Evil Next Door (34 page)

“There are a lot of mixed emotions. We would very much have liked to have brought Mr. Planten into a courtroom. We would have loved to have heard him explain why he did this, but unfortunately, we’re not going to get that opportunity,” Perry said with unabashed resentment in his voice.

The unusually large crowd of reporters and photographers pressed Perry for more details about the case, but he stood his ground and gave little new information, saying the case was not closed—
not yet.

“The fact that he has ended his life has not ended our investigation,” Perry said definitively.

Perry told the press their investigators would continue to look at any murder cases that might have a link to Planten to see if they could close other unsolved homicide cases.

Like Spurlin, Perry had no problem saying a trial was not needed to prove Planten’s guilt.

“I can say without any hesitation or reservation that Drew Planten killed Stephanie Bennett,” said Perry. “I think it’s very safe to say that Drew Planten was a very dangerous man and I think he was probably capable of doing just about anything.”

Michigan District Attorney Stuart Dunnings spoke to WRAL’s Melissa Buscher by phone about Planten’s suicide. It was clear by his tone of voice that this outcome was not the ending he had expected. Dunnings was still reveling in the fact that his department had finally solved a six-year-old case when he got the news that Planten was dead.

Before they were contacted by Raleigh police detectives, Dunnings admitted his investigators had been “up a tree” with no real leads in Rebecca’s murder. When he got the word Raleigh authorities might have a suspect with a connection to their case, he had approached it cautiously at first.

“You sort of have a hopeful trepidation because a lot of times you think you have a lead and it doesn’t pan out,” Dunnings said as he recalled what he thought at that time.

But once Michigan’s crime laboratory was able to confirm the gun found in Planten’s apartment was the gun that killed Rebecca, Dunnings’s trepidation turned from healthy skepticism into cautious optimism. That along with the circumstantial evidence that Planten had been seen in Rebecca Huismann’s neighborhood was enough to convince investigators and Dunnings that they finally had their suspect.

“I’m convinced in my mind that Mr. Planten was responsible for Miss Huismann’s murder,” Dunnings said. “Had yesterday not happened, we would have been issuing charges against Mr. Planten.”

Sarah Chandler, Drew Planten’s mother, also spoke with Buscher by telephone in a recorded interview that same week. Chandler said she learned about her son’s suicide from his lawyer, Kirk Osborne.

“My mind was just devastated. I couldn’t believe that they could allow this to happen when he was being held supposedly in a psychiatric ward where they would be mindful of his demeanor and mood. Of course I’m devastated. It’s tragic,” Chandler said, sounding like she was still in shock.

Chandler told Buscher the last time she saw her son at Central Prison, he had said some things that made her worry about his state of mind.

“The last time I visited him he was very depressed,” Chandler said. “He sounded like he had lost hope of ever getting out of there.”

Chandler said she was thinking about what she could do to “rectify the situation,” which coming from a lawyer implied she was already thinking about filing a lawsuit against the prison for negligence.

“I’m very concerned because they’re supposed to keep him safe until trial, and that’s what they’re supposed to try and do, and I don’t know that they tried very hard,” Chandler said with quiet desperation in her voice.

She said in her heart she still felt like her son was innocent and thought maybe that’s why he took his own life—because he saw no other way out of an impossible situation.

But like everyone else connected to the case, Chandler could only speculate. Only two people really knew what happened at the Bridgeport Apartments on May 21, 2002, and they were both dead. The truth was that Drew Planten took more than his own life the day he died; he took to his grave the knowledge of why Stephanie and Rebecca died. Because of this, even in death, Planten’s power over the people who loved Stephanie remained intact. Yet with every passing day, his grip on their lives would lessen, pushed back by the power of the loving memories Stephanie left behind.

“Over the years that I worked on that case, I got to know, in a sense,
know
her. She made an impression on me that I’ll never forget,” Chris Morgan said, echoing the sentiments of so many people who had worked on the case.

