Criminal - Philip and Becky

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

When Philip Benight met Becky Golden, they made a promise to stick together, no matter how bad things got.  Read Ann Neumann's reporting in Harper's.  Her book is The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more.  We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, FDA approved for over 20 years. So, talk to your specialist to see if Botox Cosmetic is right for you. For full prescribing information, including boxed warning, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. Remember to ask for Botox Cosmetic by name. To see for yourself and learn more, visit BotoxCosmetic.com.

That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. This episode discusses suicide in some detail. Please use discretion. Well, the police asked me if I knew that what I had done was illegal before I did it. and I told them that there are higher laws than Pennsylvania laws, and that it didn't make any difference to me if it was legal or illegal. It was nobody else's business. In 1998, Philip Benight was working in a clothing store in Washington, D.C. when he met a woman named Becky Golden.

He was 42. She was 54. Becky said the thing that stood out most was that she heard me laugh, and it reminded her of her father. And so she reached out to me first. Then we just went from there. Philip says he'd never met anyone like Becky before. He'd never met someone where no matter what they did together, even just driving around, it was fun.

He says she was outgoing and curious and incredibly funny. They went dancing. They went to art shows and antique stores. For his birthday, she got him a chihuahua. Then he moved into her house. I had been in and out of relationships. I'd had several relationships with men. None of them, well, they lasted a couple of years, a few of them, but none of them lasted like Becky and my relationship did. We took a trip out west, went to 27 states and three provinces, driving with the dog. And we were just really, really close friends. And then Becky got cancer. So we got married so I could put her on my health insurance. We got married in 2005. When they decided to get married, Becky Golden changed her name to Becky Benight

because she said she felt like Philip was the only person who really truly loved her. Philip told us, we had all of the really important things. He says they had trust and commitment and comfort in knowing that the other person would always be there, no matter how bad things got. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. For about six years, Philip and Becky had a happy life. And then she was diagnosed with cancer of the superglottis.

And to tell you the truth, I'd never heard of the superglottis before. It's in the throat. It's close to the vocal cords. By then, they were both working as school bus drivers. They wanted a job that would give them the summers off, so they could travel and have free time. When Becky got sick, she quit working, but she was able to get medical care through Philip's insurance. She had a seven-and-a-half-hour surgery to remove the cancer.

Philip stayed home to help her recover. Her speech was temporarily affected by the surgery, so she couldn't speak or call out to him. Philip slept on the floor of her bedroom, so if she woke up in the middle of the night and needed something, he'd be right there. And we had a cat and a dog. They slept with us.

So we all hung out in one room. A few weeks later, Philip had a heart attack. The doctors said it was stress-related. And then, on top of it all, their house burned down. Philip says Becky somehow kept her sense of humor through all of this. They tried to be positive. And since Becky had always wanted to live in a log cabin, they moved to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania and bought one.

She sewed curtains for all the windows in the house. And then, Becky began to have a series of strokes. Her quality of life declined quickly. Her health issues were constant. She fell and broke her shoulder. The radiation from the cancer treatment had damaged her teeth so badly they had to be removed. A blood clot formed behind one of her eyes.

Philip says she was exhausted. Her attitudes changed. She started talking about wanting to die and hoping that the next stroke would just take her out. And one day, while I was driving a school bus, she sent me a text that said, don't call me, don't text me, I'm through. And I thought it was like a suicide message. Of course, it panicked me, and I called the police,

and the police came. She couldn't hear them because she wore hearing aids and she'd taken them out. But I told the police where a key was hidden outside, and they let themselves in. And she was upstairs with her feet up, eyes closed, relaxing, when suddenly there were policemen standing over her. It frightened her half to death.

The whole thing was a fiasco. But what she was telling me was, no, the text didn't mean that she was going to commit suicide. It just meant she was through for the day and didn't want to be bothered. And that was really a turning point. She was so angry at me for calling the police that we didn't talk for three days. And when we did talk, she had calmed down and said, you know, if I decide to kill myself, that is my business. And nobody else's, not even yours. And she wanted me to promise that if she decided to do that,

that I would not call anyone to stop her. I wanted her to promise that she would talk to me first. I needed to know that she would talk to me first. I needed to know that she wasn't just having a bad day and gave up without thinking about it, that we needed to discuss it. And she promised. And after that, that changed things. Every so often, every few months, she would talk to me about wanting to die.

