True Crime Stories

I know there is no way for me to know about every crime, no matter how horrible, that happens in my state but I am still very surprised when I hear of one particularly horrible for the first time after many years. When this crime occurred I was actually still in high school about two hours away and lets be fair, I was not as interested in true crimes at that time. In the evening of October 10, 1986 seventeen year old Alicia Elmore went to a store a few block from her Terre Haute Indiana home to run an errand. On her way home a man, who was later determined to be Bill Benefiel, who was wearing a mask and carrying a gun confronted her. Alicia was pushed into a garage and forced to take all of her clothing off. Her head was covered and she was bound with her own clothing and electrical wire. Alicia was then put in Benefiel's van and he took her to a house that he owned. There he chained and handcuffed her to a bed. Over the next few months he continually raped Alicia and to...

It is not uncommon for me to blog about a few cases, one right after another, that are similar in some way for a few reasons. One is that I tend to try to research at least two cases before I sit down and compose them so when one particular case seems interesting to me by the time I do the next one I am still interested in that topic. The second reason is how the cases make it to my list. There are many ways that I find the names of cases. Sometimes it is from a television show that I have watched, or a book I have heard about. Other times it may be from an article I have read online. Then there are the times I fall into one of my rabbit holes and may get on Wikipedia and look at some of the lists they compile of cases similar to each other. When that happens there will be a “block” of cases on my own list that had been discovered through one of those other lists. I would gander to guess that is how I came upon this case and the case before it. However, really the only t...