Horror on the highway :Benjamin Klinger and Samantha heller case.2012

Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

At first glance it had all all  the makings  of  a tragic accident. a young man  racing down  the highway  at over 100 miles  an hour. loses control  his passengers is killed.

A truck driver who came upon the wreckage on Dec. 4, 2012, heard Heller screaming and was told by 911 operators not to move the crash victims. When police arrived, Klinger was sitting on top of Heller’s head and torso, according to the arrest affidavit.

A 19-year-old Pennsylvania man intentionally slammed his car at 100 mph into a guardrail, and then smothered his 17-year-old girlfriend by sitting on her head after learning that she might be pregnant, according to police.

Police filed homicide and other charges last week against Benjamin Daniel Klinger, 19, of Elizabethtown, for the December 4 death of Sammi Heller on an interstate near Manheim.

‘At first glance, this appeared to be simply another tragic vehicle accident,’ Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman told the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era. ‘However, the police worked hand-in-hand with our forensic experts and saw this was far more complicated, sinister and certainly criminal.

In court Benjamin Klinger admitted to killing his girlfriend, saying he deliberately crashed the car they were in — then suffocated her as she lay injured on the side of the road.

Samantha heller was a social butterfly with a big heart.

she was  just  such a decent girl .  sammy loved everybody.

But that may have also  been her downfall.

samantha was just 15 when met an older boy. Named benjamin klinger.

It was around that same time that samantha´s  friends started noticing, slight changes .

Her silly side was still there . she could still always make anyone aught.

but if  you could still  , you  could slowly see, sam´s face turn   into just like she was hurt  she was hurting

Hurting because of how they say benjamin  was treating  her  behind closed doors.

In the beginning he waa very nice  , he acted  very nice, made her  feel like happy  and meed her feel loved and then things just  deteriorated after he got control over he and he knew that she was in love with him.

Things just  started spiraling,downwards ,he started to say  that she was  clingy, he would call her **** .

Friends  like,” why are you with him?”  

I love him and he makes  it better by saying”i´m so sorry”

 she admitted that draws her back every time.A

And sam´s mom ” sandra “says :” every time ben drew her back in it drove her and her daughter futher apart.

She was starting to say  , you know i should be allowed to stay out at  these   hours during  a school night , all of that was  really stemming from ben .yeah he actually would  try to come over and convince us,she would sbe safe and i´ll make sure she gets her homework done and stuff like that .

At some point things  within the house broke apart.

we had a found out that she was giving ben the house keys to sneak in the house at night. said sandra said.

when confronted her daughter. a huge fight ensued.it was  a mess.

 

“And it´s one of the biggest  misstake i made,because i kicked her out that day . and she ran back to ben.”sandra said.

Samantha would spend the next  few months living under the  klingers roof 

And  loved ones say that´s when the relationship really turned toxic.

samanthas mom wasn´t  just  standing idly by. the last straw in that situation was a phone call. that she being taken  to the hospital. she found ouit that he had ran over  her foot.

After that  sandra was finally  able to convince samantha to move ut of ben´s house and in with her. aunt .Leanne.

shortly after she moved in, ben decided  to come ove and sit outside   the aunt leanne´s house. and that made  sammy really antsy  . aunt leanne said . ” plesase can  go out and talk to him.”  so  aunt leanne let  her go out and talk to benjamin.. 

 

Leanne:   she went  out he took off with her.”

Not long after that , leanne gets a frantic call from her  niece.

leanne:” she was scared because he was driving  too fast.and he fas  angry.”

attorney, craig stedman: klinger at that point he basically said you better  get off the phone  or i will  , you know i´ll drive this car off  the road .”

samantha  was able to talk  him down that night. and after that she appeared to break things off for good, even agreeing to move back home with her mom.

It was  only then that sandra learned just how bad things  have been.  she found that  not only was he phyical hurting her at times . that  he was taking pictures of her and videos  of sexually and  sharing it with his friends.

before meeting him she didn´t do stuff like this.she was a good girl .

Sandra took action.she  charged him for running over her foot.she charged him for for the pictures.  he was going to be charged and labeled as a  pedophile.

For the next  six months with charges pending.ben seemed to stay away ..

…and samantha seemed  to return t oh er old self.

Then  the night of december 4th. sandra is alresady  asleep whenn she  gets a text  from samantha the kind you never  erase.

 sometime after that,  samantha finds herself in the passagenger seats of benjamin klinger´s car. racing toward her own demise. 

It seemed like she was finally, free .like 17  year old  samantha heller . had finally broken away from her abuser benjamin klinger.

She had even moved back   with her mom .

and was moving forward on assult charges. against  her bpy as well as charges for fot sending explicit pictures of the underage girl to his friends.

But then after six months apart ,it seems  ben found a way back in.

