Accused predator’s arrest shocks his son’s mom

Trent Benson's arrest on accusations he is a serial predator who raped four women and strangled two of them has left his family in as much shock as his neighbors and acquaintances.

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Merchelle Tohonnie, mother of his 7-year-old son, said Thursday she has already been asked many times since his May 14 arrest whether she believes the accusations.

"As far as I'm concerned, he never hurt me," said Tohonnie, 34. "Emotionally, yes, but he never hurt me physically. I mean, I don't know if he's capable of that. That's just a whole different person."

She said her family is still trying to grasp what has happened.

"It's just painful," Tohonnie said. "I'm just very, very sorry for the losses."

Immediately after Benson's arrest and before police confirmed his identity to the media, a portrait emerged from neighbors and acquaintances of a stable and friendly single father.

His parents did not return calls seeking comment, but public records provide a picture of his upbringing.

Benson grew up in Fosston, Minn., where the population has hovered around 1,500 for the last 18 years.

He is of Korean descent and was adopted. He has a 31-year-old brother who neighbors said lived with him and a 29-year-old sister.

He graduated from high school in Minnesota in 1991 and according to county records was living in Mesa in 1996.

Tohonnie said he worked as a car salesman, but she hasn't had much contact with him in the last few years other than when he drops off their son for visits.

County records show his parents bought a condominium in the 200 block of West Brown Road in October 2000 where he was living when Mesa police arrested him.

His parents also took out a second mortgage in February on the condo, just two months before his business, Lindsay Water and Ice, became incorporated and opened its doors.

Two men at the store on Friday declined to comment.

The condominium is in Northwood Park, a well-maintained complex at Brown Road and Country Club Drive.

His neighbors described him as "a dad of the neighborhood" who supervised children as they played outside.

Tohonnie declined to discuss her relationship with Benson, but records from family and criminal courts show he was concerned for the well-being of his son and Tohonnie, who was embroiled in her own legal problems in 2003 and 2004. Tohonnie was arrested for the second time in six years in 2003 for DUI.

In a letter to a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court, Benson shouldered much of the blame for Tohonnie's legal and drinking problems and begged the court to be lenient because he and their son needed her in their lives.

Benson wrote that he turned a blind eye to her drinking and didn't enforce a "no alcohol home."

"I have apologized to her, her family, and would like to extend an apology to the court and public," Benson wrote in an April 2004 letter. "I am sorry."

Six months later, Alisa Marie Beck, 21, was strangled and left in an alley near McKellips Road and Country Club Drive, less than a mile from Benson's home.

Police contend she is the first of four women Benson raped. A second woman was also strangled.

By the time of Beck's death, Benson had already been arrested twice on prostitution-related charges, and police reports show he was well-acquainted with the terminology used in sex-for-money transactions.

For instance, he knew to ask the women if they were "working," which according to one police report is a euphemism for prostitution.

In 1997, he drove up to the Copa Motel at 2834 E. Van Buren St. and into a "customer apprehension program" of Phoenix police.

He offered a woman police officer working as a decoy $40 for sex, a transaction caught on tape.

Van Buren Street is a well-known hotbed of prostitution, and so is Main Street in Mesa, where a police officer saw him pick up a known prostitute in March 2001 near Alma School Road.

The officer followed his car to a nearby church parking lot and caught them in the act.

In both cases, Benson lied to police when they questioned him, according to reports.

There is no court record associated with the first arrest, but in May 2001 he pleaded guilty to public sexual indecency and the woman pleaded guilty to prostitution, her third such conviction that year.

Police have said Beck and Karen Jane Campbell, 44, who was strangled and dumped nude on a residential street Oct. 14, were both involved in prostitution.

But Detective Steve Berry, Mesa police spokesman, said women who were raped on Aug. 16 and Nov. 4 weren't mixed up in prostitution.

DNA links all four of the attacks, but investigators are still trying to determine whether there are more victims and trying in to fill in the three-year gap between Beck's death and the Aug. 16 rape, which was followed by two more attacks over the next three months.

Detectives are also still working with FBI profilers on analyzing Benson in an effort to determine the kind of women he targeted, which will help in sorting through unsolved cases.

"I think meticulous is kind of an understatement as to how they're working," Berry said.

"You want to be absolutely sure you don't miss anything," he said.