Introducing: LOVE MURDER
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Hey there, it's Kristen. If you're looking for a new podcast that feels like you're in the room with your best friends, you need to check out Love Murder, hosted by my friends Jesse Prey and Andy Cassatt. Love Murder focuses on love gone fatally wrong, and Jesse and Andy are best friends in real life, so their chemistry is spot on. But they actually get to the point, which is one thing that I love about their show. And they also center their stories around the victims.

Jesse and Andy are fantastic storytellers who really love to bring the audience into exactly what happened and the why. So if you're looking for a podcast that has a lot of solved cases because you need to balance out the unsolved ones from Murder, She Told, Love Murder will probably speak to you. Love Murder has just the right amount of banter with a deep dive of research so you know the story from the beginning to the end without important details left out.

Love Murder releases weekly, and they have bonus episodes, too, on current affairs, and there is a huge back catalog for you to check out. So if you're looking for a new podcast, look no further and check out Love Murder. Here's a brand new story that was recorded just for Murder, She Told listeners. So if you enjoy it, click the links in the show notes and find Love Murder wherever you get podcasts.

I'm very excited for something a little different today. Jessie, what do you have going on for our Love Murder Mini? A long-married Connecticut couple seems to have everything. A thriving family business, beautiful children, and strong connections to their community. But one spouse's secrets will slowly spin out of control until their betrayal results in a triple homicide. I'm Andi Cassette. And I'm Jessie Prey. And this is a Love Murder Mini.

Hi, Andy. Hi, Jessie. Welcome, everyone. If you're listening to this now, this might be your very first time listening to Love Murder. So we are a podcast all about matters of the heart turned deadly. And today, you'll be getting just a little taste of what is usually a deep dive into the lives and loves of those involved with the cases. Generally, our episodes are over 90 minutes or even over two hours. So yeah, today is really just a taste. And if you're listening to this now, this might be your very first time listening to Love Murder.

and an amuse-bouche, if you will, of love gone fatally wrong. Exactly. So let's get it going. In 2001, Shelley and Robert Bobby Steers seemed like a very successful couple indeed. They'd been married for 20 years, and in that time, they had raised three children and built a family automotive business from the ground up. Shelley even worked with Bobby doing the books for B&B Automotive. That stood for Bobby and his business partner, Barry Rossi.

The couple had strong ties to the Windsor Locks, Connecticut community, a suburb just north of Hartford that is a nice place to raise kids. Bobby was a popular guy who spent his free time golfing and boating and generally just enjoying his success. His wife Shelly's extracurricular activities, though, Andy, were, let's say, less wholesome than Bobby's.

Do tell. Shelly felt lonely and bored in her marriage. She looked for excitement in other places, places like the casino and internet chat rooms. Oh, okay. Soon, Shelly was racking up some gambling debts as well as credit card debts and cruising the internet for love. In mid-2001, she met an Italian transplant to nearby Meridian, Connecticut named Benedetto Cipriani online.

Benedetto, who went by Benzini online, described himself as a homebody who loved to cook and wanted to cook for any lucky lady in his life. And he also said he wasn't looking for anything serious. He and Shelly chatted online for about two weeks before meeting IRL. They had drinks at a local Marriott hotel and drinks led into sex.

something a lot more because they ended up sleeping together that very night. Man, these Marriott hotels really get some going for people, huh? I guess it does. It's like every kiss begins with K, only every affair begins at a Marriott. Yep. I don't know if they want that branding. I don't think so. After that very first meeting, they were hooked.

Benedetto seemed to be the opposite of her safe, loving, and stable husband. He was passionate and effusive. He showered her with compliments and presents. He gave her thousands of dollars in clothes and jewelry. He took her gambling, which was another one of her addictions. They ended up meeting up at least once or twice a week for sex romps at various hotels.

Yeah. Shelley soon had this fantasy that maybe Cipriani was the guy that was going to take her away from her humdrum existence. Like maybe this was more than just an affair. Maybe this was true love. And soon the illicit lovers ended up exchanging I love yous. Well, yeah. I mean, he has that like Italian stallion vibe. Very much so. He had a thick accent. He's cooking. He's cooking for her. Yeah.

I mean, the whole nine yards. And he seemed absolutely obsessed with her. And I think that that's really what she was looking for. She was looking for somebody who could not get enough of her. After 20 years of marriage, even somebody who is loving gets used to you versus a torrid affair. She wanted to be ravished.

Exactly. And so they started actually planning a life together and Benetetto actually bought a house with the plans that once she divorced her husband, they would live there together in marital bliss. Wow. But the problem was that month after month went by and Shelley wasn't leaving her husband. So finally...

Benedetto said, I'm going to give you an ultimatum. Either you tell him or I will, and I will give him every gory detail. And Shelley decided at that moment that this exciting life with her Italian lover was not worth losing her home life with her family and everything that she'd spent the last two decades building. So she decided to leave Benedetto. But unfortunately for her, he was true to his vengeful word.

