NQI Analysis: Benjamin ‘BJ’ Sifrit. Ocean City, USA (25-31 May 2002)
A gruesome double homicide or a Neuropsychiatric Quinism Incident? This week marks the 22nd anniversary of the Ocean City murders
Who was Benjamin ‘BJ’ Sifrit? Who was Erika?
The opening paragraph via Wikipedia:
Image: The Sifrit’s (source: The Dispatch)
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1. Does the situation meet the FDA Blackbox warning rule: ‘BEHAVIOUR THAT IS UNUSUAL?’
What caught my attention: I was glued to the streaming services with my teenage son in 2019 recuperating from a recent hospital admission. Every day we would find time to watch reruns of the Forensic Files and Aircraft Investigations.
One day, while watching Forensic Files we come to an episode titled ‘Dirty Little Seacret’. Something triggers me. Probably the scene in the hot tub. At the end of the 20-minute episode I turn to my son and state “BJ got mefloquine somewhere”.
It was also the first time I started investigating a specific Neuropsychiatric Quinism Incident (NQI).
The Ocean City Murders: The Dispatch did a very good review of the story on the 5th anniversary of the murders. OC’s Most Brutal Crime Remembered Five Years Later. Excerpt:
“Murder is rarely pretty or pleasant, and in this case particularly, it was gruesome and grotesque.”
That’s how Worcester County State’s Attorney Joel Todd described the brutal murder of a Virginia couple in a north-end Ocean City penthouse condominium on Memorial Day weekend in 2002, five years ago today, in his opening statement in the trial of one of the murderers. The victims were lured to the Rainbow Condominium by a married couple they had met earlier in the evening and later brutally murdered, their bodies dismembered and scattered in several dumpsters across the Delaware shore.
Five years later, the memory of the horrific crime carried out by Benjamin and Erika Sifrit still haunts the resort known more for petty, alcohol-related crime than grisly double homicide. Had the murders occurred in a big metropolitan area like Baltimore or Washington or Philadelphia, for example, the story likely would have been buried deep inside the local newspapers, but in Ocean City it was the crime of the century and remained front-page news throughout the cruel summer of 2002 and far beyond as the killers were caught, tried and ultimately convicted.
The name Sifrit still elicits shudders from locals and long-time visitors to the resort, while the names of the victims, Joshua Ford and Martha “Geney” Crutchley, evoke sorrow and regret. In either case, the names are forever etched in the resort’s memory as part of the most heinous crime in the history of Ocean City.
“It’s certainly one of the most notorious cases in my career, and probably one of the most notorious of all time in this area,” Todd said this week on the eve of the five year anniversary of the murders.
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2. Was the person(s) exposed to antimalarials. If YES… what type, duration and were there multiple exposures?
Not confirmed but POSSIBLE
Not confirmed and potentially classified. Two possible vectors I’d like to explore further:
Scenario 1: Benjamin receives dosages of Mefloquine (1st line drug of choice by the US military in the late 1990s) either during training OR during a quick deployment with a SEAL Team Two. A comprehensive history supplied in Cruel Death only talks about two deployments both of which were in the United States (New York & Alaska, both for training).
Scenario 2: It isn’t always the militaries fault. What if Benjamin & Erika went on a quick diving holiday somewhere tropical? No one asked.
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3. How was the person(s) mental health?
PRODROMAL WARNINGS?
According to BJ, his military career started to spiral out of control immediately once he ‘hooked’ up with Erika Grace. Although that might be technically true, what is missed is that they both met in Spring 1999 and swapped numbers but nothing eventuated. According to BJ he wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship, nor a wife. Another friend, a NAVY SEAL wife who lived with BJ for four months not only reported that he wasn’t violent, he was quite shy around women. Yet a few months later, in late July, BJ meets Erika at a SEAL party and they are in an almost immediate ‘steady relationship’? Barely, three weeks pass then BJ rings his mother from the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. They are both just 21. As noted in Cruel Death:
BJ’s parents had never met Erika, nor had they even heard of her when BJ called shortly after the wedding to announce he was now married.
