It Doesn’t Get Anymore Evil Than This- The Story of Benson Xiong

It Doesn’t Get Anymore Evil Than This- The Story of Benson Xiong

“To my clothes and I took them all… not moving.”

The story I have for you today is about a little boy who was killed by a woman who wasn’t even supposed to be around children at the time. This was due to her history of children in her care obtaining suspicious injuries. This is the story of Benson Xiong.

Benson Xiong was born on July 31st, 2018, to his mother, Heather Gardner, and his father, Jamie Xiong. He also had an older brother named Jason. Benson was a very happy baby who loved being held. Baby Benson smiled all the time, especially when you tickled under his chin.

Heather Gardner, who was a working mother of two, needed child care for Benson and his older brother after their grandmother, who previously watched them, had moved to California. So, she had searched for a good babysitter for her boys, and one of her co-workers suggested that she go to a woman named Marissa Tietsort. Marissa was 28 years old, and she came from the same hometown as Heather. So, after speaking with Marissa, Heather decided that she seemed trustworthy, and she hired her to take care of her boys.

But only weeks after Marissa had begun babysitting Benson and his older brother while Heather was at work, the mother noticed that Benson had some scratches inside his mouth. So, she brought him to the emergency room. She told the doctors there that she didn’t know if he was being abused by the babysitter. However, the doctors had told her that the scratches looked like nothing and she shouldn’t worry. So, Heather would end up letting Marissa babysit Benson and his brother again.

On the afternoon of October 18th, 2018, Heather dropped off her two boys at Marissa’s apartment, which was located on North 6th Street in Wausau, Wisconsin. Then, only about two hours after Heather had dropped off her children with Marissa, she received a text message from the babysitter. It let her know that there was a story on a local media website saying that Marissa had been charged with child abuse. Marissa told Heather that she was not supposed to be in contact with any children, and certainly not supposed to be watching her two boys. So, she asked Heather to not tell anybody that she was babysitting for her.

As soon as Heather read this horrifying text—which was, unfortunately, a few hours after Marissa had sent it since Heather was at work—she went over to pick up her boys right away. Heather would also bring her sister along with her when she went to pick up the boys from Marissa’s house. Now, when Heather and her sister arrived at Marissa’s home to pick up Benson and his brother, they were already ready to go. Benson was in his car seat asleep, as it was just after 9:00 p.m., and he had his snowsuit on with a hat that was pulled down just over his eyes. Marissa, who was in a hurry for some reason, quickly said goodbye to Heather and the boys and pushed them out the door, saying, “See you tomorrow.” Heather didn’t understand why Marissa was acting so odd, but shortly after, she would find out exactly why.

After picking up her children from Marissa, Heather needed to get some laundry done. So, she, along with her two children and sister, went to the Northway Coin Laundry on West Third Street. Only minutes after arriving at the laundromat, however, Heather discovered that Benson was not breathing. He was also cold to the touch, and he had stiff limbs. Heather immediately started to do CPR on her baby to try to revive him while her sister called 911.

“911, please, please, at the laundromat on the corner of Third and Union! Please, please, at the corner, the laundromat on the corner! It’s 923… wait, 923 Third or Elm or something, I’m not sure.”
“Third and Elm are very different places. Which one are you at?”
“It’s a laundromat! I don’t know the name of it, but I have another child in my arms. My sister’s baby is bad. We just think the babysitter… CPR that baby, we don’t know how, we don’t know!”
“On his back, on his back. Okay, I need you to tip his head back.”
“He’s freezing cold! He’s freezing cold!”
“Tip his head. I need you to blow into his mouth and nose, into his nose.”
“I don’t know what to do! Yes, the baby’s still not breathing!”
“Did you head with compressions?”
“Yes!”
“I need you to start. I need you to listen to me. Blow into his mouth two times.”
“Yes, I am!”
“Blow into his mouth two times, plug his nose.”
“He’s freezing cold already!”
“Okay, ma’am, I need you to take your hand and put it in the middle of his chest, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And you’re going to push on his chest, okay? And count with me. Ready?”
“Yes. One, two, three, four…”

When officers from the Wausau Police Department arrived on the scene, Heather was still trying to give her baby boy CPR. They noted that Benson had an ashen skin tone, his jaw was clenched, and his lips were blue. There was no chance of reviving him.

“Please, are they in there? Yes, okay… my clothes, and I took them… not moving…”

An autopsy was performed on Benson’s body, and it was determined that he had died from blunt force trauma. He had suffered three separate blunt force trauma injuries to his head, and his tailbone had actually been broken as well. In fact, the bottom piece of his tailbone had broken off and been displaced—that’s how hard of an impact it had been.

