February 15, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Desma Simon
Culture Representation: The documentary TV special “Very Scary Lovers” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) talking about convicted American murderers Erika Sifrit and Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit, who were 24 years old and married at the time of the couple’s homicidal crimes on the United States’ East Coast in 2002.
Culture Clash: Erika had a reputation as a “good girl” until she got involved with Navy SEAL-trained “bad boy” Benjamin, and they both had a drug-abusing lifestyle that included being involved in the murders of an unsuspecting couple at the Sifrit couple’s home in Ocean City, Maryland.
Culture Audience: “Very Scary Lovers” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about couples who commit crimes, but “Very Scary Lovers” is too formulaic and has nothing important to say about a case that has already gotten a lot of media exposure.
The documentary “Very Scary Lovers” (a spinoff of “Very Scary People”) is an unimpressive imitation of the Oxygen series “Snapped: Killer Couples.” “Very Scary Lovers” co-hosts Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg deliver their lines stiffly. “Very Scary Lovers” is described by Investigation Discovery as a TV special, but it looks like a pilot episode for a TV series that Investigation Discovery rejected. If “Very Scary Lovers” turns into a series, expect it to rehash many of the same cases already covered in “Snapped: Killer Couples” and many other true-crime TV series.
“Very Scary Lovers” is directed by Desma Simon, who is one of the show’s executive producers. Entertainer spouses Wahlberg and McCarthy-Wahlberg are also among the show’s executive producers. Wahlberg is the host of “Very Scary People,” a true crime series that originated on Headline News (HLN) in 2019, before “Very Scary People” moved to Investigation Discovery in 2023. Wahlberg is also an actor (formerly of the TV drama series “Blue Bloods”) and a member of singing group New Kids on the Block. McCarthy-Wahlberg is mostly known as a reality TV personality who rose to fame in the 1990s as the co-host of the MTV dating show “Singled Out” and later became a judge on Fox’s U.S. version of “The Masked Singer.”
“Very Scary Lovers” is about the case of “thrill kill” couple Erika Sifrit and Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit. Erika and Benjamin went on trial separately in 2003, for the 2002 murders of 32-year-old Joshua Ford and 51-year-old Martha “Geney” Crutchley, who were an unmarried couple. Erika and Benjamin met Ford and Crutchley at a bar called Seacrets in Ocean City, Maryland, on May 24, 2002.
At the time, Erika and Benjamin were living in a rented condo in Ocean City, at a building complex called The Rainbow. Ford and Crutchley were from Fairfax, Virginia, and were vacationing in Ocean City. According to court testimony and police reports, Erika and Benjamin invited Ford and Crutchley to the Sifrits’ condo on the night that the two couples met.
Ford and Crutchley were murdered at the condo. Ford was shot, while Crutchley was stabbed, according to Erika’s confession. What made the murders particularly gruesome is that Ford and Crutchley were dismembered. Some of their body parts were later discovered in a landfill in Delaware, in early June 2002.
Erika and Benjamin were caught because they were arrested for another crime. On May 31, 2002, they were caught during a burglary of a Hooters restaurant in Ocean City. While she was in handcuffs outside the restaurant, Erika started to hyperventilate and asked one of the police officers to get her prescribed Xanax medication from her purse.
In the purse, the cop discovered the driver’s licenses of Ford and Crutchley, who had been reported missing. Also found in the purse were spent bullet casings. That’s when law enforcement knew that the Sifrits were involved in crimes more serious than burglary.
“Snapped: Killer Couples” covered the exact same case in the show’s Season 11, Episode 2 that premiered in 2019. Other true-crime TV series have covered this notorious case, including “American Justice,” “Deadly Sins,” “Deadly Women,” “Forensic Files,” “Sins and Secrets” and “True Crime Daily.”
If you don’t know the outcome of the Sifrit murder trials, this review won’t reveal this information if you want to see any of this TV coverage for yourself. However, it’s enough to say that Erik and BJ blamed each other for being the mastermind. And one spouse got worse punishment than the other.
