Jeeps Keep Brother of a Budding Serial Killer Busy
This is a true story.
After graduating high school, I didn't know what to do with my life. I had a notion to attend Akron University in 1984, but that was soon squashed. Thankfully, it turns out for the good!
My mother remarried in 1984 just after I graduated High School. She moved into her new husband's home. It was her 3rd marriage, not because of divorce, but rather she was widowed twice. Her first husband committed suicide in 1969, and her second died in 1982 from bad heath, and a very bad disposition I might add. I came from a family that had little hope for the future.
My mother has issues - serious issues. It was common for me to hear the repeated phrase from her, "I wish I were just dead!" I was young and naive and didn't understand then, that my mother suffers a mental illness. Maybe part genetic, and certainly part circumstantial, but whatever the case, I certainly never heard a positive message from my mentors. I having red hair and being slightly smaller than the average person of my age didn't exactly foster the ideal environment for a good self image either.
The 1984 & 1985 was a dizzying time. I'd hoped to move into my mother's new home until I found a way to get into and through college. Well, the invitation never came. So, I asked if I could move in. The reply was, that would be an inconvenience and they never planned for me such a place. So, I retracted the notion back in 1984 and for the next year I scraped a living washing cars at local car dealerships in Ravenna.
That year my mother began having problems in her marriage and home. She overdosed on medicine once and after I received a strange incoherent phone call from her, I rushed over and took her to the hospital not knowing what she had done. She was alright, aside from the fact that she was incessantly cursing her husband for no apparent reason. Hey - she definitely had issues that year. She was living with her husband in a home that had 6 people: she and her husband, his son, his daughter, and their spouses. That's a hard thing for my mother - she's a social recluse - has religious issues too, and is so judgmental it is hard to explain. Many occasions she has accused people of being demon possessed. Well, that kind of attitude doesn't make for a healthy social structure if you know what I mean.
I was feed up with those circumstances and I decided that I'd make a career out of the military, so in 1985 I joined the US Air Force in hopes that a brighter future did actually exist. In the spring of 1987, several months after settling into my first assignment at Eielson AFB, Alaska, my mother showed up, looking for me to provide her a place to live, having left her husband for the Nth time. That lasted a week and just as I was to finalize where we were going to live and what to do for a practical car for her, off she went ... left me spinning in the dust cloud. She returned to Ohio.
What was happening I've concluded was that one of my recently acquired step-brothers, by my mothers' last marriage, had harbored great feelings against her. A greater hatred than most people will know. He lived with her for a year and couldn't abide her "issues." Two families came together under one roof in 1984, and that set the stage for certain disaster.
My step-brothers name is Glenn L. Benner II, and if you have seen Akron Ohio news, you'll know that Feb. 7th, 2006, he was put to death under Ohio laws. His rampage of hate I come to believe is a byproduct of many things: his mother had past away, he turned to drugs, alcohol, attempted suicide, and finally the addition of a judgmental step-mom with mental issues introduced into the family home. Hence spurred his rampage of hate and became a budding serial killer. So, he became caught, convicted, and the families tried to move on with their lives... well... make your own conclusion!
In February 2004, I spoke my last words to my mother. This is going to be hard to believe, but God strike me down if it isn't true. I asked my mother and step-father if they still harbored the ring that they claimed to be from one of Glenn L. Benner II dead victims. You see 19 years after the murders; they still had the jewelry they recovered from the family car - jewelry that Glenn L. Benner II hid there. My mother was awestruck for me to even speak of such a thing. My step father looked at my disturbed, paranoid mother and said, "It doesn't matter now - she's dead!"
That was the last time I spoke to them.
I've told this story to the Akron Beacon Newspaper reporter Stephanie Warsmith, channel 3 News reporter Vic Gideon, and the Captain of the police department in Akron - Captain Monchalow.
Captain Monchalow has been on the case for 20 years, and has since paid a visit to the Benners'. He hoped that he could return the jewelry to the grieving victim's families. He asked the Benners' if they had such a ring that I spoke to him about. Can you guess what the Benners' reaction was? They weren't in any trouble by returning the ring, but they denied knowing anything about it. Typical.
Glenn L. Benner II, convicted killer, is my step-brother. I didn't know him well, I'd only met him a couple times between summer 1984 and 1985. My mother (Margaret A. Mansfield) married his father (Glenn Lee Benner) in 1984 just after I graduated from Rootstown High School. I really mean when I say "thank God that I was not involved!" You may say it was good fortune or some coincidence for the good, but if I have anything to say, then it would be that someone on high has smiled on me.
It helps greatly to understand the background of (not my step family) my real blood related extended family. Certainly, I do regret having spent so much of my time and effort into their well being. I am the youngest of 5 siblings and most fortunate. I've had the opportunity to observe and understand the fiasco-based nature of their conducts.
