Taylor Behl, Disappeared
Going off to college, going away from home for the first time, is heady stuff for a 17-year-old, and pretty, outgoing Taylor Behl was excited. She was thrilled really and well, maybe just a little nervous.
Virginia
Graduating from Madison High School in the comfortable Washington, D.C., bedroom community of Vienna, Virginia, she had everything to look forward to at Virginia Commonwealth University, an hour and a half from her home in Richmond, Virginia. Not too far from mom and dad if some moral support was necessary. Close enough to visit whenever it seemed right.
buildings
Richmond, the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a nice city with an attractive downtown area, good restaurants, and an allegedly wild campus nightlife. Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), an urban school with some 30,000 students, focuses on biotech and life sciences. The sprawling VCU campus dominates the west side of Richmond.
Taylor’s mother, Janet Plesara, said “She was quite excited, happy to be on own, and looking forward to the college life.”
But something happened in Taylor Behl’s life. Something very traumatic.
In the evening of September 5, Labor Day, Taylor had dinner at the Village Cafe at 1001 W. Grace Street with a former boyfriend, then met up with former lover Ben W. Fawley who says that he walked her back to her Gladdings Residence dorm on West Main St. from his apartment at 407 Hancock Street and lent her a skateboard. This was about 10 p.m.
When Taylor got to her dorm, she found that her roommate and roommate’s boyfriend were there. In order to give her roommate some privacy, Taylor left them alone together and headed out by herself with only her car keys, cellphone and $40 around 10:30, saying she’d be back in a few hours.
But hours turned into days and Taylor did not return. She was reported missing September 7, 2005.
“I can’t imagine that she would meet someone at that time of night and just go out without her purse, without her clothes. She’s just not the type to run off … None of it makes sense,” Pelasara said. “We know that she had dinner with a friend, another VCU student at the Village Café.”
Since then there has been no activity on Taylor’s cell phone and she had no credit cards. None of her family or friends has been contacted.
Yes, students disappear from colleges all over the United States every year. Thankfully, most of the reappear with some explanations — stress, need to get away, bad love affair, boredom, etc. Consequently, the police do not get overly excited when a person “disappears” for a few days. And because the VCU campus police had no evidence of foul play, initially they did very little regarding Taylor Behl’s disappearance. As the days went by, it was a more difficult decision to stand by. All in all, the VCU police held on to the case for 11 days before turning it over to the much more experienced Richmond Police Department.
Finally, an Amber Alert was issued 11 days after she went missing, resulting in nationwide alerts of various kinds. Still nothing turned up and it wasn’t until Sept 16, 2005, the disappearance turned into a criminal investigation.
A major breakthrough occurred on September 17th, when Taylor’s white 1997 Ford Escort was found by an off-duty policeman walking his dog. The car, which was discovered in the 500 block of North Mulberry Street in the Fan District, a quiet, well-maintained residential area a couple of miles from her dormitory, was kept under surveillance for 12 hours to see if anyone approached it. After that, the car was turned over to the FBI for forensic analysis.
North Mulberry Street in Richmond, Virginia.
The police made a troubling discovery: the car had Ohio license plates that had been stolen almost two months before Taylor disappeared. This strongly suggests that someone with far more sophistication than Taylor was tampering with the car and, perhaps, wanted to use it while police were looking for a car with Virginia tags.
The plates belong to a former Ohio resident who lives in Richmond. This former VCU student reported them stolen two months before Behl disappeared. The theft of license plates from out-of-state cars is not an unusual occurrence.
Canines were brought into the investigation of Taylor’s car. While police chief Rodney Monroe would not say what the dogs had discovered, he suggested that they uncovered some promising leads.
There have been numerous mentions in the press of a 38-year-old photographer who was a friend of Taylor. Search warrants were reportedly executed at Taylor’s home and at the home of her amateur photographer friend.
Greta Van Susteren interviewed attorney Chris Collins, representing Ben W. Fawley AKA William Fawley, who is the 38-year-old photographer. Collins told Greta that Fawley “is a suspect and should be a suspect because he knew her.” Collins indicated that there was a romantic relationship between Taylor and Fawley.
Fawley has several Web sites which one could characterize as goth porn – nude and semi-nude photos of heavily tattooed girls in styles that are unusual. One of Fawley’s sites has a model named Taylor listed.
At least one news source suggests that Taylor’s mother understood that the photos of Taylor which appeared for a time on the photographer’s Web site were posted without Taylor’s permission.
Interestingly, one of Fawley’s Web sites claims he is an ex-con. Using the name “skulz” and “skulz67” he set up many Web sites, although he seems to be shutting them down now that his name has gotten into the news. Collins admitted that Fawley had a criminal background but said he couldn’t elaborate.
There was a time not too long ago in investigative journalism when learning about a person required extensive conversations with the individual’s friends, associates, family, etc. The Internet has dramatically shortened that process. People have their own Web sites and communicate to others on bulletin boards and in chat rooms — creating an interesting paper trail of publicly available insight — providing you know the person’s various Internet identities.
The people in the Taylor Behl case are part of the generation that communicates intensively through the Internet. There is a fascinating and insightful record available on two of the key individuals: Taylor herself and Ben W. Fawley, the photographer, who has been named a “person-of-interest.” This chapter will take a look at Taylor’s own site on myspace.com, what she says about herself and what her friends and well-wishers have said.
