THE KILLING SEASON-Alex French

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year old Linda Benson and her baby daughter Kelly. For Jim Fromm and Doug Rushing, the two young detectives assigned to the case, the investigation is a chance to earn their stripes and prove their metal. At first, from and Rushing page the woman's mercurial husband, a pipefitter who works outside of town, as the primary suspect. But as their case against Steve Benson unravels, the detectives find themselves short

on leads and running out of time. With the city on edge and anxious for answers, a notorious serial killer goes on the lamb, and yet another young woman and

her children turn up dead. In The Killing Season, Acclaim journalist Alex French traces the story of the Benson murders from the night Linda and Kelly's bodies are found strewn across their second floor apartment to an improbable discovery made more than thirty years later that enabled a new breed of detectives to crack the case and bring closure to

those who'd watched justice slip away. Writing in taught atmospheric prose, French has crafted at heart pounding tale of tragedy, resilience, and redemption set against the burning red vistas of the American Southwest. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Killing Season with my special guest, journalist and author Alex French. Welcome to the program and thank you for agreeing this interview. Alex French, thank you so much for having me.

had worked the case back then and had you know, had never left town, and and you know, for a long time they were sort of known as the guys who weren't solving these murders that they were assigned to solve and and they they had both sort of you know, for years and years never really been able to.

on them. They were both young, you know, in their early twenties, and I I contacted them immediately and they said, you know, gee, we'd love to tell our story, but you know, we've got to do this whole trial thing, and you know, there are appeals afterwards, and you know it's probably going to be a couple of years before before we can speak to you.

what story would you tell? And I just couldn't stop thinking about rushing and from so I contacted them right around the time I contacted them, like I think a week after the perpetrator's final appeal was denied and they were able to speak to me.

and for all sort of intense purposes. It seems as though Linda Benson was sort of this or her name was Linda Ketch him before she took his last name, really settled him down. She was a you know, I sort of spent a lot of time while I was you know, reporting this, trying to sort of get a hold on her personality, and she seems to have been a just a genuinely sweet young lady. I think, you know, she really had maybe the saddest life of anybody that I think I've ever you know, not that I ever

met her, but encountered just hearing stories about her. You know, her father died when she was two, He dropped dead in a duck blind. They were from Nebraska. They moved to Colorado with Linda's stepmother, her mother, and I'm sorry her mother and her stepfather, a guy named Tim Right, who was a degenerate alcoholic and abusive to her. When she was sixteen, Lawrence paid, uh, you know, her mother an ultimatum, basically saying, it's either the kids or me,

So she kicked the kids out of the house. There was abuse, you know, I mean, she just had her you know, a couple a couple of months before lind did. I her sister died of a you know, sort of a strange drug overdose. And I think she was just a you know, sort of a sweet, sad woman, you know, sort of twenty four year old stay at home mom. But yeah, I think she was just a sweet, sort of a sad woman. And I think she and Steve were just doing the best that they could.

you know, twenty five minutes from the Utah line. It is a really a striking place for much of the day. The the entire atmosphere there sort of glows vermillion. There's the Colorado National Monument is there, and it is it is sort of mesa and butte and high desert for as far as the eye can see.

you've got guys coming home from Vietnam. It seems like sort of oddly, everybody I spoke to had some some story about a young man that they knew back then that died in a drunken wreck. You know, I think alcoholism was fairly rampant. It was also this sort of place where when men crossed each other there was a fight. There was no sort of shoving, They just fought.

in Vietnam. So there was that sort of that, you know, the the that sort of tension of like having been in war, having been a soldier, you know, sort of you know, kind of the widespread loss of like you know, white male privilege in terms of you know, we're talking about a generation of guys who had sort of been betrayed by or you know, felt like they had been betrayed by the the command structure in Vietnam, women's live was big, you know, sort of we were on the

sort of the sexual revolution was sort of in in full progress, and around town, you know, there was a Chicano movement was sorting to sort of was starting, was beginning to sort of gather scheme. So It's Grand Junction in nineteen seventy five is sort of a town that is small and yet growing and also sort of seems to be a bit of a pressure cooker in terms of in terms of crime.