While in police custody, Erika eventually confessed to being involved in the murders, by saying that Benjamin shot Ford and ordered Erika to stab Crutchley. Benjamin had a different story during his trial. He said that Erika murdered Ford and Crutchley, and he just helped cover up the crime by dismembering the bodies and helping Erika dispose of the body parts. Erika is the one who made the first confession to police about the dismemberment and where some of the body parts were disposed.
There was apparently no motive for the murders except it was a twisted game for Erika and Benjamin. What Erika and Benjamin both agree on is that while both couples were partying at the Sifrits’ condo, Erika and Benjamin falsely accused Ford and Crutchley of stealing Erika’s purse, where Erika claimed she had a valuable ring. Erika even made a 911 call to report this supposed theft, but she hung up after giving a few vague details about her purse being stolen by someone in her home. (The 911 recording is played in the documentary.)
The purse was never stolen and was actually deliberately hidden by Erika and Benjamin, who both say that they wanted to scare Ford and Crutchley. Instead, Ford and Crutchley were murdered. Police believe that in the final minutes of Ford’s and Crutchley’s lives, Ford and Crutchley fled into the condo’s bathroom, where someone with a gun shot Ford through the locked door. After forcing the bathroom door open, Ford was killed with a fatal shot, and Crutchley was stabbed to death.
What would cause anyone to commit these heinous crimes? “Very Scary Lovers” covers the same basic facts of the case as “Snapped: Killer Couples” in nearly the exact same format: Each show talks about the personal backgrounds of the killers and has interviews with people who knew the couple. Then, the crimes, investigations and punishments are detailed. There are also re-enactments with actors portraying the killers and other people involved in the case.
Some of the same people are interviewed in “Very Scary Lovers” and the “Snapped: Killer Couples” episode covering the Sifrit murder case. These same interviewees are Kristin Heinbaugh, a childhood fried of Erika’s; Brett Case, a former homicide detective for the Ocean City Police Department; and Scott Bernal, the Ocean City Police Department’s lead investigator for the case.
Erika did not have a criminal record before she met and married Benjamin. She was born Erika Elaine Grace on February 3, 1978, in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania, which is near Altoona, Pennsylvania. Erika came from an upper-middle-class family and is the only child of Mitch Grace (owner of a construction business) and homemaker Charlotte “Cookie” Grace.
By all accounts, Erika was under extreme pressure from her parents to be an overachiever in academics and in sports. Her mother is described as being materialistic. Erika’s father was the coach of Erika’s high school basketball team, where she was a star player.
However, according to Heinbaugh, Erika felt like an outsider in her own home because Erika’s parents were extremely close with each other and made Erika feel as if she was never good enough. Heinbaugh says that Erika had anxiety and depression and was prescribed Xanax before becoming an adult. Heinbaugh describes Erika’s parents punishing her for weeks at a time if Erika got less than “A” grades or if she didn’t do as well as expected in basketball games.
Erika turned to scrapbooking for emotional comfort. She also became obsessed with Hooters, a chain of casual restaurants known for having its female servers wear outfits that show off their physiques, especially their breasts. Erika reportedly developed this fixation on Hooters because her father would take her there on a regular basis when she was a teenager.
Benjamin Adam Shrift was born in Estherville, Iowa, on October 21, 1977. However, he grew up in Minnesota and Tennessee. “Very Scary Lovers” doesn’t say much about his parents Craig Sifrit and Elizabeth “Buffy” Sifrit to provide any insight on what kind of parenting he got from them. The documentary mentions Benjamin was a star competitive swimmer in high school, but sometime during his teenage years, Benjamin became rebellious enough where his parents would lock him out of their house as punishment. Benjamin learned how to pick locks during this time, according to the documentary.
Benjamin seemed to be turning his life around when he was 18. He joined the U.S. Navy and enrolled in the Navy SEAL program, which is the most elite unit of the U.S. Navy. Benjamin became a rare 18-year-old to be named an Honor Man in the Navy SEAL program, which is a peer-voted title for the person named as the best person in the class. But there were signs that he had a violent side.
