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Alice Trappler was the take-charge type.
Alice liked to be in control of everything.
So when her ex-boyfriend was mysteriously murdered
in the middle of a custody dispute...
He has his head blown off.
It appeared to be an execution.
...his family automatically assumed
Alice was behind it.
She couldn't stand Dan.
Did not want him in his daughter's life.
But was she the only suspect?
Or even the best one?
Alice had a stone cold alibi.
A lot of people that didn't care for him.
And when the investigation began, only one thing was
certain: no one could have predicted what was
coming...
We kinda took a step back and said, "Whoa.
This is like a movie."
Beaver Dams, New York.
April 19th, 2012.
Nestled in the gently rolling hills of upstate
New York, the tiny crossroads is a place
where people go to enjoy the peace and quiet.
It's very country.
Lots of trees, dirt roads.
Most people leave their doors unlocked here.
But on that Thursday evening, residents of this
quaint rural community would have their sense of
security shattered.
At around 11PM, Frank Bennett called the
Schuyler County Sheriff's Department and reported
that someone had just walked in his front door
and shot his son, 30-year-old Dan Bennett,
in the head.
Man shouldn't a seen what I saw.
Frank Bennett sounded very shocked in the 9-1-1 call.
Frank said he'd been downstairs in the basement
when he heard the shot.
I heard the door go open.
The lights come on.
There was a big ***.
And he told the dispatcher that by the time he'd
raced upstairs, the shooter had already
fled...
Minutes later, Sheriff's Deputies arrived at the
scene, where they found Frank standing in the
driveway, shaking and in shock.
My knees got wobbly and I kinda, had to get set
down.
I wasn't doing well.
Inside, the deputies found Dan, just as his father
had described.
As Frank Bennett had said, Dan's head had been,
essentially half of it had been blown off.
It appeared that Dan had been asleep on the couch
when his killer walked in the front door and shot
him with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Just across the living room there was an empty
shotgun shell lying just inside the door on the
floor.
It didn't appear to be a robbery; it didn't appear
that there was any struggle.
It appeared to be an execution.
It was very personal in nature.
But who would want to kill Dan?
And why?
Questioned at the scene, his father had a possible
answer.
All that keeps going in my head says he had to be in
court the next day.
And the reason Dan had to be in court was an ongoing
custody dispute with the mother of his
five-month-old daughter - Alice Trappler.
Alice Trappler grew up 25-miles from Beaver Dams,
in the equally tiny town of Addison, New York.
But she wasn't a native...
Alice is from Philadelphia.
Alice's father and mother moved here and bought the
farm and raised the kids here in New York state.
After high school, Alice left home.
She graduated from college and then worked
construction in Texas and eventually returned to her
old hometown of Philadelphia, where she
got a job doing landscaping.
She's a country girl.
She's more tomboy-ish than most girls.
And she remained a country girl at heart -making the
4-hour drive to Addison to visit almost every
weekend.
Alice is very close to her parents.
They are a very close tight-knit family.
It was on one of those trips home in 2002 that
Alice met 23-year-old Thomas Wesley Borden.
Dropping out of high school in the ninth grade
was only one of many bad choices Wes had made as a
teenager.
Wesley had a lot of, uh, misdemeanor charges, petty
larceny.
Little things, um, like stealing a pack of
cigarettes or stealing a candy bar.
By the time he met Alice, Wes was eking out a meager
existence as a hired hand on local farms - including
her parents' place.
Wesley worked for Alice's brother up on the Trappler
farm.
Alice's brother and Wesley, they were the best
of friends.
They were more like brothers.
But it was his friend's 29-year-old sister Alice
who caught his eye.
Alice was, was pretty.
She is very likeable.
She is very bright.
Wes asked Alice out and within six months they
were inseparable.
He really loved the woman.
They got married.
He moved to Philadelphia where she lived.
They had a beautiful home.
Kinda like an older type old country setting
inside.
Wes brought along his two children from a prior
relationship.
They had custody of his children, two daughters.
She became very close.
The same couldn't be said for Alice and her husband,
however.
After only a few months together, the newlyweds
started to discover just how little they knew about
each other.
Alice liked to control, she liked to be in control
of everything that had happened in their marriage
and in their relationship.
Alice described Thomas as being flighty at times,
sometimes leaving home for extended periods of time,
and leaving her with Thomas' kids.
And soon Alice had had enough.
