Going West: True Crime - Greg Holman // 15

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

In the fall of 1978 in Scottsdale, Arizona, a kind-hearted and beloved high school freshman disappears under strange circumstances. When police begin to search for what happened to him, they quickly find their prime suspect. However, their immense lack of evidence creates a frustrating case that lasts just shy of 30 years. This is the case of Greg Holman. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's going on true crime fans, I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Before we get into this episode, we want to give some shout outs to some of our newest Patreon members. A big shout out to Sarah and Casey from Saturdays with Chicken Duck, very funny podcast, go check it out. And boobies and newies podcast, thanks for subscribing. If you haven't yet already, check out our Patreon account, patreon.com slash going west podcast. We release two bonus episodes a month for you guys on there, so check it out. And also, last but not least, we have a big shout out to Melanie and Little Rock Arkansas,

thanks for listening. Yes, thank you so much Melanie for listening, and if anyone else wants a shout out, go ahead and give us a nice whole review on Apple podcasts. One quick thing I wanted to note before we get into this week's episode is that when you go over to our Patreon and subscribe, we'll be donating 10% of all of our earnings monthly to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So not only do you get two ad-free bonus episodes on our Patreon, you'll also be helping children in need. So make sure you go over there today and subscribe.

Your donations really help out the show too, and it's only 5 bucks a month. This is episode 15 of Going West, let's get into it. It was fall of 1978 in Scottsdale, Arizona. A boy named Greg was entering his freshman year of high school where he made tons of friends but one enemy. On October 8th, Greg's days started out like any other, but ended tragically. The days to follow were crucial, but the search for Greg led police to a near 30-year investigation. This is the case of Greg Holman was a middle child, raised in Scaltestell, Arizona in a family of nine.

His siblings were a mix of real siblings and step siblings. He had a good relationship with his mom, stepdad, and brothers and sisters, and the house was always filled with kids from around the neighborhood. Greg had a reputation of being the big brother around the school. He was a good kid, always protecting his classmates when they were bullied, picked on, or not treated well. In the fall of 1978, he was 14 years old and just starting 9th grade. He wasn't the biggest fan of school, but he did fairly well. He mostly enjoyed hanging out with friends, riding his bike, and playing sports. At this time, Greg had a girlfriend, Susan. She remembers him to be laid back

and incredibly sweet. On Sunday, October 8th, 1978, Greg's mom surely returned home after running some errands. She was starting to get dinner prepared for her family when she noticed a note on the counter. It said, Mom, don't go looking for me. I have to get out of the house for a little while. I will be back very soon. Don't worry, please. I trust that you won't look for me, please.

And please don't call the police. Then I will get very mad. Trust me, mom. I will be back. I'll call you very soon. Love Greg." Greg was definitely one to run off and stay with his friends, but Shirley was immediately worried. One time, he was out all night with a friend and didn't return home until the next morning before school. Shirley began calling all of Greg's friends' houses to see if he was there. She wasn't

having much luck with these calls, except one of Greg's friends, Nick, said that he had been at the park with their friends around 6 p.m. However, Nick left before Greg, so he didn't know where Greg ended up. So that was a helpful hint, but didn't leave Shirley with any relief. The next morning while Nick was on his way to school, he noticed Greg's bike at the park, but Greg was nowhere in sight. It was now Monday and school was starting out for the week, but Greg didn't show up. When the school notified Shirley that her son hadn't attended classes, she called the police. Detective Dennis Borkenhagen was assigned to the case and immediately visited the

Holman's house to ask Shirley some questions. Shirley showed Dennis the letter and he pretty much chalked it up to just being a runaway at that point. It's frustrating because naturally we see this happen in so many cases regarding young people, but this time they had more reason to believe he was a runaway because of the letter. And the letter was extremely adamant about not looking for him or contacting police. So Dennis just assumes that Greg is just being a teenager and that he'll be back at some point. Dennis then told Shirley that he would return if Greg didn't show.

