Idaho man arrested in ‘93 death
MIDDLETON, Idaho – A former Salt Lake City lawyer wanted in a 1993 California slaying in which a San Francisco youth counselor was killed and dismembered has been arrested in Idaho and was being transported back to California.
Kirk C. Bennett, 50, was arrested at his home in the small southwestern Idaho community of Middleton on June 13 by Idaho State Police officers.
He’s wanted in the death of Stephanie Jensen, 31, with whom he allegedly lived in San Francisco until she disappeared in June 1993.
Deputies from the Santa Clara County, Calif., sheriff’s office picked up Bennett on Wednesday.
Jensen’s headless, handless body was found near the Paul Masson Mountain Winery in Saratoga, Calif., 12 years ago. Investigators were stymied for years because they could not use fingerprint or dental records to identify the body. The hands and head have never been found. But recent scrutiny of missing-persons files by a Santa Clara sheriff’s detective turned up Jensen’s identity and prompted a search for Bennett that culminated in his arrest in Idaho this month.
“The case remained cold for 11 years,” said Santa Clara Sheriff’s Sgt. Pedro Contreras, a “cold-case” investigator who identified Jensen’s body in mid-2004 by using DNA and blood samples from members of the woman’s family. “I got lucky because of an inquiry made by the California Department of Justice doing a profile of a serial killer.”
After Contreras gave the state agency details on the 1993 body – at the time, he only knew that it was a young, African-American female – officials there gave him a list of eight people who had been reported missing in the region at that time, he said.
“I went through that list, eliminating everybody one by one,” Contreras said, adding he was aided by modern databases not available to detectives a decade ago. “I went through it (the list) until I could eliminate all of them but one individual. That was a lady by the name of Stephanie Jensen.”
Charges related to the woman’s death will be filed against Bennett at a hearing once he’s back in California, he said.
According to police reports, Jensen had traveled from her home in Salt Lake City to San Francisco, where she and Bennett had a romantic relationship, in the early 1990s.
Contreras said finding Bennett in Idaho was relatively easy.
He attempted to interview Bennett in Middleton in January, but the suspended lawyer declined to speak with the investigator. Since his arrest June 13, Bennett has also declined to make a statement, Contreras said.
In an Associated Press interview, a spokeswoman for the Utah Bar Association said Bennett received a disciplinary suspension from that organization in 1993. She didn’t give the reason for his suspension.
Since Bennett’s arrest, Idaho State Police have knocked on neighbors’ doors and asked Middleton residents for information about Bennett, who has lived in the home for at least two years with a woman, according to ISP reports.
“I’ve never seen him work (at a job),” Ray Johnson, who lived two doors down and often saw Bennett tending to yard work, told the Idaho Press-Tribune newspaper. “He acted just as normal as me.”
Attempts to contact Bennett’s home by the Associated Press were unsuccessful Thursday.
Bennett had worked as a car salesman in San Francisco, said Santa Clara Sheriff’s Deputy Terrance Helm, the officer who transported Bennett to California this week.
He does not have any criminal violations in Idaho’s Canyon County, according to local court records.