All Creative Nonsense
Unless Otherwise Stated
copyright 2005 2006
Maricela Thompson
Violetarojo-The Violet Red
The *M* Club
†OH IF ONLY I COULD DARE†
TO BREAK AWAY FROM YOU
WOULD I THEN BE FREE TO LEAVE
OR WOULD YOU HAUNT ME STILL
↓
→ ♥ ←
↑
†ONLY IN MY SLEEP
†YOU COME AND VISIT ME
†YOU LAY ME DOWN AND KISS ME HARD & SOFT
†THEN DROWN ME IN MY TEARS
†MY DARK RED TEARS
†GIGI DIAZ MISSING SINCE 1979
♥TAYLOR MARIE BEHL♥
UPDATE
August 9, 2006
MATHEWS -- By the time his murder sentence is served, Benjamin Fawley will likely be 69. Taylor Marie Behl -- a Virginia Commonwealth University student from Fairfax County who came to Richmond last fall excited to learn, meet new people and take those first tentative steps into adulthood -- will always be 17. So it was that what began Sept. 6, 2005, as the disappearance of a college freshman -- and turned into a murder mystery a month later with the grisly discovery of Behl's remains in a dirt-road ditch in this quiet community near the Chesapeake Bay -- ended yesterday with a guilty plea and a 30-year prison sentence. "Murderer!" Behl's mother, Janet Pelasara, yelled as Fawley, head bowed and shackled at the ankles, was led from Mathews Circuit Court to spend perhaps the rest of his life behind bars. "I pray that when you get to your new home, that your new friends will treat you like you treated my daughter," Pelasara said outside the courtroom after an emotional, 90-minute plea hearing packed with reporters, police investigators and nearly three dozen friends and family members of the slain Vienna teenager. "And that you are loved to death." Ever since his jailhouse statement to police last Oct. 12, Fawley, 39, of Richmond has maintained that Behl's death was an accident, a position he did not abandon yesterday despite pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Fawley was barely able to utter responses to questions about the plea agreement put to him by Judge William H. Shaw III, shuddering and suppressing tears as he paused and took deep breaths in the courtroom, a tiny picture of his 10- and 12-year-old daughters weaving between the fingers of his free hands. When Shaw asked him if he was pleading guilty to the charge because he was, in fact, guilty, Fawley shook his bowed head and mumbled inaudibly. Defense attorney Chris Collins told the court that Fawley was entering an Alford plea, meaning he does not admit culpability but acknowledges the evidence against him would likely result in his conviction at trial. "He continues to maintain that it was an accident, that he never intended for her to die," co-counsel William E. Johnson told reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing. Inside the courthouse, Mathews Commonwealth's Attorney Jack Gill had just spent more than an hour laying out a different scenario in painstaking detail. His presentation highlighted inconsistencies in Fawley's statements to authorities. Gill painted a portrait of a young woman excited about a new chapter in her life; a girl smitten with a boy she had met in her first days as a VCU student -- and wary of the older man with whom she had a regrettable sexual encounter months before. The same man, Gill argued, who killed Behl in a twisted, near-psychotic frenzy of sex and violence that played out off a dirt road near the Mathews public beach. Gill said Fawley told police in his statement that Behl wanted him to tie her up and put a bag over her head in an act of erotic asphyxiation. He said Fawley told police that when he got squeamish about the act, Behl berated him and called him a wimp because he was too afraid that she might pass out during sex. Fawley said Behl threatened to tell her mother that she had been raped. "That's when things got crazy," Fawley told police, according to the summary of facts recounted by Gill. He said Fawley told authorities: "I flipped out," and couldn't recall what happened next, until he realized Behl had choked and stopped breathing. Fawley told police he headed back to Richmond with Behl in his car and thought about killing himself, at one point putting a gun in his mouth. Ultimately, though, he returned to Mathews and deposited her body in a ravine near a dirt road, wrapped in a plastic tarp with duct tape. "This is a young girl going off to college, with the same hopes and dreams and fears that all kids have," said Gill, whose voice cracked and faltered several times during his presentation. "It's a tragedy she was taken in this manner. "Judge, this is not a case about sex, or bondage, or erotic asphyxiation, which is a word I didn't even know," Gill continued. "This is . . . about murder. That the defendant murdered Taylor Behl. There is no doubt." Behl was last seen leaving her VCU dormitory on West Main Street on Sept. 5 at 10:24 p.m. When police knocked on the door of Fawley's Hancock Street home two days later, Gill said Fawley's first words to the officer were: "Is this about my missing girlfriend?" In fact, the officer had come to interview Fawley about a story he had told of being abducted, beaten and robbed by a group of men in the city, and driven to a remote location before being dumped with a bag over his head. The story turned out to be false, refuted by Fawley's own statement to police on Oct. 12, a week after Behl's mostly skeletal remains were found. Gill also outlined Fawley's behavior as the search for Behl took on a national scope. He helped distribute fliers of her as a missing person. "All Taylor should do is come back," he said at the time -- another statement rendered false by his later statement to police about what happened the night she disappeared. The inconsistencies were among the reasons cited by Johnson for accepting a plea deal offered by prosecutors. As part of the deal, 22 charges of possession of child pornography against Fawley will be dropped. They stemmed from the presence in his home of compact discs of pornographic movies involving children. Each charge could have earned Fawley up to five years in prison, or perhaps more if the case were handed over for federal prosecution. Outside court, Johnson said Fawley was resigned to his fate. But for others, especially those in Behl's family, things will always be unsettled. "We continue to serve the sentence he passed on us," said Behl's father, Matt Behl. "A life without a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece and a friend." Pelasara said she will probably never find closure. "How do you have closure," she said, "when you lose your only daughter?" Gill, a father, like his prosecuting partner Christopher Bullard, said it was impossible not to become emotional over Behl's death. "It was a murder," he said bluntly. "It's every parent's nightmare."
BY JIM NOLAN
Times Dispatch
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