NASHVILLE - Judy Hockaday turned to face the man who killed her dear friends in 2006, clutched a wrinkled piece of paper and unleashed the heartbreak and scorn that had built up in the two years since.
"I'd like you to look at me while I'm speaking to you," Hockaday instructed a shackled Calvin A. Bennett on Monday after he admitted to killing Mary and Pierce "Ben" O'Dell.
"They want you to know they do not feel sorry for you," Hockaday said on behalf of the couple's family, who filled the front rows of the Howard County courtroom.
Bennett, 27, received two life sentences for shooting the O'Dells at their rural home outside of Nashville on Oct. 30, 2006. He dragged their bodies behind an all-terrain vehicle into the woods, where they were found with their feet tied and their heads covered with plastic bags.
Mary O'Dell was 78. Her husband and high school sweetheart was 79.
Tom Cooper, the special prosecutor on the case, agreed to waive the death penalty Monday in exchange for Bennett's guilty plea to two counts of capital murder.
"You're getting better than you deserve," Hockaday told him, her voice steady and eyes dry as the slain couple's nieces and nephews looked on.
The couple's relatives met in private Monday morning to discuss their feelings about a plea bargain that would spare Bennett from execution.
Earl Shaw, one of the O'Dells' nephews, was adamant that the man who shot the couple with their own rifle so he could steal their truck deserved to die. But eventually the family decided that life in prison without the opportunity for parole would serve justice.
"This is the surest way to get him to where he needed to be," Shaw said after Bennett was escorted out of court. "I wouldn't have lived long enough to see him executed."
Bennett's public defenders had argued their client was not fit to stand trial. He is schizophrenic, hallucinates and may have brain damage because his mother admitted to abusing alcohol while she was pregnant, they said.
Charles Yeargan, a circuit judge in Howard County, said he was fit and set a February trial date. Changing his plea to guilty on Monday meant Bennett cannot appeal his sentence, the judge said.
Bennett, pale with dark hair and a goatee, stood with his head down as the judge prodded him for answers. Why did two people have to die if all he wanted was the truck? Yeargan asked.
"I would like to say I'm very sorry for what happened," Bennett said.
He was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, Bennett said, when he shot the O'Dells in the head and then dragged their bodies 150 yards, battering them so badly that authorities initially thought they had been beaten to death.
"It was a horrible, horrible act," Yeargan said. "I wish there was a better understanding as to why you did it."
Bennett fled Arkansas in the stolen truck after the slayings.
He was arrested in Wisconsin after America's Most Wanted reported the case on television. He went to Wisconsin, he said, to see a woman he had met online.
Bennett's mother, Carmie Rand, sat alone in the courtroom, weeping with her head in her hands for much of the proceeding. She declined to comment.
Bennett had been secretly staying in a barn on the couple's property before he killed them, authorities said. He was acquainted with the O'Dells through his grandparents, who lived nearby. The couple had even lent money to the troubled Bennett over the years.
"This is the thanks they got for being nice to you," Hockaday said.
Arkansas, Pages 9, 13 on 12/16/2008