Law Firm Mystery: Second Lawyer Dies at Young Age, Slaying of Third Unsolved

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Law Firm Mystery: Second Lawyer Dies at Young Age, Slaying of Third Unsolved

Posted Aug 13, 2008, 10:10 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Updated: The law firm Boggs, Avellino, Lach & Boggs in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton has been hit once again with the sudden death of one of its lawyers.

Vincent Venker II died at the age of 51 on Sunday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The cause of death has not been determined. He worked at the same firm as Ernest Brasier, who was found shot to death at the firm the week before Christmas in 2006. The case remains unsolved.

Another one-time lawyer at the firm, Daniel Bennett, died in September at the age of 48. The medical examiner attributed the cause to heart disease. Beth Boggs, name partner at Boggs, Avellino, Lach & Boggs, says Bennett was working at a St. Louis law firm at the time of his death and had left Boggs Avellino about a year before, a few months before Brasier's murder.

An article published by the Post-Dispatch in 2007 said Bennett had "abruptly left" the Boggs firm in 2007, gotten divorced and left the country, but he was not a suspect in Brasier's slaying.

Brasier was in Bennett’s former office when he was killed, Boggs says, but she refused to speculate on whether Bennett was the gunman’s intended target. “We’ve been told [Brasier] was using the computer in that office” at the time of his slaying, she said.

Brasier's widow, Pat Holtmeier, told the Post-Dispatch that the death of another lawyer from the firm raises troubling questions. "There's something crazy going on at that law firm," Holtmeier said. "It's almost like a John Grisham novel."

But Boggs tells ABAJournal.com that Venker apparently died of natural causes. “We have been told that Mr. Venker died of an apparent heart attack," she said. "The police are not investigating the circumstances of his death. Why [Brasier's] widow chose to make her comments, I can’t comment on that.”

Boggs Avellino is a civil defense firm. Venker has handled defense-side environmental, pharmaceutical and asbestos claims, the firm’s website reports.

Updated on Aug. 15 to include comments from Beth Boggs of Boggs Avellino and to include link to 2007 Post-Dispatch story.

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Posted by Sherlock Holmes II - 3 months, 1 week, 21 hours, 40 minutes ago

I think the wife did it…
Posted by Alex - 3 months, 1 week, 21 hours, 23 minutes ago

I’d say the widow chose to make those comments because it is what everyone in the world who read this story was thinking.
Posted by DR - 3 months, 1 week, 21 hours, 17 minutes ago

This isn’t funny…I’ve been healthy and athletic all my life, and yesterday I was told I have high blood pressure…and I’m 44! It bugs me when younger people die.
Posted by JimBob, the Wonder Weasel - 3 months, 1 week, 21 hours, 14 minutes ago

Law Firm Mystery: Second Lawyer Dies at Young Age, Slaying of Third Unsolved

Buchanan Ingersoll Sees ‘Rash’ of Lawyer Departures, Drop in Associate Hours

Your sequential headlines suggest that some rashes are fatal, some are not!
Posted by abc - 3 months, 1 week, 21 hours, 2 minutes ago

The article failed to mention that this is a firm of fewer than 25 attorneys. (See list at http://www.balblawyers.com/attorneys.asp, which includes associates and partners.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean there is any causal connection among the deaths, but it points up their statistical significance.
Posted by lawya - 3 months, 1 week, 20 hours, 24 minutes ago

Some beat-on associate is probably sitting in their office either feeling very guilty or has a newly confirmed belief that there is a God
Posted by Hmmm - 3 months, 1 week, 17 hours, 10 minutes ago

I wanna work there!
Posted by fountain_of_youth - 3 months, 1 week, 17 hours, 1 minute ago

Ummm…sorry, they were *not* young.
Posted by Maria - 3 months, 1 week, 14 hours, 2 minutes ago

They were young by mortality tables’ standards and I think Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson (aka The Closer) should be called in on this as a priority murder case. Perhaps there are some partnership interests at stake here? Just sayin’. It sounds like a good whodunnit.
Posted by twoexbbbemployees - 3 months, 1 day, 15 hours, 26 minutes ago

You could not pay me a million dollars to go back and work for H-E-R! Working with her alone would make one’s blood pressure skyrocket!

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