Snakes, Lies, and Murder: The Ben Renick Story

June 17th, 2017, in Montgomery County, Missouri, law enforcement responded to a 911 call that you just don’t see every day. As they pulled into a farm sprawling over seventy-two acres, they found the owner lying in a pool of his own blood.

This man was Ben Renick, the bona fide “rock star” of the reptile world, who had over 3,000 snakes surrounding him in various cages and displays. As if that didn’t make this case unique enough as it was, it was more than likely that one of those snakes was still on the loose and could potentially strike again.

But Ben had his reasons, aside from a burning passion, for having so many dangerous animals in the middle of his home. Ben Renick was actually an internationally renowned snake breeder. What had started as an interest when he was only a child had quickly blossomed into a booming business.

“Ben was doing stuff nobody had seen before,” friend and fellow breeder David Levison later spoke to the press. “He had a lot of ‘world’s firsts’ over the years.” Through his company Renick Reptiles Inc, Ben bred snakes with unique color combinations and patterns, essentially filling a hole in the market for bespoke, designer pets and reptiles. His animals usually sold for upwards of 100,000 dollars and went from everywhere in the States to all the way across the ocean to Japan.

Perhaps needless to say that when Ben’s wife Lynlee and his brother Sam called the police after the discovery of his body, the blame almost immediately went to one of these prized reptiles.

“My brother’s skull was crushed,” Sam later said. “It had to have been a snake,” he told the 911 operator over the phone.

Investigators rushed to the scene and pronounced Ben Renick dead. He was only twenty-nine years old at the time. 

Amidst the then desperate search to locate and secure the dangerous snake believed to have killed him, a grief-stricken Lynlee explained what had happened. She claimed to have come home and found Ben lying in a pool of his own blood. Not knowing what else to do, she had then called her brother-in-law Sam and asked for help.

It had been Sam’s idea to call in law enforcement and seek aid in capturing the creature that had killed his brother. “In my wildest dreams I would’ve never imagined someone would hurt Ben,” Sam later spoke to the press, but the investigators quickly ruled out that Ben’s death had been an accident.

Lying on the shelf above Ben’s body was a discharged shell casing from a bullet, and the investigators would quickly find more. It turned out that Ben had been shot eight times. One of those had been in the head, which had then caused the initial, false impression that his skull had been crushed.

The investigators quickly turned their attention from locating a deadly snake to finding Ben’s real killer. They first held his brother Sam as the prime suspect after discovering disputes that the two men had been having over the Renick farm and property.

But there was another big contender in the arena: Ben’s wife, Lynlee.

Ben and Lynlee had known each other since they were teenagers, but they had parted ways, only to reconnect in 2011. They were married three years later and then had a child together as Lynlee threw herself into helping Ben develop his snake breeding business. 

By 2017, Ben had made a million-dollar deal that included the sale of some pythons and anacondas, and it looked like the young family would be set for life. 

With one successful business under their belts, Lynlee then wanted to try her hand at running her own. She and Ben opened up a spa called Ascensia Spa Inc. and established themselves as the couple to be in Montgomery County.

Only, things are never quite as they seem on the surface. Investigators quickly uncovered Facebook messages between the couple where they were arguing about finances and Lynlee’s mismanagement of the spa. It turned out that Lynlee was behind in her loan, rent and staff payments and now her business was throwing the entire financial stability of the family into jeopardy.

Sensing a potential motive for murder, the police questioned Lynlee. They even tested her hands for gunshot residue, but the tests came back negative.

It looked like the investigators had been barking up the wrong tree.

Lynlee was released and the investigation continued.

And then detectives uncovered another string of messages between Ben and Lynlee. It turned out that only three years into their marriage, Lynlee had cheated on Ben with multiple men. From the messages between them, it looked like Ben had been suspicious about Lynlee and her infidelity but had no proof at the time.

It turned out that the Montgomery-County-couple-to-be was actually falling apart at the seams.

And then the investigators heard a statement from a spa employee that added fuel to the growing fire.

It turned out that about a month before Ben had been murdered, Lynlee had come into work and opened up about some of her most painful secrets. She claimed that Ben was abusing her and that she didn’t see a way out of her marriage.

Desperate to help her friend and boss, this spa employee had then agreed to do something heinous. She and Lynlee laced a protein shake with 15 Percocet pills and gave it to Ben. Ben was, understandably, poisoned. He became incredibly sick but miraculously survived the murder attempt. He then went about his life, unaware of the fact that he was living with someone who had literally tried to kill him.

But the investigators would only find out about this attempt on Ben’s life much further along the course of the investigation. 

For the moment and in the initial period after Ben’s death, Ben’s friends and family, especially those he knew from the reptile community, were left reeling from the sudden loss. They raised money to help support Ben’s family and his prize-possessions, his snakes, went to good homes and reptile experts within the community.

But on the flipside of that coin, only two weeks after the death of her husband, Lynlee made preparations to sell the Renick farm. This action in and of itself tells us that she was in a bit of a hurry to financially cash in on her husband’s death, but that wasn’t the only thing that she did. Mere days after Ben had been murdered, Lynlee was on the phone to the insurance company, asking how she could claim on Ben’s million dollar life insurance policy.

Lynlee was looking less like a grief-stricken widow and more like a prime suspect in the death of her husband. She was interviewed a total of six times and even took a polygraph test. She, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed the polygraph, but that fact alone wasn’t enough for law enforcement to arrest or charge her with murder.

What the detectives severely lacked was physical evidence, and it would take three long years for there to be any more movement in this case.

But it started with a tip that came from a jail cell. A witness claimed to have overheard a conversation about Lynlee killing Ben with the help of one of her ex-boyfriends, Michael Humphrey.

This wasn’t much to go by, but it was enough to arrest both Lynlee and Michael on suspicion of murder. In the hot seat once again, this time Lynlee, surprisingly, cracked. She told investigators that she had asked Michael to go with her to that farm that day. It turned out that she was finally going to pull the plug on her marriage, and she wanted backup in case things turned sour. Lynlee claimed that she’d had no idea that Michael had been carrying a weapon that day. It had never been the plan to kill, or even to hurt, Ben, but during the course of the argument, Michael had drawn his weapon and shot her husband.

Michael had a different version of events. He admitted that he’d shot Ben that day, but it had actually been Lynlee who had fired the killing shot.

Exactly which one of them was telling the truth didn’t seem to matter that much in the end. The jury found them both guilty of second-degree murder and sent them both to prison. Michael received a life sentence. Lynlee, Ben’s wife, the mother of his child and perhaps the mastermind behind the entire plot, received sixteen years.