Middle-Class Kids Turn Homicidal
(“Payback,” Forensic Files)
“Payback” is one of a handful of Forensic Files episodes narrated by someone other than Peter Thomas.
Peter Dean did an earnest job of it, but no one can replace the assuring voice of Peter Thomas. Plus, watching the episode kind of felt like cheating on him.
There’s another thing missing from “Payback” — a sympathetic character.
The episode details how seven young people from respectable families conspired to kill 20-year-old Bobby Kent. But even the victim sounded like someone who’s hard to mourn.
Shakespearean drama. Bobby occasionally beat up his best buddy since childhood, Marty Puccio, and even turned the poor lad into a revenue stream by coercing him to dance at a male strip club.
Marty and a group of associates, all from the Fort Lauderdale area, decided to end the abuse by killing Bobby. They came up with a plot reminiscent of Julius Caesar, except with a cast of underachievers who probably didn’t care much about iambic pentameter.
The bizarre story made headlines nationally and was the subject of a mass-market paperback and a Hollywood movie.
More about those later and also some follow-up on the killers, but first here’s a recap of the episode along with information from internet research:
Lush lives. Bobby Kent was born to Farah and Fred Kent, who had anglicized their surname after moving from Iran to the United States. Fred Kent was a successful stockbroker.
The Kents’ short, dark, handsome, and popular son did well at South Broward High School, attended community college, and had solid career ambitions.
His friends, not so much.
Marty, 20, dropped out of school in 11th grade.
Ali Willis, at 18, had already been married and given birth to a baby who her mother and father cared for. “Payback” described her as a former girlfriend of Bobby’s and also said that he had raped her at some point in the relationship. Marty would later allege in court papers that Bobby had threatened to kill Ali and her child unless she resumed their relationship.
Happy couple. Lisa Connelly, 18 and a high school dropout, had fallen in love with Marty Puccio, and being his girlfriend pretty much took up all her bandwidth. Forensic Files and the book Bully portrayed Lisa as awkward and overweight with low self-esteem. To her credit, Ali told Lisa that she was attractive and just needed a little attitude.
At least one source (I can’t remember whether it was the book or the movie) alleged that Bobby had acquaintance-raped Lisa as well as Ali.
Even though Marty and Lisa had a serious relationship and were expecting a baby, he continued to feel dominated by Bobby Kent.
Privileged upbringing. Both young men had grown up in the upscale Pembroke Pines neighborhood and were bodybuilders. Although Marty, at 6-feet, was the tall one, Bobby always had the edge physically and also harbored a sadistic streak that he trained on Marty at times.
At one point, Marty wanted to escape Bobby’s bullying so badly that he begged his parents to move. When they declined, he fled to New York to stay with relatives. But he soon returned.
Marty’s love-hate relationship with Bobby persisted. At Bobby’s urging, the two of them took a stab at entrepreneurship by making a pornographic videotape of a middle-aged man they knew from the gym. The film quality was too poor to sell, and their older friend refused to oblige when the two asked him to star in another video. They responded by beating up the poor gentleman.
Rogues’ gallery. Meanwhile, Lisa resented the amount of time the two boys spent together and also the bullying Bobby doled out to both of them. Bobby liked to call Lisa “Shamu.”
Lisa may have been the mastermind behind the murder plan.
The rest of the brain trust consisted of Ali’s new boyfriend, Donnie Semenec, age 18, her friend Healther Swallers, 18, Lisa’s cousin, Derek Dzvirko, 19, as well as Derek Kaufman, a blue-eyed mullet-wearing 22-year-old claiming to be a Mafia contract killer who could offer up his expertise; the kids believed him.
Alligators, really? On July 14, 1993, with a promise of a tryst, Ali invited Bobby Kent to a spot in the Everglades. As she distracted him, some or all of the conspirators came out of the shadows and stabbed and bludgeoned him.
He begged for mercy and apologized for whatever he’d done wrong, but they killed him anyway.
Derek Kaufman allegedly was the last person to assault Bobby, hitting him with an aluminum bat.
The friends left him out in the open near the water. They believed alligators would consume his body in its entirety and leave no evidence. The conspirators threw the knives and the bat in the ocean and agreed upon an alibi: that all seven of them were hanging around together the night of the murder and that Bobby was out on a date with a woman they didn’t know.
Police discovered Bobby’s decomposing remains on the beach four days after the Kents reported their son missing. The attackers hadn’t stripped him, and police found his driver’s license in his clothing.
Marty came under police scrutiny even before they found the body, and he initially did a good job of feigning worry about his friend.
But it’s hard enough to keep any secret that involves more than one actor. With a whole group of young people as inexperienced as the not-so-magnificent seven, it didn’t take long for the details to come spilling out.
Media magnet. The conspirators cracked and acknowledged a plot against Bobby. They gave various excuses, mostly that they were merely bystanders or that they consented to the plan under the impression that they would only beat him up, not kill him.
Meanwhile, news of a homicide perpetrated by young people mostly from unbroken, comfortable homes registered shock from coast to coast. The Miami Herald ran a 14-page article entitled “What Is Happening to Our Children? Caution: Growing Up in the ’90s may be hazardous to your health. Or even fatal” in October 1993.
The authorities would separately try and convict each of the seven kids with charges of first-degree murder or conspiracy, or both.
Marty Puccio received the most severe sentence, death by the electric chair. “Justice is served,” Farah Kent said after the decision. “Now he will fear for his life as my son did for his.”
All of the kids went to prison. A judge later reduced Marty’s sentence to life.
So, how are these dissolute characters, now middle-aged, doing today?
For the most part, the girls made out better than the boys. The state of Florida let Ali, Lisa, and Heather out of jail after a few years.
Boys inside. While the three ladies aren’t exactly out there researching a cure for cancer or rescuing people from burning buildings, they don’t seem to be causing much trouble, either.
Except for Derek Dzvirko, who went on to appear in the Forensic Files episode, all the boys still live behind razor wire.
The next blog post will provide more details on all seven of the conspirators’ epilogues. In the meantime, a mention of the book and movie seems in order.
Tome run. My neighbor lent me a copy of Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schutze (Avon, 1998) a few years ago. She had read it seven times.
For me, once was enough, although I did like the book and it held my interest the whole way through. Schutze did a good job of establishing a sense of place, conveying how living in a land of sunshine and shiny things devoid of character produced morally disabled kids.
As far as the movie based on the book, well, I hated it.
With Bully, director Larry Clark — who first made a splash with the 1994 effort Kids, which gave actress Chloë Sevigny her big break — distinguished himself as the king of gratuitous nudity.
No Hollywood magic. Although all the cast members, including Bijou Phillips and Rachel Miner, were technically adults, they look so young and Clark lingered over their bodies to such an extent that the movie seemed like highly stylized child pornography.
Perhaps that’s why you won’t find Bully on Netflix (streaming or DVD), HBO Now, or Amazon Prime.
Acting-wise, the cast did nice work, especially Bijou Phillips. Nick Stahl was an odd choice to play the stocky Persian-American Bobby Kent, but he did a lot with the role just the same.
You can check out a trailer of the movie on Youtube if you sign in to verify your age.
More to come. But this information shouldn’t be construed as a recommendation to watch Bully. It’s an ugly movie with no engaging heroes or anti-heroes.
As mentioned, the next post will supply more up-to-date information on the whereabouts of the seven real killers and show more-recent photos of them.
Until then, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube.
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