An Ordeal’s Painful Legacy : Deanna Slender’s Death Casts Pall Over Victory

When Deanna Slender saw a sheriff’s deputy poking at her husband, Charles George Slender, in a traffic ticket dispute, she ran outside the family home near Tustin and jumped between them.

Several months later, on June 27, 1984, she saw the same deputy in the front yard again, this time with a partner, giving her husband another ticket. Worried, she asked Charles George’s brother, Steve, to step outside and make sure that everything was all right. Another brother, Monte, went out moments later, and then she followed.

A few minutes later, Deanna, 23, was dead, shot by one of the deputies after an argument over the ticket escalated into a violent melee between the three Slender brothers and the officers.

All three brothers--Charles George, now 22, Monte, now 21, and Steve, now 25--were arrested. For the next 19 months, a large part of their time was spent in courtrooms and with lawyers, judges, police reports and transcripts as they fought felony charges of assault on an officer. Charles George Slender also faced attempted murder charges.

On Thursday, the day after a Municipal Court judge cleared the brothers of all charges, family members were delighted that the ordeal was over but painfully aware that nothing would ever be the same.

“I’m still in shock,” Charles George Slender said. “For the first time (in months) I woke up this morning and didn’t have it hanging over me.” But his thoughts were more about Deanna than the court victory.

He and the others were jubilant outside Municipal Judge C. Robert Jameson’s courtroom, hugging and crying. But Charles George broke away as soon as he could to make a telephone call--to Frank and Bernice DeBois in Petaluma--to tell them the news. They are Deanna’s parents.

‘Hard to Talk About’

“Deanna was only worried because it was that same deputy,” Charles George said of the fatal melee. “It’s still hard to talk about it.”

Now his full attention is on 2-year-old Charlie Slender, his and Deanna’s only child.

His immediate plans are to take his son north to Petaluma to see Deanna’s family.

Charles George prefers not to talk about Leon Bennigsdorf, the deputy who fired the shot that killed his wife.

Bennigsdorf and Deputy Ben Stripe, who was the officer who gave Charles George the earlier ticket, say the incident got out of hand after they arrested Monte Slender for interfering as they were writing Charles George’s ticket. The other brothers, they say, jumped them.

The Slenders say the deputies were beating Monte on the head with their night sticks, and that they stepped in to help their brother.

In the scuffle, Stripe lost his gun and Charles George picked it up. The gun went off--accidentally, according to the court’s ruling. Deanna had her hand on the gun, apparently trying to get Charles George to put it down.

Deputy Shot 4 Times

Bennigsdorf testified that he shot at both of them, fearing that one or both of them was trying to shoot him. He shot four times, killing Deanna and wounding Charles George. Charles George shot once in return and the bullet hit Bennigsdorf in the face.

The Slender brothers say they have always been close. They ran together as children, went to Foothill High School together, played football there together. They all worked with their father, George, who is a steward at the Los Alamitos race track.

So it was natural, Monte and Charles George said, that they would come to each other’s aid during the confrontation with Bennigsdorf and Stripe. The two brothers and their parents, George and Verna Slender, were interviewed by The Times at their home Thursday. The oldest brother, Steve, has already returned to veterinary school in Washington state.

The Slender parents said the family became even closer in the year and a half leading up to Wednesday’s outcome.

Lawyers Praised

“When one of us would be down, the others would cheer him up,” George Slender said. “We’d get together and talk about it, especially when Steve would come home from school.”

Monte Slender said their lawyers--Marshall Schulman, Al Stokke and Ron Brower--helped keep their spirits up.

Brower was Monte Slender’s lawyer. “He became a friend,” Monte Slender said. “I can’t say enough about him.”

The brothers now want to put the incident behind them. They are not bitter, their father said, but he added that a lot still hurts them all.

“We raised our boys to have respect for the law,” George Slender said. “But now when we read about someone getting arrested, we’ll always remember that there are two sides.”

What hurt most, he said, was the media attention. “The newspapers made it sound like our boys were the Manson gang or something. But we couldn’t say anything on orders of our attorneys. Now we can. We’ve got good boys, and we’re proud of them.”