An intense smell: putrid and potent.
Death.
This, mind you, in an area of the farm where you’d think the skunk cabbage—or maybe all of the horse and cow shit and a few dead raccoons and squirrels—would overpower any other aroma you might encounter.
But not on this day.
“What is it?” Rob said aloud, more to himself than his wife.
Rob’s responsibilities on the Stephens, Georgia, farm he supervised ran the gamut. With a large herd of beef cattle, he was forever cruising the terrain, looking out for predators and problems. Spending his days and even sometimes nights roaming, plus living on the farm with his wife and daughter, Rob knew every one of the 1,000 acres—along with an additional 500 more the land owner rented out to farmers and ranchers.
“We kind of have a game preserve, too,” Rob said later, “where people do a lot of hunting and whatnot.”
So, outsiders, friends of the owner and others were familiar with the land (a fact you should store somewhere in your brain, because within the scope of Doug Benton’s disappearance, that information will become important soon enough).
It was one of those daily life contingencies we deal with placing Rob and his wife on an ATV, four-wheeling over a stretch of terrain in the back part of the farm Rob would have otherwise not had reason to tend to. His daughter had been riding an ATV the previous day, Saturday. The bike got a flat. Rob had gone out to this section of the farm to find the bike and fix the tire. It is a piece of property, Rob said in court, that he normally never “went to,” adding, “It was after turkey season, before deer season, so unless we just have a purpose to go back there, we normally don’t go back there at this time of the year.”
After fixing the flat, Rob headed through what he described as “the last cattle pasture … across the last cattle guard.” This area was a quarter-mile or so down and over that slight hill he’d come upon before seeing the object, sticking out just above the soil line, a death-like smell permeating the area around it.
So now, here Rob stood over it, looking down and wondering what in the name of Georgia peaches is this thing doing in the field.
17.
Standing by the object, Rob’s wife in back of him, that atrocious smell overcoming both of them, “A cattle trough?” Rob asked aloud, figuring out what it was.
Strange.
It made no sense for a cattle trough to be this far out, in the middle of nowhere, sort of hidden and partially buried.
Rob took a closer look.
The trough was full of something.
Stepping back, he thought the resemblance to a coffin was unmistakable.
Holding his breath, wondering what was causing the smell, Rob bent down. His first thought was maybe someone had filled the trough with garbage, drove it out here away from everything and tossed it. People could be ignorant of the land and dump whatever the hell they felt like: tires, mattresses, busted-up concrete and everyday garbage. But this trough, Rob realized, was brand new. Not only that, but somebody had crudely painted the outside of it in what they’d hoped to look like camouflage.
Rob tried to move it.
Thing wouldn’t budge.
“I better take some pictures of it,” Rob said to his wife. “Then head back and get the tractor and get it out of here.”
An hour later, Rob was back at it with his tractor. He hoisted the trough out of the ground. It had been buried only several inches, not entirely; one end of it actually was a bit deeper into the ground than the other. It appeared to be filled with fresh, hardened concrete. Newly painted on the outside was that rudimentary camouflage mish-mash of colors, spotted greens and browns and blacks. It was covered on the top with fresh soil—definitely not dirt from anywhere on the farm.
Looking closer, Rob said, “That’s peat moss.” The same stuff you’d sprinkle on a lawn or garden from a bag bought at the Home Depot or feed store.
The trough now sitting on top of the ground, Rob and his wife tried to flip it over.
Not a chance. Thing was as heavy as five tombstones.
Rob stared at it. He had a funny feeling.
Something was wrong.
Yes, very, very wrong.
“I better go back and call the sheriff,” Rob said.
Rob’s gut was talking to him.
The June heat was unbearable. Beating down on the dry land, the knee-high grass all around them. It was getting late. The sun just now doing its little amber twilight dance before hiding behind the horizon until the following morning.
OCSD Sheriff Mike Smith drove out to the farm after Rob called it in. With him was an investigator from the GBI, Special Agent Ben Williams, who had just happened to be at the office when Rob’s call came in. Smith never mentioned why he brought Williams along.
Using the tractor, Rob Poston and Mike Smith managed to flip the trough on its side, while Ben Williams looked on.
The sheriff had a small chisel and screwdriver. Before he began, Smith made several notes about the trough: “It was covered with some kind of black material and looked like it was encased with cement and had a foul odor coming from it.”
The more he thought about it, Smith decided to see if Rob, using the forks on the front of his tractor, could pick the trough up off the ground and drop it, cracking it open.
Didn’t work.
“There was a lot of black stuff,” Rob said later. “It wasn’t completely filled. And it had been drained.”