Apparently ben reached out to get samantha to  drop the charges.espcially the one that would make him registered sex offender.

attorney, stedman:so , he gets her to sign something, says everyone press charges

  Then just a few days  before the end. samantha changed her mind -again.

attorney, craig stedman:she actually  comes into our office here and starts explaining looking intimidated and “i really  didn´t know what i was signing..” i dont want  him to go to jail but i want  some accountability.

 

Restitution as she put in this note to ben.A handwritten list of things  she wanted to discuss. one big  thing in particular.

December 3rd s she had gone to planned parenthood. she believed she was pregnant with ben´s baby.

and  one of thet things on the note is  she wanted  child support.

samantha was  no back with him , friends and loved ones was  so angry because she was  doing so well 

It was the last time her friends would  ever  speak.

The day after samantha´s visit to planned parenthooud december 4th ,she tells her mom  , she spending the weekend with a friend.Insteasd she was  inside  bens car. speeding down the  highway.at nearly 120 .miles per hour.

It´s approximately  2 am  when a truckdriver   calls  9-1-1. to report seeing ben´s car careen off the highway.

and in to a  guardrail.

It was a two – door car and that entire passenger side hade a huge amount of damage to it. 

Samantha´s side of the car and yet she survives the initial crash.

In the 911   call you hear samantha screaming , it´s not clear what she´s saying but you can hear that she´s still alice and is screaming.

Following protocol the dispatcher tells  the witness not to move the injured.

what he doesn´t know is exactly what the trucker  sees.

samanatha was sort of half in hal out the the car .face down in the grass and the civilians saw mr klinger essentially sitting on samantha´s head.

Not long after that  samantha falls silent.

By the  time first responders arrive , samantha heller is gone.

Ben will later tell investigators  that he doesnt remember  exactly how the crash  happened. but that it was all a tragick  accident.

So  he said he was ejected from the vehicle and landed up  coincidentally through the passanger side of the vehicle and happens to land with his   butt  sitting on her face  smothering her to death. just by coincidence

But  almost  immediately sergeant christopher keller and his team were finding  evidence that this was no coincidence.

 

C .keller:“The witness said that he didn´t see any brake lights ans mr klinger was going off the  road. that´s a pretty telltale sign  that there´s something else going on.

attorney, craig stedman: you can see actuallly in the grass  that he drove straight into the guardrail.itwas a  controlled crash.

Police  also found samantha´s  handwritten note inside the  wreck

and  then there was that  9-1-1, those screams, though you can´t make out what samantha saying on that recording . 

Another  eyewitness says  she  heard  everything.

 

attorney, craig stedman: “The car driver actually who pulled  over , said,  she actually could hear her saying;” get off ,get off me and could  see her moving her leg”

It´was  only a few  hours  before rhat when sandra mcfalls  received a text message from her daughter.saying  quot;I love you moma.

sandra: ” this was not  tragic accident  he murdered her .”

And Police took that claim, seriously  especially after a pathologist determined samantha´s  cause of death to be :

Manner of death homocide…..

The evidence showed  he  intentionally killed samantha.

Almost  immediately after news  spread that 17 years old samantha  heller  had been killed in sa crash. and that  her abusive boyfriend  ben klin ger was driving.

Everyone who knew the girl   jumped to the same conclusion.

And  samantha´s loved ones were telling investigators much

the same.

attorney, craig stedman:” One friend actually described it as  her life was a living hell.he basically made  her feel worthless every day of her life. In his phone contacts,she listed as “dumb ***” that´s who would  come up on his  contacts. it would come up ”  dumb ****  which is awful to say but that´s what he thought of her.”

And then there were ben´s lies……….

Shortly after the wreck  kliner reportedly to the nurse at the hospital Quote: 

attorney, craig stedman: he said shewas in the back seat , we could prove she wasn´t .

attorney, craig stedman: you can see the  impact, the head impact here.

And for ben´s claims that  he was thrown from the wreck and  on to samantha……

attorney, craig stedman:  we could  prove he was 100  % lying, we know  he had  a seatbelt on  because   he had  bruises on it and her and her consistent with it , but when you´r ejected the seat belts ripped or  it´s ripped out of the casing or anything like that .

 

attorney, craig stedman:  was absolutely no damage to the seat belt consistent with ejection and the other thing the reconstructions ….. this  wre able to tell us was, theres no way that the driver would under this …. you know head -on collision with the guard rail would be ejected 90 degrees to his right  through the  passanger side vehicle and land up over her sitting on top of her.

Meaning  that  to end up on samantha  ben had to actually  unbuckle his seat belt after the crash and walk around  to the other side of the car.

After week of collecting evidence prosecutors were ready   to make that case.