And I would convince her each time, just give me a little bit more time. I'm working with it. I just didn't want her to go. One day, Philip came home from work to find that Becky had had a stroke and fallen and hit her head. He called 911. Becky stayed in the hospital for more than a month. And when it was time for her to be discharged,

her doctors advised full-time medical care, a nursing home. Becky refused. She wanted to go home. and so Philip took her home. Philip says his insurance, which was with Cigna, covered 16 hours a day of in-home medical care. Philip applied for it, and until it got sorted out, he took off work to stay home with Becky. I took care of her 24 hours a day. Before she came home, I had to buy enough food to hoard up because I couldn't go to the grocery store. I couldn't leave her until

Cygnus sent someone here to stay with her. When I brought her home, the rehab hospital called Office of Aging in Pennsylvania to report that I was taking her home against doctors' wishes. And Office of Aging came, they interviewed me, interviewed her, they said, no, she was being cared for, she was happy, and she was where she wanted to be, and they didn't see any danger. Philip says that after several weeks of negotiations, Cigna pushed back on paying for someone to come to their house. The insurance company said it was willing to pay only if Becky was in a nursing home. If Becky wanted to be at home, she and Philip would have to pay for her care out of pocket, which they couldn't afford.

And there was no way around it. It was a decision that Office of Aging had made that for her own safety, she had to go to the nursing home. Philip went to see her every single evening after work. He would pick her up and take her to dinner. After dinner, Philip says he would often take her home to their house. She couldn't stand up on her own anymore, and so they wouldn't go inside. They'd sit in the car in in the driveway, and talk. We live on top of a hill you can see for miles.

It's a really pretty view. And we would sit, listen to the radio, and look at the view and remember things that we had done here. And she would tell me that she remembered planting these flowers or those flowers or really was just a way for her to reconnect with her home. It felt normal because we were together and we were home, even if we were outside.

Becky spent a lot of time outside, so we were still home. She used to tell me, if anybody can get me home, you can. And she asked me to promise that she would come home, and I told her that she would. I promised her that she would come home. When Becky went into the nursing facility, she was so miserable, so unhappy. She was very vocal about it. Reporter Ann Newman. Her son John came to visit her and she said, hey John, did you bring the gun? And he said no. And she said, that's too bad. So the nursing staff knew that Becky did not want to live anymore and they were afraid that she would run away. And so they put her in a locked ward of the facility without telling Philip. And that's what made Philip say, I'm ready.

I realized that I'd lost the battle. There was no way that she was ever going to be able to come home. And when that happened, I started getting things together. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives,

ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. for The Verge to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Philip and Becky decided to escape the situation, and the only way out they saw was ending their

lives. I could help her, but I also knew that if I did, I'm 60 years old. I'd be going to jail for at least 10 years. I'd be 70 when I got out, if I ever got out. And I wasn't going to do that. That was a ridiculous thing to do. So I decided that I would rather just go. I told Becky that we would face death the same way that we faced all of the health decisions, that we just do it together. She didn't want me to, but after I explained that I would be going to jail and that it

was really my decision, it was her decision whether or not she did it and it was mine if I wanted to join her. And so it was agreed upon. and when we made the choice and that we were going together it was actually kind of comforting and seemed right I talked to Becky and told her that I'd gotten everything ready

but I thought that sunday because we would have the whole day together would be the day um sunday i picked her up early we drove down by the conestoga river and sat down there for a while watching the birds in the river. And we went to lunch. And then came and parked in our driveway. for us, the fulfillment of my promise that she was coming home, that she would be home. Did you tell anyone before you did it? No. No one. I didn't think that would be fair. Didn't seem right to bring anybody else into it.

