Horror on the highway: Benjamin Klinger discusses Samantha Heller case from prison

at first glance it had all the makings of a tragic accident a young man racing down the highway at over 100 miles an hour loses control his passenger is killed collision reconstructionists sergeant christopher m keller is one of the first on the scene as a reconstructionist we take a collision and try and figure out what happened whether it be human error or if it's a vehicular default or an intentional act and in this case making that determination meant learning more about the girl lying next to the mangled wreck seventeen-year-old samantha heller talk to me about your daughter sammy was my youngest child she was my only daughter she was a spitfire she made life so much fun sam was the goofiest person that you could ever meet i mean she was a real comedian like she could make you laugh even if you're about to cry like she she's great a social butterfly with a big heart she was just such a decent loving caring girl sammy loved everybody but that may have also been her downfall samantha was just 15 when she met an older boy named benjamin klinger i met him once i didn't really want to but sam wanted me to meet him and he just had a very dark personality gave me chills when i saw him i just i couldn't even look him in the eye i remember one time sam had brought me to she'd want me to be friends with ben moore we were on the highway and he was speeding so so so fast it scared me and i said to sam like can he slow down she's like oh no he's fine he always drives like this his willingness to risk our lives on that highway scared me definitely it was around that same time that samantha's friends started noticing slight changes i would say that her silly side was still there she should still always make anyone laugh but if you could still you could slowly see sam's face turn into just like she was hurt she was hurting hurting because of how they say ben was treating her behind closed doors she told me she you know at the beginning he was a very nice he acted very nice and made her feel like happy and made her feel loved and then things just deteriorated after he got control over her and once he knew that she was in love with him things just started spiraling downwards he started to say that she was clingy he would call her he would call her and i asked her i was like so like why like why are you with him and she's like i love him and he makes it better by saying i'm so sorry and she admitted that draws her back in every time and sam's mom says every time ben drew her back in it drove her and her daughter further apart she was starting to say you know i should be allowed to stay out at you know these hours during a school night and we were having more arguments and do you think all of that was really stemming from ben yeah he actually would would try to come over and convince us she would be safe and i'll make sure she gets her homework done and stuff like that at some point things within the house broke apart we had found out that she was giving ben our house keys to sneak in the house at night when she confronted her daughter a huge fight ensued it was a mess and it's one of the biggest mistake i made because i kicked her out that day and and she ran to bed samantha would spend the next few months living under the klinger's roof and loved ones say that's when the relationship really turned toxic she told me that he would push her she came in once with a big green bruise on her arm and i didn't even ask her because i just knew and i was like are you okay and she was like i'll talk to you about it later and just never did but samantha's mom wasn't just standing idly by the last straw in that situation was got a phone call that she was being taken to the hospital i found out that he had run over her foot after that sandra was finally able to convince samantha to move out of ben's house and in with her aunt leanne but even then shortly after she moved in with us he decided to come over and sit outside our house and that made sammy really antsy should please can i go out and talk to him so we let him let her go out and talk to him she went out he took off with her not long after that leanne gets a frantic call from her niece she was scared because he was driving too fast and he was angry lancaster county district attorney craig stedman elaborates she's interviewable with ben and klinger at that point he basically said you better get off the phone or i will you know i'll drive this car off the road you wanted relatives to talk to is what he said samantha was able to talk him down that night and after that she appeared to break things off for good even agreeing to move back home with her mom it was only then that sander learned just how bad things had been i found out that uh not only was he physically hurting her at times that uh he was taking pictures and videos of them sexually and sharing it with his friends have your minor daughter my minor daughter this is your child this this is my child that before meeting him she didn't do stuff like this she was a good girl sandra took action i charged him for running over her foot i charged him for the pictures he was going to be charged and labeled as a pedophile you weren't playing around no it's hard ball time for the next six months with charges pending ben seemed to stay away and samantha seemed to return to her old self you were starting to get your daughter back right then the night of december 4th sandra is already asleep when she gets a text from samantha the kind you never erase it was the last thing she said to me what did she tell you she said mama some time after that sameth heller finds herself in the passenger seat of benjamin klinger's car racing toward her own demise it seemed like she was finally free like 17 year old samantha heller had finally broken away from her abuser benjamin klinger she had even moved back in with her mom and was moving forward on assault charges against the boy as well as charges for sending explicit pictures of the underage girl to his friends she was doing so well i didn't hear his name for a while you know and like you could just tell like she was in different spirits but then after six months apart it seems ben found a way back in she calls me up to her room and proceeds to tell me that they had been