In A Spine-Chilling Interview With Piers Morgan, A Psychopath Reveals Why He Killed His Little Sister

Because, at some point that night, Bennett reportedly instructed his babysitter to exit his home. With the house to himself, he unleashed a horrifying and deadly attack on his younger sister. He choked the four-year-old in her room at first. Then he beat her before finally stabbing her 17 times. Chillingly, the teen then allegedly made a six-minute phone call to a friend, before dialing 911.

In a particularly horrifying twist to the tale, while Bennett was on the phone with emergency services, he pretended to carry out CPR on Ella. He even counted out chest compressions. But the teen had been in a completely different room to his sister at the time. As such, investigators later found no evidence that life-saving efforts had been carried out on the little girl.

Bennett later recalled what happened when the police arrived in an interview with Piers Morgan for his documentary Psychopath. The show aired on ITV in the U.K. in June 2019. During their talk, Morgan asked Bennett, “Do you remember what happened after the emergency services turned up at the home?” And his response was chilling.

Bennett replied, “I remember that a male officer, walking past me, entered the bedroom. I remember hearing him mutter, ‘Oh my God,’ when he saw what I had done. And I remember I just felt like I was drowning in shame, knowing they had seen what I had done and knew that I had done it.”

And it isn’t just Bennett who remains haunted by the gruesome memory of what happened on that awful night. Indeed, Donna Kleman from Abilene Sheriff’s Department remembers the aftermath of Ella’s murder all too vividly. And during the show, she said of the four-year-old victim, “She’s a beautiful little girl.”

Clearly growing emotional, Kleman also relayed what happened when Charity arrived home to the crime scene. As the cop recalled, “The detectives covered Ella up to her neck so she could see her daughter’s very beautiful face. I hated [seeing that]. But I also didn’t like Charity having to see her daughter like that.”

Following the horrific discovery at the Bennett family home, cops arrested the 13-year-old boy. The teen would later claim that his actions were a result of a vivid hallucination. As a result, he’d seen Ella as a demon. The killer went on to contradict this claim, however, when he later revealed that he had planned the killing. He had, in fact, woken up with a clear head on the morning of the brutal murder.

As a result of Bennett’s terrible crime, he received a 40-year jail term, which he is serving at Texas State Prison’s Ferguson Unit. And that four-decade sentence is the longest a juvenile can get for the crime of murder in the state. He will, however, be entitled to apply for parole in 2027, which will mark the halfway point of his sentence.

In 2019 Bennett was 12 years of his four-decade long prison stint. As a result, he had just eight more years to wait until he would be eligible for parole. And it was during this period of his sentence that British journalist and broadcaster Piers Morgan paid him a visit, in order to interview him for a documentary.

Morgan is no stranger to coming face-to-face with evil murderers. In the past he has interviewed some of America’s most serious criminals as part of his shows Killer Women and Confessions of a Serial Killer. But one thing makes Bennett different to all the other murderers that the presenter has met. And it’s the fact that, some day, he may very well walk free.

What’s more, Bennett is still considered to be immensely dangerous. As a result, when the pair met in 2019, they had to talk through a sheet of toughened glass. However, from his polite and pleasant demeanor, it’s hard to gauge just how much of a threat the young man really was.

Going into the interview, Morgan was all too aware of the evil genius that he was dealing with. He said of Bennett, “He’s going to try and play me, isn’t he? He’s going to think he’s smarter than me.” But nevertheless, the presenter put some tough questions to the convict. And some of the answers he received were surprisingly revealing.

Watching the interview from another room was Bennett’s mom, Charity. She had stood by her son following his conviction, despite the fact that he’d killed her daughter. However, if the convicted murderer ever got out of prison, there’s a chance he may turn on her and her youngest son, Phoenix, who was born during his older brother’s incarceration.

Experts have already warned Charity that Bennett might harbor psychopathic resentment towards her. As a result, they have advised the doting mother to take Phoenix and disappear should the convicted murderer be released. Consequently, she may one day have to choose between supporting her psychopath son and protecting her family.

Following Bennett’s sentencing, Charity learned that her son was considered a psychopath by psychiatrists. Apparently, he told them that he’d experienced homicidal thoughts from a young age. What’s more, he’d expressed these ideas in the form of some disturbing drawings. The convict himself, however, has since denied the diagnosis and refused any psychological assessments as an adult.

Indeed, 2017 a documentary, The Family I Had, told the story of Ella’s murder from Charity’s point of view. And in it, Bennett said, “I chose to do my crime and I take full responsibility for my crime. And I wouldn’t say there was a predisposition to what happened. I’m not insane and I don’t suffer from any mental illness.”

During Bennett’s interview with Morgan, he denied being a “monster” and described his sister’s murder as a “mistake.” In fact, he even claimed that he loved Ella. The 25-year-old said, “We could sit here and talk all day about my feelings for my sister. A description of my feelings isn’t something I can give you in the brief time we have together because I love her.”

Given Bennett’s astonishing admission regarding his feelings towards his sister, Morgan than asked if he was “capable” of understanding what love was. And the killer’s response was telling. He said, “I don’t really know how to answer that question… It’s not simple. I can’t just point at something and say, ‘Okay, that’s love.’”

Nevertheless, despite Bennett’s vague grasp of what love may be, he claimed that’s how he felt about Ella. So why then did he choose to end the four-year-old’s life in such a horrific way when he was 13? Well, according to the convict, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. In fact, he claimed that he’d been “struggling” with himself at the time of the murder.

