Ep 32 | Ben Terry Transcript

Before we begin this podcast, please be advised that the following episode contains language that some listeners may find offensive and inappropriate. The opinions expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not reflect the views of the podcast producers. Listener discretion is advised.

People have a hard time believing my story when I tell it to them. Do you recall what his face looked like when you raised that gun to him? It happened so fast that, I'll be honest, I couldn't tell you. The guy's been to prison before for beating somebody, he's threatening you, he's - that's your residence.

Yeah, actually everything slowed down in that second. They had a dummy car and dummy routes for taking me back and forth to the courthouse. I had to wear a bulletproof vest. They had snipers on the roofs surrounding the courthouse. If I was in Jackson County, I never would've saw the inside of a jail cell.

Have you lost hope? Not entirely, no. But some days it's really hard.

You are now listening to the podcast voices of a Killer. I'm bringing you the stories from the perspective of the people that have taken the life of another human and their current situation thereafter in prison. You'll see that although these are the folks that we have been programmed to hate, they all have something in common.

They are all humans like us that admit that they made a mistake. Will you forgive them or will you condemn them? They're currently serving time for their murders, and they give us an inside glimpse of what took place when they killed and their feelings on the matter now. Here are the voices of those who have killed.

Welcome back to another episode of Voices of a Killer. In today's episode, we bring you the case of Ben Terry, a man who was sentenced to life without parole for first degree murder. Now, a life without parole is usually reserved for the most egregious crimes and the most dangerous criminals. Effectively, it guarantees that a defender will spend the rest of their life cut off from society.

So, what did Ben Terry do to warrant such a harsh sentence? Was it calculated murder as the prosecution claimed, or an act of self-defense? Since the incident in 2006, Ben has argued that he acted justifiably out of his own self-defense. Over 17 years, Ben has fought to prove his innocence, exhausting every appeal to overturn his sentence.

Today, we'll allow Ben to tell his side of the story. We'll hear about the series of threats that escalated to the point that Ben felt his life was at stake, and we'll raise questions about the failures that plague the US justice system. Should Ben Terry be spending his life in prison? Join us and decide for yourself on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So, Ben, where are you from? I'm from Clinton, Missouri. Born and raised there? Yeah. How would you describe your childhood? I guess, semi-normal. So I come from a broken home. Parents got divorced early. Both parents were pretty, pretty self-absorbed, off into their own world, trying to figure out their own problems, so I was pretty well left to raise myself for the most part.

Was there drugs and alcohol in the house? Yeah, there was a little bit of alcohol in the house. Neither one of my parents were drug users to speak of, or heavy drinkers by any means, but I definitely had exposure to it growing up. What about violence? No, my dad was a passive person in a lot of regards, but it was an abusive household, I will say that.

Do you take after your father having a passive attitude like that? No, I don't. Are you the opposite? Are you aggressive? I wouldn't say that I'm aggressive, but I'm pretty outspoken and quick to stand my ground. Does that cause you to get into situations like with fighting and things? It can, but not necessarily.

Have you had a lot of friction in your life, run ins with... situations where it got heated? I wouldn't say that. I've only been in half a dozen fistfights in my entire life. How about in prison? You get in fights there? I've spent the last 19 years in prison and I've never had to lay a hand on a single person.

Really? Really. Did you have siblings growing up around the house? I did. I got an older brother and I have a younger brother who's adopted. Do you have a relationship with family and friends on the outside? I have a relationship with my little brother. My eldest brother hasn't talked to me since I was arrested and most of my family's passed away at this point, but I still have a strong relationship with my mother and I got an aunt and a cousin that I'm very close to.

Yeah. Of course, my own children. How about your love relationships? Do you ever get married and have kids? I was married for a short time. We had two children. My oldest I still talk to on a pretty regular basis and one of her three children. So Ben, I interview a lot of people down for murder. Quite a few of them say they're innocent.

I'd be the first one to say there's definitely innocent people out there, but there's a lot of people that claim it and everybody can't be innocent. But you too are saying that you're innocent. What I'd like to know is, is what happened the day of your crime that you're claiming innocence on? Just take me back to the beginning of who is the victim to you, in relation to you.

The victim was a man named Benny Ladd, and he was some, officially he was some local muscle that was paid by somebody else I'd made mad to come after me. Why did you make somebody else mad? I'd got off into drugs and alcohol and drinking too much and everything else, and of course that led me to run around with the wrong people, and this one person in particular.

She felt like I owed her money and I felt like she owed me money. I told her where she could go with that and she didn't like it and she paid this guy named Ladd to come after me and collect what she thought she was owed. All in all it totaled about $1, 500. What was it over? It was over drugs? It was over... we traded, she had a car, and that I was interested in, and she wanted my big screen television that I had, and so I traded her my big screen television in exchange for some m***amphetamine and her car that she was trying to get rid of.

So... How long had you known this girl for? Probably about three months, four months maybe. So was there a lot of back and forth, her threatening you, saying I'm gonna find, I'm gonna kill you, or anything like that, or is it just...? She never said it. She never come out right and said she was going to kill me, but she left a few threatening messages on my, you know, on my voicemail and things like that, and one in particular was, "You thought you had problems now."

What was your response to those? Mostly I just tried to avoid her. My previous run in with Ladd... I'd actually had one other previous run in with him. He wasn't a stranger. It's, Clinton's a small town, so there's only about 12, 000 people. Yeah. But, when I was about 12 years old, him and a carload of his friends tried to run me down after school one day.

