14-year-old’s killer dies while in prison

David “Coon” Merritt, the Post Falls man who killed a 14-year-old runaway in July 2000, has died of natural causes while serving a life sentence in an Orofino, Idaho, prison.

Merritt, 53, died Oct. 27 at an Orofino hospital.

His son, Cody Merritt, an accessory to the murder, is scheduled to be released from a state prison near Boise in January.

David Merritt pleaded no contest in June 2002 to first-degree murder in the death of Carissa Benway of Coeur d’Alene. He said he had raped, killed and decapitated Benway during a Fourth of July camping trip in Coeur d’Alene National Forest.

In exchange for his guilty plea, Kootenai County prosecutors agreed to drop the kidnapping and rape charges against him. They also agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Three months after the killing, two grouse hunters stumbled upon a human jawbone at a makeshift campsite west of the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Kootenai County search teams using a dog discovered an almost complete skeleton about 70 yards up a steep embankment from where the jawbone was found.

Dental records, DNA and forensic tests confirmed the jawbone, skull and skeleton belonged to Benway. The girl, whose increasingly longer absences from home had worried her mother, was last seen shortly before the Fourth of July weekend.

Cody Merritt eventually told detectives his father killed Benway while the three were camping.

The younger Merritt pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder of Benway, his girl-friend. In June 2002, when he was 18, Cody Merritt was ordered to serve a five-year sentence. He was eligible for parole in January 2005, but was denied early release from the Idaho Maximum Security Institute south of Boise. He will complete his sentence Jan. 2.

Last January, Benway’s mother was awarded a $30,000 settlement to drop a civil suit against the city of Coeur d’Alene. Bonnie Heilander sued the city in June 2004, saying the Police Department ignored her attempts to report the 14-year-old as a runaway and, despite her request to do so, didn’t run a background check on David Merritt.

According to the settlement agreement, the city admitted no wrongdoing.

Merritt was a sex offender from Washington state who lived next door to Benway and her family. His Post Falls trailer was a popular hangout for wayward teens.

The girls’ death inspired an Idaho statute, Carissa’s Law, in 2003. It requires sheriffs to advertise the picture, name, address and criminal history of violent sexual predators who move into their counties.