Keller:  he was charged with criminal homicide for the death of samantha

But  what was  it that authorities  say finally pushed  ben over the edge. district attorney craig stedman says ; take you pick.

attorney, craig stedman: it is a cresendo of motives that  are coming together  at this period of time um… that lead to the murder… i mean,  you´ve got the  unwanted pregnancy that he thinks is  happening , you´ve got  her charges  so he´s mad at that …plus one of the other things that  um .. we found out later was he  actually  had another  girl he was seeing who he actually said at the hospital something  to the effect of ,”well  at least we don´t have to worry about her getting  in between you and i  . in the future.

 

It is only later that investigators learned samantha wasn´t pregnant after all. but  ben  didn´t know that at the time.

and according to his arrest affidavit he was either  angry because  he was going to be a father . or jealous. because he thougt it was someone else ´s baby.

either way  prosecutors believe they had him dead to rights.

attorney, craig stedman:we felt we had a very strong case from for first-degree murder.we can prove that he was lying. what took place,him at the hospital telling his girlfriend that now we can be together ,we had all that stuff of the …pregnancy and the former threats.

i mean threats  not just threats  but threats  to kill her by driving a car off the road.he did exactly what he said he was going to do. multiple times  to her .

But it  turnes  out the case would never go to trial ……

attorney, craig stedman:we felt we had a mountain of evidence for first degree , but when you have these cases….you  know its not jsut about what you can prove. it´s about dealingwith the surviving victims  and the family members.

 

and for samantha´s mom. pursuing  the first degree charges would mean reliving the unimaginable.

So when attorneys worked out a deal that would avoid a trial in exchange for  klinger pleading guilty to third  degree murder. with a minimum sentence of close to to 30  years.

sandra:i just wanted to go home and grieve and… so i made a choice to allow him to have that  plea deal.

First degree was off the table.but ben was off the  streets.

Benjamin (Ben)  Klinger was  sentenced to 28 to 56 years.

As part of his deal ,benjamin klinger also pleads to several other charges ,uncluding explicit photos of his underage girlfriend to friends. 

At sentencing he´s given the chance to adress  samantha´s family saying Quiote;

In respons lancaster county judge  margaret miller  delivers  the following statement;

After that ,21 year old benjamin klinger is taken  away   to serve out his 28 to 56 year  sentence.

End of  story …? not exactly .

what  happened in the post-conviction hearing.?

  attorney , craig stedman:well, the guy pled guilty, this wasn´t a trial where he went down saying “i didn´t do this , you got the wrong guy.I´m innocent ,i was framed . he admitted in court  to the judge  that he did this things that i´ve described and  he took  the benefit of the bargain and now he wants a do-over.

 

samantha´s  heller´s  family avoided a trial  when benjamin klinger pleaded guilty to third degree murder.

But then roughly four years  into his 28  to 56 year sentence  , klinger suddenly files  an  appeal to have his plea overturned.

Ben trying to step up and want to take this plea deal off the table. 

 

sandra:”  he makes me mad.”

So what changed?why does  samantha´s confessed killer now say he isn´t gulity of deliberately taken  her life.

One story  he says is much different  than the version most people have heard…what ben is calling stories were all true.including one  in which samantha called her aunt from inside bens  car.

Ben screaming Quote;

But ultimately that is what happened Ben was behind  the wheel during the crash that ended samantha´s life.

So what does he have to say about that tragic night?

Convenient excuse….

 

benjamin;” i had  such  a severe cncussion,the doctor at the hospital  told my family  that they dont would´t be suiprised in the slightest if i never remember anything.because of the severity of the concussion that.. i dont remember  hours before and days after.

how or why 

samantha even ended up  in his car all a blank and his not sure how that handwritten lsit of demands ended up in his car.either.

Including one….

…very  big point,a request  for child support

benjamin:“as far as , um, child support, having child  suport would never have been a problem.with me. Im really family- oriented. 

 

And he says he´s equally confused by some of the other things

he´s been reported saying after the crash. like he ended up on samanthas´s head after being ejected from the car.

Ben continue to stand firm that despite what he sworn in court he didn´t  murder samantha heller at  least he doesnt remember doing it.

So far a judge has rejected klinger´s efforts to have his plea overturned

But Ben is currently appealing that ruling and  if he does get a second chance…..

attorney, craig stedman:  I´ll tell you something. i´m really kind of okay with  the do -over because a do-over doesn´t give him a less sentence .A do-over gets him back to square one , you have a trial and he faces life in prison ,so i´ll put this in the category ” be careful what you whis for”

And samantha´s loved one  say Ben wont be facing the same people he did before.

sandra: by some slim chance  his appeal is granted, i will fight this and i will  sit through a trial and i will tell every tiny little thing and so everybody else that has contact and knows what happened to sammy.