Beautician's Murder a Strange Tale of Contract Killing and a Sex Change
Feb 8, 2012 4:45 AM EST
Author Winston Ross

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/07/beautician-s-murder-a-strange-tale-of-contract-killing-and-a-sex-change.html

The circumstance of Debbie Higbee Benton's brutal murder seem endlessly strange, investigators and local residents say, ranging from the fact that her estranged husband elected to have a sex change to the allegation that her death was a contract killing.

When police found Debbie Higbee Benton's shot and badly beaten body last May at her beauty salon in Gladstone, Ore., a Portland suburb of 12,000 people, it was hard for anyone to imagine why someone might want the hair stylist dead.

"Debbie was absolutely one of the sweetest people you'd ever in your life meet," said Delores Carlin, whose husband and sons all got cropped at the Gladstone Beauty Salon.

These days, there are some altogether different questions swirling around Gladstone, centered less on why someone might kill Debbie Benton and instead on why police have yet to arrest her estranged husband, 49-year-old Lynn Benton, who was until a week ago a sergeant in the Gladstone Police Department.

For more news articles on this incident;

Gladstone fires police Sgt. Lynn Benton, who is implicated in murder-for-hire plot of spouse

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,112849.msg857789.html#msg857789

SJ

Possibly the threads should be merged? That's crazy scary movie material

I read about this in the Oregonian last year, and I remember thinking what a confusing and weirdly written article it was. Sounds like it's a confusing story to try to report on.

The initial article I saw hardly mentioned the trans aspect.