Alice eventually got fed up with him not being
around and at times not taking care of his
children.
And when their marriage ended in divorce just four
years later-- Alice fought to stay close to the
little girls she had helped raise.
There was custody battles over the children.
In 2009, after a three-year court battle,
Alice and Wes finally settled on a compromise.
The children went to live with his parents and then
she got visitation on a liberal and regular basis.
With her step-children now living in New York,
37-year-old Alice returned home to Addison in 2010 to
be closer to them.
She purchased some property in Addison.
It was an old farmhouse she was renovating, had
out buildings, ah, you know, a fenced in area for
her, her animals.
Alice also took a job with a local construction
company.
Alice was a foreperson or a manager for a
construction company.
She was actually leading some pretty hefty
landscaping projects for them.
Uh, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more,
types of projects.
Soon, in addition to a new home and a new job, the
37-year-old would also have a new man:
29-year-old Dan Bennett.
Dan and Alice actually met online in late 2010.
Although Dan was eight years younger than Alice,
they had a lot in common.
Dan was a very big country boy.
It was always hands on farm work that he's, he's
done primarily.
Dan had plenty of rough edges to go with those
rough hands, too.
He was known to most of my staff, but there was never
any major criminal complaint against Dan.
Bar brawls, you know, here and there, drunken rages.
He was known to have a bit of a temper.
Not that Dan's reputation did much to deter Alice.
If anything, it made him more attractive...
Alice just doesn't have the best taste in men.
She liked bad boys.
And within a week of meeting, Alice and Dan
were a couple.
He was attracted to her because she wanted the
same lifestyle he had as far as living in the
country and raising a family in the country.
Alice is a pretty good-looking woman, she
can be warm, she can be fun and funny.
They hit it off really well at first, became
intimate fairly quickly.
Just three months later, in February of 2011,
things turned even more serious.
She told him that she was pregnant.
Alice was thrilled.
Alice was in her late thirties and knew that
this might be her last chance to have a baby.
She had helped raise, uh, two step-kids, but this
was her first child.
And Dan appeared to be just as excited as Alice.
Dan loved the idea of being a father.
He ended up moving in with her.
But they'd no sooner moved in together before the
couple fell into what, for Alice, seemed to be a
familiar pattern.
Fights about this, fights about that.
They would often, you know, go back and forth.
My brother's not one to be controlled.
It involved a lot of arguing over really
mindless stuff that didn't matter and progressively
got worse.
And by April of 2011, barely six months after
they met, it was over.
Whether Dan just moved out or she told him to get
out, they had ended their relationship.
All I know is he come home, and he said, "She's
crazy."
Dan moved in with his father and tried to put
his brief relationship with Alice behind him.
He did not want any part of Alice at all by the
time they separated.
However, there was something Dan did want to
be a part of: the life of his unborn daughter.
Oh yeah.
That's all he talked about.
Dan consistently would text Alice and message
Alice to let him know when her doctor's appointments
were.
But according to Dan's sister, Alice repeatedly
shut him out.
Would not answer him or would reply with something
mean and belligerent.
There is no question Alice didn't want Daniel Bennett
to have anything to do with the baby whatsoever.
And seven months after their breakup - when their
little girl was born, Alice didn't even tell
Dan.
Daniel found out about his daughter being born
through mutual friends.
Dan was devastated...
He just constantly pleaded with her.
"Please this is my daughter.
Let me see my daughter."
But Alice, still bitter over losing custody of her
stepchildren, continued to deny Dan access to their
baby.
I took him to a lawyer and she said that he should
have no trouble having visitations.
Dan quickly filed the necessary papers.
Daniel Bennett took the avenue of going through
the family court system to attempt to establish
contact with his daughter and a relationship with
her.
But the courts took their time.
New Years passed...
Then Easter...
He was never granted anything.
They kept prolonging, postponing.
In fact, Dan's case was still pending on the
evening of April 19th, when someone walked into
his father's house, put a shotgun to his head, and
pulled the trigger...
Dan's death leads to tough questions for Alice.
We could only assume that there might be a
connection.
But a chance discovery leads them in a surprising
new direction.
There's a person buying these exact same shells
Beaver Dams, New York.
April 19th, 2012.
It was just after 11 P.M.
when Frank Bennett called the Schuyler County
Sheriff's Department and reported that his son,
30-year-old Dan Bennett, had just been murdered.
According to what Frank told the dispatcher, he
hadn't seen the shooting, but he had heard it.
