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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In the vibrant city of Sacramento during the 1970s, a promising couple, a dedicated court reporter and a skilled public defender were eagerly preparing for their upcoming wedding. However, just months before their wedding day, tragedy struck.
Nancy's lifeless body was discovered, brutally stabbed 37 times, with no signs of forced entry. Despite an exhaustive investigation and countless leads, the case remained a mystery for half a century. It would take the most advanced forensic techniques and dedicated detectives to unravel the shocking truth behind this chilling cold case. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 177.
The murder of Nancy Benilak. Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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October 26, 1970 was scheduled to be a busy day at the Sacramento Courthouse in downtown Sacramento, California. Each courtroom had dozens of cases and motions that needed to be heard. And pretty soon, hundreds of people would be making their way to the court that morning. These people included private attorneys, criminal defendants, and the court staff, including clerks, bailiffs, and court reporters.
Every courtroom that morning was expected to be busy, so everyone needed to be on time for work. However, on the morning of October 26, 1970, one key court reporter was absent, 28-year-old Nancy Benelak. Nancy had worked for the Sacramento Courthouse for several years as a court reporter in the juvenile division. Every day, she was one of a handful of court reporters in charge of creating the official record of each proceeding.
Without the court reporter, there was no official court record. During the 1970s, there weren't any electronic recordings of the court hearings. All of the courtrooms relied on the court reporters to take a record of everything that was said in open court. So Nancy and the other court reporters had a critical job, especially on October 26, 1970.
A little after 8 a.m., Nancy's coworkers noticed that she still hadn't shown up to work. This was unusual because she was always on time. She wasn't the type to just stroll into work a few minutes late. And if she was running late or planning to call out sick, she would have called. So by 8 a.m., everyone was clocked in and ready to start the day. Everyone but Nancy.
About an hour passed and Nancy still hadn't shown up to her assigned courtroom. Her colleagues knew instantly something was wrong. So one of Nancy's coworkers decided to call her son and have him check on Nancy at her apartment. Her son lived close to Nancy's apartment and was off from work that day. So it would only take him a few minutes to go to the apartment and see if she was home. Maybe she was sick or something.
But when the co-worker's son got to Nancy's apartment, it was completely quiet. He couldn't see or hear anyone inside. And when he knocked on the front door, no one answered. He called his mom back and told her what had happened. He said he went to the apartment, but no one was answering. So he asked his mom what he should do next. They decided to ask the apartment manager if they would let him inside.
If something terrible had happened to Nancy, they needed to get inside. It just wasn't like her to miss work, and it really wasn't like her to not answer the front door if she was home. After some convincing, the apartment buildings manager agreed to go with him back to Nancy's apartment and check on her. If they were wrong and nothing happened to her, she might be a little mad that someone went inside her apartment.
But if they were right and something did happen to her, they needed to get inside. When they got to the unit on the second floor, the manager opened the door. And right there, lying on the floor, they found Nancy Benilak, dead. Everyone's worst fears had come true. When officers from the Sacramento Police Department arrived, they found 28-year-old Nancy stabbed to death inside her second-floor apartment.
An autopsy would later confirm that she had been stabbed over 30 times. Some of the stab wounds to her neck were so deep they nearly decapitated her. And besides the 30 stab wounds, her arms and hands were also covered with defensive wounds. She had bruises and cuts all up and down her arms, suggesting she tried to fight back. But no one could have survived 30 stab wounds, many of which were to her chest and neck.
Sacramento police detectives immediately suspected this was personal. Nancy had to have known her attacker. Anytime someone has been stabbed this many times, you have to wonder what the motivation was. Why stab someone almost three dozen times? Usually, we call this overkill. Nancy's killer probably could have killed her with only a fraction of the stab wounds. So why take it so far?
Most of the time, it's because of jealousy, betrayal, or even anger. And usually, only that amount of jealousy or anger can come from a personal relationship. It's very rare for overkill to happen when the victim and perpetrator don't know each other or don't have a previous personal relationship. Sometimes they're a friend, maybe a spouse, and sometimes a business partner.
So the extensive amount of wounds suggested to Sacramento police detectives that Nancy might have known her killer. Investigators instantly zeroed in on everyone closest to Nancy. They were all considered possible suspects, including Nancy's fiance, Ferris Salami. What kind of person might have the motive to stab someone so many times?
So, of course, the cops considered her fiancé. He was one of the closest people to her, and he had access to her apartment.
