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On March twenty fifth, two thousand and four, twenty one year old Jennifer Wicks was in crisis. Jennifer lived in Robertson County, Tennessee. She was a single mother to her two year old daughter, Adriana, who Jennifer adored. She and Adriana had moved in with her boyfriend, William Joseph Joey Benton and his parents, Cynthia and Frank Joseph Benton a few months before, in December of two thousand and three, for clarity, because the father and son have the same name.
From here on out, we're going to call the father Joseph and the son Joey. The situation at the Benton home was volatile. Before moving in with Joey's family, Jennifer lived with her mother, Kathy Nail, and her younger half sister, Casey Wicks. Casey told us that Jennifer had been calling home and complaining to her mother that she wasn't getting
along with certain members of Joey's family. Because Casey was living in the home, she was hearing some of these conversations, and also it was a topic of discussion in their house. So even though they were only hearing Jennifer's side of the story, Casey and Jennifer's mom, Kathy Nell, were forming an impression of Joey that wasn't great, So there was tension there. Over a period of a few months, Jennifer's family said the situation at the Benton home had become
increasingly strained. Then, on March twenty fifth, something happened. No one knows exactly what happened, and law enforcement has not released much information due to this still being an open investigation. That being said, we do know a few things about the timeline leading up to that day. At some point during the day on March twenty fifth, Joey got a call at work and he left suddenly, saying that he
needed to deal with a situation at home. He told police that he picked up Jennifer and Adriana at his home.
He said they went for a drive.
During that drive, Joey claimed that he and Jennifer decided to end their relationship. After that, Joey told police that he stopped at a grocery.
Store so that Jennifer could use the phone there.
Then, he said he drove her Adriana to a nearby gas station in Cross Plains, which was a few minutes away. Joey said at that gas station, Jennifer and Adriana got into a vehicle, which he described as a white four door Sedan. Jennifer and Adriana were never seen again. From the beginning, Jennifer's family has been suspicious of this story. They say they just don't believe that a young mom with a toddler would leave without any of her belongings
and without ever calling her family. Also, they pointed out that Jennifer could have stayed with multiple family members who lived in the area, and that on the day she disappeared, she had actually talked to her aunt about staying with her and picking up a key, So why would she drive off with someone else and never contact her family.
It's been almost twenty years, and those years have been filled with rumors, several searches of a property shifting, st worries about what really happened that day, a wrongful death lawsuit, and most recently, a severed body part connected to a family member found in a creek. And yet no one has found any trace of Jennifer Wicks or her daughter Adriana.
I'm Catherine Townsend.
Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five or you can send us a message on Instagram at Hell and Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. We spoke to Casey, Jennifer's younger half sister, Jennifer. Casey and their middle sister, Heather have the same mother but different fathers, and there are three more sisters on Jennifer's father's side, so six sisters in total.
He was just the cool older sister, ahead of all of us, and just all things school and boys and going through things in life that we hadn't yet gone through at the time that they disappeared. And she was artistic and quiet. She was not super outgoing, just very spoken and intrinsic, and she loved to write. She loved animals and horses and spent a lot of time outdoors, just a country girl in Robertson County, Tennessee.
Jennifer's mom, Cathy, told Dateline that she and Jennifer were very close.
She said that they were a lot alike.
Which sometimes made them butt heads, mainly because she said Jennifer was headstrong like her. Casey told us that at age nineteen, Jennifer didn't go to college after high school. She continued to live at home and was trying to figure out her next move. That's when she met a guy named Billy. They had a brief relationship. Casey said that Jennifer wanted to be more serious, but that Billy didn't want to settle down, and so they broke up. Then a few months later, Jennifer found out that she
was pregnant with Adriana. At that point, she wasn't sure who the father was. Even though the pregnancy was a surprise, the family completely supported Jennifer, and Jennifer adored her daughter. She worked multiple jobs to make ends meet.
