True Crime All The Time - Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Gallaudet University freshman Eric Plunkett was beaten and strangled to death inside his dorm room just weeks after arriving on campus. Months later, fellow freshman Benjamin Varner was found brutally murdered in the same dorm, leaving the close-knit university terrified that a killer was hiding among them. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the murders of Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner. As investigators searched for connections between the two crimes, evidence began pointing toward someone much closer than anyone expected.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 532 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. How are you? What's up? All right. Yeah. You having a good week? Yeah.

Me too. My wife's back to school. My daughter's back to school. They're, you know, got kids. So I'm back to being alone at home by myself. And you like every minute. of it. Yeah, I do, but I miss not having somebody to talk to. Yeah. So I really look forward to my wife getting home now because I sit here all day. I don't have anybody to talk to, but the dogs.

You just want her to hear this? And she's going to be like, oh, baby. Oh, you know me so well. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout-outs. We had Rose Pearl. Is that? So you have a name like Rose Pearl. You know, people go, you're such a Rose. There's such a Pearl. You're such a Rose Pearl. I don't know. I don't know. Just pick one. I just like it, though.

Kira Shybell jumped out at our highest level. Well, thanks, Shybel. Kathy Welch. What's going on, Welsh? Sharon Nardi. Ah, the Narty. Lori Stewart. Well, you know, Lori, everybody's got to be a good steward.

Maya O'Connell. I like the O'Connell name. I had neighbors that were the O'Connell's. Mm-hmm. They were a lot of fun. Okay. Yeah. So you're assuming every O'Connell is?

Oh, I guarantee you, Maya's. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Susan Sobesensky. Ah, Sobaskinsky. And last but not least, Austin Herta. Because he has hurt a lot. Yeah.

Then if we go back into the vault. This week, we selected Jerry Jensen. You know, Jerry, they're a good swimmer. Is that true? No, I don't know. Because Jensen isn't Jensen a swimwear? I think that's Jansen. This is the other version.

How can I use that before I, people are like, you are so... You use it every time, so I don't know. So we have an episode out right now on True Crime All the Time Unsolved. It's part two. And our last part on the Mitrease Richardson case. And, you know, it's a fascinating case, sad one. But we get into, you know, all of the rest of it. And then on Thursday's T-Cat, we're talking about Clara Rector.

And to me, this is a very interesting case. She was arrested for stalking and harassing her pastor. But then she shocked investigators by confessing to murder, solving a case that had been cold for almost a decade. Whatever if she could have got off, if she never would have confessed, you know? No, I believe she could have. Yeah. I don't know that they would have ever would ever caught her. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time?

I'm ready. Gallaudet University student Eric Plunkett was beaten and strangled the death inside his dorm room weeks after starting his freshman year. A few months later, another student was stabbed the death in his dorm, sparking fear among the students that a killer was hiding among them. And you pointed it out when we were doing our Patreon. I don't know if this is good or bad timing because this episode could scare a lot of parents who might be sending their kids back. to school or might be sending their freshmen to school for the first time. It's that time of year. And it is that time of year.

And now, I think most colleges have already started. But I remember that distinctly. That was a very hard time, both times for my oldest and my youngest. Eric Plunkett was born on September 8th, 1981 in Portland, Oregon. He was born with cerebral palsy. As a result, he was sometimes unsteady on his feet. and he experienced profound hearing laws. Eric's family learned he was deaf when he was just eight years old.

According to the Washington Post, his parents read books on how to raise deaf children and took sign language courses. That would be difficult to raise a child. Absolutely. Raising a kid is hard enough when they're 100% healthy with no challenges. Yeah. But if you have a kid who is born with some challenges like this,

it's just going to make it even that more difficult. And that's such a young age, right? Eight months to find out that, you know, he was deaf. His sister Aaron recalled that Eric was confident, outgoing, and he had a lot of friends. He was also a curious person who liked to take things apart and see how they were made. You're kind of like that.

You used to watch those shows, how it was made? Yeah, I do watch it. I still do sometimes. I watch things on YouTube about how different things are made. I also, when I was younger, did like to take things apart. The problem is I didn't really know how they were made, and I could never figure out how to put them back together. And maybe that's why your mom and dad were upset sometimes.

And why I didn't go into, like, engineering or into anything like that. After they had to buy five TVs because you kept on taking the new one apart, but couldn't get it back together. When he was young, Eric said he wanted to be a chef at his favorite hibachi restaurant. He dreamed of traveling and asked for plane tickets for Christmas growing up. It'd be cool to be at that hibachi grill working it and flipping that shrimp to somebody's mouth. Yeah, you know me and how much I love hibachi. Oh, you are a bachi king. It is one of my absolute favorites.

I think it would be fun, but it's still a job. And I think it's a pretty hard job. Number one, I think that grill is extremely hot. Yeah. And so that's going to be tough. You're going to smell like grease, oil, shrimp, chicken. Yeah, you're not going to smell great probably. I feel like I would be able to keep the onion tower straight.

I mean, fall on me every time. Yeah, well, you can't cook. so I don't see this as your profession of choice. You might look good in the hat, but I don't know. Other than that, Chef Bordee hat. But also, what about a kid wanting plane tickets for Christmas? Hey. That is so grown up.

