Murder of Ella Bennett

Last updated
Murder of Ella Bennett
Location Abilene, Texas, U.S.
DateFebruary 4, 2007;17 years ago (2007-02-04)
c. 11:30 p.m. (CST)
Attack type
 Child-on-child murder by stabbing, strangulation, sororicide, child rape
Weapon Knife
VictimElla Bennett, aged 4
PerpetratorParis Lee Bennett
Motive Revenge against his mother
Verdict Pleaded guilty
Convictions Capital murder
Sentence40 years in prison (parole possible after 20 years)

On February 4, 2007, Paris Lee Bennett, a 13-year-old American boy, murdered his 4-year-old sister, Ella Bennett, in Abilene, Texas. Paris stabbed Ella 17 times.

Contents

The motive for the murder was Paris's resentment towards his mother, Charity Bennett, as he believed the best way to emotionally damage her was to take away one of her children.

Paris pleaded guilty in juvenile court to capital murder, and was given the maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 20 years. Following the murder, Paris was diagnosed as a sociopath. [1]

The murder has gained extensive attention due to its circumstances, as well as the ages of both the perpetrator and the victim.

Background

Charity Bennett, the mother of Paris and Ella Bennett, was the daughter of Kyla Claar Bennett, a woman who was charged with conspiring to murder her husband and Charity's father, James Robert Bennett Jr. She was controversially found not guilty, and Charity believes her mother was actually guilty. Kyla later joked in a documentary about "manipulat[ing]" the jury. During her childhood, Charity intentionally became addicted to drugs in an attempt to bring attention from her mother to her, but Kyla never showed any interest. [2] [3] [4]

Murder

Shortly before the murder, Charity had relapsed into her drug addiction, and this was believed to be Paris's breaking point to what made him decide to murder Ella. However, Paris displayed warning signs of violence before the murder and has since admitted to feeling homicidal tendencies since he was a young child.

On February 4, 2007, Charity hired a babysitter, as she had to work late at her job at the restaurant Buffalo Wild Wings as it was the night of the 2007 Super Bowl. Around 10:00 PM, Paris was able to manipulate the babysitter and convinced her to leave the house. Later that night sometime before 11:30 PM, Paris entered Ella's room and stabbed her 17 times. Following the murder, he called a school friend for about six minutes before deciding to call 9-1-1 at 11:42 PM. On the call, Paris appeared to fake insanity, telling the dispatcher that he thought Ella was an inflamed pumpkin-headed demon and stabbed her. Once the dispatcher instructed Paris to perform CPR, he instead pretended he was by counting with the dispatcher as he paced around the room. Paris was later arrested sometime before 12:30 AM. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Following his arrest, Paris was charged with the capital murder of Ella. Paris was not charged as an adult, since the minimum age a juvenile can be tried as an adult in Texas is 14. [8] He was instead charged in juvenile court and pleaded guilty to capital murder. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years, which is the maximum sentence for a defendant convicted of capital murder in juvenile court in Texas. When he was 19, Paris was transferred to adult prison. [9] During proceedings, Paris was diagnosed as a psychopath. He has said he has had homicidal ideation since he was a child. [1] Paris will first be eligible for parole in February 2027. If he is never granted parole, he will be released in February 2047. [10]

Aftermath

Charity initially maintained contact with Paris since the murder, which Paris said astounded him. Charity has been told that she and her new son are at risk once Paris is released, which she accepts and has acknowledged she will most likely need to move to a new location once Paris is released. Experts have said that it is unlikely that Paris could ever be rehabilitated. [1] In 2021, Charity stated that she had ceased all communication with Paris after learning he was involved with a woman who was on bond two hours away from where she lived for planning a mass shooting. She stated, "I finally accepted it is okay to love him as my son but really dislike the man he has become." [11]

In 2017, a documentary titled The Family I Had was released about the case; it focused on Charity's life of being the daughter of a murder suspect (Kyla), and the mother of both a murderer (Paris) and a murder victim (Ella). [4]

Paris Bennett made headlines in 2019 when he gave an interview to broadcaster Piers Morgan. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matricide</span> Act of killing ones own mother

Matricide is the act of killing one's own mother.

