Taberon Honie | Murder Database

Taberon Honie was executed by the State of Utah on August 8 2024 for a murder committed in 1998

According to court documents following a breakup with his girlfriend Taberon Honie would break into the home of his ex girlfriends mother, Claudia Benn, and proceeded to slash the woman several times before slitting her throat and stabbing her to death

Police would arrive at the murder scene and find Taberon Honie in the garage with blood underneath his fingernails. Honie would admit to the brutal murder

Taberon Honie would be convicted and sentenced to death

On August 8 2024 Taberon Honie would be executed by lethal injection

This is the first execution in Utah since 2010. The majority of inmates on Utah death row have requested to be executed by firing squad including Troy Kell

Taberon Honie Execution

A death row inmate in Utah set to be executed on Thursday maintains that he never meant to murder his ex-girlfriend’s mother, saying he has always taken responsibility and is sorry for the life he took 25 years ago.

Taberon Honie, 48, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection for killing 49-year-old Claudia Benn, a substance abuse counselor for the Paiute Tribe who was killed on July 9, 1998, at her home in Cedar City in southwestern Utah.

If the execution proceeds as scheduled, he will become the 12th inmate to be executed in the U.S. this year and the first executed in Utah since a 2010 execution by firing squad. It will also come just two days after an execution in Texas.

“Yes, I’m a monster,” Honie told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole last month. “The only thing that kept me going all these years, the only thing I know 100%, this would never happen if I was in my right mind … I make no excuses.”

The board denied his request for a reprieve.

As his execution day approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the crime, who Honie is and what led him down a path that ended in a woman’s horrific death.

On July 9, 1998, Taberon Honie was drunk and fighting over the phone with girlfriend Carol Pikyavit, who was staying at her mother’s house along with the daughter she shared with Honie, according to court records. At one point, records say, Honie threatened to kill everyone in her home and take the couple’s daughter if Pikyavit didn’t make time to see him, records say.

Not taking the threat seriously, Pikyavit left the home and headed to work.

Honie headed to the house, saying he had planned to sleep under the porch until Pikyavit came home. But as soon as he arrived, he began arguing with Pikyavit’s mother, Claudia Benn, who was babysitting her three granddaughters.

Taberon Honie told police that Benn started the argument and was calling him names through a sliding glass door before he snapped, broke through the door and went inside, saying he just wanted to scare Benn.

Benn had grabbed a butcher knife but was overpowered by Honie, who grabbed the knife and brought it to her throat, court records say. Honie says the two of them both tripped while the knife was at Benn’s throat and that she fell on the blade.

When police arrived shortly after, Honie − covered in blood − emerged from the home and said he had “stabbed and killed her with a knife,” court documents say. Benn was found face down in the living room, with numerous “stabbing and cutting wounds” to her neck and genitals, according to court documents.

All three grandchildren were found at the home with varying degrees of blood on their clothes and body. There was also evidence that one of Benn’s granddaughters was sexually abused at some point, court documents say.

Honie was arrested, charged and convicted of aggravated murder.

Honie was raised with five siblings in First Mesa, a village on the eastern side of the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona, and is considered Hopi-Tewa. His childhood was marked by “neglect, violence and chaos,” according to a commutation petition filed in June seeking to have Honie’s death sentence thrown out in favor of life in prison.

Life on the mesa was “extremely difficult,” as the family of eight survived without access to basic resources like running water or toilets for nearly a decade, the petition says.

“We had no recreation center, no after-school activities, nothing,” Honie says in the petition. “We lived at a poverty level below the city slums. We all had a view that, ‘I will never amount to anything. I will never be able to leave the mesa, so what is the use?’”

Honie and his siblings often were left to fend for themselves, with the older children starting fires to cook or warm the house since Honie’s parents were always “absent, drinking and fighting,” the petition says.

Honie began to act out at the age of 10, turning to alcohol and drugs after falling in with the “wrong people,” and later stealing things to obtain booze and drugs. His substance abuse problems continued into adulthood until his arrest.

Honie has also grappled with bouts of depression, getting a formal diagnosis in 2009 following various suicide attempts.

Honie’s traumatic childhood, brain damage, long-standing substance abuse and extreme intoxication all had a “synergistic effect,” impacting his ability to control his judgment and behavior on July 9, 1998, the commutation petition says.

“Honie also inherited generations of trauma from his parents, extended family, and his Hopi-Tewa community, which is referred to as intergenerational trauma,” the petition says.

Honie may have done a “horrible” thing but he has paid for it by serving nearly 25 years on death row, according to the petition. And even if his death sentence is thrown out, he will continue to pay by spending the rest of his life in prison

“Mr. Honie does not have to be executed and is worthy of mercy,” according to the commutation petition, which says Honie has led a positive and productive life in prison, earning a high school diploma, learning a trade (plumbing) and staying close with family.

Honie’s execution would only “create more pain,” devastating his daughter Tressa and his granddaughter Alana, who have spent years worried about “Mr. Honie and his circumstances in the prison.”

“His family loves him very much,” the petition says. “His family has suffered much throughout their own lives and losing Mr. Honie to an execution would be devastating to them.”