So they spent you know, their days at the park or you know sort of in the in the mornings they would go and they would take their kids for a walk, and then in the afternoon they would do yogan one of the apartments and they sort of you know, since they they lived sort of one on top of the other, you know, they would just keep their doors open and sort of run up and down the stairs.

sort of revolved around motherhood. You know, there wasn't a lot of there wasn't a lot of kind of intense intimate personal talk about about you know, sort of about their lives. It was you know about sort of their their lives beyond sort of the most the more quot hittying details, you know, when they had some other friends that that I think she filled the more in that stuff. But but more, Maureen is really the closest person to to Indo at that time. And and sort of Gary

Senior worked out of town. I think he was a coal miner up north, uh, not far from where Steve worked. But they didn't really like Gary Senior. He was sort of abrasive, uh you know again, sort of a boisterous, a boisterous drinker. So yeah, they had they had a really they had a really lively social life there. You know, a lot of sitting out on the patio, you know, a lot of a lot of beer drinking, and and and and and sort of soft drugs and having fun.

So every Sunday at around four am, he would get out of bed and uh he'd either and he would drive up to Craig with a guy named Harold Railey, and you know, they they'd work the week Steve would camp out and you know, when it was warm enough, he would pop a tent out by uh was it Otter Creek up up by the yamp or out by the Yamper River, and he would wake up in the morning and he'd fish for his breakfast, and then he'd go to work, and then he'd go back to his

campfite campsite and fish for his dinner. And he saved a lot of money doing that. During the winter, he would share a hotel room with you know, eight or ten other guys and they would split the bill eight or ten ways. And you know, he was he was really sort of working for the weekend, if you know what I mean. You know, like his he had lending Kelly down down in Grand Junction, so he was sort of you know four days there, you know, three at home or or something like that.

and they were really supportive. For my first three or four days in Grand Junction, they opened up a conference room in the courthouse building, and they just brought in all the all the files, all the photos that you know, the crime scene photos, the autopsy photos, all of the police reports, all the all of the notes that the cops actually took back in nineteen seventy five. You know, Doug Rushing still had his stuff too, and he allowed

me to take a look at that. But I just had an unbelievable amount of you know, every time the police would would interview somebody, they would fill out sort of an interview report, and you know, all the sort of the stuff that I read about, you know, kind of Scheve's difficult history with women came from those police reports. You know, they came from ex's or from people who

knew an X or something like that. By all accounts, you know, other than sort of from talking to Linda's family, I mean, they they they are sort of under the impression that Steve was still is still Steve is they think Steve is the killer.

temper kind of in a drunken rage one night. But but other than that, you know, he never you know, they never heard of him, you know, sort of touching Linden in a way that she didn't want to be touched, or you know, there were never you know, Bruce Marks. I know, the police didn't pull up any you know, hospital reports for her with with you know, a broken nose or a you know, a black guy or anything

like that. So so sort of from what I gather, it was kind of a you know, kind of a quiet, gentle relationship.

Craig down to Grand Junction. About an hour outside of Grand Junction, he realizes that the keys that he'd left in the glove par the glove box of the car that he was trading in, also had his house key, so that when he arrived back to the chateau, he

was locked out. And that sort of started a I think must have been the most horrifying sort of fifteen minutes of his life where he's sort of, you know, realizing something's wrong and isn't able to you know, get inside, and he you know, began to ask ask the neighbors, you know, have you seen Linda?

and the space was just a little bit too small for her for her to fit into, so she was kind of tinned up against the wall or against the

the bureau a little bit. Kelly was in There was sort of a strange hallway in the apartment, and Kelly was in the the sort of the strange it was kind of there was the living room, and then you would walk through the living room into this hallway, and this hallway had doors for Stephen in his bedroom, and then for a bathroom, and then the bathroom adjoined to Kelly's Kelly's room, and Kelly was sort of halfway between the hallway and the bathroom, and she'd been stabbed in

a in a sort of similar similar fashion, pretty brutally, and I think six times.