Three days later, they still hadn't heard from or seen Greg. Shirley returned to the police station, visibly upset, and told Detective Borkin Hagen that Greg still hadn't come home and that this wasn't like him. He just wouldn't run away like this. He still hadn't even called her like the letter said. You know, it's probably pretty scary because even if Shirley thought that Greg had just run away for a night or two, she's probably expecting him back, but then three days pass and he's still not back, like that's kind of at the point where you start as a parent

you start to think like, oh my gosh, something serious must have happened. And it was a pretty weird letter because I don't think she'd ever gotten a letter like this. And he wasn't the type of kid to always run away, but he had been known to sometimes go out with his friends. But it was just weird that he said not to call the police as if he was going to be gone long enough. You know what I mean? Like, why would he say that? Greg goes missing on a Sunday, so it's not like he leaves the letter for his mom after school or something like that and says, hey, I'm going to a friend's house, whatever.

He doesn't disclose where he's going. All he says is that he's gonna be gone. Please don't look for me. Don't call the police. That to me is just red flag central. At this point, Detective Borkin Hagen begins taking it a bit more seriously and agrees with Shirley that he probably didn't run away, or if he did, something happened to him. He immediately opens a missing person's investigation.

To start, he began interviewing students from the school, asking if they'd heard or seen anything involving Greg's disappearance. Detective Borken Hagen found that Greg started that Sunday off at his friend Nick's house. They hung out for a while before heading over on their bikes to the local park at approximately 4 p.m. Greg's girlfriend was there along with a few of their other friends. Like we said earlier, Nick left at around 6 p.m. to make it home for dinner. According to the other kids who were present, a 15-year-old classmate named John Benson showed up shortly after. John Benson grew up in a wealthy family in Scottsdale, Arizona. John was always looked at as the weird kid.

Growing up, kids picked on him for his shy, awkward behavior. When he entered his teen years, he really wanted to change his identity. So he started acting like a party boy, always in a good mood and wanting to hang out with people. Despite not knowing any magic tricks, he would often dress like a magician to school, sporting a top hat and a long cape. He even called himself Captain Out Rages. His new found quirky personality attracted some kids though, and made him sort of popular around school, but more along the lines of bad boy crowd versus cool crowd. People mostly liked him because he had a sunken fort in his backyard where he invited classmates to drink and smoke weed.

To describe the fort a little bit, it was about 10 to 11 feet deep. It was equipped with a ladder to get in and out of and had chairs to sit in and lanterns to light it up when the cover was on top. Apparently this wasn't an unusual thing to have because of all the dry heat in Arizona, so it was kind of a thing that kids did to get out of the sun, but then also have a private place for them to hang out with their friends. A lot of friends also described John's for as being super professional looking, like it wasn't just a whole of dirt.

It was like really, really well done. Many of the kids at school describe John as being fun to hang out with, because he just wanted to kick back and have a good time. Since his parents had a lot of money, he was also very generous with friends. While at the park, John Benson asked the group of friends if anyone wanted to hang out. A few of them said that they had to go home, but Greg said yes.

Off the bat, this seems strange, because John and Greg really weren't friends. They knew each other, but with John's outcast reputation, Greg didn't see eye to eye with him, but he went off with John anyway while the rest of the kids went their separate ways back home. This was the last time any of them would see Greg again. I actually watched an interview with Greg's girlfriend and she said that it was really weird to her when Greg went off with John because they weren't friends so I think the whole group was kind of like, what are you doing? Yeah, it seemed really strange to a lot of them that Greg and John would end up hanging

out together because as far as we know, they really didn't like each other. When Detective Dennis Borkenhagen found this out, he went directly to John Benson's house to question him since it appeared he was the last to have seen Greg before he disappeared. John described that he and Greg went off to drink some beers together and hang out, but the last time he'd seen Greg was when he used the payphone at school and then left. John didn't give any other information. He couldn't tell the detective what time any of this happened or where Greg went off to. Although claiming to have spent the evening with Greg, he couldn't seem to remember any

details of the night, which is obviously very suspicious. So according to John, it didn't seem like they went to John's house at all, they just kind of hung out in the area in public. The detective immediately got the feeling that John was lying. When John would give his information, he couldn't get specific with any of it, which really raised some flags for the detective. Detective Borcan Hagen takes him down to the station for a polygraph test to try and tell if he's actually lying.

