Tobacco Heir Charged in Bombing Deaths of Relatives : Patriarch Says Wealth Cursed Offspring

NAPLES, Fla. —  The Bensons spent money like millionaires and quarreled like children. They had a yacht and sports cars and homes in three cities. They had Oriental art and splendid jewelry--but they never had enough.

It is the theory of police that the money led to the arguing and that led to the bombing of the family’s heavy-duty wagon. The mangled, burned-out frame seemed to belong in Beirut instead of a serene retirement haven on the Florida Gulf.

Two were dead, and one was Margaret Benson, the prim heiress to a tobacco fortune. The other was her adopted son Scott, a moody 21-year-old who was trying to convert years of tennis lessons into a career as a pro.

Former Beauty Queen

Alive, though burned and disfigured, was Carol Lynn, Margaret’s 40-year-old daughter and a former beauty queen. The blast left her rolling on the lawn, trying to snuff the fire from her tattered clothes.

Only Steven, 34, the older son, was unhurt. Just seconds before the car’s explosion, he had hurried back to the house. He’d forgotten something, he said.

Police found this lapse in memory suspicious. Then they found a motive. Steven, they alleged, stole from his mother and when she caught on he tried to hide the mess by blowing up the family.

His Mother’s Millions

On July 14, Steven Benson, an often-inept businessman backed by his mother’s $8 million, will go on trial here for murder.

If the prosecution has its way, the case will unfold like a morality play where money proves too costly to possess.

Already, that is the doleful judgment of the family’s white-haired patriarch, Harry Hitchcock, 79, of Lancaster, Pa.

“The love of money is the root of all evil, just like it says in the Scriptures,” said the man who made the fortune and dispersed its bedeviling gifts to the next generations.

“I’m afraid that is the lesson of all that’s happened, that maybe the money is more a curse than anything else.”

The money sprang from a hunch back in 1927.

Hitchcock’s idea was to become a middle man between cigar manufacturers and tobacco growers. He called his company Lancaster Leaf, and it became the world’s largest trader in dark-leaf tobacco.

He Married Margaret

Forty years later, he turned things over to his son-in-law, Edward Benson, the keen man who had married Margaret.

Benson worked hard and his family lived well--on the New Jersey shore, in the ski country near Montreal and in Lancaster where their lavish home was replete with pool and cabana, ivory statues and gold doorknobs.

When Edward died in 1980, Margaret sold the Lancaster place for $475,000. She and her son Scott moved to Florida. Steven and his family followed.

And no one lived happily ever after.

The Good Life

Naples is a last stop for the good life, a place where the wealthy can breathe the winds off the Gulf and build a retirement home near the alabaster sands of the beaches or the rolling fairways of a golf course.

Margaret Benson’s house sat beside the third hole at Quail Creek. On that sultry morning last July 9, a foursome was just teeing up when the blast kicked smoke and steel 200 feet into the air.

The golfers dashed toward the fire and they found both Margaret and Scott sprawled in the driveway. Only Carol Lynn was moving.

Rescuer Wounded

“I’m hot, I’m hot,” she cried out frantically, recalled Charles Meyer, one of the golfers. He was pulling her from the debris when a second explosion hurled shrapnel into his chest and blew off part of his nose.

Investigators sifted through the rubble and found the remains of two bombs made from galvanized pipe, threaded on both ends. They were set with a triggering device similar to that used in alarm systems.

One bomb had been hidden in the Chevy Suburban’s console, between the front seats. The other was stashed under the left rear passenger seat, where Carol Lynn would sit.

Rich and Troubled

Then they began prying into the lives of the Bensons, and the story of a rich and troubled family began seeping out.

“I never had to watch ‘Dynasty;’ I was seeing it in real life,” said Wayne Kerr, of Philadelphia, the family’s attorney.

One shocking revelation came in a deposition by Carol Lynn. Scott, she confessed, was more than just her adopted brother. He was her son, the love child she bore when she was 19.

“That was our closest-guarded secret,” said Janet Murphy, of Lancaster, Margaret’s sister. “I think Steven knew and maybe Scott knew, but nobody, absolutely nobody talked of this.”

In Mental Hospital

Other family intimacies became public. In 1983, Margaret had Scott locked away in a mental hospital for eight days. She swore out a complaint saying he was dangerous to himself and others.

“I remember how they handcuffed him,” said Scott’s girlfriend, Kim Beegle, who lived with him and Margaret. “The whole thing was so stupid.

“Margaret wanted Scott to feed the dog, and Scott was lying in bed doing up nitrous oxide. He had his own tank, and he would just laugh and laugh.”

Margaret was pushing her son toward a career in tennis. Lean and mobile, he had a blistering serve.

Filled With Marijuana

But his game lacked strategy and temperance, much like his life. His girlfriend said he would fill his head with marijuana every morning before going off to play.

“Margaret would get upset with Scott and throw him out,” Beegle said. “One day she took all his clothes and threw them out on the front step. I mean $500 suits and everything.

“So Scott walked right by her and started throwing her clothes on the lawn. He didn’t toss them all because that would have taken a week.”

