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On June 8 of 2017, Lynlee Renick says she finds her
husband dead in a pool of blood on the floor of the snake
facility where he runs his world-renowned
snake breeding business.
She quickly calls Sam, Ben's brother, and then calls 911.
Police quickly arrive at the scene, armed and ready
to try to find the snake or whatever
else that killed Ben Renick.
[lynlee sobbing]
Ben was very, very good at what he did.
We never thought that something like this with a snake
could have ever happened to Ben.
Yeah.
But a discovery from the coroner changes everything.
I crouched down to take a closer look.
And when I did this, I then saw some divots in the floor.
I also saw some injury to the face that I would say
was more consistent with not a snake injury,
but a gunshot wound.
And then I saw a shell casing on a shelf
just above the decedent's head.
And that's when I informed law enforcement
that I believe there was some other circumstances that--
at play.
He was shot several times.
We were there to work and solve a homicide.
We thought at first maybe someone was there to rob him.
He had very valuable snakes in his property
that perhaps that would have been a motive.
Eager for answers, law enforcement
questioned Ben Renick's brother, Sam, and his wife, Lynlee,
that evening.
What we'd like to do is, if you're willing, is to--
The typical normal practice for us,
and the reason we did it in that case,
is because they were both present.
They were the ones with Ben's body when we arrived.
Both the gunshot residue kits came back
negative for gunshot residue.
In 2012, Ben Renick and Lynlee welcomed their daughter.
And a few years later, they married.
Not only was their family growing,
but Renick's reptiles were growing too, thanks to Lynlee.
Lynlee had a background in massage therapy
and she quit that, and helped Ben full time
with the snake facility.
And they did that together for years before she decided
to open her own business.
In 2016, she opened Ascentia Spa,
and she was really happy about that.
She had achieved something that she had set her mind to.
A successful marriage and two booming businesses--
the Renicks' future seemed bright.
They were always very close.
Ben didn't necessarily talk to me about the relationship
in detail.
However, they seemed very happy, all the way up until the end.
At some point, did you guys decide
to do weekly date nights?
We decided that it would just be good
for us to have a time to kind of step away,
just have the time to ourselves, to each other,
and kind of check out from everything else.
And that's exactly what was planned for the evening
of June 8, 2017.
Benjamin Renick was supposed to pick
up their children from school.
The babysitter was supposed to come to their house.
And when Lynlee Renick got home from work, she and her husband
would go out for date night--
which, as we now know, never happened.
After a few weeks of investigating the murder of Ben
Renick, police unearthed several text messages
on Lynlee Renick's phone revealing that she was having
multiple affairs, including one with a man
named Brandon Blackwell.
They also interviewed Lynlee's spa
manager, Ashley Shaw, who confirms
the extramarital affairs.
LAW ENFORCEMENT: Her relationship with Ben--
can you tell me about that?
ASHLEY SHAW: It was always kind of up and down.
She didn't want to be with him or she was cheating on him.
LAW ENFORCEMENT: How did you know
that that's what she was doing?
ASHLEY SHAW: She would kind of hint around it.
And when she started talking to Brandon, who she's with now,
she told us about him.
Brandon Blackwell and Lynlee had
a child together about a year and a half after Ben's death.
And eventually, their relationship became strained.
ATTORNEY: Your relationship with Brandon
didn't get better after the birth of your son, did it?
No.
ATTORNEY: It continued to deteriorate?
Yes.
By mid-2019, their relationship comes
to a tumultuous end and Renick requests
an order of protection against Blackwell,
which he repeatedly violates.
By the start of 2020, Brandon Blackwell
is arrested and charged with multiple counts
of violating an order of protection,
as well as first-degree stalking.
On January 14, Blackwell speaks with the state
and implicates Lynlee Renick in her husband's murder.
His case never goes to trial.
According to Brandon Blackwell,
Lynlee Renick tried to poison her husband
prior to his actual murder.
But Blackwell doesn't stop there.
In addition to naming Shaw, Lynlee's spa manager, he also
names another co-conspirator--
Michael Humphrey, a former boyfriend of Lynlee Renick's.