he was eventually let go. You know, I think he was the I think the police sort of rightly assessed that he was just a complete and total shock and and was also at the same time a little bit aggravated that the police were really kind of you know, the the police were looking him at you know, at him as their primary suspect and and made very little secret of that. Now, the crime scene, there was a lot of blood and there, and there were there were blood in places that led the police to believe that

the killer had cut himself. They found uh, sort of bloody handprints on the wall in the living room by a light switch. They found you know, drops of blood kind of all over the kitchen, and you know, they found you know, I mean sort of this is sort of blood in addition to kind of like your average kind of cast off spray. So you know, so they

had a pretty good idea. There were sort of you know, two plump droplets on Linda's chests that you know, led the police to believe that, you know, the killer had sort of leaned down over her in blood on her. And so they you know, seeing that, they kind of immediately tried to type. You know, they took scrapings of the blood for for typing. So they also took blood from Steve Benson to to to match up to see

if they could match it up with the blood test. Still, you know, I'm fairly certain that if you were to talk to Doug Rushing or with Jim from the two detectives that investigated, I think they would tell you that fairly early on they didn't think that it was Steve Benson. Excuse me, I know from from told me on a number I'm sorry, not from Rushing, told me on another

on a number of occasions that you know. One one of the things that they learned at the police academy in Golden you know, years earlier, was that most of the time, when the bodies are just just sort of left at the crime scene, it's not a family member. Family members will try to or the theory that they were using were that sort of family members try to dispose of the bodies. They try to hide what they've done.

You know, maybe it's out of shame, but you know, they thought, you know, kind of family members will will frequently, you know, take the bodies away and try to hide them someplace.

skinny material under her fingernails. What they think happened was that it was an attempted rape, that the assailant had had entered the apartment, uh and and tried to rape her and she fought him off. And he ended up killing her. And you know, because this happened late at night, the struggle with the little girl who went out into the living room and saw this strange man in her house and you know, made a racket and he killed her.

And you know, I think, as far as I can tell, that's actually what happened, you know, and that for the most part was their theory sort of from this from the start, you know, nothing had been stolen Steve. Steve Benson's alibi was was really air tight. You know, there were time cards, there was not a lot of you know, there were time cards. There were witnesses who saw him

up around Hidden Colorado kind of hours earlier. There was no real solid reason to think it was Steve Benson other than you know, sort of you know, what what people were saying about Benson around town, and just the fact that, you know, they always look at the spouse first, and so I think the polices or the you know, the sort of Grand Junction police's assessment of what happened in that apartment from the beginning was fairly consistent and to this day, I think is actually what happened.

did a good job. The you know, the Grand Junction Police Department clearly did a very good job with the technology that they had available to them. So they were doing erology, which is, you know, blood typing, but that was kind of about it. You know, they could do fingerprints, but that was really you know, that was still a really time consuming and frequently fruitless you know sort of discipline. So yeah, I mean it was really just blood typing.

You know, blood typing and kind of on the ground police work.

and you or what was happening to them. You know, occasionally some some jogger in a park would would find some you know, a skull or some bones, or you know, a girl would wash up on a river and she'd been you know, you know, tortured and killed or you know, I mean, just just a terrifying time to live in

the West. And and Oliverson is this sort of she was gosh, twenty four and newly married, I think, and she'd had a fight with her husband, took her bike out and was last seen at a gas station where you know, kind of months later they discover Ted Bundy

used his credit card there that afternoon. But you know, Bundy is really sort of a catalyst for just a feeling of you know, just this this sort of feeling of fear that you know, he was he was grabbing girls everywhere, and and there was just that, there was just that atmosphere people were scared. This was truly nineteen seventy five, truly kind of the era of the drifter. You know, there were there were no there was no real way of you know, people you know, kind of

keeping cabs on each other. You know, there's no there are no cell phones, there are no you know, there are no real computers. It's not like the police are gonna you know, instantaneously be able to trace credit card receipts or you know, atm use or anything like that. And that's really what Ted Bundy was doing around that time, was sort of going on these hunting expeditions around uh, you know, Colorado and Utah, and so he's sort of he's sort of part of that Grand Junction also sits

on on Interstate seventy. It's the largest city between Salt Lake in Denver. So it's a major thoroughfare for all sorts of sort of uh, you know, unsavory guys who were passing, you know, you know, passing through town. I think that year, was it, two or three of the ten of the fbis most wanted were caught around you know, we're caught you know, on or around I seventy. You know,

there was a large transient population. I mean it was a really you know, like I said before, it was it was a small town that was bracing for an oil shale boom. There was sort of an influx of new money and just people started showing up in town. And nobody really knew who any of these new people were.

