Steven says, tell you what, I'll go out, I'll get coffee. You're not even, nobody's fucking ready yet, so I'll go out, I'll get coffee, I'll bring it back, and I'll grab a fucking dozen donuts for everybody, too, for the ride up. Oh, good dunks. Sure. Great. So, he goes, he goes on the donut run, he takes not his van, he says, my van's low on gas, I don't feel like stopping for gas, too, so I'm just taking the Suburban. Okay. I'll take that. So, he takes Margaret's Suburban. There's like 10 cars in the driveway. I mean, four, Scott has four cars just on him. Yeah. So. Two 280s, for Christ's sake. I'll take the Lotus, is what he should have said, I suppose. So, about 7.30 to 8.40 a.m. here is this coffee run. This should, it's the shop and go store, and this should have taken maybe 15 minutes tops to make this run. Right. He's gone for 70 to 75 minutes. Yeah. Steven is. The family's housekeeper arrives at around 8.30, and Steven still isn't back with the coffee. So, they're all joking in the kitchen about how long it's taken him, this idiot, to get coffee. He's such a moron. It takes, it takes him two hours to watch 60 Minutes. Who's, what terrible comic said that in 1983? I don't know. It was probably pretty clever then. It might have been. Yeah. As I say, if Rodney Dangerfield did it in like 7.30. 72, I'm sure it was, hadn't been done yet. So, there's jokes about 8.40 to 9.15, somewhere in there, he returns with coffee and donuts, hands it out to everybody, and then he starts arranging people. Normally, when the whole family goes somewhere together, Steven drives. Okay? That's how it works. But today, Steven wants Scott to drive for some reason. Oh, he insists. Insists. And he wants Margaret. And he wants Margaret in the front passenger seat, and he wants him and Carol to sit in the back, back seats of the car. That's the arrangement he has desired here. Now, Carol is very surprised. First of all, Scott never drives if they're all going somewhere. Second of all, Carol usually rides up front because she gets really car sick. So, she's the, unless you want to stop and let me puke, let me sit up front. But she says she'll sit in the back just this once and climbs in behind Scott on the driver's side. She's carrying the plans for the house. She's got the plans in there. She stopped to grab a drink because Carol doesn't drink coffee, which is why she's a few steps behind everybody else because she stopped to get a drink while they were getting coffee in the front yard. So, Steven, at this point, is half in and half out of the back seat behind his mother on the passenger side. And they really go over later on exactly where he was. Was he, how much on the seat? How much? Yeah. One cheek on, one cheek off. Was his leg vertical toward the ground or was it bent? One of those things. So, Margaret says, who's got the keys? Yeah. And Steven says, I have them. Now, he is diagonal from Scott. Scott's driving. He's in the passenger back. So, he could just hand them right like that to Scott. He walked all the way around this car. Instead, he gets out of the car. Yeah. Walks around it, around the back of the Suburban. Yeah. Comes to Carol's side and also boosts her seat, boosts her into the seat and moves her closer to the door there, Carol. Oh, yeah. Okay. And goes to close it. And she says, no, no, leave it open. It's hot. I'll close it when we actually leave. It's fucking stuffy. Get the AC going. He leaves Carol's door open. Then he reaches through the window, hands the keys to Scott and says, oh, I forgot something inside, Steven says. I forgot the tape measure. We need that. Yeah. I'll run inside and get it. He goes inside, jogs back to the house. Yeah. It's at that point, Scott turns the ignition and kaboom. Yeah. The car explodes. Margaret and Scott are killed immediately. Right now. Instant. Instantly. The bomb, it's a huge blast. It hurls their bodies clear out of the vehicle on floor one. Heard for five miles, like we said. Debris raining on golf courses, pieces of the Suburban, pieces of flesh. Pieces of things all over the neighborhood. Wayne Kerr hadn't got outside yet. Wayne Kerr's inside working on the books, I guess. I don't know. He wasn't going on the trip. He was going to be doing the books while they were gone. He hears kaboom, feels the whole house shake, and hears debris pelt the windows. Right. It's a shit raining down. He thought the first thing he thought was the Lotus blew up. Because I guess the Lotus has been backfiring super, super loud lately. And he thought maybe there was something in it that caused it to explode. So he thought maybe the Lotus blew up in the driveway. But it didn't happen. Too much nitrous. By the way, if my house exploded, nobody would say, I bet a Lotus blew up in his driveway. Like, that's a very specific thing. I bet that misfiring Lotus is the problem. Must be the problem. Yeah. But yeah, he said that. That must be it. Now, Carol. Was in the backseat with the door open. She got blown out of the car and onto the grass. And she is conscious and on fire, running around with her hair on fire, rolling around, trying to get the flames off of her, screaming. The two golfers, Charles Meyer and Fred Merrill, run over. Remember, Merrill was Margaret's realtor. They come over. They go to Margaret's side, find her on the ground beside the fully engulfed vehicle, grab her ankles, drag her away. Merrill goes to the driver's side, finds Scott's body. Then sees Carol alive, burning right beside the car and tries to help her. This is about 30 seconds to a minute after the first explosion. While this is going on, while he goes to help her, kaboom, it happens again. It explodes again. Yeah. Now, this, I guess, apparently, was right where this explosion went off, right where Carol had been sitting under her seat. Oh. The second explosion throws you off. It throws shrapnel 200 feet and further. So, the Merrill guy, he ends up getting a lot of the shrapnel on him. He was helping Carol away. He ends up losing part of his nose because of this. He got hit in the face. The chunk of something gets knocked off his feet and lands on top of Carol. Wow. Which either puts her out or sets them both on fire. So, that's not great. Now, Meyer, who had already tripped over some landscaping and was falling backwards when the second blast hit, the bomb blew, got shrapnel all across his chest here. He needed stitches and shit like that. That's not a gas tank. No, no. But, apparently, the fact that he was falling down helped him. Stuff didn't hit him the same way. Yeah. Yeah. They said if he'd been standing upright, the shrapnel would probably go into his chest instead of grazing him, basically. Wow. So, there's groundskeepers all over the place pulling the golfers back from the burning wreck. The golf course. Hey, those are clients. Get those people out of there. Now, Steven, where is he? So, when the first bomb went off, Steven was jogging back toward the house. When the second bomb went off, or second explosion, he was heading out of it. So, somehow, he avoids any kind of explosion here. Now, the minutes after this, it is fucking chaos, as you can imagine, around here. I mean, there's still shit raining down. It's crazy. They said the Suburban is completely open like a tin can, completely engulfed in flames. There's two dead people on the grass. Carol is horribly burned and screaming and awful. Golfers are injured. Groundskeepers are getting shit on them. It's a mess. At this point, there is a neighborhood garbage man. Okay. This fucking idiot, okay? He noticed that the burning Suburban was close to Steven's beige work van. So, he grabbed the keys to move it. Okay. You know, because you want to fuck with a crime scene, obviously. So, yeah. I guess this guy had ran in, and he said he had went to talk to see if Steven was okay. And he said he calmed down, and Steven asked this man if he could get his cigarettes from the front of the beige van that Steven had driven. Because I guess if there's a time you need a cigarette, it's probably now. Going to need a smoke, yeah. Going to need a smoke. There, he said that the van. Steven had driven. It was loaded with all the financial records that they wanted to see. The van was parked close to the Suburban. So, this guy said, we better get it out of here. And he said, before it blows up. So, this guy hopped behind the wheel of the van and reached to turn on the ignition when it struck him that, hey, maybe I shouldn't do this because maybe this will explode, too. Yeah. How many of these are rigged? Exactly. So, he didn't know. So, he took the cigarettes off the seat and brought them back to Steven. And then. not long after a member of the bomb squad disengaged the ignition and scoured the van for anything else. And then when they reconnected the ignition, they found nothing. The tank was about a quarter full. So he had a quarter tank. So this is crazy. Now, Wayne Kerr makes it as far as the front door, sees