Frank was down in the basement.
Uh, he said he did hear the front door open, and
then almost immediately heard a loud gun blast.
I hollered and jumped right out of bed and about
three steps I was upstairs.
The lights were on out on the porch.
The door was wide open.
Dan, still sprawled on the couch where he had been
sleeping, was already dead.
All I could see is, is the back of his head with a
pretty big hole in the back.
And whoever killed his son had already made their
escape, according to Frank.
I heard a truck take up and leave, start up and go
down the road.
When Sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene
minutes later, Frank Bennett's neighbors
quickly confirmed his account of the shooting.
Two neighbors had heard a vehicle.
One neighbor had heard the gunshot, heard footsteps,
a car door slam, and then it take off.
Inside the house, the investigators quickly
ruled out a robbery.
Nothing of value had been taken.
Whoever had walked through Frank Bennett's front door
had clearly come in with a sole purpose in mind:
killing Dan.
For someone to go, walk into a man's home and
execute him, it begins to make you think that this
is more of a personal type crime.
Up close and personal...
He had been, uh, shot from very close range.
But, while Dan's killer had come and gone quickly,
they had left a clue behind...
It was a spent .
12 gauge Winchester shotgun shell.
Which we believed was obviously involved in this
homicide.
But who could have wielded the gun that fired it?
Hoping for a lead, the investigators turned to
the victim's father.
We talked to Frank about who his son was; who, uh,
he believed may have wanted to hurt him.
According to Frank, there was only one person Dan
had any real trouble with - his ex-girlfriend, Alice
Trappler.
I says, "You should head somebody towards Addison."
According to Frank, Alice and Dan had been locked in
a custody dispute over their five-month-old
daughter - a very bitter custody dispute, based on
the last conversation Frank claimed to have had
with her.
According to Frank he'd last talked to Alice at
Christmas, shortly after she had called him up with
a surprising offer.
She wanted me to come over and see the baby.
Frank told the investigators that he had
rushed right over: anxious to see his infant
granddaughter and to ask Alice to let his son do
the same.
I says, "All parents should see the baby."
And looking back -- after what had just happened,
Alice's answer was chilling.
Her words to me was, "He'll never lay eyes on
this baby."
Had Alice somehow made good on her threat?
Frank had no doubts.
I figured they shoulda picked her up that night.
And the investigators were starting to wonder if he
might be right, especially after Frank explained that
the couple's long delayed court hearing was
scheduled for the following morning.
When police heard that, it sparked their interest.
It also dictated their next step: talking to
Alice...
It was about five o'clock the next morning, just
hours before her custody hearing was supposed to
begin, when investigators spoke to Alice at her
mother's home in Addison - some 25-miles from Beaver
Dams.
We didn't have any suspects so at that point
everybody is a suspect.
Dan's father may have suspected her in the
***.
But for the moment, the police had no evidence to
back up his suspicions.
We could only, uh, assume that there might be a
connection because of the custody dispute going on.
And in light of that dispute, it wasn't much of
a surprise when Alice didn't appear too upset
after the investigators told her that Dan was
dead.
She really showed no emotion.
Her demeanor was, was very calm.
She said it was surreal.
She didn't really believe it or know how to react,
so she didn't really react at first.
She just was numb.
Although, when the investigators started
asking her background questions about Dan, her
emotions did start to rise.
Alice had never made any secret of the fact that
she didn't like Dan.
Alice told investigators that Dan had been
physically violent with her, that he was a
womanizer and a drug user.
She said that Dan Bennett wasn't a very nice guy.
And according to Alice, that was why she hadn't
wanted him in her baby's life.
Alice was very forthright in telling us that they
were going to court for custody of the
five-month-old child; that that court process had
been initiated by Daniel.
She was adamantly opposed to that.
However, Alice also had an alibi for the time of
Dan's ***.
She claims that her mom was with her, she was at
her mom's house.
That was subsequently confirmed by her mother
Wilma, who was present.
Attempting to tie Alice to the *** weapon appeared
to be a dead end, too.
She said she had no long guns when they asked her
a-about a rifle or a shotgun.
An alibi and no evidence of the *** weapon
didn't necessarily rule out Alice's involvement.
But when the police wrapped up the interview
that morning, they were no closer to identifying
Dan's killer.
We walked away from the interview not knowing
whether she may or may not have had involvement in
this crime.