Such a grown up thing to ask for. Go big or go home. Yeah, I guess so. Although he did have some physical limitations. Eric still traveled and even took a trip by himself. as a teenager to see Minnesota because his family considered moving there. The family moved to Burnsville in 1997, and Eric attended the Minnesota State Academy for the deaf, which was a boarding school.

And it was said that he blossomed at school. His principal recalled he took risks. He accepted challenges. He didn't let anyone say no to him. And this is very inspiring to me, because I feel like. it would be easier to, you know, use some of the challenges you were born with to kind of say, oh, I can't do this or I can't do that. Right.

But obviously Eric didn't do that. He went the other way. He said, you know what? I'll show you what I can do. Don't tell me I can do anything. Yeah, he didn't let the limitations get in his way. And he graduated with the second highest academic honors in his 10 student senior class. Gallaudet University was Eric's first choice for college.

It's a private university in Washington, D.C. for the deaf and heart of hearing. It was founded back in 1864 as a grammar school for deaf and blind children. It's the world's only university bilingual in American Sign Language. I did not know that. I didn't either. The campus community is extremely close-knit. in 2001, Time Magazine described the university as the deaf Harvard, Wharton, and Brookings rolled into one.

It has produced generations of leaders, activists, and entrepreneurs. I mean, it's pretty impressive when you take Harvard, Wharton, and Brookings, and throw them all together, and this is, you know, equal to that. Those are all very prestigious. Time went on to say, whether in classrooms where teachers, we're teaching, lecture and sign language on playing fields where athletes key into the vibrations of huge drums rather than audible signals or in the cafeteria where gossip and flirtation are no less hot for being silent. Gallaudet embodies a heady ideal, an oasis where the deaf person can shed the role of handicapped outsider and step into a cultural majority, where the tyranny of spoken speech

is stripped away. And in the words of Provost Jane Fernandez, the dreams open up. Impressive. Well, you could see why, you know, if you were deaf, this would be an amazing place to go. Absolutely.

Great reputation. Everybody knows sign language. I think by going to a place like this, you feel less of an outsider because everybody's communicating the same way you communicate. Yeah, I would say that, would definitely be true.

Eric's parents helped him move into Cogswell Hall in August 2000. When they left his dorm, Eric told his mom not to worry about him. That was the last time they saw each other. That's like everything a kid tells their parents at dorm drop off. Absolutely. And I'll never forget when we took our oldest and left her at college, I cried the whole hour drive home.

Literally, my wife and I both could not stop crying. We didn't cry quite as much when we dropped the youngest one off, not because we love her less. It was just we'd already done it. He's been there, done it. That's what always happens with the second child. You know that because you're a second child. You're a middle child.

Eric was ready to start a new chapter. He fit right in, and fellow students described him as friendly and easygoing. He was named secretary of the campus Lambda Society. According to time, Lambda members reported there had been a marked increase in death threats against gay students. Eric filed a complaint with the school's Judicial Affairs Committee about anti-gay slurs found on campus message boards. A national gay rights group later announced that anti-gay activity on campus added up to a pattern of harassment. That would make sense. On September 28, 2000, Eric Plunkett was found beaten and strangled the death inside his dorm room.

That day, student Joseph Mesa Jr., who lived across from Eric and Cogswell, asked former student in R.A., Lauren Butchko, to do a welfare check after he noticed a funny smell coming from Eric's room. He also said he'd been unable to reach him. Lauren asked fellow R.A. Thomas Koch to help her out. Thomas opened the door and found Eric's body. Thomas checked for a pulse, but there was none and he ran out of the room. Probably because the smell was one thing. I'm sure that had a lot to do with it.

You know, I lived in a couple of dorms during my years in college. And suffice it to say, when you have that many 19-year-olds, whatever, all packed in. We had three guys in a room that was smaller than my bedroom right now. Yeah. It was very, very small. Not everybody showers as much as,

you know, the others. Not everybody uses deodorant. There's a lot of funky smells in a situation like that. You got those dirty socks smell on top of, all kinds of smells, right? Food, left out, you name it.

Gas. Gas. But when, you know, this kid said that there was a funny smell, I think we can all kind of, even though not all of us have smelled it, we can all understand. Yeah. That what he's talking about is the smell of decomposition, which you hear everyone say is unmistakable. Like once you smell it, you'll never forget that smell. And if you ever smell it again, you know immediately what it is. But you think about, you know, these RAs going in, they're probably not much older, right, than these kids, a couple of years.

RAs have to deal with a lot. They do. What most of them don't have to deal with is finding a dead student's body. No, that's going to be something that I would think 99.9% of them never come across. No, and it's going to stick with you. So it was clear that there had been a struggle. Eric's room was in disarray and blood was spattered everywhere. The autopsy indicated Eric was hit with a chair, kicked, beaten, and strangled to death.

Pretty violent. Yeah, a very violent scene. Eric's wallet and debit cards had been stolen. There were no signs of forced entry, leading investigators to believe the killer covered their tracks by closing and locking the door on their way out. Not hard to do. No, probably not hard to lock the door on your way out. And that would be a good idea, right, if you're trying to cover things up because, okay, then it's like, well, how did somebody get in or, but here's my thought.

There are a lot of dorm rooms in a hall. Yeah. Right. Usually have one on each side of you. If this was such a, you know, a violent scene, you would think it would, it would would have been pretty loud. Somebody would have heard it. But in this case, I mean, this is a university filled with people that are deaf.

