TAMPA, Fla. -- A former Atlanta lawyer dubbed the 'Handcuff Man' by prosecutors pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge of premeditated attempt to inflict death for drugging an unemployed carpenter and setting him afire.
Robert Lee Bennett Jr., 44, of Clearwater, accepted a plea bargain agreement in Hillsborough County Circuit Court and was sentenced to a 17 years in prison, to be followed by 13 years probation.
Bennett, who was charged with assaults in Atlanta in 1985 and 1991, got his nickname because he handcuffed his victims before torturing them. He was accused of preying on gay hustlers in Atlanta.
The plea agreement also extends to the Georgia charges because Atlanta prosecutors agreed to a deal in which Bennett will plead guilty and his sentence will run concurrently with the Florida term.
Bennett had been charged with attempted murder in a June 1991 attack on Gary Clapp, 35, who lost his legs due to severe burns inflicted by Bennett in February 1991. Clapp was found alongside a causeway connecting Tampa and Clearwater, an area frequented by homosexuals.
Circuit Judge Bob Anderson Mitcham denied a request by prosecutor Dale Sisco that Bennett be jailed immediately and he continued bond for the defendant.
'I'm going to trust you as a man and a lawyer,' Mitcham told Bennett.
Mitcham told Bennett to report to the Hillsborough County Courthouse at 8:30 a.m. March 9th, to begin serving his sentence. Bennett told the judge he wanted the extra time to make a guilty plea in Atlanta, get his affairs in order and spend time with his 85-year-old mother.
Bennett will also have to pay $42,000 in restitution, which Sisco said would go to Medicaid to cover Clapp's medical bills.
Max Sharder, 26, one of Bennett's Atlanta victims, said he was disappointed with the outcome and felt he got 'the short end of the stick.'
Clapp said he was 'satisfied with the sentence and just wants to get on with his life.'
Bennett was indicted in June 1991 by a Fulton County grand jury in Atlanta for allegedly attacking two young hustlers, including a 21-year- old Florida resident, Michael Jordan, who was found nude and unconscious near a downtown bar with his buttocks, thighs and genitals burned.
Jordan picked Bennett out of a police photo lineup as the last person he remembered being with before he was attacked.
Sharder was found naked and burned a few blocks away from the scene of the Jordan assault in April 1985. He identified Bennett as the man who offered him money to drink vodka that allegedly was tained with drugs.
In 1971, while a student at the University of Virginia, Bennett was charged with indecent exposure in what his attorney said was a homosexual encounter.
Three years later, with word spreading around Atlanta about a bizarre man who handcuffed and burned male prostitutes, Bennett was charged with kidnapping after he allegedly tried to force an undercover police officer into his car. Bennett pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of simple battery.
In 1982, Bennett was charged with killing a 24-year-old cab driver but prosecutors dropped the charge because their case was too weak.
