The shrill of a bell ringing loudly in the distance meant only one thing to Judy Benkowski – her husband was demanding something. Clarence Benkowski was overweight and overbearing. All his life he’d been number one in that miserable household. And even now, after retiring from his job as a welder, he expected to be waited on hand and foot.
When his sick and aged mother decided to move in it got worse for Judy, because it meant there were two of them bullying and cursing her. They made her serve them as if she was a slave. They treated her like dirt. There had to be a better way to spend your life, surely?
Often these two obese specimens would sit in their cosy armchairs in the sitting room of the Benkowski’s neat, detached suburban home at number 508, South Yale Avenue, Addison, near Chicago, for hours on end without lifting a finger. That was when the wretched little bell rang the most. An endless stream of demands followed.
Ring. ‘Get me a coffee,’ said one.
Ring. ‘Get me a beer,’ said the other.
Ring. ‘This coffee’s cold, get me another.’
Ring. ‘This beer’s not cold enough. Why the hell aren’t they kept in the freezer?’
And so it went. On and on and on. Judy Benkowski had no time for a job and only a small handful of friends in the entire world. Her main occupation was looking after those two leeches, as well as bringing up her two sons.
Not surprisingly, it sometimes got too much for Judy. Her life was so relentless and so unenjoyable that she’d often cry herself to sleep at night, wondering when it would ever end. Occasionally, husband Clarence would drunkenly try to have sex with her. It certainly wasn’t making love. Judy reckoned it was closer to rape than anything else.
The act of sex was totally one-sided. He’d make her fondle him and then – at the very moment he was ready – she would just lie there and listen to him grunting while his blubbery, obese body crushed her into the mattress. At such moments, she’d try and think of other things, like the next day’s shopping. But his roughness would snap her back to the unpleasant reality of having this huge lump of lard molesting her. But at least it was usually over in minutes, if not seconds. However the pain could be really awful sometimes. Pretty inevitable when a seriously overweight middle-aged man forces himself on a slightly built, five-foot-tall woman more than 20 years his junior. They might have been husband and wife in law. But they were complete strangers in every other sense of the word.
One day Clarence decided he wanted to spice up his sex life so he bought a waterbed. Typically, it was the cheapest one he could find and it had the unpleasant side-effect of being so under-filled that it swayed from side to side and made its occupants feel seasick. So instead of just lying there, now Judy had that awful, overwhelming sensation of rocking up and down on a boat bobbing across the ocean. Often she’d almost gag as the bile tried to force its way out of her throat. At least then her husband would stop forcing himself into her rather than risk being puked over.
Clarence’s attitude towards sex was much the same as his outlook on life: men ruled the household. Women were just there to honour and obey and do what the hell he said. He didn’t give a damn about Judy’s feelings, he just wanted four big, square meals a day and an orgasm when he felt like it.
For almost 20 years, Judy put up with the insults and misery of married life. What else could she do? She had no career. She couldn’t afford to exist outside those four walls. She’d been trapped for so long she’d forgotten what it was like to enjoy herself.
‘You cannot let him treat you like this. You gotta do somethin’ about it, Judy.’
Debra Santana was outraged by her friend Judy Benkowski’s complete indifference to her appalling marital situation. She’d heard so many horror stories from Judy. How could a husband treat his wife so badly? Debra assured her friend she certainly wouldn’t put up with it.
‘But,’ Judy explained, in her quiet, reserved way, ‘what can I do? I have nowhere to go. No means of support.’
However, Debra was determined to help her friend and neighbour. They had an unlikely kinship. Debra was a striking blonde of 32, with a fun-loving attitude towards life, who’d suffered during her marriage and taken the sensible route out: divorce. She now enjoyed everything that Judy had long since given up hope of having.
The main object of envy between the two women was Debra’s athletic, black lover who, she regularly told Judy, gave her all-round sexual satisfaction and never treated her badly. Judy was envious because all she really wanted was to feel warmth, passion and true love again from a man. Judy knew Debra was right when she said she had to do something about her marriage, but what?
