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God everytime I hear about this case, I get sick inside. By no means is my home a filthy pig sty-but it makes me want to go home and clean more. I think it is part of the reason why I dont put my baby in her crib. Everytime I hear about this, I envison my childs crib and this poor baby sitting there dead with his eyes wide open. What a gruesome, lonely death.

I hate these two with all my heart and soul-and I hope they get the max punishment...:dong:
 
So Awful. I put off even reading this thread because my baby is now 6 months old and I just can't imagine anything worse that could happen to her. How could they, the soulless monsters? I am at a loss. You know it is bad when you almost wish the baby had been shook to death.
 
Thank you for this Silva.
Baby Benjamin is the first case I dug up on this site that ever brought me to true uncontrollable tears.
I remember having to shut my laptop and walk away due to the anguish I felt inside. No other case here has ever had that effect on me. I get a tear or two every once and a while, but he made me sob like a little schoolgirl.
I remember calling my mother at midnight. I remember telling her how upset I was and how I just couldn't understand it.
Thank you for honoring this sweet angel.
 
Thank you for this Silva.
Baby Benjamin is the first case I dug up on this site that ever brought me to true uncontrollable tears.
I remember having to shut my laptop and walk away due to the anguish I felt inside. No other case here has ever had that effect on me. I get a tear or two every once and a while, but he made me sob like a little schoolgirl.
I remember calling my mother at midnight. I remember telling her how upset I was and how I just couldn't understand it.
Thank you for honoring this sweet angel.

I understand completely. It took me days to snap out of the crying and deep sorrow I felt for this baby. I think it was the connection I made with my son being the same age by days. Every time I held him, I'd imagine finding baby Benjamin and saving him from this terrible death....even dreamed about it. The anguish is unimaginable. There is peace for him now, I truly believe that, and for that I am so grateful.

Monsters are real and they live in your home... just die already....
 
Mental health defense denied for James Fuckhead Sargent:

http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1239302653/Mental-health-defense-denied-for-Sargent

The judge shot the argument down despite Dr. Terry Killian's testimony during a motion hearing. Killian said Sargent had told him he would "become" a character from "Lord of the Rings," and tune out the real world.

Well that's a pathetic attempt at an insanity plea. Just goes to show how dim witted he really is.
 
I just... just... ughhh this makes me soooo angry, sick, disgusted, filled with rage. I just stumbled upon this story and I am just gutted by the suffering of that poor baby.

I hope these two shitey cunts never have any joy or peace or relief ever again in their lives. May they suffer endlessly!
 
This has got to be one of the worst cases I have ever read. That baby's back, buttocks and backs of his legs were 'eaten into' from being left in his own waste, and he was not fed for 8 days, and was left in an 80degree room with his fucking snowsuit on! His 'parents' just....left him in his car seat to die. (tied in with a rope??? WTF??)


Killian said Sargent had told him he would "become" a character from "Lord of the Rings," and tune out the real world.

To me, that reads like he knew perfectly damn fucking well what he was doing, he could hear that baby cry and scream in torment,pain and hunger, and he made a conscious decision to 'tune out the real world' (the baby's cries) and skip off to Middle Earth. In other words, the 'real world' of responsibilities to care for that baby was not as much fun as pretending to be a Ring Wraith. He fucking KNEW what he was doing!

Thank God that judge has thrown out that ludicrous 'defense'!!! He is obviously as outraged at this baby's horrible death as any normal person would be!!!

Oh, and I also believe that when two tards were in the vicinity when a baby dies, and try to play pin-the-blame-on-the-other-tard in order to escape justice, then they should BOTH be charged with the crime! None of this 'not going for the death penalty 'cos none of them will fess up' shit. They are both just as fucking guilty and both should fucking FRY!!!!!!!

In June, Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons opted not to seek the death penalty for the two. He cited mental-health issues and said the parents appear to be blaming each other for the infant's death, which would require the prosecutor to cut a deal with one to use testimony against the other.


Sweet little baby Benjamin. You really didnt stand a chance with those two as your parents. It breaks my heart to think of how you suffered, dying with your eyes open, staring straight ahead, and with your fists clenched. RIP little sweetheart. xxx
 
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James Sargent flashed a peace sign toward his family members as he entered and left the courtroom on Friday.

Sargent, 24, accused of starving his 5-month-old son, Benjamin Sargent, to death in February 2008, waived his rights to a jury trial and instead opted for a bench trial, which will begin April 27.

The bench trial likely will be before Circuit Judge James Shadid.

During Friday’s brief hearing, Sargent’s attorney, William Loeffel, told Shadid that his client continues to remain fit and understands what is going on, despite some instances regarding Sargent’s “dissociative disorder,â€￾ a condition whereby Sargent would retreat to his fantasies and shut himself off from the real world.