And that's exactly why I think the killer thought they could get away with doing it right there. The killer had to have taken that into account, right? Well, I would think so. Like, you know, they know that no one's going to hear the ruckus. All I have to worry about is somebody seeing me or maybe seeing blood. on my clothing or something like that. But it is a much different situation than you would find on most campuses or in most dorms. Eighty-nine percent of dog parents consider their dog, their best friend in the world. And 31 percent would even let their pups eat off their own for

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During the investigation, detectives learned that while at college, Eric came out as gay, so they considered the possibility that Eric was killed in a hate crime, especially after they learned about his formal complaint. He was also considered the possibility he was killed as a result of a romantic dispute, which, let's face it, is at the heart of a lot of murders we talk about. Really is. On October 3, 2000, police arrested 18-year-old freshman Thomas Midge, who also lived in Cogswell Hall. Investigators said Thomas admitted that earlier on the night of the murder, he pushed or hit Eric during an argument, and he's, fell to the ground. According to oxygen, the student claimed Eric tried to make a pass at him.

So what are you saying? Eric made a pass at me. I didn't like it. So I pushed him. I hit him and walked away. Yeah. I mean, you know, making a pass at someone, whether, you know, it's a guy hitting on a girl, a girl hitting on a guy, a guy hitting on a guy, a girl hitting on a girl. It could go well. It could be received well and it could go badly. It could not be received well by the other person. That's true. For one thing, if you're a male hitting on another male, what if the person you're hitting on isn't gay? Probably not going to go the way you would want it to. Yep. And if you're a guy hitting on a girl and that girl's got a boyfriend, right? That's probably not going to go well. There's just all kinds of things that can cause those interactions to get out of hand.

But there's also ways to handle it too, right? I think some people would handle it differently. Well, yeah. I imagine, you know, if you're, let's say, a 19-year-old college freshman who is not gay and another male is hitting on you. some people at that age, at that time in their life, may not handle that as well as what they should. You know what I'm saying? Oh, of course. Yeah. At a certain age, you're just happy to get hit on by anybody. Well, maybe some people are. Now, I can imagine that a lot of times girls are much

better at this because they have to put up with it much more than we do. Well, that's a true statement. they have a lot of experience with guys hitting on them and diffusing the situation and how to tell them that no, they're not interested. I mean, I don't know that I've ever been hit on in my life. You probably were. You just didn't pick up on the clues. Well, that could be too, but it's, it's not like women. Women are inundated, right? By guys who want to be with them, want to go out with them. It's it's like a full-time job fending off men probably for some women. I think they probably have heard about everything that a guy can come up with. Every line. Yeah. The next day, prosecutors vacated the arrest due to insufficient evidence.

DNA also ruled him out as the killer. So, I mean, I think this thing did go down, right? The story he told. And I can understand why they would look at him. is bad timing that after this happened, Eric was killed. Yeah. I just think it's a guy that wasn't happy with somebody hitting on him. Yeah. Thomas Minch later sued the D.C. police for wrongful arrest. In April 2001, officers told the Washington Post that when Thomas confessed to hitting

Eric, the head detective stopped the interview, arrested him and erroneously told other police officers, Thomas confessed to murder. And that's a big problem. I would say so. It's like, why did you stop? One, why would you stop it? Let him finish out whatever his thought process is, whatever he wanted to say. And then, you know, you take it to the next step.

But say what he said. Like, he confessed? Yeah, because now you have other officers relying on that information. Yeah. And so maybe they decide. okay, well, we're not going to press him. We're not going to get more details. He's already confessed.

And that means that any other active investigation probably ceased. For a period of time, yeah, if they thought that he was the killer and he confessed to it. Eric's shocking murder terrified the tight-knit campus community. According to time, LGBT plus students feared walking alone on campus when another freshman student, 19-year-old Benjamin Varner. was also murdered in his dorm room, students feared a killer was hiding among them. Benjamin Varner was born on June 8, 1981, in Tacoma, Washington, but he grew up in Texas. Benjamin had profound hearing loss, but he wasn't completely deaf. His mother dedicated herself to teaching him how to speak, and he utilized hearing aids.

His parents hoped that school interpreters would help him become fluent in ASL, but he preferred to use the listening skills. He developed as a young child. Doing this, though, caused him to come home exhausted each day. I bet. And that's something that, you know, most of us have never had to go through. You kind of take for granted how easy it is to, you know, carry on a conversation. Well, maybe not with you.

But with most people, it's very easy for me to understand the person I'm talking to. But you take a guy like Benjamin, he's putting in a lot of work. A lot of effort. Yeah, a lot of effort to try to understand what other people are saying. I can imagine how exhausting that would be. His mother, Diane, told the Washington Post, he used to come home and it was so hard for him, always straining to hear. He'd say, I wish I could hear.

I wish I could hear. And as a mother, I think that would be heartburn. Oh, absolutely would be. You love your son, but there's nothing you can do for him when it comes to that aspect, right? His hearing is limited, very limited. Now, it sounds like they did everything they could, right? They bought him or got him specialized hearing aids. His mom dedicated herself to trying to teach him how to speak.