Judy’s husband Clarence, a strict Catholic, wouldn’t even discuss the subject of divorce. And he wasn’t prepared to let them lead separate lives. At least then she could have gone out with other men and he could have done as he pleased. But Clarence believed he owned Judy – lock, stock and barrel. She was his woman. If he wanted sex he’d ring his bell and get it. If he wanted to insult her he’d do it. If he wanted her to be his slave nothing could stop him, or so he told Judy with great relish virtually every day of their miserable marriage.
Judy’s friend Debra continued to be outraged. She may have been 13 years younger than her friend, but she gradually achieved increasing influence over her weaker neighbour. The more they talked about Debra’s adventures in and out of bed, the more Judy began to realise how desperate she was to end the misery.
‘But what can I do about him?’ Judy asked her friend one day.
‘I’ve got an idea …’ replied Debra. Eddie Brown was the lover who’d given Debra all the sexual satisfaction she’d ever craved. Even fully clothed, Eddie’s muscular, toned torso virtually burst his shirt buttons to breaking point. Judy Benkowski felt a tingle of excitement as she shook his hand for the first time. She didn’t need much imagination to work out what Eddie’s biggest asset must have been.
‘Eddie’s going to help you with your problem, Judy,’ said Debra, when all three met up one day in a local restaurant.
The only thing about Eddie that did surprise Judy was that he stood just 5 foot 3 inches tall. In fact, Debra towered over him by at least three inches. But none of that mattered because Debra had convinced Judy that Eddie was going to be the perfect man to help cure her marriage problems. But it was a job that required a certain amount of planning.
‘D’you really think you can kill him without being caught?’ Judy asked Eddie Brown.
He assured both women he could murder Judy’s husband Clarence with ‘no trouble’. He even agreed a fee of $5,000 as they sat round that table in the restaurant.
Admittedly, there were a few details to sort out. Where should it be done? What weapon should be used? How would they make sure the police didn’t suspect anything? And what happened if he lived?
At first, Judy Benkowski wondered if she’d gone completely crazy. How could she even contemplate murdering another human being? It all seemed like a dream. She hesitated.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this,’ she told her best friend and the woman’s lover.
There was a brief silence from Debra and Eddie.
‘What?’ said Debra. ‘You can’t change your mind. We agreed on this, Judy. Come on. Let’s do it!’
Then Eddie chipped in, ‘Yeah. It’ll be easy. We’ll make it look like a robbery. No problem.’
The pressure was mounting on Judy. She wasn’t a strong-willed woman at the best of times. Now she felt as if there really wasn’t any choice in the matter. After all, this was her only real escape route from a miserable life. It was the answer to all her problems and unhappiness. Sure it seemed drastic, but that animal of a husband deserved to die. He’d treated her like dirt for too long. Now it was her turn. Revenge would be sweet. There was no turning back.
Next they had to decide how and where to do it.
It was mid-October 1988, and Halloween was fast approaching. Judy had a great idea, which she immediately enthusiastically shared with her two partners in crime.
‘I’ll get you [Eddie] a real scary costume. You’ll look just like a kid out trick-or-treating. Then you knock on the door, Clarence answers. You scream “trick or treat” and he gets shot to death. Whaddya think?’
Debra and Eddie looked stunned. It was a ludicrous plan and they knew it. But Judy had come to life describing the ghoulish aspects of it. She’d even chuckled weirdly as she described the shooting of her husband. And she wasn’t finished yet.
‘Clarence is a mean son-of-a-bitch and he hates giving anything to people who come knocking at the door. I kinda like the idea of him getting the ultimate payback.’
The shy, retiring Judy Benkowski had been suddenly transformed into a hard-nosed killer psyching herself up for murder. Her sudden obsession with husband Clarence’s death even surprised her great friend Debra. But Judy felt that the risks involved were far outweighed by the prospect of a new life without Clarence. Judy Benkowski was feeling happier than she had done for years.
