WHEN DOES INDIFFERENCE BECOME HOMICIDE?

Benjamin Stibbe is only 24 years old but, if a criminal complaint is
correct, has left an astounding number of dead people in his wake.

That he is not dead himself might be one of the small wonders of his case.

Complaints charging him with a total of four counts of reckless
homicide paint a picture of an inveterate heroin abuser - and supplier.

Awaiting a sentencing that ended up being postponed in Port
Washington on Friday, he wore the requisite orange of the jailed. He
was pale and silent and wasn't asked to answer any questions.

Here's just one I wish he would: At what point does callous
indifference to people's lives become an almost willful taking of the same?

Lynn Smaxwill was 43 when she overdosed on cocaine and heroin the
night of Dec. 11, 2002.

The complaint filed this week alleges Stibbe purchased those drugs in
Milwaukee and was present in her Grafton house the night she died.

It also alleges that the very next day, fully aware of Smaxwill's
death and having already been questioned by police, he went back to
Milwaukee and purchased heroin for a different woman - one who
happens to still be alive.

Others are not.

On the night of Oct. 15, 2005, Stibbe allegedly provided the heroin
that killed Matthew Kobiske, a 21-year-old Grafton man; then, a mere
week after that, allegedly provided the stuff 47-year-old James Helm
died using.

He finally, we know for a fact because he already pleaded no contest
to this one, provided the drugs that 17-year-old Angela Raettig used
right before her life ended last Nov. 29.

There's no allegation he is a serial killer who planned things out.
But the word "serial" appears apt, and the criminal complaints charge
him with directly, if not intentionally, causing the deaths. Whatever
you call him, families of victims believe, you cannot call him remorseful.

"He does not show remorse," said Smaxwill's younger sister, Ann, "for
what he does."

It was Raettig's death that got the most publicity and causes people
to wonder why more attention wasn't paid to Stibbe long, long ago.

Joe Schwind is a Cedarburg doctor who dates Angela's mother and tried
to revive the girl the morning she was found. What, he wondered
Friday, do prosecutors know now about the earlier deaths that they
couldn't have known, and charged, a long time ago?

"You need evidence to charge it," responded Ozaukee County District
Attorney Sandy Williams, "and we have been discussing it with the
families, so I am surprised they would ask that question."

It's not the only one. People wonder how a man like Stibbe can
operate entirely devoid, apparently, of a conscience.

"The thing that bothers me," said Schwind of the allegations, "is
this guy contributed to the death of the first person and then he
goes and does it again and then the third time."

The first time, he said, you could say somebody "accidentally overdosed."

"But after it happens time and time again," according to the
allegations, "he has to know. Then he's truly responsible."

People overdose on heroin for a variety of reasons. Some are what
Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen calls opiate-naive.
They don't have any experience with the drug. Others overdose because
they haven't used regularly and have lost their tolerance. Still
others are genetically unable to metabolize it.

The most common problem in Grafton, criminal complaints now suggest
though: a man who seemed completely unfazed by the fact he was
leaving a trail of corpses behind him. Time and time and time and time again.