Friday, Oct. 9, 1998 | 3:57 a.m.
A convicted felon who has made numerous threats to kill comedian Jerry Lewis will come up for parole Monday after serving less than three months in prison for aggravated stalking.
Lewis, one of this century's most recognizable entertainers, is fearful for his life and the safety of his family -- his 6-year-old daughter's life also was threatened -- and is frustrated at how he believes the justice system has failed in the case of Gary Benson.
Benson, a 55-year-old diagnosed chronic schizophrenic, was convicted of stalking Lewis in 1995 and given a maximum six-year sentence, but he has spent most of that time in and out of mental hospitals and Veterans Administration outpatient psychiatric clinics or in the county jail.
In July, District Court Judge Michael Douglas revoked Benson's probation amid reports he continued to threaten Lewis and his family and sent Benson to prison to serve the last three years of his sentence.
"The balance of his prison sentence now could wind up being just 12 weeks," Lewis, 72, told the Sun in an exclusive interview this week. "I am incensed and stressed out (by this).
"I want the system to work for me and for others. I want to keep him in jail."
While Lewis, a Las Vegas resident of 19 years, calmly chronicled what has been nine years of terror, he was visibly upset when he spoke Benson's name, and more than once dropped his forehead on his wrist and shook his head over his enduring frustration.
Benson will come up for his first parole eligibility hearing 9 a.m. Monday at the Southern Desert Correctional Center at Indian Springs. The decision whether to free him will come down to whether the parole board believes Benson is or is no longer a threat to Lewis or society.
Dr. Clifford Kuhn, professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville Health Science Center, has, at Lewis' request, studied the Benson stalking case and believes Benson remains a serious threat to Lewis' well-being.
"Gary Randolph Benson is suffering from a chronic schizophrenic illness for which there is no apparent effective treatment," Kuhn wrote in a Nov. 2, 1996, memorandum to Lewis. "He is periodically seized without warning by unpredictable homicidal decisions and impulses and, as such, should be considered potentially extremely dangerous at all times."
In a follow-up opinion dated Tuesday, Kuhn wrote to his friend: "All of the subsequent data serves to confirm my original opinion. ... If anything, his condition seems to have worsened.
"Mr. Benson's continued preoccupation with the impulse to stalk and kill you should be of great concern to all of us who care for your personal safety. ... It is my professional opinion that ... Benson's mental illness is undiminished over the last 24 months and that killing you will be his highest priority the instant he is released from incarceration."
In a telephone interview, Kuhn, a psychiatrist for 26 years, said Benson "is as close to hopeless as any case I have seen because there is a strong sociopathic pattern that goes beyond usual treatment resistance. Multiple hospitalizations over 30 years have shown no benefit."
Benson said he no longer is a threat to anyone.
"I have no desire to cause any fear or harm to Mr. Lewis or any of his relatives," Benson said in a telephone interview this week from prison. "I have been using my energies to concentrate on being with my new wife, Susan, and returning to our home in Salt Lake City."
"I no longer have hard feelings, and I'm sorry I acted in the manner I did."
Benson said he got married on Feb. 8 in Elko.
Lewis says he wants Benson to remain incarcerated not so much for his own protection, but for the safety of his 6-year-old daughter, whose life also was threatened, and for the safety of other victims of stalkers.
"If another man's child is threatened and you do not protect that child, then all the children of the world are in jeopardy, and you stand as guilty as those who threatened him," Lewis said.
Even if Lewis and the Clark County District Attorney's office are successful in preventing Benson's release next week, it will be only a temporary victory.
"His prison sentence is due to expire in August 1999, and Gary Benson will be a free man then," Abbi Silver, the chief deputy district attorney, said, noting that inmates get time reduced from their sentences for various reasons.
"The district attorney's office is asking that he not be paroled because he is still a danger to the community and to his victims. He should serve ... at least until (his prison term) expires."
Silver said her office is investigating the possibility that Lewis was threatened while Benson was in prison from July through September.