‘But hang on there, Judy,’ said Eddie. ‘Trick-or-treaters don’t usually gun down their neighbours. The cops would suss it was a contract hit and they’d get us for sure.’
Pint-sized Eddie was trying to defuse the situation. Sure, he’d agreed to murder this lady’s husband because the guy sounded like he deserved it. But Judy’s scheme was absolutely insane. It was like something out of a comic book, hardly the sort of low-key killing Eddie had in mind. He’d just got out of jail and was hoping to avoid any future spells in the slammer.
‘I think we gotta do something less …’ he hesitated, ‘… dramatic?’
Judy was shaking her head before he’d even finished saying it.
‘No way. The cops’ll think some crazy trick-or-treater is out there blasting innocent citizens to death. They’ll never think it was a contract killing.’
Debra and Eddie glanced at each other and shrugged their shoulders. All they could see were the dollar signs registering in front of their eyes.
‘You’re the boss,’ said Eddie. He was jobless and needed the money so he wasn’t about to blow the contract, whatever the risks. Halloween trick-or-treating involves children dressed in ghoulish costumes knocking on their neighbours’ doors and shouting ‘trick or treat’ when someone opens up. The traditional reward is a liberal helping of sweets and, usually, everyone goes home happy. In the Chicago suburb of Addison – as in tens of millions of homes across the United States – these Halloween activities had been fervently obeyed ever since a group of devil worshippers in Salem started the ball rolling more than 200 years earlier. And South Yale Avenue – where the Benkowskis lived – was no exception. With its row upon row of three-bedroomed detached bungalows, built to maximise the use of space available, this was classic Middle-American suburbia.
But on Halloween afternoon, small-time crook Eddie Brown started to get cold feet. As Judy and Debra adjusted the ghoulish latex face mask they’d bought him at the local supermarket, Eddie felt that dressing up like a kid going out trick-or-treating was not the right way to go about a professional hit.
To make matters worse, the rubbery mask was extremely hot, sweaty and tight fitting. Judy and Debra had insisted on getting one that covered his entire face so that no one could see what colour his skin was. But it was airless behind that mask. Eddie started wondering if he’d even make it to number 508 alive. Gasping for air, he complained to the two women, ‘This is fuckin’ crazy. I can’t even see properly outta the eye slits.’
Eddie’s voice was so badly muffled by the mask, the two women didn’t understand what he was saying at first.
So he yelled, ‘I SAID, “THIS IS CRAZY.”’
If Eddie had to shout this loudly to be heard, then he’d probably alert the entire street when he went knocking on Clarence Benkowski’s door to announce his trick-or-treating surprise. But yet more problems lay ahead.
When Eddie wandered up the street to the end of South Yale Avenue his heart sank. Dozens of school children were marching up and down the street in trick-or-treating disguises. It looked as if the entire population of under-15-year-olds in Addison had all decided to hit South Yale at exactly the same time.
Eddie ripped off the mask in a fit of frustration and stood there in his white skeleton costume, jumping up and down on the spot. His two female accomplices looked at him with horror.
‘I’m not doin’ this. I can’t start shootin’ at the guy in front of all those kids. I’ll never get away with it.’
Eddie abandoned the hit there and then. Judy was furious. She’d been dreaming about that ugly hulk of a husband being gunned down. Now Eddie Brown was ruining all her plans.
‘But you gotta do it, Eddie. You cut a deal.’
But Eddie Brown had a new plan in mind.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Judy. I’ll kill that son-of-a-bitch. But not tonight. It’d be crazy and we’d all end up in jail.’
Judy reluctantly agreed.
‘OK. But it’s gotta be soon.’
Ring. ‘Where’s my breakfast?’
Ring. ‘Come on, I’m goddam hungry.’
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Clarence Benkowski was providing his usual pre-breakfast performance. At least on this day his mother was away at a relative’s, so Judy didn’t have to put up with her as well. In the kitchen, Judy muttered quietly under her breath, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get just what you deserve in good time.’
