I must think of a better word. The Lancaster Township woman was playing golf on a July day at the Lancaster Country Club when she was asked to come in off the course. This orange thing was all around me. Menu. Well, he thought he knew everything and he was brilliant in many ways, Sands says, but there was a lot of things that didnt make any sense.. Thats the way Steve was.. Carol 's cause of death is unknown to us at this time. Shortly before his death in 1990, Harry Hitchcock the owner of Lancaster Leaf Tobacco Co. asked a longtime family employee, gardener Amos Sands, to visit his grandson in prison on his behalf. "Malevolent" is what the prosecutors for the state call 35-year-old Steven Benson. Steven Wayne Benson was an American double murderer of his mother, tobacco heiress Margaret Benson, and his brother, tennis player Scott Benson. No mental problems, he was just evil., The case garnered national attention, and four authors later wrote books about it. Many members of the family have disappeared from public view in the past 20 years. A maid testified that he was "the apple of his mother's eye." People had suspicions as to why, after having two children of her own, all of a sudden Mrs. Benson adopts a third.. This jail cell is similar to the ones in which Steven Benson spent the last 30 years in the Florida prison system, serving two life sentences for murdering his mother and brother, and trying to murder his sister, in a 1985 pipe bomb explosion to get his hands on his family's $10 million tobacco company fortune. Steven Bensons children - Elizabeth Benson, 5; Christopher Logan Benson, 5; and Natalie Nichole Benson, 4 - are entitled to inherit from their grandmothers estate, the judge said. Support local journalism. BOSTON (AP) _ Tobacco heiress Carol Lynn Benson Kendall, who survived a car bombing that killed her mother and adopted brother, has said under oath that the dead young man was actually her son, her attorney said today. And she also contradicted the wake testimony regarding bombs. * The prosecution's key evidence, along with the testimony of Steven's sister, were palm prints on sales receipts for pipe identical to that used in the bombs, as well as end caps. Benson was 33, just five years younger than Bennett at the time. As trial testimony brought out, Steven had started yet another company, Meridian Marketing, which was located about 30 miles away in Fort Myers, where Steven had just bought a new (and very large) house. Apparently, the idea was to cut down on speeches to the jury, and to speed things along. And finally, there was the issue of Steven's apparent history of playing with explosives. He doesnt know for sure why Benson has stuck with the public, and with him, all these years. Though police initially called the blast, caused by two pipe bombs, a big mystery, it didnt take them long to zero on one suspect: Steven Benson. Before the day was over, according to newspaper accounts, Steven had asked for and received a loan of $20,000 from his grandfather. He smiles with his attorneys on occasion when the jury is out, but the men he seems most comfortable with, the men he sometimes even kids with, are the huge-armed deputy sheriffs, his jailers. She had hoped he would get the death penalty. Carol Kendall currently lives in Hollywood, FL; in the past Carol has also lived in Norfolk VA. Other names that Carol uses includes Carol Lyn Falkiner, Carol Lynn Benson, Carol Lynn Benson-kendall, Carol Lynn Falkiner and Carol Lynn Kendall. Behind bars, Benson has worked in the laundry and on a painting detail. Young had several reasons to suspect Benson. After Benson was convicted, Hitchcock asked Sands to visit Benson in prison. And he complained. Her father, she says, was broken up by the entire affair. A month later, the Naples police arrested Steven Benson and charged him with two counts of homicide and one count of attempted murder. Your email address will not be published. I walk into a restaurant and people say, Didnt you do the Benson case? There was a local uproar over the thought that the public would be paying his bills, and in mid-January the judge reversed himself. Steven Benson is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 2, and prosecutors have asked for a life sentence. He said Mrs. Kendall, who was recovering from severe burns at her home in the Chestnut Hill section of Boston, recently told her teen-age sons about Scotts parentage, but never told Scott. The chief prosecutor, Jerry Brock, argued she had made conflicting statements in earlier depositions. But by late 1984 and early 1985, they argue, she was coming to the conclusion that bankrolling Steven was something less than sound. I guess he didnt want him to go to hell.. Then you had Scott as an aspiring tennis player, but ordering nitrous oxide to be delivered to the house like some people get milk, he said, so he could carry on with his girlfriend, who was a stripper.. An email has been sent with a link to confirm list signup. She is shown here in a photo shoot at. Carol Lynn Benson Kendall. FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) _ The estate of murdered tobacco heiress Margaret Benson should be shared equally by the children of the son who killed her and by her daughter, a judge has ruled. Nor was he surprised when prosecutors said Benson had murdered his mother and sister to get at the familys fortune. An