However, when the police pulled Alice's cell phone
records later that afternoon, they did know
something.
Alice had a stone cold alibi.
The cell phone records show that Alice was at
home in Addison probably about a thirty to forty
minute drive away from the scene at the time of the
***.
And when the investigators started looking into Dan's
background, the idea that Alice had been behind his
*** started looking even shakier, no matter
what his father said.
He had a lot of people that, that didn't care for
him.
He had minor disputes with people off and on
throughout his entire life.
Of course, none of them would admit to having
anything to do with Dan's ***...
You track these people down and they'd say,
"Yeah, I was obviously upset over one reason or
another with Daniel, but I would never kill him."
And by Friday afternoon, with the killer's trail
rapidly growing cold, the investigators were
starting to worry...
We didn't have any suspects.
We had a lot of persons of interest.
All of us were getting a little antsy looking for
that first lead that, you know, really was going to
take us somewhere.
And it came that same afternoon, when a neighbor
of the Bennetts called the sheriff's department to
report a suspicious discovery...
The caller, who lived down the road from Frank
Bennett, said she had been checking her mail that
afternoon when something on the ground caught her
eye.
She noticed a shotgun shell laying across the
road, a live shotgun shell, unfired.
Considering the time of year, the discovery wasn't
all that unusual.
With the upcoming turkey season, it would be, not
be uncommon to have that shotgun shell in the area.
But the neighbor, aware that Dan Bennett had been
murdered just hours earlier, decided to
contact the authorities anyway.
We sent teams down to, to the area and they were
actually finding several of these matching shells.
12-gauge Winchester rounds, the shells didn't
just match the one the Bennett's neighbor found
beside her mailbox.
They also matched the one that had killed Dan.
It was three or four identical shells to the
one that was, uh, located in the Dan Bennett house.
Was it a coincidence?
Or were the shells somehow connected to the ***?
One of the investigators was determined to find
out.
I decided to do a work-up on the shell to see if we
could identify if it had been purchased
rece...recently in any local stores.
And that Sunday, he not only found matching shells
for sale at the local Wal-Mart, he found a break
that just might lead to Dan's killer.
Low and behold at seven PM, four hours before this
*** takes place, there is a person buying these
exact same shells.
Security cameras had even captured images of the man
who bought the ammunition.
Footage of the person buying the shells right at
the register.
We were able to subsequently follow that
person out of the store and see what type of
vehicle he drove.
And if that wasn't enough of a break, Undersheriff
Breck Spaulding recognized the man caught on tape.
It was Wes Borden...Alice's
ex-husband.
The police corner Wes --
He looked at the oncoming
train, looked at the investigator chasing him.
... and the investigation leads to another suspect.
He looked at me, and he started sobbing.
By Sunday, April 22nd 2012, it had been three
days since someone walked into Dan Bennett's upstate
New York home and murdered the 30-year-old in his
sleep.
We were in shock.
We couldn't believe that anything like this would
ever happen.
At the crime scene, Dan's father told the
investigators that he suspected Dan's
ex-girlfriend, Alice Trappler, was behind the
***.
After a brief, but volatile relationship, Dan
and Alice had been locked in a custody battle over
their five-month-old daughter.
Alice was attempting to keep him from being
labeled the legal father.
Alice did not want him in his daughter's life.
She told him that numerous times.
And considering their custody fight, the timing
of Dan's *** may not have been a coincidence...
He and Alice were scheduled for a family
court hearing the next morning.
However, while Alice was definitely a person of
interest, she wasn't officially a suspect -
thanks to a solid alibi.
She was home at the time of the *** with her
mother.
Even more puzzling for police - they had just
uncovered surveillance video from a nearby
Wal-Mart tentatively identifying the shooter as
Alice's ex-husband, Wes Borden.
We have him purchasing the same ammunition used in,
in our homicide, um, at 7 p.m, basically four hours
prior to the homicide.
It was a case breaker.
But it was also a head scratcher.
Why would Alice's ex-husband help her out in
a custody fight?
Especially since they battled over the exact
same issue.
Through the divorce and custody battle with her,
he had some pretty, I thought, some pretty raw
feelings toward her.
Hoping for answers, investigators tried to
reach Wes - and when they finally got him on the
phone and asked him to come in...
he said he was out of town.
I asked Wes when he thought he might be back
in New York so he could be interviewed, and Wes told
me it could be two weeks, it could be four weeks,
but he didn't know.
