Sarah Edmondson & Ben Darras

. A drug fueled road trip ends in a brutal crime scene. It was premeditated, cold-blooded. One that might have gone unsolved... We had clear pictures of the shooting. There really weren't a whole lot of leads. ...if the gunmen hadn't struck again. He had been shot in the head. And when they were caught, it would be hard to say what was more shocking. Was it the couple's identities: Two eighteen-year-old kids. She comes from a very prominent family. Or was it the supposed inspiration for their murderous spree? They watched "Natural Born Killers" while they were taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs They were like Micky and Malorie in the movie... Me and her are the only ones who really know what really happened. March 8th, 1995. It was a few minutes before midnight when a man walked into a convenience store in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a town of six thousand an hour north of New Orleans. Ponchatula is uh, you know, a sleepy little community, not much crime. But that night, a crime had occurred. When the customer walked up to the counter to pay for his purchases, he found the store's clerk, 35-year-old Patsy Byers, sprawled on the floor behind the register in a pool of blood. Patsy was a mother and a, a wife. From everything that we ever heard she was good as gold. The customer immediately contacted the local police, who called in investigators from the Tangipahoa Parrish Sheriff's office. We had an understanding where if we had a major case that we would all work it together. And this particular case that he called me about was going to be a major case. Although, by the time the sheriff's investigators arrived at the scene, Patsy was long gone. She was in emergency surgery at North Oaks Medical Center. Mrs. Byers did not die as a result of the shooting. She was paralyzed but did not die. Considering her critical condition it would be some time before Patsy was able to give the investigators a statement and hopefully identify her assailant. Fortunately for the investigators, the convenience store also had a security camera - of sorts. These were still photographs, it wasn't a motion picture type camera. It was one that would take a series of one-second interval pictures. The camera was crude and the images were grainy, but starting at 11:52 P.M. the photos had captured the entire crime. We had clear pictures of the shooting, the suspect coming in to the store, pulling out a gun, discharging the gun, leaving the store. Surprisingly, the images revealed that Patsy's shooter appeared to be a young woman. And when investigators finally identified her, they would be shocked to learn that the unlikely suspect was a wealthy teenager with family ties to Oklahoma's political elite. And, she hadn't been alone that night. The shooting was part of a murderous joyride she'd taken with her boyfriend and partner in crime. 18-year-old Sarah Havely Edmondson grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Muskogee is a fairly mid size city for the state of Oklahoma we are around 38,000 to 40,000 in population located in, uh, Eastern Oklahoma. But Sarah wasn't just any old Okie from Muskogee... Sarah Edmondson's family is one of the most recognizable family names in the state of Oklahoma the Edmondson family didn't start out to accumulate great wealth. It made it name through public service and politics. Was sometimes referred to as the Kennedy's of Oklahoma. Sarah's grandfather had been a U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma, her great uncle had been the state's governor and a U.S. Senator. Her uncle at the time was the attorney general of the State of Oklahoma. And her father was a district court judge. Some of the finest people you would ever want to meet. Needless to say, Sarah enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Status, money, everything that a person could really want. And by the time she was a teenager, it appeared that Sarah was on the fast track to popularity, too. She's, ah, petite good looking, very cute She was an editor of the yearbook and the newspaper, and active in student affairs, and made good grades in high school. But by the time Sarah was 15, a string of incidents had sent the promising teen spinning off course, starting with the death of her beloved grandfather. She couldn't handle her grandfather dying when she was fourteen years old. Soon after, one of Sarah's best friends committed suicide and two others died in a car accident, sending Sarah even further over the edge. She began acting out and was quite a handful for her parents. She did things like, uh, paint her bedroom black. She was beginning to have some problems, getting involved in drugs. And if that wasn't self-destructive enough, Sarah also started cutting herself. Sarah was really depressed and so she started acting out and she found that cutting herself was soothing. Sarah's new lifestyle yielded new friends including an