A man who impregnated his two young daughters and then beat one to death with a baseball bat because she planned to reveal him as the baby`s father was sentenced Wednesday to 90 years in prison.
Donald Benson, 31, a handyman, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of his 14-year-old daughter, LaToya, whose bludgeoned body was found on the floor of an abandoned building on the South Side.
LaToya disappeared from the family`s South Side home on April 5, 1989. Her body was found on April 17, three days after Benson was arrested in connection with sexual attacks on his 12-year-old daughter, who was four months` pregnant, according to Assistant State`s Atty. David O`Connor.
”Most civilized people would consider this sort of conduct to be the conduct of someone who is insane,” said Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Getty, who imposed the sentence. ”You are one of the most evil people that I have seen come before me. I have seen people before me that I have sentenced to death, and they have not been as evil as you.”
On April 12, while LaToya still was missing, her mother, Doris, became worried about her younger daughter`s health, took her to a clinic and learned that the 12-year-old was four months` pregnant, O`Connor said.
Upon talking to the daughter, she learned that Benson had been entering the child`s bedroom and sexually assaulting her and her sister for a year, O`Connor said.
The mother also learned that Benson had taken LaToya out of her regular elementary school, where she had been an 8th-grade student, and enrolled her in a school for pregnant girls five days before her disappearance, O`Connor said.
On April 14, police arrested Benson in connection with the sexual attacks on his younger daughter. O`Connor said investigators believe he had killed LaToya earlier that day.
When LaToya`s body was found, her pants had been pulled down to her ankles, speaker wire had been wrapped around her neck and a baseball bat that the younger girl later identified as theirs had been used to bash her head in. Residents in the neighborhood told investigators at the time that the girl had been living in the abandoned house since her disappearance, and that Benson had brought her food.
As investigators began myriad forensic tests that eventually linked Benson to being LaToya`s killer and the father of her fetus, Benson pleaded guilty in August 1990 to a single charge of raping his 12-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
He soon was brought back to Chicago from a state prison to stand trial in LaToya`s murder, O`Connor said. Benson gave a statement incriminating himself in her murder and pleaded guilty.
”It may be possible for God to forgive you for what you have done,”
Getty told an impassive Benson as he imposed sentence. ”I don`t know that it will be possible for your family, for society or for this court to forgive you.”
More Top Picks Best Evaporative Coolers