Benjamin Warren Worcester was a man known for his professionalism, his skill, and his dedication to a job he loved. A police officer with the Hayward Police Department in California, he was so respected for his abilities that he was entrusted with mentoring new recruits as a field training officer. Friends knew him as "Benjie," a nice guy who was always in a good mood and who planned to take the sergeant's exam soon.
Colleagues remembered him as a skilled and courageous officer who was particularly good at making arrests. "Ben was excellent, there was no question in anybody's mind that he was a good cop," one sergeant recalled. At 29 years old, he had a full life ahead of him, with a fiancée he was planning to marry.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Benjamin was a 1975 graduate of Irvington High School in Fremont. After high school, he served for four years in the U.S. Navy, working as a jet mechanic on the USS Kitty Hawk. His experience as a base officer at the Alameda Naval Air Station convinced him that he wanted a career in law enforcement. He joined the Hayward Police Department in 1982 and quickly built a reputation as a committed officer. Outside of work, he loved airplanes and had plans to start taking flying lessons.
The end of Benjamin’s promising life came on the evening of March 25, 1987. Around 6:37 p.m., police received a call from concerned neighbors about a suspicious camper parked on a residential street. Officer Worcester, a five-year veteran of the force, responded to the call along with two other officers. They found the camper and tried to speak with the man inside, but he refused to come out. The man, Louis Ralph Chaves, grew threatening, at one point igniting an aerosol can and welding a torch at the officers.
A struggle ensued when the officers tried to take Chaves into custody. During the violent confrontation inside the camper, Chaves managed to get behind Officer Worcester, produced a kitchen knife, and began stabbing him multiple times in his protective vest. He then delivered a fatal wound, stabbing the 29-year-old officer in the neck and severing a major artery. Fellow officers and paramedics rushed to help, performing CPR, but Benjamin Worcester died from his injuries. Officers gathered at the hospital, hugging and crying as they mourned the sudden, violent loss of their friend and colleague.
The man who killed Officer Worcester was Louis Ralph Chaves, a 44-year-old with a history of violence. Also known as Louis Chavez or Louis Notclay, he was a serial killer who had murdered a man and a woman in El Monte, California, in 1968, for which he served only seven years in prison. He had a history of mental health issues and had recently been released from jail after biting a sheriff's deputy. After being found competent to stand trial, Chaves was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Officer Worcester and two counts of second-degree murder for his prior killings. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Benjamin Worcester was survived by his 4-year-old daughter, his ex-wife, his parents, two brothers, a sister, and his fiancée. He is remembered as a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. His killer, Louis Ralph Chaves, was denied parole in 2002 and 2018. However, in December 2022, after serving 35 years, Chaves was granted medical parole. Officer Benjamin Warren Worcester is buried at the Chapel of the Chimes Memorial Park in Union City, California.
