ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MANASSAS
SOURCE: Associated Press
A former FBI agent will stand trial for a bizarre plot that police say involved taking his wife's minister hostage and threatening to blow up the man.
A Prince William County grand jury indicted Eugene A. Bennett on Tuesday. Bennett, 41, was charged with five felonies in the June 23 confrontation at a Manassas-area church. The grand jury added a sixth felony.
Bennett is accused of luring the minister, Edwin Clever, to the Prince of Peace United Methodist Church after dark. Clever told police that Bennett duped him into believing he wanted to give money to a church charity.
Instead, Bennett broke into the church and waited for Clever, police said. When the minister arrived, Bennett pointed a gun at him, chained him to a chair and draped what he said was a bomb on him, Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said at Bennett's preliminary hearing last month.
Bennett ordered Clever to call Bennett's estranged wife, Marguerite, and summon her to the church, Ebert said.
Marguerite Bennett, also a former FBI agent, arrived armed. Clever testified that the two argued, and that she begged her husband not to kill them.
The argument ended when she fired blindly at her husband and missed. Eugene Bennett fled. No bomb was found, but bomb parts where later found outside the church and scattered in cars and storage lockers across Northern Virginia.
Clever and Marguerite Bennett were not injured.
Later, Eugene Bennett held off police for nearly four hours at his house before surrendering. He told police he couldn't come out before conquering his evil alter ego, Ed. When he surrendered, Bennett told police that Ed was locked in the garage.
Bennett and his wife are in the middle of bitter, long-running divorce and custody fight.
Prosecutors believe Eugene Bennett intended to harm his wife, the minister, and perhaps a woman Bennett allegedly drew into his plans. Bennett, however, was charged only with abduction, two firearms charges, burglary, and making a bomb threat.
The grand jury added a charge of fraud, related to a complex insurance scheme. A prosecutor said Tuesday that Bennett may face charges of attempted murder and additional bomb-related charges.
Prosecutors say Bennett took out a newspaper ad offering to teach new private investigators. A woman who answered the ad reportedly enrolled in classes and agreed to help Bennett, who was using an alias, in an investigation of a fictitious life insurance scam involving Marguerite Bennett and her minister.
The woman, Mary Ann Khalifeh, has told police she took out more than $1million in life insurance on herself. The policies named Marguerite Bennett and one of the Bennetts' daughters as beneficiaries.
Eugene Bennett may have planned to kill Khalifeh and his wife, leaving the daughter as the sole beneficiary, police said.
The fraud charges involve Khalifeh's expenses in the bogus investigation.
``He would tell her, `Go out and get a pager, or a cellular telephone, or whatever, and the company will reimburse you,''' said James Willett, assistant commonwealth's attorney. ``Of course, he never did.''
Bennett has appeared disheveled and mumbling in court since his arrest. His attorney, Reid Weingarten, has indicated he may use an insanity defense. Weingarten said last month that Bennett hoped to protect his daughters from his wife, whom Bennett says is a lesbian.
In divorce filings, Bennett claims his wife had an affair with crime writer Patricia Cornwell several years ago when Marguerite Bennett was an instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico.
Neither woman has commented on the allegation.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB