The Brief
- The Kitsap County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office failed to contact family members of two murder victims before a resentencing that allowed a man convicted to life in prison to walk out of prison a free man.
- The family learned of the man’s release through a text message from the Department of Corrections. No further information was provided.
- The prosecuting attorney tells FOX 13 Seattle: “Flat out, we made a mistake.”
- A second convicted killer in the case is now fighting in court to expand a legal precedent that could not only free himself but open the door to others that were given life sentences for crimes they committed as 21 year olds.
KITSAP COUNTY, Wash. – Days before Thanksgiving 2024, Ginny Brideau received a text message that rocked her, and her family, to their core. The man that murdered her mother, a man that had been convicted of two life sentences, was walking out of prison a free man.
Gerald R. McCord, 51, and Connie Case, 42, were shot and killed at point-blank range inside their home while they slept in October 1994. The duo behind the killings, McCord’s own son, Steve McCord and nephew, Ernie Benson, made off with roughly $250 and some guns.
Roughly 30 years had passed when Brideau received the unexpected text message that the shooter, Benson, had been released from prison. It wasn’t even clear how that was possible, as the text was from the prison system, and unrelated to the court system that had made the ultimate decision to release him.
That was just the beginning of the ordeal, as the Kitsap County prosecutor appeared to have plans to resentence Steve McCord, the other convicted murderer, setting the stage for his own release from custody.…