Yeah, and they sent him to one of the best schools. Four kids with that issue. That's true. But again, there's only so much you can do. Yeah. Benjamin earned A's and B's in school and was passionate about studying other cultures around the world. During his senior year, he moved to Australia with a student group after reading about

the country for months. Benjamin was interested in Gallaudet because of the location. His mother, Diane, helped him move into Cogswell Hall in August 2000. and she left him in his dorm and returned to the hotel she had booked. Benjamin visited her that night with tears in his eyes. His mother reassured him that it would be hard, but he could do it. I get, if you're that far away,

maybe getting a hotel for a few nights because you don't want to either make the drive or take the flight all the way back home. Yeah. I want to be nearby just in case. And I would probably do that. that as well. And I don't know that this is all that uncommon, right? Especially the first day or first few days kids are at school, man, is jarring for some of them. Oh, yeah. The, the, uh, the homesick part

kind of sets in immediately for some. And it sounds like it did with Benjamin. I even think on your, uh, favorite show, Landman. They did a little scene about the one daughter going off of college and the mom getting a hotel just down the street for like a week or two or something like that. So the daughter, you know, she was there nearby. Yeah. Yeah, I would probably do that if I was far away. On February 3rd, 2001, Benjamin's body was found in his dorm room in Cogswell. His body was hidden under a mattress.

He had been stabbed at least 16 times in the head, neck, and stomach. And just like the Eric Plunkett crime scene, there was blood everywhere. Also, similar to the first crime, Benjamin's wallet, credit cards, and checkbook were missing. Once again, investigators talked to Eric's former neighbor, Joseph Mesa Jr., who also knew Benjamin. He told investigators that shortly before the murder, Benjamin told him he was gay and had secretly been seeing someone. And, you know, to me this is interesting from the standpoint that this guy, Joseph Mesa, a junior knew both of the the men that were killed or boys or whatever you want to call them, they're young.

I think for investigators, you have to at least be looking at him. He has a known connection to both victims. That's a good, like you said, that's a good reason to dive into him a little bit to determine if there's anything there. But then there's also the revelation by him that Benjamin told him he was. gay and had secretly been seeing someone. So whoever that is, if that's true, has to, you know, be a person of interest as well. You know, so as this leaks out throughout the university, I'm assuming as these students' parents hear about this, you're thinking, if my child

is gay, I don't know if I want him to be there right now or for her to be there right now. and probably you're thinking, I don't even know if I want my student, my child, their period. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, I get it.

Once it comes out that both of the victims were gay, you're going to have that issue. But if I'm a parent, I'm like, I just don't want my student to be there, period. And you do see that, have seen that.

You know, you think about Florida, the Gainesville area, with, you know, Ted Bundy and some other serial killers that we've talked about, there were times when parents drove down and just got their kids. And they were like, hey, I'm taking you home.

Yeah, we're packing this stuff up. We're going. Fear and anger spread throughout the campus as the days passed. And the second brutal murder went unsolved. Detectives were under immense pressure to solve the cases. Investigators focused on footprints, leading away from the crime scene to the stairwell. the killer managed to avoid all the surveillance cameras in the dorm.

But detectives found a bloody pairing knife, believed to be from Benjamin's room in a dumpster outside the building, as well as a bloody jacket. Investigators determined the shoe prints were made by Nike Air shoes. The shoes I wear all the time. You do wear a lot of Nike Air, specifically Nike Air Force Ones. that's kind of your go-to. They are. So they have some good evidence, right? They found a bloody knife, a bloody jacket.

They also have these bloody shoe prints. The problem is Nike Air shoes are kind of popular. So, yeah, I know they don't all have the same tread pattern, but a lot of people wear Nike's. Oh, he's a mine. I have a little, like a, you want to call it a branding rod, a small one that's got RW on it. And I just get it hot and then I stick the bottom of the shoes. So I always know that those are mine.

I got you. Yeah. Wouldn't that really tip off the police though if the RW turned up in dirt or, let's say, blood or something like that? You would think, but the way I did it, it was reversed. So it comes out as MR. The W's upside down, the R. So it's like... You know, when you turn the W upside down, the R would also turn upside down.

Yeah. Okay. Let's just move past that one. Benjamin's family discovered someone had cashed a check for $650 within 28 hours of his death. After subpoenaing the bank, detectives discovered the check was cashed by Joseph Mesa. So Joseph's in the limelight again. Oh, and I said it a minute ago. I mean, you got to look at him, right?

He has a connection to both victims. And now he's cashed a check. check just a little over a day after the murder of Benjamin, and it was a check from Benjamin. Now, Joseph claimed the check was for computer repair work, but detectives questioned his story. They also noted that he had inserted himself into both investigations. Yeah, and we've dealt with this before. Yeah, you see it in shows, but you do hear it in a lot of stories, cases, for. whatever reason.

