A suspected serial predator accused of sexually assaulting four women, killing two of them, was described by co-workers as a polite, soft-spoken car salesman who mostly kept to himself.

Trent Christopher Benson made an initial court appearance Thursday and was ordered held without bond. The public defender’s office was appointed to represent him, but a lawyer has not been named.

Police in suburban Mesa said Benson has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of violent sexual assault, three counts of kidnapping and one count of sexual assault.

Investigators watched Benson for a day before arresting him Wednesday and questioning him about four attacks that date back to 2004.

Police said Benson had a criminal record that includes arrests for soliciting prostitutes, which shocked his co-workers.

“This is unbelievable. It would be the last person that I would have expected,” said Mike Fraccola, a used car dealer in Mesa. “He seemed happy in his everyday life.”

However, Fraccola added that Benson “was always somewhat quiet and subdued. He was a little bit mysterious. No one really knows what he did with his spare time.”

Bill Fralick, a former co-worker at the dealership, said Benson told him he enjoyed strip clubs.

But “there is no way, shape or form I would have thought him capable of harming anyone,” Fralick said. “If I had kids, I would have let them be around him.”

Authorities said DNA evidence links Benson to four female victims. The first was a 21-year-old who was found strangled and partially clothed in a west Mesa alley on Nov. 4, 2004.

Nearly three years later, on Oct. 14, 2007, a 44-year-old was found strangled and raped on a west Mesa street.

A Mesa woman was abducted and raped Aug. 16, 2007, but managed to escape. A 35-year-old Phoenix woman was abducted Nov. 4, 2007, behind a business and later was found unconscious by a passer-by.

The mother of Austrian Natascha Kampusch, who was held in a dungeon for more than eight years before escaping, has been accused of masterminding her ordeal.

Retired judge Martin Wabl told the State Court in Graz, Austria, that Ms Kampusch’s mother Brigitte Sirny hatched the plot with Wolfgang Priklopil, the Daily Mail reported.

Priklopil held Ms Kampusch captive and committed suicide hours after she escaped in 2006.

Mr Wabl said Mrs Sirny had wanted to cover up the sexual abuse of her daughter when she was ten.

He made similar allegations after Ms Kampusch’s disappearance in 1998 but was fined for defamation, the paper said. He had now returned to court to have his criminal record erased.

Witnesses told the court Mrs Sirny had known Priklopil well with one saying she often hit her daughter.

Neighbour Anneliese Glaser, who also worked at a delicatessen owned by Mrs Sirny, said Mrs Sirny had little time for her daughter, the paper said.

“I never saw her abuse the child but she would come to me often and the red fingerprints of Sirny would be clearly visible in her face where she hit her,” she told the court.

“When Natascha resurfaced in 2006, I saw the picture of Priklopil and I recognised him instantly. He was at her shop with another man when I was there repairing the electrics.”

Ms Kampusch disappeared on her way to school in March 1998.

Shortly after her disappearance, a Vienna newspaper published photographs found in Mrs Sirny’s flat that showed Ms Kampusch wearing lipstick and riding boots, brandishing a whip and showing her private parts.

Mrs Sirny dismissed the photographs as “harmless horseplay”, although a psychiatrist described them as “highly sexually charged and taken for the sexual delectation of the person behind the camera” , the paper said.

No charges were ever brought against Mrs Sirny.

Ms Kampusch testified for 30 minutes in a closed courtroom due to the sexual nature of the evidence. She refused to answer questions from reporters outside the court, the paper said.

Judge Juergen Schweiger has said she was not sexually abused as a child. He will deliver a written verdict in a fortnight, the paper said.

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An unemployed graphic designer who authorities believe was nearly killed by ricin was arrested today on federal charges of possessing the deadly toxin in what he described as an “exotic idea,” never carried out, to poison unspecified enemies.

Roger Bergendorff was arrested upon his release from the hospital where he had been treated since Feb. 14.

He is charged with possession of a biological toxin and two weapons offenses stemming from materials authorities said were found Feb. 26 and Feb. 28 in his room at an extended-stay motel several blocks off the Las Vegas Strip.

“He was released from the hospital and he’s in custody,” said FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey, spokesman for the bureau’s Las Vegas office.

The charges carry a possible penalty of 30 years in federal prison and a $750,000 fine. Bergendorff, 57, was scheduled to appear today before a federal judge in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.

Prosecutors allege in a six-page complaint that Bergendorff obtained castor beans by mail in June 2002 and made ricin from them while living in Reno and in the basement of his cousin’s house in Riverton, Utah.

Cancer research is the only legal use for ricin, which has no antidote and can be lethal in amounts the size of the head of a pin.

Authorities do not allege Bergendorff’s possession of ricin had anything to do with terrorism, according to court documents.

“Bergendorff characterized the production of ricin as an ‘exotic idea,’” the complaint said.
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