aerial shot of the home is shown in the background. (Admitted to practice: 2002) Further, Kendall shall pay restitution of $1,075 to one client. Not Eligible to Practice Law in Florida . Shocked by the attack, she says that since then, her siblings have been completely uninterested in her physical and emotional well-being. The 12 members of the jury listen to arguments in the Florida courtroom where they convicted Steven Benson in 1986 of blowing up his family in a Chevy Suburban in the driveway of their Naples, Fla., home on July 9, 1985. (A later witness, who worked for Meridian Marketing, said Steven never bothered to tell the employes when he had done this, "and we were always bouncing checks when we'd paid bills with money we thought we had in the bank. Tragically, Hitchcock turned out to be right about his grandson. His sister, Carol Lynn, was badly burned in the blast but survived. Bensons wife never attended the trial. He just kept a straight face.. By the time the trial began, Steven Benson had been in jail for almost 11 months. David Ahntholz/Staff (Photo: David Ahntholz .da-), Ajuror compares a police artist's sketch of the man who bought pipe at Hughes Supply to a mug shot of Steven Benson. But Kendall, who was injured. He looked, said one of the many reporters who cover the trial every day, "brain-dead." Her daughter, Kendall, was. He parked it and positioned his family in it. All but 30 remain open investigations. Its still fresh in my memory, he said. Prosecutors argued that Margaret Benson was apparently beginning to face the growing evidence that Steven was spending beyond the limits of her frequent loans and the $3,000 a month she paid him as a "consultant" to the Meridian businesses. Under the law, jurors are not supposed to take this into consideration. Murphy s nephew, Steven Benson, was the only one to. Benson, they learned, had been pressuring his mother for money. I dont think he believed he belonged in there.. The Chevrolet Suburban was blown all to bits and pieces, with a body lying out on each side.. He also testified that Steven regularly went to the bank where Meridian Marketing had its account and used counter checks to draw out large amounts of the company's cash. He thought he was better than everybody else.. The attorney said, I want you to meet Steven Benson, she recalled. After his initial outburst, Benson became stoic and unemotional as the evidence was presented against him. She thought he had been embezzling family funds and had called her attorney to check into it. There was an error processing your request. He stared at her and walked away, said Kendall, who is now 70 and living somewhere in Florida. Not at her mother's house in Naples, for that has been sold, but behind several closed doors in the state's attorney's offices. . At the trial, the man with whom he'd spent that evening testified that Steven had not set up the meeting until 6:30 that same night. Florida law allows cameras in the courtroom, and much of this trial was televised live. The Trustees have not presented reasonable grounds for attributing the settlors scheme to their section of the trustee exercised on November 27, 1985, following the death of Ms. Benson. 3600 New York Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002, Biden migrant surge sets all-time record for most arrests at southern border, With its social media biz under siege, Facebook looks to build a new metaverse empire, Youngkin goes solo, McAuliffe leans on surrogates in home stretch of Va. governors race. But she didn't know its size, and she didn't know that Steven had made the down payment with a blank check she had signed and left behind for household expenses while she was on a cruise. When I see that, I pity people like that. He was 63, the same age his mother was when he killed her. She was afraid her brother would come after her and her children if he ever got free. The explosion was so loud that golfers ran off the course to see what had happened. Benson died earlier this month in a Florida prison, where he was serving two life sentences for the crimes. In 1983, a fight with Margaret over the behavior of his bouvier des Flanders guard dog -- she'd let it in the house and it had wet on the expensive white carpet -- turned violent. Jul 23, 2015. Carol Lynn Benson Kendall, 2719 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 164, Hollywood, disbarred effective immediately, following a Sept. 22 court order. Margaret's son, Steven Benson, was convicted of placing two pipe bombs inside the family's Suburban, which killed his mother and brother, and seriously injured his sister, Carol Benson Kendall. It also wanted to rehear some of what the government fingerprint expert had said about the palm prints. Also Read : . A juror examines a photo of the Chevy Suburban that Steven Benson exploded with a pipe-bomb in front of his family's Naples, Fla., home, killing his mother and nephew and injuring of his sister. Toxicology tests showed no drugs in Benson's system, the report states. Also in the car were her two children, 21-year-old Scott, who died, and 41-year-old Carol Lynn, who was badly injured but survived. Daddy. Macron wont let go off Africa so easily, he is love sick, Canadas Debt Crisis: A Never-Ending Burden Passed On From Generation to Generation, Alcohol tax in Canada: Canadian government is taking a sip out of your beer. The