They were transience, you know, like I said, there were sort of truck drivers and you know, and and all these people, you know, all these people sort of stopping off and mixing with the locals, and you know, every so often there'd be you know, a big barfighter, you know, a stabbing. You know, things were really sort of about to go bad there.

stone went unturned. They went as far as they had the Chief of Detectives food to Quantico to meet with the FBI, and they did a you know, they had the behavioral analysis Unit was a kind of a new thing in nineteen seventy five, and so you know, the chief of Detectives went to Quantico to meet to spend a week with the behavioral Analysis unit, and he came back with a sort of a you know, generic sketch of a you know, like a mannequin, horny seventeen year

old with you know, like you know, associative disorder, you know, or an attachment disorder or something. You know, like they were looking for a young man who you know, did not like being in the in the in the boys locker room after Jim, and was into pornography and had maybe set fires and had maybe tortured animals, had you know, somebody would have tattoos or you know, they thought, gosh, you know, like they were looking for somebody who maybe

worshiped Satan. You know, they sort of this laundry list of you know, kind of one of the investigators would later call it sad scientific, wild ass guesses, you know. And and so yeah, I mean, they they were they just didn't have the technology to solve this case. At at their disposal. There was really nothing that they could

have done. You know, I'm not sure that I'm giving up too much by saying, like, you know, like one of those drifters that I was talking about was involved, and so yeah, I mean, you know, there there was literally nothing else that they could have done. I mean, they just were not getting an answer.

just had nothing. They just they you know, they they went after Linda's father in law, guy named Lawrence Hemrit, who was you know sort of you know, as I mentioned earlier, kind of a you know, a degenerate and an alcoholic, and he sexually abused Linda when she was young. And they couldn't, you know, they they couldn't get anything on him, like you know, he would lie about his alibi.

But then there was just nothing. There was nothing that they could put on him, you know, Rushing said to me once, like, you know, you can't lock a guy up for just being an asshole, and they just had nothing. You know, they wanted him, they wanted it to be him, I think really badly. You know, he was a really good suspect, and they just they just didn't have the evidence. They just they had, you know, they had all this

sort of blood evidence, this all that. You know, there was a droplet of blood from the crime scene that was on the outside of a checks box that was just a perfect sample of you know, perfect sample, perfectly placed. They found it, you know, they there.

So what is tell us about Agent Bob Perkins and the connection with Junction and what they do with this sort of information that they're getting from these other states about missing women and murdered women.

at all anywhere. And Perkins, Perkins just noticed that these girls all looked alike, you know, and they were all sort of you know, the ones who were recovered were you know, that all the same thing it had, you know, they had all died in sort of a similar manner, you know, brutally, and he just he started to formulate this theory that you know, all of these deaths were connected and that you know, that suspicion sort of links up with accounts of this guy named Ted who's driving

you know, a tanned beetle around the you know, around the Western States, grabbing girls. You know, there had been a couple of Bundy's potential victims got.

long that they parted in the middle. But uh, From and Rushing definitely checked on Bundy's whereabouts on the night of the on the night of the murders, and there was just no way that it could have been it could have been Bundy. He was another one that was actually fairly easy to eliminate. I think it was based on credit card records.

And and there's really not much you know, there's Grand Junction and there's sort of a couple resort towns along the way, but really really not much. Aspen, uh, you know, Telly Ride is not far. But yeah, it's kind of amazing. I mean just all the all, all just the concentration of evil around that time in that place is really staggering. It really is.