Lie detector tests were standard procedure in 1978 for just about anyone. The test asked him a bunch of questions regarding Greg and his disappearance, and he completely failed it. Borcan Hagen considered John Benson the biggest suspect at this point in time, but since polygraph tests aren't really valid and they still didn't have any hard evidence or even any clue what happened to Greg, nothing could be done. Borkin Hagen is convinced John knows where Greg is, so he continues looking for answers. He questions more high school students and discovers that shortly before Greg's disappearance, there was a fight.

But all the kids had different stories. Some of the kids said that Greg stole John's bong, others said that a kid who was with Greg stole John's wallet, and someone else said that Greg took money from John. It was unclear what actually happened, but everyone agreed that Greg and John had bad blood. So why did they hang out that Sunday evening if they didn't like each other?

And a lot of people speculated the reason why John and Greg were actually hanging out that day was because they thought that Greg was trying to bury the hatchet with John if he in fact had wronged John in some way. But we're actually going to get to more theories on that a little bit later. Detective Borkin Hagen still wasn't coming up with much. Knowing they had gotten into an argument still didn't mean that John did something to Greg the night that he disappeared. But suddenly, a classmate stepped forward and met with the detective in private. He said that he heard a rumor that John killed Greg, but he wasn't sure how.

Apparently after John murdered him, he hit his body in one of the forts on the nearby Native American reservation. Just a block from the Benson home was a large desert area. John and other kids would build forts out there just like the one in his backyard to escape the heat and create a secret fun place to hang out. Since the kid didn't know where this apparent grave site was, Borkenhagen organized a group of junior police cadets to start searching the area for where a fort may have been. They assumed the hole would be covered up, so they were poking around with shovels looking for fresh dirt. Unfortunately, nothing came from this search,

and Borkenhagen was out of ideas. A few months later, he was assigned to a different department, and Greg's case was pretty much left on the shelf. In fact, three years passed before anyone even looked into the case again. In 1981, Detective Frank Hilton, of the Scottsdale Police Department, takes the case into his own hands. Frank was the best on the team at that time. Every case he covered became solved, so he felt pretty confident that he was going to close Greg's case too. After looking through the case files, Detective Hilton was also convinced that John Benson knew more than he led on. Hilton figured he'd start by interviewing John's old friends,

who were now around the age of 18 and on the verge of graduating high school. The detective started out with a couple of boys who, together, stated that John threatened Greg after he stole a bong from him. Apparently John was so mad that he threatened to kill Greg over a bong. It's unclear if Greg actually did seal it or when it even occurred, but we mentioned this earlier when students told Detective Borgon Hague in the same thing. It doesn't really seem like Greg's character to steal a bong, but a lot of people are saying this, I'm not sure when he would have even had time to steal John's bong since they didn't really hang out, but because people are saying this, we're gonna have to kind of assume that it may be true.

Yeah, unfortunately, it seems like this entire case is just kind of like a he said, she said situation. Yeah, exactly. Especially since we know the detective is getting a lot of different stories, a lot of conflicting stories from different kids, so it's hard to tell what the true facts really are if Greg did steal a bond, or if they did or didn't hang out, we don't really know. John's old friends also mentioned to Detective Hilton that they had seen John's dark side before. One time when Lou, one of the boys being interviewed, was hanging out at Benson's home,

he witnessed a fight between John and his younger brother. John pushed his little brother down and then repeatedly kicked him on the ground before throwing a bike on top of him. Blue said it's the worst beating he'd ever seen anyone give another person. And this was John's own brother. So what was he capable of doing to other people who made a mad? And this is actually a really good piece of evidence proving that John has the capability to be violent, especially because this is to someone he loved, you know,

this is his brother. So it's great that his friend came forward with this because it just shows that John can be violent. Because I don't know about you. I mean, I've definitely gotten in a lot of fights with my siblings, but not physical enough that we're literally beating the shit out of each other. Like, that's so extreme. Yeah, and a lot of people have also said that John was a huge bully.

