A dismembered leg dredged from a Tennessee creek on the Fourth of July was positively identified as belonging to an alleged sexual predator and one of the county’s most wanted criminals, police announced.
The decomposing appendage was determined to be part of Joseph Frank Benton, who has been missing since he was slapped with 40 charges for unlawful possession of dozens of weapons, explosives and sexual exploitation of a minor in 2024.
After more than a year on the lam, he’s also facing extra charges for violating his probation.
The body part was fished out of the Sulphur Fork Creek, a 17-mile tributary that runs between Kentucky and Tennessee. The creek is in Robertson County and just six minutes outside of Springfield, where Benton’s last address was listed, according to the Robertson County Sheriff’s Department.
Before skimping out on his probation, Benton was at the heart of a two-decade cold case concerning one of his son’s old flames who briefly lived with the family in Tennessee.
The girlfriend, 22-year-old Jennifer Wix, and her 2-year-old daughter Adrianna, both disappeared on March 25, 2004 while living with the Bentons.
No bodies were ever recovered and Benton’s son, Joey, told authorities he simply dropped the pair off at a gas station and watched them leave in a white car, News Channel 5 reported.
Wix reportedly called her mother the day she disappeared and sobbed about an argument she had with one of the Bentons.
She was planning on moving out, her cousin said, around the time she went missing, NBC News reported.
The elder Benton was last captured sporting a wiry, out-of-control beard, bearing a strong resemblance to a nightmarish Santa Claus.
Some followers of the notorious cold case suggested that Benton might’ve severed his own leg to throw authorities off his trail.
“For this one, I will make an exception, the creep probably severed his own leg so he could continue to evade justice, and if not, and he is dead, well, at least his family will get the closure that the Wix family has never been given. I have no sympathy for those who could not offer sympathy and decency to the family of such a young mother and her child,” one user theorized on Facebook.
“And to be honest I hope a damn coyote chewed his f–king leg off,” another added.
Others considered that maybe it was an act of street justice.
“Perhaps someone caught up with him and took matters into their own hands, ( Or Leg as in this case ),” one commenter said.
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