Park Predators - The Afterlife (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

When a beautiful co-ed is brutally murdered on a popular hiking trail in Prescott National Forest in the summer of 1987, authorities are stumped on who the killer could be. The investigation drags on for decades until finally advances in DNA technology link a serial predator to multiple cases of sexual assault and murder. This is the second of two episodes covering the murder of Cathy Sposito and the identification of Bryan Scott Bennett.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-afterlife-part-2 Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators  | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts, I'm your host Delia D'Ambra. And this is the second of two episodes covering the murder of Kathy Spizzito in Prescott National Forest in June 1987. If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend you press pause and jump back. Otherwise, you'll be thoroughly confused, and I promise you, the small details of this decades-long investigation are important to understanding the entire picture.

So I don't want you to miss a beat. In part two, I'm going to be going back in time myself, because there's a timeline to this case that is vitally important to follow. To quickly refresh your memory, Kathy was killed while hiking on Thumbute Trail on the morning of Saturday, June 13th, 1987. She'd been beaten, cut with a sharp object, and shot in the left eye. Several people on the same trail she was walking heard her scream for help, but didn't get to her in time.

At the crime scene, authorities found two rocks with hair and blood on them, a.22 caliber cartridge case near her body, and a long trail of blood leaning from her final resting place about 130 feet up the trailhead, near where a female hiker discovered a metal ratchet wrench laying on the ground. Despite investigators' diligent efforts throughout the ensuing years, the case stalled and eventually went cold. But what I didn't tell you in part one is that Kathy's case wasn't the only vicious assault in the Prescott National Forest area in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

There were others. This is Park Predators. I'm sorry. At 720 in the morning on Sunday, April 22nd, 1990, a 33-year-old woman was hiking alone down Thumbute Trail in Prescott National Forest when she heard what sounded like a person running up behind her. Initially, she assumed it was someone jogging the trail, so she stepped aside to let them pass her. But as soon as she did, she felt the person shove her forward and push her to the ground. During the fall, she cut her left knee open, but that was the least of her worries in the moment.

The person who'd pushed her was a young white man with blonde hair and bucked teeth, who she didn't recognize. She struggled, but the stranger made her stay down and told her to lie still and be quiet. He then picked up a jagged rock that was roughly the size of a softball and held it up as if he was going to strike her with it, but he didn't. He then sexually assaulted her and afterwards ran off in the same direction he'd come from, which was further up the trail. It took the victim about five minutes before she made it down to the Thumbute Campground

parking lot area and flagged down a woman who operated the facility. She told the staffer what had happened to her and immediately the woman realized the victim was injured and needed help. According to police reports, the victim had been camping with her boyfriend and a larger group of friends at a nearby program center. But she decided to take a morning walk by herself to find a restroom. Within minutes of getting help, the victim was on her way to Yavapai Regional Medical Center to be evaluated. And by 8-10 a.m., she reported her assault to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office.

About 20 minutes later, deputies arrived at the hospital to interview the woman and start their investigation. The first thing they wanted to know was what her attacker looked like. She told them he was a young white male who was probably between 15 and 19 years old with thin blonde hair. He was either 5'5 or 5'6 with a wavy haircut

that was short in the front and longer in the back. She'd also noticed some other unique details about him, like his slight bucked teeth, a gold cross earring in his left ear, and a tattoo on his upper right arm. She remembered he'd been wearing what looked like dark jeans, a blue scoop neck sleeveless t-shirt, and white tennis shoes. He'd also set down a pack of Marlboro cigarettes on the ground next to her head during the attack. She'd gotten a pretty good look at that tobacco box and noticed it was white and gold and had a piece of paper with a telephone number on it tucked inside the cellophane wrapper. But unfortunately, she couldn't remember all the digits. Before

the victim left the hospital, she allowed doctors and law enforcement to collect a sexual assault kit and keep all of her clothing as evidence. Hospital staff also retrieved biological samples from her boyfriend because she said the two of them had been sexually active the previous night and authorities wanted a comparison for elimination purposes. I want to be sensitive here and not go into unnecessary details but it's important to note that the type of sexual assault the victim endured may not have resulted in the suspect depositing semen. At least, that's what I gathered from reading the detailed police reports for the case and the victim's own statements. However, there was one report that said a semen stain was found on her sweatpants, but the victim clarified that may have belonged

to her boyfriend. A few days into the investigation, detectives spoke with the victim again and showed her several photos of men that they thought might be potential suspects, but she didn't identify any of them as the person who'd attacked her. Authorities also had her look through a Prescott High School yearbook, but she didn't pick out anyone that looked like the young man who'd assaulted her. After that, the investigation stalled. Months went by with no new leads and detectives re-interviewed the victim again in August of 1990.

