Master Of Deceit

South Salt Lake is a suburb of Salt Lake City in Salt Lake County, Utah, with a population of 26,086 today and about 10,000 when the murder happened. On 22 February 1989 a man searching the dumpsters outside the Smith's Food King grocery store at 851 East 45th South, collecting wilted lettuce for his rabbits, found garbage bags taped together. Inside were severed legs, cut at the mid thigh. Scars, a bloodstained sweater, blood type and baby footprints from an Indiana hospital identified them as Larry Dwayne White.

White was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1937. He had moved to Utah after high school and studied interior decorating at Brigham Young University without graduating. At 52 he was living with his 76-year-old father, Dale, working part time as a telemarketer and writing books. He had two unpublished manuscripts and was working on a third about the Mormon practice of baptising the dead. His father had reported him missing on 20 February 1989 and named the only friend his son saw regularly, a man he knew as Roy Anderson, who had been carpooling White to a new telemarketing job and had learned chess from him.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He had already left Utah. Federal authorities found him in Las Vegas on 6 April 1989, after he opened a post office box in White's name and applied for a copy of White's Indiana birth certificate. A search of his boarding house room produced White's identification papers, a five-shot .38 revolver, rubber gloves, electrician's tape, black plastic garbage bags, stolen licence plates and books on hiding an identity. His landlord said Bennett had rented East Kings Lane from December 1988 until he vanished in February 1989.

Detectives searched that house and noticed a bare patch in the yard between the house and a six-foot picket fence. Eight inches down they hit concrete. Beneath it, about 30 inches down and wedged between a pipe and the septic tank, was a torso wrapped in plastic, with no head and no arms. The next day they lifted another concrete patch along the southern foundation and found the head, wrapped in three bags and buried about 35 inches down. The torso showed five bullet holes from a .38, and the revolver matched. A hacksaw was found in the shed. The arms were never found. Leg bones went to the FBI crime laboratory at Quantico for comparison.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Bennett, held without bail, refused to answer questions. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

Beaverton, Oregon, detectives had another reason to want him. His wife, Floy Jean Bennett, known as Genie, had vanished on 22 February 1978, eleven years to the day before White's legs were found. She was a court reporter for county circuit judge Richard J. Birke, earned $18,000 a year and had recently inherited $90,000. She left work, came home, and at about 7.30 p.m. went out to shop at Washington Square and was never seen again. Five days later Bennett told police her car was back in the driveway and clothes and suitcases were gone. He filed for divorce on 17 March 1978 and later asked to withdraw the petition. Police dug up ground looking for a body and found nothing. Her sister became conservator of her estate. Bennett went underground, moved to Reno, disappeared for ten years, travelled the country, returned to Oregon and in 1986 married his brother's widow. details of the account remain covered until revealed She has never been found.

In April 1991 Idaho authorities said mummified arms and legs found by artefact hunters in a cave near Dubois matched the torso of an unidentified man found deeper in the same cave about twelve years earlier, and compared the case with White's. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now He was still in custody at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in his eighties, offender number 53260.