In exchange for two years of probation, Dr. First pled guilty, and was set free from the Pinellas County jail August 14, 2015, at 2:39 a.m.

Ben called to ask me to pick him up at a Denny’s he walked to after being released. As petty as it sounds, I purposely delayed coming. I was disgusted by his explanation of why he attempted to strangle his girlfriend. “What if you knew she liked it?” he whispered on the phone. I also couldn’t understand why the woman said she loved Ben – and that he hadn’t hurt her the night in question, only another night after that night in question.

I didn’t care that he called me again to complain about waiting so long, not having more than loose change to pay for a cup of coffee as he sat in a booth next to a garbage bag of clothes. “I obviously look like I just got out of jail,” he sniped. 

I did pick up my friend before the sun rose and paid for his first week of homelessness at a decent hotel on St. Pete Beach. I figured the breeze, sand and water could do some good, perhaps cleanse his soul and serve as a fresh start. Astoundingly, Dr. First soon resumed practicing oral surgery, despite leaving various patients in precarious situations when his two offices abruptly shut down upon his incarceration. He failed to adequately compensate those he owed services or money to, and, in one case, left a woman completely toothless in an unfinished procedure.

Dr. First couldn’t immediately open his own office. His wife Mary received them in the divorce settlement, which Ben consented to while in jail. Despite my protests, however, Mary consented to allow Ben to reside in the New Port Richey location as his landlord. Ben expressed disdain toward Mary, and I couldn’t see a business relationship working out any better than their failed marriage.

Mary explained that permitting Ben to live in the office was out of compassion – and to ensure he had the ability to resume practicing there when he could afford it again. She concluded it was the only way she could receive alimony payments to support herself and the children. Given that Dr. First was then broke and without credit, he couldn’t immediately cover the cost of renewing his liability insurance as well as some other outstanding debts that prevented him from re-opening Associates in Oral & Facial Surgery.

A new low in shucking teeth
In the meantime, Dr. First found work with an area dentist who knew Ben’s situation and got him to shuck teeth for a fraction of what he previously made on his own. I couldn’t feel sorry for him, because I knew how Ben had reached this new low in his life.

I continued to support his recovery by giving him money, buying dinners, loaning him a laptop computer and other gestures. Over time, I stopped thinking about the trial I attended and felt he was on a good path, completely unaware that his monstrous side was all too alive and unwell. Women continued to see and feel it, scared to death of him.

Ben’s escapades in downtown St. Pete elevated while he was leasing a high-rise condo there overlooking the city and bay. He was on a binge, spending as much liquid wealth as he could “to keep Mary and her lawyers from getting any,” he told me, as she was proceeding with plans to divorce him. Instead of realizing or caring that his actions hurt his entire family, my friend lived extravagantly, treating girlfriends to limo rides to the most expensive restaurants, for example. 

Although Mary said Ben never attempted to hurt her physically, he took a crowbar to the locked front door of the estate they had moved to in 2009, a few miles from their other Palm Harbor home. The incident occurred in August 2013.

“Ben had called to tell me what happened,” his hunting buddy Donnie Fraise said, noting that it was the first time he thought something was “broken inside” of Dr. First. “I asked him why he was breaking open the door of his own house. His explanation was that it was his ‘f—king house’ and she had no right to keep him from getting clothes he needed.”

Mary wasn’t preventing Ben from retrieving his wardrobe. She, too, was afraid of him, as his Shining-like rage was on full display in the posh neighborhood cul de sac where kids were playing, including his own, as other neighbors looked on in fear of what Dr. First may do. As he realized police were enroute, Ben hurriedly drove off in his sports car.

“It made no sense,” Donnie added. “I told him, you’re loading the gun – and handing it to them” in reference to the legal matters that would obviously result from his actions. “That’s stupid behavior. I could see a digression unfolding in Ben.”

Officers eventually caught up with Ben in Tampa, after chasing his speeding vehicle around a bank building to, he told me, “throw an eight ball” (one-eighth of an ounce) of cocaine out the window.

Although he sacrificed that expensive bag of coke, Mary didn’t press charges, and a lawyer managed to get Dr. First acquitted of the state’s case for domestic violence as well as fleeing and eluding officers in pursuit. Without skipping a beat, Dr. First continued to practice, then at offices in Palm Harbor and New Port Richey.