Ferris Salami also worked at the Sacramento County Courthouse, but he didn't work in the same department or section of the courthouse. Instead, Ferris worked for the county's public defender's office. In fact, at the time of Nancy's murder, he was the department's chief public defender. So he wasn't just some up-and-coming attorney fresh out of law school. He was also a public defender.
He had, at the time, one of the highest positions in the public defender's office. This made investigators zero in on Ferris as a possible suspect. Not only was he the victim's fiancé, but he was also an attorney, a public defender with the county of Sacramento. This meant that he likely had pretty good knowledge about both crime and murder.
So some detectives wondered if his work and experience as a criminal public defender meant that he might have picked up some tricks to get away with crimes over the years. Did he leverage his insight to try and perpetrate the perfect murder? Other detectives wondered if he thought he would get away with it simply because he was the chief public defender for the county.
Even if they had some evidence against him in Nancy's case, would the cops actually go after him? A well-respected public official? This turned out to be a complete dead end. They found absolutely no evidence suggesting Ferris had anything to do with Nancy's murder. And the little amount of evidence collected at the crime scene pointed away from him.
But if the fiancé didn't have anything to do with it, then who did? Detectives kept their attention on Nancy's fiancé Ferris, but not because they still considered him a suspect, but rather because of his work as a public defender.
As a criminal public defender, he had to represent some of Sacramento's worst criminals. Think rapists, murderers, child molesters. It was his duty as a public defender to represent these people or people who simply couldn't afford to hire a private attorney. So the police wondered if his work as a public defender could have indirectly caused his fiance's death.
Maybe it was a disgruntled client who did it. The client was so angry with the outcome of their case and thought the best way to take it out on their attorney was to murder his fiance, someone who also worked for the Sacramento courthouse. But that theory turned up empty as well. That's because the cops didn't find any of Ferris' previous clients either had the means or motive to murder Nancy.
So that meant they were back at square one. Hours before Nancy was killed, she spent the evening with her fiance. They had dinner at his mom's house and then went back to Nancy's apartment around 10 o'clock p.m. He said everything about that night was normal and Nancy didn't mention anything about anyone else coming over to the apartment that night.
At around 11.30 p.m., Ferris decided that he wasn't going to spend the night at Nancy's apartment, so he went home. That meant that by 11.30 p.m., Nancy was home alone. Ferris told detectives that she was in bed when he left the apartment, and the sliding glass door, which opened to the second-story balcony, was left open just a few inches.
According to Ferris, this balcony door was usually left open a few inches so that Nancy's cat could come in and out. And that night was no different. Nancy never worried about leaving the sliding glass door open at night because she lived on the second floor.
So if someone was going to enter the apartment through the balcony door, they would first have to make it to the second floor balcony. And if you didn't have a ladder or anything, that would be pretty difficult. So Nancy never thought twice about leaving it open for her cat. But law enforcement believed that's how the killer got inside. He somehow managed to scale the building to get to this second floor balcony.
When detectives combed the apartment for evidence, they found a blood trail that began on the balcony, continued to the sidewalk below and around the apartment complex building and ended at the parking lot. Because of how the blood trail looked, the investigators theorized Nancy's killer had probably cut himself during the attack and was bleeding as he left the apartment.
And that explains the blood trail from the apartment to the parking lot. When Nancy's body was discovered, she had a lot of defensive wounds to her arms and hands. It was clear to investigators that she struggled and fought against her attacker. So it's likely that sometime during this vicious attack, her killer cut himself with the knife.
It's also possible his hand might have slipped while stabbing Nancy, and that's why he cut himself. But besides cutting himself, Nancy's killer was very careful not to leave much evidence behind. They ended up finding 10 pieces of tape in the apartment that seemed to have been used by the killer to wrap his fingerprints with.
so that he wouldn't leave any prints behind. Ten pieces of tape that perfectly looked like they fit across a person's ten fingers. Investigators collected several samples from the blood trail.
But back in the 1970s, there wasn't much police departments could do with blood. All they could really do was blood typing or determine the sample's blood type, A, B, or O blood. And that was it. They had no DNA databases or advanced technology to match it to a particular person.
So when the authorities took samples from the blood trail, they conducted blood typing. They used the information to rule potential suspects out, including Nancy's fiance, Ferris. Although they never really considered him a suspect, but this was important because the blood sample did officially rule him out. But other than that,
The blood samples didn't help provide any more investigative leads. During the early part of the investigation, the authorities interviewed more than 500 people. Some were considered possible persons of interest, while other people were Nancy's coworkers and friends. But none, zero of the 500 interviews, led anywhere promising. Police were still no closer to identifying Nancy's killer,
So the case turned cold. The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department worked Nancy's case the best they could for the next three decades. If they received a tip, they were quick to investigate it. But over the years, nothing promising came in. All they had in the case were a few DNA samples, but no way of testing them. But all of that was about to change in the 2000s.
