Benton News

Patrick Vaughan, 19, reported the incident to Fairfield Police on Thursday, saying he was terrified of the perpetrators and too shaken up to have come forward earlier.

A Benton woman has been charged for her role in a fatal traffic accident. Melissa M. Beasley, 29, of Benton, was indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on four counts of aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol.

The gallows used to hang an infamous prohibition-era gangster in one of America's last public executions have been discovered in a dusty old barn.

A southern Illinois county where a bootlegging gangster became the last person to be publicly hanged in the state has recovered the biggest piece of history from that event - the gallows from which Charlie Birger swung in 1928.

Residents in Benton got the chance to raise money for a good cause on Saturday, while throwing a pie in a mayors face.

The mayor of Bridgeport, Ill., entered a guilty plea Wednesday to three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

Officials are investigating a fire Wednesday morning in Benton. The Benton Fire Department was called to the Webster Street Apartments at 418 W. Webster at 5:24 a.m. Fire departments from West Frankfort, Ewing-Northern, West City and Buckner also helped.

John Malkovich is the most inscrutable of characters. At 59, the acclaimed actor, who is here to perform in Michael Sturminger's long running, hard-hitting chamber theater production-cum-opera , appears to be pretty comfortable in his own skin.