Marines balk at benefits for Arthur Bennett

Robert Macy

Tuesday, July 20, 1999 | 9:19 a.m.

The Marine Corps is distancing itself from the man it twice tried to court-martial for alleged sexual assaults on several young girls, including his own daughters and those of fellow Marines.

"It has been determined he is not entitled to any type of military honors, burial in a national or military cemetery, nor is a death gratuity to be paid," Major David Lapan, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, said Monday.

Arthur Bennett hanged himself with a bedsheet July 12 on the eve of the Marines' second attempt to court-martial him. In a suicide note, he said he couldn't face the rest of his life "living in a cage." He expressed pride in the corps and in the Marine uniform.

Bennett was imprisoned in Utah, after pleading no contest, for sexually assaulting two of his three daughters and one of their friends in Hurricane, Utah.

There were alleged to be additional attacks on daughters of fellow Marines in Yuma, Ariz., and Okinawa, Japan. He was brought to Las Vegas, but committed suicide less than two days before a court-martial on those charges could begin.

A criminal trial had been scheduled to start here in February 2000 on murder and other charges related to a fire that supposedly killed him five years ago.

Relatives in Las Vegas refused to pay for funeral services at Hites Funeral Home, where the body was taken by the Clark County Coroner's office, saying they wanted nothing to do with Bennett.

Ron Given, son of Hites owner Jean Hites, said a brother and sister from California had agreed to pay for services, but no arrangements had been made as of Monday.

Lapan said the Marine Corps considers the Bennett case closed.

He said the corps could not prohibit relatives from burying Bennett in a Marine uniform.

"Obviously that is not something the Marine Corps would like to see in light of his dishonorable service, but that's something we have no control over," Lapan said. "That's a family decision."

Jean Hites said she was told last week by a Marine captain, "We buried him once and we're not going to do it again."

Lapan said Bennett's family would not receive any military benefits, and that he did not have any active insurance through the military.

Family members received $200,000 in insurance benefits in 1994 when Bennett - facing an earlier court-martial on the assault charges - allegedly faked his death in a trailer fire here.

A badly burned body retrieved from the trailer was believed to be Bennett's. The body was cremated and the ashes interred with military honors at a veterans' cemetery in Boulder City, Nev. Authorities say they may never know who was really killed in the fire.

Bennett's mother, Ellen, 67, brothers, Scott, 39, and David, 41, and ex-wife, Amelia, 45, face federal conspiracy charges in connection with the insurance case.

Family members have said Bennett told them he was a government operative being used to kill drug lords, and the military faked his death in February 1994 to provide him a new identity.