The guy that she sent after you? The guy that she sent after me, yeah, 10 years before she sends him after me, he, him and a carload of his buddies tried to run me over one day after school. Did he use drugs? Get into the drug scene? Yeah, he was a... he was a avid drug user and he was a convicted felon. He just got out of prison a couple years prior to his death.

He beat someone else over the head with a tire iron and he ended up doing about 4 or 5 years, I think. Were you a convicted felon at the time? I was not. At this time, would you say that you had issues with anger? Is that something you could say about yourself? Oh, absolutely. I was actually a very angry young man.

That's why I was doing drugs and drinking. Eighty miles southeast of Kansas City lies the small town of Clinton, Missouri. It's a quiet town at the upper reaches of Truman Lake, with mom-and-pop stores lining its streets. Known mostly for its natural beauty, Clinton is the kind of place where life moves slowly.

In 2005, Ben Terry was living in the gridlocked streets of Clinton. At 22, he had taken on the mantle of his family's plumbing business, his whole life lying ahead of him, but that all changed when Ben got caught up in a financial dispute. Things escalated and ultimately, Ben found himself mixed up with the town's tough guy, Benny Ladd.

Now, Benny Ladd was not someone you'd want to cross. Around Clinton, he was known as a violent thug with a long rap sheet. Notably, he had been arrested for brutally beating someone with a tire iron. And Ben's first encounter with Lad wasn't pretty either. Ladd had tried to run him down with a car when he was just a kid.

Now Benny Lad set Ben in his sights and over the next few months, he terrorized Ben. Cars would pull up at Ben's house at late hours of the night, tires squealing and people yelling and Ben eventually resorted to living out of his plumbing shop. Everyone knew what Ladd was capable of and Ben lived in a constant fear for his safety.

But the conflict would only reach its breaking point one evening in July. So, Ladd comes after you. Where are you at whenever y'all meet up, just where we're at? At that time, I was living in my shop. We had a family business that we shut down. And so, I was living in front of it and using the garage to work out of in the back.

I started a handyman service a couple years prior. So, at that point, it was still afloat. And you were in there? I was. I was in there. What time of day was it? It was evening time, around 6, I guess it was around 6 o'clock, 6: 30, somewhere around there, maybe a little later. Were you aware that he was on the way, or this was a surprise when he got there?

I'd been there for a while. I was waiting on a friend to show up. It was the 4th of July, 2005, so we were supposed to go to a barbecue, and I went outside to get a pack of cigarettes out of the car, and when I came outside, I noticed that he was about halfway up the street at a person's house that he knew.

And they were putting in a car stereo, sitting out front of the house. You just saw him over there? Was he kind of eyeballing you? As soon as I came outside, they all stopped what they were doing and gathered at the front of the car and stared down the street at me. Did you know that she basically had got him to do what he's going to do?

Yeah, she left a voicemail on my phone. I'd been dodging things for a couple months. I'd even went so far as to give them everything they asked for, trying to essentially make them go away. To make Ladd go away? To make Ladd go away. Everything that she wanted, I gave her. And she wouldn't drop it? And she actually sent word through a third party while I was sitting in county jail that she didn't send them at me that day.

But the consensus I got was that even after I'd squared up with her, that he just made it a personal issue. Why? Because y'all had words or something or maybe he heard you say...? No, actually, prior to that we had never had words because I was scared of him because he was a pretty unstable guy and like I said, he snuck up on somebody and beat their head with a tire iron.

Yeah, you come outside of your shop where you live and he's right up the road, you can see him. What's the next step? Right. Does he throw up his hands? What happens? And they all stare down at me, you know, the whole menacing look. So I go back in my shop and I tell my friend, I had a friend, Teresa, that was there with me at the time, and I tell her that he's outside. She's aware of the situation and what's going on.

And they had, about two weeks prior to this, three weeks prior to this, she'd been parked in front of my shop. And early one morning, they had, we believe it was them, but they came down the street and broke into her car and stole her car stereo. And I called the police. They had actually came out just in time to scare him off apparently. They left a nice cold cup of orange juice sitting on the tailgate of my truck,

which was sitting right next to her car. And so I asked, when the police showed up, I told them about the cup. They fingerprinted the cup but they left it. They said, "We don't have any use for this." And so, they left it there and so, that cup was sitting there in my shop. And at that point, I was tired of ducking and hiding and not speaking my mind. And I took that cup outside and I set it on a bucket at the end of the drive and I told him what I thought of him. And basically I called him son of a bitch and said, "Here's your cup.

You're not as smart as you think you are." Okay. And what was the response? Was it immediate back at you or did they pause and get scared or what? No, he definitely didn't show any fear from where I was standing. He just, he pulled up and then I turned around and went back inside. And shortly after that, my cousin

that I was waiting on to come pick me up showed up at the shop. And I went outside to tell him to pull his truck up a little farther so it'd be in full view of the security camera. And when I did, that was the first time that Ladd and I and that group exchanged words. How far were they from you from this point?

At that point, they hadn't left the front of the house that they were at, which was probably about 100, 150 feet up the road. Okay, so you go outside, do you get in the car and leave? No, I just told them to pull this truck up a little farther. We went back and we exchanged words with Ladd. Were the words like "F you" or "Come get some", or was it...?

