In July 2014, Lindsey and Kyle Seitz lived a joyous life that most families would envy.
On July 7, Kyle – then a software engineer – left the couple’s 15-month-old son Benjamin in his rear-facing seat in the back of his Jeep Cherokee for eight hours after forgetting to drop him off at daycare and driving instead to his office.
Benjamin was pronounced dead in the hospital from hyperthermia. Life as they knew it, with that inconceivable, fatal lapse in memory, was over.
In the months and years that followed, they were driven out of Connecticut to Colorado by a circus of media, gossip and child protective services. Kyle was convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
Lindsey quit her job as a lawyer, and focused on raising their two older daughters. Miraculously, they are still married and very much in love.
Now, in his first on-camera interview since his son’s death, Kyle, now 44, tells DailyMail how he learned to forgive himself after replacing his son’s death in his head ‘countless times’.
Lindsey, 44, also explains how she overcame the rage and blame she felt for her husband. Their joint interview – their first since Ben’s death – accompanies the release of Lindsey’s new memoir, The Gift of Ben, which goes on sale today.
‘I am profoundly in love with my husband. It’s probably stronger than it used to be… after all the grief and trauma we are probably more solid now but I’d describe it as quieter. Calmer. More relaxed.
‘Just the little moments that we really enjoy now,’ she said, speaking from their home in North Carolina, where they moved recently to be near her family.
She never contemplated leaving her husband, despite being placed under what she described as ‘immense’ pressure to by Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families to take their daughters and move on.
The book tells the story of her struggles with mental health (Lindsey was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her twenties, before she had children), and the family’s ability to move on from the tragedy that defined them for years.
They also detail the torture of being endlessly investigated by police and child protective services for months after Ben’s death, as their young daughters – then five and eight – begged to be left alone.
July 7, 2014: The split-second mistake that destroyed a family
With family in town to celebrate July 4th weekend, Lindsey and Kyle describe the morning of Ben’s death as ‘hectic’ but normal.
Their older two daughters, Kaylyn, then eight, and Riley, then five, were enrolled in Bible school for the summer while on break from regular classes.
On the morning of July 7th, Kyle loaded Benjamin into his car seat in the back of his Jeep Cherokee, while Lindsey worried about ferrying the girls to their class.
Rather than go directly to Benjamin’s daycare, Kyle – in what experts have categorized as a momentary lapse in memory – drove straight to town to collect coffee and then to his office.
‘I was driving the kids down main street to get them to Bible school and I noticed [Kyle’s] car on the street.
‘I probably thought “wow he got there quickly” rather than dropping Ben at day care then going to get coffee.
‘I didn’t say anything – and I think I’ll live with that regret for the rest of my life,’ said Lindsey. By lunch, Benjamin had been in the car for at least four hours.
Lindsey and the girls decided to drive to Kyle’s office and invite him to lunch. He was too busy, but ended up returning to the car and driving to a sandwich shop later.
He returned to his office to finish out the day, completely oblivious to his unconscious child in the back of the car, still strapped into his seat.
By 5pm, Lindsey had grown concerned that she couldn’t reach him.
‘When that happened my mind started spinning – were they in a car accident? My mind even went to hot car tragedies because you’d hear about them every summer. I don’t know if maybe somewhere in my gut I knew viscerally that’s what it was.
‘I walked into the police station and I said, “this is Lindsey Seitz, is there anything going on with my family that I need to know about. ” That’s when they rushed me to the hospital.
By then, Kyle had left his office and driven to Kyle’s daycare to collect him. It was only when staff reminded him that Ben had never been dropped off that he rushed back to his vehicle and found him unresponsive in the back.
He tried desperately to revive him, screaming in the parking lot, before driving to the hospital. Ben was pronounced dead at 6pm.
A wife’s extraordinary devotion – and father’s attempt to forgive himself
‘It felt like a bad dream. In the very beginning, it really felt like it was a break from reality,’ Kyle said.
The pair rotated between friends’ houses for several days. Lindsey feared her husband – described in her book as being ‘catatonic’ at that time – might attempt to kill himself.