After the horrible discovery that baby Benson had died, police went to find Marissa to speak with her to see what she knew. So, police made their way over to Marissa’s apartment, where she lived with her boyfriend, Adam, and their young son. But when they got there, no one was home.

However, authorities were able to work with Marissa’s cell phone carrier so that they could track her down, and they tracked her cell phone to a local hotel called The Plaza. Officers knocked on the motel room door, and Marissa’s boyfriend, Adam, answered. Marissa was still sound asleep and had to be woken up by officers.

Once they finally got her out of bed, they started to question her about what had happened to Benson. She acknowledged that she had babysat Benson and his older brother, but said she had no idea that anything had happened to him.

The officer, however, knew this was a lie because Benson’s aunt, who had been there that day, had texted Marissa from Heather’s phone. The message had said, “You killed my sister’s baby.” But when Marissa spoke with police, she tried to play dumb and say that she had never seen the text message come over because her phone was shut off. But police knew this was not true, because in order to track her to the hotel as they had, her phone would have had to have been turned on.

Marissa also told police that the reason she was at the hotel with her boyfriend was because they just needed to get away and they wanted to go swimming. In the police body cam footage, while officers are interviewing Marissa outside the hotel room door, she is even seen smiling and laughing.

“Morning, Adam. Morning, Marissa.”
“Here. What are you guys doing?”
“Please, Adam, just cooperate with us, okay? We’ll explain everything in a second.”
“Well, you already charged her! What the…”
“Adam, stay here.”
“No, you guys are harassing the hell out of us, and she already got charged. We’ll be at court. Why do you got to come here?”
“Well, because we need to talk to her about something new.”
“Something new?”
“Yep. Marissa, I need you to wake up.”
“Why are you guys here? ‘Cause we wanted to get away from everything. It isn’t against the law to come stay in a hotel room for tonight.”
“Can you get up so I can talk to you? This is a very important conversation we’re about to have. Okay, tell me about taking care of them today.”
“Oh, I was just watching him and he was fine.”
“Did you feed him, or…?”
“Um, I fed him once and then he slept, and, well, we went outside when they first got there a little bit.”
“So it was you and the kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Was he dressed? In what?”
“He was dressed in a snowsuit and a blanket.”
“Okay, and then you were home alone. And then what time did Adam get home?”
“Um, he got home at like, almost… um, maybe 6:30 or something like that.”
“Where was he at?”
“He was hunting.”
“Okay. And then what? What did you guys do after that, after Adam got home?”
“Um, we went to eat a little bit after he got home.”
“Where’d you go?”
“McDonald’s.”
“What happened? And did you come straight home after McDonald’s?”
“Mhm.”
“The only place you went outside of the house was McDonald’s. Okay, then came straight home, and anything significant happened?”
“No, we came home after McDonald’s. Um, oh, we put a movie in. Then like, I don’t know how long it was after, but she called and she’s like, ‘Um, I’m putting my clothes in the dryer and then I’ll be there.’ And then like 15 minutes, she came there, so…”
“Okay, did you have him ready or did she get him ready?”
“Yeah, I had him ready. I left him in his car seat.”
“Okay, how long had he been in his car seat after McDonald’s?”
“It was only like a half hour, 45 minutes maybe.”
“Okay, it was right after McDonald’s? I just left him in his car seat and then you didn’t take him back out?”
“No, ’cause usually she’s there at like 9:00, 9:30.”
“Awake the whole time?”
“No, he was sleeping.”
“The whole time? The whole time you babysat?”
“Well, no, I mean, like, after he got there he was up for like a couple hours, and then I fed him, and then, um, I put him in the Pack ‘n Play, and then I have this little camera, like the video monitor, and then, like, I didn’t check on him so… I have that now, so like…”
“And he was in your back bedroom, or…?”
“In our bedroom.”
“In your bedroom, in a Pack ‘n Play. And then, um… are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just like half asleep.”
“Okay. So the reason we’re here, Brittany… I’m sure you must be asking yourself this, right? Not Brittany, I’m sorry. Marissa. You have a sister, Brittany, right? Um, the reason we’re here is…”

(Although the audio here is redacted, we can infer that she informs Marissa that Benson is deceased.)

“Why is he dead?”
“We were hoping that you could shed some light on that.”
“I don’t know!”
“And I need you to tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened!”
“This is the most important conversation you will ever have in your life. I’m telling you…”
“I don’t know!”
“You’re not telling me. You didn’t tell me last time, and you’re not telling me now. And I need you to tell me the truth. Heather deserves to know what happened.”
“I know.”