I took care of her as an infant while my sister worked like second and third fifth job. So I was very close with her and treasured my time with her that it was only two years. She was perfect, the biggest, brightest blue eyes, looked just like her dad, and just a tiny little thing, just innocent and beautiful and perfect. She's my own le niece and I have nephews. But definitely knew that we would have been close today if she were here.
At first, Jennifer believed that another man who she dated before Billy was Adriana's father, but a DNA test proved that he was not. Then, after a chance meeting at the fair, Jennifer became convinced that Billy was Adrianna's father.
They had ran into each other and he kind of looked down and was like, oh, my gosh, because she's a spitting image of him and is around the age of whenever, you know, they would have conceived her whatever. They met up after that, and he was like, I mean, she's clearly mine. It would you be okay? Like getting the fraternity test, and they did, and they just hadn't paid for the results yet and we didn't pay for those and get those until after they disappeared and found out he was her dad.
In two thousand and three, Kathy got a job opportunity in Las Vegas, so she and Casey moved. Jennifer stayed behind in Tennessee. She was living with her aunt Lisa. In the summer of two thousand and three, Jennifer met Joey Benton through her cousin, Jeffrey.
My sister Jennifer called my mom and was like, I'm at the boy. She met him through Jeffrey, my cousin. Jennifer and Adriana stayed with my aunt Lisa, which is just right down the road. From where Joey lived, and I guess like Joey and Jeffrey is my cousin's name. They were hanging out all the time. They were really good friends, and Jennifer got introduced to Joey and they fell in love and started dating. And yeah, they dated for.
A short time, but then Casey said that she and her mom got a call from Jennifer in October of two thousand and three that alarmed them.
Their relationship, you could describe it as volatile intense. My
sister called my mom. We were still in Las Vegas at the time, and she called my mom and was very upset, and she had just been dropped off at her grandparents' house because Joey had pulled a gun during an argument that they were having and threatened to hurt himself and hurt Jennifer and Adriana, and so he would like just get them out of here, and his mom took them and dropped them off out her grandparents, which is not too far away.
Jennifer and Joey broke up, and Casey and Kathy were so concerned they immediately moved back to Tennessee to be with her. Casey said that her mother believed that Jennifer would break off all contact with Joey.
That was part of okay, you are breaking up, you're moving in with us, So she wasn't supposed to be talking to him and he wasn't allowed around, so they weren't supposed to be seeing on together.
Despite that conversation, Jennifer and Joey at some point did reconnect and start seeing each other, and then in December of two thousand and three, Casey said she remembers the day that changed everything when Joey showed up at their house and said that Jennifer was coming to live with him. In December of two thousand and three, Casey said that Joey showed up at their house saying that Jennifer was coming to live with him.
He walked in our house even though he wasn't supposed to be there, and went down the stairs where Jennifer and Adriana had this apartment area they were living in our basement, and he went down there and Jennifer had packed up their things, and he started gathering their things and was taking them out to the truck. Then my mom walks in and was like, WHOA, You're not supposed to be here, she's not going with you, and we're trailing them through the house, and my Mom's like, that's
not a good environment. Jennifer's told me that there's drugs, there's guns everywhere within arm's reach in that house. It's not good for the baby. It's not even good for Jennifer's not good for my daughter. And he just looked right at my mom and says, you don't have a daughter anymore, bitch, and walked out of the house and goes put their stuff in the truck.
Casey said her sister left with Joey and took Adriana with her. On that day, Casey claims that Joey kicked one of their doors off the hinges. There was a police report filed of this incident. Over the next few months, Jennifer and her mom reconciled, but Jennifer only saw her family sporadically. She was living with Joey's family. She didn't have a job or a car, so she had to rely on someone to drive her places. Casey helped work
on a podcast called Missing in Hushtown. On that show, Casey said she and her mother worried that the Benton home was not a safe environment for Jennifer and Adriana. According to the podcast, Joey had issues in the past with drugs. His father, Joseph, also had a criminal record
with multiple felony charges related to drugs and weapons. So Casey said that at first Jennifer, Adriana, and Joey were living in a trailer on his parents' property, but then as it got colder, they moved into the three bedroom house with his parents, Cynthia and Joseph, and that's when Casey said things started escalating.
