The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn
Thu, 01 May 2025
When Lee Benson’s nearly complete dream home burns to the ground, he thinks it must have been an accident. But then, a disturbing message is left at the scene. Are eco-terrorists behind this terrifying act? Binge all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment and Novel production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened to Lee Benson’s dream home in Phoenix?
I just love the beauty of the desert. All the changing seasons, coyotes, javelina, bobcats, lots of rattlesnakes in the summertime. Phoenix, Arizona, the year 2000.
Lee Benson is a local businessman. He's building his dream house. It's enormous. A custom-designed mansion close to the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, an area of wilderness set aside for conservation. This bumpy brown patch of desert is being transformed.
The walls are up, the roof is on, all the wiring is in. Every day coming to the construction site and watching this thing go up, it was so much fun. Everything is going according to plan.
Chapter 2: Who is Battalion Chief Brian Parks and how did he respond to the fire?
All of a sudden, the lights kicked on the station. Waking up from a sound sleep, and it's kind of an adrenaline rush. Your heart starts pounding. You're breathing fast.
It's 1138 on a Sunday night in April. Battalion Chief Brian Parks leaps out of his bunk at a Phoenix fire station. Get dressed quick.
Get out to the truck. Pulling out of the station and heading south, you could see a glow in the sky.
The glow is getting brighter and brighter, like a red dawn breaking over the mountains. But sunrise is still six hours away. What Brian's team is heading towards is something much more dangerous.
The flames were looking up probably 40, 50 feet in the air in the area of the mountain preserves. A huge plume of smoke billows from the base of Piestewa Peak. Undisturbed desert is where it was. You get something in there, you're going to have a brush fire.
The fire truck careens through a winding neighborhood onto a narrow dirt road before coming to a dead end. Beyond is nothing but desert, a rugged valley covered in cactus and creosote bush.
Very limited access. Very, very dark. But you can see the glow the whole time, and you're just trying to get back there to get to work. Lee Benson's mansion, on the verge of completion, is engulfed in flames.
The whole structure's ignited and burning at this point. Brian has to make a decision on whether to send his people inside the building. Rolling the window down, you could actually feel the heat. Because this is a construction site, Brian is hopeful there's no one inside to rescue. But even if there was, there's no way he can order his team into a fire like this.
The wall could collapse, and you don't want to be in the area where the wall falls on you or some of our equipment.
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Chapter 3: What clues suggest the fire was an act of arson?
Who is CSP? And why are they targeting Lee? Could there be somebody that, you know, has an issue with me? I just needed answers.
It's going to be a long time before Lee gets those answers, because CSP is far from done. There are dark times ahead for this quiet suburban neighborhood.
You never want to think your next-door neighbor is the serial killer, but he lives next to somebody.
This is just the beginning of the most notorious arson spree Phoenix has ever seen.
Is he just going to quit? Are we going to catch him? Or is somebody going to die?
He was like the roadrunner zipping around the Arizona desert.
My heart's starting to race now. Is this him? This is him. I know this is him. This has got to be him.
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Chapter 4: Who is Lee Benson and what was his reaction to the fires?
CSP's crimes will ignite a firestorm of media attention.
He thought he was so smart that he could taunt us by manipulating the media.
And divide the communities of Phoenix. Some people were rooting for this guy like a folk hero.
We were terrified. Everybody was.
From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. This is The Arsonist Next Door.
episode one you build we burn we could see more days above 110 through the weekend so unfortunately we're all looking at the same forecast here more hot days this
I've come to the sweltering city of Phoenix to investigate this story that began a quarter century ago with that first fire at Lee Benson's place. Why? Because it's a story about going to the extreme, about the crazy things that seemingly ordinary people do under the right circumstances. And I want to understand what it takes to make someone go there, to send them over the edge,
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Chapter 5: What threatening messages were left after the fires and who is CSP?
Holy moly.
My producer Leona and I have perfected a mad dash from the air-conditioned apartment to our air-conditioned car, a bright red Mini Cooper. Oh, that's delicious. But the Mini takes a while to cool down. I don't know if I've ever eaten a hot banana before. We're parked on a suburban street in North Phoenix, an area called Heritage Heights.