If Clarence hadn’t been so lazy, he might have got up from the breakfast table where he was slouched and lumbered into the kitchen to witness Judy pouring the contents of twenty sachets of sleeping pills into his coffee.
Instead he just kept on ringing that damn bell.
Ring. ‘Move your ass, woman. I’m HUNGRY.’
That last ring was the signal which would hopefully mark the beginning of the end of Clarence Benkowski’s life. For it helped Judy feel no guilt as she emptied the last of those packets and then swilled them around in his coffee. The more he rang the bell, the better she felt about killing him. It was a wonderful feeling – just to contemplate the end of her unhappy life.
Just keep ringing, Clarence. Just keep ringing. Soon you’ll never ring again.
Then Judy tipped the empty pill packets into the trashcan, before moving towards the dining area with a new spring in her step, a new bounce in her walk.
‘There you go, sweetheart.’
She hadn’t called him that for years. ‘Sweetheart’ was a term of endearment. How could she have even contemplated feeling warmth towards this lazy, fat bully of a man she was about to murder. Yet a tingle of excitement and passion ran through Judy’s body as she put the tray down on the breakfast table. Then she sat down and quietly sipped at her tea, her eyes straining upwards and across the table towards Clarence. But he hadn’t even lifted the coffee cup yet.
Clarence Benkowski was a predictable creature of habit. He liked to first gulp down his fried eggs, then stuff some crunchy toast into that big fat mouth of his. Then that cup of coffee would be lifted to his lips. Be patient. Relax. He’s going to drink it. All in good time. All in good time.
The Chicago-Sun Times was spread across the table in front of Clarence, as it always was each morning. Something caught his eye. He stopped eating and gaped at the sports results.
Not once in all their years together had he even uttered a word of conversation to Judy over breakfast. That was another of his most cherished habits. But that cup of coffee remained untouched. Judy’s initial excitement was starting to slide into desperation. Come on! Come on! Get on with it!
She felt desperate. Maybe it was time for desperate measures.
‘Sweetheart.’ For some weird reason she used that word again. ‘Sweetheart, drink your coffee or it’ll get cold.’
For a few seconds, Clarence screwed up his blubbery face and looked at his wife quizzically. She never spoke at breakfast. Why the hell was she bugging him to drink his coffee? Never before in more than 20 years. Why now? But, as with most things in Clarence’s life, he gave it no more than a brief moment of consideration. Any further analysis would have been totally out of character.
Judy was angry with herself for weakening in the face of such adversity. She mustn’t try to make him drink his coffee or he might get suspicious. She didn’t dare look up again in case he caught her eye and saw those telltale signs of guilt.
Judy was virtually shaking with anxiety. Maybe she’d blown it. Had he sussed her out? She shut her eyes for a split second in the hope all that doubt and anguish would simply go away.
Then it happened. The unmistakable slurping noise was like music to her ears. She opened her eyes to see him gulping like a fat bull at a water trough as he tried to wash all that greasy food down his big, ugly gullet. At last, he was going to pay the ultimate price for his cruelty and greed.
As he sucked that big coffee cup dry, Judy felt the rush of relief running through her veins. She sighed quietly to herself. She later admitted it was one of the most satisfying moments of her life.
Seconds later …
‘I don’t feel so good. Think I’ll lie down a while,’ belched Clarence.
The sleeping pills were already kicking in.
The previous day, pint-sized Romeo, Eddie Brown had provided Judy with very precise instructions on how many tablets she should feed him. Just enough to knock him into a deep slumber rather than complete unconsciousness. That way, no one would be able to tell he’d been drugged.
Clarence Benkowski got up and struggled towards the bedroom. He only just managed to get to his beloved waterbed before collapsing in a heap of rolling fat. A few seconds later, Judy crept into the room just to make sure he was out. Then she walked quietly back into the hallway and phoned Debra. ‘He’s asleep. You and Eddie better get over here fast.’