I don't know exactly when that move happened, but that's whenever things started to get tense and all the arguing started happening.
Casey said the last time that she saw her sister alive was on her sixteenth birthday, when Joey dropped Jennifer off so that she could see Casey and her mom.
Jennifer, I remember, came to our house and that's the first time we had seen her since everything that happened. In December. She started making up with mom, and Mom was babysitting Adriana and they were coming over on a regular basis, talking every day like usual.
After that, Casey said that to her knowledge, the dynamic at the Bitton House got worse.
There's an argument between Jennifer and Joey which Jennifer is asking him to move out of his parents' house and back into that shed born thing, and he's saying no, like you just won't hear her and doesn't want to. He doesn't think it's good to have a baby out there with no running water, which is not but just the fact that she wants to move out there at all is very telling of what she's trying to get
away from. In March, it's springtime, so it's starting to get warmer, like, let's move out there, but he just didn't want to do that. So that argument was happening the week of their disappearance. There was also jealousy stuff
going on. Joey was the baby of the family. He was the only kid left at home with his parents, and he was very close with his mom, and so there was a lot of jealousy there this other woman coming in potentially taking her son and asking him to move out of the house, So I think some of that was going on, and then just his mom being upset with him because he was playing house and pretending to be dad to a little girl that wasn't his.
Now, obviously we are only hearing one side of the story, the version that Jennifer told Casey and her mom, And to be fair to the Bittens, it is not uncommon to have arguments when you're living in a small home with a new baby with multiple people, especially since that baby was not their sons.
Yeah, just out of nowhere. In March, Adriana had gotten sick.
On Monday, March twenty second, two thousand and four, Jennifer called her aunt Lisa and told her that Adriana was sick. Lisa drove Jennifer and Adriana to.
The hospital, say visit to that night at North Crest Hospital and runt a bunch of tests on her, and she had an infection dajinaida.
This type of infection can be caused by things like diapers or soap and bathwater, and there are also other less innocent explanations. Ultimately, the pediatricians said they could not determine a cause for Adriana's diaper rash, but Jennifer was upset about something. I wonder did it have anything to do with this infection since it happened so close to
the date of her and Adriana's disappearance. Then again, Jennifer's family said she and the Bentons were already arguing before Adriana got sick, so the timing could have been simple coincidence. Multiple sources have stated over the years that Jennifer was considering leaving the Benton home during this time. On Tuesday, March twenty third, Jennifer met her mom, Kathy, and Joey outside of a Dollar General store. Kathy gave Jennifer a
homemade cream for Adriana's rash. She said she and Jennifer talked about bringing Adriana to stay with Kathy the following weekend, but that never happened because that meet up outside the Dollar General was the last time Kathy saw Jennifer and Adriana. The last time Kathy talked to her daughter was on the next day, March twenty fourth. According to Kathy, Jennifer was upset over a fight that she had with a member of Joey's family. There were multiple phone calls made
on March twenty fifth and next week. In two of this story, we're going to go into much more detail about every single version of the story.
That was told.
Casey told us what she had heard about those phone calls.
On Thursday, March twenty fifth, Jennifer and Adriana were at joe and his parents' house and Joey was at work that day. He had went to work with my cousin in Franklin, Kentucky, which is like thirty forty minutes north of where their house was. Joey worked with his dad a lot and his dad's friends and they did construction contract work, so they did steel work for commercial buildings. They put up those big racks we see in Costco,
like big shelves. So he was at work and had ridden to work with my cousin that day, and Jennifer made a couple phone calls. So round eleven o'clock on that Thursday, she talked to her dad, which it was super uncommon for her to talk with her dad during the day because her dad worked, and she said, I'm scared, Dad, and he said, of what, and she said, Joey's mom. She's acting weird. And so he remembers that on that phone call, but he remembers the baby playing in the background.