Family The story goes back half a century to 1927, when Harry Hitchcock, Margaret Benson's father, founded the Universal Leaf Tobacco Co., which imported tobacco and resold it to manufacturers. Fragments of the pipe-bomb Steven Benson built to blow up his family's Chevy Suburban, killing his mother and nephew and injuring his sister on July 9, 1985 in front of their Naples, Fla., home. Scott had canisters of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to which he was addicted, delivered to the house on a monthly basis, defense witnesses said. Stating that he could not give money to one of the children and not the other, Judge Hayes then awarded $244,000 to Carol Lynn Kendall, who also had legal bills. Eyebrows were raised in the affluent Benson neighborhood, but Margaret prevailed and she raised the boy as her son. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. But what is apparently harder is that she has to face the death of Scott Benson, who died at the age of 21 without ever knowing that the woman he thought was his much older sister, by adoption, was in fact his own natural mother. Attorneys, an investigator and a juror have never forgotten what Steven Benson did, and how it affected their lives in the years since he was convicted of killing his family in Naples, Florida. Once Benson was in custody, investigators questioned him until he invoked his right to call an attorney. Amos Sands of West Donegal Township remembers the day 20 years ago today as well. The blast blew apart the Benson familys Chevrolet Suburban sometime between 9:17 and 9:20 a.m. on July 9, 1985, in the driveway of Margaret Bensons home, just off a golf course in an exclusive Naples, Fla., community. Investigators also found on Bensons pants a single particle of zinc, which they said fell off the pipe while he was making the bombs. Carol Lynn Benson Kendall Death, Obituary pending- Carol Lynn Benson Kendall has reportedly passed away unexpectedly and suddenly. Here, prosecuting attorney Jerry Brock addresses members of the media outside the Florida courtroom where the case took place. Beyond that, Young had little to say. She said she will never forget that moment. Murphy declined to say where she now is living and says she does not see her regularly. Carol Lynn Kendall testifies during the trial of her brother, Steven Benson, during his 1986 trial. Benson was convicted of killing his mother and nephew and injuring his sister with a car-bomb on July 9, 1985. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 'It's hard for me to even put into words the devastation emotionally that this has caused me and my children,' Kendall told reporters at Logan International Airport after flying home from Florida. . His company prospered, and he became one of the best-liked civic and charitable figures in Lancaster, Pa., a lovely area surrounded by Amish farms. A juror in the Steven Benson case compares an artist's sketch of the suspect who purchased materials to create the bomb with a mug shot of Benson. I had never known anyone like this before. Steven Benson denied all requests for media interviews. Instead, he died in prison, leaving behind just $30.06 in his commissary fund. "I couldn't understand why he wasn't coming over to help me," she testified to a packed but dead silent courtroom. The Herald also reported that it was common knowledge among certain of Steven's childhood friends that he liked to make bombs. When the Challenger space shuttle exploded a year after the Florida murders, Hitchcock broke down, Murphy recalls. Benson, he recalled, had a reputation as a wimp., He didnt fit in, Schelling said. His second wife Debra was not in the courtroom, or even in Florida. He got down from his ladder, and walked toward the tennis courts, where he found Steven holding what appeared to be a remote control device. Harold Young, the lead Collier County sheriff's detective who pegged Benson as his primary suspect the day of the killings, said he is more surprised by the length of the investigation than the way Benson died. Steven Benson is led into the Collier County jail complex on the day of his arrest in 1985. Twelve and a half hours later, almost to the minute, Harry Hitchcock's granddaughter made an equally dramatic, if brief, appearance in the courtroom. Just follow the money, and you could see what he was doing.. Born on Christmas Day 1963 in a Baltimore hospital to Carol Lynn Benson, then an unmarried teen-ager, he was adopted by Margaret and Edward Benson. But there is no doubt that he had a rough crowd of friends -- the defense called several occupants of the Naples jail to testify about Scott and his various habits, in the hope that this possible alternative theory would raise a reasonable doubt as to whether Steven is guilty. The Miami Herald gave the following account of a groundskeeper who worked on Margaret Benson's Pennsylvania estate: He recalled that one day in 1982 he looked down from his ladder to see Steven carrying three copper tubes with wires protruding from them. ", Edward Benson died in 1980 at the age of 60, and his widow moved to Naples, Fla., a Gulf Coast enclave whose Chamber of Commerce boasts more millionaires per capita than any other U.S. city. He is a good son. She hardly looked at her brother, but when she testified about Scott Benson, she called him "my son. 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