But when police made it clear to Marissa that they were not buying her story, she changed her narrative. She was now telling police that while she had not killed Benson, she had known that he was dead when she gave him back to his mother, Heather.

Marissa then told police that she had been home alone with the children when Benson died. However, she had never checked him for a pulse, she never tried to administer CPR, and she never called for help. She claimed that she had put the baby down for a nap in a Pack ‘n Play, but Benson had never woken back up from that nap. She then admitted that she had put the lifeless baby’s body on the floor in the hallway of her home, dressed him in his snowsuit, then placed him in his car seat with his blankets.

When her boyfriend Adam returned home around 6:30 p.m., Marissa never told him about the baby’s death. Instead, she buckled Benson’s car seat into the car and drove with Adam and Heather’s two boys to a nearby McDonald’s, where they would bring the dead baby in with them and sit and eat for 15 minutes.

Marissa also admitted that she had purposely pulled Benson’s hat down over his eyes so that his mother, Heather, would not realize he was dead when she came to pick him up. And immediately after Heather had picked up the boys from her, Marissa and her boyfriend Adam had gone to the hotel to go swimming.

Marissa’s story kept changing, but eventually, she would come clean and say that she had become frustrated with the baby and violently thrown him into a portable playpen. Police ended up arresting Marissa on the suspicion of child abuse that day, October 19th, 2018, around 4:15 at the Plaza Hotel, and she would later be charged with first-degree murder.

So, Benson’s mother, Heather, had no idea about Marissa’s extensive criminal history prior to letting her watch her boys. Between 2010 and 2018, Marissa had been charged with possession of drug paraphernalia a number of times, and she had also been charged with receiving/concealing stolen property. She also had charges of operating a motor vehicle without a valid license, bail jumping, resisting arrest, obstructing an officer, and retail theft.

Heather also had no idea that Marissa had a total of five children herself, but she had lost custody of the first four. She also would have lost custody of the fifth child prior to this, had Child Protective Services known that she had had another one. And at the time of Benson’s death, Marissa was actually pregnant with her sixth child.

Now, back in June of 2010, Marissa’s boyfriend, Adam, who was also the father of her children, filed a child abuse injunction as well as a restraining order against Marissa. The boyfriend alleged that Marissa was using drugs and being abusive to their less-than-one-year-old son. He additionally accused her of leaving their son inside of a hot car. Adam had stopped home during his lunch break to see that his son was sitting in the car outside alone. When he tried to bring the child into the house to cool him down, Marissa would not let either of them inside. The child was red and sweaty in the face. Additionally, Marissa would slap her boyfriend right in front of the baby.

About a week after this incident, Marissa had left the house with the child in the middle of a rainstorm to go to a party. The child’s father was eventually able to get him back, but Marissa refused to give him any formula for the baby or food stamps. Now, after Marissa had lost her own children, she still continued on with a pattern of abuse—abusing other people’s children. Apparently, the daycare that she had been running out of her home was unlicensed, and it had been reported that at least two other children had been harmed while in her care.

In June of 2017, the parents of a 3-month-old baby boy had contacted the police to let them know that their child had been injured while in Marissa’s care. Marissa and the child’s mother had actually been old friends, and Marissa had volunteered to watch her children that day because her other babysitters had fallen through. The day after this 3-month-old had obtained the injury, the child’s mother went to drop him off at his regular babysitter’s house. The sitter immediately noticed that the three-month-old had redness and bruising around his eyes and mouth, a bruise on his finger, bloodshot eyes, and a lump on his head.

The baby’s mother told the babysitter that Marissa had watched them the day prior and had said that she accidentally dropped the bottle on the baby’s face. The mother said that she was thinking about taking him to the doctor in the next few days. However, after she left, the babysitter determined that these injuries were much too serious and she contacted the police. The baby was then taken to the emergency room.

Marissa had actually told the baby’s mother that the older sister had been jumping on the couch while she was trying to feed the baby a bottle. However, the older sibling had fallen on top of Marissa, causing her to hit the baby in the face with the bottle. “He only had a small bruise under his eye and was fine,” is what Marissa had told the mother. But when doctors at Marshfield Clinic later examined the baby boy, they determined that many of his injuries were not caused by an isolated incident. The baby boy actually had a skull fracture, which doctors said had to have occurred in the 48 hours prior to him being brought to the hospital. Police also found that the baby’s injuries were inconsistent with the story that Marissa had told. However, she was never charged. This was apparently because authorities said there was not enough probable cause to file charges.