Yeah, it was basically "F you", and then they yelled their "F you's" or whatever, and I... Okay. I told them, "Why don't you come down and get a..." I specifically said, "Why don't you come down and get your orange juice cup? And steal another car stereo while you're at it." Ah, okay. "The door's open." Okay. And then what's the next step?

And so, my cousin and I go inside, and at that point, when we go back inside, and he... My cousin says to me, he says, "Why you gotta stir the pot?" And I said, "It doesn't matter what I do. They'll come down here anyway." And anyhow, I had told, normally we'd leave the door unlocked, or you'd lock the door behind you when you came in because of the problems I was having. But the police, when they filed the report and said there was nothing they could do unless somebody was caught in the act of actually breaking in the car or whatever the case may be. And so in my convoluted mind at that point, I thought, well, if they come down here

I'm going to go outside and I'm going to catch them messing with the car or whatever the case may be. So I told him to leave the door unlocked because the cars were literally parked not three feet from the front door. And I walked into my office and grabbed a shotgun and brought it back in the front room with me.

And so Jamie, my cousin, long and short of it, he walked past me into my office. And not long after he walked past me into my office, my front door swung open. Benny Ladd come charging inside. Was he running? No, I wouldn't say he was running. But he didn't make it very far cause I snatched up the shotgun and I leveled it at him.

And... Whenever you leveled it at him, did he stop or did he continue walking at you? It happened so fast that, I'll be honest, I couldn't tell you. What kind of, was it a 12 gauge? Yeah, it was a 12 gauge pump shotgun. I was an avid hunter. What kind of rounds were in it? Steel, lead, buckshot? If I remember right, it was a duck load.

Yeah, okay, so that hurt. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty graphic and pretty traumatic. By July, Ladd had been harassing Ben for months. Even when Ben conceded and forked up the money, Ladd wouldn't ease off his intimidation. This had become personal for Lad and he had seemed to relish bullying Ben. Then something changed.

Early one morning, a stereo was stolen out of a car parked outside Ben's store. On the tailgate of Ben's truck, he found a cold cup of orange juice left behind. Nobody was caught in the act and police didn't take action, but Ben knew exactly who was behind the incident. To Ben, this was the last straw.

He'd suffered constant abuse and lived in fear. Now it was time to stand up for himself. So on the evening of the 4th of July, when Ben saw Ladd at a house down the road, he confronted him for the first time. Words of hostility were exchanged and then Ben said some critical words, quote unquote, "Why don't you come down and get your orange juice cup and steal another car stereo while you're at it?"

The door opened, ben went back inside, leaving the door unlocked, so he could quickly catch Lad in the act if he vandalized another car. But Ladd didn't touch Ben's car or the orange juice cup. Instead, he walked into Ben's plumbing shop, of which he also used as his residence. Ben watched as a man he knew to be unstable and violent entered his home.

He leveled his shotgun, fired, and Ladd hit the ground. Dead. So Ben, how far were you from him when you pulled the trigger? I was probably about 12, 14 feet away, approximately. Did you have the gun on your hip or up on your shoulder when you fired it? No, I had it seated at my shoulder when I fired at him.

Okay. Do you recall what his face looked like when you raised that gun to him? Yeah, actually everything slowed down in that second and he was staring me down. So, he still had one hand was covered by the door. Or not by the door, but the one hand was behind him still, but anyhow, yeah, he was just staring me down.

He was walking towards you? He was. And no sooner than he stepped across the threshold, I pulled the trigger. And I don't see how the hell... So far, like before we move any further than this, that place, you live there? Yeah, it was my residence. Did you have a residence anywhere else? No, that was the only place I was living at the time.

At that moment, my-my... she'd have been my fiancee at that point, so we'd been together for on and off for about six, seven years, but we were, we were, we were on the outs, so that was my family. there? I did. So that's your f***ing residence. The guy's been to prison before for beating somebody, he's threatening you, he's... Man, did you have a paid attorney or public defender?

I had a public defender. Yeah. And the guy that actually argued my trial, I met with him twice before my trial. The fact that you were into drugs probably didn't help you, because that's... It seems like they just lean a little harder on the people that aren't uppity, honest citizens when it comes to... They can't separate the s***.

It didn't. The prosecution wasn't allowed to bring it up. The lawyer wanted to try to paint me as... See, I'm even talking about them just pressing the charges. Because it starts where, like, when you press them, they're evaluating everything when they go to, before they press the charges. And they're like, "Okay, is this the guy that ran for mayor?

Or is this the guy that we know likes to do a little bit of m***?" You know what I mean? But anyway... You fire the weapon. Where does it hit him? I hit him in the left side of the chest where the heart's at. And the autopsy report said it clipped off the top part of his heart, the left ventricle, and he more or less died instantly.

Did he fall face forward or fall back? It blew him back out the door. It blew him? Wow. Yeah, it... Did it take him off his feet? Yeah, it took him off his feet. Yeah, it took him off his feet. There's no exit wound. It punched an inch and a quarter sized hole into his chest. That sounds... So I'm pretty, I'm like, I grew up around shotguns and duck hunting and dove hunting, so I'm real familiar with shotguns.

That doesn't sound like a duck load to me. It was a three and a half inch shell out of a Mossberg from twelve feet away. There was a lot of force behind that. I guess the choke was all where, you know what. Okay, so that's, was there a lot of spread? What was the spread on the... on his chest, do you know? There, there was no spread.

