Posted on 03/25/2009 3:59:24 PM PDT by RDTF
On March 22, William and Cynthia Bennett left their Potomac Station home for an early morning walk and never returned. Shortly after 5:30 a.m., police found William, 57 lying dead, they found Cynthia, 55 badly beaten but still alive a short distance away.
Around 5:30 a.m., less than a mile from the Bennett home, a resident on Rocky Creek Drive called police to report the presence of a suspicious vehicle ( a white panel work van), and three men outside the van causing a disturbance.
By the time a Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputy arrived, the van was gone. However, the body of William Bennett was spotted by the deputy, lying near the intersection of Rocky Creek Drive and Riverside Drive (the same reported location of the white van). More deputies arrived and found the bloodied body of Cynthia Bennett.
Both had obviously been beaten with a blunt object.
Cynthia was sent by helicopter to an area hospital, where she remains in critical condition. The severity of her injuries have prevented her from speaking with police about the attack.
Loudoun County Sheriff Steve Simpson said: “We have a situation here which appears to be random.” Simpson went on to say that the attack may have been carried-out by gang members.
William Bennett was a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel. Cynthia had also served as an Army officer. The couple have two children together.
Bennett’s murder is similar in both its brutality and randomness to other confirmed Latino gang initiations around the country.
In November 2007, a Gresham, Oregon man was nearly beaten to death with a bat by Abel Antonio Chavez-Garcia, 15, in an attempt to join the notoriously violent MS-13 gang. Lee Chilcote, 71 was waiting at the train station when Garcia suddenly began hitting him.
A witness who called police told reporters: “We saw that impact. And we saw him just start pouring out, right there, and he was on the ground.”
Fortunately, Chilcote survived the attack but suffered some permanent difficulties with his speech.
In June 2007, a surveillance video caught the horrific image of Jason Verador, 28 walking-up behind James McKinney, 41 and striking him in the back of the head with a baseball bat. McKinney, who was mentally disabled, died a few days after the attack.
That attack gained national attention both for the sickening nature in which Verador behaved after wards, as well as the evidence it provided to this nation's growing gang violence, mainly fueled by illegal immigration.
Perhaps, nearly as disturbing as the brutal attack on William and Cynthia Bennett was the lack of information coming out of the Loudoun Sheriff’s office who is handling the case.
I phoned the sheriff’s office Tuesday night and asked for a description of the suspects. The officer on the other end of the line was extremely hesitant to talk about it, and said she “did not know.”
I told her that one article had given the description of clothing one man was wearing, but nothing else was offered. I simply wanted to know weight, height, race, etc., to place in my article…She remained silent.
I then asked the anonymous woman (she refused to give me her name), if she knew about the Bennett murder, after a very long pause, she answered with a timid “yes.”
I was then referred to their media information officer, who was not in at the time.
I do not understand how the sheriff’s office, expects the good people of Loudoun County to assist them with this case, or to even protect themselves with mad dog killers on the loose, without releasing the most basic of information about the suspects.
If someone was able to describe what a suspect was wearing (gray jogging suit and a green knit cap), they were obviously able to give a physical description.
Could it be that the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office has succumbed to political correctness and does not want to cast further suspicion on the area’s large illegal immigrant population?
Of course, Loudoun County, along with much of Northern Virginia, has been hard-hit by a wave of crimes generated by the Salvadoran gang known as MS-13.
Husband, father, veteran William Bennett may very well have been the latest American to lose his life because our politicians refuse to defend our border.
I saw a report that said 70% of all crimes were gang related. It said that 50% of counties have no murders in the average year and 25% had 1 and that the crime problem is concentrated in 3% of counties
“William Bennett was a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel. Cynthia had also served as an Army officer.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2214054/posts
This has to be a joke. Underplaying the Special Forces/CIA connection.
I hate to speculate on this murder, and I am fairly familiar with the gang situation in Loudoun County and Northern VA in general.
It’s too bad that you got the run around on the phone, but this is an active investigation. Unfortunately there have been instances where the LCSO has withheld suspect descriptions and it was speculated that it was because it was an hispanic male.
I don’t want to jump to any conclusions and hopefully Mrs. Bennett will be able to provide some info on the suspects. Is there any info on her condition?