older boy named Patrick Williams. She was hanging around with Patrick, cause he was doing lots of drugs. Naturally, Sarah's parents did everything they could to put a stop to her destructive behavior. They eventually encouraged Sarah to file a restraining order against Patrick and seek recovery for her substance abuse. They had to send her to a drug rehab center. It was just the right thing to do. The treatment appeared to put Sarah back on track. She graduated from high school with honors in May of 1994 and, in January of the next year, enrolled at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It's north and east of here about twenty-five; thirty miles away. It's a college town mainly. Unfortunately, the recovering addict had barely settled into her dorm before she started slipping. Soon, Sarah was sampling the college town's drug culture at a rundown rental house off campus that catered to addicts, a place that students called "The Commune." That was a house were self described hippies like to gather. And it was at the Commune that Sarah first met the boy who would change the course of her life- an 18-year-old outcast named Ben Darras... Ben came from a very poor family. They were from a different part of society than the Edmondson's. Ben's early adolescent years had been especially difficult. Ben's father did commit suicide and that, that had an effect on him. Only thirteen years old when his father killed himself, Ben took the tragedy hard. After his father's suicide, Ben's mother had him institutionalized for about eight weeks. Like Sarah, the treatment seemed to help. But, unlike her, he struggled in school. He was marginally illiterate. He was the kind of guy that was high school drop out. For the next year, Ben dabbled with drugs, joined a local rock band and basically drifted. He had had some substance abuse problems. Think he had a couple of minor arrests. 18 years old, never really held a job, never did anything of significance at all. Had no guidance in life. Was going nowhere in life. Ben was going to The Commune, however, which is where he first set his eyes on Sarah in January of 1995. Ben and Sarah spent many hours with their friends at the, so-called commune in Tahlequah taking drugs and drinking and hanging out. Ben immediately fell for Sarah. He looked at her; that was it. I think perhaps he was infatuated with Sarah for many reasons. She was an attractive young lady. She also came from a family that was very different from his, something that he had never experienced. And Ben's bad-boy background likewise appealed to Sarah. You know, a lot of times people who come from prominent families, uh, some of the children, they become rebellious. Soon, the teenagers were a couple. They started hanging around together. It was a quick courtship. One fueled by Ben and Sarah's undeniable chemistry... They had a pretty intense relationship when you get right down to it. Although, when it came to Ben and Sarah's relationship, "chemistry" applied to more than just their physical attraction. They were smoking a lot of dope and doing psychedelics. They got in to some, uh, very heavy LSD. For the next several weeks, the couple was inseparable, Sarah's college studies all but forgotten. They began spending more and more time together. Sarah even brought Ben to a gathering at the family's vacation cabin and introduced him to her parents. The sullen young man wasn't exactly a suitable match for the heir to one of the state's most prominent political families. The family really didn't approve of him at all. He just wasn't the type of person the family believed should be dating their daughter. Sarah was undeterred by her parent's feelings about her new boyfriend. If anything, the family's rejection may have strengthened the bond between her and Ben. They stuck together and was pretty much alone together didn't associate too much with anybody else. And two weeks later on March 5th, the smitten teens returned to the family's lake cabin - alone. They were doing drugs, doing LSD. They had taken four hits of LSD and that most people only took one hit and that Sarah had taken two hits and there were a variety of other pills they were taking. Strung out on the drugs, they stayed up all night watching movies... They watched many things that night, one of which was "Natural Born Killers." While they were taking LSD, watching this very violent movie that was kind of a psychedelic Bonnie and Clyde type story. That is when they hatched the idea of going on a road trip. And then, sometime the next day the outcast lovebirds decided there was only one thing left to do - leave. There was nothing to hold them in Oklahoma. Sarah had all but dropped out of school. Her family had rejected Ben. All they had was each other... Why did they go on the trip? Adventure. Two young people, you know, wanted to take off, wanted to leave. From the cabin, the couple headed east... They had decided that they wanted to come to Memphis to see a Grateful Dead concert. Unfortunately, the drug-addled pair had overlooked one minor detail. They got here they realized that the concert wasn't here at the time. Only missed it by a week. So, after a short stop in Memphis, the couple's road trip suddenly needed a new destination. Lets go to New Orleans or let's go to Orlando or let's go somewhere else. The couple never really came to a definite decision about which direction to go. But as their drug fueled road trip took them further south, they would end up taking a deadly detour. Coming Up: Patsy Byers' shooting is linked to a *** in Mississippi. The scary thing was it was so random. Then one killer is betrayed by a blast from the past. Patrick was, uh, an ex-boyfriend. April, 1995. 