Alleged Vt. Child Killer Faces Death Penalty

Aug. 25, 2009 -- Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for a Vermont man charged in the 2008 sex-related slaying of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett, The Associated Press reports.

Michael Jacques, who is also the girl's uncle, is charged with kidnapping resulting in death. The 43-year-old convicted sex offender allegedly drugged, sexually assaulted and strangled the Bennett sometime after her disappearance on June 25, 2008.

Her body was found a week later in a shallow grave.

Bennett's shocking disappearance led to the state of Vermont's first Amber Alert.

Federal officials said Tuesday that Jacques' alleged rape and murder of his young niece was "especially heinous, cruel [and] depraved" and that the 43-year-old suspect has shown no remorse for his alleged crime, according to the Rutland Herald.

The 2008 murder resulted in allegations of horrific child sex abuse in which young girls were intimidated and assaulted.

According to the indictment handed up Oct. 2, 2008, Jacques allegedly persuaded another girl, identified only as Juvenile 1, to submit to various sex acts and to help in Brooke's abduction by telling her that a powerful organization named Breckenridge would kill her.

The juvenile told state police investigators that she had been involved in sex with Jacques since 2003, when she was 9 years old, when she got a phone call and received a note under her pillow that Jacques would be her "trainer" in a sex program called Breckenridge. To graduate, she told investigators, according to the complaint, she had to achieve a specific "success" rate.

Jacques allegedly told the girl that the fake organization sometimes "terminated" girls, the indictment says. He allegedly used her fear of Breckenridge to coerce her into allowing Jacques to videotape her while she was being sexually abused.

In May 2008, Jacques allegedly told the girl that his niece Brooke had been selected for "termination" and that she was "causing significant difficulties for J1's father, resulting in him being suicidal," the indictment says.

The girl, now 14, confessed to helping Jacques bring Brooke to Jacques' home, according to federal criminal complaints released in July 2008.

The pair allegedly lured Brooke to Jacques' house in June 2008 by telling her she would be a guest at a pool party.

In documents released earlier in the case, federal prosecutors allege that Jacques used a pair of online identities to manipulate Juvenile 1 into thinking she was working with several men who were planning to initiate Brooke into Breckenridge.

Juvenile 1 admitted to police that she knew Brooke beforehand and that Brooke was going to be initiated into the sex ring that day and would be having "sex with adult males," according to the federal complaints.

Once at Jacques' home, prosecutors say, the two girls watched television together before Jacques asked Brooke to go upstairs with him. That was the last time the unidentified girl saw Brooke, she told investigators.