True Crime Campfire - The Talented Mr. Field: Murder in an English Village

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley follows a young man named Tom, whose deep-seated jealousy and ambition leads him down a very dark path. He wants the jet-set lifestyle his trust-fund friends are living, and he sets out to get it using his intelligence and skill at deception. Tom Ripley is a pretty realistic depiction of a psychopath. To get close to the wealthy people he envies, he puts on a convincing mask of helpful friendliness. But underneath, he’s scheming with every breath—biding his time. And no one is safe around him. Join us for the story of a real-life Mr. Ripley, a man who was good at being charming, but bad at being good. A man who left one person dead, one heartbroken and defrauded, and a pretty little town in shock. Join us for the true story behind the BBC drama The Sixth Commandment--the tale of an aspiring vicar whose pious exterior hid a heart of darkness. Download the game "June's Journey" on Apple iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/junes-journey-hidden-objects/id1200391796"June's Journey" on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wooga.junes_journey_hidden_object_mystery_game&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1Sources:A Plot to Kill by David WilsonITV News: https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2019-08-09/sadistic-killer-admitted-interest-in-the-extremes-of-deathDaily Beast, Nico Hines: https://www.thedailybeast.com/gaslight-killer-ben-field-who-conned-his-elderly-lovers-is-convicted-of-murdering-peter-farquharBucks Herald, Sam Dean: https://www.bucksherald.co.uk/must-read/ben-field-the-baptist-ministers-son-who-became-a-calculated-and-manipulative-murderer-in-maids-moreton-821818UK Daily Mail, Rory Tingle and Josh White: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6984549/Church-warden-callously-videoed-hallucinating-lecturer-trying-murder.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, follows a young man named Tom, whose deep-seated jealousy and ambition leads him down a very dark path. He wants the jet-set lifestyle his trust-fund friends are living, and he sets out to get it using his intelligence and skill at deception. Tom Ripley is a pretty realistic depiction of a psychopath.

To get close to the wealthy people he envies, he puts on a convincing mask of helpful friendliness. But underneath, he's scheming with every breath, biding his time. And no one is safe around him. Join us for the story of a real life Mr. Ripley, a man who was good at being charming but bad at being. good, a man who left one person dead, one heartbroken and defrauded, and a pretty little town in shock. This is the talented Mr. Field, murder in an English village. So, campers, for this one, we're in the pretty little English village of Maids Morriton in Buckinghamshire, October 2015.

It was bright and early in the morning when a cleaner arrived to tidy up the house of 69-year-old university lecturer and novelist Peter Farker and found him unresponsive on the couch. The house cleaner ran to call 9-99, the British version of 911. The dispatcher got an ambulance on the way and the cleaner's next call was to Peter's 25-year-old lodger slash roommate, Ben Field. Within a few minutes of her call, Ben showed up. he got there even before the paramedics in fact and when they arrived ben took charge explaining that peter had been sick a lot lately he had a serious alcohol problem ben told him and in fact when the paramedics went in to check on peter farquhar they found a mostly empty bottle of whiskey on the table next to him and a glass knocked over on the floor it was immediately obvious that the older man was dead poor guy it certainly wasn't the first time the emt's had come up on a scene like this people drank themselves to death way too often. It was sad, but not unusual. A talk screen would show that Peter's blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit for driving at the time of his death. The coroner ruled that he'd most likely died of alcohol poisoning. So, for the first responders, it was a quick scene to wrap up,

a 69-year-old man in poor health, nothing suspicious there. And if Peter's friend Ben's reaction seemed strange. Peter's brother later said that he seemed completely casual as if Peter's death was no more momentous than a parking ticket. Well, people react differently to grief, right? Even as close as Ben and Peter were, sometimes there's a delayed reaction. And a few days later, at Peter Fawker's funeral at his beloved local church, Ben Field gave the eulogy. The church was standing room only if you could get in at all. Peter had been much loved and respected in life by friends and colleagues and students, and hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects. Some of them had the feeling, listening to Ben's eulogy, that there was something slightly off about it.

It was very clever, funny at times, lots of wordplay, but it seemed to be missing any genuine grief. It didn't really seem to be about Peter at all. It was more a showcase of Ben's literary abilities. But that was kind of typical for Ben. He was an intellectual young guy. He'd taught undergrad lit classes at the university, and he was studying to be a vicar. Even giving Benny Boy the full Benny of the D, I don't think it's a good idea to use your friend's funeral to practice your monologing skills. Just a tip for the awkward but well-meaning campers out there.

