The Abbeville Press And Banner

BACK IN THE PEN. Ben Bennett, the Celebrated Criminal, Brought Back From Macon.

The Columbia Record says Ben Bennett, the celebrated prisoner who killed his wife after being conditionally pardoned for another murder is again in the South Carolina penitentiary. Bennett was brought in by Sheriff Lightsey, of Hampton, from Macon, Ga.: where he was captured several weeks ago. It seems that Bennett was arrested in Macon for drunkenness and according to the story he told when being put in the penitentiary, he was sentenced to four months on the city chaingang.

Bennett evidently thought all chaingangs were easy marks, after his experience in Hampton, and he tried to escape but the Georgia guard was really on guard and he was shot down before he could get away. He has now one bullet in his back and another in his hip, but he is not so badly wounded that he could not be put into a cell at the penitentiary when he was brought in last night.

Bennett, it will be remembered. was pardoned by Gov. McSweeney while serving a life sentence for murder, the pardon being granted on condition that Bennett would leave the state and not return. After Governor Heyward became governor, Bennett wrote to him asking that he be allowed to come back to the state to see his wife at Hampton, but the request was refused as improper. Bennett came, however, and while on this visit to his wife shot and killed her. His story was that while asleep he heard some one at the window. and thinking it was the sheriff come for him, he shot, the bullet striking his wife, who had arisen during the night.

Bennett was tried for murder after a ridiculous verdict from the coroner's jury exonerating him. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, which under the laws of the state sent him to the chaingang. He found it an easy matter to get away from the gang in Hampton county and has been at large a year or more until he turned up at Macon, as stated above and was recognized as the man wanted in South Carolina.