by Amanda Lamb
One of Stephanie’s friends, Amanda Gamari, read a poem about Stephanie. She struggled to get through it, pausing at times to clear her throat and accept a hug from a friend who stood at her left shoulder for support.
“What brought us all together is a mystery to this day,” the young woman read. “We all had separate lives until senior year made its way.”
The woman choked back tears as another friend comforted her, putting her arm around her shoulder and giving her a hug from the side. It was clear that to these young women Stephanie’s death was probably the first major loss in their lives. At a time when they should have been celebrating the possibilities of their bright futures, they were instead pondering who took their dear friend from the world.
“Last year we lost a part of us, the part that made us whole. The only way to describe her is that she was the sweetest little thing, a breath of fresh air,” Stephanie’s friend continued through tears.
She ended by dedicating the bench in Stephanie’s memory and “her beauty that was within.”
After the brief service, Stephanie’s family and friends spoke to the media, surely not because they wanted to, but because they wanted to keep Stephanie’s story in the public eye. In unsolved murder cases, victims’ families learn quickly that it’s important to keep a media spotlight on the case. They go from being ordinary people to being modern-day spin doctors trying not to topple the investigation by revealing too much. But at the same time, they have a vested interest in keeping their loved ones’ stories out there because it keeps pressure on the police and often leads to new information in the case.
For the first time since Stephanie’s murder, her roommate and stepsister, Deanna Powell, talked to news reporters. Dee, as everyone called her, was the epitome of a southern girl with a perfectly coifed brown bob, a black cardigan properly buttoned over a simple black and white flowered dress, and a delicate silver pendant dangling around her neck.
“I think it’s amazing seeing how many people have come together and supported Stephanie,” Dee said. “I know she would be really honored. Knowing Stephanie, she’d probably be embarrassed, but she would be extremely honored. She had no idea how much people really thought of her.”
Despite her pulled-together appearance and cherubic face, Dee had the vacant look in her eyes of someone who had witnessed death firsthand. Clearly, the year had not done much to erase the profound pain of losing her stepsister and dear friend.
After the ceremony, Emily Metro, Stephanie’s other roommate, sat with her arm around Dee on the sacred bench. The friends had not been together for some time. Distance, and the pain of shared grief, had kept them apart. Emily’s hair was in a messy blond ponytail, and she wore a faded denim jacket over a white sundress. It gave her an air of someone who had not wanted to think too much about her appearance on such a sad occasion.
Emily recalled how she, Dee, and Stephanie had been excited about what their futures held; they were ready to go out and tackle the world, and then this had happened. It had changed everything.
Emily said that the service in her dead friend’s honor had touched her in a way she hadn’t expected. It dredged up emotions she had buried deeply in the bottom of her broken heart.
“It gave me chills. My heart was pounding,” Emily said with a tearful smile of the bench dedication ceremony. It was like witnessing a rainbow after a storm, the perfect blend of sorrow and joy. But her smile disappeared when she talked about Stephanie’s killer still roaming the streets.
“Every day you think about—maybe it was someone I saw. Do I know this person?” Emily said, her voice trembling with fear. “Just the fact that he’s going on living his life when so many other people’s lives have been torn.”
Carmon also spoke to the media after the event. He sounded confident as usual, but never removed his sunglasses, presumably to keep anyone from seeing the weight of the grief still lingering in his eyes.
“I thought it was beautiful, with the amount of people that were here, Stephanie’s friends and family. It makes you feel real good. Makes you proud of Stephanie,” Carmon said. “Yes, it’s difficult. It has been difficult. Stephanie’s birthday is the thirtieth of this month, and that’s going to be a pretty tough day.”
Carmon recalled the day he brought Stephanie to Roanoke College in 1997, her freshman year. It was a day no father could forget—the day he sent his little girl off into the world to officially begin her own life as an independent woman.
“She was excited the day I brought her over here and dropped her off. I was nervous and scared,” Carmon said, managing a small smile at the corners of his mouth. “I was the one that cried when I left, not her.”
And Carmon was still the one crying. He could not have imagined what a toll this grief had taken on his life, his family’s life, and the lives of everyone Stephanie had touched. Carmon had been working closely with the police, trying to keep tabs on the investigation, but investigators couldn’t tell him everything, just bits and pieces. He knew they had to keep some things private to protect the integrity of the investigation. He resisted the temptation some victims have to lash out at police when an arrest doesn’t come within what they consider to be a timely fashion. Instead, in a true test of his faith in the justice system, Carmon praised the detectives for their hard work.
“I have confidence in the Raleigh Police Department,” Carmon said. “They’re trying to find a needle in a haystack if you will. You know how elusive that can be. We’re just hoping that something like this doesn’t have to happen to another young lady. I’m sure as time goes on something’s going to give, and we just got to have faith and patience.”
