Not long after Ben’s release from jail in 2015, another girlfriend contacted a county sheriff’s office to notify them about Dr. First illegally possessing an arsenal of guns and silencers at the New Port Richey office where he lived off and on, now increasingly on.

Her intent was to warn the local police in case they received a report about something happening there – or if they wanted to take a closer look before it could turn bad…for them. A victim’s advocate responded, offering help, but she preferred to stay anonymous and not inadvertently cause more terror for herself. Other young victims spoke of how he would choke and beat them black and blue, then apologize through tears before insisting they wear makeup to hide his “mistake.”

Various girlfriends tried to help Dr. First … before fearing him and for their lives. He was as adept at hiding inner demons as he was tricking drug tests. When released from jail on a plea bargain for domestic violence with strangulation and tampering with a witness (the woman he strangled), I concluded he’d either turn his life around or, more likely, kill himself.

I tried all I could to support his renewed — yet court-enforced — commitment to sobriety.

One evening, we went to see A Walk in the Woods at the AMC theater a couple of miles from where he would shoot and kill his final victim, Laurese, and himself, over two years later. I had sent the Bill Bryson book to Ben while he was in jail. We both enjoyed it, but agreed Redford and Nolte only looked the parts while failing to capture Bryson’s meaning, humor and depth.

“It totally missed the point,” Ben laughed after the movie ended. “They never even see a bear in the book. It was really about the fear, what we think is out there.”

Encouraging outlook, not looking close enough
I had started to feel better about my friend’s future. He had assured me he would never take his own life. I couldn’t fathom him taking someone else’s, although I wasn’t completely confident about his ex-wife Mary’s safety, nor even my own when I confronted him about things. In particular, I told him when he moved in with Laurese in January 2019, it was because he was “tired of sleeping in his dental chair.” His eyes seemed like they were on fire as he sneered at my accusation.

I got to know Laurese as she hung out with Ben, perhaps too much on him. She was pleasant and kind, clearly smitten and looking forward to a future with the rebounding oral surgeon. Everything seemed well enough between her and Ben, although his old tendency to flair up hadn’t gone away.

I always felt I deserved to chide Ben because of his prodigious lapses in judgment, like when he intentionally agitated a couple of giant bodybuilders wearing Affliction T-shirts at an Oldsmar bar and seafood restaurant..

That was just Ben being Ben,” I thought at the time (and, in hindsight, at too many other times). He especially hated when I introduced him as a “dentist,” which I purposely did to his disdain more than once. He glared the last time I did so, snarling that it would be my last time referring to him in any way other than a “maxillofacial surgeon.”

The small signs never added up to a complete picture of how dangerous and demented Ben had become. I later learned how he was prone to pulling women by the hair, yanking their heads back, holding guns to their heads … or sneaking up from behind to choke them into blackness. My friend was leaving a bloody trail while cleaning his tracks along the way. I couldn’t see them — nor looked hard enough to know what lurked.

The terror he instilled was real.

None of the survivors I interviewed ever felt Dr. First was “bluffing,” and none of them dared take a chance to find out. One recalled his tremendous fear of an automatic 10-year prison sentence if he violated probation, which he had just done — with her — in more than one way. “After choking me out and beating me, he repeatedly warned that I not say anything about it … or he would be back to stomp on my face until all the bones broke into fucking fragments. All I could think of was surviving, hoping that if I was going to die then and there, I’d rather it be quick and painless, worrying that he preferred something…well… more sinister.”

If she ever got away, she knew reporting Dr. First to law enforcement could very easily trigger his return to her for deadly retribution. Appealing to that “sensibility” likely saved her life. “I assured him that I wouldn’t report him for various reasons, especially the obvious one. I said that I knew he would put a bullet through my head, if I did anything to cross him. I think he understood that I wasn’t bluffing just as much as I knew he wasn’t about killing me. Of course, he was holding a a gun to my temple. I’d say or do whatever it would take to get away.”