There was a single entry point of an inch and a quarter. And they found the wadding inside of him. And... That's closer than 12 feet, buddy. That's what the prosecutor's theory was, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that's the facts of the matter. And so right now I'm actually waiting. We finally got the money together to pay for a ballistics expert.

Yeah, I'd love to hear it. Just, obviously I'm not an expert, but I've... From 12 feet, I'm from 12 feet away with a Mossberg with a full choke, the pattern doesn't start to spread until... probably at least 20, probably at least 20 feet, but they found the wadding inside the chest also. So, but... Yeah, that just, that sounds... I'm not a gun expert, but I'm real familiar with shotguns, but definitely not an expert.

So that would, did y'all hire an expert to figure that out? Yeah, as a matter of fact, we finally got the money together to hire an actual lawyer and that was one of the first things. I don't know... That we... I don't even know why I'm making it an issue because whether he was 12 foot or whether he was real close, he still was coming at you in your home.

That was part of the prosecutor's theory and the medical examiner testified that how far he believed I was away and everything else and it coincided perfectly with the prosecutor's theory. And we had nothing to offer him to refute that at my trials. That is part of the reason that I'm sitting here today.

Maybe an attorney will hear this and help you out or some kind of way. I don't know. That's why I hope that something like that happens on my podcast where I know there are innocent people out there and obviously there's a bunch of ones that are guilty, but I don't... Your circumstances are... I think if you would have had a paid attorney that was really good and you were an upstanding citizen, then probably wouldn't have the route you had, but... If I was in Jackson County, I never would have saw the inside of a jail cell. But it also has to do with the size of your county. I do have, we do have a lawyer now. We do have a paid lawyer now, that's how I'm getting the ballistic expert, the report done.

I am not a lawyer, but as I hear Ben's story, I see a strong case for self-defense. In the United States, a principle called the Castle Doctrine grants you the right to use deadly force against an intruder in your home. It's originally based on the idea that your home is your castle. Therefore, you have the right to stand your ground and protect yourself and your residents.

Although laws vary by state, the Castle Doctrine generally justifies the use of force if you're in a reasonable enough threat. You need to meet several legal conditions to establish this. Firstly, you must prove that the victim unlawfully entered your home. This checks out for Ben. The shop was his place of residence and Ladd entered it without an invitation.

Second, you must show that the intruder posed an immediate threat. It was reasonable for Ben to think his life was in danger. He'd suffered months of threats from a man with a history of violent crime and intimidation. When Ladd entered that door, Ben expected that Ladd's next step would be violence.

Thirdly, you need to show that the level of force you used against the intruder was proportional to the threat. Looking at Ladd's history of assault, that's a reasonable assumption as well. So, to me, Ben's case seems to tick these three legal boxes. Did Ben justifiably use force to defend himself? Ben certainly seemed to think so.

Looking at his actions in the minutes after the shooting, it seems that Ben felt he had nothing to hide. We'll hear more about that after the break.

Ben, after you shot him and he flew back like that, what was the very first thing you did? Did you run up to him or did you like, you know, pause and...? What happened? I was in shock. I've just, I was frozen in time and my cousin comes running out of the office and he said, "Ben, what the hell happened?" And I said, "I just shot him." And he said, "What do you mean you just shot him?"

I said, "He just came in the f***ing door." And so my cousin said, "Call the police." And so I get on the phone, and, on my cellphone, and, I walk towards him as I'm talking on the cellphone. And I looked out the crack where, because his body is holding the door open at this point, and I looked out the crack between the door and the door jamb.

And I can see two guys running down the street with a sawed-off shotgun when I'm on the police with the phone. And so I tell them, "Hey, somebody just came in my house. I need the cops here now." And they said something... You know, "I shot him." They said, "Okay, we got an ambulance on the route." And I said, "The hell with an ambulance.

I need the police here right now." And so they actually used that against me in court as well. About asking for the police instead of ambulance? Yeah, they said that I knew he was dead before he hit the ground. That when I shot him... They asked me if I aimed or if I just pointed and shot in the initial interview.

And I didn't think I had anything to hide, because I didn't feel like I'd done anything wrong. And so, I just tried to tell them what happened. And in the process of that, when they asked me if I'd pointed or just shot, I told them I shot him in the left side of the chest, where the heart's at. And they used that as a statement of premeditation.

The fact of the matter is I've never been taught to shoot anything anywhere else. So, what happened when the people with the shotgun, after you called, you're on the phone with them. Who gets there first, the cops or the guys with the sawed-off? The guys with the sawed-off turned around and ran the other direction after my cousin went out the back of the shop and he waved them off, so...

I guess when they figured out that I wasn't alone in that regard, they didn't come any further. Did you look at the victim and check his pulse or touch him or look at him or anything? I tried to shove him out the door so I could get the door closed when I saw the other two coming down the street. How did you do that?

Did you pick him up and try to drag him? No, I just tried to push his leg out of the way with my foot. I didn't want to step out of the door because I didn't want to get shot at. Was he gurgling or moving or flinching or anything? No, I... He was, like I said, he was dead before he hit the ground, so he passed instantly.

Yeah. Whenever you'd gotten the body pulled out and moved out of the way and you went inside, did you wait inside for the cops? I never got him completely pushed out of the way. His knees were blocking the door from shutting all the way. Yeah. So what happened after that? But, I was, I lost contact with 911, so I had to call them back. And my friend Teresa was there, and of course she came out, and she's

scared s***less and I told her to go get in the middle room and get down. She came out about the same time I saw the two guys with the sawed-off shotgun. And then I just stayed on the phone with the police and waited. Was, I essentially was waiting for the other guys to either start shooting or for the cops to show up,

so. When they showed up, what happened? They ordered me outside and I told the 911 operator that I had to go. And I came outside with my hands up and that cellphone in it and they made me get on the ground and then they cuffed me and then they put me in a car and I sat there for about 15 minutes or so, 20 minutes until...

