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By September 1995, 22-year-old Orla Benson was only days away from returning home to Killarney.
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She had spent the summer working in Boston and had recently completed an honours degree in biotechnology in Dublin City University.
00:56
Her formal graduation was just three weeks away.
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On Friday the 22nd of September, Orla joined another 30 friends for a night out in Boston. The group had dinner together before setting off on a trolley tour of the city to celebrate an upcoming wedding.
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Shortly after 1am, the trolley stopped close to the apartment Orla shared with friends in Alston.
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Orla and one of her roommates got off. The others tried to persuade both women to continue with them to South Boston. Orla's roommate then changed her mind and climbed back onto the trolley, but Orla decided to walk home.
01:34
Her apartment was only a short distance away, but she never arrived.
01:40
At around 9am that morning a Boston police officer was called to the West End House, a boys and girls club beside Ringer Park.
01:48
Orla's body had been found outside the building, close to her apartment.
01:53
She had been raped and killed.
01:55
Detectives began speaking to Orla's friends and roommates and looking at the people connected to the area where she had been found.
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Their attention soon turned to a man who lived nearby.
02:07
When police interviewed him, he denied ever meeting Orla. He also gave them an account of where he had been during the hours she was killed.
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But before police had even spoken to him, he had already asked someone to lie about his movements that night.
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Hey guys and welcome back to Ireland Crimes and Mysteries. I'm your host Newells and I hope you're all keeping well this week.
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Now before we look into what happened in Boston that night, I want to begin as we always do, with Orla herself.
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Orla Benson was from Muckras in Killarney County Kerry.
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Her parents were Thomas and Betty Benson and Orla was their only daughter. She also had a brother Aaron.
02:49
Orla attended St Bridget's Secondary School in Killarney from 1985 until 1990.
02:56
She was a talented gymnast and represented the school in competitions.
03:00
After leaving St Bridget's, Orla continued her education and went on to study biotechnology at Dublin City University.
03:08
But science was only one of her interests.
03:11
Orla played guitar and sang. She wrote her own songs and poetry and Walt Whitman was one of her favourite poets.
03:19
She could draw and paint and also enjoyed embroidery and cooking. She also loved to dance. Her friends called her their dancing queen.
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Her mother Betty described Orla as a loyal friend, a great listener and someone people trusted with things that mattered to them.
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She loved animals and nature and Muckras was one of her favourite places to go for a walk.
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Betty described Orla as an adored daughter and a cherished sister.
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She was studying science, as I said, but she was also writing, singing, painting and dancing.
03:55
She enjoyed being around people and her friends knew they could speak to her about anything and she would listen. In 1995, Orla completed her honours degree in biotechnology and her formal graduation ceremony was due to take place later that year.
04:13
With her studies finished, Orla travelled to Boston for three months for summer work.
04:18
While she was there, Orla worked as a waitress at Woodland Golf Club in Newton, just outside Boston.
04:23
She was living in an apartment in Alistair with friends and had become part of a large social group of young Irish people spending the summer in Boston.
04:31
By September, the trip was almost over.
04:35
Orla was beginning to return to Ireland and begin whatever came next.
04:40
On Friday the 22nd of September, she and one of her roommates made plans to meet friends in South Boston.
04:46
That night would begin with dinner before a much larger group would come together to celebrate an upcoming wedding. At around five o'clock that Friday afternoon, Orla met one of her roommates and the two went shopping.
04:59
At about half past six, they left their apartment in Alliston and travelled towards South Boston.
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A friend collected them at Broadway Subway Station at around eight o'clock and brought them to an apartment where they joined others for dinner.
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At around nine, the group left the apartment and went to the Abbey, a local bar. More friends joined them there and by the time they left, the group had grown to around 30 people.
05:23
They had arranged a trolley tour around Boston.
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Orla spent the next few hours with the group as the trolley made its way through the city.
05:31
At around one o'clock in the morning the trolley stopped at Brighton Avenue in Alliston, close to the apartment Orla shared with her friends.
05:39
As I said Orla and her roommate got off but after some persuasion Orla's roommate decided to get back on and continue with the other girls.
05:47
The other women also tried to encourage Orla to get back on and continue with them to South Boston.