He was just a big jerk basically. He would just like beat up kids and he was just really mean. I think a lot of people just didn't really want to hang out with him because he was kind of an asshole and then when he started bringing out the drugs and the alcohol and stuff, kids were like, okay, we'll hang out with this guy, but we're not going to get too close to him because he's still kind of a douche. Yeah, a lot of people just kind of describe that he rubbed them the wrong way. Like, he just had this weird thing to him. Even though a lot of people did like him, but I really think

that that was mainly just because it gave them a place to hang out and drink. Yeah, if he didn't have these things to offer these kids, I really don't think that they would have wasted their time with John Benson. a place to hang out and drink. After interviewing John's friends, Detective Hilton brings John down to the station and sits him down. He asks what his relationship with Greg was, and John said that there wasn't one. They just knew each other. Hilton then accused John of doing something to Greg, which John denied time after time. He even brought up the fact that the friends he interviewed mentioned

that John had likely killed Greg, but John denied this too. They got into a bit of an argument and then John said, if I told you what happened, everybody would hate me. So this is really interesting because John goes from, I don't know what happened, I had nothing to do with it too. I know something and I'm scared to tell you. So this was all the confirmation that Hilton needed, but unfortunately a jury trial would need more to convict him. Hilton didn't want to push him too much further because he really wanted John to continue. So Detective Hilton still didn't have anything to go off and wouldn't have anything unless John confessed. The case went cold yet again. In 1992, so 14 years after Greg's disappearance, Detective Hilton received a phone call.

It's from Lisa Holman, Greg's older sister. She informed Hilton that their mom Shirley had recently passed away and unfortunately never found out what happened to Greg. Lisa was with her younger brother at the time of the call and they were discussing Greg's case. They got to thinking why police never checked out the Fort and John Benson's backyard. This blue Hilton away. The police didn't know that the Benson's even had a fort.

More about the Benson fort and Greg's case after these messages. Hi, we're the Grave Girls from Grave Girls Podcast. I'm your host, Hawthorne. And I'm Amarilis. Every week we watch a different horror film. And I find a scary story that goes with it that will definitely leave you shaking in your boots.

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executing podcasts one crime at a time. And we're back. So earlier when we mentioned that Greg's classmate told Detective Borkin Hagen about Greg's body being in a fort in the Native American reservation, police didn't even think to check out the one in John's backyard because they didn't know it existed. Hilton couldn't believe what he was hearing. This was a huge potential clue. Lisa had assumed that police knew about this during the beginning of the investigation, which is why she hadn't brought it up years earlier. Lisa explained

to the detective that John Benson's father had dug a deep hole in their backyard in the shape of a tea, and that shortly after Greg's disappearance, it was covered with dirt and gravel. It's actually pretty sad that they hadn't checked this out and I don't know why she assumed that they knew about it, maybe just because she knew about it and they were doing their job investigating so it's kind of like maybe she assumed why wouldn't they know? But it's a shame because so many years went by and they had no idea and there's a huge potential piece of evidence.

Especially because investigators went around asking these different kids if they knew anything about John Benson, and none of these kids had mentioned the Ford, which is kind of odd to me, especially considering a lot of those kids had been in that Ford. That's where they all hung out. That was their main spot, so it's just shocking that none of them ever said, oh yeah, the Ford and John's backyard. Or if they did mention a Ford, maybe they didn't say specifically that it was in his backyard. So police just assumed it was somewhere else. I don't know.