They got a grasp on what was going on and they decided to, then they figured out who was dead and they decided they better move me to the jail as soon as possible because his family was probably going to soon be on scene and they wanted to prevent any more bloodshed. Yeah. So they move you away from the body to cause any kind of friction with the family.

You went to the police station. Did they put you in a jail cell, or did they question you? They did. They put me in a jail cell and in a holding cell. And I don't know, it had been probably 10 or 12 hours. They left me there for an hour, a couple hours, and then a policeman come and interviewed me, and that's when I gave my statement.

Then they put me back in a holding cell, and I was in there for I don't know how many hours because there's no clocks on the wall. And the more I sat there, the more I was concerned about the wellbeing of... My wife and kids at the time, and I started yelling for somebody to come down here. And nobody would answer or respond, so when I finally did get the jailer down here, I told him, "Either charge me with something or let me go." And at that point, the only thing I could think of was I needed to get my family safe and get them out of town, because he had three brothers and a sister and of course, his whole family was known for, essentially for being pretty violent people.

And so I was concerned about the fallout and the backlash of all that. And an undetermined amount of time after that, they brought me up to a drunk tank across from the booking desk in the county jail there and one of the sheriff's deputies come in and read off murder one charges to me. What were you saying when he was reading those off?

What were you thinking? "What's happening? I don't understand." Did you anticipate that possibly happening while you were sitting in there? Not a clue. Not in a million years would I have thought that I was going to be charged with first-degree murder, or any kind of murder for that matter. It was hard to listen to that?

It was incredibly hard and incredibly shocking. It did not seem real. And you haven't been out since that day, have you? No, I haven't. We couldn't afford the bond that they set to start with. And we decided even if we could afford the bond, there wasn't any safe place for me to stay in the area. They shot up the front of my dad's house, somebody did. They put a bullet right through the front door. While I was waiting trial, they had multiple death threats. They had a dummy car, in the dummy routes, for taking me back and forth to the courthouse. I had to wear a bulletproof vest. They had snipers on the roofs surrounding the courthouse. It was a very big ordeal. Cause of the family? Yeah, due to his family and the threats that had been made. It was just... They shot up your house and all, your dad's house and all that?

I can't say with certainty who shot my father's house, but somebody drove by and shot around right to the front door. Have you gotten any hate mail? No. Nobody's sent me any hate mail. Is their family connected to any prison gangs in there, Southwest or anybody? No, as a matter of fact, he had an uncle who was, or I guess it was a cousin, not an uncle.

It's a... He had a cousin who was doing life for killing somebody when he was in his early teens. And he'd been locked up for about 20 years when I came to prison. And he wrote me a letter to ask if I'd sign an enemy waiver so he could come to the camp I was at. 'Cause it was closer to his family.

And so I did, and I thought either he's on some BS or he's being legit. And either way if, it is what it is. But if he's being legit, then I don't want to keep him from being able to see his family cause I understand exactly what prison is like. It's a terrible place to be. I signed the enemy waiver and he came up.

I was at Crossroads at that point in time. And so we actually spent quite a bit of time talking. And his opinion wasn't popular among his family at the time. It's probably not still, but he told me he forgave me and knew the situation wasn't ideal on any level and that... he told me to not give up fighting to make it home, so, which was pretty shocking considering all past experience, but he was a very stand-up individual in that regard, so it was a surprise.

That feel good to hear that? It did. It was encouraging and it was also a shock. And he's since made it home. He got, he paroled off his regular life sentence, so. It took just seconds for Ben's life to change forever. And after Ladd fell backward, Ben wasn't even certain he was out of danger yet.

Ladd's friends narrowed down on the house with the sawed-off shotgun and Ben frantically called 911, but Ben's shock only magnified when he was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder. Insisting he'd acted out of self defense, Ben was certain that he hadn't done anything wrong. Over the next tense couple of weeks, Ben feared for the safety of his family members.

The anger of Ladd's family was fierce. There were gunshots at Ben's father's door, bulletproof vests, snipers at the courthouse. Ben was a marked man, which was part of the reason why he chose to remain in the safety of prison. Nevertheless, Ben has also received unlikely support from Ladd's family. Later, while at Crossroads Jail, Ladd's cousin was transferred to Ben's prison.

To Ben's surprise, Ladd's cousin offered Ben his forgiveness and encouraged him to keep pursuing his freedom. Back in 2006, however, the thought of a life in prison wasn't yet a reality. As the court trial began, Ben was determined to use this opportunity to clear his name. So once you went to trial and... did you plead not guilty, correct?

They offer you a plea deal? They did. They offered me 25 years on second-degree murder. So I was 23 years old when this happened, and so that was two years longer than I'd been alive. And what year was this? That was in 2006. It took seven months from the time that I was arrested to the time I went to trial.

And you had 12 jurors? I did. And an alternate. Were you not able to say that was your home? Did they not let you use that in court? I was allowed to do some. They, it was established as a home because I had a bed there, I received mail there. How the hell did the jury...? Why'd they do what they did? I had a public defender to start with, and so, the prosecutor's theory was this. I'd started the argument when I went outside and told him to go F himself, and then I baited him into coming down with the orange juice cup.

