The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced today that a 29-year old man was sentenced to 16 years of life in state prison for fatally stabbing an acquaintance whose body was found in a plastic storage box. The suspect, Kenneth Mullen Watkins, was found guilty of one count of second-degree murder with the special allegation that he used a knife.
Tenants at the apartment complex where the victim lived, had been complaining about a foul smell, days before Terry Nigale Benjamin’s sister reported him missing. Later, the apartment building’s owner entered the victim’s apartment, discovering his body stuffed into a 45-gallon plastic storage container.
The prosecutor said, that Watkins had stabbed the victim multiple times, and then cleaned up the crime scene, bagged the evidence and piled the bags of evidence on top of the victim’s body after stuffing him into the container, according to evidence presented.