“August 21, [1999],” BJ told his mother over the phone. He sounded happy. “We met three weeks ago.” Recalling the incident later, Elizabeth Sifrit had tears in her eyes, her voice scratchy and weak from the pain of having to recall how her son’s life took such a nosedive into chaos.
Prodromal symptoms including memory loss, peculiar behaviour and even psychotic behaviour are early warning signs of Neuropsychiatric Quinism.
As noted above, when BJ first called his Mum about getting married he stated that he met Erika three weeks prior when in fact they had met months earlier, even swapping numbers, possibly suggesting memory loss, even amnesia.
From being not that interested in a relationship to getting married in three weeks would definitely qualify as peculiar behaviour. In fact, just months after getting married he would start to get in trouble with the Navy and breaking absolute ‘no-no’ rules, like sneaking Erika into his Mountain and Arctic Warfare training, which is undertaken in Alaska.
Dr. Jane Quinn explained the literature already available on this subject during her 2018 testimony into the Use of the Quinoline anti-malarial drugs Mefloquine and Tafenoquine in the Australian Defence Force. Excerpt from Submission 73:
Before spiralling into criminality and murder was Benjamin suffering the prodromal symptoms of mefloquine poisoning and was this missed by family, friends, and the US Navy SEALS?
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4. Were there any confounding variables?
YES. Multiple
Complex Diving Activity: I know blast injuries are an issue. Divers put their brains under similar compression/decompression strains just by doing their job. BJ was a medic so not sure of his exposure to blasts/explosives.
Active Criminality/Risk Taking Behaviour: As soon as BJ left the teams, he took up criminality and other risk-taking behaviours, including trips to South America.
Memory Issues: Everyone remembers the first time they met their partner. Yet BJ gets that wrong. There are other indicators that BJ was having memory issues prior to Ocean City.
Excessive Alcohol: BJ loved a drink. So do US Navy SEALS. Former Navy SEAL Operator Andy Stumpf, in a review of the film Navy SEALS (1990), points out that, after the opening scene, when Charlie Sheen's character "Hawkins" awakes still drunk and hungover on a beach that this is the only realistic part of the film which portrays life in the Teams.
Other Drugs: Excessive use of Xanax (Alprazolam) via ‘snorting’ is noted during the Ocean City trip. Xanax is a benzodiazepines and it is recommended you don’t drink alcohol while taking it.
‘Blooding’: When I review the known facts about the Ocean City murders it is a story of ‘he said’ – ‘she said’. What if BJ was testing Erika? What if the murders were an act of ‘blooding’?
Alleged Serial Killing, Necrophilia & Cannibalism… William Phelps mentions these ‘rumours’ in his book. No primary source evidence was presented.
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5. Was there a specific clinical event or trigger?
NO. That said, what happened in 1999?
I cannot make a clear clinical link between BJ’s possible mefloquine dosage and the murders that occurred in 2002.
There was a significant personality change in 1999 from being an effective Special Forces Navy SEAL to becoming a low-level criminal. What happened?
6. Other considerations?
YES. Three interesting tangents:
The ‘FLIP’
There was a power dynamic going on between BJ & Erika Sifrit and an event that corresponds with other Neuropsychiatric Quinism cases that I have studied. I call it ‘The Flip’. I found this excerpt via Murderpedia:
There's even a disturbing account of a test Benjamin Sifrit gave his wife to see how far she would go for him. She recalled, after being married for a year, that he wanted her to become pregnant. Court documents indicate that she carried his baby for nearly four months.
Then, out of the blue, Erika Sifrit claimed her husband changed his mind and ordered her to "get an abortion or I'm going to dig it out of you," Collins reported.
After she terminated the pregnancy, Benjamin Sifrit then told her: "I never wanted a kid, I just wanted to see how far you would go for me," according to court documents.