I think there's a number of reasons, but killers do often insert themselves into the investigation. I think some of them just kind of want to see if they can find out what's going on, what the police know. I think some of them maybe get a rush out of being that close to the police knowing that they're actually looking for them, but don't know it's them yet. Yeah. But I think, you know, at the time when he inserted.

him to the last, why wouldn't Joseph just come out and say, hey, I know Benjamin and you know what, I just did some computer work for him. Just did, just did it. Matter of fact, he just paid me and I have to cash the check still. I mean, why not say that then instead of letting it be a mystery because it comes back and kind of burns you here. Yeah, I don't know if maybe he didn't think they would find out. I don't know how they wouldn't find out. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat, the sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants or the tea you somehow always reach for first. Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples

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Not looking good. Investigators were shocked when Joseph came. to the police station on February 13, 2001, and confessed to killing Benjamin Varner with a knife he found under Benjamin's microwave. He also confessed to writing the $650 check to himself. When they asked why he needed the money, Joseph responded through an ASL interpreter, my girlfriend loves purple. So I bought a purple mouse and then a purple mouse pen. And then I have the TV that would be purple. And then there's a plastic plate, purple, the cup that was purple. Okay, his girlfriend liked purple. So he bought a bunch of Barney shit. Well, Barney was purple. Yeah. Detectives asked if he

had anything else on his conscience. He responded, also Eric Plunkett. I also did that one too. Wow. I mean, I think they saw that one coming. I think they did as well, but they still have to be shocked, right, that he's confessing in the way that he is because it does seem to be pretty matter of fact. Yeah, I did this and this is why I did it. Oh, and by the way, I killed Eric Plunkett too. He described how he went into Eric's dorm while he was sitting at the computer. He put his arm around Eric's neck and strangled him, then hid him in the face with a chair. Joseph called the murders a big mistake and said he decided to confess so the college could stop living in fear. So he kills Benjamin because he just wants to buy some purple stuff for his girlfriend,

which I don't get the logic there. But now he feels guilty because he doesn't like what it's doing to the university. So you have to ask the question. Was he really sorry? Did he really view this as, you know, what he was saying? This was all a big mistake. I feel bad. I didn't want everyone at the college to live in fear.

Because he did confess pretty quickly, pretty easily, it sounds like. So maybe there is some truth to it. Yeah, I mean, I think so because he might have been able to ride this out for a while. Oh, absolutely. Now, they might have gotten him, right, eventually. But there is a difference between, you know, your Ted Bundys, your Gacy's, who, I don't think they feel bad about anything they do. And they work like hell to not be caught,

to not have to confess, to not be convicted. And I'm not saying what this guy did was right, because obviously it's not. He killed two people. But he does seem a little different from those types of individuals in that I think he did have a conscience. He felt bad about what he did.

But he also did it in such a brutal way. He did. So it's kind of a strange thing, the way everything's connected. When news of the arrest came out, media outlets sought information about Joseph's background. Joseph, who was born deaf, was born in San Francisco while his father was stationed there with the army. His family moved to Guam when he was two years old. Joseph's father had a hard time with his deafness at first, according to the Washington Post. but he accepted it and the entire family learned sign language so they could communicate with him. Joseph was the first deaf student on his youth football team.

He told others he enjoyed helping the deaf community on Guam and wanted to be a teacher or guidance counselor. Joseph's brother Patrick recalled to the Washington Post, he proved a lot of people wrong about being disabled. He just went ahead and did things. It became a strong influence. on both the deaf community and the hearing community. And I understand. They're talking about him in glowing terms.

It reminds me very much about what people said about his victims. Yeah, that's true. It does sound like at one point in time, he was a good person. Now, obviously, something went very wrong because he viciously murdered two people. I keep thinking about what he said when he went in and sat next to Eric and just reached over and started strangle on him. But much easier to do, right, with somebody like Eric who was deaf, he would have not been able to hear Joseph walking up on him. In 1998, Joseph graduated from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, located on the Gallaudet campus in northeast Washington.

after graduation, he attended an English Language Institute for about a year before enrolling in Gallaudet University. Joseph Mesa Sr. told the Washington Post after the arrest, it's really not him. Here at school, he never fought with anybody. It's one of the things we teach. If there's trouble, stay away. But others saw a different side of Joseph. Abbas Ali Bemenesh was an, RA in 1999, when Joseph's roommate accused him of taking his ATM card and stealing $3,000. That's a big hit. Bemanish called school security, Joseph confessed and was suspended for a year. Before he left, they had a long talk in which Joseph attributed his bad habits to involvement

with a criminal gang in Guam. According to Bamanish, Joseph said, I saw a lot of... blood. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. You know, some kids like to tell stories. Embellish. Yeah, kids do. But it, there also could be some truth to it. There could be embellishment on top of the truth. We don't know. I will say, I don't think I had $3,000 at any point in my entire college career. I was broke as a joke. I think a lot of those were college, you know. That's why you hit the little plasma booth, you know?

We did it every week, gave plasma every week. Or every two weeks. I forget what the frequency was back then. And eat cheap pizza pretty much all the time. But there's something about Joseph and money, right? We see here he's stealing $3,000 from his roommate. We know that he cashed a $650 check. from Benjamin after he killed Benjamin.

Yeah. So money is a factor. It's a driving factor. There's no doubt about it. In a spring 2001 report, the Washington Post noted that detectives failed to notice. Someone had used Eric's debit card after he died. And they failed to run a routine check on Joseph Mesa's school records,

even though he was the first to reach out about Eric's disappearance. DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey said after the arrest, the motive in both of these murders was robbery. We have the utmost confidence in the strength of this case. There wasn't even an argument or a fight that seemed to have led to it or a moment of rape. Let's go back to detectives not even looking at Eric's debit card activity and not really looking into Joseph Mesa because I think we talked to. about it, right? This guy, even after Eric's murder, he has to be looked into because he's the one who is calling in the discovery of the body. Right. And then after Benjamin is murdered, well, now you have a guy who has a connection to both murder victims. How are we not looking into

this person? Yeah, he's the first person you should be looking into. Students were shocked that the killer was one of them. Student Jessica Young told ABC, we were really hoping that it wasn't a student, but there was a suspicion that it was someone inside the community. Student Rebecca Goldenbaum also said, we feel like a family here. And for someone to have committed those murders from our community, it's embarrassing. And at the same time, it's also a scary thought. And I get that, I think, even more in this scenario than I would, even at like the university where I went, it would be shocking, no doubt to have two students murdered.