Yeah, probably not. Ben had been part of Peter's life for several years by now. They'd met when Ben was a graduate student and one of Peter's literature courses at Buckingham, university. They bonded over their mutual love of books and poetry, became friends outside of school, and their relationship grew into something more than friendship. Ben took a room in Peter's house, and then finally, in 2014, a vicar performed an emotional, private, betrothal ceremony for them. People close to Peter knew that he'd always known he was gay, but he struggled with it, as most gay people in his generation did, especially the ones who were devout Christian,

like Peter. Sadly, he always felt like he couldn't allow himself to act on his sexual orientation, which had pretty much doomed him to loneliness, until Ben Field came along, that is. To Peter, Ben was just too good to be true, too good to resist. But the good times were peppered with bad. Peter's health had been declining rapidly over the past few years. There had been some embarrassing incidents where Peter had shown up in public, barely able to stand up straight. Ben can He confided that Peter was drinking, a lot. He was worried about him. And Peter was worried about himself. He told close friends he was starting to forget things, even hallucinating sometimes. He was afraid it was dementia. His friends were grateful that Ben was there to look after him.

Most people thought highly of Ben and saw that despite the age difference, he really cared about Peter and took good care of him. So in the summer of 2016, when Ben inherited a huge chunk of Peter's estate, people figured that was understandable. Ben got 20,000 pounds plus half the value of Peter's house, altogether about 160K, pretty major for a guy in his 20s. He used about 100K to buy himself an apartment. Ben was moving on. But there were doubts in the back of some people's minds, Peter's brother Ian and his wife especially. It was nothing you could prove, nothing you could pinpoint well enough to even say out loud really, but it was there. like a tiny speck of grit in the corner of your eye.

Ian was vaguely troubled about his brother's death and about Ben Field. But life went on the way life does, and Peter's loved ones mourned him and tried to get back to some semblance of normalcy. When nobody knew was that after collecting his inheritance money, Ben Field had quickly moved on to a new relationship with another elderly citizen of Maid's Morton, a woman in her early 80s named Anne Moore Martin. Anne lived just a few doors down from Peter. In fact, Peter's the one who introduced them. Man, a few doors down. Their houses were literally like spit in distance from each other. Just that absolute arrogance of that floors me.

Yeah, if it sounds like we're a little peeved with Ben, you're right. And soon, you will be too. Like, yeah. Like Peter, Anne was a retired educator. Anne was lonely living by herself in her big house. She'd been really close to her mom, but her mom died and didn't have any children of her own, though she was close with her niece Anne-Marie. So imagine what it must have been like for this 80-something-year-old woman when Benfield,

this handsome man in his 20s, started coming around like a love-struck suitor, showering her with attention and affection. One of the first things he did was talk her into watching the 1971 movie Harold and Maud, a rom-com about a young man who falls in love with a 79-year-old woman. Talk about priming the pump. Yeah, and that's a great movie. Don't get me wrong, but like, there's a real obvious reason why he's wanting her to watch it, right? He also wrote her poems.

He referred to the two of them as the owl and the pussycat, a joke on what an odd couple they were. They bonded over their Christian faith, just like he and Peter had, having long conversations about God. And he came on to her sexually, acting like he was just dying to get in her pants. In one love letter, Ben wrote, lust aside, I love you very deeply. It was more than Anne could resist. She was like a giggling schoolgirl about Ben, according to her niece. She was smitten with him.

He was making her feel alive. Anne's sister-in-law, Jillian, later told a criminologist author David Wilson, she said she loved him. They would sit together on the sofa and he would put his arm around her and fluff his eyelashes down her cheek. Ew. Butterfly kiss. In public, in mixed company. No.

Like, PDA is bad enough. Like, I think PDA is just fucking gross. But butterfly kisses, are you? Yeah, that's rough. No, thank you. No. He was really laying it on thick. He drew her pictures of flowers, too, and stuck pictures of himself all over our house,

including a big one in a frame that said, I am always with you and put it in a place of honor on her mantle which is like deeply ominous even if he wasn't a total fucking creep in the first place like it goes back to the knowing the words but not the music if somebody said I'm going to

loom over you constantly from your mantle piece I am always with you yeah it's almost a little bit hostile in a way but that of course is not how Anne took it if somebody said that to me no matter what my relationship with him, I'd be like, whoa, back up. Yeah. But, you know.

Every breath you take. Do, do, do, do, do. It didn't take long for things to get sexual, despite Anne being 56 years older than Ben. At one point, he bought her a sex toy. He took pictures of Anne during their sexual encounters, whether for his own gratification or as potential blackmail material, I don't know. Maybe both. My God, imagine how an 83-year-old English woman would react to a blackmail threat like that.