Lariam derangement OR a drug/alcohol fuelled rampage?
On the morning of 26th May 2002
2.26AM: Erika calls her ‘friend’ who we will refer to as ‘Snake-Guy’ twice. Both calls last less than five seconds. She has been drinking and snorting Xanax for approximately 20-hours.
Shortly after she returns to find her prized bag moved, and her drugs and jewels are missing. After a search cannot find the missing items and with Erika’s mood becoming more frantic accusations are made against the visiting couple, heightening BJ. He then produces a gun and tells the couple to strip. Naked, the couple take an opportunity to run and lock themselves in the adjoining hottub/bathroom. BJ goes to Erika and asks what she wanted him to do with Geney and Joshua. Erika thinks about it and tells BJ to just do it “Just fucking do it,”. Even after BJ finds out about the 911 call made before the call to Snake Guy he seems to have an epiphany. “I’m just going to fucking waste them, cool?”. He is smiling.
BJ then fires one or two shots through the door, wounding Josh, most likely in the arm. Erika might have even directed fire. Then BJ kicks open the door and executes Josh with a bullet to his head. He then hands the gun to Erika who walks over to the cowering Geney and fires the pistol. She misses, either by design or by mistake as the bullet goes through the wall into the next room. Pulling out her knife she proceeds to stab Geney in the stomach. Before her arrest in five days she will get a tattoo of a cobra on the spot where she first cut Geney. A trophy for her husband who approved.
Odd behaviour…
It isn’t proof but I found this page in William Phelps especially intriguing.
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ASSESSMENT
POSSIBLE (more information required)
Benjamin ‘BJ’ Sifrit is a convicted murderer. That is a fact.
My gut tells me YES he has Neurocognitive Quinism but the evidence is circumstantial and the actual mefloquine dosage is in doubt. There is enough evidence to suggest that it is a possibility.
So, I’m going to ask BJ & Erika directly.
I’ll get back to you.
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UPDATES
26.05.2024: Reviewed/Updated: Headline name amendment
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REFERENCES
Drugs.com (Reviewed 21.11.2023) Xanax [https://www.drugs.com/xanax.html] Page accessed 23.05.2024
Forensic Files. (2009). Dirty Little Seacret. Season 13, Episode 47. [https://www.forensicfiles.com/dirty-little-seacret/#] Medstar Television. USA
Manning, P (19.11.2020) ‘Blooding’ Australia [https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2020/19/2020/1605761676/blooding-australia] Page accessed 23.05.2024
Murderpedia (2023) Erika Elaine Sifrit. [https://murderpedia.org/female.S/s/sifrit-erika.htm] Page accessed 25.05.2023
New England Journal of Medicine (1.07.1993) Malaria Chemoprophylaxis for the Traveler [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199307013290107] Page accessed 14.05.2024
Phelps, M. William. (2009). Cruel Death. Kensington Publishing. New York City, New York, USA.
Quinn, J (2018) Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, Australian Senate. Use of the Quinoline anti-malarial drugs Mefloquine and Tafenoquine in the Australian Defence Force. Submission 73. Australian Government. Canberra, ACT, Australia
Tickell-Painter M, Saunders R, Maayan N, Lutje V, Mateo-Urdiales A, Garner P (2017) Deaths and parasuicides associated with mefloquine chemoprophylaxis: A systemic review. Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases. DOI: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2017.10.011
The Dispatch (24.05.2007) OC’s Most Brutal Crime Remembered Five Years Later [https://mdcoastdispatch.com/2007/05/24/ocs-most-brutal-crime-remembered-five-years-later/] Page accessed 23.05.2024
The Quinism Foundation (2024) The Quinism Foundation [https://quinism.org/] Page accessed 14.05.2024
Wikipedia (2024) Erika and Benjamin Sifrit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_and_Benjamin_Sifrit] Page accessed 19.05.2024
Wikipedia (2024) Navy SEALs (film) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_SEALs_(film)] Page accessed 23.05.2024