Las Vegas Sun

November 9, 2009

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Man who faked death to be laid to rest

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 1999 | 11:34 a.m.

Arthur Bennett, who faked his own death in a Lake Mead campground but later resurfaced amid an array of criminal charges, will be buried today in a pauper's grave.

Bennett, 45, hanged himself in his Clark County Detention Center cell July 12, a day before he was to face a court-martial on sexual assault and desertion charges. Local family members refused to claim the body for burial. A brother and sister from California then offered to handle burial expenses, but they have since changed their minds.

Now Clark County will handle Bennett's burial at Woodlawn Cemetery at an approximate cost of $725.

Bennett staged his own death in 1994 in a fiery trailer explosion near Lake Mead in what police say was an attempt to avoid sexual abuse charges. The Marines buried what they believed to be Bennett's body in a Boulder City veterans cemetery.

The true identity of the body buried there has never been discovered. Bennett was facing murder charges in connection with that death.

Bennett resurfaced in 1997 when he was arrested on charges of molesting two of his daughters and one of their friends while he was living with his family in Hurricane, Utah.

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