05:53
But Orla decided to stay behind.
05:56
She was close to the apartment and chose to walk the rest of the way home.
06:00
The trolley pulled away, leaving Orla to continue alone.
06:04
She did not arrive at the apartment and that was the last confirmed sighting of Orla alive.
06:10
At around nine o'clock on Saturday morning, Boston Police Officer John McGee went to the West End House in Alistair.
06:17
The West End House was a boys and girls club beside Ringer Park. It stood next to the apartment building where Orla had been living.
06:27
When Officer McGee arrived, he was shown Orla's body outside the club.
06:32
Her apartment was only around 45 metres away.
06:36
Orla had been raped and had suffered fatal knife wounds to the neck and chest.
06:41
Authorities later said they believed she had been forced into the West End house and her body left near a stairway. But there were no eyewitnesses to the attack and the exact sequence of what happened after Orla began walking home could not be established.
06:56
Later that evening, Sergeant Detective Thomas O'Leary of the Boston Police Homicide Unit met Orla's roommates. One of them told him about a phone call she said she had received shortly after one o'clock.
07:09
From what the roommate told him, Detective O'Leary began looking for a man called Tony. The court records do not explain exactly how officers narrowed that search down to Pedro Rosario, otherwise known as Tony.
07:23
They record only that their inquiries led them to Rosario.
07:28
Rosario lived nearby. His apartment, the place where Orla left the trolley, her own apartment and the West End house were all within walking distance of one another.
07:39
He was also familiar with the West End house in Ringer Park.
07:43
Earlier that summer, Rosario had worked on a city crew that cleaned the park.
07:48
The crew stored its equipment in a locker inside West End House.
07:52
His girlfriend at the time worked there and had keys to which Rosario had access.
07:57
Investigators began trying to establish where Rosario had actually been in the early hours of that morning.
08:04
His girlfriend said he had been in his apartment until around half past twelve when he went outside to smoke a cigarette.
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No witness could account for his movements between half past twelve and seven o'clock that morning.
08:17
In one of his later accounts, Rosario claimed he had gone to a party nearby, although he said he didn't know anybody that was at it.
08:25
He said he left the party at around half past four and returned to his apartment around 15 minutes later. According to Rosario, he then sat on the back stairs for a couple of hours because he didn't want to wake anybody up.
08:38
But before police contacted him on the day Orla's body was found, Rosario had already spoken to a He asked her to say that she had collected him at around half past twelve that morning and that he had spent the rest of the night at her apartment.
08:57
Shortly after Orla was killed, Rosario also spoke to a local television station. He told the reporter, you can't even walk the streets anymore.
09:07
During his first three meetings with investigators, Rosario denied meeting Orla and claimed he had spent the night with his former girlfriend.
09:15
The timings and the details of his journey to her apartment changed from one interview to the next.
09:21
At first his former girlfriend backed up his account when police spoke to her.
09:26
She later withdrew it and told detectives that Rosario had not stayed with her that night. She also said he had asked her to lie.
09:34
By the time Rosario attended a fourth meeting with investigators, the alibi he had given them was gone.
09:41
Police told him they had obtained a court order allowing them to take samples of his hair, saliva and blood. Rosario then abandoned his earlier denials.
09:51
He admitted that he did have sex with Orla on the night she was killed but he did not admit to attacking her. Instead, he gave police a different account of how and when he had met her.
10:01
Rosario claimed that he and a friend had gone to a local off-licence at around 8 o'clock that evening.
10:07
He said he went inside to buy beer while his friend waited outside. When Rosario came out, he said his friend was with this woman.
10:14
The three of them began walking towards Rosario's apartment and he noticed that the woman had an Irish accent.
10:22
They went into an alley behind his apartment building where they talked. Rosario claimed the conversation turned to sex and that he had sexual intercourse with the woman at around nine o'clock.
10:34
There was an immediate problem with that account.
10:38
At eight o'clock Orla and her roommate had been collected at Broadway subway station and taken to dinner in South Boston.
10:46
At nine Orla left for the Abbey with her friends.
10:51
Three of those friends later testified that Orla remained with them continuously until she left the trolley at around one o'clock.