the carnage, and concludes that probably more useful calling 911 than jumping into this mess right now. So he does that. Well, he doesn't do it. He gets the housekeeper to call 911. Somebody calls 911. Now, Stephen is shaking and having trouble talking, unable to give a dispatcher useful information. Here, doesn't know. So paramedics, police, fire, ATF, everybody shows up here. Paramedics check Stephen over, could not find a scratch on him. Not one scratch. Not a scratch. They urge him, go to the hospital anyway. You might have shock. You could have internal injuries. You know, get looked at. Now, Carol is so critically burned that she'll be eventually flown to a Boston burn unit. Florida can't even fix her. They have to fly her to Massachusetts to fix her ass. So this is in a burn unit aboard a Learjet outfitted with intensive care equipment. You wonder what the fuck. How much did that cost? How much is that trip? A private jet with intensive care, like a hospital room and a private jet all in one. So the private jet from Florida to Boston is $20,000. Add in an intensive care unit on the back. What does that cost? Holy shit. And the staff to do all the work. Wow, that is something else, man. So within hours, the police are joined by special agents from the Federal Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms, or Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I should say. They've been ordered to comb the area for anything that didn't grow, essentially. Anything that's not grass or plants. Plants. Pick it up. They wore magnetic gloves, and they squatted on the driveway, sifting the soil beneath and around the suburban for any fragments of metal that might pop up. Others found pieces of fabric, metal, and flesh in the trees and even on the roof. Oh, fuck. Neighbors would later hire a special cleaning service to remove bits of flesh that had been blown onto their screens. Now it gets caught. Gross. It's like if you get spaghetti sauce in a strainer. You know? You're fucked. That shit's going to harden in there. You're never getting it out. That's basically what they had at that point. So they needed special. It's crazy. Stephen refuses to go to the hospital. He doesn't want to leave the house, which they say is probably in shock, whatever. So the lead investigator on this from the Collier County Sheriff's Department is named Harold Young. He's one of the first to respond, and he said the suburban was blown to bits, bodies lying on each side, and he goes into the house looking for the survivor here, Stephen. He finds Stephen on the telephone smoking a cigarette. Yeah. Okay. We'll talk about in a second what he heard. But they talked for a minute, and they said, well, why'd you take an hour to go to the store? And he says, well, I was going to buy coffee, and I ran into two workers from the Sandcastle Construction Company. He said, I don't know their names. I don't know their names, but I was just chit-chatting with a couple of guys I knew. I don't know their names. I just know them from around. Hey, you. Hey. You. I know I got five people waiting for me, but let's talk for 45 minutes or so while this coffee gets ice cold. What do you say? Two guys that I'm not even about to ask your names. So he does, the detective describes Stephen's demeanor as, quote, calm as a cucumber. Okay. Okay. When he first walked up to him when Stephen was on the phone, he was talking to a business associate, and he heard the guy from the business that he's talking to, he heard Stephen ask, quote, how much did we? How much did we take in yesterday? Oh, boy. This is before the initial responders have gotten there. He's already on the phone with his business asking, how much money did we make yesterday? Which shouldn't really matter right now. So then his wife, Deborah, is brought into the scene here. Debbie's brought in. The big titty blonde? Okay. They go get her. Yeah. He goes, you'll want to do that. She has huge tits. You'll enjoy having her in the car. So Debbie seemed, they said, less concerned about what had happened. And she kept saying that someone's out to kill Stephen. She said, Scott and Margaret are at the wrong place at the wrong time. Stephen's alive, and there's still someone lurking out there who wants him dead. So this is scary. So anyway, they go in. Later on, they're looking around the house. Deborah had already been inside. When they go in to search the house for additional bombs, because they don't know if maybe there's something in the house, Stephen's wife, Deborah, emerges from a bathroom. And she's like, whoa, you guys are looking pretty serious. She said, here I am sitting on the pot, and I could have blown up. You know, like Lethal Weapon style. Sitting on the pot. Stephen and everybody left. Also, officers at one point brought Stephen a lawn chair so he could sit comfortably in the front of the house while, you know, they clean up the corpses of his mother and brother. Or nephew, I guess would be more accurate. Yeah. The medical examiner says that Margaret and Scott. Scott died of multiple, quote, overwhelming injuries from the explosion. It's an explosion. How'd they die? Exploded, essentially. Torn apart. Yeah. Margaret had extensive injuries concentrated on the left side of her body, and Scott mostly on the right side, the middle of the car. Right in the center. Yeah. Yep. They said that Scott had a piece of wood driven into his chest consistent with their positions in the front seat when the center console, they think that's where the explosion came from. A sheriff's investigator described the scene as what appeared to be flesh and blood on the side of Stephen's work van as well, and human remains thrown all the way across the street. So he's got his mother's, because it's on that side, he's got his mother's exploded flesh on his van, too. Wow. Okay. The police said at the end, quote, we know it was an explosion. We haven't confirmed whether it was a bomb. We may know tomorrow. More information. Yeah. Okay. The next day, July 10th, federal and local investigators revealed that two bombs were the cause of the blast. Two? Two bombs. Now, Carol has been transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital by that point, and Stephen is questioned about the explosion, but no details are released from his statement. We know what he said. He said, I was talking to a couple of construction guys. Right. The Collier County Sheriff's Lieutenant. Right. And Eric Daniels said that the victims, quote, probably didn't have a chance to move before the vehicle exploded around 8.30 a.m. So, now, the first bomb was positioned in the center console area between and just behind the front seats. Inside the vehicle. In the console. Yeah. Those consoles in those vehicles, in those Suburbans, Ramchar, Broncos, they're enormous. You could put a baby in there. They're huge. Yeah. They're enormous. You put your car seat in there if you want. James, I used to put two bongs in one. Yeah. They're huge. Gigantic. Gigantic. Yeah. We don't know if it's from under it or in it, though. Right. The second bomb, this one had been positioned toward the left rear, right where Carol had been sitting. Uh-huh. Okay. And the delayed second blast, they said a piece of evidence here, a bomb expert would later conclude that the devices were designed to make certain that everyone in the vehicle was safe. The vehicle died, essentially. Right. They were placed and made that way. Police have said the second bomb was controlled by a timing device. Uh-huh. This is complicated. Carol told investigators that the first blast appeared to happen when her brother turned the key in the ignition. That seemed to be the trigger for that one. Yeah. But they said the second one is on a timer. Huh. Okay. Now, the estate, things are filed in court. The estate is worth over $10 million. $10 million in cash securities and real estate. Right. Mom's estate. Okay. Which is now down to his and Carol if she makes it. You know, we don't know. She's in a burn unit. July 11th, 1985, Kerr, Wayne Kerr, files the will. He filed it. Then the will names Scott and Stephen and Carol as heirs and Kerr as executor and trustee. So that means he's the guy who would be distributing this shit. Okay. The next day, there's a challenge. The next day, there's a challenge to that will. A guy named Guillaume Deloach, a Naples lawyer, filed a will dated January 29th, 1985, which is two years after Kerr's will. Yeah. Naming the same heirs, all three kids, but excluding Kerr as executor. Oh. So cutting Kerr out of this. Yeah. Because he's involved with. Maybe. That's possible. That could be the reason. So a circuit court judge freezes all the assets of the estate until it gets to the court. Look and be decided who is what and which will is valid and what the fuck's going on. So July 15th, Kerr announces that he will contest the validity of the second will, which leaves the estate directly to the kids