May 9, 2007

My name is William David Dice.

I am the proud grieving father of Benjamen Hugo Dice.

I was raised in Dayton, Ohio & I attended Ruskin Elementary School & Stivers High School & I served in The United States Navy for 4 ½ years during the Vietnam War.

Myself & Benji’s mother Cathy Jo Dice-Getter are honorable law biding tax paying citizens of The United States Of America that were unjustly victimized by a vicious, needless, senseless & sadistic criminal act of violence.

My son Benjamen was born & raised in Bellbrook, Ohio & was a graduate of Bellbrook High School.

He was one of the best basketball players in the Dayton area & won many awards in that respect.

He learned how to do carpenter work & frame houses at the age of 15 years old.

He did that on his own.

He always had a strong work ethic.

He was his own man & did his own thing.

He moved to Ft. Collins Colorado & started his own business from scratch called Dice Custom Framing & built many beautiful homes & structures with his own two hands high in the mountains of Colorado.

He was very proud of that & justly so.

He lived out there for 4 years & had made many friends.

He ran into financial difficulties as Ft. Collins was a very expensive place to live & he decided to come back to Dayton, Ohio to re-group & be closer to his family.

He started a remodeling business & went to work for long hours everyday.

He moved in with some people in North Dayton off Riverside Drive for awhile & had all of his hand & power tools stolen from their garage worth over $3,500.00.

The tools he used for his trade.

He moved back in with me for awhile.

I went into the VA hospital for 30 days & he came to see me everyday.

When I got out of the hospital he moved into an apartment with his girlfriend in Miamisburg, Ohio.

She was with him two weeks later when he was killed.

He took me out to dinner for fathers day & when we left he gave me a hug & told me he loved me.

I got the call from the coroner a day later at 2a.m. in the morning.

They told me my son had been murdered.

Over 500 people showed up at his funeral.

They came from all over America.

I could see the deep hurt & sadness in their faces.

Not only for Benj but for me & his mother & our families.

His girlfriend cared about him deeply & I still have the card that she left in his coffin.

I hugged each one of them & thanked them for loving & caring about my son Benji.

One person after another shared how my son Benji had helped them out when they were down on their luck or had performed work for people who had the inability to pay simply as an act of kindness & generosity.

How he had encouraged them to be the best they could & never give up on their dreams & ambitions.

I was so proud of my son that day.

Especially so by the fact that so many different people had loved & cared about him.

That in itself speaks well for my son & what kind of person he was.

Someone left a little white card that simply said;

“Ben was a great person & he will be missed a lot”

His friends from Colorado brought pictures of the beautiful homes & structures he had built high in the mountains of Colorado.

They planted a tree for him & put up a monument for him high atop Horse Tooth Mountain where he had seen Haley’s Comet.

He was so excited he called his mom.

He always had a smile for you.

He could make anyone smile.

Benji was a blessing to our lives & to the lives of many others.

There were a lot of tears shed that day.

I stood at my son’s coffin & I promised him that he had not died in vain.

I had to do something to help my son.

I promised him that I would use his violent, morbid, gruesome, needless & senseless death to help others who still suffer from the horrible disease of addiction.

I loved my son & he loved me.

I keep my commitments.

In his honor & memory we are carrying on his tradition of helping others.

That was his history & legacy & who he really was.

The day my son was killed he completed his work & got paid.

All he had to his name was an old beat-up pickup truck worth $150.00, A few hand & power tools & a few clothes.

He also had a dog named Fly.

Fly & Benji were inseparable as he had brought him back from Colorado & had raised him from a pup.

They worked together, slept together & traveled together in that beat-up truck.

They were a team.

We found Fly a good home in the country but he kept running away to try & find Benji & he got hit by a car & killed in October 2006.

He simply did not want to live without Benji.

Hopefully they are back together again.

This tragic event has totally devastated our whole family & Benji’s mother Cathy Jo will never ever be the same again.

There is no stronger love than the love that a mother has for her son.

She & Benji were very close.

She is not taking this very well at all.

She is left broken hearted, victimized & damaged for life.