And I don't think he ever actually threatened her with that. Like, I think he just kept it as insurance just in case, because that's how this little fucker works. Like, if his charms ever failed, he'd bring out the big guns. Give me your bank account number, or I'll show this to everybody at your church. Sometimes, in the way a skeezy pickup artist on TikTok might advise you to do, he'd pull back from Anne. ignore her for a few days or make comments about other younger women he found attractive just to make sure she was pining for him. He gave her a clicker like the kind you used to count stuff and told her to click it every

time she thought of him, just barf, a way for him to feed his own ego. Yeah. Then he'd come back all full of love and affection. It's an incredibly effective tactic when your target is insecure and always welcomed him back with open arms. And, you know, a lot of like a pickup artist are like, well, my methods work. They think like we're criticizing them because their methods don't work. No, they work. It's just fucking

toxic, you dumbass. God. Right. Of course, Anne had no idea he was dating a constant string of other women, women his own age and a bit older. Ben was careful to keep his different lives separate. And I'm sure she had no idea he'd been romantically or sexually involved with Peter Farquhar. Just a couple months in, Ben asked her for money for the first time. He'd desperately needed a new car, he told her. Could she possibly help? Anne gave him 4,400 pounds, which Ben pocketed. He didn't need a car, but he wanted to back up his bullshit story, so he went out and rented one for a few days just so he could show it to Anne. See what you got me, you're such a dear.

This was just the first request of many. In the summer of 2016, Ben confided in Anne that his younger brother Tom was desperately sick. Kidney failure, he said. Tom needed. dialysis, but he couldn't afford the machine. And it was so heartbreaking because all Tom wanted in the world was to go and study at Cambridge. But there was no way he could go there without buying a dialysis machine to take with him. And there was just no chance at all of affording it. The machine was 27,000 pounds. Obviously, none of this was true, if you couldn't tell by my sarcastic tone. Like, who buys their own dialysis? Like, is that a thing? I mean, I've known people on dialysis. They just go to the clinic and get it. Like, I don't even think.

you buy your own machine, but anyway, it wasn't true, it was bullshit. And of course, Anne couldn't allow her true love's brother to suffer. She gave him the money. But Ben had bigger plans. He wanted more than some lousy 30,000 bucks. He wanted everything he

could squeeze out of Anne Moore Martin, including her big house. And he said about getting it. Anne's niece Anne-Marie started to notice that she couldn't get hold of her auntie on the phone. Before Ben came into the picture, Anne-Marie would visit Anne every weekend, but now Anne was always busy. And she seemed off, absent-minded in a way

she'd never been before. In fact, just a year earlier, she'd taken a routine cognitive function test with her doctor and her results were terrific. No signs of dementia or any cognitive decline at all. Clearly, Ben was isolating her from her support system, and I think he might have been drugging her too, though we don't know that for sure. Ben kept a journal, which the police would find later, and in it, he strategized possible ways of murdering Anne. He could make it look like she'd choked on her dentures. She could fall down the stairs. She could have a heart attack during sex. In the meantime, he worked on her psychologically. One of his tactics was to move things around in her house. Anne would go looking for something she used all the time, and it wouldn't

be where she always put it. Then Ben, who by now had a key to the house, would find it, like, oh, Oh, Anne, look, you put your Bible in the fridge again. You do that enough, and your victim starts to doubt herself. She starts to depend on you, more and more. And that's exactly what our boy wanted. One of the ways Ben manipulated Anne was through her religious faith, which he claimed to share. He signed all his love letters with love and in Christ, Ben. Anne was Catholic and more devout than most, and it became a very effective angle of entry for Ben

to pull on her puppet strings. He was in a stationary shop one day, and he saw one of those pens that's made to write on glass, and Ben had a little inspiration. Ooh, I know what I can do with this, he thought. What he did with it was start writing messages from God on Anne's bathroom mirror. I wish I was making this up.

The messages would say stuff like, Pray for Ben. Ben loves you. And a little later, leave your house to Ben. and Anne believed in these notes from God. This is unbelievably creepy. I would hate to live one single day in Ben's creepy walnut-sized brain. Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why I suspect he was drugging Anne,

because this was an intelligent woman, okay? She'd been a school principal for most of her career. Why would she fall for this if she wasn't under the influence of some kind of drug? and as you'll see later, Benjee has a history of sprinkling a little fairy dust to get what he wants out of his targets. So it wouldn't be the first time. After a while, these messages from God got to Anne so much that she actually did change her will, leaving her entire estate, house and all, to Ben. Ben, by the way, took pictures of these mirror messages for some reason.

Like you can see his dumbass standing right there taking the picture, like you can see him reflected in the mirror. and he stuck him in his journal with all the rest of the evidence that prosecutors would later use against him. Wasn't that helpful of him? Bless his heart. Just couldn't resist bragging to himself. And to his friend slash possible accomplice Martin Smith, who he showed the picks to later. Martin was a grad student and a really, really shitty magician.

So shitty that audiences had walked out of his shows before and demanded their money back. Y'all, it's hard to be that bad at stage magic, okay? I mean, the basics just ain't that hard. This guy'd, like, pull a rabbit out of a hat and the rabbit would just burst into flames, I guess. That didn't really happen. Don't worry. Yeah, he actually sawed his assistant in half. Just kidding.

Unless. God. Yeah, most of stage magic, you just buy the trick. That's the crazy thing you mean. You literally buy it. Just buy the trick. It's really hard to get it. It's like, okay.