without him in the middle as an executor. I want to control the money now. Stephen, in the weeks after this, talks to the press quite a bit. He even wrote to the press, insisting he had no idea what the motive could be, no clue who would want his family dead. Now the papers and a lot of people are running hard with the theory of Scott must have pissed somebody off. Scott runs a wild, loose life. His drug life, paternity suits, all-night parties, snapping, hitting his sister-mother with fucking. He must have pissed somebody off to the point where they said, all right, fuck this asshole. That's the speculation. You live in a real wild life when your car's got NOS in it and it's for you. That's unbelievable. That is crazy. So they have a wake in Naples and then the funeral will be in Lancaster later on because that's where they have the family mausoleum and all that shit. So in Naples, about 35 people, as the newspaper put it, many of them young and fashionably dressed attended a closed casket viewing in Naples. It was the hottest social event of the season, Jimmy. Investigators still have no leads. One of them said the whole thing is a mystery. So funerals happen. Margaret and Scott were flown to Lancaster. An interred in the family mausoleum. Only relatives and close friends were permitted to attend and police were there too, watching just in case. They do that when there's a murder. See who shows up. On this day, the reverend that they had called the deaths of Scott and Margaret foolish, ugly, and reprehensible. In front of about. By the way, close friends and just families, about 250 people. That's pretty nice. I mean. Easy to make friends. You can make friends when you're rich. Yeah, right? So they're placed there at the Woodward Hill Cemetery. Now, at the funeral, Stephen sits between his wife, the big titty blonde, and his grandfather, Harry, who's still fucking alive, by the way. What? Harry is still alive. Wow! So that's the thing. Mom's dad? Yes. If Harry had made them wait till he died to get the money. They'd be poor. They'd be. Middle class, because they'd be working at stuff, but there wouldn't be nitrous tanks and locuses and all this crazy shit going on. Wow. So Harry, who still works on his tulips, that's all he cares about, this poor man. I mean, this poor guy. He's in his 80s, right? Yeah. He's born in 1897, so he is 88 years old at this point. Oh, my God. Almost 90. Yeah. So during this, Stephen leans over to his grandfather and asks him for a $20,000. $20,000 loan during the funeral. That's appropriate. Harry said, okay. Gives it to him. Oh. He doesn't know what he's got going. He has no idea about all that other stuff. So he just thinks, oh, yeah, you probably need a couple of bucks to, you know, whatever. Here you go. So police talking to Stephen, they keep pressing him on that missing hour, and he just says, I bumped into some people. What more do you want from me? That's it. I'm real social. I'm just no people, damn it. Yeah. Yeah. July 17th. Investigators fly to Boston to interview Carol in her hospital room to get, because she's finally, like, less medicated enough to get words out at this point. Off the morphine, just enough. July 18th, 1985, Stephen has an announcement. Okay. He announced that I cooperated with the investigators, but now his company issues a statement urging the public to help in the investigation. However, he says that, through his attorney, I will no longer be cooperating with them. You guys should, but I won't be. I'm going to take a powder on this whole shit. Cool, cool. If you guys could cooperate in my stead, that would be lovely. I mean, go for it, but not me. July 21st, Harry, Grandpa Harry, does an interview with the newspaper where he says, remember we said what a nice guy he is? Yeah. He said he's very, very sad, and this hurts his heart and everything, but also that he forgives whoever killed his daughter and grandson. Wow. Because he's a church guy, and he takes that shit seriously. Yeah. It's not just a social outing for him. He really looks at this, oh, okay, forgiveness. I'm sorry, Harry, you're a great grandson, if we're being honest. Let's be honest here. Yeah, he's a great grandson. No shit. So the investigation, here we go. The Collier County Sheriff's Office runs the local investigation with other people in the mix here. All right? So the home, it sits on White Violet Way, like we said, tree-lined street inside Quail Creek, and has the guard entrance that you have to, even if service people have to sign in, people have to be phoned. This matters a lot because they're like, how the fuck does someone get in there and plant a goddamn car bomb when you have to go through a guard gate that takes your name down and calls the people? So that's interesting here. By the way, this country club, the golf club they live on, it's like tens of thousands of dollars a year just in membership fee. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. So they wonder also, who was the target here? Right, which of the four? Who was the target? That's the thing. There's four different people living four different lives. So in the first hours and days here, they're just baffled. And then they said, you know, this was more of a mystery than most investigations. And they said they don't have any good leads like they normally have in a murder case. Yeah. They're like, we don't have the, I saw the guy doing this or we don't have any of that. It's a bombing inside a gated golf course community with a guarded entrance, a visitor logbook, a low-key widow no one seems to have a grudge against. None of this shit makes sense. One local resident said he could imagine something like this happening in Miami among the gangsters or in Beirut. Because, you know, Miami, Beirut, same thing. But never Naples. Never. Not in this town. What's going on? Never here. So they said the vehicle was registered to both Margaret and Scott. Margaret was the money, but Scott was a wild kid with a crazy crowd and a temper and probably enemies and he might owe people money and he's an addict and he's involved in drugs and anything can happen. So the initial theory from all the investigators is that Scott was the intended victim and that the bombing is tied to his drug world and that maybe he owed the wrong people money or maybe he saw them or maybe he saw something he shouldn't have. And that's what the press ran with. Hard party and rich kid named in paternity suits with all these parties hanging out with strippers and drug dealers and it all catches up to you. 21 years old to anger that many people. Man. That's wild. So they chase every lead down. Everybody you ever talked to, everybody you ever bought drugs from, everything like that, nothing comes of it. Nothing. That theory just goes away. They dig into his social, social media, the drug enemy theory. That's a dead end. There's nothing. They can't figure it out. That's when the secret surfaced. They found out that Scott was really Carol's son and raised as Margaret's. The cops didn't even know that until they were mid-investigation here. I think it was, if I'm not mistaken, I think it might have been Margaret's sister that told them. Like, that's not, that's her kid, not Carol's kid in the middle of this. So they were like, what the fuck? Then they said, holy shit, what if he found out about that and got so fucking mad that everybody lied to him and said, fuck everybody. Fuck me and fuck everybody. Let's do this. And I'm going to blow the whole goddamn family up. Who knows? 21 years and you're an unstable guy to begin with a little bit, you might snap. So then they said, no, they said he never knew the secret. There's never any proof that he found out about it. That's crazy. They talked to all his friends. He never said to any of his friends or his girlfriend. He said he found out about it. He would have told somebody about it. Never knew. Yeah. And they said the paternity rumors and the party rumors, they're all true, but they're not motives and they couldn't find anybody that would want to kill him. The bomb in the vehicle requires access to the vehicle inside a gated community with a guard outside. That's the problem. Doesn't matter. They even looked into the, well, the family dog, not about the bombing, but Scott kept a guard dog and they said no one reported the dog raising any alarms. About a stranger near the cars that morning either. So if someone snuck in around the gate or through the golf course or something, then what? So he was too busy shitting on the Berber. Yeah, exactly. So FATF agents, when they get their look at the vehicle, one of them made the joke that it was either a murder or these people had one hell of a lawsuit against General Motors because this is an explosion. Holy shit. The suburban, they said had been reduced to what one first response or described as an open, a torn open beer can. That's how they described it. The hood blasted upward, the windshield