Gregory Rodriguez, Host of “A Rifleman’s Journal,” Killed in Murder-suicide

Gregory Rodriguez, the 43-year-old hunter and host of Sportsman Channel’s A Rifleman’s Journal, has been shot and killed by a man named Wayne Bengston in northwest Montana.

The shooting occurred on Thursday, while Rodriguez was visiting Bengston’s wife at her mother’s home near Whitefish, Montana. Allegedly, Bengston burst into his mother-in-law’s home in a jealous rage and shot Rodriguez while he was chatting with Bengston’s wife over a glass of wine. Bengston then physically abused his wife before taking his two-year-old son to a relative’s house and driving 25 miles to his West Glacier home, where he killed himself.

Police do not believe that Rodriguez and Bengston’s wife (employed by a firearms manufacturer), who met at a trade show, were romantically linked.

Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dail, whose department is overseeing the case, told the Associated Press, “It’s pretty much an open-and-closed case. Homicide and suicide.”

Aside from hosting A Rifleman’s Journal, Rodriguez was the founder and CEO of Global Adventure Outfitters, an editor at Shooting Times Magazine, and a contributing editor to Petersen’s Hunting, Guns & Ammo, and Dangerous Game.

Before founding Global Adventure Outfitters, Rodriguez was a successful mortgage banker.

Rodriguez is survived by a wife and two children.

Benjamin T. Lambright

I'm a poet and and author. I received my BA in Creative Writing from Central Michigan University and I am pursuing my MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. My work has appeared in The Greatest Lakes Review, The North Central Review, Dexter magazine, Open Palm Print, newspapers, magazines, bathroom stalls, the backs of highway billboards, under bridges and other, stranger, places.