Judy put the phone down gently and awaited her two accomplices.
Debra was the first to turn up at the house. She hugged Judy warmly to show her good friend she supported her completely and utterly. The two women then walked into the front room and sat side by side on a sofa and counted the minutes until Eddie arrived. Eventually the back door opened with a creak and their hired killer walked in.
In almost complete silence, Judy handed Eddie her husband’s World War Two Luger pistol and motioned him towards the master bedroom where the master lay sleeping on his waterbed.
The two women then sat back down on the same sofa. Debra put on a pair of stereo headphones and began listening to heavy metal on her Walkman. She didn’t want to hear what was about to occur.
Eddie had earlier said he’d use a pillow to muffle the sound of the gun, but that didn’t prevent Judy from hearing the thudding pops of three bullets being fired into her husband’s slumbering torso. She didn’t feel any great outpouring of emotion. Just a sense of relief that it was finally over.
But there was more work still to be done. Judy and her two accomplices needed to make it look like a burglary that had gone wrong. All three began pulling drawers of clothes out and spread them all over the bed where Clarence still lay. Incredibly, the waterbed was still intact because all three bullets had embedded themselves in their target. Judy was disappointed in a way because she really hated that waterbed. But then it would have caused such a mess if it’d leaked everywhere.
Meanwhile, Eddie continued smashing the place to bits so as to make it look like the house had been robbed. But all this was proving much more stressful to Judy than the murder of her husband.
‘No. Not the china, please,’ she begged him.
Judy stopped Eddie destroying her vast collection of china memorabilia which she’d lovingly collected for many years. Eddie was irritated.
‘This is supposed to look like a robbery.’
‘Surely, we can still make it look good without wrecking my china?’
Eddie shrugged his shoulders. Judy was paying him, so it was her decision.
Before Eddie was to flee out of the back door, Judy had to hand over the first instalment of $1,000. She also allowed Eddie to take two rings from a jewellery drawer as a ‘bonus’. The rest of the cash would be given to him within a week. Seconds later Eddie had disappeared. Mission accomplished.
After he’d gone, the two women embraced. They’d done it. They’d got rid of the animal. Now there was a big wide world out there waiting to be conquered. It was going to be the beginning of Judy Benkowski’s new life. But before they could leave the ransacked house, Judy checked down the street. It was mid-morning; husbands were at work, mothers were out shopping. Not a person in sight. They strolled casually out into the bright autumn sunlight.
The Italian restaurant where Judy and Debra went to celebrate that lunchtime was so crowded that the only thing noticeable about them was that they ordered a bottle of very expensive white wine. Few citizens in Middle America drink alcohol at lunchtime so their toast to one another raised a few eyebrows.
‘To us. Long may we live without husbands.’ They chuckled before downing each glass in virtually one gulp. And it wasn’t just a new life of freedom that Judy was looking forward to; Clarence’s life insurance was worth at least $100,000 and then there was the $150,000 resale value of the family house.
Judy Benkowski reckoned she was going to be a very merry widow indeed.
‘He’s been murdered. He’s been murdered.’
Judy’s hysterical voice sounded very convincing to local police detective sergeant Tom Gorniak. He’d been patched through to the Benkowski home after Addison police station had received an emergency call from Debra and Judy, who’d just ‘discovered’ Clarence Benkowski shot dead on their return from a ‘shopping trip’.
In a bizarre three-way conference call between the detective’s radio, the police station switchboard and Judy Benkowski, DS Gorniak tried to ascertain what had happened as he drove at high speed to South Yale Avenue to answer their emergency call. By the time he rolled up at the house, paramedics had already arrived. Gorniak found the two women weeping in the front yard, tried to console them and then got a uniformed officer to keep an eye on them while he carefully examined the crime scene before the police technicians arrived. Gorniak knew this was the best time to look around because everything remained untouched and exactly as it had been at the time of the murder. He was immediately puzzled by the way in which the victim’s body lay slumped in bed as if he’d been taking an afternoon nap. How could he have slept through the noise of an intruder who then leaned over him and fired three bullets into his head at close range?