Mark Greene, who was in the same Navy SEAL class as Benjamin, describes an incident when he, Benjamin and a few classmates were having a meal outdoors. There was a pigeon at a nearby table. One of the classmates jokingly dared Benjamin to grab the pigeon and bite off the pigeon’s head. However, Benjamin thought this was a serious dare and was about to do this barbaric act of animal cruelty until his classmates stopped him and told him that the dare was a joke.
Benjamin was in the Navy SEAL program when he met Erika in August 1998, at a bar in Virginia. At the time, she was a student Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she had a partial scholarship for basketball. Benjamin and Erika eloped after dating each other for three weeks. According to the documentary, this elopement was Benjamin’s idea and was considered out of character for Erika.
The couple’s relationship has been described by many as Benjamin being the dominant one, and Erika being overly clingy and caught up in doing anything to please him. According to the documentary, when Erika found out that Benjamin cheated on her with an unnamed woman who lived in Arkansas, Erika mainly blamed herself because Erika thought she wasn’t doing enough to make Benjamin happy. Meanwhile, the documentary says that Benjamin allegedly threatened this Arkansas mistress telling the mistress he would kill her and her kids if she told Erika the details of the affair.
Benjamin left the Navy SEAL program in disgrace, when he was dishonorably discharged for a number of violations, such as going absent without leave, having Erika as an unauthorized guest, and wearing the Navy SEAL insignia before he completed the program. “Snapped: Killer Couples” inaccurately reports that Benjamin quit the Navy SEAL program because it had too many restrictions that were in conflict with what Erika wanted out of the marriage. “Snapped: Killer Couples” inaccurately makes it sound like Benjamin left the Navy SEAL program to please Erika, who didn’t want Benjamin to be subjected to military assignments where he would have to work far from home or relocate on a regular basis.
After Benjamin’s exit from the U.S. Navy, he and Erika moved back to her hometown of Altoona, where they (with financial help from Erika’s father) started a scrapbooking supply business together by opening a retail store named Memory Lane. Benjamin and Erika also had a side business selling merchandise (mostly Hooters products) on eBay. Erika and Benjamin were also abusing alcohol, cocaine and other drugs. The couple had a collection of snakes and crocodiles and gave these pets names such as Hitler, HIV, Bonnie and Clyde.
Although plenty of people believe that Benjamin corrupted Erika and was the one who was controlling her, other people believe that Erika was a willing participant and was waiting for a partner in crime to unleash her unlawful desires. Dr. Katie Knoll-Frey, a criminologist interviewed in “Very Scary Lovers,” believes that Erika was emotionally vulnerable and easily manipulated by Benjamin. Erika’s childhood friend Heinbaugh essentially has the same opinion and believes that Erika’s parents didn’t raise her in an emotionally healthy and loving way, so Erika had low self-esteem and was an easy target for Benjamin.
There are no family members interviewed for either the criminals or the murder victims. Other people interviewed for “Very Scary Lovers” are journalist Ben Book of the Maryland Coastal Dispatch and tattoo artist John Mika, the person who gave tattoos to Benjamin and Erika after the murders and before Benjamin and Erika were arrested. Mika says that Benjamin and Erika acted like a normal loving couple, but he got the impression that Erika was a “ride or die” type of wife who would do anything for her husband.
“Very Scary Lovers” falls short of being a worthwhile watch because it’s really just a lazy copy of what other true-crime series have done in covering this case. The interviewees who are in “Very Scary Lovers” but were not interviewed about this case in “Snapped: Killer Couples” might have a few anecdotes but they do not have anything vital to add. “Very Scary Lovers” doesn’t mention that Benjamin divorced Erika in 2010.
“Very Scary Lovers” has very drab narration. And when Wahlberg and McCarthy-Wahlberg appear on screen, they just look like actors reading their lines with no real personality or charisma. “Very Scary Lovers” missed an opportunity to stand out from the pack of these true-crime documentaries and should have spotlighted a case that hasn’t gotten so much media coverage already. Instead, “Very Scary Lovers” took a very uninspired approach and just regurgitates a high-profile case in a way that fails to do anything original or compelling.
Investigation Discovery premiered “Very Scary Lovers” on February 2, 2025.
