It’s hard to rise to the top of the field in any profession, but snake collecting?! Snakes are off-putting to most people, but somehow breeder and collector Ben Renick became a sort of rock star in his field, garnering worldwide praise and the financial rewards that came with it. But then, one day, he was found dead facedown in his snake pit. Was he the victim of one of his exotic poisonous snakes? Or was he murdered? Read on to find out the truth about this bizarre true crime tale.
Ben was wildly successful as a snake merchant. His company, Renick Reptiles in New Florence, Mo., was known for breeding special “designer” snakes with price tags over $100k. His friend David Levinson said Ben was doing stuff nobody had ever seen before, and he had a lot of “‘world’s first’ over the years.”
From the outside, Ben had quite the idyllic life. He was married to a lovely woman named Lynlee and had a few kids. They were doing so well financially that Lynlee even opened a second business: Ascensia Spa – something that Lynlee, a massage therapist, had always dreamed of doing.
However, everything came crashing down on June 8, 2017, when Lynlee called 911 frantically to say that Ben was lying face down in a pool of blood in his snake house. Could a snake have gotten loose and murdered its owner? Following the call, Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies rushed to the scene and entered the facility cautiously.
“I don’t care if it’s a 5-inch-long snake if something tries to bite me, I’m gonna light its ass up,” one officer said on audio captured by bodycam. “Holy shit!” a second officer said, looking at all the snakes. “Something got him, so watch your ass.”
The officers, holding shotguns, were on edge, according to coroner Dave Colbert. “Someone being killed by a snake is not something that happens every day, especially in Missouri,” he said.
However, when Colbert took a closer look at the body, he made a grisly discovery – there were no snake bites on Ben’s body at all. There were bullet holes though, eight of them, to be exact. One of those shots was at extremely close range.
Ben’s brother Sam rushed to the scene, finding authorities and Ben’s wife Lynlee distraught. “He was … shot in the back almost exclusively. I — I don’t think he saw it coming at all. … Ben had such a future ahead of him. You know, he was 29 years old. He was almost — almost 30. … A lot was lost.”
Who killed Ben Renick?
Ben met Lynlee when they were teenagers and married in 2014. Lynlee had a previous son and they had another child after the marriage. In 2016, Lynlee opened the spa. In the meantime, the snake business was booming. The whole enterprise was worth millions.
Police quickly ruled out a robbery because nothing was missing. Then they tried to find out who would have a motive to kill him. Ben and Sam’s father was involved in a ponzi scheme and had recently committed suicide, so they initially thought it may have been a revenge killing, but that led nowhere.
Next, they looked at Sam, who by cooperating fully and subjecting himself to a polygraph test, was cleared, despite Lynlee’s attempts to implicate him. Then they looked closer at Lynlee. Could she have been responsible? Deputies soon discovered that the couple’s marriage was not what it seemed.
Missouri State Highway Patrol criminal investigator Devin Foust said Lynlee told them about an affair she was having, and then another one with a man named Brandon Blackwell. She had also suspiciously deleted some social media messages with Ben. Those messages showed that Lynlee was mired in debt from her failing spa business and that Ben chastised her for it.
“After we started to find out about boyfriends, the shape the spa was in, how much money she owed, it just started pushing Sam to the side [as a suspect],” Foust said.
A motive soon emerged: If the couple divorced, Lynlee could potentially lose out on the sale of the snake business and the property. But his death would not only allow her to avoid that, it would also gain her access to a $1 million life insurance policy after Ben’s death. Altogether, it was a very significant amount of money.
However, despite her failing a polygraph, authorities couldn’t quite pin the murder on her, and the case went cold for three years. Then police got an unexpected tip from Lynlee’s ex Brandon Blackwell, who just happened to be in jail.
Brandon was in jail for violation of a stalking order that Lynlee got against him. He was screwed and wanted to make a deal, so he sang. He told authorities that Lynlee asked an ex named Michael Humphrey to help her with the murder.
“They drove to the farm, he had gloves, he had a firearm, the plan was for him to do it. They get there he hands her the gun and says he doesn’t feel comfortable doing … it’s something she’s gotta take care of. She walks in with a gun … and just shoots him a bunch of times.”
A spa employee named Ashley Shaw said that Lynlee told her “Michael got — too nervous, or didn’t want to do it, and so he handed her the gun, and she actually killed him, she said that she put the gun to his back and shot him several times.”
Lynlee was arrested and found guilty of murder in the second degree. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The judge in the case, Boone County Judge Kevin Crane, told Lynlee she was “lucky” for such a lenient sentence.
“You’re awful lucky, ma’am,” Crane said. “You’re going to get out in your 40s, and my 40s weren’t too bad. I just hope you don’t kill again.”
At present, Lynlee is still in jail and Humphrey is serving a life sentence.
Published: Aug 10, 2024 09:58 am