Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner

True Crime All The Time

This episode of True Crime All the Time examines the murders of two Gallaudet University freshmen, Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner, who we

Key takeaways

• The murders of Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner occurred in the same dorm at Gallaudet University, sparking fear among students that a killer was hiding within their community.
• Eric Plunkett, born with cerebral palsy and profound hearing loss, was an ambitious and resilient student who dreamed of becoming a chef and traveling the world.

Main topics

• The murders at Gallaudet University
• Eric Plunkett's life and background

Notable quotes

"I think it would probably just fed the need to do more." – Gibby on Joseph Mesa's likely continued violence.

Conclusion

Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner were promising young men whose lives were tragically cut short. The investigation into their

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:34) and welcome to episode 532 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson, and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you? What's Speaker 2 (0:44) up? Speaker 1 (0:45) All right. Yeah. You having a good week? Yeah. Me too. Me too. My wife's back to school. My daughter's back to school. They're, you know, got kids. So I'm back to being alone at home by myself. Speaker 2 (1:01) And you like every minute of it. Yeah, Speaker 1 (1:03) I do. But I miss not having somebody to talk to. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:09) So Speaker 1 (1:09) I really look forward to my wife getting home now because I sit here all day. I don't have anybody to talk to. Speaker 2 (1:15) Oh, Speaker 1 (1:16) man. But the dogs. Speaker 2 (1:17) You just want her to hear this and she's going to be like, oh, Speaker 1 (1:20) baby. Oh, you know me so well. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Rose Pearl. Speaker 2 (1:26) Is that, so you have a name like Rose Pearl, you know, people go, you're such a Rose or such a Pearl. Speaker 1 (1:32) You're such a Rose Pearl. So I don't know. I don't know. Just pick one. I just like it though. Kira Scheibel jumped out at her highest level. Well, thanks Scheibel. Kathy Welch. What's going on Welsh? Sharon Nardi. Speaker 2 (1:44) Ah, the Nardi. Lori Speaker 1 (1:46) Stewart. Speaker 2 (1:47) Well, you know, Lori, everybody's got to be a good Stewart. Speaker 1 (1:50) Maya O'Connell. Speaker 2 (1:52) I like the O'Connell name. I had neighbors that were the O'Connells. They were a lot of fun. Okay. Speaker 1 (1:58) Yeah. So you're assuming every O'Connell is. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:01) I guarantee you Maya's. Speaker 1 (2:03) Oh, I'm sure. Speaker 2 (2:04) Yeah. Speaker 1 (2:05) Susan Sobosinski. Speaker 2 (2:06) Ah, Sobosinski. And Speaker 1 (2:08) last but not least, Austin Hurta. Speaker 2 (2:11) Because he is a hurt Speaker 1 (2:12) a lot. Yeah. Then we go back into the vault. This week, we selected Jerry Jensen. Speaker 2 (2:19) You know, Jerry, they're a good swimmer. Is Speaker 1 (2:23) that true? Speaker 2 (2:24) No, I don't know. Because Jensen, isn't Jensen a swimwear? Speaker 1 (2:27) I think that's Jansen. This Speaker 2 (2:29) is the other version. How can I use that before people are like, you are so good. You Speaker 1 (2:36) use it every time, so I don't know. So we have an episode out right now on true crime all the time unsolved. It's part two and our last part on the Mitrice Richardson case. And, uh, you know, it's, it's a fascinating case, sad one, but we get into, you know, all of the rest of it. And then on Thursday's TCAT, we're talking about Clara Rector. And to me, this is a very interesting case. She was arrested for stalking and harassing her pastor. But then she shocked investigators by confessing to murder, solving a case that had been cold for almost a decade. Speaker 2 (3:16) I wonder if she could have got off, if she never would have confessed, you know? Speaker 1 (3:21) No, I believe she could have. Speaker 2 (3:22) Yeah. I Speaker 1 (3:23) don't know that they would have ever caught her. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime all the time? Speaker 2 (3:30) I'm ready. Speaker 1 (3:31) Gallaudet University student Eric Plunkett was beaten and strangled to death. inside his dorm room weeks after starting his freshman year. A few months later, another student was stabbed to death in his dorm, sparking fear among the students that a killer was hiding among them. And you pointed it out when we were doing our Patreon. I don't know if this is good or bad timing because this episode could scare a lot of parents who might be sending their kids back to school or might be sending their freshmen to school for the first time. Speaker 2 (4:05) It's that time of Speaker 1 (4:05) year. It is that time of year. And now I think most colleges have already started, but that I remember that distinctly. That was a very hard time. Both times for my oldest and my youngest. Eric Plunkett was born on September 8th, 1981 in Portland, Oregon. He was born with cerebral palsy. As a result, he was sometimes unsteady on his feet and he experienced