blew out, the roof peeled back, everything. A team of around 20 investigators combed the gravel driveway and surrounding yards and recovered some 40 fragments of two suspected pipe bombs. Among the debris, they also found pieces of what looked like a circuit board, a motherboard fragment. They theoried, theorized had come from a burglar alarm, which is a detail that is points in one certain direction. Very important. Yeah. The debris field was so intense, they said with fragments and everything else being thrown so far that the investigators had to keep widening their search perimeter. Wow. Because it kept going farther than they thought, pulling pieces from screen porches and yard, you know, houses down the street. And also they were scared of a third device. They They were really afraid in the beginning there might be another bomb in one of the other cars in the driveway. So they used a remote control setup to turn on the ignitions of the other vehicles from a safe distance, one at a time, to see if any of them were rigged with explosions. That's how we find out if they're rigged? We start them? You put a remote start thing on, back away, and see if it explodes. Hey. See if this – if I'm in the neighborhood, I'm definitely gathering around for that. This is going to be interesting. Yeah. I'm going to keep my distance, but definitely. Then they're studying the catastrophic explosion and the pattern of injuries on the bodies. And that's how they're working out the sequence and the seating. Margaret had been in the right front passenger. The extensive damage was concentrated on her right side, obviously the opposite with Scott. Two people sitting up front, each shredded worse on the side facing the console. So, duh. It's in the center console. Very easy. Second bomb positioned toward the left rear passenger. Right where Carol had been sitting. And the timing of the second blast, 30 seconds to a minute after the first, is the detail that gives them a lot of information. A bomb expert concludes that the devices were designed to make sure everybody died. The first blast to kill the front seat, second blast to kill whoever sat in that back seat behind the driver. It was a two-stage kill engineered to kill everybody. And they said the only reason Carol survived is because her door was open. Yeah. It blew her away from the car. Out of it, yep. Which helped her. Whereas the other thing, they were trapped in there and got all the shit. The force was able to stay and injure them rather than blow them out. Right. Exactly. And that's only because she asked Steven to leave it open because it was hot. Right, because of the AC. Yep. So, they said when the first bomb went off, the open door and the blast dynamics blew her out of the vehicle and onto the grass before the second device, which was the one meant for her. Uh-huh. Could get her. So, the golfers playing their game saw the family gathering at the car, expected to keep playing their round. Instead, they saw this explosion. They said the call to 911 was a mess, they said, because Wayne Kerr couldn't answer the dispatcher's questions because he genuinely didn't know what happened. He was doing numbers and then an explosion. Steven was too shaken to talk, so the housekeeper ended up on the line. Nobody in the house could tell the dispatcher what had exploded or why or how, which is interesting. Now, they're trying to figure this all out. But then they figure out they find something. Because one thing they said, why weren't you in the car to Steven? He said, I went back to get the measuring tape. And so did Carol. He went back to get the measuring tape. What they find in the debris near the vehicle is a fucking measuring tape. It was in the truck the whole time. Wow. He didn't go back to get it. It was in the truck. So they're like, what up with that? They go, I mean, maybe he didn't know it was in the truck and thought he was in the house. Who knows? But that seems pretty suspicious. Sure enough. Then also Harold Young, the first investigator, said that it was just weird. He took a 75-minute coffee run. He took the Suburban with him and took way too long to get coffee rather than taking any of the other cars. He's the one who told everybody where to sit. Then he runs out of the car. Out of the car. It's very weird. It's awfully. Yeah. He's either the luckiest son of a bitch alive or he's got some splaining to do here. So then they trace the bomb components, four-inch galvanized pipe and matching end caps. They trace that to Hughes Supply, a construction and plumbing supplier, which is just a few yards from Stephen's office. A few hundred yards. Sorry. The hardware store, they find that on July 5th, 1985, a man matching Stephen's description. Walked into Hughes Supply and buys two four-inch galvanized steel end caps. He signs the receipt. The signature is illegible. He gives the company name as Delray Construction, which does not exist, and wears a baseball hat and dark sunglasses while he purchases these. Okay. You know, to make you look like the Unabomber. You want to look as much like the Unabomber as possible when you're buying bomb supplies. I want to look as suspicious as possible. Oh, man. So July 8th, 1985, the day before the explosions, a man matching Stephen's descriptions makes a second purchase, two galvanized steel pipes, four inches in diameter, 12 inches long, pays in cash. So now he's got the end caps from the 5th and he's got the pipes from the 8th. That's a big-ass pipe. It's big. I mean, these are big explosions. Giant bomb. It was $36.08 and then $28.05. So he spent possibly $64 to kill his family. What the fuck? That doesn't seem like enough. I mean, you've got to get the guts, too. $64.13. Yeah. That's pretty cheap. That's what they're thinking. So they built a composite sketch from the salesman's description. It resembles Stephen. Yeah. And the salesman said he couldn't rule Stephen out. Didn't pick him out of the lineup but said, I can't rule him out. 6'2", big guy, 230 pounds. He fits the description. So Hugh's supply, by the way, was only technically supposed to sell to licensed contractors. But you've got a guy standing there with cash in his hand and a couple of pipes and he's just trying to finish this job real quick. They go, yeah, fuck it, whatever. There you go. Just a little bit of pipe. That's fine. Just laying a little bit of pipe, everybody. Then they get the – because, I mean, his description's fine. But you need more proof. Sure. Then, with a search warrant, investigators obtained – they obtained Stephen's palm prints and compare them against a palm print lifted from the paperwork that was signed. And it's a perfect match. A left-hand palm print on the receipt at a large number of points of identification. Not a lot of doubt. There's a lot. Plenty to really know it's his fingerprint or palm print. So then there's trace evidence here. On Stephen's pants, investigators recovered a single particle, a flake of zinc. A flake. Oh. One flake, consistent with the galvanized coating on the pipe used in the bombs. Oh. They said, holy shit, it flaked off onto him when he was building the fucking bombs. That's what happened. Galvanized steel shed zinc and Stephen had zinc on his clothing. Well, there you go. Wow. So then the timers as well. The detonation method pointed back to Stephen's skill set, which is computer shit, which is exactly what it does. A bomb technician concluded that the devices had probably been set off electronically or electrically. A conclusion consistent with the two closely timed sequenced blasts and consistent with Stephen's professional background of installing burglar alarms and security systems. Because this circuit board fragment they found is from a burglar alarm. And he has a company that does burglar alarms, which seems, yeah, he understood wiring triggers, time circuits. He knew all that shit. That's all. And that's all that stuff. So that's the one, basically. They said that also this isn't his first homemade explosive. There's a back story from a workman, a groundskeeper at the family's compound in Pennsylvania years ago. He said that he looked down from his ladder one day and saw Stephen walking across the yard carrying copper tubes with wires attached. Uh-huh. Then heard a huge explosion. What the fuck? He came off the ladder. Walked toward the tennis courts and saw Stephen holding what looked like a remote control device with two buttons on it and laughing. He said he was just cracking up because he blew something up just for fun. Huh. Wow. There's also testimony that at a memorial gathering, Stephen himself had spoken about previously making and setting off pipe bombs with copper pipe and gunpowder. Really? Jesus Christ. So then there's the money. Stephen is. He's just bought that big house, and now all the walls are collapsing on him. Didn't sell the sports car. The federal auditor looks into this and said he stole at least $180,000 into