18-year-olds Sarah Edmondson and Ben Darras had just returned home after a drug-fueled, cross-country roadtrip. Their travels took 'em, uh, to a wide area of the United States all the way to Florida and then eventually back into Oklahoma. They'd been inseparable on the trip, but once they returned, they had a lover's quarrel that resulted in a brief split. She wanted him with her one night and he just blew her off. She freaked out and, ah, that's when they, they broke up and she was hanging around with her ex-boyfriend Patrick. Though the couple's breakup would be short-lived, the consequences of their days apart, AND the road trip they took together would soon come back to haunt them. Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Investigators with the Tangipahoa Parrish Sheriff's office were working an unsolved *** case that had occurred 3 weeks earlier. On March 8th, just before midnight, 35-year-old Patsy Byers had been found shot and bleeding on the floor of the convenience store where she worked. Though there were few leads, investigators did have surveillance footage from a camera just above the cash register. Starting at 11:52 p.m., the camera captured disturbing images of a young woman pulling a gun and shooting Patsy Byers. You see her go in. You see her shoot Patsy. You see her leave. And then you see her come back inside and go through Patsy's pockets and try to get in the cash register. Police had released the surveillance photos to the media, hoping someone might recognize the mysterious woman in the striped hooded jacket. We had clear pictures of the shooting. We then made the pictures available to the news media hoping that we could, ah, generate some activity. It was a big deal. They had rewards posted. It was covered by all the TV channels and all the newspapers. We got a lot a calls on look alikes and we had to investigate each and every one of 'em. They also made their own efforts to locate or at least identify the mystery woman. We have homeless people that we look at, we have people that are, are petty thieves, and then we have felons that are out, just got out of jail or what have you. But ultimately, neither the phoned in leads nor the fieldwork panned out. Things kinda died out. We still didn't have a clear identity on this person. In the meantime, Patsy Byers remained in a nearby hospital. Mrs. Byers did not die as a result of the shooting in Ponchatoula. Shot once in the neck with a .38 caliber pistol, the 35-year-old mother of three was paralyzed. She'd only survived by leading her shooter to believe she wasn't alive. I just pretended I was dead. Somehow she got into the cash register and she took the money and she left, and that's the last I'd ever seen of her. The investigation went nowhere until, almost three months after the shooting, when the Tangipahoa Parrish authorities received an unsolicited phone call on June 1st... One of the officers came from the front office and saw me in the back and he said, "Listen, there's this guy on the telephone. Talk to this guy." The caller was a police officer in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He told the Louisiana investigator he had received information from a boy named Patrick Williams that might be of interest, information pertaining to a girl named Sarah Edmondson, the daughter of a local judge. Sarah's ex-boyfriend Patrick Williams was arrested, uh, on a local warrant and, uh, he gave the information to the arresting officer. According to Patrick, he'd recently been hanging out with his ex when she started talking about a road trip she and another boy had taken back in March. They had traveled to a wide area of the United States all the way to Florida. They drive to Florida, spend a day or so looking at the ocean, decide its time to come home. And they were running low on money. Which may have explained something else that Sarah had told Patrick while they were hanging out: She had been involved in an armed robbery and possibly even a homicide in Louisiana. Was it possible that Sarah had confessed to shooting Patsy Byers? There was one way to find out... I said, "Have, do you have a picture of this person?" he said, "Yes, I have a number of pictures of her." I said, "Is there