Joshua Bennett was born in 1985 in Mattoon, Illinois, where he lived with his father.
After graduating high school, Joshua enlisted in the army. His friend Jennifer Blackwell said:
“I believe Josh just wanted to kind of get out of the Mattoon area and travel and just see the world. Everybody was rooting for him. We were all proud of him.”
In 2005, just before he was due to be deployed, Josh’s father passed away, so he took a leave of absence and ended up reconnecting with his mother Jacqueline Bennett.
On August 22, 2005, Joshua went to Claremont, Illinois to his mother’s house, which she also shared with her boyfriend Lee Jackson.
On the morning of August 23, 2005, a 911 call was made and Robert Blythe, a Richland County Sheriff’s Deputy was dispatched to Jacqueline Bennett’s home.
When he got there, there was a man bleeding, crawling across the floor. He had been shot. In the kitchen Joshua Bennett was bleeding on the floor from multiple stab wounds. In another room Jacqueline Bennett was sat bleeding from stab wounds to her neck.
Sadly Joshua Bennett died from a fatal stab wound to the chest.
23-year-old Jackie Jackson, Lee Jackson’s son, told Deputy Robert Blythe that he had shot an intruder that had stabbed both Joshua and Jacqueline Bennett.
“There’s very few murders in this area where you walk in and you’ve got so many people injured and you’re trying to figure out who’s the bad guys and who’s the good guys.” Said former Illinois State Police Sergeant Kelly Henby.
Jackie Jackson told police he lived at home with his pregnant girlfriend , 17-year-old Linsey Kasinger, his father Lee Jackson, and Jacqueline Bennett. Joshua Bennett had arrived the night before for dinner. Around 3am, Jackie heard a commotion. He ran upstairs from the basement with a loaded shotgun, where he saw two masked intruders stabbing Joshua Bennett.
Jackie hit one intruder in the face with the butt of the gun and shot the other when he tried to wrestle the gun off him. He then fought with the other intruder, this time grabbing the knife from the intruder and stabbing him in the leg before he fled, leaving his partner behind injured on the floor. Jackie then called 911 from a neighbours house.
The intruder that was shot was taken to hospital. He identified himself and David Lindner and his partner as “Ricky”, before falling into a coma.
Sergeant Kelly Henby said:
“I asked him why’d this happen, What’s going on? And he said, ‘The lady put a hex on us so we had to kill her.”
Jacqueline Bennett said she had woken in the middle of the night and went to the kitchen where she saw the intruders. When they attacked here, Joshua woke up and went to help his mum when he was fatally attacked.
Jacqualine Bennett told detectives that she had not met David Lindner before and had certainly never put a hex on him.
Then at approximately 8am that same morning, a hospital in Lawrence County, Illinois contacted authorities to notify them that 38-year-old Oscar Richard “Ricky” Eck arrived several hours earlier with a stab wound to his leg.
Illinois State Police Sergeant John Waggle asked Eck about his injury which he claimed had happened when he was installing drywall.
Two women, 34-year-old Irenia Cotner, and 20-year-old Jenny Wolfe were at the hospital to pick up Oscar Eck. Waggle said:
“Irenia was very, very nervous. To me, she was visibly shaking, eyes downcast.”
Both women were questioned and denied any knowledge of the attack and were released from custody.
Investigators also interviewed Eck’s roommate, 22-year-old Misty Gangloff who also claimed to not know anything.
At Eck’s home, investigators found a book on witchcraft.
It turns out that the three women, Cotner, Wolfe and Gangloff were friends, with an obsession with the occult.
“They would have these candlelit ceremonies and they would talk about ridding themselves of hexes.” Said attorney David Williams.
Gangloff told investigators that in the Spring of 2005, Cotner had said that Lindsey Kasinger, Jackie Jackson’s girlfriend, had put a hex on them.
Cotner had previously been in a relationship with Jackie Jackson, and she said the only way to lift the curse was to murder Jackie’s new girlfriend, Lindsey, who was pregnant at the time.
When interviewing Eck again with this new information, he said that Cotner had convinced him that Lindsey Kasinger had in fact hexed them, so he recruited self-proclaimed warlock, David Lindner to help him carry out the murder.
On the night of August 22, Cotner, Eck, Lindner and Wolfe held a seance. Cotner said the murder needed to be carried out by the time the candles burned out and though she wouldn’t be going with them, she would enlist demons to protect them.
Wolfe, Eck and Lindner went to the Bennett/Jackson household. Wolfe stayed in the vehicle while Eck and Lindner entered the house via an unlocked kitchen window.
They stabbed Jacqueline, thinking she was Lindsey, and then attacked Joshua when he came to help his mum. Jackie then shot Lindner and stabbed Eck.
Wolfe then drove Eck to the hospital and disposed of his bloody clothes.
Irenia Cotner, Jenny Wolfe, Oscar Eck and Misty Gangloff were arrested and charged with first-degree murder and home invasion.
David Lindner died from his injuries in March 2006, aged 30, before he could face justice.
Misty Gangloff pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in 2006 and was sentenced to 7 years in prison. She was released in 2013.
Oscar “Ricky” Eck pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder in July 2007 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He will be eligible for release in 2027. He will be 60 years old.
Jenny Wolfe pleaded not guilty and went to trial in 2008 where she was found guilty of first-degree murder, home invasion, and conspiracy to commit murder, and sentenced to 32 years in prison. She could be released in 2040.
Irenia Cotner was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and home invasion, and was sentenced to 57 years in prison in 2006. She will be eligible for parole in 2063. She will be 93 years old.