Anyway, Martin had... He rolled a one in through his mo. He's, yes, the least charismatic guy in the entire world. Hello, hit tonight. We're going to do some miraculous tricks for you. He's like dropping, like he's dropping the top hat or like accidentally turning the case the wrong way. So they see the like secret compartment. It's like, dude.

Doves fly out of the hat and just shit all over everybody and then burst into flames. Oh, my God. He should have done one of those, he should have done one of those, like, was it prestige, one of those prestige machines where he actually has to, like, create a clone of himself and then kills the clone. Oh, God, he would have been more successful that way. Anyway, Martin had rented a room in Peter's house before his death, and for a while he moved in with Anne Moore Martin, too. Ben's idea, of course. We say he was a possible accomplice of Ben's

because he did end up charged in this case, but he was acquitted, so nothing was ever proven. So big old capital A allegedly all over this, you know? Right, right. Yeah, he was acquitted. I mean, it's very possible Ben just like was hoodwinking him along with everybody else. Yeah, it's very possible he's just stupid, you guys. That's a reasonable assumption. What we do know is that Martin was in close proximity to both cases, and a good friend of Ben Fields. Anyway, after a year plus of gaslighting, manipulating, and isolating Ann, Ben finally convinced her to change her will, making him her primary beneficiary. This was in December of 2017, and as far as I can tell, Anne didn't tell any family or friends that she'd changed her will. But a couple of months later, Anne had a stroke, a mysterious stroke, as several stories,

sources describe it. There was heavy suspicion that Anne had been drugged. Her niece, Anne Marie, rushed to the hospital to be with her, and it was only then that they finally got a chance to talk about Anne's recent lapses in memory, about her lodger, Martin Smith, about Ben Field and the messages from God, and of course, about the will. Anne's niece immediately realized what was going on. She'd already been suspicious of Ben just because of the age difference. When a 25-year-old starts hitting on a woman in her 80s, you tend to suspect that something might be. be a bit askew, which, you know, we're not saying that true love doesn't exist, okay? I'm sure whoever your gammy is dating loves her. But just, you know, keep your head on a swivel.

Make sure you're asking her the right questions. But for Anne-Marie, it was all starting to make sense now. This guy was after her auntie's money. She felt sure of it, especially when she went to Anne's house to pick up some stuff and ran into Ben, who'd moved in and was strutting around like the Lord of the Manor. He was already acting like this was his house. niece Anne-Marie had seen enough. She called the police, and as part of their investigation, the police spoke to Anne's attorney. Now, this attorney just happened to be Peter's former lawyer, too, and when he heard that Anne changed her will to make Benjamin Field her beneficiary, his eyebrows hit the ceiling. Benfield? The same Benfield who inherited Peter's estate? What in the

hell is going on here. Both the police and niece Anne-Marie told Ben he'd better not go anywhere near Anne again. It took Anne-Marie and the rest of the family a few months to convince Anne she'd been conned, but she did finally come to realize it. Her heart in pieces, she cut Ben out of her will. Yeah, and I cannot even imagine how humiliated she must have felt and how betrayed. I mean, she loved this asshole, and she thought he really loved her and really wanted her. I mean, how absolutely devastating.

Devastating enough that Anne died two weeks later. Can you die of a broken heart? Sure as hell looks like she did. If there was a silver lining to this awful story, it was that police were finally on to Ben Field. They suspected him of attempting to murder Anne Moore Martin, of drugging her and defrauding her, and they were about to crawl all the way up his ass to investigate.

Not only that, but they now realized that there might be a lot more to the story of Peter's death, so they started looking to that. too. But we're going to put a pin in that just for a second. Ben Field grew up in a normal middle-class family in Leicestershire. His dad was a Baptist minister. His mom worked in politics. Ben was their middle child. He was close with his two siblings, especially his brother Tom. Ben wore a pretty convincing mask of normality, but some people could sense a darker side underneath it. Ben found normal, mind-numbingly boring. He liked to push boundaries. societal and personal. At university, he started going on Grindr and other hookup type apps to

find men willing to pay for oral sex. He'd let guys go down on him for money, like 30 to 50 pounds a pop. But according to criminologist David Wilson, whose book A Plot to Kill was one of our sources for this case, it wasn't about the money. It was about the boundary pushing. It was about the thrill and the power of being desired. Ben is about as clear-cut a narcissist as I I've ever seen in like all my decades and years of true crime obsession. And for a narcissist, there is no stronger drug than adoration. He also liked to push legal boundaries. In 2011, he got caught shoplifting at a clothing store. He also got in trouble multiple times for trespassing, which I find interesting, because we've seen this a lot with serial killers, this predilection

for creepy crawling around people's houses. It gives them a sense of power and control, which is, again, and basically psychopath crack. And speaking of crack, Benji liked a little snort or two of cocaine now and then. He'd take Benzos to bring himself back down so he could sleep. Despite these extracurriculars, though, Ben managed to be successful in school and work. He graduated from university, enrolled in graduate courses, even taught seminar classes. He was active in church, studying to be an Anglican vicar. While much of this stuff was going on with Peter and Anne, Ben worked part-time at a nursing home,

called Red House, which just has a weird-ass name for a nursing home if you ask me, but there you go. Perfect job for a sweet young guy like Ben, right? Yeah. One of his favorite pastimes there, apparently, was to taunt the old people about the fact that nobody ever came to visit them. There's video of one of these instances, which this little prick evidently took himself, presumably for him to re-watch and giggle over later. And in the video, Ben is gleefully taunting this old woman with dementia about how lonely she is. He's saying stuff like, does it make you angry, the loneliness? Does it make you want to kick someone?