And that was if he came back at all.
He told the investigator on the phone that, uh,
unless there was a warrant for his arrest, he was not
coming back to talk to us.
Obviously Wes knew he was a suspect in Dan Bennett's
***.
And the knowledge apparently ate at him, if
the distraught call one of the investigators got at
one o'clock the following morning was any
indication.
I recognized the phone number on my phone and I
answered the phone and I said, "Wes, how you
doing?"
Wes said, "Not very good."
I asked him when could we get together and talk
about that.
Wes said, "Probably never."
I said, "What do you mean never?"
Wes said, "I'm just going to eat a bullet."
The investigator tried to keep Wes on the phone and
tried to talk him down.
But it was apparently no use.
I said, "Wes, you don't need to do that.
We need to talk."
Wes terminated the phone call, hung up on me.
However, since Wes did have his cell phone, there
was a chance they could reach him before he did
something rash.
We could trace through GPS coordinates where he was.
According to Wes' cell phone provider, he was in
suburban Philadelphia.
And when the New York police contacted the local
authorities, they quickly tracked him down.
They saw him driving.
They attempted to pull him over and a pursuit ensued.
After a short chase - Wes suddenly abandoned his
truck in a parking lot and made a run for it on foot
before being stopped by another cruiser.
They got out to interview him and asked him who he
was, he gave a false name at first.
They asked him for identification.
He did pull out his driver's license, and they
knew it was Wes Borden.
But even as they attempted to place him under
arrest...
He bolted, and he ran.
But with several officers in pursuit, the
authorities figured it was only a matter of time...
We're gonna get this guy, we're gonna talk to him.
The chase wasn't over, however.
And it soon led to some nearby railroad
tracks...and a possible getaway.
If Wes could just beat the approaching train, and put
it between him and his pursuers...
The, uh, police officer that was following him was
within ten yards.
But the train was moving too fast.
There was no way he could beat it...and in that
moment Wes Borden, who'd already threatened
suicide, apparently decided to make good on
his promise.
He looked at the oncoming train, looked at the
investigator chasing him, looked back at the train
and then dove...
A suicide by commuter train.
Um.
We in the media immediately kinda took a
step back and said, "Whoa.
This is like a movie."
The investigators were taken aback, too.
Whatever Wes Borden knew about Dan Bennett's ***
had died with him.
Your emotions...
just crash.
Uh, now you know you're not gonna speak with this
guy, ah, the suspect, ah, it, it just changes
everything.
Hoping to find out just why Wes would throw
himself in front of a train, the investigators
went back to one of the last people to see Wes
alive - his stepbrother and roommate, Nathan Hand.
Nathan had a house and he had an extra room so, they
moved in together.
It wasn't very long before this all happened.
Wes moving in with his step-brother wasn't all
that had happened recently, either.
According to Nathan, Wes had also reconnected with
Alice.
Nathan told the police that his brother had never
gotten over his breakup with Alice.
Alice was the love of his life.
No matter what she did to him, he'd still forgive
her.
According to Nathan, that's why he had recently
reached out to her.
Wes was, uh, hoping to rekindle his relationship
with Alice.
They'd been hanging out and texting and talking.
But did Alice still have feelings for Wes?
Or did she have an ulterior motive?
According to Nathan, Alice had recently asked Wes for
a favor - a favor involving her other ex -
Dan Bennett.
Although, according to what Wes had originally
told Nathan, the favor didn't include ***.
His brother had told him about a week before that
they were going to go beat up Dan Bennett.
Nate Hand said he was under the impression that
they were doing so to keep Dan Bennett from going to
the family court hearing the next morning.
Nathan said he was still under that impression when
Wes came home from Wal-Mart at around eight
o'clock on the evening of April 19th.
His brother came home, said, you know, "Let's
go."
And he said, "Go where?"
He said, "We've got to go, uh, we got to go deal with
Dan."
The way Nathan described it, the night had started
out with the air of a high school prank.
They get dressed in, uh, camouflaged pants, dark
black shirts.
I think they may have said that they had, uh, black
bandanas on, and they drive around, you know,
getting psyched up to go beat Dan Bennett up.
But according to Nathan, at some point during the
drive, things had suddenly turned serious - deadly
serious.
Wes Borden said, "We're going to kill Dan
Bennett."
Nate Hand said he was stunned but went along for
the ride.
He looked at me and he started sobbing and he
said, "I didn't know what to do."
