An agent who questioned the man accused of shooting his parents and three younger sisters to death in the family’s southeast Iowa home was on the witness stand Tuesday.
Twenty-three-year-old Shawn Bentler is on trial for the five murders and prosecutors showed a video tape featuring the DCI agent who interviewed Bentler last October shortly after Bentler’s arrest."I was not there," Bentler yelled at the agent, who was pressing Bentler to tell what he knew about the murders. "I don’t know," Bentler replied. The interview took place in Quincy, Illinois, where Bentler was living and where he was picked up by police.
"Evidence is there that’s going to put you in the house. There’s no question you did it. The phone calls are damning," the agent told Bentler, referring to a 9-1-1 call from his sister who screamed "Shawn don’t!" before she was shot to death. Bentler repeatedly said, "I don’t know" in answer to many of the interrogator’s questions. The DCI agent who questioned Bentler suggested Bentler was unemotional when the interview started, and then "faked" tears later on during last fall’s police-station interview.
Bentler’s attorneys have said he has an alibi — that his roommate in Quincy, Illinois, will testify Bentler was there and could not have been at his family home in Bonaparte when the shootings happened.