Bennett then told Morgan, “[There was] part of me that knew what I was doing was wrong. It was the part that loved my sister and would have turned the world upside down for her. And the other part was the wounded, twisted, dark part. The part that had been in pain for so long. It was the part of me that wanted to cause pain [in order] to take the pain that I had been feeling and give it to someone else.”

During Bennett’s interview with Morgan for the Psychopath documentary, the 25-year-old recalled how he’d felt while killing his younger sister. He said, “I remember that even during the time that I was stabbing her, I was struggling with myself to stop. But I just didn’t struggle hard enough. I didn’t put up a good enough fight against myself.”

At that point in the interview, Charity – who was still listening from another room – grew visibly upset as she heard her son’s harrowing testimony. By stark contrast, however, Bennett himself showed no emotion. In fact, his voice barely wavered as he chillingly recalled the night he took his little sister’s life.

Later in Psychopath with Piers Morgan, Charity revealed why she had stuck by Bennett. As she explained, “He’s my son. As a parent I have always believed that you give your children unconditional love. And I’m also the parent of someone who obviously has a mental health issue. I mean, he is a psychopath. But I don’t know how to stop loving my children.”

Charity’s commitment to Bennett is striking, particularly when we learn that the person he intended to hurt by killing his sister wasn’t Ella, but her. The then-13-year-old had reportedly wanted to punish his mom for her relapsed drug habit. It seems that she was addicted to heroin before conceiving her eldest son and had briefly used cocaine when he was 12 and her daughter three. Consequently, the teen allegedly accused his mom of putting drugs before her family.

Speaking to Morgan, Bennett revealed, “For many, many years there was just this hot, flaming ball of wrath in the pit of my stomach and it was directed at my mother. One of the reasons that I chose to kill my sister and not someone else is because I knew that, by doing so, I could hurt my mother in the worst possible way.”

Revealing the motive behind Ella’s murder, Bennett said he’d realized that by killing his sister, he could rob his mom of her entire family. As he told Morgan, “I had always known as a child that the most devastating thing to my mother would be the loss of one of her children. And I found a way to take away both of her children in one fell swoop.”

Following Ella’s death, Bennett told cops that he had originally planned to kill Charity as well, when she got home from work. However, he’d later had a change of heart. But the teen’s decision to spare his mom’s life was intended as a curse rather than a blessing. And it was his intention to cause as much pain as possible to his mother.

Indeed, in 2017 Charity told the New York Post why Bennett had spared her. She said, “The first reason he didn’t go ahead with it was because it was a lot harder to kill someone than he thought. The second reason was the realization if he killed me, I only would have suffered for five, ten, 15 minutes. But, if he left me alive, I would suffer for the rest of my life.”

However, while Bennett succeeded in killing Ella and hurting his mom, he denied taking any joy from his callous actions. He told Morgan, “At no point did I ever feel like I had accomplished something, or that I had achieved a goal.” Instead, the 25-year-old claimed that he didn’t even recognize the person who had committed his heinous crime.

Speaking on Psychopath with Piers Morgan, Bennett revealed, “One of the reasons why it’s so hard for me to talk about how I felt at that time is because I’m completely estranged from who I was then. Now, I can’t comprehend how I could ever have thought that killing my sister would solve my problems. It’s like we’re here talking about a completely different person.”

And Bennett continued to distance himself from the murder of his sister. As he told to Morgan, “You’re asking me to try and climb inside someone else’s head and peer through his eyes and catalogue his thoughts.” Explaining his state of mind, the convict added, “I realize we’re talking about myself, but it doesn’t feel like we are.”

After the episode aired in the U.K., there was plenty of reaction to Bennett on Twitter. One user posted that the murderer had left them feeling freaked out. Their tweet read, “Just watched #PsychopathwithPiersMorgan. Oh my, what a scary guy! And he’s due parole! I’m actually quite freaked out right now.”

Elsewhere, there was little sympathy for Bennett. One such tweet read, “Not a lot stops me in my tracks but, Jesus Christ, if ever there was a case for the death penalty, this is it! This person should never, ever be able to breathe the same air as everyone else, let alone be considered for parole! My God… Chilling!”

However, not everyone was so quick to judge Bennett. One Twitter user wrote, “I get that on the face of it [this] is shocking. It IS shocking. Impossible to comprehend. But that kid, now [an] adult, has a condition. He doesn’t feel empathy. If he doesn’t feel it, he doesn’t feel it. He is ILL.”

But even those with empathy for Bennett may have struggled to comprehend how Charity managed to forgive her son for his crime. As the 25-year-old himself then told Morgan, “It astounds me that she can still love me, care for me and stand by me.” The presenter, too, was also stumped by the mom’s capacity for forgiveness.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday in June 2019, Morgan said, “This, surely, is the ultimate test of a parent’s love. Could you forgive a child who murdered another of your children? Could you continue to love that child? Could you bear the thought of that child being freed to potentially do it all over again?”

As for Bennett, he’s entitled to apply for parole in 2027. And if he does win his freedom, Charity will have to reconsider her relationship with her killer son. Speaking on Psychopath with Piers Morgan she said, “There will come a point in time where I will not be able to mother both of my children. When the time comes to make that choice, Phoenix will come first.”