Pubdate: Fri, 11 Aug 2006
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/submit.asp
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265
Author: Mike Nichols
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

WHEN DOES INDIFFERENCE BECOME HOMICIDE?

Benjamin Stibbe is only 24 years old but, if a criminal complaint is 
correct, has left an astounding number of dead people in his wake.

That he is not dead himself might be one of the small wonders of his case.

Complaints charging him with a total of four counts of reckless 
homicide paint a picture of an inveterate heroin abuser - and supplier.

Awaiting a sentencing that ended up being postponed in Port 
Washington on Friday, he wore the requisite orange of the jailed. He 
was pale and silent and wasn't asked to answer any questions.

Here's just one I wish he would: At what point does callous 
indifference to people's lives become an almost willful taking of the same?

Lynn Smaxwill was 43 when she overdosed on cocaine and heroin the 
night of Dec. 11, 2002.

The complaint filed this week alleges Stibbe purchased those drugs in 
Milwaukee and was present in her Grafton house the night she died.

It also alleges that the very next day, fully aware of Smaxwill's 
death and having already been questioned by police, he went back to 
Milwaukee and purchased heroin for a different woman - one who 
happens to still be alive.

Others are not.

On the night of Oct. 15, 2005, Stibbe allegedly provided the heroin 
that killed Matthew Kobiske, a 21-year-old Grafton man; then, a mere 
week after that, allegedly provided the stuff 47-year-old James Helm 
died using.

He finally, we know for a fact because he already pleaded no contest 
to this one, provided the drugs that 17-year-old Angela Raettig used 
right before her life ended last Nov. 29.

There's no allegation he is a serial killer who planned things out. 
But the word "serial" appears apt, and the criminal complaints charge 
him with directly, if not intentionally, causing the deaths. Whatever 
you call him, families of victims believe, you cannot call him remorseful.

"He does not show remorse," said Smaxwill's younger sister, Ann, "for 
what he does."

It was Raettig's death that got the most publicity and causes people 
to wonder why more attention wasn't paid to Stibbe long, long ago.

Joe Schwind is a Cedarburg doctor who dates Angela's mother and tried 
to revive the girl the morning she was found. What, he wondered 
Friday, do prosecutors know now about the earlier deaths that they 
couldn't have known, and charged, a long time ago?

"You need evidence to charge it," responded Ozaukee County District 
Attorney Sandy Williams, "and we have been discussing it with the 
families, so I am surprised they would ask that question."

It's not the only one. People wonder how a man like Stibbe can 
operate entirely devoid, apparently, of a conscience.

"The thing that bothers me," said Schwind of the allegations, "is 
this guy contributed to the death of the first person and then he 
goes and does it again and then the third time."

The first time, he said, you could say somebody "accidentally overdosed."

"But after it happens time and time again," according to the 
allegations, "he has to know. Then he's truly responsible."

People overdose on heroin for a variety of reasons. Some are what 
Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen calls opiate-naive. 
They don't have any experience with the drug. Others overdose because 
they haven't used regularly and have lost their tolerance. Still 
others are genetically unable to metabolize it.

The most common problem in Grafton, criminal complaints now suggest 
though: a man who seemed completely unfazed by the fact he was 
leaving a trail of corpses behind him. Time and time and time and time again.