 Taylor Behl
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“Sod Off” Female 17 years old Vienna, Virginia United States Last Login: 09/04/2005 |
Taylor then writes:
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About me: |
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Who I’d like to meet: |
Some things are worthy of note. She calls herself “Bitter,” but we don’t know why. The photo of herself that she put on the site is in stark contrast to the vibrant, happy teenager that has been spread all over the press. This photo she chose of herself fits with “Bitter:” a young woman worried, pensive, and unsure. One of her friends, Sim Sim, alludes to this when he posts:
When I was visiting you today you weren’t seeming to be having the best day, so here I am to cheer you up, come with me and my cousin Kamal to go dancing at this club we were at, it was awesome, well here’s a picture just to illustrate the kinda fun we had:
The message is accompanied by a cute amateur photograph of man dancing with a 5 or 6-year-old boy.
The site shows that the last time she logged in was Sept 4, 2005, the day before she disappeared.
Before her disappearance, she had a number of messages from her friends, mostly from Starbucks where she worked, and Madison High School. Overwhelmingly, her friends expressed their love for her. One of her friends from Starbucks has a funny clip of Paris Hilton (?) and a moniker “Sluts don’t belong in children’s movies.” Since then the moniker has been changed to “my heart is black as coal:”
 Paris Hilton
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Aug 3, 2005 06:05 AM Taylor, you’re hot. I miss working at the Buck and watching you do crazy things with your boobies! I can recall an evening when I came in, and you were wandering around with your shirt unzipped past your bra! LOL. You’re a filthy hooker, but I love you the mostest. Why you might find your self asking? Cause you’re my baby (ie: you’re the youngest person I know)!!!! I do however have slight bits of rage for you… you moved to Richmond. I have a friend that I actually just visited there, next time I’m down I’m callin’ yer ass! ‘Nuff rambling. LOVE YOU, MEAN IT!!!!!!! |
After Taylor’s disappearance, there are many messages of concern, love, pleas to come home safely, and prayers.
Another chapter will take a look at the relationship between photographer Ben W. Fauley and Taylor Behl as viewed through the Internet written record.
Taylor Behl’s Web site is http://www.myspace.com/doowop/
By Steve Huff
A close look at Taylor Behl’s Livejournal, a weblog the 17-year-old VCU freshman wrote under the screen name “tiabliaj” — “jailbait” spelled backwards — between April of 2004 and 2005, shows there was more going on with Taylor than many may have known when she disappeared September 5, 2005.
The following exchange between Taylor and Ben W. Fawley, the amateur photographer considered a ‘person of interest’ in connection with Taylor’s vanishing, was found in a Livejournal entry Taylor made April 8, 2005. This dialogue between the 38-year-old Fawley and Behl may shed more light on the nature of their relationship and Taylor’s part in that relationship. Taylor wrote, in the main weblog entry:
If you read this,
Even if I don’t speak to you often,
You must post a memory of me.
It can be anything you want, good or bad,
Just so long as it happened.
Then post this to your journal.
See what people remember about you(…)
…This very attractive girl climbed up into my bunk @ 407, the last girl to do so before the move…
A bit later Taylor answered him; “well I was curious…” and three days after that response, on April 11, 2005, Ben again commented; “…so was I…fact I still am…. :-p.”
Five days later, according to an April 15, 2005 entry Fawley made in a Livejournal he later deleted, Taylor Behl came to Richmond to visit him:
Taylor should be here around noon, but then who knows. If she does I plan on taking her off to take photos in that spot I want to take some photos in. I think it would be a great place for photos. I wanted to take another there, but I don’t think that will happen and Taylor is game…
Later, in a Livejournal he kept under the screen name “Skulz67,” Fawley wrote about Taylor’s visit:
Then Taylor came down to Richmond to visit for the weekend. Got out to Belle Isle amongst other things(…) I got some photos, not as many as I would have liked, but Taylor looked cold…
This exchange seems to show that Belle Isle (an island in the James River in downtown Richmond) for Fawley and Behl wasn’t just a place to “take photos.” The dialogue seems to show too that Taylor was active in the initiation of a relationship with Fawley.
A former lover of Ben Fawley’s kept a Livejournal here, using the screen name “select_choice.” In this entry written August 29, 2004, she mentioned Belle Isle, mistakenly referring to it as Belle Island:
I am saddened that you feel we will not work. I will move on and find another like you will in time. I like that you keep going after things.
That spot on Belle Island is in my head. Sex in the woods was fun silly boy…
Taylor Behl appeared to pursue Ben Fawley, at least to some degree, but Fawley didn’t have to say yes. Even if Taylor ‘climbed into his bunk,’ Ben Fawley could have told her to turn around and climb back out — the difference between 38 and 18 is maturity as much as years. Maybe he was already thinking of getting her out to Belle Isle.
That Taylor Behl pursued Ben Fawley does not expose some dark secret about Taylor — but Taylor Behl’s Livejournal does expose how vulnerable she might have been to a potentially predatory older male with a habit pursuing barely legal and perhaps even illegal lovers, age-wise. Taylor was so vulnerable, apparently, that she willingly placed herself in his hands.
Taylor’s journal portrays a bright, intense young woman who was just seeking a place to land, to put down some roots, to find something real and stable. Taylor Behl’s story is the same story found in the lives of a million other 17 and 18-year-olds of both sexes. No longer a child, but not really an adult, either.
