Pubdate: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) Copyright: 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc. Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/submit.asp Website: http://www.jsonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265 Author: Mike Nichols Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) WHEN DOES INDIFFERENCE BECOME HOMICIDE? Benjamin Stibbe is only 24 years old but, if a criminal complaint is correct, has left an astounding number of dead people in his wake. That he is not dead himself might be one of the small wonders of his case. Complaints charging him with a total of four counts of reckless homicide paint a picture of an inveterate heroin abuser - and supplier. Awaiting a sentencing that ended up being postponed in Port Washington on Friday, he wore the requisite orange of the jailed. He was pale and silent and wasn't asked to answer any questions. Here's just one I wish he would: At what point does callous indifference to people's lives become an almost willful taking of the same? Lynn Smaxwill was 43 when she overdosed on cocaine and heroin the night of Dec. 11, 2002. The complaint filed this week alleges Stibbe purchased those drugs in Milwaukee and was present in her Grafton house the night she died. It also alleges that the very next day, fully aware of Smaxwill's death and having already been questioned by police, he went back to Milwaukee and purchased heroin for a different woman - one who happens to still be alive. Others are not. On the night of Oct. 15, 2005, Stibbe allegedly provided the heroin that killed Matthew Kobiske, a 21-year-old Grafton man; then, a mere week after that, allegedly provided the stuff 47-year-old James Helm died using. He finally, we know for a fact because he already pleaded no contest to this one, provided the drugs that 17-year-old Angela Raettig used right before her life ended last Nov. 29. There's no allegation he is a serial killer who planned things out. But the word "serial" appears apt, and the criminal complaints charge him with directly, if not intentionally, causing the deaths. Whatever you call him, families of victims believe, you cannot call him remorseful. "He does not show remorse," said Smaxwill's younger sister, Ann, "for what he does." It was Raettig's death that got the most publicity and causes people to wonder why more attention wasn't paid to Stibbe long, long ago. Joe Schwind is a Cedarburg doctor who dates Angela's mother and tried to revive the girl the morning she was found. What, he wondered Friday, do prosecutors know now about the earlier deaths that they couldn't have known, and charged, a long time ago? "You need evidence to charge it," responded Ozaukee County District Attorney Sandy Williams, "and we have been discussing it with the families, so I am surprised they would ask that question." It's not the only one. People wonder how a man like Stibbe can operate entirely devoid, apparently, of a conscience. "The thing that bothers me," said Schwind of the allegations, "is this guy contributed to the death of the first person and then he goes and does it again and then the third time." The first time, he said, you could say somebody "accidentally overdosed." "But after it happens time and time again," according to the allegations, "he has to know. Then he's truly responsible." People overdose on heroin for a variety of reasons. Some are what Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen calls opiate-naive. They don't have any experience with the drug. Others overdose because they haven't used regularly and have lost their tolerance. Still others are genetically unable to metabolize it. The most common problem in Grafton, criminal complaints now suggest though: a man who seemed completely unfazed by the fact he was leaving a trail of corpses behind him. Time and time and time and time again.