Sargent was previously found to be fit by doctors and able to stand trial.

On Friday, Sargent answered several questions from Shadid affirming his desire to move forward with the bench trial.

[...]
If convicted, Sargent faces 20 to 100 years in prison. Hermann’s trial is scheduled for May 4.
http://www.pjstar.com/homepage/x126901061/Sargent-opts-for-bench-trial-over-sons-death
 
Graphic pictures tell Story

They are pictures too horrific to imagine, but very real.

24–year–old James Sargent buried his head in his hands as prosecutors showed pictures of his deceased son during day two of Sargent's murder trial in Peoria County.

Sargent is charged with leaving his 5 and a half– month old son Benjamin in a car seat in his crib for up to eight days without food and water, leading to his death.

According to our news partner 1470 WMBD Radio, prosecutors also played video of the interview police conducted with James Sargent the night Benjamin was found dead.

It showed Sargent at first claiming he had checked on the baby 20 minutes before finding him dead and that he had fed him multiple times. But the story changed as detectives continued to question him.
....

Both parents face up to 100 years in prison if convicted. Sargent's trial is expected to wrap up tomorrow.

100 years will do just fine, then Hell will take care of them. I can't fuckn' wait.
 
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Thanks nurseronda.

James Sargent has been found guilty of two counts of first degree murder in connection to the death of his five and a half month of old son Benjamin last year. Peoria County Judge James Shadid handed down the verdict today (Wednesday) immediately following the conclusion of a three day bench trial.


Sargent is guilty of failing to provide care for Ben including giving him food, water or changing his diaper for up to eight days. He died due to an unchanged diaper leading to sepsis. Sargent's attorney William Loeffel wanted involuntary manslaughter. He said Sargent became preoccupied with his relationship with Hermann and neglected Ben, but did not do so on purpose.
....
Sargent faces 100 years in prison due to the act being found as brutal and heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty. He is set to be sentenced June 25th. Loeffel asked for Sargent to be guilty with mental illness to allow him to get help in prison.

BabyKillerSargent/2countsMurder

YES! love this kind of news. Now rot in prison then in HELL.
 
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This is great news. I hope that he gets the full 100 years.

I'm a little confused as to why he's been found guilty of 2 counts of murder??
 
This is great news. I hope that he gets the full 100 years.

I'm a little confused as to why he's been found guilty of 2 counts of murder??

Good question, I'm not sure why. I'll have do so looking, but I'm tired right now...lol.

God, I hate those fuckers....HATE, it kind of scares me.
 
Interesting article here:

What emerged over the course of the trial was a pathetic picture of a twentysomething into weird bouts of fantasy sword play and computer games; obsessed with his girlfriend to the point of tuning almost everything else out, even as she sought other relationships; unemployed but otherwise too busy, stressed, depressed, exhausted to look in on his son or keep the 3012 W. Proctor St. scene of the crime clean; utterly dysfunctional and self-pitying. He slept for some 18 consecutive hours prior to discovering his son dead. "You have to understand," he told a detective. "I didn't have any help. You don't understand how hard I tried." Yet, as prosecutors noted, "he didn't forget to feed himself."

http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/x1669764553/Our-View-Absolutely-no-business-being-a-parent
 
"I didn't have any help. You don't understand how hard I tried." Yet, as prosecutors noted, "he didn't forget to feed himself."

I hated this bastard from the moment I first read about poor baby Ben's horrible death. Reading his pathetic, whiney 'excuse' for ignoring that baby to death just makes me want to vomit at his rediculous self-pity! He doesnt give a flying fuck about that baby still, all he wants to do is bleat on about how 'hard' he tried, and how hard it was for HIM.

That baby died in absolute AGONY, and all because this fucker 'tuned out' the real world because it was so hard for him and he had no help. Cry me a fucking river.

100yrs will do. I just hope he gets the FULL 100yrs. Her too.
 
I'm a little confused as to why he's been found guilty of 2 counts of murder??

Somes states now charge you with two counts of murder if the child is under a certain age.
 
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I'm a little confused as to why he's been found guilty of 2 counts of murder??
So was I. Here's what the counts from the Grand Jury were: (bolded the wording differences)
FIRST DEGREE MURDER - They, both being persons over 17 years of age and while under a duty to provide care and protection for their child, born August 27, 2007, without lawful justification and for consecutive days knowingly confined another in a car seat and knowingly neglected to provide basic physical needs of food, liquid and sanitation, that being exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty to another knowing these acts would create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm to him and thereby caused the death of another by starvation.