The real Taylor Behl could have been a million other kids. Suddenly out there, alone for the first time, looking for something.
Taylor’s attraction to Ben Fawley, her vulnerability to him, may not have been her undoing. Fawley is only one person-of-interest; in a way, Fawley’s desire to publicize himself in the past, along with his predilection for very young women, has been his worst enemy.
The real Taylor Behl was still underneath it all a kid. She wasn’t prepared for the Ben Fawleys of the world, even if she thought otherwise. The real Taylor was everyone’s daughter, walking the tightrope between childhood and being an adult without balancing pole, in a high wind. She didn’t truly know who Ben Fawley was, much less Taylor Behl, but at one point it does seem that she wanted to be with him.
The tragedy when someone so young disappears one night in September is that they didn’t have the chance to find so many things out about themselves, where their lives might be headed. If Taylor Behl is gone forever, it might be because she truly didn’t know who, or what, some of her friends and lovers were, until it was too late.
The URL for Taylor Behl’s Livejournal is http://www.livejournal.com/users/tiabliaj/.)
Copyright© Steve Huff
by Marilyn Bardsley
The portrait of Taylor Behl that has emerged from acquaintances, her online journals and her mother is a young woman far more mature in many ways than most 17-year-olds.
Janet Pelasara, Taylor’s mother, says that Taylor traveled alone on international flights at the tender age of five. While there was certainly an airline employee charged with young Taylor’s safety on these flights, it still required a presence of mind that one would not particularly expect in a child of that age.
Pelasara was married to a Royal Air Force officer and they lived with Taylor in both England and Belgium. She told Jim Nolan of the Times-Dispatch that when the marriage to the officer ended, she returned with Taylor to northern Virginia. Taylor had attended 15 different schools before she enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
Pelasara characterized Taylor as “street smart,” but “sophisticated” might be a better term. Vienna and Ashburn, the two northern Virginia communities in which Taylor lived from the time she came back to the U.S. at age 11 are affluent, middle and upper middle class communities that are more prone to shelter their children from the type of “street smarts” a kid on the streets of Washington, D.C. might acquire. It’s a reasonable guess that when she lived in Europe in the home of a British officer, the opportunities for becoming sophisticated were greater than becoming street smart.
Having grown up in conservative, well-to-do communities without rebelling against its norms, Taylor told her mother that she chose the huge, diverse urban campus of Virginia Commonwealth University because it offered her a different kind of experience.
“She’s very smart and very worldly at 17, but she’s still a 17-year-old,” her uncle, Jeff Pelasara, told Nolan.
Large urban campuses are not immune to the kinds of problems that characterize all urban settings — crime, drugs, every kind of predator and undesirable. VCU is no different. Even so, most of its students avoid these problems and go about their business and get the good educational experience that the school has to offer.
Young Taylor did do a few things that put her at risk. High on that list is her relationship with Ben Fawley, a man more than twice her age with a criminal past who is now in jail on child pornography charges. Also, she was walking around in an urban area, presumably unescorted, at 10:30 at night. Finally, at least some of her new friends in Richmond were people who were very much involved in the local drug scene.
“It sounds like she was exploited by several people,” her mother said, “and they are going to pay.”
By Steve Huff
Ben Fawley, the 38-year-old ‘amateur’ photographer named a person of interest in the disappearance September 5, 2005 of VCU freshman Taylor Behl, put a lot of himself on the internet for the world to see. At one point you could even learn that his shoe size was 10.5, he was 5’8″, and his weight was usually around 140.
But the man that liked to go by the nickname Skulz had more than simple statistics about himself on the web. He also had websites devoted to his own morbid artistic endeavors. Photographs focused not only on images of death and decay, but also on subtle and not-so-subtle erotic depictions of women — typically women much younger than Ben Fawley. One photo might be of an assemblage of various animal skulls, another of a girl seemingly no older than 18 posing seductively in a plaid ‘schoolgirl’ outfit.
Ben Fawley was intriguing enough to 17-year-old Taylor Behl that it appears she at least initiated the romantic part of their relationship. Positive portrayals of Ben, many found in this Livejournal kept by a former lover, portray him as thoughtful and sensitive, a romantic, prone to caretaking. Another Livejournal, begun by an ex-girlfriend the day after she had Fawley arrested for assault in March of 2004, depicted both sides to Fawley in the first entry:
I know that he is a wonderful person. But there is another side, that scares (…) me. I cannot tolerate an object being thrown at me, then it hits me in the arm. A big thing of keys can hurt a lot when its (sic) thrown at you hard. My arm is bruised, and scraped. It could have been worse, but even something as small as that is unacceptable.
A third former lover reported via e-mail that though she felt Ben was indeed charismatic and charming, he also had a penchant for spotting the psychological vulnerabilities in another, and making them feel as though they were problems he shared, and understood. Her tolerance of Fawley was fairly limited:
Ben and I were involved for about a month before his erratic behaviour, mood swings and criminal activity forced me to stop seeing him.