Morgan hovered like a bodyguard around Carmon during the interview. He was always ready to jump in if a reporter got too pushy or personal and upset the father of the murdered girl. He couldn’t help himself. Morgan always felt the need to protect victims’ families even when they didn’t need protecting. As usual, Morgan had no trouble attracting television cameras himself. He took his turn after Carmon, appearing to be talking off-the-cuff, while in actuality, he delivered perfectly formed sound bites.
Morgan loved the camera, and the camera loved him. But it was more than just theatrics. Reporters, like WRAL’s Len Besthoff, respected him and his dedication to the cases he handled.
“It amazed me how deeply immersed he became in the case,” Besthoff said, “and how connected he was with the victim’s family and friends, and the lengths he would go, to keep the case in the public eye.”
“We have several thousand man-hours invested in this investigation,” Morgan said to the reporters assembled before him. “It’s still actively pursued each and every day by a team of very dedicated and committed detectives who won’t rest until the killer of Stephanie Bennett is brought to justice.”
Morgan had a way of saying things to reporters without really saying anything at all. He rarely ever showed his hand, but he could talk to a television camera until you ran out of tape.
“People who commit crimes such as this don’t live in a vacuum. They’re out there amongst people every day. Somebody out there may hold the vital information that we need,” Morgan said. “I’m the chief investigator and this is a heinous crime that was committed in my city and we won’t give up.”
Coming up Empty
One year had gone by since the murder, and there were still no real leads after countless hours of investigation by countless officers. They had tirelessly followed up on all of the tips that came in through e-mail and by phone. They had knocked on doors, interviewed hundreds of people, and taken dozens of DNA samples, but they had nothing to show for it except an overflowing case file.
“We want to find out who did it. We don’t want another family to go through what we’ve been through,” said Mollie Hodges.
“As time goes on something has got to give,” Carmon said. “You have to have faith and patience.”
Investigator Chris Morgan had taken on the case as a “personal
quest,” one that he vowed to solve before he retired. The problem was that every time he planned to retire, another case came up, and he couldn’t let it go. Morgan had formed a personal bond with Stephanie’s family that amounted to a great big hole in his heart. He wanted justice for Stephanie and for her family.
“Every day we came in with the attitude, what can we do today? What can we follow up on? Somewhere, we’ll find the answer,” Morgan said, remembering how he and his detectives refused to give up on the case.
Profile of a Killer
On June 9, 2003, Morgan stood outside the Raleigh Police Department and held a press briefing as he squinted beneath the direct rays of the midday sunlight. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow. The police had come up with a new profile of the killer they hoped would give the public insight and in return give detectives the leads they were so desperately seeking.
“Likely as not, this person works, [and] moves amongst other people every day. This was a person who moved in society, who blended in,” Morgan said.
Morgan went on to describe the suspect as a white man in his late twenties or early thirties who may have military experience. The military experience was based on a theory from psychologist Michael Teague. He felt like the use of restraints and the ability to subdue someone completely without leaving more injuries on her body was the mark of a trained killer.
Given this theory, Sergeant Clem Perry remembers that investigators even tried to tap into military DNA databases to see if they could find a match with the killer’s DNA. He made contact with several higher-ups in the military to see if there was a way to run the killer’s DNA profile through their databases.
“The comment that I got was, ‘If you want to determine anything about DNA from the military, when I say it’s going to take an act of Congress, Sergeant Perry, it’s going to take an act of Congress,’ ” Perry recalled with a smile.
At the press conference Morgan went on to say the killer probably also engaged in sexual fantasies including bondage and role-playing. Detectives had worked with a number of experts, including Teague, the police department’s psychologist, as well as investigators in other law enforcement agencies to try and develop a clearer picture of the suspect. But it was still just a hypothesis, a hypothesis with no identity attached to it.
By this time, Perry said, they were rapidly moving away from the theory that the Peeping Tom had something to do with Stephanie’s murder. The original composite, which was based primarily on a single eyewitness account of the Peeping Tom, was shelved as investigators started to focus on the new profile.
“Based on the profile we were told that the likelihood of the peeper being responsible was very slim,” Perry said.
One reporter at the press conference asked Morgan how Stephanie Bennett’s family was doing. He paused and looked away from the cameras for a moment before answering. It was a question he had anticipated, but still hated to answer. He knew it was something reporters had to ask, but it still annoyed him to no end. He also knew that they already knew the answer, but they wanted him to give them an emotional sound bite that would play well on the 6:00 P.M. news. Morgan took a deep breath and decided to give them what they wanted this time.
“The family has shown remarkable strength and resolve,” he said. “They are certainly anxious. This is a terrible thing for them to have to live with.”
Money Talks
August 26, 2003, was a typical sweaty end-of-summer North Carolina day. The cool autumn breezes had not yet begun to take hold in the south as they did in the northeast at this time of year. Heat literally rose from the ground as it baked from almost three months of ninety-degree temperatures. The air was laden with heavy humidity, which made it hard to breathe, let alone think.