And then I invited him inside with the intent to ambush him when I told him to come get the cup and steal another car stereo while you're at it. Of course the prosecutor knows all this stuff. Come on. Of course, that could be a scenario. But the prosecutor doesn't know that. Did somebody say that you said that? Did the other guy that was with the victim, did they say you were trying to get him to come inside?

No. Nobody said I was trying to get him to come inside. That was part of it. When I told him, "Come down and get your stupid orange juice cup. And why don't you steal another car stereo while you're at it. The door's open." They said that I was implying the door to the house. So, with the... And then because I left the front door unlocked, because I intended to be able to get out of it quickly if somebody came down to mess with the cars, they said

that was... Where was the cup? When you brought it in or you left it out? No, I left it on, sitting on the five gallon bucket at the end of the driveway. You could have reached it without stepping over the property line. And that's what it was all about. It was the cup out there. Man, you got f***ed. Yeah, and on top of that, if I was truly serious about him coming down to get the cup or anything else. On top of that, my friend Teresa had taken the cup and actually peed in it.

I guarantee you if an off-duty police officer would have been in an argument with somebody and said, "Come get your f***ing cup" and left it at the road and went in his house and somebody went in his house and he f***ing shot him in the chest right as they entered, he wouldn't be in prison or whoever.

Jesus, dude. It's pretty wild. People have a hard time believing my story when I tell it to them. But it's all there. No, trust me. I've... It's all there in black and white in the court record even. Ben, how long was your trial? How long was my trial? It lasted three days. What did you think whenever, before they told you what their verdict was, how did you feel it went?

So the first day was discouraging. The second day, I felt like... Was it the second day? After we got to make our argument and my lawyer actually pointed out the inconsistencies, the fallacies in the state's witnesses statements and everything else, we were feeling pretty confident at first. And then at one point in time, we actually stopped to... It was the beginning of the third day, before the trial started, we stopped and took counsel with my parents and with my lawyer, considered the, uh, possibly taking the plea deal because it wasn't looking good. So you considered taking the plea deal at one time? At one time I did, and so, and at that moment... So they offered me 25 years on second-degree murder initially, but my public defender told me that she was also under the understanding that the prosecution was going to seek to add an armed criminal action charge to it and ask for life on that one, or 25 years on that one as well.

I mean, that's what I don't understand. They just want to like, ugh... It's very much a double jeopardy situation. It's already a violent crime. So obviously there's a weapon being used. But fire away. Yeah. So let me ask you something. You're sitting in there these three days, you look over at the jury.

When you're into this situation, do they stare at you? What are they doing? Most of the time they might look at you outta the corner of their eye or something like that, but they tend to try not to make eye contact with you. The day that they filed in to pass the judgment essentially, or give their decision

after deliberation, not a single one of 'em looked my direction and so I-I knew. Before they read it off, that not a single one of them looked at me and they decided I was guilty of something. You felt like they were embarrassed about their decision? They didn't, too embarrassed to look at you? Too ashamed?

Perhaps. I can't really say what they were feeling. Or I couldn't say what they were feeling at that time. But I know that they realized that they were condemning a man to prison for the rest of his life. Obviously their reaction, you know, was the cause of some emotion they had, what emotion that was, I don't know, but it could have been shame or guilt or embarrassment.

Yeah, I'd say or perplexed. My lawyer went and interviewed some of the jurors afterwards, which I guess is a normal thing. And one of them said, "We could tell that Mr. Terry was scared, but we didn't feel like we had any other choice." Which confused the hell out of me, because being afraid for your life is the first precursor of self-defense to start with.

Even then, before the law changed. Wow, yeah. But, so basically that said that my lawyer had did such a poor job at presenting a defense that they didn't feel like they had any ground to acknowledge that. So is what it, is what it felt like. At the end of the short three day trial, a jury found Ben Terry guilty of first-degree murder.

His claim of self-defense had been rejected. The prosecution's case went something like this. They argued that the murder was calculated, with Ben waiting inside his shop to ambush Ladd. They refused the idea that Ladd entered unlawfully, claiming that Ben had baited him into the property with the words, "The door's open", something Ben claims was misinterpreted.

Prosecutors also pointed to a close-range shooting and Ben's choice to call the police, not an ambulance, as proof of his intent to kill at all costs. Swung this way, it looked like a premeditated killing, not an act of self-defense, with Ben as the aggressor. Ben feels he wasn't justly represented against this argument.

At the time, a public defender was handling his case. Now, public defenders play a vital role in the legal system as they offer counsel to those who can't afford it. More often than not, they are just as capable as any quote unquote "real lawyer." But they also face a high volume of cases that limit the time and resources they can devote to each case.

This held true for Ben, who only saw his public defender twice before the trial. Not only this, but the level of experience of a public defender can vary, and sometimes, especially in complex cases like this, having a lawyer who specializes in self defense might have been critical to yield a different verdict.

Still, opinion had turned against Ben by the third day of the trial, and as jurors read out the guilty verdict, they avoided eye contact with Ben, possibly a sign of doubt about their decision. So Ben, who read out the verdict? One of the jurors? Yeah, the jury foreman. And you stood up for that? I did. When you stood up, did you look down? Did you look at the jury reading it? Did you look at the judge?