A weblog purportedly kept by an acquaintance of Fawley’s seemed to indicate that Fawley’s pattern of pursuing much younger women and girls was fairly common knowledge:
(…Y)ou know the missing VCU chick? It turns out they questioned Skulz re: her disappearance(…) because they were friends(…) While he’s probably uninvolved… that would SO not surprise me. He’s been scaring (…) underage chicks after worming his way into their vaginas ever since I met him…
Ben Fawley wrote at least three weblogs. One could be found in the ‘journal’ section of Fawley’s site at deviantart.com, skulz.deviantart.com. The other two blogs were Livejournals; http://www.livejournal.com/users/skulz67/ and http://www.livejournal.com/users/line_nowhere/. There is reason to believe, based on similarities in user profiles found for these journals, that Fawley at one time may have kept a third Livejournal, under the user name ‘darkevilgoth.’
Fawley was cryptic in many of his weblog entries. The following quote comes from a skulz67 journal entry that at one time contained photos of canisters with hazard symbols on them. That journal was subtitled, “Playing with Fire ~ The Trash of a Crazy X-Con”:
It’s (sic) gonna burn……..nothin ya can do about it, its just gonna happen again and again…
In the same weblog, Fawley wrote an entry musing about his recent sexual experiences, referencing partners with only letters like “K,” “E,” and perhaps significantly, “T,” with whom he implied there was something he still “wanted to try.”
Ben Fawley was a photographer with a decent eye for composition and light, an artist with a predilection for images alluding to decay, death, fire, and sexuality. On the surface, he wasn’t all that different from many well-known and accomplished artists who are fascinated with the extremes of the human experience. A person’s hobbies, habits, and artistic pursuits do not make them a killer, or a rapist, or a kidnapper.
However, in a move that was said to be unrelated to the disappearance of Taylor Behl, Ben Fawley was arrested by Richmond Police September 23, 2005, on child pornography charges. The NBC television station in Richmond reported the following quote from Fawley’s lawyer, Chris Collins; “It’s my information that those were found on computers from an ex-roommate.”
The ex-girlfriend who mentioned Fawley’s “erratic behavior” disputed this excuse, ” He didn’t want anyone touching his precious machines. Perhaps now I know why.”
While Ben Fawley was not the only person of interest to the Richmond Police as the investigation into Taylor Behl’s disappearance unfolded, he certainly seemed to be the most intriguing, and troubling.
Copyright Steve Huff
By Steve Huff
On September 23, 2005, at 11:24 a.m., the following comment was left on Taylor Behl’s Livejournal:
(…) i haven’t been found is because i don’t want to be… im happy now, im sick of living in fear, i’ve had my ups and downs but now im starting over, i’ll visit after the new year comes in but untill then just stay calm, hold your head, you can keep praying for me if it makes you feel better but im alright now, it’s all ok…. it’s gonna be ok…
It is doubtful that the comment was posted by Taylor Behl. Weblogs that have acquired some sort of notoriety after the weblogger has vanished, disappeared, or been arrested are magnets for wags who find the attention given the person and journal somehow amusing, or perhaps a source of jealousy.
Whether a sick joke or red herring, the comment did prompt the question; what else could have happened to Taylor Behl the night of September 5, 2005?
The mainstream media began to mention early in the investigation Taylor’s 38-year-old ‘amateur’ photographer friend, Ben “Skulz” Fawley. Fawley’s identity was rapidly determined by webloggers and cybersleuths, but it was not until Fawley was arrested on September 23, 2005, and charged with 16 counts of possessing child pornography, that the mainstream news seemed comfortable mentioning the man by name. By then, rightly or wrongly, Ben Fawley seemed the suspect most likely to have had something to do with Taylor Behl’s vanishing.
The reasons were many; Fawley and Behl had a romantic relationship, and Ben Fawley had a history of instability, petty crime, and violence. The day after Behl disappeared, before she was reported missing, Fawley filed a report that he had been mysteriously assaulted and kidnapped. From a journal entry made by Ben Fawley at skulz.deviantart.com on September 8, 2005:
I was out very early, not sure of the time but the sun hadn’t been up long. I was heading up to Monument to take photos when 3 to 4 guys jumped me. They got a trash bag over my head before I could see them. Tossed me into a car and dumped me out on some dirt road. I wasn’t hurt much, just from where that sat on me. As they never said a word I am sure this was not just a robbery. My one camera and tripod is missing along with the $20.00 I had tucked in the camera. I didn’t have my wallet, but I did have my bank card and that wasn’t taken…
By the time Ben Fawley wrote the words above, Taylor Behl had been reported missing to University police. Yet, in Fawley’s journal entry, there was no mention of Taylor, at all. The Richmond Times-Dispatch article about Fawley’s alleged kidnapping reported that he had stated at one point that he was out around 5 a.m. Many noted in blogs and on various messageboards that the sun did not rise that morning until about 20 minutes after 6 a.m.
Still, as the search for Taylor continued, Richmond Police made it clear that Fawley was not the only person of interest in the investigation. There was Jesse Schultz, a 22-year-old man whose scent was tracked from Taylor Behl’s white Ford Escort after it was found parked on a street 1.5 miles from VCU to his home. Upon tossing Schultz’s home, police arrested him for cocaine possession. There was “Jake,” a young man whom Behl had apparently just begun to date after arriving for her freshman year at VCU in August of 2005.
There was at least one entry in Taylor Behl’s Livejournal that seemed to indicate problems present in her life before she even arrived in Richmond. She wrote the following on April 8, 2005, titling the entry, “Another Night at Dad’s”:
I don’t really want to be here. I want to be home in my bed where I know I’m safe. I would be home alone, except for the cats, and I’m fine with that. My dad’s g/f’s son is creepy, he hits on me and it makes me very uncomfortable…
The “Dad’s girlfriend’s son” was barely mentioned in early coverage of Behl’s disappearance.