Do you want to kick me? And then he encourages her to kick her. Like, go ahead, kick me. It is no joke, one of the most blood-curdling things I have literally ever seen. Just pure sadism with the mask all the way off. Guys like him always work real hard to put themselves in positions of power over vulnerable people. I mean, we see so many killer nurses and doctors, so many predatory priests, so many terrible teachers. That's why you really have to pay attention to the people you're allowing in your circle.

A priest's collar or a stethoscope doesn't like burn a bad person when they put it on. Oh, if only, right? Peter Farker had been a much-loved professor of English literature for years and years. He'd retired in 2004 to focus on his own writing, and he'd published several novels since then. But after a while, Peter got bored. He missed the classroom, the great conversations he'd have with his students. So he went back to teaching part-time, as a guest lecturer in poetry classes. And that was where he met Ben Field.

Every teacher gets excited about a student who's genuinely interested in what they're trying to teach, genuinely engaged, especially if the student is really smart and funny, and Benfield was. Ben caught Peter's attention in the classroom first, as one of the most talented graduate students he'd ever had. And Peter obviously caught Ben's eye, too. Now, whether he was a mark for Ben from day one or Ben was actually attracted to him, we can't be sure. I think there's actually some evidence on both sides,

and they get into that a lot more in that book I was telling you about. It's really kind of interesting, but, you know, the two things aren't really mutually exclusive anyway, so it doesn't matter to me at the end of the day. I think Ben's an opportunist who'd take advantage of any and everybody in his life if given the chance. And this might be a good time to talk about cognitive empathy, which is something a lot of people with psychopathic traits have. It's very different from emotional empathy, which is what helps you put yourself in somebody else's shoes and genuinely feel for them.

Cognitive empathy means that you can understand intellectually what somebody is going through, but without any emotional resonance. Psychopaths can actually have very high cognitive empathy. They can be experts at reading people, sussing out their vulnerability. and as you can imagine, some of them use this to manipulate and control. Ben manipulated Peter systematically, chronicling his progress in a journal, which is how we know a lot of these inside details. They'd already bonded over literature in class, then Ben started inviting himself over for tea and out to dinner. They became close friends, started playing chess together. Ben would let him win a lot of the time. They watched movies, they had long,

passionate debates about poetry. Peter was amazed by Ben's intelligence. He was working on his dissertation at the time and had all kinds of fresh ideas. The other main pillar in Peter's life was his faith, so Ben got busy worming his way in there, too. Going with Peter to church services on the regular and cozying up to the congregation and clergy. Eventually, he volunteered to take the minutes at church meetings. He knew the church world well. His dad was a minister. In 2013, knowing Ben was looking for a place to live, Peter invited him to rent a room in his house.

As far as his family knew, Peter had always been celibate, his concession to his Christian faith. He felt conflicted about being gay and Christian, and I guess this was his way of trying to reconcile the two things in his mind. Yeah, it's so sad to me, especially if Ben Field really was his first actual lover. Like, it's just such a shame to wait your whole life for romance and then have it end up like this. It's just heartbreaking. Ben also got Peter a little dog they named Kipling. Criminologist David Wilson has an interesting perspective on this detail. He says it was a way for Ben to isolate Peter from friends and family.

because he'd have to turn down invitations to stay home with a puppy. We know that abusers like to do this, separate you from your support system, from anybody who might be the voice of reason in your life. It's a diabolically effective tactic, and Ben used it to full advantage with both Peter and Anne. There's also a cultural element to why Ben's plan worked so well. David Wilson talks about it in his book, how they lived in the starchy little village in England, the kind of place where people sort of tend to look the other way about people's private bedroom business. It's not like they didn't know Peter and Ben were romantically involved. It's just that nobody really said it out loud.

Right. It was sort of an open secret and nobody wanted to know too much about the particulars. I mean, Peter's peers were churchgoing people in their 60s and 70s. So it's not like he felt super comfortable like confiding in them about his gay relationship. Yep, and that enabled Ben to maneuver without a lot of scrutiny. He let the relationship develop for a while first, got Peter good and hooked. and then he began a carefully plotted gaslighting regimen. This was gaslighting in the purest definition of the word. Like he'd later do with Anne, Ben would hide Peter's stuff, move things around, break things.