So I was sort of like really thinking about like two traditions and sort of you know, the Western and or you know, sort of the Border trilogy books, and also sort of you know, old detective novels. You know, I was reading the David Piece I read They read

the David Piece trilogy right around that time too. And the thing that I love about rushing in from as characters is that they're both you know, when this happened, they you know, they were both detectives, but they were still both like twenty three and twenty four years old, so they were really you know, they were kids. They were children, and they were you know, you know sort of and I was sort of trying to operate in this, you know, the tradition of like you know, the hard

boiled detective novel. But these guys were just like the softest boiled guys. The boiled guys.

really soft spoken, very sweet, very sensitive guy. And so, you know, they it was sort of fun to interact with those characters and sort of like try to understand how to completely innocent twenty three year old kids are dealing with this, you know, with these murders, and I and I and I really truly believe that they were really trying to just get by, you know, they were I think they were. They were really just trying to survive. They ran down you know, really every lead there was.

I mean, I think, you know, I think that they were two very different guys. You know, Doug is sort of soft spoken and from his sort of to this day sort of as a real chip on his shoulder, and they were, you know, they complimented each other. Well, you know, from is the first guy to sort of like knocked down the door, but Rushing wants to hang around a lot longer and sort of like look at evidence or he always wants to do the extra interview.

You know, he was really thorough, very thoughtful, very analytical cop and they really, you know, they ran it out. They ran it out to the end. From told me the day that he knew that they weren't going to catch.

pornographic materials sent to their house. And on the top of the list was like From's best friend, who was just this really you know, gentle guy who there was no way that he had killed Linda Benz in just no way, and he knew it, and he you know, that was just sort of the endpoint for them, you know that that that that was was that afternoon that they realized they were never going to catch this guy, that he was just gonna walk free and get away

with it. And yeah, that went cold. It went it really went cold kind of about a month and a half after the bodies were discovered, or so, you know, a month month and a half after that, you know, Jim and Doug sort of stopped working you know, eighteen hour days and you know, started playing golf again.

on Uay Avenue, not far from the Chateau apartments. They lived across the street from a young woman who was in her early twenties and had two boys. Her name was Linda Miracle. And I think it was in mid August, about a month or so after the Benson gals turned up dead, pat Botham, along with Linda Miracle and the Miracle boys vanished and just you know, nobody knew where they went, I mean sort of. It was clear that

they were snatched from Linda's house. Uh you know, there was food still on the table, and you know, I think one of the burners on the stove was still going. But they just they didn't know where those two women had vanished too. They sort of thought, oh, you know, Pat Botham is you know, very unhappily married. Maybe they all took off, But you know that there were weird things like Pat Botham's kids were still there, and so were her glasses and her cigarettes, and one of her

shoes was still there. You know, like things that people presumably would take with them if they were, you know, bailing on an unhappy marriage were still in the house and so missing. You know, there was never ruled a homicide.

You know, nobody's you know, nobody, no homicide until the bodies were found gosh, I think six or seven weeks later, maybe, you know, like I think late October, right, and uh yeah, I mean there was just a sort of an orgy of evidence pointing to can Botham blood on his car, you know, wire, you know, the the when the bodies were recovered, they were the hands were bound with a sort of a pretty heavy age wire. Yeah, and so they you know, they found matches on wirecutters and wire.

But again, you know, I mean, what I really wanted.

it's got to be somebody else. And and and what's going on that all of these all that all of these women are disappearing, And so somehow from and Rushing end up investigating this, this this Botham case, you know, and to this day, you know, Botham has since been mister Botham has since been twice convicted of these murders, and to this day, there are just there's a you know, a large faction of people around town that are are

absolutely sure that he's innocent. You know, that it was somebody somebody else.

guy either, you know. I mean, it's just there was just sort of there was no relief even sort of you know, I sort of often feel like, you know, like an arrest, justice is something that frequently will offer relief, and there was just no relief like that either, you know, And and sort of I think the police department really

really almost lost control of the town. The people. People were so scared, and I think in a lot of ways that's what I really wanted the first half of this book to be about, as sort of a town unraveling, you know that that certainly happens, you know, and and sort of that that real feeling of fear around town sort of pervades until the middle of like nineteen seventy six or sort of a fall of seventy six when when mister Boffam is convicted.