10:58
Two said they had not seen Rosario with her at any point that night.
11:04
There was also a photograph of Orla taken on the trolley. Her watch appeared to show half past twelve, although one of her friends accepted that it could instead have shown half past eleven.
11:15
The photograph couldn't really establish the exact time, but it did show Orla on the trolley during the tour.
11:22
The trolley driver also confirmed that Orla had been dropped on Brighton Avenue at around one o'clock that morning.
11:29
Rosario had first told Cleese he never met Orla. By the fourth interview, he admitted being with her on the night she was killed, but the version he now gave placed him with Orla at nine o'clock when she was in South Boston with her friends.
11:45
While police were checking Rosario's new account, the samples taken from him were compared with semen recovered from Orla and her clothing.
11:53
DNA testing linked the semen to Rosario.
11:56
At his trial, an expert said the likelihood that the samples had come from anybody else but him was 1 in 6.8 million.
12:06
Saliva recovered from an injury on Orla's body was also tested and an expert said it was highly likely to have come from Rosario.
12:15
The injury was treated as a bite mark.
12:18
The second expert compared it with Rosario's teeth and later told the jury that Rosario had caused that bite mark.
12:26
That evidence was accepted at the trial in 1997, but ByteMark comparison is viewed very differently today.
12:34
In 2023, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology found that the central claims behind ByteMark analysis was not supported by sufficient data.
12:45
Researchers had not shown that dental patterns were unique. Skin can stretch and move, while swelling and healing can change the shape of a mark.
12:55
Experts did not always agree on whether an injury was a bite mark in the first place.
13:00
Rosario was not charged straight away. The investigation would continue for more than eight months, in part because detectives were waiting for forensic testing to be completed.
13:10
But during the first week of that investigation, Orla was brought home to Killarney.
13:15
She'd been due to make that journey herself within days. Instead, her family were bringing her home for her funerals.
13:23
On Friday evening the 29th of September a large crowd gathered at the Benson family home in Mockris.
13:29
From there Orla's remains were taken to St Mary's Cathedral in Killarney.
13:34
Her brother Aaron who was 24 was among the relatives who carried her coffin from the hearse.
13:40
At the cathedral, the coffin was received by the Bishop of Kerry, Dr. Bill Murphy, together with Father Ciarán O'Brien and and Brian Lockheed of the Church of Ireland in Clarny.
13:52
Bishop Murphy spoke about the effect Orla's death had already had on her family, her friends and the wider community. He described her as an intelligent and successful young woman who had many friends and her whole future ahead of her.
14:07
One of Orla's student friends also spoke to the congregation. She said Orla had brought sunshine with her wherever she went. She was someone who could turn tears into laughter and bring brightness to a dull day.
14:20
The following morning, St Mary's Cathedral was packed for Orla's Funeral Mass.
14:26
It was celebrated by Father Michael Fleming.
14:29
Orla's classmates from Dublin City University were among those who had travelled to Clarny.
14:35
They should have been preparing to attend their graduation with her in a few weeks. Instead, they were saying goodbye to her.
14:42
During his homily, Father Fleming said Orla's death had stunned not only Clarny, but people much further afield.
14:50
For those who had known her, what had happened still did not feel real.
14:55
After the mass, the funeral cortege made its way slowly through Killarney towards the cemetery. The town came to a standstill. People lined the streets and bowed their heads and prayed silently as Orla passed.
15:08
Dozens of wreaths and floral tributes had been sent by relatives, neighbours and friends.
15:13
Many carried messages of how deeply Orla had been loved.
15:17
At the cemetery which overlooked the beautiful lakes of Killarney, Orla was laid to rest.
15:23
Her classmates wept openly at the graveside.
15:26
Thomas, Betty and Aaron had buried their daughter and their sister.
15:31
The following month at the DCU graduation ceremony that Orla was due to attend, her degree in biotechnology was presented to her family.
15:40
But in Boston, the investigation into who had taken her from them was still continuing. On the 10th of June 1996, Pedro Rosario was indicted for first-degree murder and aggravated rape.
15:55
Four days later, Rosario appeared in court in Boston.