Michael Humphrey was an ex-boyfriend of Lynlee Renick.
He was kind of in and out of jail.
It was huge, and the case wrapped up within a couple
of days after that.
Ashley Shaw tells investigators
that Lynlee Renick had convinced her that Ben was abusive.
Claiming she was aiding her desperate friend in leaving
a toxic relationship, Shaw admits
to the prior poisoning attempt.
She also admits to helping Lynlee find and contact
Michael Humphrey, and later to helping Lynlee
cover up the killing.
The state offers her full immunity.
On January 17 of 2020, almost three years
after Ben Renick's murder, Lynlee Renick and Michael
Humphrey are arrested.
Humphrey is tried first.
Michael Humphrey's guilty verdict
means he now faces a possible sentence of life in prison
without parole.
But in an effort to reduce that sentence,
Humphrey's legal team contacts the attorney general's office.
The state offers Michael Humphrey a deal--
a lesser second-degree murder charge with the possibility
of parole in exchange for his testimony against Lynlee
Renick, and Humphrey agrees.
On the stand, Ashley Shaw also admits to helping Lynlee Renick
on the day of her husband's death,
when Lynlee returned to the spa after being
gone for several hours.
She runs in the spa and says, follow me to the back.
She took off her clothes and she got on the Vichy shower
and she asked me to scrub her body and her hands really well.
And she washed her whole body.
The aftercare when she came back from the murder, as far
as washing her hands and her body,
is why Lynlee's gunshot residue kits came back
negative for gunshot residue.
But Lynlee Renick firmly denies having anything
to do with her husband's murder and denies Ashley Shaw's claim
that she attempted to poison Ben Renick before he was killed.
According to Renick, the only thing she was guilty of
was wanting a divorce and being too afraid to confront
her husband to ask for one.
Lynlee told Ashley Shaw that Ben was abusive towards her,
and that's the whole reasoning why she had asked Michael
to accompany her to the Renick farm
to ask for a divorce from Ben.
She said she was scared on what he might do to her,
and she wanted Michael as backup.
Lynlee showed up at my driveway.
She had a girl named Ashley with her.
PROSECUTOR: Can you tell us what kind of transpired?
She said that there was different physical abuse going
on from Ben and they wanted to try
to find somebody to shoot him.
I told him I was not going to be a part of that.
Michael Humphrey admits that his involvement
did not end there.
But what he describes next completely contradicts
Lynlee Renick's story.
I went up to the spa about two or three days later, yeah.
I actually took her my gun.
KEVIN ZOELLNER: Why did you want to take
that gun to her automatically?
I thought she could use it in a case of self-defense,
because she said that she couldn't leave there, so.
KEVIN ZOELLNER: Is the gun--
have ammo with it?
It does.
It's loaded.
DAN ABRAMS: Humphreys admitted to giving Lynlee Renick
what became the murder weapon.
But what he says next about when he
and Lynlee arrive at the snake facility is even more shocking.
We got out and she walks up to me,
and I feel something on my hip.
And I'm turning around looking at it.
It's the gun that I've given her.
I shoved it back at her and asked here, basically,
what the hell she was doing.
Ben came out the door and then I heard a shot come out.
I kind of ducked a little bit.
I looked down through there and she
was at the end of the corridor, posted
up like this with the gun.
The jury's heard two versions of what happened to Ben Renick
on June 8 of 2017.
And while, up to now, it's he said, she said,
Lynlee Renick now must face the intense cross-examination
by the prosecution, where every detail of what she said
will be challenged and examined.
Ben.
Um, I believe me.
Ascencia Spa was really just bleeding money.
Lynlee was behind on a lot of payments
to the bank, a heating and cooling company.
She had owed them thousands of dollars.
There was a lot of bills that she was behind on,
and even some bills that Ben wasn't even aware of.
Ben was focusing on his snakes.
He allowed Lynlee to manage the spa herself.
It didn't go all that well.
She did this for money.
OK, this is verdict as to count one.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Lynlee Renick,
guilty of murder in the second degree.
And verdict as to count two, we, the jury,
find the defendant, Lynlee Renick,
guilty of armed criminal action.
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