Taylor Behl

By Marilyn Bardsley

Tomorrow, Oct. 5 2005, the grand jury investigating the disappearance of Taylor Behl will convene. One of the individuals testifying will be Kevin (last name withheld), one of two skateboarder acquaintances of Taylor Behl. Tuesday evening I interviewed him about Taylor and the events before her disappearance – some of which is well, shocking.

On Oct. 3, Kevin was given a subpoena by FBI agents to appear in front of the grand jury. I asked him if he had a lawyer and he told me. "No, I don't need a lawyer."

Kevin and Taylor had met four times in total. They were really acquaintances rather than friends. They had spoken a couple of times at a popular meeting place before Kevin and his younger friend (name withheld) went skateboarding with her Saturday night, Sept. 3, and into the early morning of Sunday, Sept. 4. before Taylor went back home to Vienna, VA., to spend the end of the Labor Day weekend with her mother. Kevin told me that the three of them went skateboarding at around 12:45 a.m. for about an hour. He believed that she went back to her dorm after that.

His impression of Taylor was that she was a "straight arrow, normal girl that had her act together, but she was running with a rough crowd." He also characterized her as "very trusting."

The next time -- and the last time -- Kevin saw her was Monday, Sept. 5 around 8:45 p.m.   She had been eating dinner with a former boyfriend, but later, by herself sought out Kevin to tell him something she was excited about. "I'm going to do something highly illegal," she confided. "an early birthday present." Kevin sounded a bit wary of that announcement and didn't ask her for specifics. He didn't think anything more about it until Thursday, when he first heard that Taylor had gone missing.

Kevin said that he went to the VCU police Thursday to tell them about skateboarding with Taylor Saturday night and what she told him the night she disappeared.    That same day, Kevin met Ben Fawley, Taylor 's amateur photographer friend, for the first time. Fawley had learned about the skateboarding with Taylor and approached him at his place of work. He wanted to know if Kevin knew where Taylor was and where he could find Kevin's skateboarding friend who had been with him Saturday night.

When I asked Kevin what he meant by "running with a rough crowd," he was referring to Fawley. Kevin was shocked when Fawley told him he had an intimate relationship with Taylor. "It was like she was leading a second life," he told me.

Finally, I asked Kevin what about Jesse Schultz, the man who the bloodhound tracked down allegedly with Taylor 's scent on his clothing? I had seen Kevin loosely linked to Schultz in several media accounts. "Don't know him," he told me.