But unfortunately, nothing new surfaced. The victim was certain, though, that if she ever saw her attacker again, she'd be able to identify him. The April 1990 sexual assault happened almost three years after Kathy Spizzito's murder. The victim in that case has never been publicly identified, nor should she ever be. So I'm just gonna refer to her as victim number two. The fact that her assault and Kathy's murder happened just a few years apart though, on the same trail,

certainly stuck out to authorities. But from reading the source material and police reports, it doesn't seem like an official connection was ever documented on paper. It wasn't until around 2015 or 2016 when a new cold case detective from Yavapai County Sheriff's Office named Dan Pritchard took over Kathy's case that potential dots started to get connected. According to Dan, the Sheriff's Office had only been looking at the murder case one way

for a long time, and he felt like the department needed to explore other ways to try and solve it. This, of course, included retesting old evidence with new technology, as well as taking a look at other violent crimes that had happened around Prescott in roughly the same timeframe Kathy was killed. And that's when his team rediscovered Victim Number Two's case. For a while, Dan and other detectives, along with a group of volunteer cold case investigators, focused heavily on a man named Ed Gumm. Ed was a convicted felon who'd been released from prison in 1986 after serving time for

attempted sexual assault and moved to Prescott right after. He took a job cutting firewood and doing construction for a while, but was later convicted for sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint in 1991 at a place called Granite Dells. That recreation space is about 20 minutes northeast of the Thumbute trailhead. When Ed worked as a firewood cutter, he'd spent a lot of time going in and out of different parts around Thumbute. So I imagine authorities felt like he could have been aware of good places to hide to find potential victims. Investigators interviewed Ed in prison in 2017 and 2018 because he'd been put there for unrelated crimes and he told them that back in 1987 he didn't go to Thumbute often. However, he had hiked on

the trails a few times while waiting for his wife to get off work. Before speaking with Ed, detectives had done their homework and interviewed some of his family members and friends. What they learned from those folks was that Ed liked to party, fish, and camp in Prescott National Forest on a regular basis in the late 1980s. One of his friends told investigators that Ed usually kept a firearm with him while he was in the woods, and another man straight up told detectives that Ed had confessed to killing Kathy after seeing a news report about her murder on the news. When investigators confronted Ed with this information, he admitted to having firearms

in 1987, which included a shotgun, a.22 Marlin brand rifle, and a.22 caliber Ruger revolver he'd borrowed from his brother. But he clarified that he'd never taken the Marlin rifle with him while hiking because he said it was too bulky. He said he preferred to carry his brother's gun while in the woods. Obviously, Ed admitting he had access to a.22 Marlin brand rifle peaked investigators' interest

because they knew Cathy had been shot with a.22 Marlin brand firearm. When the Sheriff's Office asked Ed directly if he was responsible for Kathy's murder and victim number two sexual assault in 1990, he told them he wasn't. When detectives asked him to take a polygraph to prove he was telling the truth,

he agreed to, but the results came back showing that he'd failed. His explanation for those results was a confession, not for Kathy's murder or what happened to victim number two, but to a handful of other secrets he'd been keeping. After Ed Gumm failed his polygraph examination, he confessed to 10 other sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults in the Prescott area between 1986 and 1987, three of which had occurred near Thumbute Recreation Area.

In case you didn't catch that, I said 10 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults, three of which happened in the exact same area victim number two was attacked and Kathy was murdered. Ed told authorities that he remembered every sexual assault he'd ever committed, and Kathy and victim number two weren't two of them. He said the women he'd assaulted at Thumbute were victims he'd either picked up in his car and driven there or women he bumped into while hiking the trail system. The best way for officials to rule him in or out, though, as a suspect for either crime was to compare his DNA to the evidence.

