911 Caller Said Reptile Breeder Killed By His Snake, Bullet Wounds Found

Ben Renick was a rockstar when it came to the world of boutique snake-breeding.

The unique color combinations and patterns he produced at Renick Reptiles in rural New Florence, Mo., created “designer pets” that could sell for upwards of $100,000, says his friend and fellow breeder David Levinson.

“Ben was doing stuff nobody had ever seen before, and he had a lot of ‘world’s first’ over the years,” Levinson said.

However, reptiles can be very dangerous when being handled.

When, on June 8, 2017, Ben’s wife, Lynlee, called Ben’s brother and screamed that she’d found 29-year old Ben face-down at the breeding facility in a pool of blood, Sam Renick raced over and reached the most logical conclusion.

“My brother’s skull was crushed,” he says. “In my wildest dreams I would’ve never imagined someone would hurt Ben.”

With Lynlee by his side, Sam told 911: “It had to have been a snake.”

Despite what Sam thought a coroner said that there was no way his brother died from a snake.

According to the coroner, Ben hadn’t been strangled by a reptile, but was shot eight times, at least one of the bullets struck him in the head.

Rumored tensions between the brothers over money and possible sale of the family farm at first pointed investigators to Sam, 38 and Lynlee, 34, didn’t dissuade them.

“Sam was a heavy suspect,” says Missouri State Highway Patrol criminal investigator Devin Foust. “The seed was definitely planted early that he had something to do with it.”

Lynlee had asked Sam to maintain, then help sell and downsize, Ben’s 3,000-reptile stock of animals, which included prized ball pythons that could fetch more than $1 million.

However, during the investigation, detectives soon turned to Lynlee being the suspect behind Ben’s death.

Foust said, “Lynlee described to us that her and Ben had a troubled relationship. Lynlee soon acknowledged an affair. She then even admitted to a second one with a man named Brandon Blackwell, who she began seeing just days before Ben’s murder. The day prior to the shooting, Lynlee also had deleted social media exchanges with Ben that revealed his mistrust and their fights over money, as Lynlee had fallen deep into debt from a spa business she’d opened a year earlier.”

“After we started to find out about boyfriends, the shape the spa was in, how much money she owed, it just started pushing Sam to the side as a suspect,” says Foust.

Meanwhile, an ex-boyfriend of Lynlee, Michael Humphrey, came to the attention of investigators.

Lynlee would later claim that she’d enlisted Humphrey to accompany her to the snake breeding facility, where she planned to break up with Ben on the day he was killed.

Despite Lynlee’s explanation, Foust said he believed she had very different intentions.

“Lynlee feared that if she and Ben wound up in divorce court, she might lose custody of the child they had together, along with access to Ben’s $1 million life insurance policy and any proceeds from the sale of his business and property,” Foust said.

In court, Lynlee testified she didn’t know Humphrey had a gun with him, and they both blamed the other one for firing the fatal shots. Jurors found both of them guilty late last year, and each is serving time for second-degree murder and a related charge; Humphrey was sentenced to life in prison, and Lynlee was sentenced to 16 years.