How Worst Ex Ever’s Benjamin Obadiah Foster Was Stopped By Man’s Best Friend
Benjamin Obadiah Foster's love of dogs was key to ending his brutal rampage as depicted in episode 1 of Netflix's Worst Ex Ever.
Throughout the first episode of Netflix’s Worst Ex Ever, the titular devil of “Dating the Devil,” Benjamin Obadiah Foster, is shown through a lot of flashback photographs. He is seen smiling, hanging out with friends, smoldering behind the bar, and most surprising of all, cuddling a tiny little mixed-breed dog. Foster’s love of dogs was what allowed the man an entry into the life of one of his victims, Las Vegas-based Jaimee. He was good to her dog, and that won her over enough to allow him to date and, eventually, move into her apartment. Pictures and videos show Foster and Maya the dog playing and cuddling together, which would be cute save for how the story ends.
Like all of Benjamin Foster’s relationships, the pairing with Jaimee went sour. He turned angry after losing his job, and turned that anger on Jaimee herself, beating and abusing her – even shaving her head. This abuse worsened after he locked Jaimee in the apartment, and the only thing that allowed her to escape was that they ran out of food and had to go to a grocery store. While Ben took Maya on a walk, Jaimee bolted from her car, ran into the grocery store, then ran out the back door where a passing stranger took her to a hospital. Jaimee was treated for seven broken ribs, two black eyes, cauliflower ears, eye damage, and a laundry list of cuts and bruises all over her body from Foster’s abuse.
The thing that allowed Jaimee to escape from Benjamin Foster wasn’t some action movie act of physical prowess, but Benjamin Foster’s soft spot for Maya the dog. Maya needed to be walked, Foster did it, and Jaimee escaped. Even when Foster was arrested, he answered the door of Jaimee’s apartment holding Maya the dog and turned her over without incident or injury to the police, where she was returned to her owner Jaimee no worse for wear.
Perhaps Maya was just a means to an end at first, but Benjamin Foster’s love of man’s best friend remained a constant thread throughout “Dating the Devil” and that love of dogs provided the link that brought Benjamin Obadiah Foster’s multiple-day flight from the police to its final end, but not without another dog-related twist.
Two days after the brutal beating of Justine Siemens that sparked his first escape from police, police followed tips and found Foster holed up in a rural trailer owned by family friend Tina Marie Jones. As police set up sniper points and prepared to take him into custody, Foster was alerted to the presence of police by, what else? Jones’s dog, who Foster had taken outside. Foster escaped from the police and disappears again. However, while it was a dog that allowed him to escape from police once, it was a dog that led to his eventual capture.
The police department of Grants Pass, Oregon, obtained surveillance footage of someone who looked suspiciously like Ben Foster walking a random dog. The small white dog was traced back to his owners, Richard Barron and Donald Griffith, who lived in Sunny Valley, north of Grants Pass. Knowing Foster had been in the area, police had been doing welfare checks when they discovered the bodies of the two men, who had been beaten to death. The house had been ransacked and several things had been stolen, including a small white dog. The same dog Foster was seen walking on surveillance footage turned over to the police department, who traced Foster back to the Grants Pass home where just a week prior he had initially escaped arrest after nearly killing Justine Siemens.
Like Maya, the kidnapped canine was unharmed by Benjamin Foster; the dog was found a couple of blocks away from the home where Benjamin Foster hid in the crawlspace to initial police investigation and turned over to the Humane Society for re-adoption. As for Foster, rather than face judgment for his crimes, he opted to shoot himself with a .45 pistol and died en route to the hospital, bringing the very strange case to an end.
At every turn, Benjamin Obadiah Foster’s fate was seemingly guided by dogs. A dog allowed him to get close to one of his final victims in Las Vegas. A dog alerted Foster to the police dragnet and allowed him to escape. And a dog was the final clue that allowed police to track Foster down and end one of the strangest manhunts in Oregon state history.
All four episodes of Worst Ex Ever are available to stream on Netflix now.
Written by
Ron Hogan is a freelance writer from Louisville, Kentucky who got an English degree from a college no one has ever heard of. After dropping out…