Jason Eric Massey

Jason Eric Massey (born January 7, 1973 in Texas , † April 3, 2001 in Huntsville , Texas) was an American criminal who was sentenced to death and executed for double homicide.

Childhood and criminal development

Jason Massey was one of seven siblings. His single mother was addicted to drugs for years, and he never met his biological father. From birth, Massey was neglected by his mother and often mistreated with a belt and bleuel . The mother also starved her children while hoarding food in her room and even eating in front of the children. The youth welfare office took five of the children from the family, but Jason and his sister Johnia were left with their mentally ill mother. The Massey family moved from one shabby dwelling to the next, even staying in the car a few times.

Change from victim to perpetrator

As a result of the chaotic social conditions in his family, Jason Massey increasingly developed anti-social behavior and fantasies of violence. He beat up younger children in his neighborhood and began torturing and mutilating animals when he was nine . In his early teenage years, Massey began drinking, using drugs, and becoming interested in serial killers and satanism . It was Charles Manson his idol, with whom he could identify. Because of various kinds of harassment, drug abuse and repeated animal cruelty, Massey came into contact with the police again and again. When his mother found his diary writing about rape, murder, and wanting to become a serial killer, his mother sent him to a psychiatrist.

At sixteen, Massey dropped out of high school and worked as an unskilled roofer . To do this, he bought a brown Subaru , even though he did not have a driver's license , and stole his cousin's .22 caliber pistol unnoticed.

Massey lived with a woman for some time, but she threw him out when he killed dogs in her home.
In 1992 he wanted to fulfill his dream of killing and threatened the daughter of his former partner with a knife at her home. When the girl's mother came home, she put him out again and reported him.

Massey later met James Brian King and his stepsister Christina Benjamin . He liked Christina very much and wanted her to be his friend. Before he could carry out his first planned murder, he was imprisoned for four months in early 1993 for renewed drug abuse and because the police found a (dead) cat in his car with a noose around his neck .

The double murder

In the early hours of July 27, 1993, Massey picked up Brian King, then fourteen, and Christina Benjamin, then fourteen, from their parents' house in Garrett , thirty miles southeast of Dallas , and drove them to Telico , Ellis County fifteen miles away .

He stopped on the wooden bridge on Cutoff Road and shot Brian King twice in the head at close range. Then he threw the body out of the car and off the bridge. Christina escaped from the car, but Massey followed her, first shooting her in the back and then in the head. He then stabbed her, stripped her naked, and mutilated her.

On July 29, 1993, a road worker found Christina Benjamin's naked body and alerted the police. Both hands, head and nipples had been severed from the girl, and the body was covered with knife wounds and deep cuts. A shot in the neck by a small-caliber handgun was found to be the cause of death. The clothed body of Brian King was found about ninety yards away. Apart from the two headshots, this one showed no injuries or mutilations.

Enlightenment of the fact

The two youngsters had been reported missing two days earlier. James King, Brian's father, testified that he was woken up by the noise of an engine in the early morning of July 27th and saw his son, who had been sleeping outside in the hammock, get into a brown Japanese-style compact car and drive away. When, after a few hours of sleep, he found that his son was still gone and that his stepdaughter was not at home either, he and his wife went to the police and reported both of them missing. The investigation revealed that Christina had wanted to meet a young man who called himself Jason.

Soon after, an anonymous call came in to the local sheriff. The caller suggested taking a closer look at a certain Jason Massey.

A few days before the bodies were discovered, Ennis police had been informed that a calf had been mutilated behind a McDonald’s restaurant . There the police noticed a light brown Japanese car and found a bracelet on the floor with the name Jason engraved on it.

Investigator Johnny Cruz invited Massey for interrogation and showed him some photos of the crime scene. When Massey choked, he became suspect. This was followed by a search warrant in Massey's house, hair samples taken, and his Subaru confiscated. Blood was found on a car seat, which was examined by means of DNA analyzes. The entomologist Dr. Neal Haskell from Illinois examined samples of insect maggots from both bodies to determine the time interval and the period of death of both victims.

arrest

After several witnesses testified to have seen Massey with a gun, he was finally arrested on August 3, 1993. Newspaper articles about the murders and a bill for small-caliber pistol ammunition, handcuffs and knives were found in his house. One of these knives, which had been used to mutilate Christina Benjamin, had already been seized in his car. In 1994, Massey went to trial in Texas for the two murders.

The gruesome discovery

Even during the hearing was a hunter in the woods, not far from the crime scene, a red cooler with thirty severed animal heads and two spiral pads described by Massey, he Des murderer death book ( Engl. The Slayer's Book of Death ) called.
Massey was found guilty of the two murders and merely stated that he was glad it was finally over.

The prosecution gathered the information from the records, which had been written by Massey between 1989 and the month when the double homicide occurred:
It said how he killed a total of eight cows , thirty dogs and thirty-nine cats , how he beheaded them and his own According to the best minds kept as trophies. There were also descriptions of his planned deeds. According to the records, Massey set out to kill young girls and wanted to become the greatest serial killer in the United States. His goal was to kill seven hundred people within the next twenty years, other sources even speak of a thousand candidate victims.

The anonymous caller

The unknown caller to the police, who now identified himself as Paul Demomio , also appeared in court during the trial and reported on his experiences with Jason Massey:
Years ago, Demomio had done drugs with Massey, committed a few robberies and killed animals. His family and friends convinced him to turn away from Massey and seek therapeutic help. He recognized Massey's handwriting in his death books and testified that Massey wanted him as a murder partner, similar to the collaboration between Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole .

Sentencing and execution

After just fifteen minutes of deliberation, the jury agreed on the death penalty . Jason Eric Massey was sentenced to death on October 6, 1994. During his time on death row , Massey converted to Christianity and referred to himself as a servant of God. He was in on 3 April 2001 Huntsville Unit with the lethal injection executed. His mother and grandmother, as well as Christina Benjamin's grandparents, were present at his execution . Massey apologized to them for his act and confessed to throwing Christina's head and hands in the Trinity River . Despite continued searches, her body parts were never found. Massey was the 245th person executed in the state of Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

The Jason Eric Massey case was featured in the 57th episode of the television series Medical Detectives .

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personal data
SURNAME	Massey, Jason Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American double killer
DATE OF BIRTH	7th January 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH	Texas
DATE OF DEATH	April 3, 2001
Place of death	Huntsville , Texas