I remember looking at the jury and thinking, one of you needs to look at me in the face while you're saying this and while you're doing this. And none of them ever did, and not even the jury foreman, who was ex-military, but... I looked at the judge. And what was your reaction when they said guilty? My heart dropped.

That's all I can say is my heart dropped. I just, I couldn't, it felt, I just felt like I was still living in the twilight zone. Did you cry that day? Like a baby. Like a baby. They transported me to a different jail in a different county to avoid any other complications or issues and they put me in a suicide cell there immediately.

And so it was right next to the officer's desk with a big viewing window, and I just laid on the floor, and I just cried. And I just, I... first time in my life I'd ever lost my appetite. I couldn't eat. I just, I cried and I slept and I didn't know what else to do. I just couldn't understand. I couldn't understand how anybody could come to that conclusion.

Man, I could, it's like I can feel that pain, man. Benny Ladd had a rap sheet that was thicker than a family Bible. Just case after case of assaults and charges dropped and thefts and all this stuff on his prison record. He had a really messed up life. He made a lot of bad choices. There were cops that didn't like pulling him over.

You're talking about the victim? The victim, yes. While I was sitting in the county jail, almost every police officer that stopped by the county jail, that got a chance, that saw me, said, "Hey man, they should give you an award. They should give you a gun and a badge, they should give you this, they should do that, man. You did the right thing."

And I just kept telling myself, I kept saying to myself, and thinking to myself, "If I did the right thing, if this is so great, then how come I got charged with murder one, and why am I being treated like this?" And the other side of it was, I just took somebody's life. That's pretty serious, right? And I wasn't sure how to process that, so I don't have any military experience or service. I've never pointed a gun at anyone before in my life that I can recall. And I just, I was just, I was blown away that this was the attitude ever since, but if this was such a right thing, then why was I being treated like this?

Yeah. Ben you, uh, you, whenever you got read your guilty verdict. How far after that was the sentencing? It was a month or two months later that they did the sentencing, so... Did you have any outbursts in court? I did not. So when you... I did not. What was it like when he read the verdict to you? Did you stand up and stare at him?

I was still holding onto hope, because in that moment, the judge had the power to overturn, uh, the jury's decision, uh, which, you know, it very seldom ever happens, but it is possible, and I was holding out hope that, at the very least that he would have saw the absurdity of it all and corrected. Looking at his facial expressions and... Do you think that,

the demeanor of the judge, maybe he could have felt that way and he had it on his mind? I do. I believe the judge was conflicted. He looked conflicted? But not... yes. But not conflicted enough to do the right thing. Yeah. And so that's very telling of his personal issues and whatever things might be going on in that courthouse, in that county.

And because the fact of the matter is... When humans are involved, there's gonna be mistakes made, there's fallibility, there's fill in the blank. And I don't know, it's just, yeah, he felt, I believe he felt conflicted but not conflicted enough to do the next right thing. And what did he sentence you to?

Life without parole. Life without parole? Life without parole, which is to say... Are you f***ing kidding me? You go to, you go to prison, you never get out. Jesus. Dude. Man. Now when we can... Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm just f***ing pissed off right now. When we considered taking the plea deal when things were not looking well, and my lawyer was just shrugging his shoulders, I talked it overwith my family in a side room, off the courtroom. And the lawyers explained to me that a life sentence was 30 years, and it was our understanding that if I got life without parole, that meant that I had to do a life sentence without a chance of parole. So that meant I had to do a flat 30 years. And we thought, if I'm not guilty of this to start with, then what's another five years?

If I lose this, what's another five years? And so 25 years didn't seem like that great of a deal. It wasn't a great deal to start with, but especially if I'm not guilty to begin with, and if I'm just going to have to do five more years. I went into that with the understanding that after 30 years in prison, that I would have the chance to go home.

But that is not the case. Despite signs of reservation from the judge, Ben was sentenced to life without parole. Ben met his sentencing with complete disbelief. That moment, he says, was like living in the twilight zone. He justifiably defended his life. Prison guards were even congratulating him. But his defense team hadn't managed to convince the people who mattered most, the jury, of his innocence.

Now the weight of a murder conviction hung on his shoulders. To add salt to the wound, Ben was handled the harshest possible sentence. Life without parole. At the time, Ben didn't fully grasp the implications of this sentence. It meant that Ben would spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of release.

At 23, his life in the outside world was effectively over. Recently, Ben has actually become an active advocate for prison reform. Together with a fellow inmate, he has authored the Killing Time Bill. This proposed bill argues that people sentenced to life without parole should be able to opt for a voluntary death sentence instead.

Lifelong incarceration, Ben told a news outlet, is a cruel and inhumane punishment that gives inmates no incentive to reform and no hope to rehabilitate. The chances of passing this law are very slim, however, Ben's efforts have brought awareness to the cruelty of a life without parole sentence.

Considering his advocacy for the killing time bill, I was curious about Ben's experience of prison life. Facing life in prison, a world passing you by, must be painful. Has Ben managed to accept his circumstances? How has he found a way to cope?

How long have you been in prison now? I'm working on year 19 right now. So I just finished up year 18 about a month ago. Have you already exhausted all your appeals? I've exhausted every appeal all the way up to the federal habe stage. The only thing I have left is to file a state habe, and in order to do that, you have to bring new evidence.

And it has to reach a significant level that it could have influenced the jury's decision. Or I have to bring a Brady violation, which is something, a situation where evidence was withheld by the state, and whether it was by the court or the police or the prosecutor or whoever. And that's, those are the things we're working on now.

