Four years before police discovered that a child-molestation suspect had faked his own death, the man told a fellow Marine he would do just that if he was ever charged.
Staff Sgt. Gene Davis said Saturday that he warned investigators that Arthur Bennett may have staged his apparent suicide in February 1994, but Marine officials were convinced that they found Bennett's body in a burned-out home outside Las Vegas."They felt there had been enough bad publicity, and basically they told me to leave it alone," Davis said. "I felt his death fell through the cracks."
Bennett disappeared in January 1994, while awaiting court-martial on charges of raping Davis' 13-year-old daughter and at least three young women in Okinawa.
Bennett, under the name Joseph Benson, had been living with his ex-wife and three daughters in Hurricane, Washington County.
He has been charged with 11 counts of rape of a child and sexual molestation, accused of raping two of his daughters and one of their friends.
Davis, now stationed in Fargo, N.D., said Bennett had told him in 1993 that he would fake his own death if he was ever accused of molestation. The two Marines were stationed at Yuma, Ariz., at the time.
Calls for comment to Sgt. Kevin Tunell, spokesman for the Marine Corps Air Station at Yuma, were not answered Saturday.
Earlier, Tunell said: "When we received word that Bennett had died, the military shut everything down."
The burned body was cremated by Bennett's family and buried with full military honors. Relatives collected $200,000 in government insurance.
Police say they may never know whose body that was.
Authorities say there may be other young victims in Hurricane, where Bennett worked with young people in a high school drama department.
In a preliminary hearing Friday, Bennett's 15-year-old daughter testified that he raped her almost nightly for the past three years. A 13-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old friend testified he began raping them earlier this year.
Davis said he allowed his 13-year-old daughter to spend the night at the Bennett house in 1993.
"I knew I wasn't a sexual pervert and assumed another Marine wasn't either," he said.
But he was perplexed by something Bennett said the day after the sleepover.
"He said if anyone ever accused him of sexual molestation, he would fake his own death, then come back and kill them," Davis said Saturday. "Now, looking back, it made sense. I think he was just trying to warn me."
Davis said his daughter told him later that Bennett had raped her. Bennett was arrested by local authorities, and the case was turned over to the military.