THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505200319
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Sitting through the court cases of the four men who murdered his wife, Wes Benica heard how they robbed the motel where she worked as a night clerk and shot her in the head as she lay curled up and afraid on the floor. How they went to a restaurant for breakfast afterward and ordered French toast and eggs. How, after making sure she was dead, they went to their rooms and fell asleep.
He became sick with rage and grief.
``It's just there, it's always there,'' he told a reporter after the last court hearing in 1990. ``I don't think it will ever be over.''
Five years later, Benica remains inconsolable. But he has found a new target for his anger: the Virginia Parole Board. On Feb. 28, the board paroled one of Julie Benica's killers without notifying Wes Benica beforehand. The prisoner, James Michael Wear, has since been reincarcerated, but Benica remains furious.
He wants an explanation, he said. He has a right to know what happened. He doesn't want it to happen again with any of the other killers.
Benica's lawyer, Stephen G. Test, has written to parole board Chairman John B. Metzger III asking for more information ``regarding the circumstances about Mr. Wear's parole.'' Test says Metzger called him and they spoke briefly, but he has received nothing in writing.
``They have never yet called him,'' said Test. ``They have never apologized. They have never asked him how he feels. He has been ignored in this thing by everyone.''
Benica wants the men convicted of killing his wife - Ronald D. Murray, Alfred Dallas Bastible, Robert E. Burd Jr. and Wear - to serve every minute of their sentences. Wear is serving 27 years, Murray is serving two life terms plus 27 years, Bastible life plus 97 years, and Burd 32 years.
``They don't belong out,'' he said. ``They don't belong in society. Anyone who can murder someone and then go get a big breakfast and then come back and look at them. . . . I can't even put it into words. It's not human. My wife was my life. And they should give up their lives for taking hers. . . . As long as I'm alive, I want them in there. . . .
``Through my many hours of sitting in a chair going nuts, to know that they were stone sober when they did this, I can't even conceive of it.''
In 1990, Benica said, he signed papers requesting notification each time one of the murderers becomes eligible for parole. Under state law, the board must notify victims who make such requests before releasing an offender.
Leaving nothing to chance, Benica said he called the parole board in 1991 to make sure board members were aware of his strong feelings. On Feb. 15 of this year, he called again. He knew James Wear would be eligible for parole this year, and he wanted to make an appointment with the board so he could object to Wear's release.
Benica talked to Rebecca W. Sirles, the board's director of victim services. She assured him that Wear had been denied parole, he said, but made an appointment anyway for March 8.
The day before the appointment, Benica learned that Wear - who had served only 4 1/2 years of his 27-year sentence - had been paroled and, at the order of the parole board, rearrested.
In a rage, Benica, along with his two brothers, confronted Metzger in a conference room at the board's office in Richmond. Metzger, he said, told him that Wear's release was a mistake that occurred because Wear's adult criminal record had not been entered into the board's computer. Benica had not been notified because the board did not have his phone number.
Correspondence between Wear and the parole board indicates that the board had been preparing to release him since November. Publicly, Metzger has blamed Wear's release on a computer error and a ``staff blunder.'' At a hearing in Virginia Beach Circuit Court on April 25, parole board staff members gave testimony so confusing and contradictory that lawyers for both the board and Wear conceded that they ``might never find out what happened.''
On Friday, Metzger said he could not discuss the matter because legal issues concerning Wear have not yet been resolved.
Benica calls all of Metzger's accounts ``a crock of bull.''
``If their computer went down, then how many other first-degree murderers did they let out by mistake?'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Wes Benica
KEYWORDS: PAROLE PROBATION MURDER by CNB