and they were really into like racing hot rods. Uh and and they Goad and his buddy Clint were in the parking lot at the chateau one night and they saw a guy, you know, the night that when the bench is murdered, they see a guy sort of like leave the apartment building, and you know, it looked like he was sort of like, you know, sort of clutching at his hand or something, and God got it, gave

him a good book in the eye. And and the way God put it to me, he said, I thought we were gonna rumble, Like the guy just was scary looking and looked at him very aggressively. And yeah, so I think I think he waited like what like six six months or eight months to contact the police with this,

and he was sure that it was Ted Bundy. The funny thing was that, you know that that testimony was largely dismissed because there was some information that Steve was sort of like God was the phrase for this, like visually unreliable, like he had once he had once claim to see an airplane crash on a golf course and swore that he saw this airplane crash on the golf course, but no airplane ever crashed on the golf course in grand junctions. So they were just sort of like, you know,

this guy's this guy's fruit loops. You know, he's sort of nuts, so that you know, his testimony was eventually dismissed. But yeah, I mean they ran down everything. I mean, and it seemed like the mess In case, which was officially closed in seventy six, every every couple of years somebody would come forward and claim to know something, and they would, you know, there was a you know, one of Linda's mom or Linda's mom, Barbara had had a husband.

She had several husbands. I think she'd been married like eight or nine times, but she had a you know, one of her sort of many husbands came to the you know, the police and like, you know, seventy nine or eighty and said, I think Barbara did it. You know, I mean it was always sort of you know, it was always sort of being opened and shot and you know, they look into it or you know, they'd be a

lead and they'd go and get the boxes. But yeah, sort of strangely, they yeah, they just never they never got their guy.

open up cold cases. And so what they did was they called in you know, a lot of these old cops had stayed around, guys that had had you know, sort of headed up the department in the seventies, had stayed around Grand Junction, especially a guy named Ron Smith who was kind of the chief of detectives, and he he ran a kind of a private detective agency after retirement, and and you know, all these guys talk. It's a it's a really small, really tight knit community as is.

But they came to him and they said, you know, we've got this, we've got this spedual money, and we're sort of, you know, we're looking for a cold case to investigate. Do you does anything sort of strike you as as appropriate, and he said, oh, yeah, you know the Benson case. They asked you know, they asked another the police asked another retired detective. He gave them the same answer. You know, they got to rushing and from

and they gave him the same answer. So it was very clear early on that there was gonna be a lot of a lot of evidence that maybe they could use. I think it was right around Thanksgiving of two thousand and eight or so they called in a guy named Larry Bullard. And if there was ever a gentleman who is like sort of made and crafted by the Lord to be a law enforcement agent, it was this guy.

I mean, he is, you know, sort of big strawberry blonde guy with you know, sort of fists like hammers and huge forearms and the thundering voice and the you know, gigantic mustache. And he had been you know, the head of forensics and you know, at a police department and in gosh, New Mexico for years, years and years before retiring and moving to Grand Junction and starting a second career in law enforcement. And they thought, and he would just ended up being the you know, sort of the

perfect person to spearhead this thing. You know, he took all these boxes of evidence, you know, all the exhibits, all the notes, and you know, organized and digitized things and really recreated that the the investigation from nineteen seventy five that from rushing in this sort of other small team of detectives that worked with them put together for

the Benson case. Eventually, you know, his his uh, I think sort of as he was getting it sort of happened as he was getting to the end of his own investigation, but they got that's when the the DNA match came back, and so it's sort of it sort of really worked neatly for them in terms of, you know, the timing that you know, Bullard finishes his investigation, he sort of has he sort of has come to the same conclusion that the cops in seventy five did you

know that there was just nobody. It didn't make sense that anybody around town did this. You know, everybody had sort of these buttoned up alibis. You know that finally they get sort of you know, they get the result from the DNA test and it was just somebody they never suspected.

like five or six years for that first offense. And on the on the on the very day that he was released, he was picked up again and brought to and extradited to Colorado for a rape that he committed like a day or two after his after his first assault, and he pled, he played, you know, he pled guilty and went went away again for you know, another seven years, and then you know, sort of drifted around and ended up in Grand Junction and was passing bad checks and

did another four years. And it was just sort of he was just in and out over and over again, and just yeah, I mean I can't think of anything to say about it other than he was just a real like just a really rotten character. You know, during during my research, I actually uncovered a really sort of gosh, probably a three or four hundred page stack of letters that he had exchanged.