It's just around the corner from Lee Benson's house, the scene of the crime, where it all began. I'm actually feeling kind of paranoid. You know when you're in a picture-perfect neighborhood and get that feeling like you're not supposed to be there? That's exactly the sort of place we're in right now. It's an affluent suburb where dozens of cul-de-sacs wind around each other.
I'm seeing Spanish-style houses painted in desert colors, some with lawns neatly trimmed and well-watered, despite the heat, which makes no sense for the desert. We exit the car and start knocking on doors.
Hi. Hello. My name's Sam Anderson. Hi. I'm a journalist. We're actually making a podcast.
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Chapter 6: What is the neighborhood of Heritage Heights like?
We want to understand what kind of place this is and what happened 25 years ago when that first house went up in flames.
This is the perfect place to live in Phoenix, Arizona. Absolutely the perfect place.
Nestled between Freeway 51 to the north and a panoramic view of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve to the south, this area is filled with wildlife.
Little teeny tiny gecko. New baby.
And with an active homeowners association, everyone seems to have a pretty good idea of what everyone else is doing around here.
I've had keys to every house in our cul-de-sac. You're looking out for the kids, picking them up at school if somebody needs help.
These folks aren't afraid to spill the tea about what their neighbors are up to.
If you just wouldn't have had a noisy Doberman, nobody would have cared.
From what I can tell, not a lot of bad stuff happens here.
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Chapter 7: How did neighbors and locals perceive Lee Benson and his mansion project?
But was it really so out of place that someone would try to burn it down? It's my property and I get to do whatever I want with it.
Lee was not going to be influenced by the tension in the neighborhood. I'm on private property that I purchased not bordering any part of the preserve. It's all BS.
What Lee is saying is true. The problem is, it's not always clear to locals where exactly the preserve ends and private land begins. It's easy to mistake a vacant desert lot right by the preserve as part of the preserve, when actually, it's just private land that no one's gotten around to building on yet.
Technicalities aside, what mattered to Lee Benson's new neighbors was that an enormous mansion was being built directly between their homes and their previously uninterrupted view of a beloved mountain landscape. And Lee Benson himself, well, he didn't quite fit in with the neighborhood either. This community was mostly upper middle class.
Doctors, real estate agents, quiet professionals raising families. Lee was and still is a high-powered CEO. He's middle-aged with a buzz cut, bright blue eyes, and a charming smile. He's a business owner, an author, a martial arts teacher, and he even achieved that most glorious title we all aspire to, a podcaster.
Hello and welcome to the Show Your Value podcast where we explore the art of value creation in three macro buckets.
The point is, the man is successful and he's definitely perceived as a bit flashy.
Back at the time of the fire, Lee was hard at work, creating value. Right around 2000, I'm running my full-time Taekwondo martial arts school, and I'm operating three different aerospace-related businesses. Not only was the guy rich, he was fit, too. I've done lots of marathons, ultramarathons, competed in three different Ironmans. I just loved to exercise.
Not only was he rich and fit, he played guitar in a hard rock band. That's Lee on guitar. Band was called Three Degrees West. Played over a thousand nights on stages, clubs, concerts, all of that. So music's going on. Martial arts is going on. I've got my aerospace companies going on. Life is full and amazing.
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Chapter 8: What role does Lieutenant Rob Handy play in the investigation?
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Lieutenant Rob Handy is sitting in his office at the Phoenix Police Department headquarters. He's a big, serious-looking guy with a buzz cut. He's only in his early 30s, but he already has a reputation for being intense and pretty competitive when it comes to catching bad guys.
In his hand is the note left behind at the scene of the second fire, proof that Lee Benson's new home has been deliberately burnt down again.
It says warning across the top that looks like it's been almost stenciled with two exclamation points.
The fire department can't handle something like this alone, so they've called in the police. And Rob is tasked with leading the investigation. But so far, he only has one lead, the piece of paper in his hand. Whoever wrote the letter has taken steps to conceal their identity.
Underneath it is typed from a computer and printed, but then the top looks like it's more scrawled.
The letter goes straight into the ominous, thou shalt not desecrate God's creation line.
And then it has Revelations 14.10 and then Proverbs 17.19.
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