One of San Luis Obispo County’s few remaining condemned killers died at San Quentin State Prison on Monday after spending nearly 34 years on Death Row.
Richard Allen Benson was a 38-year-old parolee when he molested, tortured and killed Nipomo resident Laura Camargo and her three children, Sterling, 23 months; Shawna, 3; and Stephanie, 4; in January 1986.
Benson told a probation officer during a jailhouse interview in 1987, “I should die for what I did.”
Benson was found unresponsive in his cell at 5:27 a.m. Monday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,
Correctional officers entered the cell, performed CPR and called an ambulance.
Benson, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m. by a paramedic, the agency said.
Benson did not have a cellmate, and foul play is not suspected.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office Coroner Division will conduct an autopsy to determine his cause of death.
Benson, who lived for a time in Oceano, was sentenced to death on April 30, 1987, for four counts of first-degree murder for the 1986 deaths of Camargo and her three children.
His two sentences for lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14 years old and of arson of an inhabited structure were stayed pending the carrying out of the death sentence.
Tribune archives show that Benson, who was a parolee with a history of child molestation convictions, stalked and kidnapped Camargo, ultimately bludgeoning her to death.
He then suffocated the youngest child, and repeatedly sexually assaulted and tortured the two other children over a two-day period before beating them to death with a hammer and setting their apartment on fire in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy evidence.
Benson, who his defense attorneys argued was in a deranged, methamphetamine-induced state at the time of the killings, later confessed to a San Luis Obispo County Sexual Assault Response Team doctor, likening his crimes to “being in heaven.”
During final arguments prior to his sentencing, the prosecutor told the judge “there’s no redeeming quality to this defendant,” according to Tribune archives.
“I believe in mercy, too,” then-Deputy District Attorney Ted Duffy said in March 1987, “but this isn’t the case (for it).“
Given the local publicity due to the viciousness of the murders, Benson’s trial was moved to neighboring Santa Barbara County.
His two-and-a-half month trial was, at the time, the most expensive prosecuted by San Luis Obispo County officials, costing the county roughly $250,000.
With Benson’s death, only two former San Luis Obispo County residents remain on Death Row.
Michael Whisenhunt, now 56, was convicted in 1996 for torturing and murdering his girlfriend’s baby.
Rex Krebs, 55, was convicted in 2001 of separately kidnapping, torturing and killing 20-year-old college students Aundria Crawford and Rachel Newhouse.
The California Supreme Court upheld Krebs’ conviction in January 2020.
Though the men remain on Death Row, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March 2019 that state officials would not carry out any executions during his time in office.
There are currently 703 people on California’s Death Row. More information about capital punishment in California can be found at cdcr.ca.gov/capitalpunishment.
Matt Fountain is a reporter for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Contact him at mfountain@thetribunenews.com.