A jury in California convicted a man accused of holding a Tinder date hostage and then torturing her before murdering a man she met on the popular dating app.
Damon Benson, 31, is facing the possibility of life in prison after a jury found him guilty on a variety of charges including murder, aggravated mayhem, torture, felony criminal threats, false imprisonment by violence, says the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.
“This case relates to three individuals who met separately on Tinder which resulted in jealousy, the torture of a vulnerable female victim and ended in the murder of one of the men involved in the love triangle,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.
Benson’s initial arrest occurred back in August 2021, when the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office “found that the defendant was holding the [female] victim against her will at his apartment after being extensively tortured on multiple occasions,” according to the district attorney’s office.
Three weeks after being booked into the Sacramento County Jail, Benson was again arrested, but this time by the Rocklin Police Department.
Investigators made that arrest after learning that Benson allegedly “tortured his victim to ultimately get the address to murder her other lover.”
That other lover was Cameron Gabriel, 49, whose body had been discovered on July 25, 2021. Gabriel had been shot dead and left in an alleyway, according to authorities.
An eyewitness placed Benson at the scene of the murder, said the district attorney’s office, allowing police to obtain a warrant for his arrest.
Little else is known about the case as all documents were filed under seal, and the Placer County District Attorney, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and Rocklin Police Department did not respond to requests for comment from Digital.
The district attorney’s office said that jurors did hear testimony from the female victim Benson was convicted of torturing at his home
Benson will be back in court on Dec. 5 for sentencing in the case.