Both Drove Lotuses

Scott also quarreled with Steven. Both drove red Lotus Turbos Esprits, each $35,000 worth of sports car. Steven had blown the engine on his, and Scott called him a jerk.

“The children weren’t spoiled rotten,” said Janet Murphy, their aunt. “Spoiled, yes. Rotten, no. Oh, it’s all so relative.”

But the biggest revelation of all was that Steven Benson, a pudgy, laconic man in thin black glasses, was the prime suspect in the bizarre murder.

In a sworn statement to police from her hospital bed, Carol Lynn said: “My mother did indicate to me that perhaps she would not put it past (Steven) to do away with her.”

An Unlikely Villain

By the accounts of those who grew up with him, Steven made an unlikely villain. He seemed amiable, if lackluster--someone who would lend out his Mercedes to a high school pal with a hot date.

Steven’s great skill was electronics. He could wire a house or fix a TV. One friend quoted in police files recalls Steven touching off explosions with a remote control device.

As a college student, he studied business, though he never graduated. His father cast an imposing shadow, friends said, and Steven was in a hurry to show he could be successful on his own.

Parceled Out Money

“It was carrot-and-stick with the Bensons; they controlled their kids lives by parceling out the money,” said lawyer Mike Minney, of Lancaster, who used to play poker with Steven.

But the young man started three businesses that he gave up on--landscaping, import-export and real estate. It was wryly suggested in the family that he might end up with a million if he could only begin with two, but sometimes, that didn’t seem so funny.

“Money was pretty important to the Bensons, so when they argued, you could bet that money was what it was about,” said Nancy Ferguson, Steven’s wife from 1972 until 1979.

Squandering Fortune

Last summer, money was on their minds when Carol Lynn Kendall, a divorcee, came down from her home in Boston to see her mother. Steven was squandering the family fortune, she had been told.

“He would never consult my mother on anything, but he would get some huge project going that maybe involved $150,000 and he’d have it committed and the thing signed and then he’d, you know, drive over to my mother’s and say: I need $150,000,” Carol Lynn said in her affidavit.

Margaret, it seemed, went through phases, one day afraid her money was being frittered away, the next day concerned that more be spent to avert tax problems.

Feared Going Broke

“(Mother) was really getting distraught in the thought that she was going broke . . . , “ Carol Lynn said.

“Steven had gone through about $2-2 1/2 million of mother’s money, and since my father had died, my mother was really upset because she was afraid she didn’t have enough money left now to even build herself a house.”

Margaret dreamed of another home, bigger yet than all the rest. It would be more like the family property in Lancaster, with lush gardens and separate places for her three children and their families.

But nothing was working out. Life among the Bensons had become prickly.

Three Grandchildren

Margaret did not get along with Steven’s second wife, who would no longer permit her to visit the three grandchildren, family members said.

What’s more, Steven was at work on another grandiose business scheme. He had started 11 companies on paper, calling them the Meridian World Group.

The full-page ad in the phone book described it as a network of specialists for home, industry and government. But it was really just a modest concern selling burglar alarms out of a trailer on a weedy lot.

Complained About Son

Margaret worried about pouring more money into the business. She complained about her son’s bad habits. He would disappear from the business at midday, she told her daughter.

Worse, she suspected he was stealing. Margaret had left him blank checks to meet the company payroll while she had gone off to Europe. When she got back, the checks were used up and Steven had a new house in nearby Fort Myers. Margaret was furious. She had driven up to take a look.

“She said that the yard was so big that it made the tennis court look small,” Carol Lynn recalled in the affidavit.

To ‘Pull the Plug’

A reckoning may have been at hand. When the bombs exploded, Wayne Kerr, the family attorney, had been called down to Naples. He was there to “pull the plug” on Steven, he told police.

Investigators considered these circumstances, then added some grist of their own. Steven was indeed an embezzler according to their audits.

They also believed that he was a murderer. His prints were on a sales receipt for galvanized pipe from Hughes Supply Co., they said. The hardware was the same kind found in the debris.

Denied Charges

Forty-five days after the explosion, Steven was arrested. From a jail cell, he issued a statement to “unequivocally and categorically deny the charges.”

His attorney says that at trial he will show that any of the Benson children could have placed the bombs. “They were all much concerned with the money,” Michael McDonnell said.

In fact, probate documents reveal that each owed Margaret plenty. She kept track: Carol Lynn--$118,560.33; Scott--$263,856.30; Steven--$268,163.69.

Brought on Glaucoma

But back in Lancaster, Harry Hitchcock gloomily remarked that he finds all the evidence against Steven overwhelming. The strain of it has brought on his glaucoma.

Just think of it, his daughter Janet said. He rode to the funeral in the same limo with Steven and then sat beside him at the cemetery as they placed the marred bodies in granite crypts.

Steven shuddered and cried into a handkerchief. Then he took his grandfather aside. Bops, Steven and the others always called him.

Bops, the grieving grandson asked, could he have some money: $10,000 or $20,000 ought to do it.

And the old man wrote out a check.