https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/just-like-a-wild-man-ronks-man-describes-attack-that/article_8b22520c-a564-11e8-9788-572bdf8c0d55.html
TOM KNAPP | Staff Writer | August 21, 2018
Benuel King was making supper in his home on Hedgewood Avenue -- a short, dead-end residential street in rural Ronks, East Lampeter Township -- Monday evening when he saw Jonathan Herr walk up to his brother-in-law's front door and knock.
When 68-year-old Michael Varley didn't immediately answer the door, King said, Herr took a brick he was holding in one hand and smashed the window next to the door.
Then, King said, when Varley came to the door, Herr grabbed him, hauled him out onto his front porch "and started beating on him."
King, 73, hurried outside and tried to intervene, he said -- even beating Herr over the head and back with a broomstick until it broke -- but he couldn't stop the attack. He rushed back inside and called 911.
"I told the dispatcher ... it's bad. You better get them down here quick," he said.
Within minutes, he said, police and ambulances arrived on the quiet street. Herr was arrested -- taken away in a straitjacket, King said -- and Varley was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that evening.
"You read about it in the big cities," King, still visibly shaken from the encounter, said outside his home Tuesday morning. "But not in a small town like this."
King said Herr moved into the neighborhood about three weeks ago.
"I never had any connection with him," he said, although Varley spoke with him a few times.
King said he wasn't aware of any prior confrontations between Varley and Herr, however.
Lisa Zimmerman, who lives on Ronks Road and is Varley's and King's niece, said Varley once texted a friend and said, "My neighbor is looney toons."
"So there must have been something," she said.
On the evening of the attack, King said he saw Herr and Varley talking for about 30 minutes outside Varley's home. Herr was wearing a black shirt and jacket -- he almost always wore black, King said -- when he walked back to his apartment two doors down the street.
When he came back about 15 minutes later, King said, Herr was shirtless and carrying a brick in one hand, a cooking pot in the other.
He used both items, as well as a knife, in the attack, police said.
Herr turned to face King when the older man tried to intervene, King said.
"His eyes were wild. Just like a wild man," he said. The blows with a broomstick "didn't phase him," he added.
Varley, he said, was struggling to defend himself.
"He was hollering, 'Somebody help me. Somebody help me.' I don't think he realized I was there."
King said he went to bed Monday night believing his brother-in-law was still alive. He learned of his death Tuesday morning, when his sister -- Varley's wife, Sarah -- called him.
Lydia King, Benuel King's sister, also lives on Hedgewood Drive. She wasn't home during the attack, she said, although she watched police take Herr away.
She said Herr has an "evil mind."
Her brother agreed.
"He was demon-possessed," he said, noting that Herr shrugged off blows from a broom handle that would have put most men on the ground.
He said other signs -- from his penchant for wearing black to the symbols he scrawled on his door in Varley's blood -- suggest involvement in a cult.
King said he couldn't sleep Monday night, and he was still shaking Tuesday morning.
"That guy should get the electric chair, no ifs, ands or buts," he said. "If he ever gets out -- which I don't think he will -- I told the cops I'll get my gun and take care of him myself."