Burglars just didn’t usually do that sort of thing. Even in trigger-happy America burglars rarely used their weapons. Most professional burglars would get the hell out of a house the moment they were disturbed. So Gorniak quickly concluded that the victim was asleep when he was shot. He didn’t even have time to turn around and see his killer.
Then investigator Gorniak noticed the clothes thrown from the drawers over the body. That meant the killer had ransacked the room after the shooting. It just didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have bothered to do that, surely?
Tom Gorniak had been a policeman for ten years and he knew only too well how dangerous it was to draw any conclusions at such an early stage in a murder investigation. But he was convinced this looked like a contract killing.
Outside, he leaned into the squad car where Judy was sitting and asked her, ‘Did your husband have any enemies, Mrs Benkowski?’
Gorniak tried to be gentle. After all, this was the grieving widow he was talking to, and she seemed to be really upset.
‘No,’ Judy replied through sniffs. ‘He had no enemies.’
But Tom Gorniak had a hunch, so he persuaded Judy Benkowski to visit the police station with him that evening. He said he knew how bad she must be feeling, but it was important they went through a few details so that the killer could be quickly apprehended. Judy agreed. She didn’t want to seem to be hindering the police enquiries in any way. Soon Gorniak and his colleague Detective Mike Tierney were gently probing the widow for clues. They were already convinced she had a lot more to tell them about this case.
Naturally, Judy started getting a little edgy. She had to tell them something so maybe a half-truth would keep them happy.
‘Now I remember, I did notice someone outside the house this morning,’ she recalled anxiously to the two detectives.
Gorniak and Tierney raised their eyebrows. Why didn’t she mention this before?
Judy then described in precise detail how she’d returned from her shopping trip with her friend Debra and they’d seen this rather short, stocky black man.
‘I think he was runnin’ away from the house,’ explained Judy.
The two officers were even more puzzled. They began pulling in the reins. Both sensed that Judy Benkowski knew a lot more than she was admitting. Their next move was to haul Judy’s friend Debra Santana in for questioning. As the detectives waited with Judy for Debra to arrive, they tried an old and trusted police technique.
‘It would sure help us if you could tell us everything you know. How about we start from the beginning again,’ asked Tom Gorniak.
Judy hesitated. She had a lot on her mind and she was starting to think that maybe the officers were well aware of it. Then she took a long, deep breath. ‘Well, I think I knew that black guy running away from my house. His name is Eddie Brown. He’s Debra’s boyfriend.’
Tom Gorniak and Mike Tierney looked at each other and smiled. They knew they were about to hear a confession to murder. As Gorniak later explained: ‘After all that planning, Judy Benkowski went and gave it all away before her husband’s body was virtually cold.’
In September 1989, Judy Benkowski sobbed uncontrollably as she was sentenced to 100 years in prison for hiring hitman Eddie Brown to murder her husband. Du Page County prosecutor Michael Fleming had earlier demanded that Judy get the death penalty, but Judge Brian Telander ruled that there were mitigating factors that ‘precluded the imposition of the death penalty’.
These included no prior criminal record, numerous health problems and several character witnesses who testified on her behalf and told the court her husband was a lazy bully of a man. Prosecutor Fleming described the sentence – which meant Judy would not be eligible for parole until she was 97 – as ‘fair and appropriate. She claimed she wanted a divorce and he wouldn’t go along, but she never even talked to a lawyer about it.’
On 31 August 1991, Judy married sweetheart Clarence Jeske at the Dwight Correctional Institute, in Illinois. The couple had first met before her husband was murdered but they both insist their relationship did not begin until after the killing. By a strange twist of fate, Jeske now lives in that same house where Clarence was murdered, in South Yale Avenue. He’s even been made legal guardian of Judy’s two children.