FIRST DEGREE MURDER - They, both being persons over 17 years of age and while under a duty to provide care and protection for their child, born August 27, 2007, without lawful justification and with the intent to kill another, for consecutive days knowingly confined another in a car seat and knowingly neglected to provide basic physical needs of food, liquid and sanitation, that being exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty to another and thereby caused the death of another by starvation.
http://www.peoriacountystatesattorney.org/Grand%20Jury%20Indictments/2008%20Indictments/030408.htm#James%20Sargent
http://www.peoriacountystatesattorn...nts/2008 Indictments/030408.htm#Tracy Hermann
 
I remember reading this story when it first happened. The horror of it has never left me. Is there punishment enough for what those two pieces of SHIT put that poor baby through? That poor baby must've cried himself hoarse...it kills me to think about it.

And the father's statements about retreating into a fantasy world, and "how hard he tried" just ENRAGE me. I hope to GOD he gets put into the general population in prison!
 
Me too O'Malley.

This is the one that brought me to DD. I cried for days, and I'm not exaggerating. My babies bday is only 2 days different from Benajamin's so I was really feeling how tiny and helpless he was at that time. To this day I think about how he suffered so much and once the infection was full force he would have been in so much agony....damn, I'm getting myself all worked up again.

Authorities said, Tracey Hermann didn’t want Benjamin. That she wanted to give Benjamin up for adoption, and refused to do anything that loving mothers typically do with their children - taking no part in the feeding, bathing, or changing of Benjamin.

She didn’t play with him.

She didn’t talk with him.

She didn’t hold him.

Benjamin had only gained 2 pounds since birth. This is also the reason I often refer to her as the birthing unit and not a mother as she never earned to be called that.

I would like a chance to sit down with this bitch and ask her to her face why? and how she could live her own precious son die such a horrible death. I would make her look at me in the face if she could. Then I'd bitch slap her as that is all they would let me do....you know, they'd take my sword away from me and all.

Tracey Hermann's name is synonymous with death.



Kisses sweet and precious Benjamin, countless people will always remember you.
 
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I'm from IL, this douchebag looks crazy familiar. his gf just looks like a bitch. I can't believe I never heard about this story until i was on here. this is just completely disgusting to be and wow. I just don't even know. little benjamin, i hope they lock your horrendous parents up forever.
 
I was reading an update, mostly just information already put out there. However, I thought this was odd. This article states the judge gave Sargent a 1st degree murder charge. The article posted originally bu nurseronda indicating 2 counts of second degree murder were released on the same day, April 29....am I missing something here?
Taking only a 10-minute break after the conclusion of the three-day trial, Peoria County Judge James Shadid found Sargent, 24, guilty of first-degree murder. Additionally, the judge rejected any notion that Sargent acted recklessly or was in over his head when he was caring for Benjamin Sargent.
[...]
Defense attorney William Loeffel said his client was consumed by the disintegration of his relationship with Hermann.

"He was so preoccupied with this that Ben just slipped his mind
," Loeffel said.

The attorney went on to point out that rather than having a "malignant heart" as prosecutors alleged, James Sargent was a grief-stricken father. The attorney conceded his client wasn't likeable nor a good parent, yet he said that Sargent lacked the basic skills and never meant to kill Benjamin.

In a videotaped statement to police, Sargent portrayed himself as an exhausted father who was worn down as the sole caretaker of the child. He reached out to relatives for help, but no one came, he said on the tape.

Prosecutor Nancy Mermelstein mocked that, saying he managed to speak with his mother twice during the week in question and both times, he was happy and enjoying himself. All the while, a few feet away, Benjamin was in his crib, alone.

"Is it possible to imagine him not crying out?" she asked during her closing. *"Perhaps he stopped because he realized no one would come."
*


Rather than grief, Sargent had "a whole lot of self-pity for himself," she said.
Sargent is a selfish, stupid, heartless bastard. No doubt he was preoccupied with the stupid bitch who bore little Benjamin. He certainly had his priorities fucked up. Overwhelmed, yes, all parents find themselves at that place, but it never occurs to those of us in that same state to let our child go uncared for and left to die.

He talked to his mother for christ sake, that very week Benjamin was sitting there dying. He could have told her on any occasion he needed help. He didn't. I'm sure by that time baby Benjamin was to exhausted, sick and distraught to cry anymore. That house was very small. How they ignored his cries for days is beyond me.
sargent-home
sargent-home
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As it is, the elder Sargent himself may never again plant eyes on the Friendly Confines, given what likely the next several decades hold in store for him from the decidedly not-so-friendly confines of his prison cell. On Wednesday, Peoria County Judge James Shadid didn't buy Sargent's poor-overwhelmed-me pleas, ruling in the latter's bench trial that he was not just criminally clueless as a parent but a murderer in the first degree, callously indifferent and self-absorbed to such an extreme that his conduct was not merely reckless but intentional, "brutal and heinous ... indicative of wanton cruelty."
In short, intolerable.