Well, there's a big reason why I think these kids didn't come forward about the fort earlier on. And you know, like I said, we're going to get into that a little bit later. But it is really frustrating that police weren't able to figure out this fort back in 1978. Detectives went to the Benson's home to figure out this for back in 1978. Detectives went to the Benson's home to check out this tip. Turns out the Benson's were no longer living there, but the people renting the house allowed the police to look around. As they were scoping the backyard, they found a dirt area in the very back of the yard that looked different from the rest. They

immediately got a backhoe and began digging in that very spot in hopes they would find something. A local anthropology professor led the forensic team. They actually had to dig layer by layer and screen every bit of dirt for potential remains, which was an incredibly tedious process. And this was feet after feet of digging, sifting and searching. So it took the entire day. Suddenly, the professor feels something under the dirt and pulls out the tip of a large black plastic garbage bag. When they opened it up, it was obvious right away

that they were human remains. Not only human, but the bones of an adolescent male between the age of 12 to 15. The most horrifying part is that the skeleton wasn't complete. The bones that were in there had clear saw marks through them, meaning this person had been dismembered. And although the bag was full of bones, it did not include hands or a skull, making it almost impossible to identify who it was.

But it was incredibly obvious to everyone that it had to be Greg Holman. It's incredibly scary that the killer knows that he needs to remove the head so that investigators can't match dental records, and he also knows that he needs to remove the hands so that they can't identify fingerprints. It's just crazy that police spent so many years looking for these remains and they were in John's own backyard, like they were right there. And it's also just upsetting like we mentioned earlier that Greg's sister didn't come out

with a sooner because she assumed police knew. And I mean, how'd she come out with this at the time? They would have found Greg's body so much sooner. That and I feel like it was probably very frustrating for Detective Borkin Hagen, the very first detective on the case, because he had an idea that it was John, but he had no idea about this for it if he had known years before this may have been solved a lot sooner. DNA was brand new at this time. The state of Arizona wasn't even doing DNA in 1992, so they had to outsource and ended up coming in contact with UC Berkeley in Northern California. They asked the police to send them a femur bone and get blood from Greg's siblings so that they could do a cross-match of genetic DNA. Since DNA was so new, it was going to take months for the results to come back. So the police department and Greg's

family waited on pins and needles to come back, so the police department and Greg's family waited on pins and needles to hear back. It's interesting though, because if they had found these remains in 1978, they probably then would have had to wait 14 years to positively identify whose remains they were, since DNA testing did not exist at the time, so even though we're pretty much sure that these are the remains of Greg Holman, they probably would have just sat on it for all those years not knowing. In the meantime, detectives gave the Benson's new Holman-temperier-Zona a visit to discuss the remains that had been found in their old backyard.

The last time anyone in the police department had spoken to John was 11 years prior, back when John said he would call the detective with more information. John's parents were home at the time and were seemingly upset by the news that there were bones found in their old fort, saying they had no idea how they got there. John's dad even stated that he filled in the fort sometime in 1979 because he caught John drinking in it, which he didn't approve of. It seemed like they did a lot of drinking in this forer, so I don't know how he would have hid this from his dad for all of the time that he did it, so I don't really believe that it took

his dad that long to figure out that they were drinking. Another question I have is where was John getting all these booze from? Did his dad actually know that he was drinking? And this is just an excuse that he's telling detectives to cover for his son? Well, that's exactly what I was thinking. Because when I was that age, you know, like in the beginning of my high school years, if I drink with my friends, we stole it from their parents, you know?

But it wasn't, I mean, they looked like they drank a lot. So... If John Benson was known for having kids in this fort and drinking, it's not like he's like, oh, I found one bottle of my parents' booze. It must have been a consistent thing. So, how was he getting the booze? To me, it seems a little bit sketchy that John's dad filled in the fort with gravel. That kind of sends a red flag. Well, also, when the detectives asked John's dad if he had looked in the hole before filling it, he said no. So, I don't know if maybe the bag was buried already slightly and then he just filled it in and it looked empty to him,

or if he actually had something to do with this. Another thing that really stands out to me is that if this was, indeed, John murdering Greg, and he's the one who dismembered him, I mean, how do you murder dismember and bury someone when you live in a house with three other people and none of them finding out about it? Like, I know that he had his fort, so he could have done it all down there, but I mean, that's not a tidy thing to do. That's a that causes a great deal of a mess. Well and like you said earlier, how did it take John's dad so long to figure out that he was getting fucked up with his friends in this fort? That's why I don't really believe that his dad is innocent. I mean I don't know. I think that it's very possible that his dad is innocent. I mean, I don't know. I think that it's very possible that his dad would have helped him out with this.