By 2004, DNA testing had come a long way. Back in 1970, at the time of Nancy's murder, all they could do with the blood was rule suspects out or perform blood typing. But by the early 2000s, police departments could do so much more. So in 2004, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department decided to retest the blood samples to see if anything new could be discovered. And there was.
The crime lab generated a full DNA profile from the blood samples. So instead of just a few slides of blood, they now had a complete DNA profile of Nancy's killer. Once they had the profile, they submitted it to CODIS, our national DNA database, to see if there was a match. But the results came back empty. The profile didn't match anyone in the database.
This was a massive letdown for Sacramento detectives. For the first time in over 30 years, they felt like they had a real chance at identifying her killer. Finally, they had his blood, and now they had a DNA profile. But they still didn't know who he was, and once again, the case went cold. Nancy's family and friends had almost given up all hope that her murder would ever be solved.
There weren't many leads in the early days of the investigation, and the few leads they had didn't really lead anywhere. The suspect list seemed endless. Although investigators suspected Nancy might have known her killer because of how many times she was stabbed, there was no guarantee that she actually did. Maybe this truthfully was a random act of violence committed by a random stranger.
It's possible someone was waiting outside of Nancy's apartment, knew she was home alone after her fiancé left. Maybe he even saw that the door was open on the second floor balcony and decided that that's how he would get inside. There seemed to be so many possibilities, but very few clues. Back in 1970, Nancy and her fiancé Ferris were just weeks away from getting married.
They both worked at the courthouse together, they had a big wedding planned, and they were excited about spending the rest of their lives together. But before they could do any of that, Nancy was murdered, and for decades, her killer remained on the loose. In 2014, Ferris Salami died of leukemia at the age of 84.
Like many of Nancy's friends and family, he died without knowing what happened to her. And he must have carried so much guilt with him over the years. He might have blamed himself for not spending the night with Nancy because if he did spend that night with her at her apartment, she probably wouldn't have been murdered.
But, of course, the opposite could have come true. He might have also become a victim if he did stay the night inside that apartment. Either way, Ferris Salami died without ever knowing who murdered his fiancée. By 2019, the authorities were desperate for new leads. By then, Nancy's murder had become one of Sacramento's oldest cold cases.
It was one of the few homicide cases the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department just couldn't solve. Even other difficult cases from the 1980s and 1990s had been solved by that point. But the department remained determined. So to generate new leads in the case, they got creative.
When the DNA collected from the crime scene was tested back in 2004, they generated a full DNA profile of Nancy's killer. But there was still one big problem. They didn't know who the DNA belonged to. CODIS had no match. Well, by 2019, many police departments across the country were starting to turn to new DNA testing methods to help solve cold cases.
These methods included taking unknown DNA from crime scenes and performing forensic genetic genealogy, or the process of combining advanced DNA testing with traditional genealogical research. One of the first major, large law enforcement agencies to start using forensic genetic genealogy was the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Cold Case Team.
Not only have they been able to solve old homicides, but they've also been able to use the same technology to help identify John and Jane Doe's or people discovered in Sacramento County that have been left unidentified. So when they looked at some of their cold cases to determine which would be a good fit for this type of testing, they knew that Nancy's case was perfect because
Her case checked off all the boxes. It was one of the county's oldest unsolved homicide cases. The case file had unknown DNA evidence, presumably left behind by her killer, and they had exhausted every other investigative tool. So it was the perfect candidate for forensic genetic genealogy.
In November 2019, investigators from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office cold case team and the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office jointly started working on the case. They specifically tested the unknown DNA profile collected from Nancy's apartment. And over the next three years, they used the DNA profile to hunt for her killer.
The first task they had to complete was to ensure the DNA sample was still in good enough shape to be tested. It had been almost five decades since it was collected, so there needed to be enough of it left and it needed to be in good enough condition to be retested. Once they realized they still had a usable amount of DNA, they uploaded it to various DNA databases.
Not only were they looking for an exact match, but they also looked for familial matches or relatives of Nancy's killer. If they could at least find a relative, they would have a starting point. From there, they could then narrow down a possible suspect list. In Nancy's case, the authorities not only had a testable amount of DNA left in the case...
But when they uploaded it to DNA databases, they got several hits. They found several possible relatives of her killer. But that's just the first step in the process of forensic genetic genealogy.