According to police reports, all of the original case evidence from victim number two's 1990 assault had been destroyed at some point after the crime. But the state lab had kept a few cuttings from her sweatpants in storage, one of which had a semen stain on it. The Sheriff's Office had also submitted 46 pieces of evidence in Kathy's case for DNA analysis. But in 2018, the only fruitful results they'd gotten showed unknown male DNA that had been found beneath her fingernails and was part of a mixture on one of the rocks used to bludgeon her. DNA results for the bike helmet and ratchet wrench had come back as inconclusive due to insufficient DNA.

But times were changing and the sheriff's office remained hopeful. Throughout this whole process, a detective working the case visited victim number two and got samples of her and her husband's DNA. Because turns out, the guy who was her boyfriend back in April of 1990 ended up becoming her husband. The state lab needed more recent DNA samples from both of them for elimination purposes, and the couple had no issue letting investigators

collect buckle swabs. A few months later, the results came in and confirmed that most of the DNA from the 1990 sexual assault evidence belonged to victim number two and her partner. But the semen stain on the sweatpants contained an unknown male's DNA. Investigators uploaded that profile into CODIS, but there wasn't a hit. Ed Gumm was formally cleared at that point because his DNA wasn't a match to the profile either.

Now, I imagine that must have felt like a huge blow to investigators, but the sheriff's office persisted. Their next move was to see if the unknown DNA from victim number two's case was good enough to sequence for familial DNA matches. Turns out, it was. The state lab successfully compared that profile to men who were already in Arizona's convicted offender database, you know, to see if any of them were a brother,

a father, or son of the perp, but the results were negative. Detectives then sent the DNA profile to a private forensics lab to conduct genetic genealogical analysis. In April of 2020, the lab developed a DNA snapshot that showed investigators the approximate eye color, hair color, skin color, and genomic ancestry of the 1990 sexual assault suspect. A few months later, in November 2020, genealogical analysis of the DNA sample's matches was conducted and led to a tentative identification that was one of two brothers, both of whom had lived in Prescott in the late 80s and early 1990s.

The two men were originally from Kentucky but but had moved to Central Arizona during their youth. In 2020, by the time investigators learned about them, one was still alive, but the other had died way back in 1994. Before his death, though, he had a daughter with his ex-wife, so the sheriff's office got in contact with the daughter to see if she'd be willing to provide a sample of her DNA, which she did. Her father's name? Brian Scott Bennett.

Brian's living brother wasn't quite as helpful as Brian's daughter had been. He refused to give investigators his DNA. However, eventually, thanks to some help from the Kentucky State Police, the Sheriff's Office got it by collecting some of his trash. In May 2021, the private forensics lab that had done all the testing in victim number two's case compared Brian's daughter's DNA to the unknown male DNA profile from the semen stain and confirmed that the assailant in that case was a paternal relative of Brian Bennett's daughter, aka most likely Brian. But until the lab could do a direct comparison with a fresh sample of Brian's DNA, things were still a bit uncertain.

Around the same time this was all happening, the sheriff's office received additional information from the DPS crime lab that really made everyone stop and take a beat. It had taken a few years, but staff had successfully compared the unknown male DNA profile from victim number 2's case, that was now looking like it belonged to Brian Scott Bennett, to the unknown DNA profile in Kathy's case.

If you remember, Lab Techs had been able to isolate a male profile from blood found in her mouth and from one of the rocks used to beat her. According to police reports, every single genetic loci on those two DNA profiles matched. Meaning the same person had likely committed both crimes. This was a huge break for detectives. It officially linked the two cases. But they still needed to be absolutely certain that Brian Bennett was the man they should be looking at for both crimes. He was definitely the prime suspect in victim number two's assault. There was no question there. But with the newest development, he'd shot straight to the top of the suspect list

in Cathy's case too. Detectives were more determined than ever to get a fresh sample of his DNA to do a direct comparison. Just using his daughter's DNA wasn't going to cut it. But like I said earlier, Brian had died in 1994, so it was going to be tricky. Brian's brother had been ruled out forensically of any involvement, but detectives still wanted to speak with him. So in September 2022, they drove to where he and his mother lived in

Kentucky and interviewed him. He told investigators that he and his brother had lived in Prescott back in the day, but they moved to North Carolina and then eventually Kentucky. He said he didn't know anything about Cathy's murder or victim number two sexual assault in Thumbuid. After interviewing him, detectives spoke with his mother

and she told investigators that in 1987, her son, Brian, was 16 years old and attending Prescott High School. At the time, he had a girlfriend who he later married and shared a daughter with. After dropping out of high school in 1988, he bounced around Prescott for a few years before joining the army and eventually moving to North Carolina. A year or so into his military career though, he decided to abandon his post and go AWOL.

