Former Baseball Wives star Anna Benson was once dubbed by VH1 as a cross between Angelina Jolie and Bill O’Reilly for her “unapologetic stance on everything from guns to furs (pro on both counts) and beyond.”
Now, she is being called a jailbird.
Benson was arrested on Sunday (some news outlets have reported the day as Monday) after she allegedly donned a bulletproof vest and threatened her estranged husband, former pro pitcher Kris Benson, with a handgun and expandable baton if he didn’t give her $30,000. The 37-year-old former FHM model is being held without bond in Georgia’s Cobb County Jail, says Kim Isaza, a criminal investigator with the Cobb County District Attorney's Office.
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The mom of four was charged with two counts of felony aggravated assault with a weapon, one count of criminal trespass, and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Benson, who cemented her bad-girl persona by telling shock jock Howard Stern that she would have sex with her husband’s entire baseball roster if she ever caught him cheating, was taken into custody the same day police in nearby Powder Springs arrested the 31-year-old son of former New York Giants linebacker and former Dancing With the Stars contestant Lawrence “L.T.” Taylor for allegedly sexually assaulting two underage girls at his Georgia home. Lawrence Taylor Jr. was charged by the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office with aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, and statutory rape.
“It’s like celebrity rehab in tiny little Cobb County,” said Isaza.
According to the Benson police report, officers received a call from Kris Benson around 8 p.m. on July 7 that Anna Benson was in the master bedroom of his house in Smyrna, a small bedroom community located 10 miles northwest of Atlanta, wearing a bulletproof vest and threatening him with a handgun.
Police immediately responded and found the onetime reality star on the back porch smoking a cigarette. According to police, she “hesitantly” complied with orders and told police that she had done nothing wrong.
Officers removed her bulletproof vest and discovered that she was also carrying a Batman fold-up knife inside her waistband and was wearing an ammo belt around her waist.
When police told her they had been called to the scene by her husband, she interrupted and called her husband a “fucking pussy,” according to the incident report.
Once handcuffed, she explained to police that she dropped by Benson’s house to speak to him about “why he hadn’t picked up the kids and to discuss money.”
She told officers she got in through the garage door and confronted Benson with a metal baton in the master bedroom. “She said she thumped her bulletproof vest a couple of times with it and then swung the baton around and finally hit a computer monitor on the desk with it.”
When asked why she was wearing a bulletproof vest, she told an officer that it was a new model she was testing for a company. “She said she had to wear it for an extended time to get it to “mold to her body,” wrote the officer.
She then told officers that there were illegal drugs on the premises and “offered us consent to search the house.”
For his part, Benson who started his baseball career with the Pittsburgh Pirates and later joined the New York Mets in 2004, told police that his estranged wife “was screaming and out of control and he was scared.” He told officers that she grabbed a handgun from her purse and “told him that she wanted $30,000.”
Asked if he thought she was going to shoot him, he replied, “Maybe.”
Benson, 38, told her his wallet was outside, and he needed to get it, but when she didn’t follow him he escaped to the basement and called 911. During his conversation with the 911 operator, he told her he had taped the confrontation on his voice recorder. He was outside the house hiding in the woods when police arrived.
According to the police report, officers also found a Taser and a hatchet in the house. But according to Smyrna Police Department Corporal Ed Cason, “neither party would take responsibility for them, so they were confiscated for safety reasons.”
While in jail, Benson told the New York Post that she was wearing the bulletproof vest because she planned to open a bulletproof-vest company. “I am designing bulletproof vests—bulletproof window film that is also good for insulating windows,” she said.
“My plan is to drive around the Southeast to the different gun shows and see what is out there and what is cool. The problem is that I don’t have any money to start my business, and a lot of the stuff I can’t tell the investors about because it is top-secret military and Department of Defense stuff,” she said. “I don’t disclose any of the information, because that could jeopardize the officers and the soldiers.”
Last year, Kris Benson, who later played in 2010 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, filed for divorce from his wife, whom he allegedly met when she was a stripper in Atlanta. He later won custody of their three kids. Last month, she was ordered by a judge to vacate their home.
