7 days Archive

Last meal Bill J. Benefiel's last meal was served Tuesday. Here's what he requested: • One large pizza with sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, green pepper, black olives and tomatoes • One 12-inch Italian beef sandwich with cheese • Four pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream: Butter Pecan, Cherry Garcia, New York Super Fudge Chunk and Oatmeal Cookie Chunk • One Dutch apple pie • Six cans of RC cola • Six cans of Pepsi cola Source: Indiana State Prison

After more than 16 years on Indiana's Death Row, Bill J. Benefiel is scheduled to be executed early Thursday for the 1987 rape, torture and murder of a teenager.

His lawyers say Benefiel long has suffered from mental illness and have urged Gov. Mitch Daniels to halt the execution.

Daniels' spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski, said Tuesday he was reviewing Benefiel's case.

Meanwhile, the mother of Benefiel's victim is planning to drive from her home in Terre Haute to the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where she'll wait for word of the execution in a room near the death chamber.

Benefiel held Delores Wells, 18, captive for 12 days in a Terre Haute home, raping her repeatedly before suffocating her on Feb. 7, 1987. He was sentenced to death in November 1988.

Barring action from Daniels or the U.S. Supreme Court, Benefiel will be killed by chemical injection shortly after midnight. It would be the second execution this year and the second since Daniels became governor.

Daniels is reviewing paperwork "to make sure there are no lingering questions of guilt, no new evidence of factual uncertainties," Jankowski said.

It's the same sort of review he undertook last month before Donald Ray Wallace Jr. was executed, Jankowski said. Wallace was put to death March 10 for murdering an Evansville family of four in 1980.

Details of Benefiel's crime "curl the stomach and numb the mind," the U.S. Court of Appeals wrote in a 2004 opinion denying an appeal. The same court denied another appeal last month.

According to court records, Benefiel handcuffed Wells to a bed and beat her while another captive victim watched. He cut off Wells' finger and told her she would die a slow death.

As 17-year-old Alicia Elmore watched, Benefiel glued Wells' nostrils, then taped her mouth shut. He took Wells outside, where he finished suffocating her, then buried her.

Elmorewas abducted on Oct. 10, 1986, from a gas station two blocks from her home. She survived four months of captivity to testify against Benefiel.

Elmore was raped 64 times before she stopped counting. Her eyes were glued shut for the first two months. She testified she had been bound naked to a bed. She was rescued when police raided Benefiel's home on Feb. 11, 1987.

Defense lawyers say Benefiel is mentally ill and has never been properly treated. He is delusional and believes he is "not of this world," said lawyer Marie Donnelly.

"His guilt is not in question," Donnelly said. "The question is whether someone who was identified as mentally ill so early in life but never received help should be executed."

She noted recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that bar the death penalty for those who are mentally retarded and said the mentally ill suffer similar limitations.

"That's so obvious in Bill's case," she said. "He was offered a sentence modification that he wouldn't take. The extreme withdrawal and the extreme sense that he believes he is not of this world is so pervasive."

Margaret Hagan, Wells' mother, has been waiting for this moment for a long time.

"It's going to be a hectic day," she said, adding that other relatives also would be traveling to Michigan City for the execution.

Call Star reporter Vic Ryckaert at (317) 444-2750.

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