by Amanda Lamb
“Sir, it doesn’t look good for your daughter,” Teague finally admitted, not wanting to add to the man’s growing frustration by appearing to be trying to withhold information from him.
“As soon as I said that, the extreme anger he had immediately melted into the grieving mode,” Teague recalled.
“He was not a man to wear emotions on his sleeve,” Sergeant Perry said of Carmon Bennett. “But he was visibly shaken. It was a very, very tough thing to do.”
As the father of a then five-year-old girl himself, Perry felt that telling any parents that their child was dead was the most gut-wrenching part of his job. It was something he had done a handful of times in his career, but it never got any easier. Thinking about his own daughter made him sick to his stomach as he spoke with Carmon that night.
“It always makes it harder,” Perry said. “You can’t help but think, that could be my daughter.”
And that was what was going through everyone’s minds that night—Perry’s, Teague’s, Morgan’s—Stephanie Bennett represented everyone’s daughter. She was proof that no one was immune to violence, not any one of their loved ones.
“The family was the quintessential all-American family, and as a result, everyone could relate to their tragedy,” photographer Chad Flowers said as he remembered the clean-cut, well-dressed, middle-aged couple grieving off-camera.
Morgan finally trudged up the hill to where Carmon and his wife stood supporting one another at the edge of the crime scene tape. He felt he’d made Perry and Teague do his dirty work for long enough, and it was time for him to step in and give the grieving father some straight answers. He couldn’t make these people wait any longer for the inevitable bad news.
“I’ve looked at her driver’s license. I’ve looked at the girl who’s dead in there, and I think it’s your daughter,” Morgan told the Bennetts, never one to sugarcoat the truth. “There’s absolutely nothing you can do by staying here. Go home, just go home.”
Morgan pulled Carmon’s wife, Jennifer, aside and encouraged her to take her husband back to Virginia where he could be surrounded by loving family and friends. He told her there was nothing good that was going to come out of Carmon staying at his daughter’s murder scene into the wee hours of the morning. Morgan bluntly added that there was absolutely nothing Carmon could do to help the investigation at this point, and Morgan definitely did not want him there when the medical examiner rolled Stephanie out of the apartment on a gurney in a black body bag.
“I told her to get his ass in the truck and get him back to Rocky Mount,” Morgan said with the typical unapologetic bravado of a man who always knew best, or at least thought he did.
Morgan gave Jennifer his cell phone number and told her he would keep them updated on any developments in the case. He fully expected to hear from Carmon Bennett before the sun rose.
Going Public
Lieutenant Chris Morgan held an impromptu press conference just outside the perimeter of the crime scene tape to bring the media up to speed. He had removed his signature white fedora as the oppressive North Carolina humidity had pasted it quite uncomfortably to his forehead. His voice was solemn, and his face was purposely expressionless as he fielded questions from hungry reporters. Even though Morgan considered most journalists in the Raleigh area his friends, he also knew they had a job to do. They loved it when cops got emotional; it made for a better story. He refused to give in on this night.
“We just got a report that a body had been found here,” Morgan said as reporters followed up with questions about specifics that the detective was clearly not going to answer. “We’re doing a thorough search for any evidence that might be available,” Morgan said with a measured tone, saying something while really saying nothing at all—a technique he had perfected from years of dealing with journalists. He had already learned from the officers’ preliminary interviews that a Peeping Tom had been seen in the area just a few weeks earlier, but that wasn’t something he was about to let the media in on just yet. He needed to know if there was a possible connection between the peeper and the murder before he started running his mouth.
Even though investigators were releasing few details about the murder, there was nothing the police could do to quell the growing fear that was quickly developing in this quiet southern city. While Morgan didn’t specifically say it was a random act of violence, the look in his eyes said it all. The police obviously weren’t treating this as a case of domestic violence. They were throwing all of their resources into scouring the area, looking for a killer, looking for a stranger. It appeared that Raleigh had its first random murder in as long as anyone could remember, and suddenly no one felt safe.
One reporter shouted out a question to Morgan about whether there was a dangerous person roaming around that the community needed to worry about. For the first time since the press conference started, Morgan’s expression changed. His mouth tightened, and his eyes widened. Morgan mechanically turned his head toward the camera lens with a flabbergasted look on his face and paused. For a minute it looked like he might simply ignore the reporter’s inane question. But that wasn’t Morgan’s style. His inner pit bull was scratching to get out.
“We’ve got a homicide,” he replied with razor-edge sharpness in his voice. “Obviously there is somebody dangerous somewhere.”
The Perfect Victim
Morgan finally left the Bridgeport Apartment complex at about 4:00 A.M. on Wednesday, May 22. He instructed his detectives to go home and get a couple hours of rest before returning to continue their work at 9:00 A.M. He commanded several uniformed officers to guard Stephanie’s apartment and not to let anyone in until the detectives came back. Morgan basically “froze” the crime scene until the detectives could get back to work with a few hours of sleep under their belts.