His goal, very literally, was to make Peter think he was going insane. He hoped maybe the old guy would kill himself eventually. But sometimes he'd let up. Give Peter a chance to get back to normal again and make sure he still had a firm emotional grip on him. Of course, Peter had no idea that Ben was secretly. dating other people. One of these was a young woman named Lara, who later said she had no idea Ben was living a double life. She just thought he was a sweet, smart, kind of nerdy guy who cared about her. He even took her to meet Peter once or twice. They sat in Peter's front room,

drinking tea. Neither Peter nor Laura knew that he was sexually involved with both of them, making both of them pretty promises. And of course, they weren't the only ones. Yeah, not even close. He had a whole string of other relationships and the stuff. time. Ben was proud of the way he manipulated and gaslit his victims. One of his favorite books was how to use your enemies, a 17th century guide to success through deception. According to one of his journals, Ben had the whole thing planned out on a specific timeline. There's a line in there that absolutely made my blood run cold. He wrote, 2014, cordial, marriage to pee, will. Next to that, there's this little doodle of a gravestone with the phrase holes the goal next to it, as in

Peter in a hole is the goal. Ugh. Then he says, can still gaslight for fun. 2015, end Peter. Can still gaslight for fun. This is our boy's idea of high amusement. And despite his alleged high intelligence, he's out here providing a step-by-step instruction on how to prosecute him. Oh, yeah.

I actually have a theory about this. I think Ben and people like him are so tickled pink at their own genius that they want to brag. Unfortunately, what they're doing is illegal and they're too smart to run their mouths, unlike, you know, some killers we've talked about. So instead, they brag to a journal. It also explains the pithy little jokes he makes as well. He's just so excited. He's like, oh my gosh, holds the goal. It's like, shut the fuck up, you nerd.

Jesus. Also, this bears repeating. book smarts has nothing to do with real world intelligence. I just want to throw that out there. Peter kept a journal, too, and the contrast between his and Ben's is just gut-wrenching. Ben writes about Peter the way you'd write about some lab rat you're running psychological experiments on, and Peter writes about Ben the way you'd write about the great love of your life. He is exceptionally humane and thoughtful, Peter wrote in one journal entry. Right on schedule, in 2014, Ben asked Peter to make him.

Mary him. Peter was ecstatic. He wrote, Ben made this an exceptional and wonderful birthday. He presented me with a beautiful jet and mother of pearl knife and asked formally and with great dignity and beauty if we could be betrothed. This is one of the most magnificent and happy days of my life. Bless his sweet soul. He'd spent his entire life alone, and this is what this little streak of filth decides to do to him. It just kills me. They had a betrothal ceremony at church, exchanging pocket knives instead of rings. Ben's idea.

Creepy. And the music was an odd choice, too. Box Goldberg variations, the same piece that Hannibal Lecter was listening to in Silence of the Lambs when he killed that prison guard and ripped his face off. Knowing Ben, I suspect he picked that one on purpose. This is a man, like you were saying, who really likes to sign his crimes. in subtle little ways he thinks only he'll be clever enough to recognize. Twat.

Now, as if we didn't already have enough to hate about our boy Ben Ben, he also considered himself something of an amateur rapper, which is hilarious. Like, this guy has an accent like David Attenborough, and he thinks he's going to, like, spit some bars or whatever. And luckily for us, Ben liked recording himself at this little hobby, and, oh, God, it's just... cringe is not even the word there's no word big enough here's part of one of his master works recorded around the time he pledged his eternal love and devotion to peter benjamin's my right hand by which i'll allow you to suffer and field is the soil of the ground i'll put you under thinks this is suicide you're losing twice i'll disconnect this youth from life there's nothing in your future when i do you then it's euther you've been euthanized

Oh, boy. Okay, there, notorious cup o' tea. With all those entendras, he thinks he's Kendrick Lamar. More like Bendic Lamer. Oh, God. He rhymed suicide and losing twice. Yeah. And then he said, man, oh, man.

When I do you, then it's Utha. You've been euthanized. like that's you said the same thing twice he said it twice dude just in case it was you know what he's assuming the intelligence of his audience which you'd never do right he said he's like they'll never understand the word yutha they'll never get it right of course not yeah well that's yeah that's how ben thinks of everybody nobody's as smart as he is and of course this little rap was what he really thought of peter he liked to refer to him as the f word for gay people in his journal, too, which is interesting coming from a guy who's constantly hooking up with

dudes on Grindr, but like, okay. Peter didn't have long to enjoy his betrothal to the love of his life. Ben stepped up his gaslighting campaign and added two new elements. He started telling people that Peter was an alcoholic and showing signs of dementia. And he started drugging him, with sedatives and adding pure grain whiskey to his drinks. Ben not only murdered Peter in the end, he stole his dignity first. At one point, Peter had shown up to a book launch for one of his novels, barely functional because Ben had drugged him with florazepam beforehand. They had to take him home. Everybody saw. It was humiliating. And as Peter became more and more frail and more and more dependent, Ben was relentless. Erase all phone contacts, he wrote in his journal. In his diary, Peter wrote,

for no explicable reason the mobile had erased all my text numbers. Isolation and gaslighting in one, with that one. He took careful notes on the drugs he was giving Peter and the dosages. 14 June, breakfast in bed, 2.5-mig diazepam on toast. In his journal that day, Peter wrote, Ben made up for yesterday by giving me breakfast in bed. What he'd done yesterday, I'm not sure, but there was definitely some friction between them around this time.