just personal accounts. Meanwhile, the total misappropriation is running well into the millions. This was all coming to light. That day, he had to have an explanation for what he did literally two hours later when they got done with this trip. On the 25th, 1985, Wayne Kerr attempts to have a Naples stock brokerage firm turn over more than $1 million in Benson stock and their stocks, and the brokerage firm declines because it's still being fought in the courts. So even though it's all put on hold, Wayne Kerr is still trying to get moves made somehow. Meanwhile, Carol is improving. Oh. She has skin grafts that appear to be successful. Shit. And, yeah, so the two investigators that were up there returned to Florida after talking to her a whole bunch. July 27th, 1985, Stephen Benson closes down his Florida businesses, telling his employees that funds to keep the operations going are tied up following the deaths of his mother and brother. I can't steal anymore from my mother. Yeah. Can't steal. So he was also, in addition to the burglar alarm and security firm, he was operating a public relations and marketing firm in Fort Myers as well. He could use some public relations at this point. July 29th, 85, a Florida attorney charges that Margaret Benson never properly signed a 1983 will and that Wayne Kerr may have committed fraud upon the court and perjury when he told a probate court judge that he knew of no will written after May of 83. Oh. So they're saying she told you when she got her other will going and you're trying to just be in control of this. What is that about? Well, it's because the executors get gigantic fees for doing this. Oh, okay. That's the thing. This isn't about stealing that money. You don't have to. That's why people want to be executors because they get massive fucking – you can charge massive amounts of fees to do that. So it's a huge deal. It's the best business you could be in. July 30th to August 5th here, a Collier County judge freezes the Benson estate barring any distribution of assets. A representative for Carroll announces her presence for the January 85 – oh, her preference for January 85 will. She likes that will better, the one that just gives her the money right away rather than having to go through Kerr. And also, even though the will from May 83 leaves all of Margaret's jewelry to her, but the other one doesn't. She said, I'd rather take the other one anyway because I can buy jewelry with the massive amount of fees. I'm going to pay this guy. August 5th, in separate requests, Stephen and Carroll ask the judge to be joint administrators of their mother's estate. So they said, let us do it. Let us be the administrators. Yeah. August 8th, detectives say an arrest may be made by the end of the month. And that same day, Wayne Kerr is interviewed for three hours by investigators in Naples. Oh. August 10th. Carroll is released from the burn center. Great. She's doing great. August 16th, 1985. Wayne Kerr says, fuck it, and withdraws his request to administer the estate. Not worth my time. Fuck it. August 22nd, 1985, at 10 a.m., Stephen is at his attorney's office when the police show up and arrest him. Why? Absolute. For murder. Yeah. Double. And attempted. And all sorts of other shit. Yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot. Now, when they arrest. They arrest him. Stephen had driven here in his work van. The brown one? The beige van. Yeah. The beige one. It's very light. Some people call it white. So it's like a very light beige. On his door, he still has blood and flesh from his mother. He never even cleaned his mother's fucking brain matter off the side of his car. When is this? August 22nd. He's been driving around for a month and a half with brain on his car. With mom on the side. That is fucking insane. Wow. Six weeks. That is wild. I'm surprised the rain didn't take it off in that much time. That is some Florida ass shit. So he's arraigned, enters a plea of not guilty to nine charges against him. And then they're talking about they have to change venues because there is renovations at the Collier County Courthouse. Also, there's a ton of publicity here. So you should probably move it anyway. Okay. Now, Harry, grandpa, great grandpa, in some cases, is still alive. Uh-huh. And he asked personally that the judge deny Stephen Bale. Yeah. This nice man, you've pushed him too far. Keep his ass in there. He said anyone willing to murder his own mother and brother, quotey brother, for money would be willing to murder his grandfather for the same money. Yeah. That's what he says. I don't feel safe. The charges are two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder, plus arson of a dwelling and a shitload of explosives-related counts that are separate there. Now, because using explosives to commit a murder is a federal offense, there was a judicial and jurisdictional issue of where do we try him, state or federal? At the time, though, there was no federal death penalty, but there is certainly one in Florida. So they decide, let's try him state level and get him a death penalty. He gets no bail, by the way. So July of 86 is the trial. So a year later. A year later. After the explosion and the deaths and everything else. It's a, it's, imagine just this, even if these people were nobodies, this would be a crazy story that everybody covered. But the fact that they're rich on the golf course and all that is just the biggest story ever in Naples. Huge. So they have to move it to Lee County here. There's a big article here in the Philadelphia Daily News. Steven Benson murder trial draws Hollywood interest. Yeah. A Hollywood movie. A Hollywood movie producer was in court yesterday to get a firsthand look at the Steven Benson murder trial in hopes of bringing the story to the silver screen. Elliot Geisinger, producer of the Amityville horror and other feature films, has said the people from his from his firm in attendance at the trial since its start. But he's had his partners, him and his partners wanted to get a firsthand look. He said, we think it's a fascinating case. He said he called it a soap opera aspect of the story is what interests him as a film producer. Conceiving the story might be better suited as a made for TV movie than a Hollywood feature. Might be right. Yeah, might be right. It's a huge circus. People magazine came. CNN came. And this is 86. This isn't, you know, now reporters fly in from around the world and the country. Local television is preempting regular programming to run live courtroom feeds. It's huge. One station cut away from a soap opera to go live to the Benson trial. And it got a hundred angry calls from. People that are pissed off that the soap got cut off and then a record number of calls asking when they would go live at the trial again, because that was awesome. Please just skip days of our lives every day. Now, this is way more dramatic. What we just told you is way better than two years of days of our lives or whatever the fuck it is. Palmer Cable Vision, the cable company, ran a nightly hour long recap of each day's proceeding called the Benson Chronicles. Wow. At least three authors are in the gallery working. On notes for the case as well to write books. The Brock brothers who are prosecuting use more than 200 exhibits in this whole thing. Reporters, by the way, because they have the Brock brothers and then they have the defense team who are like Jaguar driving slick back guys. So they call this whole thing Miami Vice meets the Beverly Hillbillies. That's the defense team versus the Beverly Hillbillies of the prosecution team. Wow. They also did a weird thing where they picked the newspaper, put an ad out in the paper for six men and six women to be a mirror jury to go to the court. And then the paper will ask them like if they were a jury what they would do, which is interesting. But the only thing is they would have to leave every time the jury gets dismissed or else you're hearing shit they're not hearing. So that'll change your mind. You got to keep them exposed to the same shit the jury's exposed to and nothing more. That's it. Yep. So they were paid. The same hourly wage that they received for their regular jobs by the newspaper. They appeared to have little in common with the real article. They said one was a pink coiffed high school English teacher from the Midwest, a younger woman with jet black long hair. OK. And a heavy mascara was dubbed Cleopatra by reporters. Well, another mirror jury juror was a bald man from Las Vegas with a white mustache and double pierced right earlobe. Oh, yeah. These are things. Nobody would even notice now about them. Back then it was like they're weird. It's a fascinating guy from Vegas. That's it. But they say by now the trial had more than its full complement of colorful regulars, among them a soap opera writer and baggy pants and dark glasses. A redhead with ruby studded ankle bracelet and a straw fan and an 83 year