Carmon Bennett had invited the media to his house for a press conference regarding a reward he was offering for information leading to the arrest of his daughter’s killer. A crowd of photographers, reporters, and detectives gathered on the lawn in front of Carmon’s modest ranch home. The persistent din of the crowd quieted as Carmon stepped in front of a metal stand with at least a dozen microphones haphazardly attached to it with gray duct tape.
Carmon was a country gentleman with the weathered look of a man who had made an honest living working outside most of his life. He had a Marlboro Man mustache, sea blue eyes, and a reserved demeanor. It was clear from the way he tentatively glanced down at his notes and then up again at the crowd that public speaking was not one of his favorite things to do. After pausing for a few seconds, he then began to read his prepared statement in front of the throng of microphones and journalists:
“These have been the hardest days of my life, as it has also been for the rest of Stephanie’s family and friends. We have felt such loss and grief in her death, but as the days have passed, this has strengthened us in our resolve to see the person responsible for this terrible murder brought to justice. We also fear for the daughters, sisters, wives and girlfriends that remain possible victims of this monster,” Carmon read stoically in front of the massive group of microphones.
“Stephanie was such a wonderful young lady, so kind, so loving, so gentle. She gave of herself to so many, who now miss her so deeply. Stephanie had unlimited potential for good that the world has now been robbed of by the person responsible for her death,” Carmon said.
Carmon proudly talked about the scholarship fund totaling more than forty-eight thousand dollars that had been raised in Stephanie’s name. But he said it was now time to do more. He said the police had told him even more than a year after his daughter’s death that someone out there may be holding on to information that could help solve the case. To this end, he said he was offering a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who took Stephanie’s life. This money, he pointed out, was in addition to the ten-thousand-dollar reward already being offered by the state of North Carolina and the local police.
“Again, we pray that if there is someone, anyone who has information which might help in identifying this person who so viciously took Stephanie from us, that he or she will now come forward and do what is right.” Carmon ended his speech and backed away from the microphones.
Stephanie’s mother, Mollie, again hid her eyes behind her large black sunglasses and blended in with the crowd as her ex-husband made his statement. After Carmon finished, Mollie agreed to speak to the media. As she took the sunglasses off in front of the cameras, she revealed red puffy eyes swollen with unending grief.
“It’s hard every day to face the fact that Stephanie is not here anymore,” she said, pausing to wipe a tear from her cheek. “But it is also hard to feel like someone else’s daughter could have the same thing done to her.”
Thankless Thanksgiving
Holidays seem to be the hardest times of the year for the loved ones of murder victims. The loss is almost unbearable when they start planning for the big day and realize there will be an empty spot at their dinner table, not to mention a giant hole in their hearts.
Stephanie’s mother, Mollie, chose November 2003 to put a letter addressed to the public about her family’s tragedy in the local Raleigh newspaper. The letter to the editor appeared in the News and Observer just after Thanksgiving:
“It has been over a year and a half since my daughter, my best friend, was taken from me.
“A year and a half of pain and never-ending ache deep inside my soul that cannot be filled. I have lived through another Thanksgiving without the presence of her smile,” Mollie began.
Mollie described the upcoming Christmas in miserable terms—a tree with no presents underneath it labeled to her dead daughter, a day without joy.
“Now imagine a lifetime of Christmas mornings. The loneliness is all-consuming, it never ends,” Mollie said.
Mollie went on to say that no matter how hard she tried, she still could not face the fact that Stephanie was not coming back. She still on occasion caught herself picking up the phon
e to call her daughter, and then realized that Stephanie was gone. Now, all Mollie had left were the “priceless memories” of her daughter and the wonderful times they had shared together.
“Stephanie’s death was so brutal and senseless. Maybe, in time, I could have accepted a car accident or disease as a reason for my loss. My heart struggles for understanding even while my mind knows that I will never find it. I know that my Stephanie isn’t any different than everyone else’s daughter; my loss isn’t any more painful that anyone else’s loss, but I need answers. Please contact me—” Mollie said, ending her emotional letter to the editor.
Mollie included her mailing address at the end of the letter. She wasn’t exactly sure what kind of feedback she would get—clues to help solve the crime? Sympathy from other parents who had lost children? But she was desperate to keep the case in the public eye and saw no better way than to reach out to the Raleigh community directly in a letter asking for their help.
Mollie was amazed when she received dozens of responses from people who were touched by her letter in the newspaper. She was relieved Raleigh residents still seemed to be keeping up with the case even though so much time had passed. She received a wide variety of responses from a wide range of people—from empathetic parents to North Carolina lawmakers who vowed to do whatever they could to push the investigation forward.
“I was just really shocked at the amount of people that wrote letters,” Mollie said in an interview with WRAL. “Because I did get a lot, a lot of letters.”
But it was more than just a kind response she was hoping for; Mollie was praying her letter would prompt someone with relevant information in the case to come forward.