pressuring her you know making her feel bad because of the upcoming charges apparently ben reached out to get samantha to drop the charges especially the one that would make him a registered sex offender so he gets her to sign something says everyone press charges then just a few days before the end samantha changed her mind again she actually comes into our office here and she starts explaining looking intimidated me and i really know what i was signing you know i do want something done i don't want him to go to jail but i want some accountability restitution as she put it in this note to ben a handwritten list of things she wanted to discuss one big thing in particular december 3rd she had gone to planned parenthood she believed she was pregnant with ben's baby and one of the things on the note is she wanted child support she told me she was back with him and i was just so angry because she was doing so well and i was like you know what i can't do this anymore sorry it was the last time paige myers and her friend would ever speak [Music] the day after samantha's visit to planned parenthood december 4th she tells her mom she's spending the weekend with a friend instead she was inside ben's car speeding down the highway at nearly 120 miles per hour lancaster county 911 police fire ambulance i need both there's a car on fire interstate 283 it's approximately 2 am when a truck driver calls 9-1-1 to report seeing ben's car careen off the highway and into a guardrail it was a two-door car and that entire passenger side had a huge amount of damage to it samantha's side of the car and yet she survives the initial crash we've got a car with injuries uh just past the mountain so in the 911 call you hear samantha screaming it's not clear what she's saying but you can hear that she's still alive and is screaming what you said it's just the one car yes okay sir i know what to do because this person is upside down okay okay we don't want it we don't want to move them just try to keep them safe following protocol the dispatcher tells the witness not to move the injured what he doesn't know is exactly what the trucker sees samantha was sort of half in half out the car face down in in the grass and the civilians saw mr klinger essentially sitting on samantha's head not long after that samantha falls silent how many people were in the car all together two people okay are they both awake no the ones unconscious the girls scream but stop okay okay there's help by the time first responders arrive samantha heller is gone ben will later tell investigators that he doesn't remember exactly how the crash happened but that it was all a tragic accident so he said he was ejected from the vehicle and landed up coincidentally through the passenger side of the vehicle and happens to land with his you know butt sitting on her face smothering her to death just by coincidence but almost immediately sergeant christopher keller and his team were finding evidence that this was no coincidence for example the witness said that he didn't see any brake lights as mr klinger was going off the road that's a pretty telltale sign that there's something else going on you can see actually in the grass that he drove straight into the guardrail it was a controlled crash police also found samantha's handwritten note inside the wreck and then there was that 9-1-1 call those screams though you can't make out what samantha's saying on that recording another eyewitness says she heard everything the car driver actually who pulled over said she actually could hear her saying get off get off me and could see her moving her leg she couldn't breathe it's hard knowing that your child suffered in the end it was only a few hours before that when sandra mcfalls received a text message from her daughter saying quote i love you mama and i didn't know when i got up the next morning i replied i'm like i love you too honey and when are you coming home [Music] when did you get a phone call something terrible had happened police had showed up and they he told me that there had been a tragic accident as soon as they mentioned that it was with ben i said this was no tragic accident he murdered her and police took that claim seriously especially after a pathologist determined samantha's cause of death to be multiple traumatic injuries and asphyxia manner of death homicide the evidence showed he intentionally killed samantha almost immediately after news spread that 17 year old samantha heller had been killed in a crash and that her abusive boyfriend ben clinger was driving everyone who knew the girl jumped to the same conclusion i knew right away that it wasn't an accident and samantha's loved ones were telling investigators much the same one friend actually described it as her life was a living hell he basically made her feel worthless every day of her life in his phone contacts she's listed as dumb propeller that's who would come up on his contacts it would come up you know dumb color which is awful to say but that's that's what he thought of her and then there were ben's lies shortly after the wreck klinger reportedly told a nurse at the hospital quote i feel guilty i told her she could lay down in the back seat without a seat belt on and she was pregnant with my child and now she's dead he said she was in the back seat we could prove she wasn't you can see the impact you know head impact here and for ben's claims that he was thrown from the wreck and on to samantha you knew he was lying we could prove he was 100 lying we know he had a seatbelt on because he had the bruises on it and here and here consistent with it but when you're ejected the seat belts ripped or it's ripped out of the casing or anything like that there was absolutely no damage to the to the seat belt consistent with ejection and the other thing the reconstructions this were able to tell us was there's no way that the driver would under this you know head-on collision with the guard rail would be ejected 90 degrees to his right through the passenger side vehicle and land up over her sitting on top of her meaning that to end up on samantha ben had to actually unbuckle his seat belt after the crash and walk around to the other side of the car when you think about what sammy had to go through that night it's horrible it's horrible she crawled out of the car he got out