Peter may have had his suspicions as early as 2014. One morning, he wrote in his journal, I am sleeping much longer at night. What a contrast to the year before, but there is something not right about it. There were a few other entries where Peter speculated to himself about whether Ben really loved him or was in it for some other reason. And it's not hard to see why he'd wonder.

Another time, Peter found one of Ben's notebooks full of nasty stuff about himself, and it shook him up really badly. Peter wrote in his own diary, I immediately discovered it was all about me, and negatively so. He records daily any sign of loss of memory and worse. And fictionally, he records how much alcohol I drink. Before my colonoscopy, he recorded I had drunk gin, a pure invention. He has also recorded that he shared this information with friends in the church and with his mother and brother.

See, this was Ben's plan to get everybody thinking Peter had a drinking problem, so nobody would be surprised when he turned up dead. Peter went on, If this clandestine activity were not happening, everything would be so perfect. I'm now hesitating about changing the will. But of course, as we know, he changed it anyway. If you're in a relationship that makes you say something like this, you need to get out. If it wasn't for this one giant issue that makes me doubt everything, it would be perfect. Bad relationships aren't bad all the time, the same way happy relationships aren't happy all the time. I think poor Peter's inexperience was the

clearest here because if he'd had more relationships, he'd be more savvy. I'm sure by this point he was so confused he could barely think straight on his constant diet of booze, sedatives, and the occasional psychedelic. Peter told his friends that he'd spent one horrible night curled up on the bathroom floor, hallucinating swarms of awful black insects crawling all over the walls. Oh my God. I felt like King Lear in the midst of his mental breakdown, Peter told his friends. Around the same time, evidence would later show Ben Googled cyanide poisoning. He scribbled notes about how he might take Peter out if drugs or drinking didn't do it fast enough. Hammer, he wrote. Strap.

I had a lovely meal tonight, but I felt quite ill afterwards, Peter wrote in his journal. Florazepam on toast, Ben wrote. And just as he had with the elderly dementia patients he'd abused at the nursing home, Ben took a video of his handiwork with Peter. There's a heartbreaking video where Peter's lying in bed, clearly loopy from the drugs, Ben was slipping him. And he says, I'm so dependent. I actually used to be sort of competent.

That worries me. Of course, of course, Ben says from behind the camera, Mr. Sympathy. Yeah, I think this is one of the top five worst people I've ever come across, if not the worst. Like, I fucking hate this piece of shit. He needs to be fired into the sun. That video is one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life. It's horrific.

Like, it's just, it's just chilling. Like, I, I, there's no reason for him to have taken that video. And it's like you are seen through his eyes. It's, it makes me sick. It's a trophy. I mean, that's plain and simple. All it is, it's a trophy. That's why he took the pictures of those messages from God that he wrote on Anne's mirror, too.

He liked this stuff. This was fun for him. Yeah. Sick. On the stand, Ben would later say, Most of my pleasures have been privately held. It's the habit of lifetime to be living inside my head. He makes it sound intellectual, but I don't think that's what he meant.

Ben was the poster child for the mask of sanity that Hervey Cleckley used to describe psychopathy when he first wrote about it in the 1940s. He showed the world the mask of a pious, witty, philosophical young scholar who loved helping people. Because if he showed them his true insight, they'd run screaming. The pleasures he's talking about are sadistic and not in that fun spanky way. Sadistic, like, can still gaslight for fun. And yet, he has the nerve to write in one of his journals that he really did like the old

fella and appreciate all he'd done for him. Yeah, I can tell. And this goes back to my point about why he wrote the journals in the first place. He was self-aware enough to know that he couldn't take off the mask. Ben clearly considers himself a professor Moriarty-like criminal. mastermind, which is hilarious given how careless he was to try and pull this shit twice in a two-year span. His diary is full of smug self-satisfaction about all the little strings he was pulling to keep his victims clueless and at his mercy. I'm not really sure how proud you should be of your manipulation skills

when you've got to keep people dope to the gills to get him to comply, but okay. Dr. Wilson even thinks he might have based his murder ammo on one of Peter Farker's own books, where one lover is poisoned by another using what else Floresapam. Wouldn't that just be a sick burn to kill him with his own fictional murder plot? Brilliant. God, what a putts you are, Benjamin. The only thing this guy's virtuosic at

