Ex-FBI Agent Gets 23-Year Sentence
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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A former FBI agent was sentenced to 23 years in prison for trying to kill his estranged wife after she began an affair with crime novelist Patricia Cornwell. Eugene Bennett lured his wife into a darkened church last summer and threatened to blow her up in a scheme that involved a minister bound, blindfolded and used as bait. Marguerite Bennett, also a former FBI agent, foiled the plan when she squirted her husband with pepper spray and fired a gun at him. Circuit Judge Richard Potter reduced the 61-year sentence recommended by the jury.
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