STEPHANIE ANN BENTON - Teen (2002) - Lake Elsinore/El Cajon CA

LAKE ELSINORE -- Jurors have recommended the death penalty for two men
convicted of the brutal murder of a teenage girl more than 7 years ago.

Glen Joseph Jones, 26, and Jeffree Jay Buettner, 34, were convicted
last month by two separate juries of the first-degree murder of
Stephanie Ann Benton.

Both juries also found the defendants guilty of a special circumstance of the murder of a witness.

Buettner's jury also found him guilty of lying in wait while Jones'
jury found him guilty of murder committed during a kidnapping.

The El Cajon teenager disappeared in late May 2002.

Then on June 10, 2002, her badly decomposed body was found in a
55-gallon drum in an open field near Nichols Road and Collier Avenue in
Lake Elsinore.

A leather belt was around her neck and her head was completely wrapped in duct tape.

Prosecutors allege Buettner and Jones murdered the victim about two
weeks earlier because they believed she had been talking to law
enforcement officers about crimes the two men had been committing.

Benton was beaten and strangled by her killers who left her body in the
trunk of her own car for several days before they moved it to the drum.

Buettner and Jones are due back in court for sentencing on April 23.

Jones testified last week that he gave Buettner his belt to strangle Benton to death before they hid her body.

Sobbing during his testimony, Jones said he should have stopped
Buettner and told of how he confessed to police and showed detectives
where her body was found.