His brother Duke is damaged forever as the two of them grew up together & brothers are one.

Our families will never be the same again & this father simply feels deeply hurt & devastated & betrayed.

My son did nothing to deserve what happened to him on that fateful day.

In honor of my son I need to come to his defense as he is not here to speak for himself.

There are a few things that our family feels needs to be considered when the final sentence is decided upon.

1. It is our understanding that our son Benji was familiar with, knew & trusted the person that robbed & murdered him.

It is our understanding that he had allegedly purchased narcotics from him in the past.

That he had met him at this same location in the past.

That is why he had no fear of meeting him there.

My son went to him to purchase narcotics for himself or someone else & brought cash with him that he had performed work for to pay for his purchases.

He did not go there to harm or hurt anyone.

Darnell T. Valentine has not been charged with illegal drug trafficking which means he is simply getting away with that without penalty for lack of evidence in so much as he killed the key witness.

2. My son Benji was shot in the back multiple times & he somehow made it out of the front door which proves that he was trying to get away or avoid confrontation.

Shooting & killing an unarmed human being with an illegal weapon is bad enough in itself but shooting an unarmed man in the back that is trying to get away from harm is a total disgrace to society, humanity, mankind & the human race.

A cowardly act of sadistic cruelty & violence that simply defies all logic & reasoning.

Especially when he shot him more than once.

That act in itself proves that Darnell T. Valentine is a dangerous psychopath & a threat to society forever.

He simply can never be trusted not to pull the trigger & kill again.

He will not learn anything in prison that will change that.

A minimum sentence of 15 years in prison for committing such a cowardly act is simply not enough & in our opinion a disgrace to our judicial system & our family as it is also our understanding that he had been busted for carrying illegal firearms in the past.

It is also our understanding that he has refused to talk, cooperate with detectives or reveal the identity of another person that may have been involved in this crime.

A person that was seen leaving the premises after the shooting.

The murder weapon was never located or found due to his refusal to talk or co-operate.

His refusal to talk clearly implies that others may have been involved in this robbery & killing that are still out there on the streets & could kill again with the very same weapon.

It also proves that he is not an honest man that can ever be trusted again.

Everything he has done since the day he was arrested was simply for the purpose of saving himself or other people that may have been involved in this crime without regard for his victim Benjamen Hugo Dice or his victim’s family.

He requested a new free public defender at tax payer expense.

A new lawyer just to delay the trial which simply benefited him & no one else.

Our family was very generous & lenient in allowing him to cop a plea which essentially gave him a second chance at life as he is a very young man.

A second chance in life that he really does not deserve.

By all rights & in our opinion he should be going to the electric chair.

My son Benji got no second chance at life.

He is dead.

Stone cold dead.

His ashes are in a box in my living room.

There are $39,429.56 in unpaid medical bills that Darnell T. Valentine should rightfully be held responsible for.

They are sending the bills to me.

He has also been forgiven all fines because he is supposedly indigent.

It is for these very reasons we hope & pray that your honor will do the right thing & not allow the aggravated burglary charges to run concurrently with the murder charges & throw the book at him as a just reward for shooting an unarmed man in the back not once but twice while he tried to get away & for his failure to be honest & cooperative with detectives that represent the Great State Of Ohio.

A State that he has no respect for or it’s laws.

Our judicial system has given Darnell T. Valentine much more than he deserves in lieu of the brutal & violent nature of his crime.

That may have saved taxpayers money but it did nothing to take away our pain or restore our loss.

No one has offered to pay for our counseling or therapy & we also paid all the funeral expenses from our own pocket as we are told that we will not be receiving any victim financial assistance because of the drug related nature of this crime which simply further magnifies our grief, misery & victimization.

That was over $4,500.00.

He should be held responsible for that.

Nothing on this earth is more valuable than a human life.

Nothing on this earth was more valuable than my son’s life.

It was no small thing.

The life of my beautiful son Benjamen Hugo Dice.

Now it is time for the judicial system to give something to the families of the victim.

Justice to protect the public from a vicious killer named Darnell T. Valentine.