During that time, he'd separated from his wife, who moved to California with their daughter. In early 1990, Brian had returned to Central Arizona and gotten arrested by the Prescott Police Department for forging checks. Almost two months after that, Chino Valley police officers arrested him for attempting to sexually assault a woman at a Fourth of July party. In that case, the victim claimed that after she'd started to feel unwell, she went to lay down in a room.

Shortly after she sat down, Brian followed her inside and locked the door. He then tried to sexually assault her and threatened to harm her. Eventually, some other partygoers realized what was going on in the room and broke down the door, but in the commotion, Brian got away. Fortunately not for long, because the cops caught up to him and he was later taken into custody. According to investigative records, in November and December 1990, he was tried for that offense in Yavapai County Superior Court, but the jury ultimately found him not guilty due to some discrepancies in the eyewitness's testimony. For his prior offense of check forgery, he was given three years probation and sent on his way, but he later violated the terms of that release and ended up spending a year in jail.

He was temporarily released in the spring of 1993 and returned to Prescott. But later that summer violated his parole again, and when a warrant for his arrest was issued, he absconded to Kentucky. his parole again and when a warrant for his arrest was issued he absconded to Kentucky. In late January 1994, still a wanted man, he ultimately died by suicide with a firearm. His mother said that growing up her oldest son was always a gentle, loving person who'd usually be by himself. She said Brian didn't have a lot of friends and she referred to him as a loner who, to her knowledge, didn't get his first girlfriend until he met the mother of his child between junior and senior year of high school. After he entered the military, she said he began to change and she didn't recognize the person he was.

After he died, Brian's body was buried in Kentucky. In order to exhume him to retrieve a fresh DNA sample, Arizona investigators needed his mother to give them consent to essentially break open his grave and retrieve his remains, which she eventually did. In November 2022, the exhumation happened, and a few months later, in March 2023, results confirmed by direct comparison that Brian Scott Bennett was the man responsible for sexually assaulting victim number two in April 1990. Authorities' next move was to see if new technology could detect whether his DNA was on the murder weapons in Cathy's case. Specifically, the two rocks and Craftsman ratchet wrench that

had been found at the crime scene. According to the source material, it seems like detectives really favored re-examining the wrench because it had more places that DNA might have been deposited. Turns out their hunch was right. Advanced test results showed that the wrench had several different DNA profiles on it because a few people had handled it after the crime. But the two major profiles with the highest concentration belonged to Kathy and a male whose DNA had a lot of similar markers to Brian. It wasn't a 100% match, but enough likelihood for officials to conclude

that Brian had held the wrench and left some of his DNA on it. In August 2023, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office held a press conference formally announcing him as Kathy's likely killer. At that point, they considered her case solved. For the 35 years it had gone unsolved though, Ryan never came on investigators' radar until forensic testing ramped up in 2020 and 2021. Throughout the late 80s, the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, his name was never mentioned

and he'd never been convicted of any violent crimes in Arizona. But maybe he should have been. Like we're always going to be tied together. We're always going to have a connection. She will be with me till the day I die. Hi everybody. Thanks for coming. For everybody that's by saying thank you, God. I give you all the glory because he was with me that night. I prayed. He spoke to me. He's the reason that I'm here today." That's the voice of a woman named Renee Sandoval. In August 2023, at the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office's press conference about Kathy's

case, Renee spoke and publicly identified herself because she had a powerful story to tell. On June 2, 1993, nearly six years after Cathy's murder and almost three years after victim number two's sexual assault, Renee was getting into her car outside a post office in Prescott when a man kidnapped her at Knife Point, stole her jewelry, and sexually assaulted her in his car. He then drove her into the woods outside of town, sexually assaulted her again, and threatened to kill her. Thankfully, a police officer passing by the car stopped because he noticed that the headlights weren't dimmed.