The radio news here is usually pretty vague about it, but seems to be saying that she’s unable to speak to the police at this time.
People deplore the recounting of vigilante justice, and public executions-hangings,etc. of 100 years ago or more.
It was done because of the actions of people like these-it wasn’t as widespread as now, but there have always been people like this. However, throughout history, society has looked out for innocent members as a whole, instead of the perp. And sent a strong message along those lines. It’s usually swept under the rug, but the vast majority of the people who were executed back then had committed rape, murder, etc.—it wasn’t for no reason.
Now we do differently—differently from any other society in history, and thanks to all our understanding and nonjudgmentalism, we have more and more of it.
Reports say he left the CIA contract in 2000. Anything on who he was contracting for recently?
I think we can reasonably assume this was a minority-on-white crime. Had it been a gang of white guys, the powers-that-be would have been all over themselves announcing it.
Since when is an office a who, Mr. Gibson?
Now that I've got that off my chest, this still doesn't smell right. Former Special Forces, former CIA, out with his former military wife, both physically fit ... it just doesn't add up.
Was there no witness description of the three men reportedly "causing a disturbance?" These were some very adept "initiates," if this was a gang initiation. Does "gang initiation" automatically mean random, in light of the reported paramilitarization of MS-13?
So many questions.
Definitely not a hate crime. /s
These damn Swedish Lutherans! Always causing trouble! I knew when I first heard this story that either Swedes or Slovaks would be behind it. Same thing. Violent blonde troublemakers both.
While I'm sure Marines would be welcome to "tag along", the Special Forces, aka Green Berets, will take care of their own.
Maybe we need to form a posse and start protecting our families from gangs since law enforcement is so afraid to even admit that these gangs are taking over our streets
Leave it to the LibDems to blame the victem for the death caused by the Mara Salvatrucha illegal alien criminals.
The criminals are to blame; Washington, DC, politicians are the “inablers” for all illegal aliens in this country and for the perpetration of the drug problems here, too.
Close the borders. Keep the criminals out of America.
Karl in Phoenix
Pretty amazing they can’t bring themselves to narrow down the list to hispanic so they would have a better chance of finding the bad guys.... oops did I just make a hate speech? /sarc
A co-worker lives outside of downtown Leesburg just off Rt. 7 in one of the neighborhood’s heading out towards Purcellville. Our friend’s daughter was returning home Saturday night and passed a man walking down the street of their neighborhood. They started up their driveway (which is long) and met her parents who were leaving for the night to go to a wedding. After a little discussion, the parents left (passing the man walking); the daughter and her friend went into the house. The man then went to the door of their house and began ringing the doorbell. The girls did not approach the door or any windows, so the man went around the house trying to find a way in ringing any doorbell he could find along the way - of course scaring the girls to death. The daughter called her older brother, who was also in the neighborhood - thank God. As he drove up the driveway the man fled and was seen by the brother getting into a white cargo-van. The brother and his friends followed the van and got the license plate info - they were FL tags.
The parents called the sheriff’s office and gave the info to the police. They believe this incident and the people involved may be linked to the mother-daughter murders that occurred last week in MD. They also believe they may be linked to the beating of the couple that occurred yesterday morning (5am) in Landsdowne.
I just wanted to give everybody a heads up on something that happened in our neighborhood March,21, that may be connected to the murder in Lansdowne.
Around 6:30 to 7:00 pm an unknown person was seen at one of our neighbors house trying to gain access, luckily someone was home and were able to call for help, the person was aided by 2 other people that were waiting in a vehicle, my son and one of our neighbors caught up to them before they left the neighborhood and got their tag number, the police were called and a police report was filed.
The details of the vehicle were:
White Ford E250 Van with Florida plates, plate # J65 ZYX
The description of both the vehicle and the person were similar to the report that was filed at the scene of the murder-beating. Photo fit composites are being put together from our neighbor and possibly my son who also had a good look at them.
In general the description of the person who was walking around our neighborhood was:
Approx 5’7”-5’8” in height, white complexion, medium brown color hair and wearing a Blue colored hoodie, he also had a full very short beard, Blue Jeans and white sneakers and had a distinctive slow walk.
The boys did not get a good look at the other 2 people in the van.
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