old retiree who always brought along tucked under his arm one of his painted wooden duck decoys. Well, that brings his ducky. Brings it with him. Brings it with him. I made this. Who wants ducks? I mean, shit, there's a lot of tension on the physical evidence. The state walks the jury through everything. The receipts, the fake Delray construction, the name, the disguise, the palm print, the zinc flake, the reconstructed devices, the fact that he has expertise, you know, all the evidence. There's a lot of evidence. Yeah. Fingerprint expert testifies that that's definitely his palm print on the invoice recording the sale of the pipes that blew up. Yeah. Another here. I am metallurgist. And bomb technicians also testified to the construction. The galvanized steel pipes, roughly 12 inches long, four inches in diameter with matching galvanized end caps screwed on to contain the charge packed with nails and tacks to maximize the shredding damage. Nails and like it's an Iraqi IED. What the fuck are you doing? This is your family. Wow. The last detail here about it was it wasn't really it wasn't just a bomb. It was. It was a shrapnel. It was meant to kill, not to explode. Wow. Later on, a juror would say that the horror was fathoming that someone had plotted and schemed and told the people where to sit to like that seems gross. Really gross. That's a forensic testimony. Investigators reconstructed the pipe bombs dimensions from partial fragments since no intact pipe survived to measure extrapolating diameters from partially reconstructed. end cap circumferences inferring length from threading dimensions that matched industry standards for 12-inch pipe of that width, reasoning the caps had to have been screwed on because otherwise the device couldn't have contained gunpowder or functioned at all. Got to have something to keep it in. Gunpowder is the explosive filler, a smokeless powder in lab reconstructions confirmed through microscopic examinations of the recovered particles and thin layer chromatography comparing the residue against the powder standards. Okay, so Carol testifies. She takes the stand and it's like, they call her and she hasn't been sitting there, so no one's seen her and they just know she's been horribly burned is all we've heard. So when they call her, everyone's like, what's she going to look like? And the interesting thing is the way the book put it was very interesting. She was beautiful still, but had you could see the burns from the graphs. Yeah, but they said it. She looked like a movie star who was playing someone who got burned a little bit. That's what she looked like. They said she was still, still beautiful. And the pictures of her, like from the newspaper from back then, where you can't really see that kind of thing. She just looks like a pretty blonde lady. So, um, the, uh, um, by the way, now she refers to Scott as my son on the stand. Oh, well, she started out as runner up of Miss Florida. So she probably just looks like, uh, yeah, she's pretty. Yeah. Like Miss West Virginia. Now she's still hot as shit. She just looks like Miss Mississippi and that's that. So, uh, Scott leaned down. She said, quote, Scott leaned down toward the front. Like he was ready to turn the key. And immediately following that I was surrounded by this orange thing. I felt I was being pushed back in the seat. They said, did you know what happened? And she said, no, I didn't. I thought I was being electrocuted. There was this thing all around you. I don't know how to explain it. It was just awful. I pushed my eyes open and saw my son lying on the ground. And I knew something was wrong. He had his eyes closed and a little blood on his face. There was blood on his face. And I suddenly thought he's dead. She said, I recall looking up and seeing my brother, Steven standing on the walk. He was facing the suburban and staring straight ahead. I couldn't understand why he wasn't coming over to help me. Yeah. Then Steven's eyes widened really wide, open, really wide. He had been standing really still. Suddenly his eyes opened and his mouth dropped and he raced toward the house. Um, so they said, Mrs. Kendall, is it true that you're not sure at what point Scott gave the keys? This is the defense attorney. And she said, no, it's not true. They said, didn't you tell them that you weren't sure? And he, she said, I don't remember the question or the answer. Steven handed Scott the keys. He said, no, it's not true. And she said, I don't remember the question or the keys through the window of the automobile period. And they go back and forth. But didn't you tell this one agent that you weren't sure how the keys got passed? And she goes, that was almost a year ago. Steven was in my line of sight. I could see him, but I wasn't looking directly at him. So they go back and forth for a while. You're going back with a burn lady who got exploded by her brother. It's like, this is bad. You're going to ask a lady what she remembers a year ago versus what she can vividly remember and recall right now. Fuck yes. Um, wow. Um, she said, I'm not going to have you distort the answer by not allowing me to answer the question completely. She said, yes, I did make that statement. However, at the time the statement was made, I had already been informed that my mother's body had been thrown to the other side of the car. I was making the assumption with the knowledge he was going around to that side of the car to my mother. Okay. Um, they said at the time was Steven screaming and she said, I couldn't hear him. There was noise. It sounded as though he was making lamentations. He was extremely agitated. They said, was he screaming? And she said, yeah, I guess you could put it that way. So, um, she talked about Steven getting out, like boosting her into her seat and like basically trying to close her in. She said, no, don't talks about the fireball. Uh, by the way, little, little break from testimony. Once she's off the stand, little something I just saw in the, in the newspaper about the jury. That was fascinating. Quote, coffee maker, coffee maker installed. They got one of the, one of the jurors in the Steven Benson murder trial has brought a coffee maker to the jury room to make breaks in the courtroom action. A little more pleasant. The County pays for the jury's lunch eats each day, but soft drinks and coffee are not provided. So I brought it in for everybody. All this talk about coffee made me want a coffee. I'm going to bring in my coffee. Yeah. Anybody got donuts in here? So the defense goes after Scott somebody, the defense goes after Scott, obviously their defenses, someone that was mad at Scott did this. Um, he said he doesn't believe the prosecutor to the judge said he doesn't believe Scott should be the focus of any testimony. They said, Scott's the victim of a crime. His character, we do not feel as relevant at all, but in this case it kind of is. So they allow a lot of this stuff in, um, a lot of the stuff we talked about the nitrous drinking it like a Pepsi. Um, yeah, uh, they used Mrs. Benson's secretary and a tape recording to try to show Scott as the true target. Um, and later on, um, in his closing, they drew the contrast here, quote on one side, one on four, poor, unfortunate young man running amok, threatening to kill his mother, dragging her across the house, beating his sister and biological mother, both with his fists, consuming enough narcotics to make violence probable. A kid who'd do anything to kill his mother. A kid who'd do anything for more drugs. And on the other side, Steven, the loving son who took over when his father's died, who never crossed a soul, the peacemaker who only ever got angry when Scott abused their mother. That's it. Um, also a private investigator for the state or for the defense, um, who said that state prison inmate, Dave Galloway told him Scott Benson once offered to put his sports car up as collateral on a large drug deal. I'll try to show that Scott can get in deep. Um, another guy, an assistant defense attorney who put on, was put on the stand to tell about a similar drug related conversation. He had another with another inmate about Scott. They bring in a boat captain who said a man who said he was a man who snorted cocaine with Scott on a boat trip. Hell yeah. Um, interesting. And he said that Scott looked like a composite drawing of the man seeing buying pipe bomb materials. He said, I thought that was Scott. Yeah. Several other former associates of Scott who said that they smoked marijuana. With Scott or saw him use cocaine, whatever. Um, pipe bomb builders. Yeah. Yeah. They talk about Steven's on scene laughter because he made it like a joke and made like a weird laughter thing at the scene. And the defense tried to frame it as that's people that laugh in weird situations. That just happens. They said, have you ever studied what makes people laugh? And he said, no. Um, a neighbor also said the police failed to examine