PROSECUTOR'S DEATH LEAVES AN 'INEXPLICABLE MYSTERY'

My cellphone was going nuts. It was my first hint that something was
wrong. Usually, journalists are the ones tracking down sources. Yet on
the day this happened, nearly a dozen of mine were desperately trying
to get hold of me.

A few days later, some of them would join me at the funeral in a crowd
of 1,000: judges, attorneys, reporters, cops in uniform - all of them
awash in pain.

It wasn't easy watching anyone fight back tears - knowing that these
are the kinds of people, in the kinds of professions, who are taught
not to shed them easily.

But what broke me was the family of Dan Benavides. The way they walked
into the church in quiet dignity, their eyes puffy, their lips
quivering, their gaze fixed at the altar ahead. It was tough to keep
my composure. It didn't help when an older sibling, in eulogizing him,
choked on the word "brother."

The priest called the passing of the 38-year-old Dallas County
prosecutor an "inexplicable mystery."

Dan was found dead in his home last week, apparently of a suicide, a
week after a big demotion and just one day before he was scheduled to
testify to the Dallas County grand jury investigating the 2001
fake-drug scandal.

Talk to former prosecutors, and they'll tell you: Dan was in a
position to know a lot about how it was that dozens of bogus drug
cases managed to worm their way through the criminal justice system
right under the noses of prosecutors, judges and juries.

Dan's family and friends have plenty of questions about how he died.
But there's no question about how he lived.

You hear the same things over and over: that Dan loved his family,
that he was a good son, brother and uncle. That he loved politics,
public service and being a prosecutor. That he was an achiever, an
athlete and a competitor.

That he loved helping people and had, since before anyone can
remember, methodically laid out his plans to do more of that by
running for office. That Dan planned to start with a campaign for
judge in Dallas County but that - according to at least one friend I
spoke to - he had said things that suggested he ultimately had his
sights set on Congress. (If he had gotten there, it would have been as
a Republican. Though he came from a family of staunch Democrats, he
recently had switched parties.)

You hear that Dan was bright, disciplined, ambitious, organized and
easy to be around and that he had a knack for playing reconciler and
bringing people together.

Above all, his friends and family say, Dan always, always, tried to do
the right thing. Everyone I spoke to - every last person - insisted
that, if Dan were put into a situation where he had to put his hand on
the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth so help him God, this good-hearted Catholic boy would stick
to his vow.

Take it from the person who perhaps knew him best, his sister Cindy
Benavides. I'd known her for three years before I ever met her younger
brother. But I hadn't seen her like this. Usually cheerful and full of
life, Cindy looked as if she had just lost her best friend. And, from
what I know about her relationship with Dan, she may have.

"I know my brother very well," she told me. "For him to do something
like this, he had to be extremely conflicted."

I asked her if she thought Dan was the kind of person who would feel,
in her words, conflicted if he were under pressure to do something he
didn't want to do - especially if he felt he had little or no choice.

She wouldn't say.

But Cindy did say she thought something very significant must have
happened on Wednesday, April 7 - the day before her brother's body was
found - that changed Dan's disposition for the worse. Although her
brother had, the week before, been demoted to a lower court after
butting heads with a supervisor, she said that, after a few days
passed, Dan gave her and other family members the impression that he
had come to grips with the setback.

"We talked that Tuesday," she said. "He said, 'You know, it's not
going to be that bad.' "

That may have been true at the time. But somewhere along the line, it
went bad. It went real bad.