When police walked into Ben Renick's snake facility, they expected to find a deadly reptile on the loose.

After all, his brother had said on the 911 call that a snake had killed him.

But when they approached Ben's body, they quickly realized that this was not a snake accident.

This was an execution.

This is Red Rum, stories about the true victims of crime.

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Okay, let me prelude this by saying this case is a bit of a wild one.

And there is a lot of conflicting evidence out there.

There is an oxygen article that is quite detailed.

But a lot of the information in there did not match up with what I found in a documentary

where the victim's brother speaks about his lived experiences of what happened.

So where that happens throughout the case, I try and give you the most corroborated version,

but occasionally there are some conflicts that I just couldn't confirm either way,

so I'll let you know if they come up.

Ben Renick was passionate about snakes, so much so he started a business in snakes.

To be honest, I had no idea about the snake breeding business, especially in the US,

but this was the kind of thing where Ben would get literal requests for how people wanted

these snakes to look, how they wanted their markings to look, the types of colors they

were. And he would specifically breed these snakes together to create the perfect custom snake

for his customers. And because of this, he had a loyal customer base and he was selling

snakes for a lot of money. Some of them would go for $25,000 for one snake. So this is big

money business for Ben. And he also is quite personable. He's friendly, he's chatty and so his customers really, really

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