15:59
Thomas Benson was in the courtroom as the charges were read.
16:02
Rosario pleaded not guilty to both charges.
16:06
After the hearing, Thomas gave a short statement. He said, Rosario had already been convicted of rape in 1991 and had served 32 months in prison. And during the same summer that Orla was in Boston, the city of Boston had employed him to supervise teenagers.
16:31
So how had a man with that conviction ended up in that job?
16:38
The answer was that nobody had checked. The city of Boston later admitted that it had carried out neither a background check nor a criminal record check before hiring Rosario.
16:49
A proper check would also have revealed a separate conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
16:55
Rosario had been released on parole and was living in the community when Orla was murdered.
17:00
There had been further warning signs before her death.
17:04
Four months before Orla was killed, Rosario had been arrested in connection with robbery in a bar.
17:10
There had also been motor vehicle charges and missed court dates.
17:15
A later investigation into the Massachusetts probation system also found that Rosario had repeatedly violated probation, but he was not brought before a judge for a violation hearing until after Orla had been killed.
17:29
At the time, these hearings were often postponed until any new criminal case had been resolved. The practice was known as tracking. There was no legal requirement to wait, however.
17:41
A probation hearing could have taken place before the new criminal case and the standard of proof was lower for it than it would have had been at a criminal trial.
17:50
A judge only had to decide whether it was more likely than not that probation had been violated.
17:56
That does not mean Rosario would automatically be returned to prison, but the alleged violations would at least have been placed before a judge.
18:05
That did not happen until after Orla's death.
18:09
Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph Martin later pointed to Rosario's case when he criticised the way probation violations had been handled.
18:18
Martin said the lack of a consistent approach had placed public safety at risk in cases where probation had not been revoked.
18:27
On the 10th of July 1995, the city hired a 16-year-old girl to work with the youth clean-up crew. She was assigned to the West End House where Rosario became her immediate supervisor.
18:41
The teenager said that on the 19th of July Rosario told her that she needed to complete additional paperwork connected to her job. He asked her to remain behind until the other members of the crew had left for the day.
18:53
Rosario then told her that the paperwork was back at his apartment and that they would have to go there for her to sign it and the teenager went with him.
19:02
She later alleged that Rosario raped and assaulted her inside of that apartment.
19:07
She said she tried to resist and that Rosario threatened her that she would lose her job.
19:12
In the days that followed, she alleged that Rosario approached her several times and warned her to stay silent if she wanted to keep her job.
19:20
Several days later, one of Rosario's friends approached her during working hours and told her that Rosario wanted to see her at his apartment again.
19:28
The teenager could not later remember the exact date.
19:32
She alleged that Rosario raped and assaulted her for a second time and again threatened her with the loss of her job.
19:40
Afterwards, she told a friend what had happened.
19:43
The friend encouraged her to speak to someone and later told a counsellor during a group meeting. The teenager herself then spoke to the counsellor and told a therapist about both alleged assaults.
19:56
She also reported that Rosario had made sexual comments to her and another girl working on the programme. The other girl had complained and was transferred to a different work site.
20:06
The 16-year-old also asked to be transferred but her request was not acted upon.
20:11
On the 27th of July, her therapist reported the allegations to the City of Boston.
20:17
Four days later, after carrying out an investigation, the City dismissed Rosario.
20:23
The reasons recorded for his dismissal included the sexual harassment complaint, what the city described as sexual contact with a child he supervised, and allegations that he had forged payroll records. Rosario was arrested and charged with rape, but the charges were later dismissed.
20:41
The teenager went on to pursue a civil case. On the 17th of July 1996, she filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
20:51
In April of 1997, she withdrew that complaint and brought a civil action against Rosario, the city and several city employees. Part of the case was moved to a federal court in December of that year. It remained there for almost three years while the two sides disputed the exchange of evidence.
21:11
In September 2000, the federal civil rights claim was dismissed and the remaining case was returned to the Massachusetts Superior Court.
21:19
In January 2001, the City of Boston asked a judge to dismiss several of the claims before they went to trial. The city argued that the sexual harassment claim had been brought too late.
21:30
The judge rejected that argument because the teenager had been a minor when the alleged assaults took place.
