Bones to Talk With
Identification
Brian King was from Garrett, Texas, some 30 miles southeast of Dallas. Detectives went there that night and showed James King, Brian's father, the wallet retrieved from the boy. He confirmed that it had belonged to his 14-year-old son, who was missing. He believed that the girl they had found might be his stepdaughter, 13-year-old Christina Benjamin, who was also missing.
They asked him if he'd seen anything suspicious. According to a statement issued by the Texas Execution Information Center, King said that three nights earlier around midnight, something woke him — a car. It had honked twice near the house and then driven away. Brian, he knew, was sleeping outside in a hammock — something he'd never done before — so when it sounded like the vehicle had returned, he looked outside and saw that a tan car had pulled up, turned off its lights, and parked near the house. That roused King from bed and he went to the front door to investigate. He saw that Brian was talking to someone inside, and figured it must be one of Brian's friends. Someone in the back seat had long, light colored hair with a fuzzy texture. He could not see the driver.
Not yet concerned, he went to the bathroom, but when he came back, Brian and the car were both gone. He waited for an hour, but Brian did not return. King decided to go back to bed and speak to his son in the morning about this unusual behavior. But Brian did not come home that night, or the next morning. When the family searched the house, they realized that Christina was also missing. Calls were made to people they knew, but neither of the children could be located. King and his wife went out searching on their own but turned up nothing, so after another day they filed a missing person's report.
Christina's younger sister, who slept in the same room with her, offered some intriguing information. Apparently Brian had come in to wake Christina to urge her to sneak out. It had sounded pre-arranged.
While the possibility of some kind of drug deal retaliation was discussed among the investigators, it became clear after talking with the parents that these were good kids who were usually obedient and did not make a habit of sneaking away. Brian had been bored lately, but there was no evidence that he was hanging out with the wrong crowd. Everyone who knew him liked him.
Photographs of Christina showed her to be a blond with long hair, so investigators asked for samples of her hair to compare to what they had found on the barbed-wire fence. They received her hairbrush, around which strands of blond hair were wound. The family also provided an x ray of a recent injury to Christina's foot from an accident at school. Investigators took these items to be analyzed, but felt sure they had learned the identity of their Jane Doe.
Two kids had gone out one night for a lark, only to meet an unexpected fate that would turn out to be more twisted and evil than anyone yet imagined.