Nathan claimed that he wasn't the only one in on
it with Wes, either.
As the night wore on, he said it quickly became
clear that Alice was the one calling the shots.
Wes had been communicating with Alice all evening
leading up to the crime while they were together,
they were text messaging each other back and forth.
And when they finally pulled into Dan's driveway
at around eleven o'clock, Wes had taken a 12-gauge
shotgun out from behind the seat of the truck.
Nathan told us that Alice had given him the gun, uh,
to commit the crime.
Next, according to Nathan, he and Wes had crept up on
the porch, taking positions on either side
of the front door.
His brother said, "Alright, when I push the
door open, I want you to flip on the light switch."
According to Nathan, uh, Daniel started to raise
his head and that's, that's when Wes Borden
fired the shot...
Nate admitted that, uh, Wes Borden was the one
that shot Daniel Bennett.
Nathan said that after the shooting, he and Wes had
jumped back into the truck and fled.
But as they drove away, Wes had foolishly left the
trail that the investigators would
eventually find...
He says that, uh, his brother racks the shotgun
to drop the shells out, he pulls over on the side of
the road and throws the remaining shotgun shells
out the side window.
They'd ditched the gun that same night, according
to Nathan.
He said they went to the Pinnacle State Park and
buried the, uh, the gun.
With Nathan's cooperation, the investigators
recovered the gun by the end of the day.
Nate Hand actually led police to the buried
*** weapon.
By then, Nathan was also under arrest for Dan
Bennett's ***.
And by the next afternoon, April 24th, Sheriff's
Deputies were knocking on Alice Trappler's door.
I advised her that she was under arrest for the
*** of Daniel Bennett.
Alice's trial leads to an unexpected twist.
He was having an affair with Alice.
But it's Alice's own words that are the real
surprise.
On April 19th, 2013, Alice Trappler was on trial for
the 2012 *** of her former lover - 30-year-old
Dan Bennett.
Their six-month romance had resulted in a bitter
custody dispute that ended when someone shot Dan in
the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.
If Alice Trappler were to be convicted of all counts
against her the sentence range could be between a
minimum of fifteen years and a maximum of life.
Wes Borden, Alice's ex-husband and the
suspected triggerman, wouldn't stand trial,
however.
When the authorities tried to apprehend him, the
result was a desperate foot chase...and a
dramatic suicide.
They were chasing him down a railroad track and, uh,
he just jumped in front of the train.
You know, justice was done I suppose.
In his opening statement, the prosecutor said that
for all his tormented guilt, Wes Borden was
nothing more than Alice's pawn in the *** plot.
She was masterful at manipulating people.
She was manipulative enough to get her
ex-husband to do the dirty work.
According to the prosecution, Alice had
recruited Wes to kill Dan Bennett so she would be
guaranteed custody of the couple's five-
month-old daughter.
He's killed at eleven o'clock at night.
He has a family court custody case with Alice
Trappler at nine o'clock the next morning.
In its open, the defense argued that Alice was
innocent, that the investigators had simply
rushed to judgment as soon as they found out about
the custody fight.
If Alice was involved in this *** and truly her
motive was the family court case, it was really
premature.
There was no indication that Dan Bennett was going
to get unsupervised visitation.
But when the prosecutors started presenting their
case, they made it clear that the custody fight was
only a small part of what they had against Alice.
Everything in the evidence led me to believe that it
was Alice Trappler.
First and foremost was the testimony of Wes's
stepbrother, Nathan Hand.
Wes Borden's confessed accomplice, he'd made a
plea deal with the prosecution.
Nathan Hand was, uh, charged with, uh,
manslaughter in the first-degree and he
pleaded guilty, and he was sentenced to nineteen
years in, uh, in prison.
On the stand, Nathan repeated what he'd already
told the investigators: that he'd helped Wes kill
Dan Bennett and that Alice had put him up to it.
He was sympathetic and he did cry on stand, as well.
The prosecutors also had some compelling evidence
to back Nathan up: a record of the text
messages sent from Alice's cell phone on the night of
the ***.
The text message evidence was very compelling.
She, in fact, was providing him information
that he needed to commit this crime for her on her
behalf.
Even where to find the victim...
A text says, "He still lives on Pearl Street."
And then, just minutes after the ***...
There's a text message that said, "Wonder if
he'll show up for court today LOL."
It just helped to show that Alice Trappler was
knee-deep in this.
