The murderer spoke with his slain wife's family for the first time on the Sally Jessy Raphael TV show last week. He attributed the killings to his dependency on drugs and alcohol and to his general poor health.
After he had remarried and been with his second wife for more than a decade, Benson confessed to murdering his first wife, Barbara, and his two sons, ages 8 and 15, with a hatchet and hiding their bodies in a rented storage shed. Investigators were unable to find a trace of the missing family until their remains were accidentally discovered and Benson confessed.
For nine years, Benson's second wife dutifully paid the storage fees on the shed, though she was unaware of its grisly contents.
"I just got tired of paying the fees, so I stopped paying them," said the second Mrs. Benson.
And despite learning of her husband's crime, she said her mate was "one of the finest husbands anybody ever had." And she still loves him.
Asked by a member of the television audience if she had any regrets, Mrs. Benson said her biggest regret was that she had stopped paying the storage fees on the shed without telling her husband.
To that, Sally's typically shockproof audience heaved a collective gasp.
Case Number 2: It was a vintage year.
Michael Milken - notorious as the junk-bond king of the go-go 1980s - had a very good year in 1992.
His 10-year jail sentence in connection with one of the biggest scandals in Wall Street's history, was substantially reduced by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, President Clinton's second choice for U.S. Attorney General. Wood, who originally sentenced him to a decade in the slammer, shaved eight years off Milken's term, citing his cooperation with investigators, plus his good behavior in prison, as reasons for the unusually generous reduction in his jail time.