Stephanie Bennett was not a young woman anyone involved in the case was ever going to forget. And the case itself—a once in a career case for a cop—was not something any of the detectives who worked on it would ever forget either.

“This case would not have been solved if it were not for Ken Copeland and Jackie Taylor. There’s no doubt in my mind,” Sergeant Perry said. “We were bouncing theories, after theories, after theories, and Ken cut right through the theories and went right to what made sense to him, and
that’s
what cleared this case.”

Prosecutor Susan Spurlin agreed that having Taylor and Copeland on the case made all the difference.

“They’re both methodical. They’re both thorough. They went back and started looking at everything with fresh eyes,” said Spurlin. “It’s inspirational that they solved the case. With hard work
anything
is possible.”

“Don’t get away from the facts,” Copeland said regarding how he solved the Bennett case, and now, how he approaches other cases. “I don’t have a theory. The minute I have a theory, then I’ve set my mind on something, and I’m afraid I’ll close out something else.”

Copeland said his sense of justice comes from bringing some sense of peace to Stephanie’s family, especially to her father, Carmon Bennett.

“I didn’t make him a promise, but he looked at me for help, and I said, ‘I’ll do the best that I can,’ ” Copeland said. “I like to think that Jackie and I helped that family get the resolution that they needed.”

Copeland said the investigation into Stephanie’s murder was the most emotionally draining case in which he had ever been involved. It wasn’t the kind of case you could just leave at the office. It almost consumed him as he methodically went back and shuffled through all of the evidence that had been gathered in the case looking for that needle in the haystack.

“I would think about it on the way home. I would think about it when I got home. The next morning I’d get up—I’d think about it on the way back to work,” Copeland said, shaking his head as he remembered his borderline obsession with the investigation.

But that perseverance paid off, even though the detectives were never quite sure that it would.

“When we started this investigation I don’t know that either one of us ever thought in the backs of our minds that we would solve it,” Taylor said. “We were going to try our best, and felt like we had a good shot at it. But when you actually end up solving it, it’s unbelievable.”

Michigan Detective Joey Dionise has had many high-profile murder cases since this one—several involving serial killers. But for some reason, the Huismann case was the one he has never been able to shake. Maybe it’s the fact that it didn’t end the way he had hoped it would—with a trial and a conviction. But when he is pushed to reflect on the outcome, he can’t help but come to the conclusion that at least the case files are finally back in the file cabinet now where they belong and not sitting homeless and dusty on some detective’s desk waiting for a tip to come in.

“We solved the case—six years later,” Dionise said with pride. “I hope we gave the family some peace.”

At any given time, State Bureau of Investigation Agent Mark Boodee had been working on fifty cases with a backlog of nine hundred DNA samples waiting on the shelves to be analyzed by him. But he personally agreed to fast-track the Stephanie Bennett case for reasons that to this day he has a hard time putting into words. It was just one of those cases from which he couldn’t turn away.

“I volunteered to take this case on a rush basis. At the time I had a daughter that was very close in age to her, and it could have been anyone’s daughter,” Boodee said.

Because he never wants to forget her, a picture of Stephanie Bennett smiling in a pink dress with a dainty gold necklace around her neck still sits on Boodee’s desk. It is nestled warmly among pictures of Boodee’s wife and children as if they were protecting her, surrounding her with their own family’s love.

“You see in her someone that you know from your own life. You can picture something like this happening to someone in your own life, and you don’t want that to happen,” said Boodee. “You’re trying to work for justice. You’re trying to make sure the process works the way it is supposed to.”

It may have been bittersweet justice, but to those who worked on Stephanie’s behalf and to those who loved Stephanie, a type of justice
was
achieved. No more innocent women would die at the hands of Stephanie’s killer, and that alone made the world feel like a safer place.

The only cure for grief is action.