Silver said the justice system considers the 1,100-plus days that Benson spent in custody at lockdown mental facilities, such as the Lake's Crossing Center for the Mentally Disordered Offender in Sparks, as time served.
"There is a disparity in the law when one person can absolutely terrorize another and face just six years in prison while another person can steal a shirt from a department store and face a maximum of 10 years," she said.
Silver wants Lewis to accompany her to the Nevada Legislature to lobby for an anti-stalking law that would carry a maximum of 20 years.
Such a law would do nothing to help Lewis' current situation unless Benson again stalks him and is convicted under such a tougher law.
"I think the harassment and stalking will continue," Silver said. "I have great concern for the safety of Mr. Lewis when Gary Benson's sentence ends."
Benson says that with the counseling he has received in prison and future counseling from the VA -- along with "stabilizing my medication' -- he hopes to convince authorities he is not a danger to Lewis or the community.
Deputy Public Defender Terry Jackson, who defended Benson at his probation revocation hearing, says he has not had contact with him since then and thus is not in a position to comment on the pending hearing.
Inmates are not entitled to free legal counsel at parole eligibility hearings, Jackson said.
Lewis rose to fame in the late 1940s and early '50s as the partner of the late crooner Dean Martin and later became an international film and television star. He also has been heralded as a humanitarian for hosting decades of Labor Day telethons that have raised millions to fight Muscular Dystrophy.
However, Lewis says he became a target of threats not because of jealousy over his celebrity status, but because he tried to do a favor for an employee.
The stalking began in 1989 when Lewis offered to help his housekeeper by checking into the background of Benson, to whom she had become engaged.
Lewis obtained a lengthy police record on the housekeeper's fiance and gave it to her. She told Benson about it and that triggered a long string of harassing phone calls to Lewis' home and Las Vegas office.
"During the first call, he told me I had no right to tell her about his personal life, and I apologized," Lewis said. "I felt I had appeased him."
However, before that night was over, Lewis received two more phone calls -- the last ending with a threat to his life.
Lewis' housekeeper married Benson, but they later divorced.
"I was angry because he (Lewis) gave her my rapsheet, and he fired her," Benson said. "That put a lot of pressure on me and our marriage."
Benson says he is the son of the late Maynard Benson, who became a pop icon of post World War II as the sailor kissing a woman on V-J Day in the famous photograph that was taken in New York City's Times Square. That, however cannot be independently confirmed.
Benson says the death of his father a few years ago was devastating to his emotional well-being. His only surviving family, Benson says, is a brother who lives in New York, whom he has not seen in some time.
Benson owned a home in Las Vegas at the height of when Lewis was being harassed.
For three years, Lewis said he received at least two "crank calls a week," but did not report them to the police.
It was not until the life of his then-6-month-old daughter was threatened in 1992 that Lewis contacted authorities who issued a protective order and tapped Lewis' phones.
Also, on top of normal security measures, Lewis says he spent $70,000-$80,000 a month on round-the-clock protection.
After a lengthy investigation, Benson was arrested on Feb. 4, 1994, and was held on $1 million bail.
Following a plea bargain, Benson was sentenced on May 15, 1995, to six years in prison on one count of the then-new law of aggravated stalking. The sentence was suspended on the condition he attend mental health counseling.
Two months after his conviction, Benson was jailed for a short time after reportedly telling a doctor at a VA psychiatric clinic in San Diego that he heard voices telling him to kill Lewis.
Over the last few years, Benson went to various facilities in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah for tests on his mental capabilities.
But the harassment also has continued.
In 1995, Lewis went to Broadway to perform in "Damn Yankees." There and on the road in Florida, Lewis received letters and phone calls from people claiming to be Benson's friends or relatives. Lewis again alerted authorities.
Earlier this year, Benson reportedly stopped going to treatment sessions at the John Tyler Center in Salt Lake City. At the same time, Lewis said he received a threatening phone call.
That was the last straw as Douglas revoked Benson's probation, saying that Benson found ways to get out of attending counseling sessions and that he apparently had continued to threaten Lewis.
archive
