KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A sex offender who says he worked for months to engineer his escape from a Minnesota treatment center found Kansas City very much to his liking until a bartender at a place he'd been frequenting spotted him on "America's Most Wanted" and called police.
The bartender said Michael Dale Benson was there and watching the television show the night his picture was shown during a segment about his April 15 escape. But Benson, in a telephone interview from jail with The Kansas City Star on Wednesday, said he had heard only a mention of Minnesota and didn't realize his face had been shown.
"If I would have known that, I would have left Kansas City that night," he told The Star. Benson, 42, said he enjoyed his time in a very friendly Kansas City, taking in its varied attractions, but figured on leaving in another three days anyway. He said he was just waiting for a paycheck from the job he had taken.
"I was ready to move on," he said. "I had a full tank of gas, clothes and food." Benson said Kansas City was not far enough away to suit him. "It was just a stop for me to make more money and gather some clothes and tools," he said. Benson said he had no animosity toward the bartender who turned him in, calling her "a lovely young lady."
Benson, convicted of rape in 1989 and later committed for treatment as a sexual predator, said he was surprised his escape was featured on the TV program.
"To be honest, I didn't think I was that big of a fish," he said.
Benson, arrested May 2, said that during his Kansas City stay he visited art museums and the Liberty Memorial, an imposing hilltop World War I monument.
He said he also went to a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins and claimed he held up a sign in hopes that a broadcaster for the Twins would call attention to it. Benson drove to Kansas City in a car he stole after cutting his way out of Minnesota's St. Peter Regional Treatment Center. A judge committed him there after he finished a prison sentence for a 1989 rape conviction. He said he decided to escape because he had no hope of being discharged legally.
In Kansas City, he was befriended and taken in by a church organist who believed his story of homelessness and hard luck. Benson said he lied to the organist and others he met to protect them from accusations of helping a fugitive.
"One of the things I noticed about Kansas City is that the people are friendly," he said. "I talked to everybody out there."
Benson gave The Star a detailed account of his escape from the treatment center, something he said he worked on every day for four or five months. But those who know him cast doubt on some of his claims. "I would take everything he says with a grain of salt," said Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokesman Kevin Smith. "He can get people to believe him. Look what happened in Kansas City. He lived for free with a guy he met in a bar."
Benson's father, David L. Blue, 59, has been accused of smuggling a hacksaw into the treatment facility. He was released on bond from a Minnesota jail Tuesday. Benson said his father did not help him escape. He wouldn't say where he got the hacksaw but said the other tools were from a kitchen and workshop.
He said he sanded and filed through a quarter-inch of steel to eventually dislodge a window bar, then used it to smash a layer of thick, hard plastic covering the window. He said his room was searched three times a day during the process, but he covered his work area with a CD rack. Benson said when he got through the plastic he used the dislodged bar to shatter a layer of glass. He said he managed to squeeze through the window and went to nearby woods to wait for three others he said he expected to join him.
He said they didn't appear and he went back and gave them the bar that had fallen to the ground so they could enlarge the opening, but then he took off. Benson said he ran about two miles through the woods, then dived into a river and rode the current to Mankato - a claim authorities find hard to believe because they say the water would have been too cold for him to survive.
Benson said he passed a home where the garage door was open, found keys in the ashtray of a car and drove off.
Benson, who is fighting extradition, remains in the Jackson County Jail without bond awaiting his next court appearance on June 1.
Information from: The Kansas City Star, kcstar.com