Perhaps Taylor Behl really had run away. For whatever reason, she decided to leave her dorm room after 10 p.m. on September 5 with just the clothes on her back, a student I.D. and some cash.
In June of 2004, Taylor wrote in her blog:
I wish I had real friends that would hang out with me. But I’m kind of a bitch so I really dont think I would want to hang out with me. Not to mention im kinda full of myself, not as bad as some…
Was Taylor Behl really feeling alienated from many of her friends? Was she feeling like no one would ‘hang out’ with her, or was the passage indicative of a passing mood no different from those experienced by any teenage girl on the cusp of her senior year in high school?
In the past, the journal of a missing teen might be something available only to the detectives charged with finding her — a thing pored over under fluorescent lights in a police precinct for some clue as to how the young person set out on their road into limbo.
The Internet Age brought the average web user into the picture. A grim phenomenon was born, and webloggers in their sweatpants and stay-at-home moms in their jeans could spend hours looking at the missing person’s online journal, figuratively peeping over the detective’s shoulder. Hunting in a way previously only dreamed of by amateur sleuths for the breadcrumbs left by children like Taylor Behl as they made their way through the shadows of the worldwide web.
Copyright Steve Huff
From Ben Fawley’s deviantart.com site, a journal entry written September 19, 2005:
C:= [Reminder – laundry, must do the laundry…….and the sheets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
Since 38-year-old artist and photographer Fawley was the suspect most talked-about in the news after the September 5, 2005 disappearance of VCU freshman Taylor Behl, with whom he had a romantic relationship, naturally many who read the line above wondered if Fawley was playing some sort of game with what he was aware was a large number of new visitors to his websites. By the time Fawley wrote of ‘doing the laundry,’ his name had been in the news quite a bit, first being published in more than one weblog, then revealed the following day in the mainstream media.
Four days after Fawley wrote that journal entry, on September 23, Detective Jeffrey W. Dwyer compiled a list of items seized with a search warrant executed on Ben Fawley’s premises at 407A North Hancock St. in Richmond, Virginia. Among the evidence seized at Fawley’s residence were a plastic laundry hamper containing clothes, a laptop computer and a Macintosh, a digital camera, sex toys, a knife, two bags of clothes from a garbage can outside, a beaded necklace with a cross that had been tossed out, a bicycle chain necklace, a watch, also from the trash, a 35mm camera, a box apparently containing bones, rolls of film, a black brassiere, machete, chains and straps, a .32 caliber cartridge, hatchet and hammer, and a pry bar. Additionally, a cutting of a reddish-brown stain was made from a box spring located in the residence for laboratory analysis.
To those already suspicious of Fawley many items seized from his apartment seemed alarming. Just days before the warrant was made available online and first mentioned on Court TV’s Catherine Crier Live on September 29, 2005, a misunderstanding between a Richmond Police spokesperson and the press resulted in Fawley seeming, for a day at least, to no longer be a “person of interest.” Some watching the case wondered if the investigation was stalled. Only after the police clarified that Fawley’s being in jail on child pornography charges made him more accessible and did not actually alter their view of his relationship to Taylor Behl’s disappearance was it apparent that Fawley was definitely still under suspicion.
When Fawley wrote of “doing the laundry” on the 19th and specifically mentioned the sheets, the reddish-brown stain from a box spring in his residence seemed that much more startling. Unless the list of items seized was not precise, the fact that the stain was on the box spring and not the mattress might be more telling – where was the mattress, and how much blood did it take to soak through a mattress to the box spring below?
Another item on the list, a .32 caliber cartridge, was also interesting. Ben Fawley sometimes worked on movie sets and in theatrical productions, and had expressly stated on one of his websites that he couldn’t work with real weapons because of his status as a convicted felon. Why was he in possession of a .32 caliber cartridge?
The warrant brought a wealth of questions to mind, of course. Why did city-dwelling Ben Fawley own a machete? A defense attorney might point to Ben Fawley’s hobby of exploring and photographing “urban decay” – abandoned buildings and houses. Ben might need to hack his way through some weeds now and then. Also, most households might have a knife and a hammer around. The machete defense could also apply to Fawley’s reason for having the hatchet, as well.
More subtle items seemed stranger still, such as the beaded necklace and watch found in the garbage outside Fawley’s residence. They did not seem like items typically just tossed in the trash. Then there were the cameras on the list. Ben Fawley stated in this deviantart.com journal entry that a tripod and camera were stolen from him by the three to four mysterious men who allegedly kidnapped Ben the very night Taylor Behl disappeared. Yet still digital and 35 mm cameras were in his possession when he was arrested on the 23rd. How many cameras could Fawley, who was receiving disability payments for bipolar disorder, afford?
Of the other people examined in connection with Taylor’s disappearance, only one other name was mentioned with any frequency in the mainstream media; Jesse Schultz. The 22-year-old ‘skateboarder’ was arrested after scent dogs tracked from Taylor Behl’s vehicle to Schultz’s front door — the residence of his uncle and aunt, where he was staying. The arrest came after evidence of cocaine was found in Schultz’s room.