But when you're at this prestigious university for the deaf and the heart of hearing, and you're all kind of dealing with that same challenge, Yeah. To find out that someone who knows what it's all about, what it's like to go through all of that, killed two other members of your community, I think it's got to hit even harder somehow. I agree with you. You would think that somebody in that community would understand, like you said, the challenges, the difficulties that life has laid out in front of you.

But to me, it seems like he used his knowledge to... to his advantage. Oh, for sure he did. And we talked about, you know, nobody's going to hear this, you know, very vicious, loud encounter. Well, he knows that as well as anybody does. You think about him being able to walk up behind Eric. But he knows what that's like, right?

Eric is not going to be able to hear him. And you wonder if this kid didn't inject himself into the, cases, didn't do stupid things like, let's write a check to myself and cash it, how long it would have been before someone would occlude in was him. Or how long would it have been until he struck again? Well, that's true too. But I think, you know, it does go back to money because that does seem like a huge motive. Yeah, that's his motivating factor for sure.

It definitely seems like it. So I don't know, maybe he thought he was smarter than what he was. but the, you know, the injecting into the investigation really seems like a dumb idea in hindsight. But we're not talking about large sums of cash either, though. No, I mean, the one was $3,000. I mean, that's a lot of money for a college student, most college students. But to, you know, kill somebody. Well, but like we always say, what is an amount of money?

Yeah. Where it would make sense to kill somebody. And we always say there is someone. So we've seen people kill for 50 bucks, you know, it just is so messed up, but it happened. Joseph Mesa's murder trial started on May 3rd, 2002. Defense attorney Ferris Bond argued that Joseph was not guilty by reason of insanity and that Joseph robbed and killed Eric and Benjamin because he saw sign language in his head, directing him to do so.

He also said, Joseph suffered. from several mental illnesses. So we've heard a lot of defenses over our 10 years of covering these cases. I've never heard a defense of someone seeing sign language in their head. Because they normally say I heard voices in my head. That's what you hear normally, especially in a not guilty by reason of insanity type of defense. Bond said about the killings, he couldn't stop. He wanted to, but he couldn't.

That's why these things happened. According to the Washington Post, mental health experts said, Joseph suffered a lifetime of depression, frustration, and antisocial behavior because he's deaf and felt he could not communicate his feelings to others. And these are serious things, right? Depression, frustration, antisocial behavior. But there is a part of me, Gibbs, that think, you know, some of that is just being a teenager. Yeah, I don't think it's isolated just to him because he's deaf.

Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking about both of my girls, you know, they had bouts of depression. They got frustrated a lot. There was some antisocial behavior here and there. I can't imagine there's too many teens that don't experience one, two, or, all three of those. Exactly. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Collins and assistant U.S. attorney Jeb Bosberg argued that they would prove Joseph was not mentally ill and that he methodically

planned and carried out the murders for money. Eric was chosen as the first victim because he seemed like an easy target. Joseph made a few dry runs to see whether he could sneak into Eric's room behind him without Eric knowing. Okay, folks, here's something my younger self definitely would have benefited from, and that's Chime. Chime is changing the way people banked. They're nothing like the old traditional banks,

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Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. In the late evening of September 27th, Joseph slipped into Eric's room and wrapped his arm around Eric's neck until he fell to the floor. He beat Eric with his dorm room chair and then stole Eric's ATM card and, used it. Joseph later considered killing his roommate, Chad's shoemaker, but decided it would be too obvious. According to the prosecution, instead he took Shoemaker's credit card. I think Chad dodged the bullet there. Yeah, I don't know what you're feeling, right? After you find out that the prosecution believes he wanted to kill you thought about killing you.

I mean, every night when you went to sleep, you know, who knows what he was. And just think about, you know, that kind of living arrangement in general. I mentioned it, right? I had two roommates, three of us living in a very small room. You are pretty vulnerable. You're asleep. There's other people in the room. Now, I didn't think about it back then, but I do now thinking, oh, I was pretty vulnerable.

Every night I went to sleep. Yes, you were. I mean, if he would have killed Chad and then. then followed up with Benjamin. He would be known as a serial killer. Yeah, depending on the cooling off period, um, yeah,

yeah, he probably would be. But here's the thing, right? Killing Chad, in his mind would be too obvious. And I would say, yeah,

I would. It's the same room. But even I thought Eric and Benjamin was too obvious. Especially Eric, right? Right across the hall. Around February 1st, Joseph decided to rob and kill Benjamin Varner because he knew Benjamin had money and lived alone.

He also knew that Benjamin was bigger and would be harder to kill than Eric. So he used a knife when he attacked Benjamin. And, you know, if all of these things are true, right, his reasonings behind why he did what he did, it would really be hard for a jury to find him not. guilty by reason of insanity. I mean, this is a lot of premeditation. A ton of it. You know, who lives alone?