—G. H. LEWES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took my last trip to visit Stephanie Bennett’s parents in Virginia on January 4, 2006. In many ways, this was the trip I had been dreading the most. My other journeys to see Carmon Bennett and Mollie Hodges had been when the case was still unsolved. The weight of their grief and their growing frustration permeated our earlier meetings, but they were still working toward something, a goal,
an arrest.

Now, with Drew Planten’s suicide, it was clear to everyone, despite what the police said about the investigation continuing, that the case was truly over. There was nothing for Stephanie’s parents to work toward anymore. There would be no further arrests, no trial. In my heart, I was worried about how they were going to approach this new phase of their lives.

My last meeting with Carmon was in his sunroom at the back of his house, a spot where we had sat and chatted on many other occasions. The room hadn’t changed a bit, but Carmon had. Like many murder victims’ parents I had seen, Carmon had visibly aged every day that passed without his precious daughter. He had always spoken to me through a clenched jaw. I saw him as a man trying to take control of his emotions during what had to be the most gut-wrenching period in his life. But on this day, his jaw was a little more relaxed or maybe just more resigned to the truth of how the tragedy had finally played out.

“It took a few minutes for it to sink in. I’m happy in a way, and sad in a way,” Carmon said honestly of his reaction to Planten’s death. “We were actively seeking the death penalty, and it just got carried out in a way other than it should have.”

Once again, as a parent, I tried to wrap my head around how Carmon Bennett could go on with his life after experiencing such an unimaginable loss. It was something that was almost impossible for me to grasp, something I continued to grapple with no matter how many times I had spoken to him. In my eyes, the parents of murdered children were among the most heroic people I had never known. They had survived the absolute worst tragedy. Yet they were able, by virtue of their steely resolves, to somehow do ordinary things like breathe, eat, walk, talk, and even occasionally smile. And all of this when one’s natural instinct would to be to curl up in a fetal position and block out the world.

After I left Carmon’s house, I traveled across town where Stephanie’s mother, Mollie Hodges, met me on a bench in a small tranquil park near her home. She described what she thought when she first got the call from a Raleigh detective that Planten was dead.

“It was a surprise, sort of shocking too, [a] disappointment; we were hoping to get some answers. We’ll never get the answers we need,” Mollie said with weariness in her voice.

Mollie said she was sorry for Planten’s mother, Sarah Chandler, because she knew what it was like to lose a child. But she did not feel any sadness for Planten.

“I hope he suffered. I hope he suffered these last days he had. I hope he suffered from day one that they arrested him and put him in jail. I hope it just ached his heart. I hope he was just in bitter pain the whole time,” Mollie said through pursed lips without a hint of remorse in her voice.

Mollie had never been one to hide her emotions in front of the camera. On this day, they seemed as raw as they had ever been, close to the surface and intense. It was as if Planten’s death suddenly brought back the intense anger she had experienced just after Stephanie was murdered.

Mollie said there was some consolation in not having to live through a trial, but that had to be weighed against what they might have learned if Planten had faced a jury.

“That’s one good thing we don’t have to face, the fact of going through the trial, the details of what happened to her, seeing the gruesome pictures. In a way it’s a good ending,” Mollie said, her voice trailing off into the cool January breeze.

But for Mollie and Carmon there would never truly be a good ending to this horrendous story. Mollie said her faith in God was what sustained her. She was sure Stephanie was in heaven and that gave her a small amount of peace in what had become a life that was for the most part devoid of peace.

“I know where Stephanie’s at, and I know where he’s at,” Mollie’s words trailed off in the wind. It was up to me to fill in the blanks.

In May 2008, Drew Planten’s mother, Sarah Chandler, did file a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina for failing to protect her son from himself. Even though the State Bureau of Investigation had ruled there was no foul play or negligence involved in Planten’s suicide, Chandler’s lawsuit alleged her son was taken off suicide watch prematurely after his mental health appeared to be improving and was then not given proper counseling or oversight.