He called Bobby to give him every dirty detail of the affair, and he also began to tell others in Windsor Locks where they lived about the affair.

That sounds like a nice community too, Windsor Locks. Yeah. Mr. Steers was devastated about this, but he was also determined to keep his family together. He and Shelly vowed to renew their marriage, but Shelly's vows, just like her marital ones, were hollow. Oh no. Within a few months, she ended up taking Benedetto back.

And what followed was several months of her being torn between two men and two lives. And it seems like she really could not choose.

So she had Benedetto on one side and then she had her family and her husband Bobby on the other. Bobby started getting a little suspicious that she had started the affair once more. And it seems like at that point, Shelly did try to break off the affair for good. But Benedetto was not ready to give up his lover, whom he had become extremely obsessed with.

The love triangle would explode into fatal violence on July 30, 2003. A customer arrived at B&B Automotive in the afternoon only to find the shop eerily quiet. Upon further investigation, he discovered a bloody scene and three men who had been shot to death on the garage floor. Three? Three men.

Now, he thought all three men were deceased at this point. When the police and emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene, they found that that was true for, unfortunately, two of the men, owner Barry Rossi and mechanic Lorne Stevens. But the third man, Robert Bobby Steers, was barely clinging to life.

While Bobby was rushed to the hospital, the police discounted the possibility that the murders had been the result of a burglary. All three men had their wallets on them still, and the shop safe remained untouched. Yep, Shelly Steers arrived at the hospital only to receive the horrible news that her husband of now 22 years had not survived. Oh no, Jessie, I thought you were going to give me a survivor little snippet. I'm so sorry, not this time. Shelly Steers arrived at the hospital

Shelly burst into tears, and then she gave the police a name. She said it was Benedetto Cipriani. What a name. I mean, it sounds like he was meant to be a villain here. He could have been like a hot Italian TV star. Opera singer. He just chose the wrong path. Gelato maker. Yeah.

I'll have the Benedetto Cipriani. The problem was that Mr. Cipriani had a rock-solid alibi. He had been in New York at the time of the triple homicide. While the police continued to investigate, Mr. Cipriani went back to his home country of Italy only seven days after the murders. Permanently.

He fled the U.S., and what was the first thing he did when he got to Italy? Got John Travolta's face on his. He set up a Match.com Italia profile. Just for some D? Or, like, I don't know what he was doing, but he was looking for a lady already. He must have decided that Shelley and that ship had sailed. Okay.

So he's not worried at all about anyone finding him? Apparently not. That doesn't seem very smart. No, he would not be riding off into the sunset with a new lady love after all. An informant came forward to help reveal a murder-for-hire plot. Cipriani had paid three young men named Eric Martinez, Jose Guzman, and Michael Castillo $15,000 to take out his romantic rival, Robert Bobby Steers. Oh!

Ugh, so shady. Yep, he had also given these men cell phones, prepaid phone cards, a photo of Robert, and instructions to kill anyone who happened to be in the shop with him. Cold-blooded. Yeah, like, why?

Such unnecessary collateral damage. He wanted Shelly, and he would stop at nothing to get her. Yeah, but she's not going to want to be with you if you're, like, just going around shooting all of her homies. I mean, I would agree, and I think that's exactly what happened here, but I think he was absolutely blinded by lust and love. Yeah. The police would come to find out that Jose Guzman was the gunman. Yeah.

And that he had forced Steers back into his own shop at gunpoint as the loving family man was trying to leave the establishment for the day. And then he had pushed him into the garage where Barry Rossi and a mechanic who worked for them named

Lawrence Stevens were standing, unfortunately, and he commanded all of the three men to lie on the ground face down. I'm sure that they assumed that this was a robbery. And then at that point, he shot all three of them in the head execution style. Oh, horrifying. An electronic trail would tie Benedetto to his henchmen and provide enough evidence to extradite the Italian stallion back to the States to face justice. The trial took place in late 2008.

And a tearful Shelley Steers took the stand to testify against the ex-lover who had been so obsessed with her that he had murdered her husband and two entirely innocent bystanders. Benedetto Cipriani was convicted and sentenced to 200 years in prison. Wow. Yeah, so he will be in there for the rest of his life and he has not had a good time. In 2011, he was attacked and beat unconscious by his cellmate,

When the cellmate was asked why, he said it was because Benedetto was so annoying. Oh my God, stop. He said that he would, quote, not stop running his mouth.

Okay, what about the gunmen? They also got various prison sentences as well. Sad. It is a sad waste of three men who had beautiful lives and families who loved them. Yeah. In conclusion, I think the moral of the story is, Andy, as usual, don't have an affair. Yeah, even with an Italian stallion. And as always, trust your gut when it comes to love so no one ends up murdered.

Thanks for listening. Bye.

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