The Richmond Police, however, seemed to take care to allow Fawley’s name to be the one most often mentioned in conjunction with Taylor Behl. In appearances on cable news channels, Taylor’s family, her mother, Janet Pelasara, and father, Matt Behl, both seemed to know the most about Ben Fawley, and discussed him a great deal with various reporters and news anchors.
As the September faded into October, the search for Taylor Behl continued.
In an e-mail a source stated that police were poring over the photos Ben Fawley had posted online of various deserted and run-down sites in the Richmond area, photos he’d taken of what he felt were fascinating examples of “urban decay.”
Perhaps the answers to the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Taylor Behl were near an old vine-covered bridge, a dilapidated house, an abandoned railyard. The answers to the questions her family and friends continued to ask, answers to questions asked by complete strangers saddened by Taylor’s youth and beauty in photos posted on one of her websites. The answers might be found in a desolate place in the real world, but if Taylor Behl had truly fallen prey to someone decayed and dead on the inside, her vanishing might remain an intractable mystery long after the case was cold, or closed.
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.
Janet Pelasara, Taylor’s mother said today that she believes a body found in a wooded area is her daughter. “The body found is most likely my baby’s,” she said at a news conference at her home in Vienna, VA.
“I’m positive the authorities will bring these subhumans to justice…and pray they will receive the death penalty.”
George O. Peterson, the family attorney, says that official confirmation has been made.
“The strongest suspect they already have in custody,” Peterson said, but there remains the possibility that others were involved. A K-9 tracked the scent of another person from Taylor’s car. The person has been arrested for possession of cocaine.
One key person of interest in this case from the time that college freshman Taylor Behl went missing is Ben Fawley, a 38-year-old amateur photographer who had a romantic relationship withTaylor . Fawley is currently charged with 16 child pornography counts and is being held without bond in Richmond .
Crime Library sources have indicated that another of Fawley’s former girlfriends once lived at 554 Knight Wood Road in Diggs, VA. The remains found by the task force searching for missing college freshman Taylor Behl were located near the intersection of Rt. 611 and Rt. 613. Knight Wood Road in Mathews County is very close to that site. Mathews County is right on the Chesapeake Bay , about 70 miles from Richmond.
Members of the task force searching for Taylor Behl meticulously researched the online records created by Taylor, Fawley and their various associates. From these online records, police determined that several sites should be examined. One of those sites was the area where the remains were located behind a barn on private property. Police had shown photos of the site to one of Fawley’s former girlfriends who identified where the photos were taken.
The remains were very decomposed and positive identification was not immediately possible. However, several news sources indicated that clothing found at the site was similar to clothing that Taylor reportedly wore when she disappeared. The FBI will continue to handle the gathering of evidence at the crime scene.
Pat Collins of NBC 4 was told that soil samples from the under carriage of Taylor’s car match soil samples from the area in which the recently discovered body was found.
Fawley told police the day after Taylor disappeared that he had been abducted and assaulted several hours after Taylor was last seen. He claimed that he had been driven to an unknown location and robbed of his camera, tripod and cash. Fawley told police he was then dumped on a dirt road where he managed to get a ride back to his residence. Fawley told police that a former girlfriend was behind the attack on him.
Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe said Thursday that charges would be filed within hours of the official announcement of finding the body of missing Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) student Taylor Behl.
“I have the utmost confidence that we’re going to be able to resolve this case,” Monroe said.
Monroe said the investigation has become much more targeted and that charges may be filed in the next few days.
Taylor Behl disappeared from Richmond on Sept 5, Labor Day. Taylor was last seen by her roommate around 10:20 p.m. when she said she was going out skateboarding with three guys and would be back in a few hours. Richmond police have interviewed several skateboarders who were acquainted with Behl, but have not revealed any information regarding who Taylor was planning to skateboard with or even if she did go skateboarding at all that night.
Two individuals have received a great deal of media attention lately. One is Ben W. Fawley, the 38-year-old amateur photographer who is now in jail over charges of possessing child pornography. The other person is skateboarder Jesse Schultz, a 22-year-old now in jail over cocaine possession charges.
Fawley and Taylor had a brief romantic relationship and continued a friendship over a period of several months. Fawley may be one of the last people to see Taylor alive. He told police that Taylor had come to his apartment to borrow a skateboard and he walked her back to her dormitory around 9:30 p.m. the night she vanished. The next day, Sept 6, Fawley claimed that he had been abducted and robbed around 5 a.m. that morning and filed at police report around 4 p.m. Fawley attributed the attack to a long-running altercation that he had with a former girlfriend and model.
Fawley previously had a romantic relationship with a young model whose family owned property near the Mathews County farm where Taylor’s body was found Oct. 5. The former girlfriend identified for police some photos available on the Internet taken by Fawley of the area where Taylor’s body was found.
Jesse Schultz came to the attention of police in a dramatic way that evokes Court TV’s Forensic Files. Needless to say, the task force members brought in a K-9 to get the scents in Taylor’s car when it was found in Richmond. The K-9 got wind of a scent other than Taylor’s and went straight to Jesse Schultz. Schultz denied knowing Taylor. However, Chief Rodney Monroe said that at this time, Schultz is not considered a suspect.
By Marilyn Bardsley
In the month since Taylor Behl went missing and her body was found, the media, the bloggers and the message boards have put 38-year-old amateur photographer, Ben Fawley, under a microscope. The reasons for the scrutiny are substantial and almost too numerous to list, but these are the most significant:
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Fawley at one time had an intimate relationship with Taylor and maintained a friendship with Taylor when the brief romantic interlude ended.