On January 27, 2001, Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop, aged 62 and 55 respectively, were stabbed to death at their home in Etna, New Hampshire. Originally from Germany, the couple had been teaching at Dartmouth since the 1970s. High school classmates James J. Parker, age 16, and Robert W. Tulloch, age 17, were charged with first-degree murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Price (murderer)</span> American serial killer (born 1973)

Craig Chandler Price is an American serial killer who committed his crimes in Warwick, Rhode Island between the ages of 13 and 15. He was arrested in 1989 for four murders committed in his neighborhood: a woman and her two daughters that year, and the murder of another woman two years earlier. He had an existing criminal record for petty theft.

Scott Edgar Dyleski is an American murderer, convicted of murdering his neighbor, Pamela Vitale, the wife of prominent attorney Daniel Horowitz. He received the maximum penalty allowed by the law, life in prison without parole. As a juvenile at the time of the murder, he did not qualify for the death penalty. The murder was committed on October 15, 2005, when Dyleski was 16 years old. He is currently serving his sentence in California State Prison, Corcoran. In 2018, Dyleski's sentence was reduced to 25 years to life in prison, after the state of California passed Senate Bill 394, which gives juveniles tried as adults and sentenced to life without parole a chance for eventual freedom. He will be eligible for parole in 2030.

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the Fourth Amendment and the automobile exception.

Sara Jessimy Kruzan is an American activist and survivor of child sex trafficking. In 1995, at the age of 17, she was convicted of the first-degree murder of her trafficker, George Gilbert Howard, who began to groom her for the sex industry at the age of 11. She was initially sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, but was later both paroled and pardoned.

Brenda Hodge is an Australian who is notable as the last person to be sentenced to death in Australia. She was found guilty of murdering her de facto partner in 1984 and was sentenced to death. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and she was paroled in 1995.

Susan Lucille Wright is an American convicted murderer from Houston, Texas, who made headlines in 2003 for stabbing her husband, Jeff Wright, 193 times in an act of mariticide and then burying his body in their backyard. She was convicted of murder in 2004, and was given a 20-year sentence at the Crain Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She was denied parole on June 12, 2014, and July 24, 2017. She was granted parole in July 2020 and released from prison on December 30, 2020.

Rick and Suzanna Wamsley were murdered on December 11, 2003 in their home in Mansfield, Texas, as part of a conspiracy involving their son Andrew and two others.

Lucia and Leo Krim, aged 6 and 2 respectively, were murdered in the late afternoon of October 25, 2012, at the La Rochelle apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The children's part-time caretaker, Yoselyn Ortega, was convicted of stabbing the children to death with kitchen knives while their mother Marina Krim and three-year-old sister Nessie were a few blocks away at a swimming lesson. Upon returning home, their mother and sister found Lucia and Leo dead in a bathtub at the family apartment. Ortega then began stabbing herself repeatedly in the neck and throat. She survived the self-inflicted wounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 South Valley homicides</span> Mass murder in New Mexico, USA

A mass shooting on January 19, 2013, in South Valley, New Mexico, resulted in the deaths of five family members of the Griego family: the parents and three younger children. They were shot with two different weapons. The 15-year-old eldest son of the family, Nehemiah Griego, was arrested and charged with the shootings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Skylar Neese</span> 2012 murder in West Virginia, United States

Skylar Annette Neese was an American teenage girl who disappeared from her home in Star City, West Virginia, around midnight on July 6, 2012. Neese's body was found in January 2013, across the nearby state line, in Wayne Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania.