You could hear like cartoons on the TV. And then he also remembers hearing someone approach Jennifer while they were on the phone. On her call like walk up to her and say something. But he didn't hear what they said, but she said stop, I'm talking to my dad, and he thought that it sounded like a woman's voice.
The details of that call are stated in a civil lawsuit that was launched by Jennifer's family. The lawsuit stated that Jennifer told her dad that quote, she was scared of her boyfriend's mother and that Cynthia was quote acting weird end quote. Again, a civil lawsuit is only one side of the story. We did reach out to Joey and Cynthia Benton. Joey did not reply. Cynthia replied that she had no comment, but in a court filing they have denied the allegations in this civil lawsuit. We know
that Joey left work at some point. He claimed that he, Jennifer, and Adriana drove around. Joey had told police that during that drive, he and Jennifer decided to end their relationship. Then he dropped Jennifer and her daughter off at that gas station to be picked up by a friend. Jennifer's aunt, Lisa told Dateline that Jennifer also called her on Thursday, March twenty fifth, and told her she didn't want to
live at the Benton house anymore. She said she was going to tell Joey that day that she was leaving.
Jennifer's aunt said.
Jennifer asked her aunt if she did leave, if she could come to her house. Her aunt said, of course. Lisa said that she would leave out a spare key for Jennifer. Lisa went into a job interview, but when she got home, the key was still there and there was no sign of Jennifer. On March twime twenty six, no one in Jennifer's family had heard from her, which Casey said was very unusual. They started calling the Benton home repeatedly, but Casey said no one answered. Then on
March twenty seventh, Cathy reported her daughter missing. Pulice did talk to Joey, since the Bentons were some of the last people known to have seen Jennifer a live, Lisa told Dateline she finds it implausible that Jennifer would get into a vehicle with someone and disappear with her daughter when she had authors from family members to stay with him, and even if she had, she and Casey believe that Jennifer would have called them to let them know where
she was. Jennifer's cousin and Lisa's son, Jeffrey Grayson, was the cousin who Jennifer had met Joey through. He and Joey were friends. He was at work with Joey that day. Jeff told Dateline that he talked to Joey at work that day. He confirmed that Joey got a call and had to leave. He told Dateline quote, it was really fast. It was really something happened. You know, we gotta go, I gotta go. You know, it was really really, really really urgent end quote. Casey says that at the time,
members of her family talked to Joey. She claims that he told their family slightly different stories about what had happened to Jennifer.
Casey claims that on the day when.
Jennifer went missing, there was a bonfire party and both Jeffrey and Joey were present at that party. She claims that Joey told her cousin Jeffrey, that Jennifer was with a friend. For years, nothing seemed to be happening with this case, but in twenty thirteen it made headlines again. The Robertson County Police Department posted details on their website.
They posted quote, the investigation led deputies to the Robertson County home of Jennifer's boyfriend Joey Benton, where Jennifer and Adriana had been living with Benton in an outbuilding on the property. Joey Bitten claimed that on the evening of March twenty fifth, two thousand and four, Jennifer asked him to take her to a grocery store in Cross Planes to use the phone.
End quote.
The post said Jennifer told police that after he drove Jennifer and Adriana to a grocery store so Jennifer could use the phone, he then drove them to a local excellent station and dropped them off. The post had a few more details. The post read quote, Joey said he pulled across the street and watched as a white four door car pulled up and Jennifer and Adriana got inside.
End quote.