The first thing Morgan himself did upon getting home was open the door to his twin sixteen-year-old daughters’ room to make sure they were okay. Seeing what had happened to Stephanie Bennett had reinforced his lifelong fear that something could happen to his own precious children. He tried not to let his family know that, because of what he did for a living, he had constant fears for their safety. Morgan didn’t want to transfer his lifelong paranoia to his wife and kids. But he couldn’t help feeling the way he did; it was something that unfortunately came with the job.
“I don’t think I can face this night,” Morgan recalled thinking. “I’m going to need something to drink.”
Earlier in the evening, Morgan had realized he had no beer in his house and would not get off work in time to buy any. He had instructed his buddy, police department psychologist Michael Teague, to run to a nearby convenience store and get him a six-pack so it would be waiting for him when he got home. Another friend might not have acquiesced to such a mission, especially someone with multiple degrees like Teague, but Doc was only too happy to help Morgan deal with his demons the old-fashioned way—by drowning them.
After checking on his peacefully sleeping family, Morgan sat down at the kitchen table and popped open the first of the long-awaited cold beers. As he gulped down the foamy liquid, trying to placate his brain into a quick and easy buzz, the events of the day continued to trickle back into his consciousness even as he tried with all of his might to push them away. The past thirteen hours had been some of the hardest hours of Morgan’s life, and at this point, he didn’t see things getting any better in the immediate future.
“I was thinking, how could a man do this to another human being?” Morgan said. “I was almost ashamed that I was part of the male gender. It was obviously a totally sexually motivated crime. There was no rage. There was no revenge. This was nothing but a sexual sadist.”
From what Morgan had already learned about Stephanie, he had begun to form an image in his mind of a young, sweet, shy southern girl whose gentility made her what he referred to as “the perfect victim.” Morgan believed her kind and gentle nature had probably made her more vulnerable because the killer assumed he would have a more passive victi
m, someone who would not as readily fight back. Morgan knew from experience that rapists often chose women whom they thought they could easily subdue instead of women who seemed like they might heartily resist.
Morgan imagined that the killer had probably spent a lot of time before the murder watching Stephanie, studying her, following her, learning about who she was and what her daily patterns were like. Based on the methodical way in which the crime scene was laid out, Morgan assumed the killer did not just randomly pick this particular apartment and this particular girl on this particular night. Given this hunch, the Peeping Tom who had been spotted at the apartment complex a few weeks earlier was quickly flying to the top of the list of possible suspects. If only they knew who he was.
“I think he knew as much about Stephanie as you could ever know about someone without actually meeting them,” said Morgan.
It was about 4:45 A.M. when Morgan’s cell phone rang. At that time, he was still sitting at his kitchen table pondering things and rounding the corner on cold beer number three. He was working on a pretty strong buzz, which had momentarily numbed his visceral reaction to the tragedy. But he was violently jarred right back into reality when he heard the voice on the other end of the phone. Morgan was not at all surprised that Carmon Bennett would be calling him at such an ungodly hour. He had given the man his cell phone number because he had expected him to call. The victims’ family members always called Morgan, eventually. It was never a question of if they would call him, but just when. Never a man to mince words, Carmon got right to the point.
“Are you going to find out who did this to my daughter?” Carmon asked Morgan.
“I can’t guarantee anything but I’ll promise you this, I’ll keep trying until I can’t try anymore,” Morgan replied honestly.
Morgan meant every word he said to Carmon and if nothing else, Morgan was a man of his word. He sensed he and Carmon had that in common.
Morgan could tell by the scratchiness in Carmon’s voice he had probably been up crying most of the night. He couldn’t blame the man. Morgan started to get a lump in his throat just listening to the broken father. He hung up the phone wondering just how he was going to deliver on his promise.
Hail to the Chief
A few hours later, Lieutenant Morgan got wind that Raleigh’s police chief, Jane Perlov, was raising hell because he and his detectives had left the crime scene in the hands of patrol officers and had gone home for a few hours to get some sleep. Major Don Weingarten, one of Morgan’s superiors, called Morgan on his cell phone that morning to tell him Chief Perlov was on the warpath and was looking for him. Weingarten, an affable company man, wasn’t about to get in the middle of a dispute between the lieutenant and the chief. He simply relayed the message, and let Morgan take it from there.
Morgan explained to Weingarten his detectives were exhausted and had needed a little break in order to come back and process the crime scene with fresh eyes. Weingarten told Morgan that Perlov was currently at Stephanie’s apartment and wanted to see Morgan there immediately. So Morgan brushed his teeth, washed his face, threw on a clean shirt, and jumped in the car heading for the Bridgeport Apartments, all the while cursing under his breath.
Since coming to lead the Raleigh Police Department in the fall of 2001, Chief Perlov, a petite blond New Yorker with a fiery personality, had knocked heads with Morgan on more than one occasion. It was no secret that many of the officers didn’t accept Perlov because she was a woman and a Yankee, but that wasn’t why Morgan didn’t get along with her. Despite her diminutive stature, Perlov had a big personality and a desire to take charge of situations in the same way that Morgan did. On the surface they couldn’t have been more different, but at the core, they had more in common than either of them would ever own up to.
Morgan pulled up to the scene, put on his fedora, got out of the car, and ducked gingerly under the yellow tape. Like someone climbing into a yard expecting to be attacked by a guard dog, Morgan turned quickly in either direction. He spotted with his peripheral vision Perlov advancing on him, ready for a confrontation.