‘When they told me in the hospital room what had happened, my mind immediately switched from Ben’s gone to is Kyle gone too? I knew how close they were. I was worried about what had become of him after he found out that Ben had passed.
‘The next few days were so rough on him. We were all concerned.’
The thought never entered his mind, he says now.
‘It was about survival. It was wake up, eat food. Just do the little things of getting through the day. You had to make yourself do it.’ They were scarcely alone in the immediate aftermath of Ben’s death.
Despite blaming Kyle, the thought of separating never entered her mind.
‘I always knew we would be together forever but I knew the process would be hard and tough. We both loved each other for twenty-something years through serious imperfection.
‘It was a really rough journey for me [with my mental health struggles] and he was there with me through really hard times.
”After Ben died I remember walking into a room where he was lying on the gurney I just crawled on top of hi m and said I love you.
‘I really blamed him a good bit but I’ve learned how to love him through that imperfection. All of the struggles, difficulties – everything. We can love each other.’
Kyle took longer to forgive himself.
‘The self forgiveness part is tough. It is a process, it takes a lot of time. For years I had thoughts of “could I ever forgive myself.”
‘I think someone said to me one time, if you believe in a loving and forgiving God and if God forgives you I said yes. If you believe God can forgive you, why cant you forgive yourself?
‘It doesn’t mean there’s not pain every day. There is a hole there. There is a process. It is not easy at all.’
A grueling investigation
The day after Ben’s death was the first time the couple were interviewed by DCF in Connecticut.
Kyle was eventually criminally charged with negligent homicide. He pleaded guilty via an Alford Plea and was given a conditional discharge sentence. To flee the media circus and gossip in Ridgefield, Lindsey took the girls to Colorado.
But it wasn’t without resistance from an ‘overinvolved’ DCF in Connecticut, which not only investigated Kyle, but also looked into Lindsey after learning from a nurse at hospital where Ben died that she was bipolar.
For the next four months, DCF insisted on weekly meetings with the family including the young girls.
They sought a protective order in court which was turned down.
They requested all of Lindsey’s medical records, which she refused, and also demanded a forensic sit-down with the girls without either of them present, which they fought.
‘It’s hard to grieve when that part is going on. the grieving was put on hold until all of that process played itself out over how many months that was.
‘It seemed like d a lot longer than it was. It felt like years,’ recalls Kyle.
‘We didn’t understand because we knew it was an accident but then me being a lawyer I knew they had to do that.
‘But we thought the investigation would be simple – that once police and DCF collaborated on the facts and our background and everything, that it’d be simple.
‘It wasn’t the case,’ Lindsey says.
In their case, however, they say the authorities seemed hell-bent on driving a wedge between them.’It was such a battle.
Kyle’s lawyer told me I needed my own in case our interests ‘may divulge’.
Just staying with him, instead of taking the girls, [it was ] was negligence.
‘And because I was bipolar and refusing to release my medical records, it was as if I was an unfit mother.
‘It would have been a lot easier to leave [Kyle]. I was under so much pain and pressure from DCF.. I didn’t know how much I could handle.
‘It’s called defensive social work… there is undue pressure on CPS to get everything right because if they don’t get it right, the media can come after them, there can be lawsuits etc.
‘You sometimes hear about how they got it right – there was abuse, they got the kids out, thank goodness.
‘What you don’t hear about is the over-involvement where they’re investigating and causing trauma with the family when there’s no reason to do so. It’s a broken system.
The family’s case was ultimately referred to CPS in Colorado, which concluded the other girls were not at any risk. In 2019, Lindsey, Kyle and their daughters moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to be closer to Lindsey’s family. The girls are now 17 and 14.
The family now works with car safety advocates and recently successfully lobbied for the Hot Cars Act to be included in the 2021 infrastructure bill.
It includes a mandate for car manufacturers to include devices that will remind drivers to check the backseat of their car before they leave.
The pair had hoped to work with a technology company to develop a sensor that would detect if a child is in the back of a car, and alert the adult if so.