Yeah, I mean a lot of fathers will do a lot of things to make sure that their son doesn't go down for something like this. And I'm not going to confirm that John's dad had anything to do with this. We don't know. I don't know John's dad's character or his mother's character, so I can't say for sure. It just is kind of sketchy that John's dad filled in the hole shortly after Greg disappeared. We have no idea who was involved, so it's not really fair to point the finger at his parents anyway, but I'm just trying to think of all the possibilities because not that I've ever done it, but I would assume murdering and dismembering someone takes a lot of strength. And also, it's very messy,

so I don't see a 15 year old being able to do that by themselves and not have anybody find out, but what do I know? In the fact that the head and the hands removed, like I got to mention this again, it just, I keep coming back to this because it's like, what a 15 year old think of this, what a 15 year old plan this out like this. Would he be able to cover up the mess

and dispose of the body in this way? Another thing though is what an adult say, oh, let's bury him in the backyard, you know? It makes sense for John to have put him in the backyard because he doesn't have a car, he doesn't drive. So what's he gonna do? Drag a bag down the street. Like, this makes sense for John to do this.

I think thinking of it though, maybe an adult wouldn't think that they'd say, oh, let's drive this somewhere far away. You know, why would you want to put a body in your own backyard? That's a really good point. I mean, that would look really bad if investigators did in fact find the body in your backyard, which they did. And we also have to think of the possibility that maybe John's friend helped him do this, so it wasn't a one-man job because like I've been saying, it just doesn't seem like something

that one 15-year-old could do. I mean, I don't know what he's capable of, but it seems like he definitely could have gotten some help. So when the detectives were talking to the Bentons, they actually stated that they hadn't seen John in years and that they didn't know where he was living, but they thought he may be in Mexico. Detectives asked the Bentons to give them a call if they heard from John because they, of course, really wanted to sit down with him and get this sorted.

Detectives called up John's old friend Liu, the one who was present when John beat up his brother and who also mentioned that John had threatened to kill Greg. They wanted to let Liu know that they had found remains in John's fort and hopefully get some more answers. Liu was horrified by the news, especially since he had been in there on numerous occasions. Lou stated that nothing bad ever happened down there. It wasn't some evil layer, at least not while he was there. They just drank, smoked weed, and hung out. There was one memory though that came back to him while he was talking to detectives, which I'm actually really surprised that he didn't mention earlier.

One day, John invited Lou and a couple other guys down to the fort for some drinks. John was visibly drunk, and while everyone was just hanging out, said, what would you do if I told you there was a body down here? Lou said that everyone felt silent at that moment, and was really taken aback by that statement. But they quickly laughed it off before John said, no, seriously, there's a body down here. The friends just thought he was trying to freak them out and that it was just his cat's body or something and they again laughed it off, figuring John was just high. Now that Lou looks back, he wonders if that was John trying to confess. And as we know from many previous cases,

killers like to talk about the crimes that they've committed and kind of sometimes like to brag about the things that they've done. So I'm sure that this was his way of coming forward and saying, look what I did. Exactly. And even though he wasn't straight coming out and saying, hey, I killed Greg Holman, he still wanted people to know. Just a few weeks later, police were actually able to track down John Benson, who was living in Tucson, Arizona,

which is roughly a two-hour drive from Scottsdale. So he wasn't in Mexico at all, and it's unknown why this was believed. Police were pretty frank with John. They asked him if he remembered a fort in his backyard and John said yes. Then they told him they found human remains in it, and that John's old friends told them all the things that John had

said about there being a body in the fort. John denied every accusation they made, and they basically told him to cut the crap and confess. John then got up and left. As disappointed as this made police, they just didn't know what else they could do. They needed John to confess, and he just wouldn't. A year passes and nothing new happens in the case. But then, finally, the DNA results come back on the remains that were found in the fort.