any way you can fax it? fax a picture to us?" and he said, "Yes." A few minutes later, the Louisiana authorities figured they had finally found the mystery woman who'd shot Patsy Byers and left her for dead. It was so similar that we had to say, This, this, this has got to be her. They were able to match a photograph of Sarah up to the surveillance photograph from the Convenient Store. And as soon as that information reached the police in Ponchatoula the next day, they were able to secure a warrant for Sarah's arrest. On June 2nd, the authorities descended upon the Muskogee home of Sarah's parents. She wasn't home, however. According to her mother, she was out - and she wasn't alone. It was a friend with her, Ben Darras. Ben Darras was Sarah's boyfriend. The two had been living in Muskogee after returning from a three-week road trip back in the Spring. But even though they were back, it seemed the vacation hadn't ended. Sarah and Ben and some other friends was at an amusement park in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was scheduled back that night. While the investigators waited for Sarah to return, they questioned her father, a district court judge. We inquired about a gun that he may have had. He said that he did have a .38 pistol, uh, that we was looking for and as far as he knew it was at his cabin near Talehquah. The judge offered to take the investigators out to the cabin to retrieve the gun. The gun was there at the cabin in a nightstand. He voluntarily gave up that, that gun and gave it to us. Then, once informed of what his daughter was accused of and the evidence against her, the judge revealed that Sarah did have a troubled past. She had a history of problems with drugs in junior high and high school. But he did make a request. The judge asked that he be the first one to speak to 'em. So, when Sarah and Ben arrived home that night, they found her parents waiting. We stood back somewhat, uh, at a distance and allowed the judge and Mrs. Edmondson to greet Sarah and judge gave her a big hug and she hugged her mom and they told her that we were there to arrest her. In fact, Sarah's father handled some of the formalities himself. He told her he loved her and, ah, that she had the right to remain silent and basically the Miranda warning. Based on what Sarah's parents had told them, the investigators assumed that Ben had been an accessory in the shooting. Sarah's mother, told us that Sarah's current boyfriend Ben Darras and her had traveled to Louisiana. Ben was also arrested, and the two lovers were taken away together. For the time being, their love was still holding strong, but it was about to be tested. Coming up: Once in custody, Ben and Sarah turn on each other. Ben's statement was he had no idea what she was gonna do. So, Sarah shocks authorities by revealing another stop they'd made on their deadly road trip. There was a homicide in Hernando, Mississippi. June 3rd, 1995. 18-year-old Sarah Edmondson, the daughter of a prominent Oklahoma judge, had just been arrested for shooting convenience store clerk Patsy Byers in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Also arrested as an accessory was Sarah's 18-year-old boyfriend, Ben Darras, who'd been on the spontaneous road trip with her when the crime occurred. Once in custody, Sarah had heeded her father's warning and refused to talk. But not Ben. Despite his intense relationship with Sarah, he immediately folded. Ben was not educated, but he was not, not stupid. We took Ben to the United States Attorney's Office and talked to Ben about their travels from Oklahoma and down to Louisiana. During the interview, Ben also confirmed that it was Sarah in the photographs from the convenience store. Ben admitted being there with Sarah. Although, the way Ben described it, he was essentially a bystander to Patsy Byers' shooting at the convenience store. Ben's statement was he had no idea what she was gonna do. He asked her to go in and get some merchandise. He stated that he sat outside in the car and Sarah had gone in. But, while he claimed he hadn't been involved in the shooting, he did take some responsibility for the robbery. Sarah had actually came out without the money according to Ben and Ben had to send her back in to go and get the money and this was after Sarah had shot Patsy Byers. Shocked by the shooting, Ben said he and Sarah had spent the next week or so wandering aimlessly before returning to Muskogee. During the interview of Ben we went over, uh, their travels and their routes where they had been. Soon, the couple was back on the road, but this time in custody. They were extradited to Louisiana to face charges of armed robbery and, in Sarah's case, attempted ***. Things did not look good, uh, down in Louisiana. If convicted, Ben faced a possible 99-year sentence while Sarah faced a total of up to 149-years. It was sinking in that this was real, this was not a, a childlike game and that uh she was looking at serious, serious