Then, a little over a year after this incident, the parents of an 11-month-old girl would go to the police and say that she had also gotten hurt while in Marissa’s care. This little girl had injuries to her face. Marissa told the girl’s parents as well as the police that the 11-month-old had been sleeping on the couch when she had suddenly rolled off. But doctors said that her injuries were not consistent with a fall off of the couch; however, they could not say exactly where they had come from.

The girl’s father told police that it looked like she had a giant rug burn across her face, like she had been dragged across the carpet. And the girl’s mother said that two years after this incident, the little girl still did not like to have her head or face touched. This made it difficult for her to wash the little girl’s face, hair, brush her teeth, or do any other normal activities. This little girl also did not hit her normal developmental milestones at the same time most children do.

This time, charges were filed against Marissa, and she was charged with child abuse in regards to this incident on October 11th, 2018—only a week before Benson was killed. The girl’s mother also told police that she had known Marissa for about a year, and Marissa would regularly watch the 11-month-old and her older sister at her apartment. The mother, however, said she had never had any issues with Marissa up until that day when she had to watch both of the children; normally, she would only watch one or the other.

When social workers, along with police, had visited Marissa and Adam’s apartment after this report had been filed, Social Services removed their youngest child from the parents’ custody. Marissa became upset, but Adam would begin yelling at police and the social worker. However, eventually, he called his father to come take their son. Adam’s father then told police that he was responsible for having the couple’s first four kids removed when they were doing drugs, and if he believed for a moment their son was being mistreated, he would have notified authorities.

In regards to the abuse of the 11-month-old girl, Marissa was actually scheduled to appear in court on November 1st, 2018. But about two weeks prior to that, Benson had been killed and she had been arrested. Marissa was charged with first-degree intentional homicide in relation to the death of Benson. She was held on a $500,000 cash bond and also ordered to have no contact with the victim’s family. Twice while in custody, Marissa would also request that the court lower her bond because she said she was not receiving proper prenatal care while in jail. Oh, now you care about children, huh?

In a letter that she had written to the judge asking for this bond to be lowered, she had said, “I’m not a threat to society or a monster. I’m a great mom, and I love everybody.”

In March of 2022, Marissa went to trial, and her defense attorney argued that she was not responsible for Benson’s murder because she had brain damage caused by prolonged substance abuse. The defense also said that while Marissa was horrible and did deserve punishment, she also needed help.

Her attorney told the court how Marissa’s father had abandoned her when she was young. She had then lived with a perverted stepfather who would pay her and her sister to show him their body parts. Additionally, Marissa’s mother was a drug addict and had sold her to two drug dealers in exchange for drugs. Marissa had then grown up to be a drug addict to deal with the trauma from her childhood, her lawyer claimed.

Marissa’s lawyer also asked the judge to only give her 14 years in prison. The judge would say that while he understood that Marissa had had a troubled childhood and that she had been abused, nothing in her past justified what she had done to Benson.

Marissa would end up being sentenced to 37 years behind bars for Benson’s murder. She also ended up receiving three years for her other charge of child abuse. Marissa’s sentences are to be served consecutively and will be followed by 20 years of supervised release.

The Marathon County judge said that the families of the two babies were justified in considering Marissa to be a monster. “What you have done to these two families is depraved,” the judge said. Marissa also apologized to the two families: Benson’s family and the family of the 11-month-old girl who she had hurt. Marissa said that October 18th, 2018, was the worst day of her life. She said if she could go back to that day, she would have told Benson’s mother what had happened, because she did not deserve to find out herself at the laundromat.

Benson’s mother and other family members wore sweatshirts with Benson’s picture on them and the words “Justice for Benson” to the sentencing hearing. Heather said about her son, “He was a very easy baby, always smiling. He loved being tickled and taking car rides.” Benson’s mother said she thinks and wonders about him a lot. She wonders what his first words would have been and where he would have taken his first steps. She said that she thinks about all the firsts that Benson will never get to have because of Marissa.

Benson’s funeral was held privately on October 28th, 2018. His family also gathered together on the one-year anniversary of baby Benson’s murder, and they sent lit lanterns into the sky in his memory.

Well, thank you for listening to Benson’s story today. Marissa is absolutely sick. Not only did she regularly hurt children, but when Benson died in her care, she also acted like it didn’t happen and everything was fine, giving a dead baby back to his mother. And all the smiling and laughing that you can see her doing in the police body cam footage is just infuriating and disgusting. I’m glad that she’ll be in prison for most of the rest of her life.