Having done years a research into family history, I have discovered that our family suffers from a genetic-based mental illness. The afflicted can't see past cynicism and judgmentalism to understand acceptable ethical conduct. It naturally breeds anti-social personality disorder, bi-polar-ness, and even schizophrenia. Things that society looks upon as good, to the afflicted are a scourge. Good becomes bad to them, and the bad becomes good. The affliction, or should I say disease, produces a backwards philosophical nightmarish existence.
How else would you explain these?
=B7 In January 8, 1969, my father is said to have committed suicide at the back door of his home in Cuyahoga Falls. Later that morning, my second oldest brother discovers a corps. (Personal comment: guns create awfully loud bang. Interesting isn't it that my mother didn't hear it being no more than 20ft away inside her bedroom? I've heard snippets of all the fighting that took place between my oldest brother and father and mother! Hmmm...) =B7 Soon after, my oldest brother goes to prison for armed robbery. (Personal comment: I've heard my mother comment on the subject from time to time, most disturbing though is what she said, "...he got caught because his friends ratted him out..." Excuse me but isn't crime a punishable thing?) =B7 Soon after that, my second oldest brother goes A.W.O.L. from the marines, comes home and destroys the house, and puts a hammer though the TV in the living room. He is diagnosed with a mental illness and deemed unable to cope with society and is put on disability welfare. (Personal comment: I remember the scene having only been a few years old. I have a photographic memory - I remember even my first birthday. I'm beginning to see a pattern here - one that has lasted from then up to the present.) =B7 Long after, my older sister reveals to the family that she has slept with more boys than she can count on her two hands, twice over, before the age of 17. Holy cow Batman! That explains why you've had 6 different husbands to date! =B7 ... There is just too much to list ... it would grieve you out to hear all the destruction. All you have to do is research the public record of Portage and Summit counties to see.
But here's something public records don't readily reveal:
=B7 Christmas 1991, I announced to my extended family that my wife was pregnant and we will be having a baby in August 1992. My mother left the room and went to the kitchen. Sarah and I went to see her hoping she would be joyous of the news only to be devastated to hear my mother say, "Don't get your hopes up." (Personal comment: Perhaps you don't know how devastatingly hurtful that comment was?) =B7 August 5, 1991, my daughter was born and now all the plans that my mother made with my sister to come see us in Dayton, Ohio - I thought would be joyous, yet it was not. You see, when I called my mother to tell her the good news, she was depressed. She totally changed her mind and didn't want to see us. (Personal comment: I now realize my mothers' mental illness causes her to hate my nuclear family, and I have overlooked all that in the past but I can't help to see a pattern here. Sadly, she was mentally unfit to drive that day and in doing so it cost some ones life. My nephew lost his life when my mother ran her truck off the road. The death of a family member on my daughter's birthday? Who believes this to be an accident? Come on - is it so unclear? It was mental illness. She has never visited my daughter on her birthday - ever!).
Fortunately there is hope and recovery with treatment; that is, if treatment is sought after. I was smart enough to have recognized it. While I have sought treatment, my afflicted extended family can not accept this. Peoples overpowering need to judge causes them to criticize. So rather, my philosophical ideologies on life are ones of 'hope and a bright outlook for the future'. How people live with themselves under such circumstances and justify their actions is sad.
This history is an extremely hard thing for me to accept - having helped other, gave, forgave and overlooked fiasco after grieving fiasco, year after year after year. Then having moved from Boston, Massachusetts, and leaving a very high profile career in Nuclear Missile Defense, just to help family only to witness their ever deteriorating state, well... It's hard. I'm not so naive these days. Matter of fact, having dealt with such far fetched wierdness; it's guaranteed that I ain't takin any more shit from no one these days. You have to grow-up and decide where your loyalties are and who your true friends are. After all, we are human beings able to make choices. Even the mentally ill can choose. Getting help is a choice. I did
I keep busy these days... real busy. What ever it is I can find to occupy my time, then that I do. I build 4x4 Jeeps to help occupy that time. They are not pretty, cause any piece of steel left laying around just might get welded on if I think it could occupy me for an hour. Better just to keep busy. History shall record all our deeds. The Benners budding serial killer is in print everywhere. Public records clearly show much of the rest of my families past 40 years of mischievousness too. Perhaps this story will help you understand what it's like to wear my shoes, so-to-speak. I choose rather to be known by the good things I have accomplished. Integrity is important to me, it was important for my pioneering family ancestors, it was important for our Nations forefathers, it is important to a healthy society, and I dare venture to say it is important to the man upstairs. If it takes History to reveal that, then so be it. I can wait. Bravo!
- Eric Warman