However, according to the prosecutors, Wes and
Nathan weren't the only ones caught up in Alice's
conspiracy.
They also called another ex-boyfriend of Alice's to
the stand.
A co-worker named Brett Bacon, he had been her
lover for several months before the ***.
Brett Bacon was married at the time.
He was having an affair with Alice.
But the affair wasn't all that Brett revealed.
Brett Bacon said, "I gave this gun to Alice
Trappler."
Brett testified that Alice had claimed to need the
gun - a 12-gauge shotgun - for protection on her
farm.
During the course of the trial, we saw numerous
instances where she was able to manipulate people;
and Brett Bacon was one.
And if Alice talking Brett into providing the ***
weapon wasn't enough, the prosecutors followed up
his testimony with a series of phone calls
Alice had made to her mother...from jail.
After somebody is arrested, we tend to
monitor what they say on their jailhouse calls.
In the calls, Alice seemed desperate to relay a
message to Brett.
Alice never directly said just what she wanted to
talk to Brett about, but the prosecutors were
convinced that it had something to do with the
gun...
specifically, convincing Brett to deny that he had
given it to her.
That to us was certainly not the, uh, the mentality
of somebody that was innocent.
When it was the defense's turn, they admitted that
Alice made no secret of her feelings for Dan.
She went around telling anyone who would listen
how much she couldn't stand Dan and what a
monster he was.
And there was no denying that she didn't want him
in her daughter's life.
She called him a *** donor.
But according to the defense, that didn't make
her a killer.
Her entire life had been pretty exemplary.
She was a good person who wouldn't do this sort of
thing.
And the gun that she had allegedly given Wes?
The defense admitted that it was the same gauge,
make and model as the one Brett gave her.
But, since the serial number had been filed off,
they also pointed out there was no way of
knowing if it really was the same gun.
In fact, the prosecutors couldn't even prove that
it was the *** weapon.
A shotgun shell, it's all small, tiny pellets that
come out of, of the gun, so you can't match rifling
like that you could on a bullet from a, a rifle or
a pistol.
Instead, the defense claimed that Wes had acted
alone, hoping to win Alice back in the process.
Alice Trappler had no idea that Thomas Wesley Borden
was planning to kill Daniel Bennett.
And finally, determined to prove her innocence once
and for all, Alice took the stand in her own
defense.
She laid out her story and essentially said, "Yes, I
hated Dan.
I wanted him to have nothing to do with our
child.
I was willing to go to just about any length to
keep that from happening.
But I'm not a killer."
The jury reaches a verdict.
We were like, "Wow, that was quick."
But will Dan's family be disappointed?
She was going to get away with it.
On May 8th, 2013, after less than four hours of
deliberation, the jury in Alice Trappler's ***
trial announced that it had reached a verdict.
When an officer came out of the conference room
with a paper saying that they reached a verdict, we
were like, "Wow, that was quick."
Alice and I were cautiously optimistic.
We were confident that the prosecution had not proven
its case.
The 41-year-old was accused of masterminding
the April 2012 *** of her ex-boyfriend, Daniel
Bennett, allegedly over the custody of their
daughter.
The day after the *** they were going to go to
court on the paternity piece of it to see whether
or not it would be established that Daniel
Bennett was the biological father.
At trial, the defense argued that Wes Borden,
Alice's ex-husband and the alleged triggerman, had
taken it upon himself to kill Dan, in hopes of
winning Alice back.
Wesley did want to get back with Alice.
But would the jury believe her?
The entire courtroom held its breath as the verdict
was read:
Guilty - guilty - guilty - guilty - guiilty
- on all counts.
The courtroom erupted.
The Bennett family, which was probably twenty-five
strong, erupted in joy.
Alice, on the other hand, showed no emotion at the
verdict - and no remorse, either when she addressed
the court three months later -- before being
sentenced to 25-years to life.
She said she was very sorry that Dan had died
but that she couldn't have remorse for something she
didn't do.
She may not have pulled the trigger, but Dan
Bennett's family was grateful Alice had been
held responsible.
I was happy that they found her guilty.
That's the main thing 'cause she pretty much
figured she was going to get away with it.
I don't want any other family to go through what
my family went through.
The family of Wes Borden and his stepbrother Nathan
Hand feels the same way.
If not for Alice Trappler, one of their sons would be
free and the other, still alive...
I hope and pray to God that that woman thinks
about every one of us every day she rots her ***
away in that jail.