21:36
The judge dismissed the civil rights and negligent supervision claims. He also dismissed separate emotional distress claims, although emotional harm could still form part of the negligent hiring case.
21:50
The claims against the individual city employees were also dismissed. The claims brought directly against Rosario were not part of that application.
21:59
But the sexual harassment and negligent hiring claims against the city were allowed to continue.
22:06
The judge pointed to the city's admitted failure to check Rosario's criminal record.
22:11
He also noted the long unexplained gap in Rosario's CV covering the time he had spent in prison.
22:18
The judge said that gap should have prompted the city to ask further questions.
22:23
A jury could reasonably find that the city had failed to make proper inquiries before hiring Rosario and that putting him in a position of authority over teenagers had contributed to the harm the young woman said she had suffered.
22:36
This was not a finding that the city was liable. It meant that the sexual harassment and negligent hiring claims could continue.
22:44
Rosario had been dismissed from the youth cleanup crew on 31st of July 1995. Less than eight weeks later, Orla was killed outside West End House.
22:56
Rosario's trial began in Suffolk Superior Court in June 1997, almost 20 months after Orla's death.
23:03
Judge James D. McDaniel Jr. presided over the case. The case went ahead before a jury. Rosario continued to deny killing Orla. By then however he was no longer denying that he had met her.
23:17
His admission to the police that he had sexual intercourse with Orla had never been withdrawn.
23:23
The question for the jury was when that encounter had taken place and what had happened during it.
23:29
Rosario maintained that it happened at around nine o'clock and that he had not attacked Orla.
23:35
The prosecution had the evidence of Orla's friends, the trolley driver and the photograph taken during the tour.
23:42
Together they accounted for Orla's movements from dinner in South Boston until she left the trolley at around one o'clock.
23:49
The jury also heard about the false alibi Rosario had tried to arrange before police had even contacted him.
23:56
They heard how he denied meeting Orla during the first three interviews and how his account changed after his former girlfriend told police she had not been with him that night.
24:07
The DNA and saliva results were also presented along with the bite mark evidence we discussed earlier. There was another part of the prosecution's case that we have not yet gone into.
24:18
The jury had already heard that information from one of Orla's roommates led police to begin searching for a man called Tony.
24:26
At the trial, that roommate was allowed to describe the telephone call she said she had received from Orla shortly after one o'clock on the morning she was killed.
24:35
She said she had been asleep when the telephone rang at around quarter past one.
24:41
According to her evidence, Orla said she had enjoyed her night and was next door at the West End house with someone called Tony.
24:50
The roommate said Orla invited her to join them for a drink. When she declined Orla said she would be home in a few minutes.
24:57
The defence objected to the roommate repeating what she said Orla had told her but the judge allowed the jury to hear it.
25:05
In his closing speech the prosecutor argued that the call had been a cry for help and that Orla was trying to tell her roommate where she was and who she was with.
25:16
On Friday the 13th of June 1997 the jury of nine women and three men retired to consider their verdict.
25:24
After a short deliberation they found Pedro Rosario guilty of aggravated rape and first degree murder.
25:33
The murder conviction rested on two grounds.
25:37
The jury found that Orla had been killed with extreme atrocity or cruelty and that she had been killed during an aggravated rape.
25:45
Before Rosario was sentenced, Orla's parents, Thomas and Betty, and her brother Aaron were given the opportunity to address the court.
25:54
For much of the trial, Orla had been spoken about through timelines, photographs, forensic results and the injuries she had suffered.
26:03
Her family now had the chance to speak about her as their daughter and their sister.
26:09
Thomas had sat in the courtroom throughout the proceedings only a few metres behind Rosario.
26:15
When he addressed the court, Thomas spoke about what the murder of his only daughter had done to their family.
26:22
He said Rosario had taken the sunshine out of their lives.
26:26
He called Orla a beautiful human being and said in murdering my daughter he brought the world of a gentle, loving, thoughtful, sensitive woman to an end.
26:37
Rosario had not only ended Orla's life, he had taken a much loved daughter from her parents and brought to an end everything she had been building for herself.
26:47
Betty had set through the trial holding a lock of Orla's hair in her hand.