Chief Perlov told Morgan she needed to show him something in the parking lot in front of Stephanie’s apartment. She brought him to a set of keys, lying on the ground right in the center of the black asphalt parking area just outside the yellow crime scene tape. Perlov pointed to the keys and asked Morgan how he and his team could have missed what could be a crucial piece of evidence.
“Man, Chief, I was all over this parking lot for thirteen hours, I don’t think those keys were there last night when I left,” Morgan told the chief without hesitation.
Again, Perlov asserted that Morgan might have missed what could be a critical piece of evidence. In addition, she said, Morgan had been irresponsible to let all of the detectives just go home and take a break in the middle of a high-profile murder investigation. Perlov asked him why he hadn’t had detectives out there in the parking lot searching on their hands and knees all night long. Morgan said Perlov told him she wanted to see the detectives growing beards right in front her eyes as they worked on the case around the clock.
“I told her that tired detectives make poor decisions, and they miss things,” Morgan said as he recalled trying to keep his growing anger at the chief’s inquisition in check.
Morgan explained the crime scene had essentially been frozen, and that nothing had been touched during the few hours they were gone. The uniformed officers had guarded the scene since the detectives had left at 4:00 and no one had been permitted to go back inside the yellow tape until Perlov had arrived.
About that time, a blue and white Raleigh Police Department patrol car pulled up, and a young officer climbed out of the passenger seat. He yelled over to Morgan, who was still deep in conversation with Perlov. He apologized for interrupting, but wondered if they had found a set of car keys because his were missing, and he suspected they had fallen out of his jacket pocket in the parking lot shortly before he got off of his shift at 7:00 A.M.
“[Chief Perlov] looked at me with another stare of disgust,” Morgan recalled as he smugly reached down, picked up the keys, and tossed them to the grateful young officer.
The chief then asked Morgan to take her into the apartment. He cautioned Perlov that the crime scene had not been fully processed yet, and she should be careful not to touch anything. Somehow, Morgan knew his stern admonition would likely goad her into touching something, and he was right. The first thing the chief went for, he said, was the base of a cordless phone in the den. The receiver had been found on Stephanie’s bedside table. There was a red light indicating that at least one message had been left on the machine. Perlov wanted to know if the investigators had checked the messages. Morgan told her they had not checked the messages yet because they still needed to dust for fingerprints on the base of the phone before anyone else touched it.
“Well, the key to this case might be right here on this answering machine,” the chief theorized. Morgan said Perlov then took her hand out of her pocket and started reaching down toward the phone.
“Chief, that hasn’t been processed yet,” Morgan recalled saying anxiously. She kept reaching. “Chief, please don’t touch that. It hasn’t been processed yet.” The chief moved closer to the phone, as did Morgan, to block her.
Morgan felt like the chances of fingerprint evidence on the phone being relevant to the case were pretty minimal. Still, he had a dead girl at the medical examiner’s office that he was obligated to find justice for. He wasn’t going to take any chances that potential evidence might be contaminated, not even by the chief of police.
He said Perlov looked at him and must have seen the rage in the eyes of a “tired old fat man” and decided touching the phone wasn’t worth setting off the firestorm that would surely follow. Whatever the reason, ultimately she backed away, and so did he. They both had bigger fish to fry. Their petty differences would not derail their common goal of catching a killer.
Stranger Than Fiction
In
the early stages of an investigation everything is considered evidence. Nothing is ignored because until a working theory of the case is developed, anything might ultimately have something to do with the crime.
Investigators kept circling back to their puzzling discovery of the underpants on the bush not far from Stephanie’s apartment. It looked like someone had been running by and had tossed a bagful of underwear in the air. The empty red duffel bag lay in the dirt near the bush. What were the chances that women’s underwear just happened to end up on shrubbery the same night a woman is raped and murdered in a nearby apartment?
“That caused us all kinds of concern. What does this have to do with anything?” Morgan recalled his thoughts at the time.
Investigators discovered that the local hotel chain had given out as many as six thousand of those particular duffel bags to guests as a promotion in the past year. They also discovered that a flood at one of the hotels had soiled about a thousand of the bags. The damaged bags had in turn been offered to any employee who wanted them; the rest were thrown away. With the sheer number of bags given out, it was simply impossible for investigators to track where this particular one had come from.
Officers quickly determined that an adolescent boy who lived in the apartment right next to Stephanie’s was responsible for leaving the underwear on the bush. Initially, the thirteen-year-old boy told investigators he found the underwear in a Dumpster in the apartment complex parking lot. But after more questioning, the boy admitted to having stolen the underwear from the apartment complex laundry room. In a strange twist, the boy’s bedroom was found to share a wall with Stephanie’s, but there was no indication that any of the underwear had belonged to Stephanie Bennett or either of her roommates. The boy swore in multiple interviews he had nothing to do with the murder. While Morgan thought the boy was a “budding pervert,” he believed him. He didn’t think the kid was capable of committing such a serious crime. But this left the never-ending question in Morgan’s mind—who was?