part of a car bomb that still rests on the scene. He said that the car was on top of his screened in porch across the street. There was some other witness they're trying to find. They can't find anyway. The defense finishes up their case and then they ask for an acquittal. They asked the judge. He said, it's a totally and entirely circumstantial case besides the fact that his palm prints on a receipt and he has fucking zinc from a bomb on his goddamn erroneous. Yeah. Totally. And it's a, you know, incidental and, and whatever. So the judge says, I don't think so. There's plenty here. Um, so they also talk about in the paper that whether he, even if he's found not guilty, he's probably going to be sued and he's probably going to face a bunch of suits about these bombings. His sister could sue him. They could sue him to cut him out of the will. They could, there's a bunch of shit going on here. Verdict comes in 10, 10 women and two men on the jury. Okay. They deliberate somewhere in the range of 11 to 12 hours. It must be the coffee keeping going. Yeah. Yeah. Two days. He is found guilty of all charges, all nine charges, everything. Um, a later, a juror later said that the panel convicted on the very first vote. So rather than do a straw poll, they did the whole, what do you build the thing first and then do a vote and then they did it. And so that's what they did. Now, sentencing death penalty on the table. Mm hmm. Prosecutor argues killing your mother is uniquely reprehensible. And that the deliberate murder of one's own mother basically is bottom tier human behavior. Just awful. Uh, the defense urged that there had been already been enough killing in this family and the jury shouldn't add to the death toll. Let's not add to the roster. Um, now the jury comes back on the death penalty thing. All they need is a majority for a thing here. Seven to five would do it. No, they are deadlocked six, six. Really? Six, six. So at the time you had to have a majority. So a tall, a tie defaults to a recommendation of you, sir. Yeah. May fuck off two consecutive life sentences. Yeah. Which is a minimum of roughly 50 years before any parole consideration. Plus an additional, I believe 37 years tacked on consecutive based on the bomb shit as well. Oh fuck. So quite a lot of time. Quite a bit. Um, they made them con consecutive rather than concurrent, which was the wishes of the sister Carol who said she wanted to be as certain as the law could make it that her brother would never walk free because she said she was genuinely afraid if he ever came out she's he would go after her and her children yeah um harry grandpa lives still alive said quote justice has been done that's all he would say um so there's that 1988 there's an appeal the first two two main counts on the appeal first is that expert testimony about the pipe bombs dimensions and construction had been improperly admitted and um the second argument was the circumstantial evidence was sufficient insufficient and the state had improperly pyramided interference or inference upon inference and failed to execute uh execute exclude jesus i can't read that every reasonable hypothesis of innocence the court said no he good yeah all right send him out keep going keep fucking so then there's the money he can't there's the slayer act so he can't get anything carol um basically had it extended so that even steven's children can't benefit from it even they won't get anything wow um then he's got some prison problems this guy's not a guy who's made for prison if you think about it spoiled rich kids soft all these things not made for failure and everything in life yeah the inmates hate him hate really hate him hate him hate him he's a scumbag rich kid who killed his mother they have no sympathy for them these are all people who never met their mother or my mother smoked crack in front of me my whole fucking life i just wanted a good mom that's all i wanted so steven is transferred constantly more than 20 times mainly for his own safety after strings pissing everybody off pissing he was stabbed by an inmate then transferred to another prison for his safety another time he was found to have an 11 inch knife and a vent in his cell in 1990 yeah uh he was written up for fashioning a battery pack outside of his transistor radio so he knows how to do that shit he was selling legal services to other inmates using the prison computer to keep track of his customers yeah he stole ketchup and mayonnaise packets from mealtime and he had his unauthorized scrabble game confiscated lots of trouble yeah he lost a cross pen set that was sent to him which are expensive nice pens that you get refillable things for a leather a leather belt some clark shoes you know the kind ghost face killer like to make different colors on he got clarks in prison they gave him clark somebody sent him to him an extra pair of slide shoes all fine to be out all found to be outside regulations and taken away he worked jobs from everything from a houseman to working in the laundry or painting he was disciplined for running unauthorized legal services hustle like we said 93 his wife debbie divorced him and left the state and he changed his emergency contract a contact to one of his groomsmen from his first wedding because that's the only person left he'll talk to him no more women in 97 he lost his real estate license how long do you have to be in prison to lose your real estate license he's been in prison for 12 years he's got a sentence of 80 years he can keep it he loves writing grievances against other inmates against officers against anyone he's pissed off about malik fuck he complained about inmates having to wear shirts in the television room it's hot he said he was concerned that a television room was used for spanish programs several hours each day when the spanish speaking inmates just joined the other inmates to watch television anyway so why should they get to watch what they want they're gonna sit here anyway and he wants to do this with his nipples out that's right with his fucking hairy nipple rings he argued that the amount of sales tax charge tax charged at the commissary and had his accountants and his employees to pay for the Account credited, 95 cents. Yes. He protested when a book, Hacking Exposed, Network Security Secrets and Solutions, was taken from him. He said the title was misleading and that no one would listen to him, that the book was about preventing hacking, not carrying it out, which you have to know how it's done to prevent it. He spent several stints in segregation. He told prison officials he's trying to live a well-adjusted, low-profile life. He never responds to interview questions either. Margaret's sister, Janet, who is still fucking alive also, rich people live a long time, says that she does not want to see him get out of prison. She said, I would talk to him, I guess. I'm pretty sure Stephen wouldn't want to talk to me. She says that he has been turning away people, basically. So one guy said he was trying to bring religion to Benson. And Benson cut him off, which I would, too. I'm not listening. I ain't listening to you. So anyway, the woman said he was always easy to talk to. He could find all the problems with the prison, but he can't see what he did wrong. All right. That's right. Now, there's no record of a single family visit across nearly 30 years. Wow. Nothing. That's it. July 3rd, 2015. OK. A couple of prisoners named Cordell Washington and Marvin Taylor. Soon after Stephen's transfer to a northern Florida prison in June, Cordell Washington said, I remember that motherfucker and I hate him from a previous jail. I know him. Within days. Well, we'll find out some stuff that happened here. OK. Multiple times here in 2012, there's animosity between Benson and Washington, which stemmed from a series of prison assaults in 2012. Multiple inmates told investigators that Washington made plans to extort $1,000 from Stephen within days after arriving at the Taylor Correctional Institute. When Benson refused to pay, Washington and another man, 26-year-old Marvin Taylor, ambushed him and stabbed him in the head with a homemade knife. Oh, fuck. While en route to the hospital, he told staffers two men jumped him as he walked from the chow hall to his dorm room. He said he didn't know their name. But he recognized one of them from a print stint in Hardy County. Washington and Taylor are both indicted because Stephen dies at the hospital from his wounds. They're indicted on first degree murder charges. Oh, my God. He got stabbed in the fucking head. Yep. This all stems from other shit. November of 2012, Washington and another man jumped a fellow inmate identified by one prisoner as Benson's then boyfriend. So the dude Stephen was hooking up with in jail got jumped by. These two guys. A day later, several inmates assaulted Washington in the recreation yard. A retaliation ordered and paid for by Benson. By Steve. Yeah. One