26:52
When she addressed the judge, she said Rosario and the city had taken one of the best.
26:58
Betty did not direct her words only at the man who had murdered her daughter. She also spoke about the city which had employed Rosario to supervise teenagers without checking his criminal record.
27:10
She told the judge that peace and justice were now in his hands.
27:15
Aaron then spoke about Orla as his sister and about the future she should have had.
27:21
He said Rosario had taken from her the chance to fall in love, get married and have children.
27:26
Orla was only 22. She had completed her degree, her graduation was still ahead of her and she had not yet had the chance to decide what the rest of her life would look like. That was the loss Aaron asked the court to recognise. It was not only the life Orla had already lived, it was every year and every experience she had been denied going forward.
27:49
Thomas, Betty and Aaron made sure that before Rosario was sentenced, Orla was not remembered in that courtroom only through what he had done to her. They made sure that the court knew that she was their daughter and sister, that she was loved, that she had plans for her future and that she should have been given the chance to live that future.
28:09
Judge McDaniel then sentenced Rosario to two consecutive life sentences. The sentence for first degree murder carried no possibility of parole.
28:20
Rosario appealed both convictions.
28:23
His appeal challenged the roommate's account of the telephone call and the prosecutor's conduct during his closing speech.
28:31
What had happened during that closing speech had already caused the trial judge to intervene.
28:36
The question was whether it had also denied Rosario a fair trial.
28:42
Rosario appealed both of his convictions to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
28:48
There was no jury at the appeal. The appeal judges reviewed what had happened during the original trial to decide whether any legal errors meant Rosario should be given a new trial.
28:59
His appeal raised two main questions. The first concerned the telephone call Orla's roommate said she had received at around quarter past one that morning.
29:07
During Rosario's trial, the jury had heard that Orla said that she was at the West End house with a man called Tony.
29:14
She'd invited the roommate for a drink, she declined and Orla said she'd be home in a few minutes.
29:19
Rosario did not challenge Detective O'Leary's evidence that information received during the investigation had led police to begin looking for someone called Tony.
29:29
His objection was to Orla's roommate being allowed to repeat the full details of the conversation to the trial jury.
29:36
During the trial, the prosecution said those details were not being used to prove that Orla was actually at the West End house with Tony.
29:44
They said the call was only being used to explain why police began looking for a man with that name.
29:50
But the appeal judges did not accept that the trial jury needed to hear the entire conversation for that purpose.
29:57
Detective O'Leary could simply have said he had acted on information received during the investigation.
30:04
The details of what Orla was said to have told her roommate were not needed to explain what the police did next.
30:11
The appeal judges found that account of the call should not have been admitted. It was hearsay and because Orla could not be questioned about what she had said, Rosario's lawyers had no way of challenging her words or the circumstances in which they were spoken.
30:26
There was another problem too. Although the prosecution had said the call was only being used to explain the police investigation, the prosecutor relied on it very differently during his closing speech at the trial.
30:39
He described the call as a cry for help. He suggested that Orla had been trying to leave clues behind by giving her roommate the name Tony and the location of the West End house.
30:51
The appeal judges found that the prosecutor had used the call as evidence that Orlo was with Rosario shortly before she was killed.
30:59
That was exactly what the prosecution had said the call was not being used to prove.
31:04
The second part of Rosario's appeal concerned the prosecutor's behaviour during the same closing speech. At one point, the prosecutor called Rosario a monster. Then he threw a photograph and impressions of Rosario's teeth onto the table in front of him. The appeal judgment does not say what that photograph was.
31:23
The trial judge intervened immediately. He told the trial jury to completely disregard both the description of Rosario as a Munster and what the prosecutor had done with the photograph and the dental impressions. The evidence in the case had already come from the witnesses and the exhibits admitted during the trial.
31:41
The closing speech was the prosecutor's opportunity to explain what he believed that evidence showed.
31:48
It was not an opportunity to add anything new or to encourage the trial jury to decide the case because of anger or emotion.
31:56
The following day, the trial judge spoke to the jury about it again and made it clear that the prosecutor's words and actions were not evidence.
32:05
When the appeal judges examined what had happened, they were strongly critical.