The Robertson County Sheriff's office stated that these stories that Joey dropped Jennifer and Adriana off at the gas station or that they had been at the grocery store. Quote were never independently corroborated, despite countless hours of investigation and
numerous interviews end quote. The department's website confirmed the last person known to have spoken to Jennifer was her father, Michael, at approximately eleven am on March twenty fifth, four and that Michael quote told detectives that his daughter spoke of arguing with Joey Bitton's family and that she looked forward to seeing him in Manchester on the following Sunday end quote. There were more details on the website that Casey said
her family wasn't aware of before then. For example, police stated that Joey said he saw Jennifer again the next day, on March twenty six, two thousand and four. The department website reads, quote, Jennifer showed up back at his property, collected her belongings, and said that she needed some time away end quote. And the police announced that they were reclassifying the disappearance of Jennifer and Adriana from a missing
person's case to a homicide. There are a lot of questions about what went down on March twent twenty fifth, two thousand and four. Police confirmed a few facts. They did confirm Jennifer talk to her father and her aunt, Lisa said on the day she disappeared, Jennifer also called her, telling her about arguments in the Benton home and about potentially leaving. Who called Joey at work that day to tell him to come home? Was it a member of Joey's family or could it have been Jennifer telling him
to come back to the house again. We're going to go more in depth on the phone calls and get into exact details and conflicting stories in part two next week. There have been several searches done of Joey and his family's property. They own multiple acres of land along Owen's Chapel Road, and in the years since Jennifer and Adriana went missing, Casey says that they have built a log cabin on the property. She said Joey still lives on
the property and so does his mother, Cynthia. The case went radio silent again for a long time after two th thirteen. Then on March twenty seventh, twenty twenty four, days after the twentieth anniversary of Jennifer and Adriana's disappearance, police.
Raided the Benton property.
They executed a search warrant and announced that Joey's father, Joseph Benton Senior, was facing over forty charges, including possession of explosives, multiple weapons, and, most terrifyingly for Jennifer's family, sexual exploitation of a minor. According to court records, this happened after a twenty year old picture was discovered of what was described as a child in a sexual situation. Because Joseph was a fellain, having weapons was a violation
of his parole and so he was immediately arrested. It was later announced that the picture of that child was not Adriana and that the raids actually had nothing to do with Jennifer and Adriana's case. The timing of the fact that the house got raped basically on the twenty year anniversary was just a crazy coincidence. Once again, Jennifer's family was anguished at the lack of progress. Casey and
her family have always continued to fight for answers. In twenty eleven, Cathy started a Justice for Jennifer and Adriana Wick's page on Facebook. Casey has helped with the page since the beginning, and eventually she took over and in the last few years Casey told me she started doing even more of her own investigation. She told me that after over twenty years, she decided to go back over everything and see if there was anything that she could learn, and incredibly, Joey agreed.
To talk to her.
Whenever I picked up the investigation a couple of years ago, I just decided I'm going to talk to everybody all over again, and everybody Joey of course, as one of those people. And so last year, before the girl's twenty aeth anniversary and before the raid at their house and everything, I had started to make contact with him and asked him if he would talk to me, and after the raid he agreed to. So we got on a phone call.
The phone call lasted for about an Hour's my first time talking to him, and he was seemingly very helpful, and he was very cordial. I went about the conversation like with and you were one of the last people that knew my sister very well like I was young. She didn't share parts of her life with me that she would have with you, like you know, I want to know about her, I want to know about y'all's relationships. I want to know about you. You know, like, what
were y'all's plans and stuff? And he told me on that call that they loved each other, that he loved Jennifer and Adriana, that they had plans to get married, that they had plans to have another baby. Those were recent plans at the time the girls disappeared, and that's what they were planning then, And so he shared all of that with me, and then I was able to ask him the story that you told dropping them off at the gas station and everything, like was that true?
And he said, yes, yes, that's true. All that's true. I did what she asked me to do. I took her where she told me to take her, and that was back. And when I got off that phone call, I just remember thinking, like am I wrong? Like are we looking at the wrong person here? Like did someone pick her up in that white car? Or was it someone else that new Jennifer that we're just overlooking, you know, started to like really question myself.
On May third, twenty twenty four, Casey set up a meeting with the District Attorney's office and said that she was surprised when after the lunch break, the DA told her they would have to leave because Joey was coming in to talk to them.
They ended up interviewing him for hours, and he said that he was ready to tell everyone everything. So that's what he did for the next couple of hours, and we just kind of waited and waited, and then that meeting ended and our law enforcement team came out and just said, we've got a lot of work to do, and that's where that left off.