That's why we're getting a ballistics report because the medical examiner was allowed to testify to ballistics, you know, to matters of ballistics and it's outside the realm of his expertise and he was wrong because I know earlier in the interview we talked about how much a shotgun pattern should spread within 10-12 feet or 14 feet but their theory was that I was standing right next to the door. And the problem and the medical examiner testified that, according to the wound that the striations around it were stippling, which is powder burns. And that he believed that I could have been, I was three feet or closer when I shot him, and that would fit the prosecutor's theory that I was standing right at the door waiting for him to come in to ambush him, as opposed to being across the room and... but there's no exit wound.

There was damage to the inside of the chest cavity, and the back wall of the chest cavity, but there was no exit wound, because the only some factual or scientific evidence allowed in was the prosecutor's witness, and it coincided with the prosecutor's theory, and my attorney didn't offer anything to refute that evidence.

And it became a point of contention of where I was standing at in the room. I was third generation on our plumbing business. So, I grew up in that office. I know exactly how many steps it is from the front door to the back door and everything else. And so, when I say, when, I think at the time, I said I was probably 16 feet away.

And if I'm standing there and I'm holding a shotgun that's 3 feet long, or a little less than 3 feet long, so that puts the end of the barrel at approximately 12 to 14 feet, depending on, give or take. If you take a tape measure to the room, it's 15 feet and 6 inches to the point where I was standing at. Yeah. So, and all that stuff didn't come out until after my trial because no one took the time to go down there and actually measure it.

And that's not even the half of it. There was a fourth guy there that the state's two witnesses lied and said that they were the only two people there besides the deceased. So right now I'm hoping that guy is willing to come forward and admit to being there. And we had an eyewitness neighbor that saw this guy come running out from between the houses and the only way he could have made it, with the direction he went, was if he was already down there at my property, which means he'd circled around to the back.

And so one was coming in the front door and one was coming in the back door, or at least covering the back. Have you lost hope? Not entirely, no. But some days it's really hard. I'm not going to lie. More than once I've thought about tying a bed sheet around my neck, but I keep finding a reason to get up.

What's that feel like, being in there for so long and exhausting your appeals and just being to where it's a slim chance, man? What's that feel like? It's, I'm going to tell you what, there's a sense of desperation that I wouldn't ever want anyone to feel. Some guys figure out how to do it. They figure out how to compartmentalize their life and to let go of the things that make them consider that kind of stuff. Losing family, missing out on opportunities. And essentially you have to find a new sense of purpose, because wherever you're at, if you don't have a sense of purpose, you're not going to find a reason, a good enough reason to live. And so, it's about finding a sense of purpose in here.

So, that's what I keep trying to do, even if it only lasts for a week or two and I have to find another one after that. That's what I do. Do you exercise? Yes. So I found it's integral to mental health and I need all the mental health I can get. So to stay sane in a place like this, because it really will rob your humanity if you let it.

What about meditation? I'm actually a Christian. I've spent a lot of time in prayer and study and just trying to focus on those sort of things and relying on a power greater than myself. Do you see a lot of violence in there? I do, I do. I try to stay out of the way, so I never got involved in gangs or drugs or any of the other stuff that populates prison. As a matter of fact, I've been sober since the day of my crime. But yeah, it's a pretty brutal and ugly place at times, but it's full of real human beings with real problems, and not everybody in here is, are broken, twisted people, they're just people who had one bad day or took one wrong turn, and they're just trying to figure out how to do life.

Prison isn't full of bad people. Yeah. So, Ben, I'm going to, uh, in case an attorney is listening to this, I want to say that your name is Ben Terry. It's spelled like it sounds. You're in Jefferson City Correctional Center, Missouri. You can be reached at JPay or Securus with your DOC number 1142 558. Is that correct?

That is correct. All right. I want to make sure and get that out there because... It's crazy, man. I appreciate it. So Ben, I hope that somebody hears this, that may be able to help you. I think it, out of all the interviews I've done, you're at the very top for people that I think are wrongly convicted. I know this is a podcast.

I don't have all the evidence, but usually you can get a kind of a feel for what it is and what it needs to be or whatever, but I appreciate you opening up to me. I hope that helps you in some kind of way being able to tell somebody what's going on and if you need something, you got my number and don't be afraid to ask.

I appreciate you giving me a chance to tell my story. This is a matter of getting guys and stories out there and getting them heard and getting people home. All right, well you take it easy, okay? I will. All right. Thank you, Toby. Yep. See you, man.

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer.

That's a hell of a story, man. Really got into doing anything illegal. First time I got in trouble was having a gun, but before that I didn't know what prison was. And that's a really, really loud noise when that gun went off. That probably scared the shit out of you. Yeah, it made my ears ring.

How long did you stand there in front of the body, in shock like that? A good couple of minutes and then I left.

But you think that you should be a free guy after doing life in prison? Yeah, how many people change, eh? There's some people that don't change, I felt should not get out.

That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Ben for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you would like to listen to the raw recordings of these interviews, you can visit https://www.patreon.com/VoicesofaKiller. By becoming a patron, you can access not only this, but hours of bonus recordings, correspondence, and you can contribute to the way the show is produced.

A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handle the production, audio, editing, music, licensing, and promotion of this podcast. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at https://www.voicesofakiller.com/. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast.

Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support. And we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future. Thank you for tuning in.

I'm your host. Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.