32:10
They described the prosecutor's conduct as wholly inappropriate. They also said that parts of his closing speech had been unprofessional and improper. But that did not automatically mean Rosario was entitled to another trial.
32:24
The appeal judges then had to decide whether the telephone call or the prosecutor's behaviour could have affected the original verdict.
32:32
When deciding whether the error had affected the verdict, the appeal judges considered the rest of the evidence without relying on the call.
32:40
Even without it, Rosario had admitted having sexual intercourse with Orla on the night she was killed. He had placed that encounter at around nine o'clock when Orla's friends said she had been with them in South Boston.
32:53
His former girlfriend said he had left her apartment at around half past twelve and he had no account for his movements between then and seven o'clock the following morning. There was the DNA and saliva evidence along with the bite mark evidence that had been accepted at the time. There was also Rosario's changing accounts and the false alibi he had tried to arrange before police had ever approached him.
33:16
The appeal judges found that the remaining evidence against Rosario was overwhelming. They decided that allowing the trial jury to hear the telephone call had been a serious legal error, but they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it had not changed the outcome of the trial.
33:33
They reached the same conclusion about the prosecutor's closing speech.
33:37
His behaviour had been improper, but the trial judge had stopped him immediately and had given the jury clear instructions to disregard it.
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The appeal judges found that it did not justify setting aside the convictions.
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On 30th December 1999, Rosario's convictions for first-degree murder and aggravated rape were upheld.
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The appeal court also carried out the additional review required in a first-degree murder case and found no reason to reduce the verdict or order a new trial. Rosario's two life sentences remained in place, and while his appeal was making its way through the courts, Thomas and Betty were pursuing a separate case.
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This one was not against Rosario. It was against the authorities they believed had repeatedly failed to stop him before he ever crossed paths with Orla.
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In November 1997, five months after Rosario was convicted, legal papers were filed in Boston on behalf of Thomas and Betty Benson.
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The action sought undisclosed damages from the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts.
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Thomas and Betty claimed that Orla's death was a direct result of failures by the authorities responsible for supervising Rosario after his release from prison.
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Their case alleged that officials had failed to properly monitor him or enforce the conditions of his probation and parole.
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The family also claimed that Rosario had been allowed to complete community service and pay a fine when his release could have been revoked.
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According to their claim, it was while completing community service that Rosario came into contact with people connected to the West End house.
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Thomas and Betty also alleged that the probation office had failed to warn those at West End House about Rosario's history of violence and unlawful behaviour.
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Their lawyer was Kerry Bourne attorney Dennis Gearn.
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Gearn said the action could take two years to resolve.
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Although the family were seeking damages, he said they were not interested in receiving a large financial payment. Their reason for taking the case was to try to make sure that another family did not lose someone in the same circumstances.
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Gearn also said that the Boston Probation Department had changed the way it monitored people following the public outcry over Orla's murder.
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Further changes were later introduced across Massachusetts.
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In December 1999, formal rules were adopted for probation violation cases in the state's district and municipal courts.
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They came into effect on 3 January 2000. The rules required probation violation hearings to take place before a judge in open court and on the record.
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They also prohibited the practice of delaying a hearing simply to wait for the outcome of a new criminal charge.
36:36
Rosario's was not the only case behind those reforms, but it was one of the cases used to show what could happen when repeated violations were not dealt with.
36:47
The legal action was one part of what Thomas and Betty did after Orla's death. The other had nothing to do with Rosario or the courts. It began at Dublin City University with the subject Orla had spent years studying. In 1996, Orla's family and friends founded the Orla Benson Memorial Scholarship at Dublin City University.
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Orla had completed her honours degree in biochemistry but she was killed three weeks before her graduation ceremony.
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The sponsorship is awarded each year to a postgraduate student who shows outstanding potential in biotechnology.
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It is currently worth €2,500 and can help recipients travel to specialist laboratories, work with researchers in other countries and present their findings at international conferences.
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By 2016, the scholarship had already supported 15 postgraduate students.
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The research carried out by recipients has covered areas including cancer detection, treatment, cardiovascular disease, genetics and environmental damage.