This guy's bigger, so I'm going to have to have a different type of weapon. I'm going to need a weapon, right a knife. Who's got money? All of it. Premeditation. After the murder, Joseph returned to Benjamin's room several times to get things he left behind, such as his bloody jacket and knife. Police zeroed in on Joseph after a bank video.

showed him cashing a forged check of Benjamin's. Joseph then confessed at the police station. And I really don't know, Gibbs, how he thought he was ever going to get away with these murders after the financial component. Because it's one thing if you just slip in and you murder someone and you don't leave any DNA behind or anything like that. But when you're stealing checks and, caching them or you know you're taking people's ATM cards and you're using them there is going to be

a record of all of those transactions yeah and your face is going to be on the screen and i don't think he was thinking about that at all i think he was more worried about getting that money so he can go buy his girlfriend some bunch of purple junk the jury viewed joseph's confession video where he admitted to two detectives that he went to Benjamin's room on February 1st, 2001, with the intention of robbing and killing him. But he wasn't sure he would carry it out. He had a small knife, but thought he would need a bigger one, considering Benjamin's size. He said he was kind of excited when he entered Benjamin's room and noticed a knife near the microwave. He asked to Benjamin whether he had his checkbook, and Benjamin said yes, and then returned to typing.

Joseph picked up the knife and stabbed Benjamin. Benjamin got up and staggered around before trying to run to the door. He stopped Benjamin and wrapped his arm around his neck. He stabbed Benjamin in the cheek, stomach, and head. When Benjamin fell, he kicked him in the head and slashed his throat. You know, he had, what, 16 stab wounds? Yeah, I mean, This is just a very vicious attack. Joseph said it was his conversation with his girlfriend, Melanie de Guzeman, and his guilt that made him confess. He said, I knew that if I held it in, it would get worse.

And I think for most people, that's true. But it does tell me that, you know, this isn't your classic serial killer who has no empathy and doesn't understand people's feelings or have guilt. You know, he had those things. He did, yeah. He felt guilty. Joseph then got on the stand to testify in his own defense after his father, brother, and girlfriend described how he was prone to fits of rage, headaches, and blackouts.

Joseph said, as quoted by the Washington Post, most of my confession was a misunderstanding. He described how images. come into my mind of oversized hands and arms covered in black leather gloves, they signed to me and tell me to commit crimes. The hands often held guns or knives and instructed him by demonstrating how to kill, including depicting, stabbing, and strangling motions. He said, the hands first appeared when he was 10 years old and never left. He claimed the hands appeared to him during the trial and instructed him to attack prosecutor Jeb Bozberg.

When the hands appeared for the first time, they led him to kill the cats in his living room while his family slept. Okay, so now we're getting into a little bit of the making of a serial killer. Yeah, I mean, harming animals. He said he kept the visions a secret because I always felt so embarrassed. I didn't want the whole family knowing I was meant to. ill that there was something wrong with my mind. So, I mean, the big question I have here, and I'm sure what the jury grappled with is,

is any of this even remotely real, or is this a defensive tactic that pairs well with not guilty by reason of insanity? Yeah. So, I mean, the problem I have is that he admits that he went into. Eric's dorm several times trying to see what it would be like to sneak up on him if he could do it, you know, to kill him. To me, that's somebody that's planning. It's planning, planning, planning, planning, right? How can I do it the most efficient way?

And then on Benjamin, he goes back again and again to clean up the crime scene. To me, it doesn't sound like somebody that's mentally ill. Now, maybe he would argue that the hands are telling him to go in and see. see if he can sneak up. Maybe the hands are telling him he's got to clean up. But yeah, I'm with you. You also have to wonder how his confession was a quote unquote misunderstanding. Yeah. Late on September 27, 2000, the hands showed Joseph how he was going to kill Eric. He saw images of Eric's bloody face in his mind. He said, I tried to stop myself, but I couldn't. I tried to prevent those pictures from being there, but it kept bothering me and bothering me.

It's like they were trying to force me to do something. Joseph testified about the attack. I grabbed him around the neck because the hands had shown me his chokehold. He then bludgeoned Eric with a chair and stole his credit card, which he claimed he did because he wanted to get caught. He said, I wanted to give a clue to police so they could apprehend me. I was afraid I would kill again. Or you were just stupid. Well, now to me, we're just getting into the realm of complete BS.

Right. The reason I killed was, you know, these black hands that were appearing in my mind. And then I took the ATM card. I took money out because I wanted to get caught. I was afraid I was going to kill again. You know, you could have just turned yourself in. Absolutely. But you didn't.

You then planned and committed. another murder. So it just doesn't ring true to me. During cross-examination, the prosecutor asked if that was the case, why did Joseph dump his jacket knife in the dumpster? Joseph said he also did that to get caught. On February 1st, 2001, he saw the hands again, and they showed him a machete and how he was to use it to kill Benjamin Varner. He said sometimes it would cut across the neck and then make stab marks all over his body. He said, I tried to stop the black hands, but I couldn't. I felt they were more powerful than I was, forcing me to do what I did.

And like I always say, Gibbs, you know, you have to come up with some defense. Sure, yeah. You have to. But if I'm on that jury, this would be a real tough one to buy. I mean, he's going to probably, him or his defense attorneys will keep saying these black black hands talk to me because they want that insanity deal. On May 21st, 2002, Joseph was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and related robbery and burglary charges, amounting to 15 counts total. Good.

