Manuel Mark Everett Benitez, known professionally as Mark Everett, was a former child actor who became a fugitive in the 2004 killing of his girlfriend, Stephanie Spears. Born September 28, 1969, in Coral Gables, Florida, he had an acting career beginning at age nine and appeared in commercials, TV and films including Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Stand and Deliver before that work tapered off in the late 1980s.

A state arrest warrant issued in 2005 and a federal warrant for unlawful flight followed in 2006. Benitez later faced other legal trouble, including a 2003 conviction for possessing a concealed, loaded firearm and involvement in drug dealing.

On December 23, 2008, officers in El Monte, California responded to a report of a gaunt man with a boy at a strip mall. Benitez had taken his seven-year-old son hostage in a restaurant bathroom, threatened the child with two handguns, and after a roughly two-hour standoff was shot and killed by a SWAT team; the boy was wounded in the thigh and survived. Anyone who knew Benitez, Spears, or their son, or who has information about the 2004 killing or the subsequent manhunt, is asked to come forward.