trouble. But Sarah's political family was prepared to fight against the guy they believed responsible for their daughter's demise. I think that Ben Darras was a perfect storm for Sarah in that she had a drug addiction and that Ben was able to fuel that and that she had something in her that gave her the ability to do this and that Ben brought that out of her. Sarah's parents feared that Ben's statement would create an uphill battle for her defense. But what they didn't know was that Sarah had one major card to play against Ben. In July of 1995, a month after Sarah's arrest for the shooting of Patsy Byers, her attorneys contacted the authorities in Hernando, Mississippi and informed them that she had information about an unsolved *** case. But she wasn't willing to tell the information unless she was granted immunity. The deal was quickly cut. And, when Mississippi authorities went to Louisiana on July 17th to interview Sarah in the Tangipahoa Parish jail, she shared her own version of the road trip that she took with Ben, including a very important detail that he'd left out, a *** committed by Ben. According to Sarah, it all began when she and Ben had been watching movies at her family's cabin, and according to her, one movie in particular inspired them to go on their road trip. They had watched uh "Natural Born Killers." Starring *** Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, the Oliver Stone film chronicled a fictional couple's cross-country killing spree. They were two young people traveling across the United States on a crime binge. That movie really mesmerized Darras. And Ben's interest wasn't just cinematic, according to Sarah. She claimed that her lover became obsessed with recreating the movie's tale of a serial killing couple - for real. According to what Sarah says after they watched the movie Ben wanted to commit ***. She said in her statement, they were like Micky and Malorie in the movie. Sarah told the investigators that Ben's homicidal fantasies had made her so nervous that, before they left for Memphis, she'd pocketed the .38 caliber pistol her father kept at the cabin. She said in her statement, that she was afraid of him that's why she took the gun. Despite her apparent fear of Ben, The love-struck teen hit the road with him, a loaded .38 and a hefty supply of drugs in tow. They had, been doing a lot of drugs over the whole trip starting in Oklahoma, all the way to, ah, New Orleans and back. Just two people, two people on a bender, man. I mean, they were just, you know, they were out of control. The office for the cotton gin is a small, uh, white building somewhat similar to a very small mom and pop convenience store. In the statement, she said, they walked into the office and Ben Darras supposedly told her to act angelic, you know. And She has a pretty little face and she probably could have done it, I don't know. Inside, Ben had come face to face with the gin's 58-year-old manager, Bill Savage. Bill was a farmer he was a, a gin operator he was a very well, well-respected man in the community. He was loved in the county. He was active in his church. He was active in mission work. Ben had asked Bill Savage for directions back to the interstate. But Bill hadn't been fooled, according to Sarah. He knew something was up, cause he stood up from his desk. And that's when all hell breaks loose. According to Sarah, Ben had pulled the gun and fired, but the shot failed to kill Savage. And it grazed his cheek, and the bullet went into the back, uh, wall. Then Sarah claimed that the older man had rushed Ben, grabbing for the gun. But during the struggle, according to Sarah, Ben had fired a second, fatal shot. While they were wrestling, he got it to where he could shoot him. Sarah said that as they sped south after the shooting, she had been shocked by what had just happened. But not Ben... He just said, "It was just a rush, he said it was unbelievable, ah, to hold the power of life or death. And it was apparently a rush he wanted Sarah to experience. In her statement, she claimed that the couple was in New Orleans, walking around the French Quarter only hours after shooting Savage when Ben turned to her and made a stunning announcement. Ah, He said, ah, "Now it's your turn." According to Sarah, Ben told her that if she loved him, she would kill someone, too. He called them partners. He said I done one now it's your turn. It seemed that he wanted her to be equally culpable in this string of, uh, crimes. Contrary to what Ben had earlier told the Louisiana police, Sarah claimed that shooting Patsy Byers had been his idea. You have, uh, dueling banjos. Darras would uh point the finger at her and she would point the finger at him. According to Sarah, she'd tried to ignore Ben, but it was no use. He had been adamant that they should kill again. With Sarah's statement complete, investigators were stunned, especially considering that they'd had no leads on the Bill Savage *** due to the random