RALEIGH - Even though her alleged killer committed suicide before his trial, Stephanie Bennett will get her day in court.

An order signed this week allows lawyers for her estate -- and her father -- to proceed with a wrongful-death lawsuit against the apartment complex where Bennett was raped and murdered four years ago.

The case alarmed young women across Raleigh who, like Bennett, lived in apartment complexes, had seen or heard about peeping Toms and who waited more than three years for police to make an arrest in the case.

Drew Edward Planten was charged last fall. Planten, 35, hanged himself in January while awaiting a capital murder trial.

Earlier this month, lawyers representing Equity Residential, one of the nation's largest apartment landlords, asked Wake Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens to end the case without a trial.

On Thursday, Stephens denied Equity's motion for summary judgment, finding that "there exist disputed issues of material fact."

The trial is set to begin Oct. 30.

In May 2002, Bennett, 23, was found bound, gagged and strangled in her ground-floor unit at the Bridgeport apartments in North Raleigh's Lake Lynn area. Planten once rented an apartment that was separated from Bennett's by a few hundred feet of woods. Police think he was seen looking into Bennett's window a few weeks before she was killed.

The ruling means her father, Terry Carmon Bennett of Virginia, will get his day in court.

"We are very pleased with the court's ruling," said Durham lawyer Charles Bentley, who is representing the Bennett family. "The judge was basically saying we have enough evidence to go to trial -- that we should not be dismissed out of court because there are genuine issues ... to go before the jury."

Raleigh lawyer Dan Hartzog, who represents Equity, has maintained that his client should not be responsible for Planten's actions and that the lawsuit should be dismissed.

"I will tell you this: If I had not believed in the validity of our motion for summary judgment, I would not have filed it or pursued it. I still believe we were right," Hartzog said. "I have confidence that a Wake County jury will be willing to do the right thing even in the wake of a very sympathetic plaintiff's case."

The jury's decision could mark a new day in how apartment complexes manage security patrols, lighting, shrubbery, reports of crime and possible criminal activity -- and even maintenance on windows and doors. Equity Residential owns about 200,000 rental units nationwide.

This month, Bentley said that Bridgeport's 8-foot-high shrubs, dim lighting and inadequate security invited a killer.

Whether a window to Bennett's apartment actually locked when clicked into a secure position also could be pivotal in how a jury views the complex's liability in Bennett's death.