Speaking after the verdict, Benjamin's mother, Diane, noted that weeks before her son was killed, he loaned Joseph $60 to buy Christmas gifts for his girlfriend and family. That's how nice this guy was. Yeah. Right. Benjamin loaned the guy who would ultimately kill him money to help him buy some gifts. I want to help you out for the holidays. Here's 60 bucks. Eric's mother Kathleen Cornel said that after Eric was killed,

Joseph returned several of his belongings to the family with a note, saying he borrowed them and considered Eric a friend. Eric's father Craig called Joseph a heartless, cold-blooded killer. I think I'd want to throw up after getting a note from him like that, or if it was verbally said, I just would want to throw up once you learn what he did. Yeah, when it happened, they probably didn't think much about it other than, oh, it's nice that maybe he's returning that stuff. But after you've learned the full truth, it would be sick.

You're right. Joseph's attorney said he planned to appeal. by challenging the judge's decision to allow letters between Joseph and his girlfriend to be used in trial. In those letters, Joseph wrote that he was planning to fake insanity during the trial. Awesome. Just put it in writing. And so interesting that those letters were allowed to be entered into the trial. On July 10, 2002, Joseph Mesa received two life terms without parole.

Judge Robert Richter cited psychological reports that described Joseph as a developing serial killer. That doesn't surprise me at all. No, not at all. In two life terms, without parole, is a very, very fair sentence. I agree 100%. Rikter said, per the Washington Post, there's a dark side to his being. And I don't see any meaningful prospect of that being erased. the court finds that this is one of the rare cases where a sentence of life without parole is appropriate and warranted.

The defense asked for Joseph to be incarcerated at an institution where he might receive psychiatric help. According to an evaluation by two court-appointed psychiatrists, Joseph had had fantasies of killing since adolescence. Probably since he killed his cats. One psychiatrist compared his psyche to that of serial killers in an FBI study and wrote that Joseph found the murder as gratifying as if it were an end in and of itself. And if that doesn't scream serial killer, I don't know what does. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like classic, right? Well, we talk about serial killers a lot. You know, whether you call it the frog demon, as we've called it before, there's something.

that has to be satisfied. In this case, Joseph found the murders gratifying. Like they satiated him. He enjoyed it. Yeah. And I think that's what you find with a lot of serial killers.

It scratches an itch for the lack of a better term that they have. And it lasts for so long until they need to get that type of release, satisfaction, gratification, whatever you want to call it. They need it again.

He talked about beating a cat to death with a baseball bat when he was a teenager and then killing its kittens. He told this story with a twinkle in his eye, according to one of the doctors. It made him happy to tell that story. Yeah, that's how sick he was. Joseph said in court, I'm very, very sorry for what I've done. The victims will be in my memory forever, for they have. had done good things for me. And they had, and that's what's so strange about it. And I would say,

you don't deserve to have them in your memory forever. Not the good memories. No. You deserve to think about what you've done. Relive it. Yeah. Not in a good way, as some serial killers do. It is possible, though, Gibbs, that he is very, very sorry for what he's done. Or it's possible that he's very, very sorry he got caught. I don't know. I, I, think he's really, really sorry he got caught. Well, I think that's the truth for all. But he doesn't seem quite as remorseless to me as some killers we've talked about. I think he's upset that his plan to be found guilty reasons of insanity didn't work out.

But as we wrap this one up, you know, Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Barner were college freshmen who lives were tragically cut short. Both young men likely would have gone on to have successful college careers and probably do great things with their lives had it not been for Joseph Mesa Jr. who claims he's harbored violent fantasy since adolescent. And I think the biggest takeaway for me is this unanswered question. Was Joseph Mesa a developing serial killer as was described in psychological reports? I think it's very possible that if he had not been caught, there would have been more victims, either killed on campus or in the surrounding community or wherever he decided to live after he graduated. I don't think he was going to stop killing on his own.

No, I think it would probably just fed the need to do it more. Which is what often happens with serial killers, right? very few of them just decide to stop one day because they've had enough. I think that's pretty rare. But that's it for our episode on Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner. We've got a voicemail. You want to check that out? Let's hear it.

Hi, guys. I'm Kelly. I'm calling from Sydney, Australia. And I just discovered your podcast episode about Melissa Caddick, who was one of a notorious true crime episode. things. Yeah, I really enjoyed the podcast. You've now got a subscriber in Australia. And if you want an interesting case over here to look at, there's quite a few over here that are pretty crazy. You probably heard about the mushroom murders. Just type of your mushroom murders,

you'll get it straight away. That's a particular, and because he's been in the news again lately because they think they've got more victims that they haven't been previously discovered here. Anyway, sorry, I'm rambling. I just want to say I really enjoy the podcast. Keep it up. And thank you. Thank you for making my morning commute more interesting. Bye. All right.

Great voicemail. And as you know, gives us my favorite accent. You love rise of lights. It is. I don't know why, but I find the Australian accent very soothing. It's very down under.

Speaking of that all-male review show you used to be in. Oh. Thunder from Down Under. Thunder from down under. But we appreciate the voicemail very much. Thank you, Kelly. All right, buddy, that is it for another episode of True Crime all the time. So for Mike, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.