of his side walked around the front of the car and sat on top of her it's almost too much to bear to even think about her crawling out of that vehicle and having a second chance at life she was so close she was but he wasn't going to let it happen he wasn't going to let it happen and after weeks of collecting evidence prosecutors were ready to make that case he was charged with criminal homicide for the death of samantha but what was it that authorities say finally pushed ben over the edge district attorney craig stedman says take your pick it's a crescendo of motives that are coming together at this period of time um that lead to the murder i mean you've got the unwanted pregnancy that he thinks is happening you've got her charges so he's mad at that plus one of the other things that um you know we found out later was he actually had another girl that he was seeing who he actually said at the hospital something to the effect of well at least we don't have to worry about her getting in between you and i in the future it is only later that investigators learned samantha wasn't pregnant after all but ben didn't know that at the time and according to his arrest affidavit he was either angry because he was going to be a father or jealous because he thought it was someone else's baby either way prosecutors believe they have him dead to rights we felt we had a very very strong case for first-degree murder we could prove that he was lying about what took place him at the hospital telling his girlfriend that now we can be together we had all that stuff of the of the pregnancy and the former threats and and the former threats i mean threats not just threats but threats to kill her by driving a car off the road he did exactly what he said he was going to do multiple times to her but as it turns out the case would never go to trial we felt we had a mountain of evidence for first degree but when you have these cases you know it's not just about what you can prove it's about dealing with the surviving victims and the family members and for sandra's mom pursuing the first degree murder charges would mean reliving the unimaginable i don't think that you can underestimate the how difficult this particular trial would have been on the family members just her manner of death all that stuff we would have had to go into great detail injury broken bone after broken bone how she was begging for her life so when attorneys worked out a deal that would avoid a trial in exchange for klinger pleading guilty to third degree murder with a minimum sentence of close to 30 years i was tired i just wanted to go home and grieve and so i made a choice to to to allow him to have that plea deal first degree was off the table but ben was off the streets what was he sentenced to it was 28 to 56 years personally i was like this guy deserves first degree in the rest of his life in jail but it's easy for me to say because i'm not the family they're the ones that have to live with this as part of his deal benjamin klinger also pleads guilty to several other charges including sending explicit photos of his underage girlfriend to friends at sentencing he's given the chance to address samantha's family saying quote i accept full responsibility for the loss of a very special person i want you to know with all my heart i'm sorry i'm really sorry in response lancaster county judge margaret miller delivers the following statement quote today is the first day i've seen any degree of humanity or motion in you there is no doubt in my mind you lived your life with a callousness arrogance and a cowardliness because being a bully is a coward the judge had some choice words that i rarely see handling the issues that i that were raised by the defense after that 21 year old benjamin klinger is taken away to serve out his 28 to 56 year sentence end of story not exactly what happened in the post-conviction hearing well the guy pled guilty this wasn't a trial where where he went down saying i didn't do this you got the wrong guy i'm innocent i was framed he admitted in court to the judge that he did these things that i've described and he took the benefit of the bargain and now he wants a do-over even for seasoned investigators the way samantha heller died is almost too difficult to comprehend didn't doing this for 26 years i've seen a lot it would be one of the worst deaths imaginable because she suffered a traumatic injury to her body she would have known the impact was coming and to have her murder you know smothering somebody you don't die right away from that and so would be absolutely helpless end of her life and those were the horrific details samantha heller's family avoided at trial when benjamin klinger pleaded guilty to third degree murder but then roughly four years into his 28 to 56 year sentence klinger suddenly files an appeal to have his plea overturned ben trying to step up and want to take this plea deal off the table i'm sure it's infuriating it really makes me mad this is my baby and he took her and he ripped her life apart he had it right so what changed why does samantha's confessed killer now say he isn't guilty of deliberately taking her life and what was to be his first time speaking publicly about the case benjamin klinger was about to tell us himself thank you for taking my call right away from state correctional institution in albion pennsylvania ben tells our producers there's one thing he wants to make perfectly clear they fully take responsibility for the passing of samantha heller but he says it wasn't murder third degree or otherwise i believe i'm at vote for not driving in a safe manner do you wish you had gone to trial then yes yes so much if i knew then what i knew now i wouldn't have done i would have went to trial so i could tell my story one he says is much different than the version most people have heard no stories of abuse those were that's exactly what they were they were stories they weren't as you could see in the pictures she was not afraid of me she wasn't scared of a relationship she loved attention she loved getting sympathy from others and she knew the best way to get attention and to get sympathy was tell stories but prosecutors say what ben is calling stories were all true including one in which samantha called her aunt from inside ben's car been screaming quote if you