Probable Cause

In 1998, Wayne Conley was arrested and trial began after he led a gang rape against an unconscious woman — a fellow soldier — while the others waited to take their turn.  After finishing, he told another man, “go in there and get you a piece.”

In 2009, after Melina Benninghoff was taken to task by blogger Mark Bennett because his articles were showing up on her website under her name, Wayne Conley — who turned out to be the tech guy behind Benninghoff’s website –  decided he was going to get him a piece of Mark Bennett.  Among other things, Conley has falsely labeled him “the worst lawyer in Houston.” Later, he went after Brian Tannebaum (for this post) and Scott Greenfield (who most recently wrote about it here).

As before, Conley does not seem to know when he has tried to get a piece that’s just too much for him.

I’ve held off writing about this for a variety of reasons.  One is that I’ve been trying — really trying — to give Benninghoff, an attorney whom I’ve met and with whom I’ve discussed the situation, the benefit of the doubt.  I honestly cannot determine just how much Benninghoff understands or knows about what is going on.  I’ve never thought it made much sense to blame someone for the indiscretions of a nutcase just because they unknowingly hired the nutcase.

On the other hand, not only should Benninghoff have monitored what Conley was up to, she was alerted to the problem by me (and other attorneys who became “targets” of Conley) fairly early on.  At one point, she told me that she’s tried to talk to him, but that there was nothing she could do to stop Conley from putting up a website in her name.

That, of course, is absolutely untrue.  If he’s used her name, her law office website and her image without authorization, there’s plenty she can do.

It may be true, however, that she’s tried.  She might even think she’s actually been successful.  To those who don’t know how the technology works, her primary website appears to have returned to its normal ugly and grammar-impaired self.  But as of this writing you can still find Conley’s posts on her website about other attorneys by changing the “www” to “fresnocriminallawyer” in the URL.  (I don’t want to help boost Conley’s or Benninghoff’s ranking on Google by actually providing the link.)

At any rate, a primary reason I’ve held off on writing about this was I wanted to see what, if anything, attorney Melina Benninghoff would do to stop rapist Wayne Conley from making a bad situation worse.  And, frankly, I’d rather spend my time working on my cases, building my practice, or doing just about anything other than worrying about some sociopath who apparently does not know when to quit.

My relative lack of involvement, of course, did not stop Conley from threatening me and offering to give me some of the same type of treatment he has given others.  But then, what should anyone expect from a sociopath-turned-cyberpath who rapes unconscious women?  What should any of us really expect of a “man” who would do this and then afterward say, “Her _____ is so tight, my ____ hurts”?  Should we expect a man who rapes a woman and then argues to the court that it wasn’t really rape because she was unconscious and thus can’t remember details of it to be reasonable?

I think not.

So it’s no surprise to me that Wayne “Remorseless Gang Rapist of an Unconscious Woman” Conley has decided that my relative quiescent approach to his ongoing activities is not good enough.  I complained about him to Benninghoff.  I re-tweeted a couple things others said about him, hoping by doing so to help undo any damage he may have done to my friends.

But Wayne Conley doesn’t reserve his ire for people who try to defend themselves.  He also doesn’t like people who defend people he attacks.  If you aren’t already unconscious, he’s going to find some other way to shut you up.

As an example, the last time I checked, there was an open case out of Reedley, California, alleging that Conley repeatedly harassed another man for apparently defending a woman who had sought a restraining order against Conley.  Wayne Conley admitted to a police officer he repeatedly sent text messages and phoned the man, then called the man’s employer when the man stopped taking his calls because he was “trying to get to the bottom of what was going on with” the woman’s restraining order against him.  A warrant is pending in that case, but things being what they are, the police will leave Wayne Conley alone until he’s either actually hurts someone (again), or possibly until they run a warrant check after a traffic stop.

What all this shows is that when it comes to Wayne Conley, it seems there’s no such thing as “no,” or “leave me alone.”  In 1998 Wayne Conley showed he was willing to rape someone who was unconscious and thus couldn’t say “no” to having sex with him and his co-rapists.  In 2007, Wayne Conley was trying to prove to several people that he was willing to harass them, their friends, family and employer for saying “no” to his attempts to communicate with them.  And in 2009 and now 2010, Wayne Conley is going to show those bloggers who stand up to him for scraping content and won’t back down when he defames and harasses them online that he still doesn’t understand the meaning of the words “no” or “leave me alone.”

Wayne Conley has been using his poor website design skills and his self-proclaimed knowledge of Internet search engine optimization technology to try to trash some of my friends who stood up to his theft of blog articles.  Nevertheless, I largely laid off writing anything about Conley and limited myself to re-tweeting a couple of articles they’ve written.  After all, he is apparently a sociopath who lives in my area and I’m still uncertain exactly why Melina Benninghoff has not tried to stop him from using her website — though one comment she made about it made me think she might be afraid of him.

Apparently, though, any amount of interfering with what Wayne Conley wants is a no-no.  He can’t get me to lie down unconscious for him, so Wayne is now making mis-statements about me and threatening to try to damage me and my law practice.  Such a nice guy.

Conclusion

After his 1998-1999 trial for his part in the rape of an unconscious woman and the attempts to cover up the crime after the fact, Wayne Conley was convicted.  Appeals he filed were all denied.  The evidence against him was too strong.  Wayne Conley was busted down to the lowest possible rank of the United States Army, sentenced to 10 years and dishonorably discharged.  Did he learn anything from that?  I don’t know.

What I do know is that Wayne Conley is doing his damndest to try to prove that he’s still crazy after all these years.  The personality flaws that allowed him to complain to his co-rapists that the unexcited — did I say “unexcited”?  I meant “unconscious” — woman against whom he lead a gang rape was “so tight, my ____ hurts” are still manifesting themselves today.

Unless he gets himself a piece of help, others are eventually going to be hurt and Wayne Conley is going to learn how hard it is to build websites from the inside of a prison.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Stupidity. Hyperlinked tags for this post include Conley, convicted rapist, harassment, rape of unconscious woman, Wayne Conley, Wayne Conley dishonorably discharged, Wayne Conley rapes unconscious woman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.