Jarmecca Yvonne "Nikki" Whitehead was a 34-year-old mother of 16-year-old identical twins Jasmiyah Kaneesha and Tasmiyah Janeesha Whitehead. On the afternoon of January 13, 2010, she was found dead in the bathroom of her Conyers, Georgia, home in the Bridle Ridge Walk subdivision. She had been beaten with a vase and stabbed repeatedly. Her daughters were arrested four months after the slaying on May 21, 2010, and charged with murder. Both initially pleaded not guilty. In a plea agreement, each twin pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter in 2014. They were sentenced to serve 30 years in prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broken Arrow murders</span> Mass stabbing and familicide in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, US

The Broken Arrow murders, otherwise known as the Bever family massacre, was a familicide and mass stabbing that occurred on July 22, 2015 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The perpetrators, Robert and Michael Bever, murdered their parents and 3 siblings. It was the deadliest crime and mass murder in the city of Broken Arrow, until a murder-suicide in October 2022 which killed 8 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Elizabeth Olten</span> 2009 crime in Missouri, United States

Elizabeth Olten was a 9-year-old girl who was murdered by her neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, who was 15 at the time, in St. Martins, Missouri on October 21, 2009.

On January 17, 2020, 16-year-old Colin Jeffrey "CJ" Haynie shot and killed his mother and three siblings and injured his father in Grantsville, Utah. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in Utah since the 2007 Trolley Square shooting that killed six including the gunman, and Grantsville's first homicide in nearly 20 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Antonio Santiago</span> Murder of an infant during an attempted robbery

One-year-old Antonio Santiago was murdered on March 21, 2013, during an attempted robbery in Brunswick, Georgia, United States. As Santiago and his mother, Sherry West, were returning home from the post office, they were confronted by two youths, 15-year-old Dominique Lang and 17-year-old De'Marquise Elkins. Elkins, who had previously shot another victim he tried to rob, pointed a gun at West and demanded money. When she did not comply he fired two .22-caliber bullets, one of which grazed her head, and the other of which went through her leg. He then shot Santiago in the face, killing him. The murder received national as well as international attention due to the victim's young age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Rachael Anderson</span> 2018 murder

The murder of Rachael Anderson occurred on January 28, 2018, in Columbus, Ohio. Anderson, a twenty-four-year-old aspiring funeral director, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Anthony Pardon in her apartment on her birthday.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murders of Claudia Maupin and Oliver Northup</span> 2013 double-murder

On April 14, 2013, Oliver "Chip" Northup Jr. and his wife Claudia Maupin were tortured, murdered, and mutilated by Daniel William Marsh in the couple's Davis, California home. Marsh, who was 15 years old at the time of the murders, had an extensive history of antisocial and violent behavior. Marsh had long been fantasizing about torturing and murdering people and desired to become a serial killer. The high-profile murders have impacted the policy debate surrounding the sentencing of juvenile offenders.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Paris Bennett: The Horrific Story Of The Psychopath Who Killed His Four-Year-Old Sister". 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  2. ↑ "Kyla Bennett Freed on $100,000 Bond - May 15, 1980". The Atlanta Constitution. 1980-05-15. p. 144. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  3. ↑ "Jurors Clear Kyla Bennett in Cobb Trial". The Atlanta Constitution. 1980-07-09. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  4. 1 2 3 "'The Family I Had' Is One Of The Saddest, Most Unnerving Documentaries You'll Ever See". Ranker. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  5. 1 2 "Boy murdered his 4yo sister just to make his mother suffer". NZ Herald. 2023-06-06. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  6. ↑ Clarendon, Dan (2018-01-06). "Who Is Paris Bennett? Convict Killed Sister When He Was 13 and She Was 4". In Touch Weekly. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  7. ↑ "Mum reveals moment she heard her four-year-old daughter was murdered by her son". Yahoo News. 2017-12-22. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  8. ↑ "Age Boundaries in Juvenile Justice Systems". National Governors Association. 2021-08-12. Retrieved 2024-05-26.
  9. ↑ Garza, Ariana (2012-09-05). "Abilene teen to serve remainder of 40-year sentence -- for killing 4-year-old sister -- in adult prison". KTXS. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  10. ↑ "Texas Department of Criminal Justice Inmate Search". inmate.tdcj.texas.gov. Retrieved 2023-06-06.
  11. ↑ "Charity Lee on Facebook". Facebook .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.