As such Sargent could be sentenced to a century behind bars when he comes back before Shadid in June. Whatever he gets, he'll serve 100 percent of it, minus time he's already spent behind bars. Sargent's one-time girlfriend and Ben's biological mother, Tracy Hermann, is scheduled to stand trial on the same charges in August.

Sargent's defense attorney had argued diminished capacity and sought the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter but Shadid wasn't buying it after three days of gruesome testimony and photos. "A picture paints a thousand words," Shadid would say in passing judgment.

Indeed, if at Christmas 2007 the almost four-month old Benjamin appeared in family photos with chubby cheeks and a smile, six weeks later his body was emaciated and raw. Ultimately he died not of starvation, as originally thought, but from infection - sepsis, specifically, as the waste he was left to sit in for days ate away at his skin until the toxins seeped into his bloodstream. Police would find him with open eyes and clenched fists on Feb. 12, still in the car seat his paternal grandmother had left him in when she dropped him off on Feb. 4.
In 25 years at this newspaper, we cannot recall a more horrific case of neglect. There is no way to dance around that delicately.
Sargent and Hermann should both get death. However, sitting in a prison for likely the rest of their life has some appeal. Still even death is too good for them. I believe their time will come as Hell is waiting for them. Their suffering for the anguish they dealt baby Benjamin has yet to begin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A picture of baby Benjamin with big sister Natalie. Another life forever changed by this horrific incident. Kisses little ones.
akegas.jpg



SargentsActionsCruel&Heinous
NoBusinessBeingAparent
 
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This is one of the few, if not only, cases I have not been able to comment. I can not start thinking about this to form a coherent sentence. My mind just starts bleeding, as does my heart.

Utterly horrific doesn't even come close. I sincerely hope that Hell does exist in some way. It did for Benjamin.
 
I remember this case from before I found this website.

I feel nauseous all over again. The total lack of soul that these parents have shown is just astonishing.... and I can't stop asking why. Why do these innocent babies have to die such painful and preventable deaths? Why do these people, who clearly can not be labelled as parents, not tell someone, ANYONE that they're struggling? Why, if there is a god, is he letting this happen to our children? Why doesn't anyone notice that something is off, why doesn't anyone intervene?

It's painful to think of what this poor little guy went through. What was going through his mind, not able to speak for himself, not able to reach out because there was no one to reach out to.

I just can not even fathom that someone could be so cruel and heartless that they could not even take 20 minutes every few hours to feed and change their baby. As neglectful as that could be, with no love or cuddles, at least little Benjamin would still be alive.

Sorry for the long rant, I am just so upset right now and I can't make sense of anything. These people do not deserve to breath the same air that we breath. They don't deserve the luxury of prison. They don't deserve a crumb of food, let alone 3 meals a day. They simply do not deserve to live.

RIP beautiful baby Benjamin. xoxo
 
I remember reading this story when it first happened. The horror of it has never left me. Is there punishment enough for what those two pieces of SHIT put that poor baby through? That poor baby must've cried himself hoarse...it kills me to think about it.

And the father's statements about retreating into a fantasy world, and "how hard he tried" just ENRAGE me. I hope to GOD he gets put into the general population in prison!

Me too...

This story hasn't left me since I first heard about it. I had twin baby girls at the time when I heard about poor little baby Benjamin. I was struggling at the time because I was working, bringing my twins with me to work, and hardly having time to sleep or eat or take care of myself.

I was so outraged... so so outraged. How dare they? I mean, they had ONE BABY. They couldn't even do the basics?

Now I have twin 2 year olds and a 4 month old little baby boy who was born a year after Baby Ben died. Benjamin died on February 12th and Trevor was born on February 13th. As it gets closer to Trevor being 5 months old I can't help but think of that poor little baby constantly. Whenever my son cries I feel eaten with guilt. My guy somehow ended up with a diaper rash even though I change him often... and I feel so guilty. How could those two people do that? Do you guys really think they were on drugs? Is drugs an excuse? I know plenty of pot heads who are great parents. Heck, I've been known to :cheers: on a Saturday night and still come home to take care of my babies. Not lately since my son refuses any bottles but when he would take pumped milk it was easier. lol

I digress! :hello:

Nice to meet you! My name is Cat and I'm obsessing about this poor baby boy. My kids are going to end up completely spoiled because of this poor baby. :lollypop:
 
I am endlessly & immensely gratified to see these two worthless individuals finally & permanently separated from society. I guess I'm like all the other parents here who just can't figure this out.

They had TWO children? An older sister for little Benjamin?? Oh the fun they MIGHT have had together; much better than stupid video games. I have a 6-year-old girl and a three-month-old boy, so I think I know what I'm talking about.

Scum of the earth idiots. I don't swear but even if I did, I wouldn't find adequate words for people like them.
 
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