It was personal. It was ours. And we weren't going to discuss it with anybody else or try else into it. It was personal. It was ours. And we weren't going to discuss it with anybody else or try to explain it. And they would want an explanation. So no, we didn't do any of that. What I did do is I wrote letters and kept a journal so that my aunt and Becky's relatives would be able to see and read that we didn't know what we were doing. No, they couldn't have done anything. And it just seemed like the right thing to do before picking her up I'd placed all of the important papers

and things in the kitchen that was all prepared for the executor of the will to come in and have everything that they needed computers and what not I told Becky I would have to come in and get the pills, and she said okay, that she would wait in the car. Becky had been sick for 14 years, and in that time, she'd been prescribed a lot of medications. Philip collected every pill he could find and dumped them out onto the marble island in the kitchen.

He crushed the pills in a mortar and pestle and mixed them into a cup of craft vanilla pudding. He walked outside of the house, opened Becky's car door, and knelt down beside her. She could no longer swallow pills, and her pills had to be ground up. She ate her pudding first and then I came around and sat down next to her and swallowed the pills. It was a large amount of pills. I think if I remember correctly, it was three heaping handfuls of pills to get them all down. And when I turned to look at her, she was already unconscious. So I knew it wasn't going to take long, and that was the last thing that I remember. They became unconscious, and after several hours, the nursing home became concerned because Philip had not returned Becky to the facility.

And so they called the police for a wellness check. police showed up in Becky and Phillip's driveway after midnight, in the wee hours of the morning of January 26th. And they found Becky and Phillip in the car, unconscious, and pulled them from the car and cut their clothes off and stabbed them with Narcan and resuscitated them and took them to Lancaster General Hospital. The first thing that I remember is a light. And I was shocked that I would even recognize a light or have any sort of consciousness because I didn't believe that I thought when you died you just died um no religious anything and I thought oh my god now

why am I seeing light and and my first thought was son of of a bitch, there is a light. And then I started like mental telepathy or something telling Becky, we have to go to this light. I have no idea what's there, but I can't see you. I can't, if you can hear me, come to my voice. But we have to do this together. And so I was searching for her. The light disappeared. And I was still calling out to her. And the next time that I saw the light, it was horrifying. I realized it was not the light.

It was just a light in a hospital. And there were people all around the bed holding me down. I was physically restrained to the bed. And I came up fighting. I remember hating everybody that was there. I was terrified, angry, and really scared and worried about Becky because I didn't know where she was. And I asked where Becky was. They told me that she was in the next room. Philip had been in a coma for three days,

and when he woke up, the police arrived. They asked me questions. I answered them, and at the end of that, they said they were arresting me. They apologized for having to arrest me, and that they were taking me to jail. So you went straight from the hospital to jail? Yes, and only hours after waking up. Had you ever been in trouble with the law before?

No. Did they put you in handcuffs? Yes, they put me in handcuffs. They handcuffed me in front of my body rather than behind my back because they said it was more comfortable. How long were you in jail for? Time doesn't mean much to me, but it was the same day, a matter of hours, but I don't know how long.

They took me in front of a judge. He set my bail at $300,000. And as soon as that happened, the guard asked me, do you want me to call a bail bondsman? And I said, yes. Yeah, they took the last money that we had. What a surreal thing to walk into your house again. It was. And outside my house was a barrage of reporters, cars, video cameras, television cameras. They stayed several days parked across the street so that every time I went out. Also, they would come occasionally

and knock on the door and ask me if I wanted to talk. Did the judge tell you that you could not go anywhere near Becky? My attorney told me that the judge had ruled that I was not to be able to see Becky and that I could not go to the hospital. So the attorney said, if you feel like you have to go and see her, all I can tell you is that I'll do my best, but I don't know what I can do if they decide to put you back in jail.

How did you feel when you heard she had died? None of it felt real to me because it felt like a dream or some sort of nightmare because I didn't expect to be here I never expected to be back in my home I never expected to be separated from Becky even when she died my attorney said that the rule the judge had put in place was still in place.

Even though she was no longer living, I was still not allowed to see her. What were you charged with? I was charged with assisting suicide. And the assisting part was that I ground her medication up. And what potential sentence were you looking at? The sentence for that is 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. During the trial, Becky's son John testified that he knew that his mother had wanted to die, and that he believed that Philip was carrying out his mother's wishes.