profound hearing loss. Eric's family learned he was deaf when he was just eight years old. According to the Washington Post, his parents read books on how to raise deaf children and took sign language courses. That would be Speaker 2 (4:46) difficult to Speaker 1 (4:47) raise a child. Absolutely. Raising a kid is hard enough when they're 100 % healthy with no. Speaker 1 (4:57) Yeah. If you have a kid who is born with some challenges like this, it's just going to make it even that more difficult. And that's such a young age, right? Eight months to find out that, you know, he was deaf. His sister, Aaron recalled that Eric was confident, outgoing, and he had a lot of friends. He was also a curious person who liked to take things apart and see how they were made. Speaker 2 (5:25) You're kind of like that. You used to watch those shows. How was it made? Speaker 1 (5:29) Yeah, I do watch it. I still do sometimes. I watch things on YouTube about how different things are made. I also, when I was younger, did like to take things apart. The problem is I didn't really know how they were made, and I could never figure out how to put them back together. And maybe that's Speaker 2 (5:47) why. Your mom and dad were upset sometimes. Speaker 1 (5:49) And why I didn't go into engineering or into anything like that. Speaker 2 (5:55) After they had to buy five TVs because you kept on taking the new one apart, but couldn't get it back together. Speaker 1 (6:00) When he was young, Eric said he wanted to be a chef at his favorite hibachi restaurant. He dreamed of traveling and asked for plane tickets for Christmas growing up. Speaker 2 (6:10) It'd be cool to be at that hibachi grill, working it and flipping that shrimp to somebody's mouth. Speaker 1 (6:15) Yeah. You know me and how much I love hibachi. Oh, you are a hibachi king. It is one of my absolute favorites. I think it would be fun, but it's still a job. And I think it's a pretty hard job. Number one, I think that grill is extremely hot. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:34) And so that's going to be tough. You're going to smell like grease, oil, shrimp, chicken. Yeah, you're not going to smell great probably on Speaker 2 (6:45) your way home. I feel like I wouldn't be able to keep the onion tower straight. It would fall on me every time. Speaker 1 (6:50) Yeah, well, you can't cook, so I don't see this as your profession of choice. Speaker 2 (6:58) He might look Speaker 1 (6:58) good in the hat, but I don't know. Other than that. Chef Bordy hat. But also, what about a kid wanting plane tickets for Christmas? Hey. That is so grown up. Such a grown up thing to ask for. Go big or go home. I guess so. Although he did have some physical limitations, Eric still traveled and even took a trip by himself as a teenager to see Minnesota. because his family considered moving there. The family moved to Burnsville in 1997, and Eric attended the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, which was a boarding school. And it was said that he blossomed at school. His principal recalled he took risks. He accepted challenges. He didn't let anyone say no to him. And this is very inspiring to me, because I feel like It would be easier to, you know, use some of the challenges you were born with to kind of say, oh, I can't do this or I can't do that. Right. But obviously Eric didn't do that. He went the other way. He said, you know what? I'll show you what I can do. Don't tell me I can't do anything. Speaker 2 (8:11) He didn't let the limitations get in his way. Speaker 1 (8:14) And he graduated with the second highest academic honors in his 10 student senior class. Gallaudet University was Eric's first choice for college. It's a private university in Washington, D.C. for the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded back in 1864 as a grammar school for deaf and blind children. It's the world's only university bilingual in American Sign Language. I did not know that. I didn't either. The campus community is extremely close-knit. In 2001, Time magazine described the university as the deaf Harvard, Wharton, and Brookings rolled into one. It has produced generations of leaders, activists, and entrepreneurs. Speaker 2 (9:04) I mean, it's pretty impressive when you take Harvard, Wharton, and Brookings and throw them all together, and this is, Speaker 1 (9:10) you Speaker 2 (9:10) know, equal to that. Speaker 1 (9:11) Those are all very prestigious. Time went on to say whether in classrooms where teachers lecture in sign language, On playing fields where athletes key into the vibrations of huge drums rather than audible signals, or in the cafeteria where gossip and flirtation are no less hot for being silent, Gallaudet embodies a heady ideal, an oasis where the deaf person can shed the role of handicapped outsider and step into a cultural majority, where the tyranny of spoken speech is stripped away. And in the words of Provost Jane Fernandez, the dreams open up. Impressive. Well, you could see why, you know, if you were deaf, this would be an amazing place to go. Absolutely. Great reputation. Everybody knows sign language. I think by Speaker 2 (10:10) going to a place like this, you feel less of an outsider because everybody's communicating the same