TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Verdict: Guilty Of Murder

ADVERTISEMENT

By TODD LESKANIC, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 17, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY - Robert Benjamin tried to hold back his tears.

He didn't, however, hold back on Daniel Lee Parbel.

"I don't know if your parents are here or not, Mr. Parbel," Benjamin said. "If they are, they lost today, too. We all lost because of some crazy things you and your buddies did.

"I hope you can make some good friends in prison and satisfy and make those happy you want to make happy because that is where you're going to have to make them happy. I ask the judge to impose the harshest sentence possible."

Benjamin spoke in a courtroom Friday, minutes after a Pasco County jury found Parbel guilty of first-degree murder in the 2005 slaying of Benjamin's twin brother, John, 37. After listening to Benjamin, Circuit Judge William Webb sentenced Parbel to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

For the Benjamin family, the verdict ended one chapter of the story that began Sept. 25, 2005. That afternoon, a construction worker found the charred remains of John Benjamin and the burned-out shell of an Isuzu sport utility vehicle near a construction site off Hays Road.

Two months later, Parbel, 37, and Christopher Wright, 46, were arrested in connection with the slaying. Parbel's trial began Tuesday and ended with Friday's verdict, which the jury returned after about an hour of deliberation.

Wright's trial is set for Dec. 10.

Testimony throughout the week revealed what the Benjamin family has come to learn: John, an optician and father of two, had slipped into a life of drugs in the months leading up to his demise. Most of the prosecution's key witnesses were drug users and felons, all of whom shed light on the sleazy underbelly of west Pasco's drug world.
John Benjamin owed Sherry Harris, his drug supplier, $300 for some crack she had fronted him, and Harris wanted to collect. Harris tracked down Benjamin at a house on Tidalwave Drive on Sept. 24, 2005.

Inside the house, Daniel Parbel was threatening Benjamin with a shotgun. Harris arrived at the house in her Isuzu SUV and left with Benjamin, Parbel and Yusef Wilson in her vehicle.

She drove the men to pay phones around west Pasco so Benjamin could call his 77-year-old mother and beg for the money. Margaret Benjamin, who was visiting New York at the time, testified that as she spoke to her son, a man got on the phone and said her son would be killed if she didn't come up with the money.

The man was Parbel, said Assistant State Attorney Michael Halkitis. "Do you think that lady will ever, ever, ever forget those words?" Halkitis said in his closing argument. "You think she would forget those words?"

Harris testified she then drove the men to a motel on U.S. 19. That's where Wright and another drug dealer, Michael Lind, met them. According to testimony, Lind put a gun to Benjamin's head in the room's bathroom. After Lind left, Parbel, Wright and Wilson put Benjamin in Harris' SUV and drove him to the area off Hays Road.

Wilson testified that when the SUV came to a stop, Wright reached around Benjamin's neck and made a slashing motion. When Benjamin jumped out of the car, Parbel and Wright chased him down and beat him. Benjamin broke free and managed to get in the driver's seat of the SUV and drive away, but the vehicle got stuck in the sand.

Wilson said Parbel and Wright ran to it, pulled Benjamin out and began stabbing and beating him. The men left Benjamin for dead, but returned hours later to set the area on fire. Wilson testified that both men dragged Benjamin's body back to the SUV, doused the vehicle and the body with gasoline, and then set the blaze.

In a videotaped interview with detectives, Parbel admitted he was there when Benjamin was killed and when the fire was set, but denied touching Benjamin. But jeans later taken from his apartment had Benjamin's blood on them.

Juror Bill Brodil said the blood on the jeans was enough to convince him of Parbel's guilt.

"That and the testimony of Wilson," Brodil said. "He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and he sounded the most sincere, and nobody else implicated him."

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084 or tleskanic@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT