TARGETED: A Deputy, Her Love Affairs, A Brutal Murder

by M. William Phelps

  As Tracy turned and saw the man closer up, she was pleasantly shocked and surprised when she realized it was Doug Benton.

  “What a difference. His hair was cut short. He had a neatly trimmed moustache.” Doug looked “very clean-cut.” Yet, Tracy recalled, “It was his body; he had lost weight and he was ripped. Muscles everywhere. Chest. Biceps. Gone were the earring, the long hair and the beer belly. He looked like a totally different person. I was certainly interested this time.”

  After the check came and Tracy and her father got up to pay and leave, she “took a detour” over to Doug’s table.

  “Don’t I know you?” she said, standing, staring at him. “Aren’t you Doug … Benton?”

  He laughed. “Yes, I am. Good to see you!” He seemed to recognize Tracy from the tanning salon.

  “You look so different,” Tracy said. She was beaming. Totally smitten. Doug could easily tell she was into him. “I’ll see you around.”

  Doug smiled as he watched Tracy and her dad leave the restaurant.

  As Tracy walked out, “I remember thinking: Man, I’d like to see him again!”

  Leaving the parking lot, Tracy drove to a pub she hung out in once in a while, sat and chatted with several friends. About a half hour into the conversation, she felt her hip buzz, looked down and saw that her pager was going off.

  She did not recognize the phone number.

  It was Doug. He’d gone home that afternoon, searched hell and high water for her phone number from two years before, found it and called. Doug had felt a connection, apparently. He was calling to see if Tracy wanted to hook up, ending the message with, “Give me a call when you get home.”

  Tracy didn’t waste any time. As soon as she got home, she called.

  “And this time we really talked. He seemed so different from the person he was before, not just physically, but he even talked different. It wasn’t ‘all about me’ this time. He was genuinely interested in what I had to say. And this time, when he asked me to go out, I didn’t hesitate. We decided that we would meet somewhere for dinner that Saturday night.”

  The closer it got to Saturday, however, Tracy changed her mind again.

  “Indeed. I had another idea. I called Doug that morning, and told him, ‘If you want to go out with me, then come and pick me up like a real gentlemen and take me to lunch today.’ And that’s what he did. At noon, on the dot, Doug came driving up in my yard in a red Dodge dually, a far cry from the Corvette convertible I had seen him in before. This guy had totally changed his image. I love trucks! Big trucks. So this was just one more thing to like about him. Again, he was wearing jeans, a tight shirt and boots. I just couldn’t get over the difference.”

  Both Doug and Tracy were, as she put it, “Into watching what we ate.” Both were trying to stay as physically fit as possible. The first restaurant they stopped at didn’t have any type of “healthy” seafood, so they left. After they found a nice spot with healthier choices, they drove to a park, held hands and walked around. They soon found a bench seat near a lake and sat.

  “We found that we had so much to talk about,” Tracy continued. “We shared our entire life experiences that day. Conversation was easy. I found out that he was a welder and he found out that I was a deputy. It was like talking to an old friend, someone I could really relate to, and it was wonderful. It was as if we had waited our entire lives for that moment. Doug told me about his childhood, what it was like to grow up in Michigan and then move to Georgia. It was a total culture shock. He had been picked on a lot as a boy because he was small and that was what had given him the incentive to lift weights. He wanted to get ‘big’ so people would stop picking on him. Not only was Doug big, he was strong. He had won a few bench-press competitions and could bench 500 pounds. Nobody messed with Doug anymore … nobody.”

  Cupid had speared them both on that day. Tracy and Doug had found each other two years after first meeting. Both were primed and ready for a relationship. Yet, as Doug began telling Tracy about his past, the “more I realized what that nagging feeling had been the first time I had talked to him.”

  Doug had secrets, Tracy claimed. And here he was, sitting, hours into their first official date, spilling many of them.

  8.

  The phone was ringing. Sheriff Tom Lutz waited for someone to pick up. He was hoping Doug’s good friend, Jerry Alexander, would answer. It had been Doug’s other friend, Jeff Bennett, who’d said Doug’s truck had been parked at Jerry’s house one day, gone the next.

  “Have you seen Doug lately?” Lutz asked after introducing himself.

  “I have not,” Jerry said.

  “Is Doug’s truck parked at your house?”

  “It is. Yes.”

  “How come you have Doug’s truck if you have not seen him?” This didn’t make much sense to Lutz. But then, thinking about it, maybe Doug and Larry had some sort of deal between them whereby Doug could drop off his truck anytime he wanted and Larry would keep an eye on it. It was well documented that Doug loved that vehicle. He took care of it like one of his birds. He wouldn’t just leave it where it could be stolen or vandalized, especially without explanation.

  “The truck had been dropped off in the middle of the night last Sunday … with a note.”

  By “last Sunday” Jerry meant the weekend Doug had last been seen.

  “A note?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “Well, let me get it.”

  Lutz waited.

  Jerry came back on the line and read it word for word: “ ‘Jerry, I trust you to take care of my truck. Don’t try to contact me. I’ll contact you later.’ ”

  “That it?”

  “Just about.”

  “You mind if I stop by and have a look at the truck?”

  “No, not at all. Come on over.”

  They hung up.

  Jerry lived in Lexington, Georgia. He had known Doug for about 10 years, having worked with him most of that time.

  “We got to know Doug,” Jerry said later in court, referring to him and his wife, “and (brought) him to church at Corinth back (in 1990). We were real close and he got saved back then.”

  As he thought about it, Jerry was certain Doug’s truck had been dropped off at his house on that Sunday night, June 4, the weekend Doug went missing. Jerry was sure of this “because we never heard anything, but that Monday morning (June 5, 2000), when I went outside, the truck was parked on the side of my yard right there … backwards.”

  At an angle, in other words. Hastily parked, as if Doug was in some sort of hurry to ditch the vehicle and take off.

  When he spotted the truck that morning, Jerry thought Doug was probably inside his house sleeping. That he had come over in the middle of the night, didn’t want to wake anyone up, found a place inside to crash and went to sleep. So Jerry walked back into his house, looked upstairs and down, all over the house, “hollering” Doug’s name.

  But he came up empty. Doug was nowhere to be found.

  “And I said to myself, he’s got to be around here somewhere. He never brings his truck and just leaves it.”

  Jerry went back out and looked inside the truck. He found the keys in the ignition. He considered this “kind of weird” on Doug’s part. Again, something Doug would never do.

  Not only did he find the keys, but that note he’d read to Lutz. It was “attached right there on the side, taped right there on the side of the window,” Jerry explained.

  So Jerry pulled the note off the window and stared at it.

  “It looked just like Doug’s handwriting. It looked identical. He always wrote scribbly like I do most of the time. We both always kidded around, said we had Japanese handwriting.”

  What worried Jerry most about finding the truck and the note was that he felt Doug had “a lot of problems with depression.” That this was a sign, telling Larry that Doug had gone and done something to himself.

  Could Doug, Jerry considered, have taken
his own life?

  Jerry Alexander lived in a white house with black shutters. The front of the place was hidden behind overgrown tree limbs and brush. When Lutz and another deputy arrived later that day, June 17, 2000, to “secure the vehicle,” Jerry met them outside in the driveway.

  Lutz asked (again) how Jerry had come across Doug’s truck.

  Jerry changed his story up just a little here. He said he at first didn’t recognize it as being anybody’s truck he knew, so he searched through the glove box and found documents that told him it was Doug’s. He did not mention the note.

  So Lutz asked: “What about that note?”

  “It’s in the house.”

  Lutz didn’t see the truck. “Where is it now?”

  “In back.”

  Jerry said he’d moved it, but couldn’t recall exactly when. Perhaps a few days after he found it parked. He couldn’t remember exactly when.

  “Listen, Doug had a lot of problems with depression,” Jerry stated next, according to Lutz’s report and Jerry’s later testimony. “I don’t think he left the property. He might have hung himself in that building back there.” There was an abandoned barn behind Jerry’s house.

  Lutz and the deputy walked back to the barn. Pushed the door open. Shined a flashlight inside.

  Nothing.

  Doug’s truck was parked nearby. They searched it.

  Nothing.

  Lutz decided to call his lieutenant to see what he wanted to do from this point. They had Doug’s truck, this strange note and several people now saying they had not heard from Doug in nearly two weeks. Every sign pointed to Doug not coming back.

  “We’ve secured the vehicle, sir,” Lutz reported.

  “Have it towed in.”

  Lutz explained to Jerry that they were going to have Doug’s truck towed into the sheriff’s office. Standard police business. A wrecker was on the way.

  This didn’t sit so well with Jerry. “He became outraged,” Lutz later reported.

  “I want to see a warrant!” Jerry snapped.

  “Please calm down, sir,” Lutz said. “We do not need a warrant. The truck is part of an investigation of a friend of yours who is missing.”

  “I already contacted a lawyer and you need a warrant to take his truck away,” Jerry stated for a second time.

  “Once again, sir, I do not need a warrant, I assure you. This truck is part of an investigation.”

  Jerry looked toward the truck, back at the sheriff. Then at the truck. He was thinking.

  “I guess,” he said, rubbing his chin.

  Just then, Jerry’s wife walked out of the back door toward them. She was obviously upset at what was going on.

  “I spoke to Tracy,” she said of Doug’s girlfriend, blurting it out without being asked, “at about 10:30 this morning. She called to ask if we had seen Doug because the sheriff’s office was looking for him.”

  “What else can you tell us about Tracy?” Lutz wondered.

  “Well, I can tell you that she has caused severe marital problems between my husband and I and I do not like that woman.”

  They talked a bit more. Nothing much came out of it. As they were discussing Doug, the tow truck arrived.

  Jerry Alexander thought of one more thing. He pulled Lutz off to the side.

  “What is it?” the sheriff asked.

  “Well, I know Doug, Sheriff. And Doug would never have left his house and let his birds die—this is really serious.”

  “Thanks,” Lutz said.

  9.

  After that first date, which ended in the park with Tracy and Doug sharing their life stories, Tracy later said, “We became inseparable.” As Tracy got to know her new man more personally, she added, Doug revealed the secrets of his life. For one, he’d suffered from a drug and alcohol problem, Tracy alleged, but had since went to war with those demons and won. Doug was clean now. Sober, enjoying his new life.

  The underlying substance abuse, however, was only part of a larger problem. According to Tracy, Doug also struggled with “anger issues,” which she called “just a dreadful mix. Not to mention the steroid use, which caused a great deal of frustration and irritability,” more commonly known as “ ’Roid Rage.”

  Tracy said Doug had been through tough times in life. During his younger days, he had unresolved issues of which he had no outlet to channel, which ultimately led him into a line of work he wasn’t proud of later on.

  “He was an angry person and wanted to take it out on others,” Tracy told me. “So it was his work as an enforcer for a local drug dealer known as (Painkiller, a pseudonym) that gave him the reason he was looking for to beat up someone or break a bone or two. He also worked as a bouncer in the local strip bars, which also gave him an excuse to do the same. He went to work hoping a fight would break out. Doug enjoyed inflicting pain on his adversaries. He was making up for all those times he had been bullied as a boy.”

  Doug had a habit, Tracy said, of sitting in public places with his back to the wall, facing the entrance and/or exits.

  “As a police officer, I know why I do it,” Tracy told her man after the first few times Doug sat like this and she noticed. “But why do you do it, Doug?”

  “You never know who is out to get you,” he said. “I have a lot of enemies.”

  As their relationship continued into 2000, Tracy and Doug routinely lifted weights together. Whenever they weren’t working their jobs, they spent time together. Doug opened up even more.