don't get off the phone with your expletive relatives right now i'm going to run this car right off the road i never said that that's an absolute fault that i would never want to take her away from her family i would have never heard her now that that claim is absolutely false but ultimately that is what happened ben was behind the wheel during the crash that ended samantha's life so what does he have to say about that tragic night i can't tell you specifically because i don't remember the actions or hours and hours leading up to it a convenient excuse i had such a severe concussion you know the doctor at the hospital told my family that you know that they don't they wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if i never remember anything uh you know because the severity of the concussion that i don't remember hours before and days after how or why samantha even ended up in his car all a blank and he's not sure how that handwritten list of demands ended up in his car either i know what the police report said it looks as this that note was us discussing points for our relationship including one very big point a request for child support that note as part of what the prosecutor calls a crescendo of motives a series of things that would have angered ben clinger and made him furious enough to do what he did well it's just not true as far as child support i think most poor would never have been a problem with me i'm really family-oriented yeah yeah i would love to have it and i would i would have always been okay with having support but if that's so true how does ben explain having another girlfriend at the time and what was he overheard saying to her i'll read the quote at the hospital klinger telling his girlfriend now we can be together and she won't be between us the thing to understand is that the condition that i was in with the head trauma the concussion medications that i was on from just being in the car accident myself i don't remember hardly anything of that that time period i can't verify that i even said that i've seen the court documents i've seen the quotes but i it doesn't sound like my character and he says he's equally confused by some of the other things he's been reported saying after the crash like that he ended up on samantha's head after being ejected from the car that doesn't make sense i don't think i was ejected and if i said that i don't know if somebody asked me that when i was in that duke state and i didn't know and i said yes you know i was very confused and disoriented and i don't remember anything from that time again an answer that seemed just a little too easy and it brings up another question if he can't even remember the crash why did he plead guilty to third degree murder i intended to plead guilty to causing an accident that took a young woman's life i did not realize that third degree was there's intent and there's malice i was guilty of causing the death of samantha from a car accident but not in a malicious way that is murder and he says his defense at the time didn't adequately explain that my lawyer was ineffective he guided me toward that pool he encouraged me and said that made me guilty of actual murder and not a car accident and i can't accept him you know i did not kill sam in fact as part of his appeal klinger's new defense team points to another culprit all together yeah you know the guard rail pierced the car through the front dashboard and through the passenger area and out the door guardrails are not meant to operate that way my lawyer hired an engineer look at that guardrail and in fact did and he was willing to testify that very likely we both would have walked away from that accident had it been a correct guardrail but district attorney craig stedman has a response to that you know last time i checked guardrails don't reach out and murder people um the only reason the guardrail's an issue is if you drive the car into it at 100 miles an hour head on guard rail murderer no benjamin klinger murder the guardrail didn't drive the car at 115 miles an hour off the road guardrail didn't cause two years of abuse the guard rail didn't threaten the killer it's just really stupid i rarely say that about other arguments that i've seen in court but this is one of the dumbest ones on top of that it's really offensive it's really insulting but ben insists it was a contributing factor that he never did anything to intentionally cause the death of samantha and that believe it or not having his conviction overturned is just as much for samantha's family as it is for him you know i think it's a tragic miscarriage of justice it's not just that it's unfair to me it's unfair to her family it's unfair to her friends it's not fair that they have to try and live with this terrible picture painting of how she passed and it is terrible how she passed but to try and say that it was an intentional act it's not just a smear on me but the smear on her legacy at the end of the day someone i really cared about passed away and that's pretty much where our conversation cut off with ben continuing to stand firm that despite what he swore in court he didn't murder samantha heller at least he doesn't remember doing it so far a judge has rejected klinger's efforts to have his plea overturned but ben is currently appealing that ruling and if he does get a second chance i'll tell you something i'm really kind of okay with the do-over because a do-over doesn't get him a less sentence a do-over gets him back to square one you have a trial and he faces life in prison so i'll put this in the category be careful what you wish for and samantha's loved ones say ben won't be facing the same people he did before by some slim chance his appeal is granted i will fight this and i will sit through a trial and i will tell every tiny little thing and so everybody else that has contact and knows what happened to sammy he wants to try to fight us on this we'll fight right back and you're all stronger now than you were five years ago that's right he's not fighting broken people anymore we're strong now so bring it on

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 1,795,821

Rating: 4.8264003 out of 5

Keywords: Benjamin Klinger, Samantha Heller, Crime Watch Daily, True Crime Daily

Id: BzJA_5JbdbE

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020