way you communicate. Speaker 1 (10:16) Yeah, I would say that would definitely be true. Eric's parents helped him move into Cogswell Hall in August 2000. When they left his dorm, Eric told his mom not to worry about him. That was the last time they saw each other. Speaker 2 (10:31) That's like everything a kid tells their parents at dorm drop-off. Speaker 1 (10:37) Absolutely. And I'll never forget when we took our oldest and left her at college, I cried the whole hour drive home. Literally, my wife and I both could not stop crying. We didn't cry quite as much when we dropped the youngest one off. Not because we love her less. It was just we'd already done it. Speaker 2 (10:57) Been there, done it. Speaker 1 (10:58) That's what always happens with the second child. You know that because you're a second child. You're a middle child. Eric was ready to start a new chapter. He fit right in and fellow students described him as friendly and easygoing. He was named secretary of the Campus Lambda Society. According to Time, Lambda members reported there had been a marked increase in death threats against gay students. Eric filed a complaint with the school's Judicial Affairs Committee about anti-gay slurs found on campus message boards. A national gay rights group later announced that anti-gay activity on campus added up to a pattern of harassment. That would make sense. On September 28, 2000, Eric Plunkett was found beaten and strangled to death inside his dorm room. That day, student Joseph Mesa Jr., who lived across from Eric in Cogswell, asked former student and RA Lauren Butchko to do a welfare check. After he noticed a funny smell coming from Eric's room, he also said he'd been unable to reach him. Lauren asked fellow RA Thomas Koch to help her out. Thomas opened the door and found Eric's body. Thomas checked for a pulse, but there was none, and he ran out of the room. Probably because the smell was one thing. I'm sure that had a lot to do with it. You know, I lived in a couple of dorms during my years in college. And suffice it to say, when you have that many 19 year olds, whatever, all packed in, we had three guys in a room that was smaller than my bedroom right now. Yeah. It was very, very small. Not everybody showers as much as, you know, the others. Not everybody uses deodorant. There's a lot of funky smells in a situation like that. You Speaker 2 (12:58) got those. Dirty socks smell on top of all Speaker 1 (13:01) kinds of smells, right? Food left out. You name it. Speaker 2 (13:06) Gas. Speaker 1 (13:07) Gas. But when, you know, this kid said that there was a funny smell, I think we can all kind of, even though not all of us have smelled it, we can all understand that what he's talking about is the smell of decomposition, which you hear everyone say is unmistakable. Like once you smell it, you'll never forget that smell. And if you ever smell it again, you know immediately what it is. But you think about, you know, these RAs going in, they're probably not much older, right, than these kids. A couple of years, RAs have to deal with a lot. They do. What most of them don't have to deal with is finding a dead student's body. Speaker 2 (13:53) No, that's going to be something that. I would think 99.9 % of them never come across. No, Speaker 1 (14:00) and it's going to stick with you. So it was clear that there had been a struggle. Eric's room was in disarray and blood was spattered everywhere. The autopsy indicated Eric was hit with a chair, kicked, beaten, and strangled to death. Pretty violent. Yeah, a very violent scene. Eric's wallet and debit cards had been stolen. There were no signs of forced entry leading investigators to believe the killer covered their tracks by closing and locking the door on their way out. Speaker 2 (14:34) Not hard to do. Speaker 1 (14:35) No, probably not hard to, to lock the door on your way out. And that, that would be a good idea, right? If you're trying to cover things up because, okay, then it's like, well, how did somebody get in or, but here's my thought. There are a lot of dorm rooms. in a hall. Yeah. Right. Usually have one on each side of you. If this was such a, you know, a violent scene, you would think it would have been pretty loud. Somebody would have heard it. Speaker 2 (15:07) But in this case, I mean, this is a university filled with people that are deaf. Speaker 1 (15:14) And that's exactly why I think the killer thought they could get away with doing it right there. The killer had to have taken that into account, right? Speaker 2 (15:24) Well, I would think so. Like, you know, they know that no one's going to hear the ruckus. All Speaker 1 (15:30) I have to worry about is somebody seeing me or maybe seeing blood on my clothing or something like that. But it is a much different situation than you would find on most campuses or in most dorms. 89 % of dog parents consider their dog their best friend in the world. And 31 % would even let their pups eat off their own fork. Safe to say, people are obsessed. My wife loves our two Maltese dogs so much, she doesn't want them to get wet. So she buys them rain jackets, booties, even though the first thing they do is kick the booties off. But you know who else is dog obsessed? It's Ollie. They deliver fresh human