Delores Jean Wells:1987 Terre Haute

    

   Delores Jean Alkire was born September 5th 1968 to John and Margaret Alkire. She married David Wells on June 9th 1984. The couple welcomed a son in 1985. 

   In 1987 Delores Wells was a Mom and homemaker caring for her 2 year old boy, David Lee. It should have been a joyful time in her life. On January 26th, 1987 all that changed. She was walking home from a relative’s house in Terre Haute when she was kidnapped.

   Delores was abducted on January 26th 1987 by Bill Benefiel. He grabbed her and took her to one of his three run down homes on 13 ½ Street in NorthTerre Haute. She would not be alone there in her captivity.  

   

   Bill Benefiel had abducted teenager Alicia Elmore on October 10th, 1986. She had been walking to a corner store to buy her mother a soda. Her Mom was sick and thought the soft drink would help settle her stomach. Alicia had been there for months now and had endured horrific sexual, psychological and physical abuse.  But she saved her life by convincing Benefiel that she loved him. It was a brilliant survival tactic. 

   She had been through the unimaginable. She never knew what to expect next. Benefiel would assault and beat her one day. The next he would be elated about something he had managed to steal. Some days he would just sit in the next room crying. 

  He took her to Vincennes for medical care once. He had a gun and stayed very close by. He threatened to kill her if she spoke up. She was so terrified that she did not say a word to the medical staff. Trauma is a powerful thing. 

  Alicia was a survivor though.  She kept going even when she realized that she was pregnant. Her will to live and survive was admirable.

  Astonishingly, Benefiel had a wife and three children living next door to the house in which he kept the women captive. He regularly beat his wife. She lived in fear of him. The two lived largely separate lives in 1987. And yet, she felt strangely loyal to him. 

   Benefiel’s homes on 13 ½ street were ramshackle places and were full of stolen goods. He regularly burglarized homes, driving his blue van, and then hoarded the things he took.  He dug tunnels and holes to hide things in. I don’t even know if he legally owned the houses or if they were abandoned and he had taken them over just because no one was around to prevent it. They both looked like they should be condemned in 1987 photos. (It looks like they have since been demolished.) 

   

   Benefiel’s wife knew about the first kidnapped girl in December of 1986. She told her sister and her sister called the police and told them in mid-January that Benefiel was holding a woman captive.  Nothing happened. The police did not rush over and check on the tip. 

   Who was Bill Benefiel? He was born in 1956 and had birth defects and a low IQ. Children at school teased him and beat him up. His mother, Helen Benefiel, regularly said “he was born with half a brain”. Most schools did not have a special education program. He had a very rough upbringing and had anger issues. In 1971, at the age of 15, he was almost committed to a children’s home in Lebanon, Indiana but the judge inexplicably never signed the papers. His school believed he was in Lebanon, Indiana. The Children’s Home in Lebanon had no idea that he should be with them. And so, Benefiel never went to school after that. The judge never followed up on it. Social workers believed he was in Lebanon as well. Benefiel had slipped through the cracks of an overburdened and underfunded social service system. 

   His Father was not around. He would later learn that his Mother was not his biological Mother.  She gave no explanation as to how Bill Benefiel had come into her care. 

   If you search old newspaper archives for reports of Alicia Elmore’s disappearance in 1986 you won’t find anything. The attitude by the media in Terre Haute seems to have been that she had run away. Another missing teenager wasn’t going to sell papers. I don’t know if there was a local effort to put posters up and spread the word that way. I imagine her family was desperate. She had disappeared while walking to a nearby store.  She had taken nothing with her. She had not run away. But without a big media response; even if someone had seen this girl in the window of that home they probably would not have thought about a missing girl and made the connection. 

   Benefiel raped the two women repeatedly. Alicia Elmore began counting the rapes when she was first kidnapped. She stopped counting after 64. In her first months of captivity Benefiel kept her tied to a bed with her eyes taped shut; headphones on and a gag to prevent her from making noise. He did not bring her food or water very often and at first did not allow her access to a toilet. When he decided to take the tape off her eyes it was Benefiel who had to pry her eyelids open. 

   When Delores was first kidnapped she was kept in the basement. Alicia knew it was cold there and convinced Benefiel to bring her upstairs. He did not keep the women in the same room though.  Delores was tied up in the kitchen. 