Here's a guy who's sort of in his life, has never really done anything and has a really you know, high opinion of himself and nothing of it, nothing is ever his own fault, and you know, there are sort of all these really bad sexual innuendos, and I mean just really a guy who's clearly not comfortable with who he is, and he's you know, you can tell he's you know, he's lonely and he's desperate, and you know you can sort of every once in a while you

sort of like he'll write something and it gives you a glimpse of sort of like you're sort of reminded, like, oh, this guy is a serial rapist.

were sort of a mess together. You know, I think they were in a lot of ways. It seems like they were kind of perfect for each other, and just that they really were kind of a mess together.

she went with him until eventually they broke up. And then he committed another rape and he was in jail and from fessionally think it was from seventy eight to like ninety eight or so, or seventy seventy seventy six to ninety eight. Yeah, when he was released.

the culprit. And what the police that needed to do was they needed to figure out if Jerry Nemnic was ever in Grand Junction at that time where he lived, to see if there was any sort of proximity to the Bens in place, if he had known Linda Benson,

and what was the connection. Because they didn't have a murder weapon, so they needed all this they you know, and and they also needed a DNA sample to test against the sample that they had from nineteen seventy eight, anti test against the samples that were taken from Underling when his fingernails and from the bread on the on the cereal box. And so they dispatched these two detectives, Crockett and Bennett, both really great guys from Grand Junction.

And these guys start traveling in the United States tracking down people who were friends with Jerry in the seventies. And they got these those names through looking at the visitor's logs at the prisons where Jerry had done time and just sort of then by word of mouth, so they you know, and and they sort of worked in

these circles. So at the center of the circle was Jerry, and since they didn't want to they didn't want to tip them off about the investigation, they started on the outside of the circle, which is a sort of a common device or sort of a common strategy that a lot of journalists like wood Word would use. And so they sort of started circling Jerry, and so the first round of people that they wanted to talk to were

the ones who were sort of farthest from him. So it was actually they started by talking with the women that he had raped in the past and sort of figured out what was his mo and then they eventually, you know, eventually, you know, they talked to some other people that sort of knew Jerry in the seventies, and then just when they thought that they were getting a little too close, that's when they got their arrest warrant and brought nemnic in. So after they brought nemnic in,

they and they had him in custody. That's when they got on the road and they started talking to people that they knew were really close with nemnic in the seventies, and eventually they they get to this sort of little town, was it Winnetka? Is that where Sandy's from, Yeah, sort of on the border of Illinois and Indiana, And she lives in this sort of scrapy old house and she's clearly a very field lady. They could you know, they could smell the cats from outside, and she just had

just very little memory. I mean, I think it had sort of been erased by a, you know, a life of boozing, and she she just was not really able to recall anything at first. And then you know that they thought. I think Bennett and Crocker going into that interview had thought that that was going to be the

one that sort of wrapped it up for them. Oh, yeah, you know, we knew Linda Benson from X or you know, Jerry took an a leg to her because why or yeah, we used to have threesomes with the Bensons or there, you know what I mean. There would be something, some some recognition of the name. You know, this interview was gonna was going to yield some results for them. And Sandy didn't remember anything until the next morning when she calls Bennett on his cell phone and says, you know,