nature of the crime. We were at a dead end we had uncovered every rock every stone we could and just were nowhere at this point in time. They never connected the, the crime in Hernando with the crime in, ah, Ponchatoula. And they never would have, if it hadn't been for Sarah. Coming Up: The prosecutors try to answer a tough question. Was she trying to put it off on him when she actually did it? And Ben speaks out. We both know who's lying and who is telling the truth. By July 17th, 1995, the authorities in Mississippi and Louisiana figured they had solved two shocking crimes. One was the March 7th *** of 58-year-old Bill Savage, a businessman in the small town of Hernando, Mississippi. It was a premeditated, cold-blooded killing and what was more frightful than anything else, it was so random. The second crime, the March 8th shooting of a convenience store clerk wasn't technically ***, but its aftermath was horrifying enough. The victim, a 35-year-old convenience store clerk named Patsy Beyers, had been left paralyzed from the neck down, her spinal cord severed by the bullet. When she come in there and shot me she killed Patsy Byers and I think I might be like this the rest of my life. Just as shocking was the identity of the young woman charged with shooting the clerk: an 18-year-old Oklahoma native named Sarah Edmondson. It was a very prominent powerful Oklahoma political family that she came from. Her father Jim at the time was a District Judge in Muskogee County and is now an Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice. Sarah's boyfriend, an 18-year-old high-school dropout named Ben Darras was also in custody, charged for his role in the convenience store robbery. He's just a punk. That was my, my opinion that he was your typical drug addict. But, according to Sarah, Ben had been the one who had shot Bill Savage. She told us that it was Ben's idea and that Ben had committed this crime here in Hernando. Blaming her boyfriend for a *** wasn't the most surprising thing in Sarah's confession, however. Instead, it was what she claimed had sent her and Ben off on a road trip that left Bill Savage dead and Patsy Byers paralyzed. Sarah came out and said they were watching "Natural Born Killers" and that caused them to do that. They watched "Natural Born Killers" several times while there were taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs and smoking pot. I think that the movie certainly was a triggering mechanism for Ben to do what he did. That's what Sarah claimed had happened. She described kind of a psychedelic Bonnie and Clyde type story. But was her incredible story true? We took her statement and then we started the investigation to confirm everything that she said. One thing was relatively easy to confirm. Whether or not the gun used in the Byers' shooting had also killed Bill Savage. They were able to do tests on the firearm and connect the firearm with Mr. Savage killing. However, unlike the shooting of Patsy Beyers in Louisiana, the Mississippi investigators couldn't prove who had pulled the trigger. The only unknown at the time was, is she trying to put it off on him when she actually did it? In the end, it didn't really matter. Between Sarah's statement and the ballistics, the authorities had more than enough to charge Ben with Bill Savage's ***. Under Mississippi law if two conspirators go together to commit a crime then the acts of one are the acts of all. Which means that regardless of whether Sarah was the shooter or Ben was the shooter they went in together to commit the crime and they were both eligible for whatever punishment was appropriate. Sarah, who already faced attempted *** charges in Louisiana, had been granted immunity in exchange for the statement that basically solved the Bill Savage case. They made us aware of the fact that if she wasn't truthful, if she wasn't forthcoming, they would withdraw the immunity agreement and prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law. Ben Darras had no such immunity, however. In September of 1995 he was indicted for first-degree ***. And if convicted he would face severe punishment. We do have the death penalty in Mississippi. And the fact that he faced a possible death sentence gave the prosecutors plenty of leverage. With the death penalty being on the table once his attorneys looked at everything the best advise they could give him would be to enter a plea. I mean he was in a, a real jam. I think he could've had Johnny Cochran, F. Lee Baily and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and he would've still been convicted. Ben eventually took his lawyer's advice. In May of 1996 the DeSoto County District Attorney's office announced that they had reached a deal. Ben would plead guilty to Bill Savage's *** in exchange for a life sentence. He was not, not stupid, you know. He was not a dumb young man. I mean, he did some crazy things, but he was not unintelligent. He said, "I'm sorry." He wrote me a letter