   On February 7th Benefiel came back to the house with dirt and mud on his clothes.  He had blisters on his hands and told Alicia he had been digging a grave big enough for two. Alicia was convinced that both she and Delores would be killed that day.

   Delores was killed by Bill Benefiel on February 7th 1987. He forced a very strong glue into her nostrils and glued them shut. He wrapped her head in adhesive tape. She died an incredibly torturous death of asphyxiation.

   Alicia Elmore was rescued from Benefiel’s house on February 10th 1987. Police were three days too late to rescue Delores. If they had listened to the tips called in they could have rescued Alicia in January and completely prevented the kidnapping and murder of Delores Wells. 

   Delores Wells’ body was found on February 22nd, 1987. Glue residue was still in her nostrils. Tape residue was still on her face and hair.  Benefiel had buried her in a shallow grave in a wooded area near the intersection of 25th Street and Springhill Road in South Terre Haute. 

   I happen to know a bit of the backstory of this case.  In the early 1990’s I lived in Terre Haute and I dated a man who had been friends with Alicia Elmore. Let’s call him “Brian”. They went to high school together and had briefly dated.  After Alicia was kidnapped, police came to Terre Haute South High School to question her friends.  They zeroed in on Brian.  Brian was not a clean cut young man.  He wore black T shirts, jeans and black boots. He had dark hair and dark eyes. He did not look like a nice guy.  He actually was a fairly nice guy but his outward appearance did not reflect that. They held him in an office there at the school and began with friendly questions.  He answered honestly.  Soon, they began to push him about a scratch on his arm or a bruise here and there.  Their questions turned to accusations.  Brian was an intelligent and well read young man; despite looking like a roadie for a Heavy Metal band. He was also very socially savvy. He knew what the officers were trying to do. He clammed up and demanded a lawyer.  He said nothing else even though they held him there for hours. The police made threats and said they would personally see him prosecuted for this crime. (What crime? Alicia was still missing at that point and considered a runaway.) Brian sat with his arms folded.  They took his silence as an aggressive move.  They continued to grill him.  He continued to remain silent. At the last bell of the day they let him go.  He went straight to a pay phone and called the law office of a friend of his Mother.  I don’t know if the lawyer said anything to the police but the pressure on Brian ended. Brian did say that police cars seemed to be driving past his house more than usual but he wasn’t questioned again.  Keep in mind he was a minor. He was not arrested and was never read his Miranda Rights. His parents were not present. He was not advised that he could have a lawyer present. All of this questioning was completely out of bounds. 

   A few years later Brian was working as a short order cook at a restaurant. He was taking a break and talking with another cook there. The man happened to be the widower of Delores Wells. David Wells and he spoke about the questioning both had undergone.  Police had put David Wells through the wringer too about the disappearance of his wife.  Of course police have to question individuals who were close to the victim. But both agreed that the questioning used was intimidating and threatening. Both men had a moment there of sharing the terror that they felt thinking that they might be railroaded into being prosecuted for a crime they didn’t commit. 

   I am writing this but not to shame and blame the police.  Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, their tactics were wrong. But, they really had no idea what kind of predator they were really dealing with in Benefiel.  Even with the massive numbers of violent crimes in Indiana in the years before this; it is hard to imagine a predator like this in your town. This was the Terre Haute of ISU and Larry Bird after all.  

  Police were also dealing with a lot of regular everyday crimes.  Terre Haute was economically depressed in the early 1990’s when I lived there.  All the problems that come with poverty were there. I learned a lot of streetwise skills that have helped me out a great deal as I have traveled the country in the past decades. 

  It’s also a college town so there was a great deal of drinking, partying, rape, drunk driving, and fighting associated with the college crowd. 

  There are a lot of lessons we as a society can learn a great deal from this case. Many mistakes led to this tragedy. If Bill Benefiel had gotten more professional help as a child this might not have happened. 

  

  In 2005, Bill Benefiel was executed by the state of Indiana by lethal injection. 

  I wonder if Benefiel had other victims out there. Were there victims that he did not take home? Were there victims in the home who were disposed of before 1986?

  Delores Wells deserves to be here. She deserved to raise her child. She deserved a long and peaceful life with her husband and family. 

   Rest in peace Delores Jean Wells.