is smugness, and if you don't believe me, he actually preached a sermon about the Thou shalt not kill commandment while he was out on bail on the murder charge he's about to get stuck with here in a minute. And his take was basically sometimes you just got to bend the rules a little bit. Yeah,

you know, those Ten Commandments are really more of a gentle guideline at the end of the day. Well played, man. Way to stay under the radar. Yeah, gentle guideline. That's why the consequence of breaking them is a lake of fire. So we already know how this story ends. Peter's house cleaner found him dead on the couch with a mostly empty bottle of whiskey next to him. At the time, nobody thought anything of it. But after the Ann Moore Martin affair, that all changed. There was a bright spotlight on Ben Field and police knew they had to take a much closer look at Peter Farker's death. The investigators had to go to Peter's brother and sister-in-law and tell them the worst news

imaginable that they suspected Ben had murdered him. Ian said he was stunned for just a moment and then it all made sense, as though some deeply buried part of him had known it all along. On May 30, 2017, Peter Farker's body was exhumed for a more thorough autopsy. since before Peter's death Ben had pushed a narrative that he was drinking himself to death and he pushed that same narrative with the paramedics and other first responders at the scene and they bought it. But now science was ripping that story to shreds. In Peter's hair, they found fluorazepam, diazepam, and other drugs that matched the notes in Ben's diaries.

It was clear that they'd been administered bit by bit over the course of at least a couple months. More than that, a liver specialist concluded that Peter had never been an alcoholic. There was no sign of it whatsoever. So, how did Peter die? Well, most likely he was sedated and smothered with a pillow, the medical examiner theorized. This matched up with some of the notes Ben wrote to himself when he was brainstorming about how to kill Peter. Smothering and strangulation were two of the methods he considered. One of the worst details in this case is something else the investigators found in Ben's diet.

a scribbled description of what he planned to say to Peter as he took his last breaths. Much like he'd done with the old people at the nursing home where he worked, Ben taunted Peter as he died. I hated you all along, he told him. Then he crowed about how he'd conned Peter into changing his will for him. This is my house now, he said, as Peter struggled against the effects of the sedatives. Peter had loved this man with his whole heart, and this was his thanks. These were the last words he heard before his life force flickered out. It was finally time to put the habeas grab us on Ben, and his little buddy Martin Smith, who at that point they suspected as an accomplice. They charged Ben with the murder of Peter, the attempted murder of Ann Moore Martin, and a slew of

fraud charges. As they sat in the back of the cop car together on their way to jail, Ben said to Martin, I expect to get away with most of it. Yeah, you know you're being recorded back there, right Ben Ben? He was wrong, of course. He couldn't have done more for the prosecution if he'd actually filmed himself smothering Peter. Ben's trial happened in October of 2019, almost exactly four years after Peter's murder.

His notebooks, recordings, and diaries were a roadmap of his crimes, and although he took the stand and tried to say they were nothing more than fiction, nobody bought it. Ben copped to defrauding Peter and Anne, but he said he didn't kill anybody. I have deceived absolutely everybody that I have any kind of relationship with, he told the jury.

But murder? Clutch the pearls, of course not. The jury's response, sure, Jan. They found him guilty of everything except the attempted murder of Ann Moore Martin. The jury didn't think there was enough evidence for that. He did admit he hated Peter, though, sat right there on the witness box and said, I didn't like him at all. It was all just to get money. Smooth move, man. I'm sure the jury loved you. Yeah, right.

In a striking contrast, Peter's brother, Ian, told the press he felt awful for Ben's mom, who sat in the courtroom and cried throughout the trial. I don't know which is worse, Ian said. Finding out your brother was murdered or finding out your son's a murderer. See, that is human empathy, something Ben seems to lack on a molecular level. It's too bad this didn't happen in the States, because I'm pretty sure Ben would have gotten life without parole. As it stands, he got a minimum of 36 years.

pretty blistering for the UK, but still not enough for me. I hope he serves every nanosecond of it. If he does, when he gets out, he'll be about the same age as Peter when they first met. Ben wanted to live the high life on somebody else's dime. At least now, we know he'll spend the rest of his youth behind bars, all because he got cocky and tried to repeat his little romance-slash-murrame a few months later and three doors down. How's that for irony, MC Slammer?

Wonder how the other inmates will feel about. about his rap lyrics. Oh, my God. You know, I can't help but daydream about Ben volunteering to freestyle one night at the inmate talent show and getting pelted with rotten tomatoes. The other guys were saving up to make Pruno. We can dream. Please, go ahead.

Please. And somebody type video, please. One of the things investigators found in Ben's diary was a list of hundreds of potential victims. many of them elderly. He called it his client list. It included some of the people he'd cared for at the nursing home, his own grandparents, people from church, and his younger brother Tom. So our boy wasn't done.

Not even close. I think he'd have done this as many times as he could get away with until somebody stopped him. Thank God, somebody finally did. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Amanda, Monica, Charlie with two E's, Caitlin, Caitlin, and Marika.

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