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes argued against Honie’s clemency petition, citing “Honie’s horrific acts, their life-long impact on Claudia’s family and her tribal community.”

He said combined, they all demonstrate a “failure to own up to the terror and gravity of his conduct.”

One of Honie’s daughters, Benita Yracheta, told USA TODAY that she’s feeling relief that she can soon put her mother’s death behind her, saying that justice for her mother is “finally happening.”

“I had told them that I had cried for this man that killed because now that he knows his death date, he’s trying to throw everything out there to stop it,” she said. “My mom, she never knew her death date. She didn’t know she was gonna die that night, but I know that he needs to end it.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/07/taberon-dave-honie-utah-death-row-execution/74679003007

Taberon Honie Case

On July 9, 1998, defendant Taberone Dave Honie killed Claudia Benn. Between approximately 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. on July 9, defendant telephoned Carol Pikyavit–the mother of defendant’s child, T.H., and the daughter of the victim, Claudia Benn. Defendant was intoxicated and asked Carol to join him at the home of his girlfriend at the time, Shilo John. Carol refused and told defendant she was going to work. Defendant responded by threatening to kill Carol’s mother, Claudia, and the children of Carol’s sister, Benita. He also threatened to take T.H. from Carol. Carol discounted defendant’s threats because he had threatened her life before. Defendant called twice more before Carol left for work at 10:30 p.m., and the caller identification system recorded one more phone call from Shilo John’s residence after Carol left for work. Carol left T.H., and Benita left her two children, D.R. and T.R., with Claudia that evening when they went to work. The children were dressed and ready for bed when they left.

¶4 Later that evening, around 11:20 p.m., a cab driver picked up Taberon Honie. Although defendant was intoxicated, he directed the cab driver to an apartment complex near the victim’s neighborhood where he got out.

¶5 Later on, at approximately 12:20 a.m, several police officers arrived at the victim’s home in response to a 911 call from a neighbor. Upon arrival, the officers discovered that a sliding glass door in the rear of the house had been broken by a rock, with the glass substantially removed to permit access to the house. The police ordered the occupants inside the house outside, and the defendant was encountered exiting the house through the garage. Defendant was covered in blood and stated to the officers that he killed the victim by stabbing her with a knife. Defendant was arrested, and the officers inspected the house.

¶6 Inside the house police officers discovered the victim’s body partially nude, lying face down in the living room. A telephone was in her left hand and a large blood-stained kitchen knife was lying near her head. Blood had pooled on the carpeted floor underneath her neck, and blood was located on her exposed buttocks, on her lower body, and on the floor near her. One bite mark was identified on the victim’s left arm. Drops of blood were found throughout the house: on the kitchen floor, on kitchen drawers, on the bathroom floor, in the bathroom sink, and on the walls near the bathroom and where the body was found. Blood was also smeared on closet doors.

¶7 One of the officers found the three children inside the house. Two of the three children had some blood on them, and the other child, D.R., was covered with blood. Further, D.R. was found wearing only a t-shirt; she was not wearing the panties she was wearing when her mother left for work. D.R.’s panties were recovered, and blood found on them was eventually determined to be D.R.’s. D.R. was given new panties the night of the murder, but she continued to bleed into the new panties. At trial, expert testimony indicated that the source of the bleeding, abrasions to her genital area, was consistent with rubbing or fondling, and not likely accidental. Following the trial, during the sentencing proceeding, defendant’s expert witness, Dr. Nancy Cohn, testified that defendant admitted to her that he sexually molested D.R. by digitally penetrating her.

¶8 The postmortem examination of the victim’s body revealed that Taberon Honie brutally slit the victim’s throat. Defendant had cut the victim’s neck from ear to ear. Four “start marks” on her neck ran together into a deep cut from the front of the neck through to the backbone in the back of the neck. Three deep cuts into the backbone were identified.

¶9 Taberon Honie also mutilated the victim’s lower body, stabbing and cutting her multiple times both in and around the vagina and anus. Defendant stabbed the victim in the vagina at least three times. The external surfaces of the anus were cut, but the deeper penetrating injuries were in the vagina, including two wounds that went through the vagina and into the pelvic cavity in her abdomen. Defendant also severed the perineum, the band of tissue between the back wall of the vagina and the front wall of the anus. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified that the victim could have been sexually violated prior to death, but she could not testify for certain, however, whether the injuries to the victim’s vagina and anus were inflicted before or after the injuries to the neck, or whether the vaginal and anal injuries occurred prior to or after death. While minimal compared to the above injuries, the victim’s scalp, mouth, and buttocks were also bruised.

¶10 Over the course of three interviews with law enforcement officers on the morning of July 10, defendant admitted he had argued with the victim, yelling through the sliding glass door. Taberon Honie confessed to using a rock to break the door and enter the house. Further, defendant told officers that he attempted to penetrate the victim’s anus with his penis.

¶11 Taberon Honie was charged with aggravated murder, in violation of section 76-5-202 of the Utah Code,(1) and convicted of the same by a jury. Defendant waived his right to a jury at the sentencing phase and was sentenced to death by the trial judge.