inmate serving a life sentence for armed robbery told investigators he knew Washington and Benson from their time together in Hardy County and said Nelson said he warned Benson that Washington could be trouble. But Benson already knew. He said he was demanding a thousand dollars from him. So anyway, he's dead. There you go. Now, in the meantime. In the media, Dominic Dunn, who's done a ton of shit. He's the one whose daughter got murdered. Fucking horrible way. He devoted an hour for the case on his show, Dominic Dunn's Power, Privilege and Justice. There's been a bunch of books written on the family. Blood Relations by John Green. What is the money to burn? The true story of the Benson family murders and the one we got some excerpts from the Serpent's Tooth by Christopher P. Anderson. Jesus. So there you go, everybody. That is Naples, Florida. And one fucking hell of a weird story. Serpent's Tooth, James. Serpent's Tooth, babe. There you go. So there you go. If you like that story, please get on whatever app you're on. This helps so much. These are really hard to put together. So it takes 20 seconds to sign in whatever app you're on and give us five stars. It helps a ton. Netflix, that thumbs up. You're on your remote. Click, click, done. Super easy to do. Yeah, get someone else to do it on theirs, too. So do that. Help us out. There's an option for. Oh, the double. Yeah, that's right. That's a double us up, everybody. So, yeah, do that. Definitely follow on social media at Small Town Murder on Instagram at Small Town Pod on Facebook. Right. You can absolutely listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which there's a whole murderous thing going on. You don't have to like sports. Just trust us there. Then for small or for also your stupid opinions. Yeah, it's just hilarious. If you like a funny show, listen to your stupid opinions. It's hilarious. So do that. Check that out. Get yourself Patreon. As well. Actually, go to shut up and give me murder dot com. First, shut up and give me murder dot com. That's where all the tickets are. All the merchandise tickets to live shows. The 18th of September in Milwaukee. I think those are sold out, but we might have a few holds that will release. So if you really want to go, keep looking next night on September 19th. Minneapolis State Theater. Get those tickets right now. Dallas on October 3rd. San Jose, Sacramento, October 16th and 17th. And then November 13th, 14th. Which is just about sold out. Get those if you want to go. And Boston as well. Medford. We're going to. So get in there. Get those tickets. Shut up and give me murder dot com. Patreon dot com slash crime in sports. Where you get all of the bonus material. Five dollars a month or above. Gets you everything we put out. Every damn thing. As soon as you subscribe, you get like almost 400 back bonus episodes. New ones every other week. One crime in sports. One small town murder. You get it all. All the episodes. This week, we're going to talk about the Donner Party. Great. Want to hear about cannibalism in the snow? Not the Donner Party. That's a weird party. Donner had his own parties. This is the Donner Party. But similar outcome. Exactly. That joke was made a lot when Dahmer was killed. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of the Dahmer party merchandise with him eating people. That makes sense. It's too close. Otherwise, it's great. So you nailed it. But yeah, that's going to be amazing. We can't wait to do that episode. So check that out, patreon.com slash crimeinsports, just like the name of the show. And also, in addition to that, you get all the shows we put out, all ad-free as well, not just on Patreon, the regular shows, all ad-free. Then on top of that, you also get a shout-out, which is right goddamn now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the best fucking people in the world who would never explode us or not tell us who our real mother was. Jimmy, hit me with them right goddamn now. This is Executive Producer Martha Taljard, I believe. Martha. She's 10 years sober. Good for you, Martha. Good for you. Congrats. Congratulations. Congratulations to you. Heidi Griffin, it's her birthday month. Didn't give a day because happy birthday. Fourth month, Heidi, because that's what women love to do. That's a lot. Buy me gifts every day, please. I'm here, and it's happened this month. It's like fucking Hanukkah over here now. Yeah. Happy Hour in Monticello, Utah. That sounds nice. Gary Howard is in Ena, Illinois. Gary? Sounds like Happy Hour wins this week. A little nicer place. I don't know. Weed's legal in Illinois. Maybe not. I've never been to Ena. Ina? It's probably Ena, right? I don't know. Weed's legal, and the other's Utah. That's a great point. I'll take Illinois all day, baby. I'd rather be stoned and stare at tagging than be sober and look at Utah. Weed and you'll go to Taco John's next to a farm field and fucking eat like we did, and we're happy as shit. Yeah. Robin Perrier. Perrier. Perrier. Perrier. Happy birthday. Oh, no. It's not a birthday. She just told me. Happy birthday, Perrier. Happy birthday. Heard you got one this year. Alicia Grant and other producers this week. Thank you guys so much, by the way. Thank you, guys. You guys rule. Other producers this week are Annie Goulihy, James. She's on her boat. She's going to say it. It's her maiden name. Very nice. She used to go out with Bad Billy Pratt there. You got to watch out. She got herself a brand new closet. I love it. I see that. Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Scott Richard in Maricopa. Poor son of a bitch. Yikes. He donates and gives his whole fucking address. Scott, you got to stop that. We won't give that out. Don't put your address on the internet. It's a cry for help, I think. He's in Maricopa, the poor bastard. He just wants out. Send help. He's like, please, to this address. Get me. Allie V. Nitz, Racecraft. JC is lost in Diamond Art, James. Whatever that is. John Scarpalini, Isabel Carpenter, Aquila, with no last name. Danielle Land, Reinhardt. No, that's Ryan Hall. Seth Klein, Fetzluck? Or Fetzluck? I don't know. I don't know. 45. There's 44 more. Sarah Farley. What is that? Is that a bondage thing? I don't know. I hope not. I hope they didn't make me say something gross. Deborah Hawes, Jennifer Blacks. Nope, that's Backs. Or is it Backies? What's going on? God damn it. You are on today, baby. Nancy, Iannigan. Sherri Lynn Kaye. Hey, Simonsmeyer. Samantha with no last name. Kelly with no last name. Bethany Hughes. Caroline Jay. Julia Maxwell. Kaisa Luther. Kisa, perhaps? Morgan Smith. Donald Radice. Radice. Radice. Courtney Gregg. Beth Spooner. Barb Pothier. Pothier. Pothier. Allison Hull. Ryan White. Shane with no last name. Josh Cowles. W.W. Ray Ann Williams. Angelia. Not Angelia. It's Angelina. It's Angelia. Odon Rosser. Pill Cosby, James. Pill Cosby. Cindy Berg. George Schatzel. Maddie Burnett. Wendy White. Dooley with no last name. Stephanie Stewart. Amanda Treloar. Jolene Aiken. Amanda Adams. Fuck you, Andy. I don't know who that is. A. Diz. A. Dizzle. That's who that is. Brittany Wells. Tyler Hilverding. Peter White. Wait, because Melissa Guarino. No. Jake Bick. Roderick with no last name. Jerry White. Jams with no last name. Michael Best. J.C. and Shannon Linville. Brooke Brownlee. Jennifer Brown Weber. Sarah Misichik. John Glasgow. Casey Samaha. What is this? Lily Pittman. Allison S. Gloria Hoffspin. Hoffsinsperger. Jessica Hecker. Valerie Rediker. Rediker. Redicker. Did she red-dick him? You don't know. Red-dick 5,000. I was red-dicking him, I guess. Alexis Livermore. Leon Kennedy, 05. Anne Frazier. Jake Ouellette. Ouellette? I don't know. Kaylee Regnault. Renaud, baby. Scott Jacobson. Patrick Jones. Justin Clearwater. Aubrey with no last name. Amanda Root. Adam Miller. Coriana Mullenix. Jared Marnin. Nellie with no last name. You know him. You know Nellie. Julia Matz. Edwin Spade. Spader? Ah, perhaps it's that man's kid. No, it's James' son. James is the best. God, that fucking man's so funny. I love James Spader. Wash ashore. Destiny Stepanek. Stepanek. DIY Huntress. Sam Raimondi. Michelle Maloney. Dana Wright. Krista Barton. Aaron with no last name. Vix Austin. Armoni Waters. Armani, perhaps. Yaz with no last name. Rose Chaland. That's a terrible way to pronounce it. Linda, Kristi Darnell, Stacey Maxwell, Heather Morris, and everybody that patrons this show. You guys are the best, thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. God damn it, you guys are the best. Unbelievable. Fucking amazing, and we appreciate the shit out of everything you do for us on a daily basis. You want to find us on social media, shutupandgivememurder.com is where you get all the information on everything. Head there, keep coming back, seeing us every week, tell your friends, that really makes the biggest difference. And that's about that, and until next week everybody, it's been our pleasure, bye!