Other family and friends of Becky's testified that Philip would never do anything to hurt her, and that they had no doubt that Philip had done exactly what Becky had asked, and had been asking, for years. The judge himself had just lost his parents not long ago, so I think he was sympathetic. At any rate, I got six months of house arrest and five years of probation. Did anyone make you feel like a murderer? No, not really. There are a few people that don't talk to me anymore, so I'm assuming they disapprove. But they never voiced it. And surprisingly, most people were supportive. And when Becky and I were going through it those

last few years, I had really felt like the both of us were invisible. People didn't listen to us. So I was surprised that I actually got cards from people that worked in stores, one of the pharmacists. And the card said that they knew that I was a good caregiver, that I loved Becky, that they had seen us together, that they had admired the way that we worked together. It was mostly all positive things. Was there anyone who stood up and who knew Becky and Phillip and said, this was wrong, this was not what Becky wanted or should have been done?

Not a single person. And I think that's why Philip was only given six months house arrest, because so many people had heard Becky adamantly say that she no longer wanted to live. Anne Newman is from Lancaster County and was home visiting her sister when she read about Philip in the

local paper. She'd been researching cases like Philip and Becky's for paper. She'd been researching cases like Philip and Becky's for years. She'd written a book called The Good Death, an exploration of dying in America. So when she realized that Philip was just a few miles down the road, she knocked on his door. When I met him, I was probably the first few weeks or interviews. I wanted to find the cracks. I wanted to find his errors. I wanted to see what could have gone differently to allow Becky to still be alive. And ultimately, I realized that there was nothing.

She was so determined. And they were committed together to doing what was best for Becky, what she had wanted, and what was in keeping with her sense of autonomy and independence. You know, what's funny is that whether we think this is right or wrong, or it doesn't matter, our opinions or this story that's coming with it. I mean, it's a crime. Exactly. And I think anyone who's spent time in a nursing home can see that there's a big problem. There's a big problem with just caring for someone's body but forgetting about someone's mind and intellectual stimulation

and giving agency and dignity to people at the end of their lives. Do you think about this all the time in your work? All the time, every day. We know that this is not just an issue that Philip and Becky experienced. Kaiser Health News just did a fantastic report on the rate of suicide in long-term and elder facilities. And they've noted that these facilities are placating patients, making them as easy to manage as possible. Part of this is because staffing is too low and resources are not invested in, you know, the health and livelihood and maintenance of these individuals' intellects or social lives. It's really just about getting their bodies through the course of a day. And this is detrimental to seniors' health, mental and physical,

and they're profoundly unhappy. No one listens to you when you're in a nursing home. No one listens to you when you're over 65. You know, and I do think it's challenging when dementia and Alzheimer's are brought into the picture. It's harder to just call something black and white in the way that you might handle an individual. But this wasn't the case with Becky. No.

I think some of the local news reports stated that she had dementia, but that was completely untrue. She did not have a dementia or Alzheimer's diagnosis. And I think she was always clear and consistent in what she was willing to tolerate. And when she no longer wanted to be alive, she was always very clear about that. What's a typical day for you like now? How is your life different? I have friends here helping to get my house ready.

I'm going to sell this house and move. It's too big for me. It's too big for me it's too expensive for the things that I don't want to remember quite so often or at least have a little more control over it. Here, I'm bombarded every day with memories that would be easier just not to have every second. Do you ever feel like Becky talks to you now? I talk to her all the time. All the time. We called Philip last weekend to check in. He said he'd just been thinking about Becky when he was brushing his teeth,

thinking how he used to wake up and look forward to talking to her. He said it seemed like it was going to be a long day. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Audio mix by Johnny Vince Evans. Ann Newman wrote about Philip and Becky, along with other couples in similar situations, for Harper's Magazine. We've got a link in the show notes. Special thanks to Melissa Kaplan. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them

at thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. Radiotopia.

From PRX. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome and

medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Your own weight loss journey is personal. Everyone's diet is different. Everyone's bodies are different. And according to Noom, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you

with their psychology and biology-based approach. This program helps you understand the science behind your eating choices and helps you build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your free trial today at Noom.com.