and, um, I've worked really, really hard to forgive him. Ben also wrote Sarah to profess his continued affection. He still cared for Sarah, he, he really did. And then he provided the authorities with a hand-written statement, confessing to the crime. He basically confirmed what Sarah had, had told us. In Louisiana, Ben pled guilty to armed robbery for his role in the Byers' shooting, receiving a 35-year sentence. But, despite claiming that he still loved her, he agreed to testify against Sarah, who was still awaiting trial for armed robbery and attempted ***. Ben also agreed to a national interview where he discussed his relationship with Sarah and his role in the crime. We were just your basic boyfriend and girlfriend When asked about the night that Patsy Byers was shot, Ben claimed he hadn't been the one encouraging Sarah to commit the crime. I wasn't like the little cheerleader squad from hell like they tried to make out - you know, 'You're bad enough, you're good enough, or whatever - it wasn't nothing like that. As for his own actions, Ben showed remorse - especially for the lifestyle that he claimed led to his violent behavior. Never going out and taking any responsibility for myself, never getting a job, never finishing school, never doing anything the hard way. I did everything the easiest way I could. When it came to Sarah's downward spiral, Ben had his own theory. She didn't want to be governor of Oklahoma. She didn't want to be the district judge. She didn't, she didn't want to be her dad or grandpa. But, despite his openness about their past, Ben still wouldn't provide details about the crimes. Me and her are the only ones that know what really happened, we both know who's lying and who is telling the truth." But were Sarah and Ben the only ones responsible for their murderous crime spree? In June of 1996, bestselling author John Grisham, wrote a scathing magazine article about the case. John Grisham the famous, uh, legal novelist weighed in. He had, uh, worked as an attorney in Hernando, Mississippi and personally knew Williams Savage and he took it personally. He was trying to bring attention to Hollywood and to producers and directors that they need to be more responsible, uh, with what they put on film, because he felt very strongly about this. And he had even stronger feelings about the film that supposedly inspired Ben and Sarah's crime spree: Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers." He also said that that movie should have been outlawed. It was just, believe it was almost pornographic about, you know, how what a high it is to kill somebody. This became a big, big case, big news. Patsy Byers' family took things even further. They filed a multi-million dollar civil suit against Stone and eventually took legal action against Time Warner for product liability. With a national debate brewing over who was to blame, the issue would ultimately be left to the courts to decide. Coming up: Sarah faces a tough choice. This young beautiful girl had jeopardized the rest of her life. And, Hollywood goes on trial It was an attack really on the First Amendment of the United States, Free Speech. On October 5th, 1998, Sarah Edmondson walked into a Louisiana Courthouse to face justice for the 1995 shooting that had left a convenience store clerk paralyzed from the neck down. Sarah just through the grace of God did not kill somebody. Sarah hadn't come to court to stand trial, however. She was there to plead guilty to armed robbery and second-degree attempted ***. Sarah copped a plea and got thirty-five years in the shooting of Patsy Byers in that armed robbery. It was a heartbreaking sight of this young beautiful girl who had her whole life in front of her, through a series of bizarre, senseless criminal acts had jeopardized the rest of her life. That December, in exchange for a life sentence, Ben also stood up in a DeSoto County, Mississippi courtroom and formally pled guilty to the *** of William Savage. I hate it that he was that young and that he's gonna be in prison all of his life, but you did the crime, you do the time. With Sarah and Ben's fate determined, there was still another issue that was unresolved: the lawsuit Patsy Byers' family had filed against Oliver Stone and Time Warner for the role the movie "Natural Born Killers" might have played in the murders. The case eventually went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was an attack really on the First Amendment of the United States, Free Speech. There was no proof that "Natural Born Killers" caused these two individuals to participate in these, these crimes. It may have been simply that they were two eighteen-year-old kids with evil in their hearts. Not that there weren't similarities between Sarah and Ben and the film's killer couple. For all their, ah, their stupidity and immaturity they loved each other. But the two stories also had one big difference: the ending. You know, they got away with it in the movie.