Most of the family members they identified were very distant relatives of Nancy's killer. They were sometimes third, even fourth cousins. So there were hundreds, if not thousands of people they still needed to look for to try and identify the real suspect, a.k.a. the guilty family member. The entire process took almost three years to complete, but the wait was well worth it.
In 2022, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department and District Attorney's Office finally had an announcement. In the summer of 2022, both departments held a joint press conference to provide updates on Nancy's case. And the update was massive. After over five decades, they said they had finally identified her killer through forensic genetic genealogy.
And they had finally solved the county's oldest unsolved homicide. On July 21st, 2022, investigators identified the suspect as Richard John Davis. Richard Davis was a longtime resident of Sacramento. And according to the authorities, he was 27 years old at the time of the murder.
So not only did he live in the area, but he was also the right age, not too young and not too old, to have committed such a brutal assault and murder. They also believed that he was physically capable of scaling the side of the apartment building to get inside Nancy's apartment through the open sliding glass door on the second floor balcony.
Once the authorities had narrowed their search down to Richard John Davis, they dug deeper into his background. Not only was he a longtime Sacramento resident, but at the time of the murder, he lived in the same apartment complex. Nancy Benelak lived in apartment 17, and he lived in apartment 23.
He could even see Nancy's apartment directly across the building's community pool from inside his apartment. He likely looked directly inside her apartment every single day. Although it's unclear whether Nancy and Richard Davis had ever met, the authorities believed he might have been stalking her in the weeks and months leading up to the murder. He likely knew when she would be home alone when her fiancé wasn't there.
And when he left, it was the perfect time to commit the murder. In the month following Nancy's murder, the Sacramento Sheriff's Office interviewed more than 500 people. This included Richard Davis and his roommate. They were both interviewed by the police because they lived in the same apartment complex. So they were interviewed about what they heard or saw the night the murder happened.
But Davis and his roommate were never considered possible suspects. Both of them had alibis. They both said they were home with each other at the time of the murder. Essentially, they established alibis for themselves. So, unfortunately, the police never spoke with Richard Davis again, and he was never considered a suspect.
Before his identification in the Nancy Benilak murder case, his name had never appeared on the police's radar for anything else. He had no history of committing violent crimes. Besides a few DUI convictions, he never had any contact with law enforcement involving a violent crime. So the cops never considered him a suspect. That also explains why his DNA wasn't in CODIS.
We might never know exactly what happened that night in October 1970, but sometime after Nancy's fiancé, Ferris Salami, left the apartment, Richard Davis made his move. He might have been inside his apartment when he saw Ferris leave. He knew she would be by herself in the place once he was gone.
To get inside her unit, he somehow managed to scale the side of the building to get to the balcony. And he was able to get inside the apartment because Nancy left the sliding glass door open just a couple inches for her cat. Once he was inside, he attacked. We know she fought back because she had defensive wounds all up and down her hands and arms.
During the attack, he was cut either by Nancy attacking him or he cut himself with the knife. Either way, this caused the blood trail from the apartment to the parking lot. And this is how the authorities collected his blood back in 1970. It wasn't until 2019 when the necessary technology became available for testing and identification.
After he assaulted and stabbed her dozens of times, he fled the apartment and was able to avoid capture for 50 years. Getting answers in Nancy's case involved decades of investigative work, but getting justice is an entirely different story. The man responsible for her murder is dead.
Richard John Davis died in 1997 at the age of 41 from alcohol-related complications. He died 25 years before he was finally identified as her killer and 27 years after he committed the murder. And because he died in 1997, he can never be held criminally responsible.
At the press conference in July 2022, the Sacramento Sheriff's Office read a letter from Nancy's sister, Linda Cox. The letter read in part, quote,
How many times my husband, Tom, and myself have said, Nancy would love our ranch, all our animals, and land with wide open spaces. We have missed sharing our children and grandchildren and so much more. End quote. And just for reference, Mickey links as a retired homicide detective with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department who worked the case for decades.
Anne Marie Schubert, a prosecutor with the Sacramento DA's office, also spoke at the press conference. Throughout her entire time with the department, Schubert has spent many years trying to solve the county's cold cases through genetic genealogy. In her statement, she said in part, quote, "...it's been said that justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected."
A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. When we talk about dormant justice and a miracle, there is no doubt that justice in this case was dormant for decades. Over the years, for those of us who have worked in the courthouse, I often got asked by court reporters what was going on with Nancy's case.
Nancy was never forgotten. She was always at the top of my list. To share your thoughts on this week's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.
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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. For a small monthly contribution, you can help create new compelling cases for the show, help fund research, and assist with production and editing costs.
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Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
