900915MB Kingston, Massachusetts, Abduction, Date of Incident 9-17-90, Located, Homicide

 

13 year old Melissa Benoit of Kingston, Massachusetts. Services requested by the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. NEMPB launched its largest massive ground search in efforts to locate the missing girl. With over 1000 civilian, law enforcement, fire department, Civil Air Patrol agencies. NEMPB coordinated the search efforts freeing up the Kingston Police to investigate the case. Melissa was found 11 days later by police in a basement of the neighbor's home, Henry Meinholtz. Meinholtz was later convicted of the abduction and murder of Melissa Benoit. Special thanks to Capt. Tim Barker of the Civil Air Patrol and all that helped the NEMPB on this case. Specialists on the case: Dana Preston, Steve Chase, Shaun O'Donoghue, Andy Gillis, Mike Meyers, Shaun O'Donoghue, Michelle Cormier, Noelle Prebolla, Arron Saris, Scott "Radar" Burnett, Michael Vaccaro.

 

A collection of articles.

 

Plymouth, MA -- Nov. 16, 1991 -- Henry L. Meinholz Jr.'s lawyer described for the first time yesterday how his client says he murdered 13-year-old Melissa Benoit in his garage before throwing her body into the basement of his home and burying her in a shallow grave.

Jack M. Atwood said Meinholz performed a sexual act just before the murder. Atwood did not say what it was. He said that the teen-ager then asked her alleged murderer, "Are you going to kill me?" Then Meinholz suffocated her with a pink blanket.

Nov. 22, 1991 -- Henry L. Meinholz Jr. testified yesterday that he raped and murdered Melissa Benoit, 13, in his garage, smothering her under a blanket after she had begged for her life, then holding her face in a pan of water to make sure she was dead.

Until Meinholz's testimony, there had been no definitive evidence that Benoit was sexually assaulted. He is not charged with rape.

Meinholz, 53, admitted in his two-hour testimony that he was "conscious" of committing the acts at the time he committed them.

VERDICT

Nov. 24, 1991 -- Cheers and applause broke out in Plymouth Superior Court yesterday as a jury convicted Henry L. Meinholz Jr. of first-degree murder for suffocating his 13-year-old neighbor.

In the front row, the victim's mother and younger sister embraced and wept as the verdict was announced. Later, relatives said they were pleased that the jury rejected Meinholz's defense that mysterious voices drove him to rape, kill and bury Melissa Benoit.

Meinholz, 53, a former church deacon and lumberyard bookkeeper, trembled slightly but showed no other emotion as he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. An appeal is automatic.

"Your despicable efforts to add a stigma on the memory of this child only adds to the enormity of your crime," Judge Cortland Mathers told Meinholz, referring to the defendant's graphic testimony that the eighth-grader willingly participated in sex before her death.

Mathers noted that, in colonial times, someone convicted of such a crime would have been hanged in the public square. "I truly regret this option is not open to me in this case," Mathers said.

Had the jury agreed with defense arguments that Meinholz was insane, he would have been confined to Bridgewater State Hospital. The jury also rejected the option of a second-degree murder conviction, which carries a shorter prison sentence.
Meinholz was not charged with rape.

By the time Benoit's body was found in Meinholz's cellar, 11 days after the murder, investigators were unable to say whether she had been sexually assaulted.

The jury of eight women and four men had been sequestered Friday night after deliberating for 2 1/2 hours. They reconvened yesterday morning, returning with a verdict just over an hour later.

Meinholz will be sent to the state's maximum-security prison in Walpole, a Boston suburb, pending his automatic appeal.

About 150 spectators filled the courtroom yesterday, as they did on other key days in the week-long trial. Some wept when the verdict was announced. Outside, others jeered as Meinholz was led away. "What are the voices telling you now, Henry?" somebody yelled.

Defense attorney Jack Atwood said Meinholz felt he had received a fair trial. He said Meinholz has expressed no remorse in the case, but has been under a suicide watch for about three weeks. "It was a very, very strong case the government had," Atwood said.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph Gaughan, who prosecuted the case, called Meinholz's graphic descriptions of sex with Benoit "a crime almost as vile" as the murder itself.

"I don't think there is any case more appropriate for the death penalty," he said. Gov. William F. Weld recently proposed legislation to reinstate the death penalty. Jurors declined to comment.

To support arguments that he was insane, Meinholz testified at length about a 40-year history of rape fantasies and sexual abuse of young women. He said he frequently exposed himself, fondled teen-agers he picked up hitchhiking, followed school buses to spy on young girls and made obscene telephone calls.
He also described having sex with a Marshfield teen-ager after pulling a knife on her in 1980.

He said he first heard the mysterious voice Sept. 15, 1990, when it instructed him to rape Benoit in his garage, then smother her with a blanket.

Meinholz then joined in a massive search for the missing girl that ended when investigators found her body buried under the dirt floor in his cellar. He testified he didn't remember the crime until months later.

In closing arguments Friday, Atwood argued that Meinholz's testimony and his apparent enjoyment in recounting his past perversions "shows you he's off on the moon somewhere." But Gaughan said Meinholz was sane when he killed the girl he had known since he moved in next door in 1978. "He acted of his own free will, driven by lust," Gaughan said.

Dianne Richard, the victim's mother, made a brief statement Friday, saying she and her 11-year-old daughter Erin would "continue our lives to the best of our ability and, in that way, honor Melissa." She urged the public to remember the intensive search that united the community, and urged them to "work toward peace for ourselves, our children, our country, our world."

Other Benoit relatives said they were satisfied with yesterday's verdict. "It's gratifying to know that Henry Meinholz will never follow another bus, never visit another mall, never rape another child or never murder another person," said the victim's uncle, Ken Benoit of Halifax. "He's one demented, perverted, sick excuse for a human being." Many area residents echoed those sentiments.

"I'm happy for Erin and Dianne that it's over, and I'm glad he's going where he's going," said Kingston Police Detective Richard Arruda, who worked on the case. "I'm glad," said Janet Murphy of neighboring Duxbury, where Meinholz worked for Goodrich Lumber. "My impression was that he was trying to get out of a jail sentence by acting insane."

UPDATE

June 20, 1995 -- The Supreme Judicial Court yesterday upheld the first-degree murder conviction of Henry L. Meinholz Jr., who kidnapped his neighbor, 13-year-old Melissa Benoit, and raped and strangled her before burying her in the cellar of his Kingston home in 1990.

In a unanimous ruling, the SJC said Plymouth County prosecutors did not err when they showed the jury a photograph of Benoit's body being removed from the grave and photos from the autopsy.

Henry Meinholz Jr. died in Prison.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BOSTON -- Former Massachusetts State Police administrator Bob Pino reflected back on some of the high-profile murder cases in Massachusetts that he helped solve during the course of his 23 years as a chemist at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab.

Case: Henry Meinholz Jr., convicted of raping and killing his 13 year old neighbor Melissa Benoit in 1990

"I was part of the collection in Meinholz. What ended up occurring was she was buried in his cellar, in Meinholz's cellar. And then we went to the crime scene and we found the body and we actually had to dig her out of the cellar, it was just a dirt floor cellar, we dug her out, she was covered with a little bit of coal and some other stuff, but she wasn't buried that far down.

And we just dug her right out and from there we found where the actual crime scene had occurred. She was killed in the garage, she was hung up in the garage by a ladder. There was blood throughout, he had tried to clean up but the blood had actually gone into the cracks, gone into, he had exposed 2 by 4's and the blood had actually sopped into the 2 by 4's. We could figure out back then that she was killed in the garage and taken back, taken into the cellar and buried."