I do remember having an injury. He came home one night, and I remember because he was wearing my favorite He had these Sherbert yellow Sherbert yellow nylon pants that I used to love on him, and they were covered in blood and then she says, you know, and then the next day we took off to Denver, and so they you know, I think Crocker and Bennett then go to Rhode Island and they find the guy that Jerry and Sandy had stayed with in Denver, and it turned out

that you know, Sandy could never remember the adjust where they lived in right, because they were trying to establish proximity. And so the guy that they were staying with in Denver was this guy named George who had worked in the liquor store, and Jerry had passed two bad checks

in this liquor store. And the guy George, who walked, you know, works behind the counter and was putting Jerry up, had saved these checks for thirty four years just because he was positive that he was going to encounter Jerry Nemnic at some other point in his life and wanted to be like, I want my fifty bucks, so I mean and and on these checks, Jerry had scribbled out their address in Denver and had written on the checks twenty eight to fifty Texas Avenue, Grand Junction, Colorado, and Crockett,

seeing that, immediately knew that twenty eight to fifty Texas is about is a little is a little it's a little trailer on a sort of on a corner and a pretty nice little development, like a pretty nice little trailer park.

the deal for those guys was was getting that address. Coincidentally, you know, sort of some of the the the the police. One way one place where sort of the police department had failed was there was an old cop named Wilcox that lived right across the street from from Jerry and and Sandy, and he said that you know, they were screaming and fighting and sort of labored noises coming from the Nemnic residence all the time, and Wilcox just never

looked into Jerry. I mean, it never never occurred to him even after he saw him with a you know, with the bandage on the hand to look into him.

that the jury might buy it. And then Nemnic takes the stand and gives just sort of the most outrageously really just the most outrageous testimony in the history of perjury.

I mean, just you know, really just unbelievable. He claims that, like, you know, he's at the bar one night and he gets talking to what is it, like a six foot seven Indian and he can't tell if this this you know, this Indian is male or female, and the Indian says, oh, hey, you know, well, you take me to get a little marijuana. And so they go to the chateau and then the guy disappears and he waits around and he's got a piece.

So he goes into the chateau hallway to look for this six foot seven Indian, but you know, like he doesn't see him, but he does see that there's a door open, and it happens to be the door where Lindon and Kelly are and just as he walks in, he sees he sees a figure who he can't tell if that figures male or female coming at him with a knife raised over his head, and Jerry's got to fight the knife out of his hand, and he does.

The guy drops the knife and runs out of the apartment, and Jerry picks up the knife and throws it in the kitchen. That's how the blood got everywhere. And then he can see, you know, the bodies from from sort of that kitchen area, which is actually an impossibility because of because of the weird hallway that I was talking about earlier, the bodies were walked from view. And so he has this just I mean just really the most porous testimony ever and and is convicted. You know, I

think that was convicted fairly quickly. You know, I think that that jury spent a lot of time sort of going over things.

the Gilah Wilderness in New Mexico. And and so, you know, what struck me is just the way that these murders thirty five years ago, have just utterly destroyed lives, you know, like Jeeve Benson has has been on the has been sort of hiding from this. And I don't think hiding and I'm not saying that he's been hiding from it

because he's guilty of it. I think that what happened to him find finding finding those people who were, you know, the two people in the world that he loved the most so utterly wrecked him that he had to run away. You know, you know, uh Lindes, Linda's family, you know, Linda's Linda's stepsister and her little brothers. Like Linda's stepsister was just absolutely ruined by this. She went, she she went, She lost her mind, you know, she she had problems for years and.

one of those Dale Carnegie Conferences. They had one at the holiday and I think in Graham Junction or in Golden a couple of years back, and he got to thinking about you know, there was a question that he had to answer during one of the exercise, which was, you know, if you think really honestly with yourself, what is the most profound thing that has ever happened to you? Like, what is the thing that has changed your view of

the world most? And he thought and he thought and he thought, and rushing couldn't think of anything that had happened to him that was more important than that case. You know, same same with from you know, he he quit the force, or was sort of you know, asked to leave the force shortly after those shortly after those murders, or not too long after those murders, and he you know, opened up and has had a pretty success full run as an accountant. But again, you know, he would find

himself thinking about that case. What did we do wrong?

a neighborhood and a community as well too. So an incredible story for those that might want to contact to do you do Facebook? Do you have a website?