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Fawley is also one of the last people known to see her alive the night she disappeared, Sept 5.
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Incredibly Fawley told police that around 5 a.m. on Sept 6, he was stumbling around Richmond drunk when unknown assailants abducted him and drove him to an unknown dirt road where he was hit in the stomach and robbed. He claimed an unknown person picked him up and drove him back to his neighborhood.
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Fawley was arrested on 16 counts of possession of child pornography and has a history of mental illness and criminal activities.
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Taylor’s body was found at a remote site that Fawley visited and photographed.
If anything, the revelations coming from the sudden scrutiny have made Ben Fawley look even more emotionally disturbed and violent. Justice Magazine reported that in 2003, he choked an ex-girlfriend to the point where she was afraid she would die. He then cut his arms with a knife. and had to go to the hospital. The young woman was afraid for her life and got a restraining order against him.
The following year, Fawley assaulted another girlfriend, Jessica Payton. Payton portrayed him as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde: sometimes a “wonderful person” and sometimes a “person that is full of anger and hatred.” Fawley sat in jail for a couple of months for that assault. The “Jekyll and Hyde” behavior is symptomatic of the bipolar disorder from which Fawley suffers.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation was made by Jonathan Delano to various media sources. Delano shares an apartment with Erin Crabill, a young woman with whom Fawley was obsessed. They had a disagreement over some photos and Erin broke up with him. Fawley posted long rants on his Web sites with his side of the story.
A few weeks after he and Erin split up, Fawley got into Delano’s apartment in the middle of the night carrying a hammer and a can of mace, saying that he just wanted to talk. Apparently, Fawley thought that Delano was Erin Crabill’s boyfriend.
Fawley refused to leave and launched into a long diatribe about his life. Delano was not amused and filed a criminal trespass complaint. Fawley’s brushes with the law are nothing new. He has an extensive rap sheet in Pennsylvania which includes theft, assault and receiving stolen property.
We see a man who cannot control his temper, who surrounds himself with people half his age, who manufactures scary personae to attract girls into the troubled life of a disabled misfit, and who becomes obsessed with the young women who pass briefly through his life and then reject him, when they realize how damaged he is. He cannot accept their rejection and resorts to violent behavior. The question for the Richmond police is whether pretty, intelligent and classy Taylor became a victim of Ben’s anger when she tried to take their relationship from intimate to friendship. Could he stand to lose a prize like her?
By Steve Huff
The following quote is from an article written by reporter Jim Nolan for the Richmond Times-Dispatch on October 5, 2005, titled, Behl task force investigates body in Mathews County:
An ex-girlfriend of a man interviewed in connection with the disappearance of Taylor Marie Behl yesterday led investigators to a Mathews County farm where police discovered the severely decomposed remains of an unidentified person, law-enforcement sources told The Times-Dispatch…
The ex-girlfriend, 23-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) student and freelance model Erin Crabill, later wrote this to me in an e-mail:
If they found Taylor’s phone on her…It makes me cry every time thinking that she was out back of my parent’s house (not a league from the property line) with her phone ringing for days. She’s so lonely out there(…)She was so close [to the house], but not close enough. She’s abandoned and maybe no one will find her but her phone is ringing…
Erin Crabill’s relationship with Ben Fawley, the 38-year-old man incarcerated in Richmond, Virginia on child pornography charges and also suspected by many of having a hand in the death of 17-year-old VCU freshman Taylor Behl, was brief, but intense.
By Marilyn Bardsley
Vienna, Va. (Crime Library) — Drizzle, punctuated by persistent periods of rain, gloomy gray skies, and a chilling wind ushered in Taylor Behl’s eighteenth birthday. I drove down Maple Avenue, once the center of Taylor’s universe, past the Starbucks where she worked last summer, past Jammin’ Java where a benefit concert was held in her honor. This day would have been a very important day for her, a kind of official rite of passage from girlhood into womanhood. Instead of the birthday cake and party that should have been hers, there were a few Happy Birthday balloons tied to her casket. Inside the funeral home, over a hundred and fifteen beautiful flower arrangements did their best to dispel the mantle of sadness that hung in the air.
Shortly after I arrived, Janet Pelesara, Taylor’s mother, came in with family members. She was much prettier than her photos in the press and quite thin. This had to be one of the worst days in her life, but her composure and inner strength was remarkable. She was clearly determined to fulfill her role in this tragic event with the utmost dignity.
When she walked towards me, I stood and, in a stumbling torrent of words, poured out my condolences to her and apologized for arriving as an uninvited stranger to this private family affair. I was not there as a member of the press, but as a person who has grieved over the tragic loss of vibrant young woman on the threshold of life.
By Rachael Bell
On January 17, 2006, amateur photographer Fawley, long suspected for his role in Behl’s disappearance, was finally indicted and accused of her premeditated murder, abduction and rape. However, in February 2006, the indictment was amended because it was “flawed” in that it “offered multiple options to how Behl died,” citing that Fawley murdered her “while committing another felony, such as rape, sodomy or abduction,” the Associated Press reported. The language of the indictment was eventually changed, and Fawley was charged instead with the second-degree murder of Behl. At the tine of his indictment, he was serving time for numerous counts of child pornography.
