Police: Man may have used identity of fatal fire victim

Cathy Scott

Thursday, Nov. 13, 1997 | 10:15 a.m.

HURRICANE, Utah -- A man whom police say faked his own death in 1994 in a trailer explosion at Lake Mead may have assumed the identity of the man who actually died in the fire, Hurricane Police said.

On Feb. 3, 1994, a small travel trailer exploded in a remote area near Gypsum Wash at Lake Mead. A man burned beyond recognition died in the fire. It was ruled a suicide and the man was assumed to be Arthur Bennett.

But Bennett has been living in Hurricane for the past two years under the name Joseph Benson. His ruse was uncovered Oct. 31 when Hurricane Police charged him with raping three children. Detective Shayne Coleman, who arrested Bennett, said he knew the moment he met "Benson" nearly two years ago that something wasn't right.

"We have uncovered, in the last 24 hours, documents indicating that there may have been a Joseph John Benson, and that the name may not have been made up," Hurricane Police Chief Len Excell said Wednesday.

Bennett almost pulled off faking his own death, Excell said. According to identification cards for Benson, he was 33. Bennett is 44.

"We had served a search warrant on his residence and turned up these documents," he said. The documents, including an Ohio driver's license, a Social Security card and a Sam's Club card, appear to be authentic, Excell said.

Also found in a filing cabinet in Bennett's basement was a Las Vegas SUN article, dated Feb. 4, 1994, with a photo of the fire scene at Lake Mead, and an obituary from the SUN, Coleman said.

All the documents are being turned over to Metro Police homicide detectives, Coleman said.

For almost two years since Benson moved to Hurricane with his former wife, Amelia Bennett, and their three daughters, Coleman and his partner, Detective Tracey Gubler, questioned who he was. The family lived in a rural subdivision a few blocks from downtown Hurricane.

"I remember telling him, 'I don't think you're telling me the truth,'TH" Coleman said.

From November to March 1996, Bennett volunteered painting and building stage sets for the drama club at Hurricane High School, where his eldest daughter attended school. But when several parents complained to Principal Rob Golding that Bennett allegedly had touched their daughters "inappropriately," Golding banned Bennett from the campus.

"I took care of it that day," said Golding, who noted that Bennett sometimes dyed his beard and hair red. "Right here in my office, I told him he was not to come on campus without my express permission. He said, 'I won't be back. I don't want to cause problems.' I didn't know how to read the guy."

Bennett's arrest has sent shock waves through the city of 6,000 people 140 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Bennett lived in Las Vegas for 30 years before his disappearance four years ago.

"You don't expect it to be in your neighborhood," said a parent volunteering at Hurricane High School Wednesday. "As parents, we don't want this kind of scandal."

A neighbor across the street from where Bennett's wife still lives said Bennett's youngest daughter often played at her house. She said Bennett spent a lot of time with his daughters and was the one who picked up his youngest from school each day. His wife works as a seamstress at the Casablanca hotel-casino in Mesquite.

Detective Coleman called Bennett at home on Oct. 27 and left a message on his recorder.

"That was the day I was going to arrest him" on the child rape charges, Coleman said. "I think he knew what was coming. We didn't know how much was coming."

But Bennett "took a bunch of pills," trying to commit suicide, that day and ended up in the hospital, Coleman said. Bennett was arrested at the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George four days later. He was later taken to the Washington County jail in St. George.

Coleman said he and his partner "had some suspicions this guy wasn't who he said he was. He bragged about being a former Navy Seal and an FBI agent. He said he was a war hero. He wore a California Highway Patrol baseball cap. It raised some red flags."

"He seemed weird," Detective Gubler added. "We kicked it back and forth amongst ourselves that something wasn't right. We were trying to figure it out."

After Bennett's arrest, Gubler ran the man's fingerprints through a national database and it came back "deceased" in Las Vegas.

Coleman said he knew "Benson's" wife had been married to Arthur Bennett, who supposedly had died in a fire.

"When it came back it was him, I knew we had a dead guy standing in front of us," Coleman said.

He contacted Metro Police in Las Vegas, and homicide detectives went to the jail and questioned Bennett.

Upon his arrest, Coleman and Gubler said Bennett told them, "I have a story to tell, but I'm going to tell it to my lawyer."

The "story" involves the U.S. Marine Corps, which this week issued a desertion warrant for Bennett's arrest, said Sgt. Kevin Tunell, media relations coordinator for the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona.

"We are looking into what other counts he's going to be charged with," Tunell said. "There are three counts of child rape, and there are issues in Las Vegas as well. Everybody wants to make sure all the right feet are being put forward."

On Feb. 3, 1994, the day a man was burned beyond recognition in the trailer owned by Bennett, Bennett faced a court-martial from the Marine Corps for allegedly sexually assaulting a girl under age 16 in Yuma, police said. The father, who has since moved his family out of Arizona, contacted Coleman this week about Bennett, Coleman said.

And Metro Police are now investigating the 1994 death, which was ruled a suicide by the coroner's office, as a possible homicide, police said.

Bennett's mother was paid a $200,000 life insurance policy from the Marine Corps after his "death." But "we heard that some of the money was funnelled to Bennett" and his family in Hurricane, said Detective Coleman, who noted that he and Gubler thought it was odd that Bennett didn't work, besides doing some handyman jobs for neighbors.

Metro homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen said Bennett's family knew he wasn't killed in the fire. At the fire scene, Scott and David Bennett, his brothers, arrived via a dirt road. The brothers, visibly distraught, had to be restrained by police from going into the burned-out rubble while investigators searched the scene.

It isn't clear when the brothers and the rest of the Bennett family, some of whom still live in Las Vegas, learned Bennett was still alive, police said. The couple's daughters, who lived in Twentynine Palms, Calif., with their mother at the time of the fire, have been taken into protective custody, a neighbor said.

The victim's body was never positively identified by a Marine dentist who worked on Bennett's teeth, but because it was Bennett's trailer and he was seen near the camp site about two hours before the fire, everyone believed it was him, Petersen said. The victim was cremated and buried in the veterans cemetery in Boulder City.

The body found at the lake was a white male between 30 and 40, 5 feet 7 to 5 feet 9 and weighing 130 to 160 pounds.