Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999 | 11:48 a.m.
Gary Benson, a felon who has made numerous threats to kill comedian Jerry Lewis, will be a free man early next month.
A date of Oct. 5 was set Wednesday for Benson's release. Benson served 4.3 years of his six-year sentence, earning time for good behavior, Glen Whorton, chief of classification and planning for the state prison system, said.
Benson, a 56-year-old diagnosed chronic schizophrenic, was convicted of aggravated stalking of Lewis in 1995. Benson served his time in jail, prison and lockdown mental health facilities.
"His obligation to the Nevada prison system will be completed," Whorton said, noting that Benson will not have to report to a parole officer because he served what was considered a full sentence. "He will be required only to register as an ex-felon with police wherever he decides to live."
Whorton described Benson as "an unremarkable inmate," meaning he stayed out of trouble while behind bars.
Meanwhile, Lewis will go before Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti on Sept. 21 seeking to extend a 1992 protective order that warned Benson to have no contact with Lewis.
The Lewis stalking case played a key role in the passage of a bill this year before the Nevada Legislature that upped the maximum aggravated stalking penalty to 15 years. Advocates, however, had sought to make the crime punishable by 20 years in prison. Benson had received a sentence of six years, the maximum available under the old law.
Lewis, a Las Vegas resident for 20 years, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. A worker who answered the phone at his home said he was en route to Venice, Italy, for a week's vacation. A call to Lewis' Las Vegas office was not returned.
Lewis, 73, has been in ill health for some time. He was hospitalized during a performance in Australia last month. He was able to perform for just the first three hours and last four hours of his 34th Annual Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon on Sunday and Monday, reportedly because of blurred vision and other complications.
In an Oct. 9, 1998, copyrighted Sun story, Lewis expressed fears about the possibility of an early release for Benson, who then was scheduled to go before the parole board.
"I am incensed and stressed out," the comedian told the Sun, noting that he had been stalked by Benson for nearly a decade and that Benson had threatened Lewis' 7-year-old daughter's life when she was an infant.
The board of parole and probation unanimously denied Benson's request for release. Lewis did not appear at that prison hearing. Instead, he met a few days before with board members to express his fears.
At that hearing parole commissioners grilled Benson about his police record, which included charges of credit card and check fraud and an armed bank robbery, and his alleged contact with Lewis in the past three years.
Although Benson served 1,582 days incarcerated before trial and after, just 431 of those have been spent in prison at the Southern Desert Correctional Center at Indian Springs, Whorton said.
The other 1,151 days were spent in and out of lockdown mental hospitals, including Lake's Crossing Center for the Mentally Disordered Offender in Sparks, and in the Clark County Detention Center. Benson went to Veterans Administration clinics while on probation.
The lack of prison time angered Lewis, who last October told the Sun the system had failed him and his family because the harassment continued during that jail time.
Asked if Benson could face additional charges of aggravated stalking stemming from such alleged incidents, Chief Deputy District Attorney Abbi Silver said: "I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation."
Although Silver has been one of Lewis' most sympathetic supporters, she said Wednesday that Lewis' comments on a recent Larry King Live cable television show -- in effect, daring Benson to stalk him when he got out of prison -- were "unadvisable."
Lewis told King that he wanted the stalker to come to his home just one time, implying he would shoot him.
"I'm sure Mr. Lewis was very frustrated," Silver said of Lewis' controversial statement on national television. "I think this man will continue to stalk Mr. Lewis."
She is not alone in that theory.
Lewis requested that Dr. Clifford Kuhn, professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville Health Science Center, study the Benson stalking case and render an opinion on the matter.
"Gary Randolph Benson is suffering from a chronic schizophrenic illness for which there is no apparent effective treatment," Kuhn wrote in a Nov. 2, 1996, memorandum, which was provided to the Sun. "He is periodically seized without warning by unpredictable homicidal decisions and impulses and, as such, should be considered potentially extremely dangerous."
Last year Kuhn told the Sun that Benson "is as close to hopeless as any case I have seen because there is a strong sociopathic pattern that goes beyond usual treatment resistance. Multiple hospitalizations over 30 years have shown no benefit."
Benson, both in an interview with the Sun and in statements before the parole board last year, said he no longer was a threat to anyone.
"I have no desire to cause any fear or harm to Mr. Lewis or any of his relatives," Benson said in a telephone interview with the Sun days before his hearing. "I have been using my energies to concentrate on being with my new wife, Susan (they were married Feb. 8, 1998, in Elko), and returning to our home in Salt Lake City.
"I no longer have hard feelings, and I'm sorry I acted in the manner I did."
Before the parole board Benson said during a 45-minute interview: "I'm not a threat to Jerry Lewis or his family or society. I want to leave that behind. I want to be with my wife and start a new life."
Silver said Benson is skilled at saying things people want to hear -- a talent that, she said, allowed him to remain free for so long while Lewis lived in terror.
Benson's luck ran out in July 1998, when District Court Judge Michael Douglas revoked his probation amid reports Benson continued to threaten Lewis, and sent him back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Lewis, one of this century's most recognizable entertainers, rose to fame in the late 1940s and early '50s as the partner of the late crooner Dean Martin and later became an international film and television star.
He also has been heralded as a humanitarian for hosting Labor Day telethons that have raised millions to fight muscular dystrophy.
However, the stalking began not over jealousy for his fame, but rather because of a domestic situation in which Lewis thought he was doing a good deed for one of his longtime employees.
In 1989 Lewis decided to help his then-housekeeper by checking into the background of Benson, to whom she had become engaged.
Lewis obtained a lengthy police record on the man and gave it to his housekeeper. She told Benson about it, triggering a string of harassing phone calls to Lewis' home and office, which Lewis did not report to police even though his life was threatened.
It was not until the life of his then-6-month-old daughter was threatened in 1992 that Lewis contacted authorities. A protective order was issued and authorities were allowed to tap Lewis' phones.
On top of normal security measures, Lewis said he spent $70,000 to $80,000 a month on round-the-clock protection.
Lewis' housekeeper married Benson. They later divorced.
After a lengthy investigation, Benson was arrested on Feb. 4, 1994, and was held on $1 million bail. Following a plea bargain, Benson was sentenced on May 15, 1995, to six years in prison on one count of the then-new law of aggravated stalking. The sentence was suspended on the condition he attend mental health counseling.
Two months after his conviction Benson was jailed for a short time after reportedly telling a doctor at a VA psychiatric clinic in San Diego that he heard voices telling him to kill Lewis.
For the next few years, Benson went to various facilities in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah for tests of his mental capabilities.
In 1995 Lewis went to Broadway to perform in "Damn Yankees." There and on the road in Florida, Lewis received threatening letters and phone calls from people claiming to be Benson's friends or relatives. Lewis alerted authorities.
Early last year Benson stopped going to treatment sessions at the John Tyler Center in Salt Lake City. At the same time, Lewis said he received a threatening phone call. Benson again was arrested and, as a result, his probation was revoked.
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