Fawley was scheduled to go to trial in May 2006. Yet, On August 9th, he decided to bypass a trial and accept an Alford plea for second-degree murder, a technical maneuver in which the defendant concedes that the state had enough evidence to convict him but refrains from admitting guilt, Jamie Stockwell reported for The Washington Post reported. Fawley repeatedly declared that he accidentally strangled Behl during rough “consensual sex,” although Behl’s family’s lawyers dispute the claim. The autopsy was unable to reveal an exact cause of death because of the decomposition of Behl’s body, although her death was ruled a homicide. The facts surrounding her death will likely remain a mystery.
In the meantime, Fawley will remain behind prison bars until shortly before his 70th birthday, fulfilling his 30-year sentence, which was handed down in February 2006. Even though it is unclear why Fawley committed such a horrific crime, what is known is that the case will forever change the way police investigate crimes. Behl’s murder case would likely never have been solved had it not been for cyber sleuthing and good ole’ fashioned onsite investigation.
By Rachael Bell
Around the time the police took over Taylor’s missing person’s case in mid September 2005, Marilyn Bardsley, founder and executive editor of Court TV’s Crime Library who is less formally known as a real-life Nancy Drew, decided to do a little detective work of her own around the city of Richmond, Virginia in an attempt to get to the nitty gritty of what happened to the missing college student. During her investigation, she ventured behind the scenes where few reporters dared to travel and learned about another side of Taylor of which investigators and the media were unaware.
Her detective work and that of her freelance investigative online reporter Steve Huff took the investigation to a totally different dimension, from the streets of Richmond and into cyberspace. The case gained historical significance as one of the first investigations to be almost totally played out on the internet and which eventually changed the way police conduct their investigations.
During her field investigation, Marilyn discovered some interesting and at times shocking leads that provided insight into Taylor’s behavior and movements around the time of her death, as well as an interview with one of the last witnesses to see her alive. While visiting one of Taylor’s favorite haunts, the Village Cafe, Marilyn talked with some of the staff, who seemed more than a little concerned about Taylor. Most of the employees were familiar with Taylor and had difficulty understanding why such a beautiful and sweet young girl would spend so much time at the restaurant-bar where college students mixed with a rougher, more seasoned sort of clientele. What surprised them the most was that she seemed more interested in fraternizing with middle-aged men at the bar instead of young men her own age. They were worried for her safety and, after her disappearance, suspected that Taylor’s trusting nature had finally led to the worst kind of consequence.
Marilyn’s interview with Kevin (last name withheld), an acquaintance of Taylor’s and one of the last people to see her alive, alluded to her risky behavior. When he last saw Taylor, it was on September 5th around 8:45 p.m, the night of her disappearance. Kevin said that at the time Taylor had just finished eating diner with a former boyfriend and that she was all excited because she was going to “do something highly illegal…an early birthday present,” Marilyn reported. He never found out what she intended to do and he would never get the chance to ask her again.
Kevin also claimed to have met Ben Fawley at an earlier period. He said that Fawley suggested that he and Taylor had an intimate relationship. It surprised Kevin because he saw Fawley as a “rough” sort of character. Fawley turned out to be rougher than he ever imagined. Steve Huff discovered just how rough when Marilyn asked him to conduct an online investigation of Fawley and his acquaintances, as part of her on-going investigation for Crime Library.
While cyber sleuthing, Steve discovered a wealth of information concerning Fawley’s dubious behavior, unusual hobbies and former relationships, including that with Taylor and Erin Crabill. Much of the information he retrieved was from social networking sites like Livejournal.com and Myspace.com. It was information that neither the media nor the police had yet stumbled upon but would later be used by investigators to narrow down their list of potential suspects until only one remained—Fawley.
Fawley, the amateur photographer, included in his online writings his absurd abduction story that he claimed occurred on the morning after Taylor’s disappearance. He said he was kidnapped by unknown assailants, beaten up and robbed before a kind stranger picked him up and drove him home. His incredulous story was never substantiated.
Steve also learned of Fawley’s “morbid” interest in “death and decay” as exhibited in his sometimes graphic “erotic depictions of women” typically “much younger” and often “posing seductively.” Many of the girls appeared under 18 years old. The pictures were just a few of many that would later land Fawley in jail on child pornography charges.
Even though Fawley went to great lengths to destroy his messages related to Taylor before he was imprisoned, his secrets were unlocked by a growing number of computer-savvy sleuths that followed Huff in his quest to uncover the truth. It was only a matter of time before the police caught on to the importance of an online investigation, leading to acquiring their own computer experts to sift through the mountains of posts that exposed Fawley’s hidden pleasures, sadistic nature and eventually the location of Taylor’s body. Police work will never be the same again.
ABC News: New Clues in Case of Missing College Student, Sept 19, 2005 CBS News: Missing Freshman’s Car Found, Sept 19, 2005
Richmond Dailypress.com: Mother Appeals for Missing Daughter’s Return , Sept 14, 2005
MSBBC: Police Issue Amber Alert for Missing Teen
Richmond Times Dispatch: Scent Found in Missing Teen’s Car, Sept. 19, 2005
Washington Post, various articles.
Associated Press (February 2006). Indictment against Fawley amended.
Stockwell, Jamie (August 10, 2006). Thirty year sentence in slaying of student. The Washington Post.