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One recipient used the scholarship to continue work on developing a way to detect colorectal cancer at an early stage.
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Another travelled to Argentina as part of her research into the role of stem cells in cardiovascular disease.
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More recently, the award has supported breast cancer research and international collaborations with laboratories in the United States and Norway. Three decades after it was founded, the scholarship is still supporting postgraduate research at the university where Orla studied.
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Orla never had the opportunity to begin her own career in biotechnology.
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Through the scholarship created in her name, other young researchers have been given help to continue theirs.
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And at her former school in Killarney, another award was created around the qualities Orla's family and teachers remembered in her.
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At the request of Thomas and Betty, St Bridget's began presenting an annual award in Orla's memory in 1997.
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It is given to a Leaving Cert student chosen by the teaching staff.
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It's not just an award for academic achievement. Staff consider how the student has participated in school life and how they have treated the people around them. They look for someone who works well with other students and staff, uses her free time creatively and shows leadership. Having a sense of humour and a joy for life are also part of the criteria. But above all, the school looks for a student who gives her time and talents to help other people. Those qualities were chosen because they were the qualities St Bridget's associated with Orla.
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She had been involved in school life, competed in gymnastics and used her own free time to write, sing, paint and play music. Her family and friends also remembered her as someone who listened to people and was there when they needed her.
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The award has been presented every year since 1997.
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Over the years, Aaron has returned to St Bridget's to present it on behalf of the Benson family. It has allowed him to meet the young women being recognised for many of the same qualities his own sister had.
40:01
The DCU scholarship is connected to the work Orla hoped to do.
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The award at St. Bridget's is about how she lived her life and the way she treated other people.
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Both have continued for almost 30 years. And in 2015, on the 20th anniversary of Orla's death, her family and friends found another way to remember her.
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This time, they returned to one of her favourite places in Muckras. In 2015, her family and friends organised a memorial walk. They called it Orla's Walk. It took place on Saturday the 19th of September. Those taking part met outside the cafe at Muckers House at 11 o'clock that morning. There were two routes so that people could choose the one that suited them.
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A collection was held on the day for the Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre.
40:51
20 years after Orla's death, her family and friends were remembering her in one of her favourite places while also supporting people affected by sexual violence.
41:01
Orla's name continued to be remembered in Boston as well. For many years, women from Boston's Irish community have competed for a trophy bearing her name. The trophy is known as the Orla Benson Cup.
41:14
It is contested by women's Gaelic football teams within Boston GAA.
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Records show the competition taking place from at least 2009, with clubs including the Boston Shamrocks, Tiernanog and the Connacht Ladies competing for the Cup. The matches have been played at the Irish Cultural Centre in Canton, Massachusetts.
41:35
In 2012, members of Orla's family attended the final and presented the cup to the winning captain. The competition continued into the years that followed and records show that the Orla Benson Cup was still being contested in 2023. It has kept Orla's name within the same Irish community she became part of during her summer in Boston.
41:57
Members of Woodland Golf Club, where Orla had worked that summer, also established a memorial fund in her name.
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None of these things can give Orla back her life, but they make sure her name is not remembered only for what she died from.
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When Thomas spoke at Rosario's sentencing, he said Rosario had taken the sunshine out of their lives.
42:18
One of Orla's student friends had used the same word at her funeral, but in a very different way. She said Orla brought sunshine wherever she went. She could turn tears into laughter and bring brightness to a dull day.
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That was the Orla her family and friends knew. She was the daughter and sister and friend people trusted when they needed someone to listen to them.
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She wrote beautiful songs and beautiful poetry and played her guitar, painted, danced and loved walking in Mockris.
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Her friends called her their dancing queen.
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What Pedro Rosario did is part of Orla's story. It is not all of it.
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Orla Benson was 22 years old.
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So guys, that's it for today's episode of the Ireland Crimes and Mysteries podcast. Again, thanks for your listenership. And don't forget to subscribe to the show and hit that auto download so you never miss an episode.
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Until the next time, keep your eyes open and your mind curious.
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This podcast has been compiled from information gathered in the public sphere, like news articles, documentaries and open source material that can be found on the web.
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Everything in this podcast is alleged unless a conviction has taken place.