  Apparently, Doug had not only worked for Painkiller, but also wound up becoming an influential force in helping to convict the guy in the years after he got off Painkiller’s payroll. Which, as one might imagine, caused Doug some problems on the street.

  “I helped put (Painkiller) in prison,” Doug explained to Tracy one night. “He will kill me when he gets out.”

  Isn’t that good enough reason by itself, Tracy wondered, to keep your back to the wall and watch the door?

  Certainly is.

  “Doug also told me he had been responsible for cleaning up the Madison County Sheriff’s Department and he had lots of friends there he helped out. He also allowed them to use his property to set up surveillance on a nearby meth house. According to Doug,” Tracy concluded, “he was a C.I.”

  Confidential informant.

  All reasons—err, motives—Tracy insisted, without coming out and saying as much, for someone maybe wanting to kill Doug.

  At this time, Tracy worked a 12-hour shift at the sheriff’s department, 7 to 7. When she got out of work, Doug was there, waiting to take Tracy and her daughter, Elise, out to dinner or just hang out. It seemed to Tracy, as their relationship blossomed into a serious affair throughout the winter of 2000, that Doug’s past was behind him. He was a working man now. A welder. Owned his own business. He lifted weights and still took steroids, according to Tracy, but he was out of all the nonsense associated with being a tough guy, drug dealer’s enforcer and C.I.

  Tracy and Doug yearned for a more peaceful, predictable, routine life. Work, dinner, weekend getaways, birthdays and holidays with family and friends. Settle down. Maybe even live together someday.

  “As a matter of fact, Doug didn’t know that I could cook for the first two months of our relationship. On my days off, he took us out to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. My truck didn’t move from its parking spot in my yard for almost as long. I never had to drive anywhere because Doug was always willing to take me wherever I needed to go.”

  One day, Tracy and Doug got to talking about hobbies. How each passed the time when not working. Tracy told her lover she adored hunting, fishing, horseback riding and weightlifting, of course—but also, as a kid, Tracy was totally taken in by riding motorcycles.

  Tracy had begun riding a steel horse at 6 years old, the same age she started riding a real horse.

  “I had my first motorcycle before I got my first horse.”

  Tracy was fascinated with Harley-Davidson motorcycles. She told Doug one day she’d always d
reamed of owning a chopper.

  Well, when Doug found out, he explained that he had a Harley, but had loaned it to a friend after the friend had expressed interest in buying it.

  “Oh, no, Doug,” Tracy said, “don’t you sell it.”

  Doug got the bike back soon after.

  Doug then went out and bought himself a Fatboy Harley and gifted his other bike to Tracy. Now they could ride together. Two lovers, on bikes, chugging around town.

  Tracy was living the dream.

  Here it was, not five months before Doug Benton would turn up missing, and Tracy and Doug were in love, riding, lifting weights side-by-side, dining out with her daughter and taking walks in the park hand-in-hand. It seemed as if they’d carved out a piece of life’s bliss. Doug had been married and divorced twice. Tracy had come from a few tumultuous relationships and marriages herself. Neither had given up on romance, Tracy said, and they’d finally found it again: a second chance at love.

  10.

  Amory “Buck” Scoggins, an investigator with the MCSD, had been involved on the fringes of the Doug Benton missing person case as Sheriff Lutz made strides in gathering information over that weekend Doug went missing. Now with Doug’s truck sitting for two weeks or so at a friend’s house, a note left on the window, Doug nowhere in sight, Scoggins was interested in the case as he walked into the office on Sunday morning, June 18, 2000, for his weekend shift. The plan was for the MCSD to dig in heel-deep, call some of those people back they’d already had spoken to. These types of investigations, in the early stages, relied on having conversations with people the person knew.

  One was Jeff Bennett. Scoggins got hold Jeff first thing Sunday morning, after picking up the case from where Lutz left off.

  Agreeing to come back into the station, Jeff Bennett said that after leaving the MCSD the previous day, having come in to speak with Lutz, he thought of something that might be relevant.