Jury Recommends Death in Rape, Murder

SANTA ANA —  A jury recommended Monday that a Costa Mesa handyman be put to death for the 1994 rape and bludgeoning murder of a Laguna Hills woman in whose home he had installed linoleum.

Eric Wayne Bennett, 25, stared ahead as the jury of seven women and five men announced their decision after about two days of deliberations. He dabbed his eyes a few moments later. In the gallery, his wife sobbed and buried her head in a friend’s shoulder.

Across the courtroom, the daughter of murder victim Marie Powell Evans, 50, bowed her head and sighed heavily as the verdict was read. A second woman Bennett also was convicted of raping a few weeks before the killing gasped loudly.

“I’m the one who lived,” the rape victim said later outside court.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood labeled Bennett a “monster” for committing two brutal crimes while maintaining to loved ones and police a facade of innocence.

“He is able to convince people that he’s an innocent kind of guy. . . . It’s kind of a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Kirkwood said after the verdict. “He can go out and commit a crime like this and go back to business as usual.”

The same jury convicted Bennett last month of killing Powell and raping one of his neighbors at knifepoint just days after he moved into a Costa Mesa home with his wife and two sons. He moved there after installing carpet at a home next door to the surviving rape victim.

On the day of that rape, the prosecutor said, Bennett had installed vinyl flooring in Powell’s Laguna Hills condominium. About two weeks later--on Oct. 13, 1994--Bennett returned to the condominium and bludgeoned, raped and robbed Powell, a secretary in Newport Beach, who was attacked as she lay on her bed watching television.

Kirkwood said Bennett struck Powell on the head with a glass decanter, tried to suffocate her with a wet towel and dropped a television set on her head before robbing her.

The jury’s verdict included findings that the murder took place during a rape and burglary, making Bennett eligible for a death penalty. Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary will sentence Bennett on Dec. 13.

Bennett’s wife, Karen, his parents and other relatives attended the emotionally charged trial while Powell’s family members clustered on the other side of the room. Tension in the courtroom was especially high when the reading of the sentencing verdict was delayed for about two hours as lawyers shuttled in and out of O’Leary’s chambers. Kirkwood declined to discuss the delay and defense lawyers were not available for comment after the verdict.

Christine Hougan, Powell’s daughter, fought back tears as she expressed hope that the verdict will help her get on with life.

“Nothing will ever bring my mom back,” Hougan said.

Bennett’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia, urged jurors to spare Bennett’s life. Gumlia said his client, who grew up in a strict religious household and has lately ministered fellow jail inmates, had no previous criminal record or history of violence.

“Left to his own devices, he would have pleaded guilty,” Gumlia said.

The defense attorney asked jurors for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

“We’re not talking about life as you know it,” Gumlia said. “We’re talking about a man spending the rest of his life in a cell.”

Bennett was addicted to alcohol and methamphetamine at the time of the crimes, largely in response to a troubled childhood marked by abuse and learning difficulties, Gumlia said. Bennett tried to get sober in early 1994, taking religious classes and moving his family from home to home, but his addiction overtook him, Gumlia said.

“This was a man climbing up ice to try and get his life in order and he failed,” the defense attorney said in his closing arguments.

Kirkwood told jurors the brutality of the crimes outweighed Bennett’s personal travails.