It was concluded that the remains were 99% positive to match Greg Holman. This was as close as it was going to get without a dental match, so they took it as a win. I mean, it's a 99% match and they were found in John's backyard? It has to be Greg. After 15 years of questions, Greg Holman's case is now officially being looked at as a homicide investigation. With this new evidence, police were so confident that John Benson would go down for this in a court of law.

After all, John was the last person to see Greg. It was known that they had gotten in a fight just days before, and Greg's remains were found in his backyard. But the DA wasn't convinced. When they read over the report, they refused to go forward with an indictment. In a way, I understand because they still don't have something saying it was John killing Greg, you know, it was in the Benson's backyard, and it was a 99% match, and they still don't know what happened to Greg. But there's

so many things pointing to John Benson that it's hard to look past. It's one of those frustrating cases where it's like all the evidence seems to be glaring you in the face, but because you don't have one piece of physical evidence, they just completely shut it out. So in 1993, the case went cold again. But then, 13 years later in 2006, Hugh Lockerby, one of Scott Stills' greatest new detectives, takes a crack at the case. He wanted to get this solved once and for all, and really believed that he could do it. Detective Hugh Lockerby's commander even asked Detective Frank Hilton to come out of retirement to help close this case for good.

Just like every other time someone has tried to solve this case, Lockerby and Hilton re-interviewed the friends. No one had actually interviewed them since the earlier years in the investigation, so they thought that they'd be able to get more out of them now that they were grown up and they were right. They interviewed an old friend of Johns who was a couple years younger. He said he finally felt okay telling this story after all these years. Next, the anonymous male described a horrific scene to detectives. John invited him to the fort one day and it was just the two of them. John got him high and drunk and forced himself on him. He

then aggressively raped him. And this wasn't the only guy who came forward with this information. John had done this to multiple boys. Most of the details are apparently too horrific to mention, but one guy who was assaulted by John even described him as a Jeffrey Dahmer type person. John really banked on the inkling that, since they were younger, they were too scared and embarrassed to tell anyone, which is exactly true. One of the boys who was molested by John only told one person when it happened. That person was Greg. Like we mentioned earlier, so many kids looked up to Greg and felt like he could always protect them. Whenever someone was being picked on or bullied, Greg would be there to step in and make things right.

Because this young boy told Greg that John had sexually assaulted him, many believe that the reason Greg went with John that fateful day in 1978 was so he could confront him about the incident and make sure it didn't happen again. So this is pretty horrifying because before we knew anything about these sexual allegations, we just thought that he was bad enough, you know, and now this comes out and you're like, wow, this kid really was a monster. Yeah, he was a repeat sexual offender. Another kid that was actually down in that fort

had said that it was something like a house of horrors. So it's really not hard to believe that he would have murdered Greg. And by the way, these men that detectives interviewed in 2006, they were not initially interviewed back when they were kids in 1978. They actually decided to look a little bit younger and go talk to kids who were a few grades below, John, and that's how they found these kids who came forward with their stories. And you know, they kept this information with them for so many years and you can imagine why I mean they were so young, they were probably 12 and 13 years old and they're being raped and it's like how do you deal with that? So it completely makes sense why they didn't come forward and I'm just so glad that we

have that information now. The other thing that's so heartbreaking about this case is that like we said earlier, Greg seemed to be this upstanding guy. Like he looked out for the younger kids. He wasn't, you know, a piece of shit like John. He cared for these kids. It's just so sad to see such a good person suffer such a terrible fate. And I do believe that Greg went off with John

to confront him about the younger boy who had been molested because that just seems like something that Greg went off with John to confront him about the younger boy who had been molested because that just seems like something that Greg would do. And that makes it even more sad that if in fact that was what he was trying to do, he was just trying to help his buddy and he ended up getting brutally murdered for it. But before we move on, let's go back and take a look at this letter that Greg left his mom the day that he disappeared. So Greg left that letter that basically said, don't come looking for me, don't call the police, I'll call you soon, I'm fine, right? When did he leave that?