And then Casey and her family learned that when Joey talked to law enforcement, he revealed some shocking information, something that they had never heard before.
Joey and his sister reached out to us after that meeting, and that's whenever they started sharing a location with us that Jennifer and Adrianas remained to be found.
Casey claims that Joey said that on the day he got that phone call and rushed home on March twenty fifth, two thousand and four. When he got home, Jennifer and Adriana were already dead, so he gave law enforcement information
about their alleged locations while not admitting any guilt. We don't know exactly what story Joey told law enforcement, but after joe So we spoke to the DA law enforcement did search a location, reportedly the coordinates provided by Joey and his sister, looking for Jennifer and Adriana's remains, but nothing was found at that location. Then Casey said that Joey wanted to meet with Jennifer's mother in person.
He wants to meet with my mom face to face, and we had already been on a phone call before, but he's like, I'd rather not do a phone call. I need to tell her that's to her face. And so my mom goes to meet with him locally in Springfield, and I'm on speakerphone, and she sits down with him for about two hours, and he just jumps right into it and starts telling us what happened that day. And I don't share a lot about what he says because I believe it's just another story that's been told in
a way that benefits him. But what I do share is that he said whenever he got home from work that day on Thursday, March twenty fifth, two thousand and four, that Jennifer and Adriana were already dead and that they died at his home. So I do share that, and he did go into details with Mom about how they died, and he did go into details about what came after, which is I mean, those are horrible things that I just won't share.
Casey made it clear that she absolutely does not believe Joey's version of the story that day. But what did happen that day and what's the state of the police investigation now? With all these different stories out there. After Jennifer's family heard about the raid, including getting the information about Joseph being charged with sexual exploitation of a minor, the Wicks family decided to take the case to civil court.
In twenty twenty five, the Wicks family filed a civil lawsuit in Robertson County Circuit Court against the Benton family, Joseph Benton, his wife, Cynthia Benton, and Joey Benton. They are seeking a jury trial for damages in connection with
Jennifer and Adriana's deaths. The civil suit read quote the wrongful acts of William, Joey Benton, Joseph Benton, and Cynthia Benton, including the acts of killing Jennifer and Adriana Wicks, of hiding their bodies, and of otherwise hiding or destroying evidence to impede the investigation into their deaths have been intentional, fraudulent, reckless,
and malicious end quote. And it gives more alleged details about those arguments that took place between Jennifer and the Benton family, including the fact that in the day before Jennifer and Adriana disappeared on March twenty fourth, two thousand and four, Kathy could hear Jennifer quote screaming in the background and was told by Jennifer Wicks that Cynthia Benton had thrown her, Jennifer and Adriana's dinner outside and told them they could eat like dogs.
End quote.
It's very important to note here Joey and Cynthia have never spoken publicly about this case. They have completely denied any of these allegations. In a response to the Wicks family lawsuit filed on July ninth, Joey and Cynthia say they had no knowledge of involvement in or connection with the disappearance of Jennifer or Adriana end quote. Neither Joey nor Cynthia, nor anyone connected with the Minton family has ever been arrested or charged in connection with Jennifer or
Adriana's disappearance. According to court documents. Cynthia said she is not communicated with Joseph Benton since his release from jail after the raid in March, and again when we reached out to Cynthia Benton, she told us that she had no comment. Joseph Benton Senior was sentenced to a year as a result of his charges on weapons and sexual exploitation of a minor. His sentence included time served, so he was immediately released, but he did have to follow
the conditions of his probation. Joseph reportedly missed his first probation hearing and after that he disappeared. Cynthia Bitton had filed for divorce and also in order of protection from Joseph while he was behind bars, so she and Joey have told police after Joseph was released from prison they.
Had not seen him.
No one saw any trace of the sixty eight year old for months until a few months ago on July fourth, twenty twenty five, when a severed leg was found at soul for Fort Creek in Springfield, about ten miles from the Benton home. Forensic testing revealed the leg was Joseph Benton Seniors. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me
Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show
on Instagram at Helen gonepod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five at six seven eight seven four four six one four five
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