By  Seamus McGraw

August 10, 2006

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MATHEWS, Va. (Crime Library) — In the end, even as he accepted a 30-year-sentence for the slaying of pretty young co-ed Taylor Behl, part-time photographer Ben Fawley, now legally a convicted killer, could not find it in himself to take responsibility for the crime.

Taylor Behl

The aging pretty boy who has spent most of the past 10 months in jail said little this afternoon as he agreed to a plea bargain that netted him 40 years, with 10 years of that sentence suspended. Flanked by his attorneys, the boyish-looking 38-year-old agreed when Judge William H. Shaw III asked whether he was entering his plea to second-degree murder voluntarily.

"Yes," he replied softly.

Ben Fawley

But when the judge asked Fawley if he was admitting guilt in the death of the 17-year-old from Virginia Commonwealth University, Fawley sobbed and fell silent and instead, as his lawyer later explained, he entered what is known as an Alford plea, a technical maneuver in which the defendant admits that the prosecutor has enough evidence to convict him, but stops short of admitting guilt.

Legally, of course, the result is the same. An Alford plea is technically a guilty plea, and newspapers and media outlets no longer need to take care to refer to Fawley as an "accused killer." He is, for all intents and purposes, a convicted killer, and he is destined to remain in prison for decades.

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