Because he was at Nick's house and then he was at the park and then he went to John's. So it's not like he was at the park, then he went home and then he went to John's and he wrote that letter before going to Johns? Why would he write that if he was just going to Nick's house? I get seemed like a very concerning letter. Right, if he was just going to Nick's, there's no reason for him to write a letter saying, hey, don't come looking for me, please. Unless in fact, Greg was up to no good, which we know Greg wasn't that type of person.

Yeah, he stayed out late, he hung out with his friends, but to have such an alarming letter, it really kind of makes you question what was going on there. And I think if he was just going to Nick's, which is what Nick said, then he would have just been like, hey mom, going to Nick's, be home for dinner, you know, like why would he write what he wrote? So I don't know necessarily that John wrote this letter and put it in his house. I don't really see that happening either, but I just can't figure out when and why Greg wrote this letter. So is there a possibility that when John and Greg left the park, they stopped back by

Greg's parents house and then Greg left the letter because he knew he was going to Johns to drink and smoke weed. Could that be a possibility? It's possible. I wish I knew how close of a vicinity the house was to the park because he didn't take his bike because remember Nick found his bike at the park the next day. So he didn't take his bike. He walked. So if they were close enough to the house then yes, but I don't know the vicinity of the house and

John's house and the school and the park, I wish I knew that. And you would assume that Greg would have went back for his bike at some point, right? Like if he was, I mean, in any case, if he was going to go home and write that letter, he probably would have just rode his bike off. So I'm thinking that maybe Greg was assuming he wasn't going to be gone that long and then unfortunately he went missing for 15 years. But if he didn't think he was going to be gone for that long, why would he write his mama note saying, don't call the police, I will be home. You know, that's true. Yeah, that's definitely true. But we can't confirm that Greg did or did not write this letter because there was no handwriting analysis done to prove that it was or was not Greg's handwriting.

That we know of, at least. And all the research we both did didn't come up with any of that. And I think that's pretty important information because this letter is such a big piece to this puzzle. After finding out about the sexual abuse, police believed that they would be able to successfully prosecute. Two years later, in 2008, a grand jury indites 44-year-old John Benson for second-degree murder. Because they didn't know the circumstances of Greg's death, they couldn't go for first-degree murder. Because they didn't know the circumstances of Greg's death, they couldn't go for first degree murder. John Benson pled to the lesser charge of manslaughter, meaning

he never had to stand trial for Greg's death. At this time, he was a registered sex offender because of an unrelated crime committed in 2006 regarding luring a young boy from a park. This proves even further that John doesn't have very good character at all, and for that crime he committed in 2006, it was for luring a minor for sexual exploitation. I don't know the details of it, I don't know what part of it was sexual how they knew. It was sexual before anything even happened, but regardless, this says it all. Clearly he didn't learn from the mistakes he made as a teenager, so that, like you said, proves his kind of character if he's committing

these crimes when he's an adult. John never came out with any more information surrounding Greg Holman's death, which is incredibly unfortunate for anyone involved in this case or Greg's life. They were finally able to close the book on Greg's case, however, John only served six years in prison and was paroled on October 8, 2014. The reason he only served six years is because he was sentenced as a minor since the crime had been committed when he was just 15 years old. He is now a free man living in Phoenix, Arizona. 15 years old. He is now a free man living in Phoenix, Arizona. Thank you so much everybody for listening to episode 15 of Going West. Although this case was an awful one to cover, I'm really glad that Greg's family was able

to find some closure. Greg was an awesome kid who stood up to bullies and I think we could all stand to be a little bit more like Greg. Make sure you go over to our Patreon account to check out our bonus episodes which is patreon.com slash going west podcast. We do two ad free bonus episodes a month. Also check out our website goingwestpodcast.com. Go to our listen tab and click on the blog for this post because we really want to know what you guys think Or go and comment on our Instagram post at going West podcast and let us know what you guys think about this case

And don't you dare forget about your boy over on Twitter at going West pod For everybody out there in the world, keep it real, and stay weird. Cheerio! Thank you. you