Conviction possible without a body in woman’s vanishing?
MIAMI — They’re likely the biggest hurdles, although not historically insurmountable ones, for prosecutors alleging Lewis Bennett murdered his wife at sea. There’s no body.
And, by the way, no witnesses. Last week the FBI and federal prosecutors charged Bennett, a 41-year-old dual England-Australia national, with second-degree murder. They allege that on May 15 he killed 41-year-old suburban Delray Beach real estate broker Isabella Hellmann, his bride of three months and the mother of their child, in international waters south of Key West, then deliberately sank his catamaran and staged it as an accident.
In federal court in Miami on Feb. 26, Bennett — again shackled at the wrists and ankles and wearing a tan prison jumpsuit, said he is broke and no one wants
to take his case.
“I’ve not been successful,” Bennett told U.S. District Judge Chris McAliley. “I’ll require the services of a public defender, if possible.”
McAliley granted Bennett’s request and assigned federal pub-
lic defender Lauren Krasnoff. Asked if he was employed, Bennett said he has a “solarpower business” but doesn’t “receive an income. I haven’t for the last six months.” He also said he owns no property. He said the extent of his money is “approximately $ 2,000 in an Australian bank account.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Lunkenheimer noted that when Bennett was arrested, police found $20,000 in a backpack in a car belonging to Hellmann. But the judge said because federal officials have custody of that cash and wouldn’t release it to Bennett, it wouldn’t affect her decision. A U.S. magistrate last week had set no bail for Bennett, citing the seriousness of the charges and the risk that the dual England-Australian national will flee the United States. Then, on Friday, a judge again denied bail. U.S. District Judge Chris McAliley questioned whether Bennett is a “danger” to the community but did agree Bennett is a flight him risk and told that, if he was motivated to flee, “you’d be capable of doing that.” Two notorious Palm Beach County cases, one federal and one local, did end in convictions without bodies: a horrific double murder in Singer Island a decade ago and the 1955 assassination of an eminent judge and his wife in what’s been called Palm Beach County’s “crime of the century.” Nationally, as far back as the 1850s, a court returned a murder conviction despite the lack of a corpse in the case of a Harvard Medical School professor convicted of burning victims in his basement incinerator. In that case, however, small body parts were found. Former Chicago-area police officer Drew Petersen never was convicted of the murder of his fourth wife, Stacey, who has not been found, although he was convicted in the death of his third wife. And the FBI’s public-affairs department has devoted a podcast to a similar Georgia conviction. “It’s a difficult row to hoe, but it’s not impossible,” said Bob Dekle, who was a public defender for the Lake City area for two years, then that area’s state attorney for 30 years, and then a University of Florida Law School processor for a decade before retiring. “Rule number one: There are two kinds of evidence, direct and circumstantial,” Dekle said. “Rule number two is all evidence is circum- stantial.” He said he “lost more eyewitness cases in homicides than circumstantial ones.” Dekle also said federal prosecutors could have far more evidence than was revealed in the seven-page complaint. “It’s a circumstantial evidence case built on inferences,” Dekle said. But, he added, “It would help if they had one whopping good evidence of motive.” Prosecutors potentially have at least two. First, Bennett appeared to be in a hurry to have Hellmann declared dead so he could settle her estate, of which nothing was in his name and everything in hers. He asked the Coast Guard within days of the agency’s calling off its search to ask if it had the authority to issue a “letter of presumed death.” He later filed a probate case in Palm Beach County court, where Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll has refused to rule, and even has asked Bennett’s lawyers why he was in a hurry. Secondly, Hellmann’s family has said she confided to them that Bennett wanted to move with her and the baby back to Australia. David Bludworth, who was Palm Beach County state attorney from 1971 to 1993, recalled working as a special