Shortly after stumbling upon the crime in progress, Renee was rescued. At the time she positively identified her assailant as Brian Scott Bennett, a young man from Prescott who'd been temporarily released from prison nearly two months earlier. The police department arrested him for Renee's kidnapping and sexual assault. But unfortunately, the case against him didn't move forward and charges were never filed. According to the source material, the case fell apart due to lack of evidence and

discrepancies in statements. But Renee said during the 2023 press conference that she just tried her best to put what had happened to her and the lack of justice out of her mind because she had to move on with her life and raise her young daughters. One day, three decades later, she received a call from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office notifying her that Brian Scott Bennett had been identified as victim number two's assailant from 1990 and Kathy Spizzito's murderer from 1987. Renee was floored to learn there were so many other victims. This is a tragedy.

It's a horrible, horrible, horrible tragedy. But I have met some awesome people. I've met the Sposito, well not met them, but I've spoke to them on the phone over and over. I've been in touch with another victim, the one before me, the one that the sheriff described. I ask that everybody in the community pray. Pray for these victims. Pray for all these people that have suffered a crime like this. Pray for those people who never had a voice, who were never given an opportunity. I got to kind of know Kathy from her brother, Sal. Love you, Sal.

They were very, very close. He told me so much about her, about their family, things they've done together, And he never gave up. He never, ever gave up, never wavered. And today, she's free. Kathy, you're free. During the 2023 press conference, the Sheriff's Office said that in the four cases they'd been able to link Brian to, they believed he'd acted alone. There was no indication anyone had helped him. If Kathy was his first victim, he'd been just 16 years old at the time.

What's particularly eerie is that when the Sheriff's Office released their findings, they tracked down a Prescott High School yearbook photo of Brian from the mid 1980s. And his picture is a dead ringer for the young man that victim number two had described to authorities after her assault in April, 1990. Now, I know I said earlier that investigators showed that woman a high school yearbook a few months

after the crime and she didn't identify anyone. But I have to wonder if maybe detectives just didn't go far enough back and show her a yearbook that Brian would have been in. We know from the Sheriff's Office's findings that he dropped out of high school in January 1988, so he wouldn't have been in yearbooks published after that year, and there's a good chance he wasn't even in that one. Another circumstantial connection linking Brian to Kathy's murder was that she was shot with a 22 caliber firearm, which was never found after the crime.

In 1994, Brian died by suicide with the same caliber gun. According to the Sheriff's office, the firearm from his suicide and the bullet evidence recovered in Kathy's case has never been compared. And I think that's because the Sheriff indicated Brian's firearm was too old to be compared or something, or maybe the ballistic evidence

was too degraded. I don't know the details on that for sure because the Sheriff's comments were a little vague, but I think the assumption is that Brian's gun being the same caliber as the gun that was used to kill Kathy is just one more puzzle piece that circumstantially links him to her murder. Sheriff David Rhodes told news reporters that his office hadn't found any evidence that Brian knew Kathy prior to attacking her. He'd essentially stalked her in the woods and ambushed her for no apparent reason, similarly to how he'd attacked his other victims. I think a lot of people who've worked this case assume that he had a sexual motive just because of what's been determined in other cases. But the

Emmy who did Kathy's autopsy didn't find any signs of sexual assault. So I don't know if that really was his motive in her case. The sheriff told the press that Cathy's murder had all the telltale signs of extreme overkill. And I have to agree. At the conclusion of the press conference, the sheriff's office said that they suspected Brian might be responsible for other crimes. They wanted the public to be aware that he was known to sometimes go by the name Scott Bennett instead of Brian Scott Bennett.

And before his death in 1994, he'd spent time in Arizona, North Carolina, California, Kansas, and Kentucky during his short stint in the army. The sheriff emphasized that due to the nature of Brian's known crimes, it was highly unlikely the four cases Yavapai County had identified were the only ones. According to Bianca Bono's reporting for 12 News, Brian's DNA is now in a nationwide database for other agencies to check their unsolved cases against. In his comments, Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes categorized Brian as a serial predator. Someone who lives among residents for a long period of time and can go completely undetected.

Someone who hunts in the areas they know and commits crimes that changed the course of many people's lives. Sal Sposito, Kathy's brother, told 12News after the press conference that finally having an answer to the mystery of who killed his sister was comforting. He said, quote, I thought I would just go on not knowing, and to get an answer like this was a big relief, end quote. A big relief indeed, for those of us still here and for people like Cathy, who I like to imagine are somewhere at peace,

hiking the amazing hilltops of the afterlife. Park Predators is an audio chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow park predators on Instagram at at park predators. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram at at Park Predators. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?