With the smell, the size of the trough and now a black, muddy liquid draining from it, the sheriff, special agent and Rob looked at each other and realized there probably wasn’t an animal buried in that concrete. So Smith decided he’d better call in EMS, adding, “I’m going to call out the coroner, too.”
Just in case.
18.
Although they were “in back” of the farm, far away from most of the farming equipment and active farmland, this “cow part of the farm,” as Rob later referred to it, was easily accessible from the main road. It was considered the “preserve” section of the farm, which one could access though a dirt road connected to the main street. A car or truck could turn off the main road and jump onto this access—or dirt—road and make its way out to where the cement-filled trough had been found—that is, if the driver could get through the locked gate or knew of another way onto the land.
This was a section of the farm the owner, Rodney Sturdivant, allowed friends and others to hunt. In fact, Tracy Fortson, considered by some to be an “expert hunter” who had “bagged several trophy deer” and even a wild turkey on this very spot of land, was someone Sturdivant had hunted with on occasion out here.
What about admittance to the area? GBI SA Ben Williams and OCSD Sheriff Mike Smith wondered as they waited for the coroner and EMS personnel to arrive.
The dirt road passed by “175 feet or so from where the container was found,” Rob Poston explained.
There were two gates to get into the property near this same section of the farm. Rob had taken a ride over to both while law enforcement checked out the trough and, sure enough, one of the gates had been busted open.
The coroner and EMS arrived on scene, where Rob, Sheriff Smith and Agent Williams waited. The thought was that whatever they were about to uncover inside the trough, encased in fresh concrete, was going to require the services of a medical examiner. Smith had experience with the odor coming from the trough, as did Williams.
It smelled like the morgue. Using his chisel and screwdriver, after several tries, Smith created a crack in the concrete and stepped back as a putrid, multi-colored liquid pissed out.
Which was when the sheriff saw something.
An arm.
My God.
Staring at the arm, Smith later said, he had a “good idea” who the dead man encased in concrete was.
He knew that arm.
“I have seen it before,” Smith commented, referring to the tattoo of a single rose visible on the arm.
Incredibly
, it wasn’t that Smith had recognized the victim as someone he knew personally, but he’d seen the guy on several occasions. Same as many of the other investigators and deputies and sheriffs.
“At the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Department.”
Smith knew his name: Doug Benton.
Then it all came together.
“Ain’t there some missing person’s report out on Doug Benton?” Smith asked Williams.
They needed to call it in and find out.
And so, as investigators got together to confirm the man buried in the concrete was, in fact, Doug Benton, it appeared Doug had not run away, after all. Nor had he gone into the woods to kill himself. But somebody had murdered the guy and buried him in a horse trough, covering Doug’s corpse with concrete.
19.
Gbi agent ben williams, Mike Smith and several other investigators were back at the OCSD brainstorming where to take the investigation next. They’d want an absolute confirmation, but by all accounts, the dead man in the concrete was Doug Benton. Smith had been told Doug’s mother and brother were on their way south and would be in town soon. By then, they’d have Doug’s body out of the trough and a positive ID could be made. Until that time, they were going under the assumption that Doug had been murdered and encased in concrete. Probably, the thought was, on or near June 4, 5 or 6, the last time anyone had reportedly seen or heard from him.
Before heading back to the sheriff’s department, Smith and Williams stopped at Jerry Alexander’s house. It was close to 6 o’clock on that same evening Doug’s body had been found. Being a Monday, Jerry had just gotten home from work as they pulled in.
They asked Jerry if he would mind following them down to the OCSD so they could have a chat.
“What’s going on?” Jerry wondered. They could tell he sensed something was up.
Once they were at the OCSD, Smith sat down with Jerry. Other investigators were present.
“Doug’s dead,” Smith told Jerry. Doug wasn’t missing. They’d found his remains.
“What?”
Smith didn’t say how, where or what they found, but indicated that Doug’s body had been recovered. It wasn’t a suicide, either, as Jerry had thought.
Jerry “became emotional,” Smith’s report said.
After Jerry had some time to collect himself, he started talking about Tracy. Here was one of Doug’s besties painting an interesting picture of Doug and Tracy’s relationship, in the scope of what they had uncovered. Later, when recalling this interview in court, Jerry said he hadn’t planned on pointing a finger at Tracy as a potential suspect in Doug’s murder. But the thought was the first thing that came into his mind.
What spawned this sudden interest in Tracy?
“The only reason … was that me and Jeff (Bennett) were the only ones that showed up Sunday”—which would have been the day before the police interview—“to go looking for Doug,” Jerry had said in court.
This seemed odd to Doug’s friend.
Jerry had made several calls after the sheriff and deputies were over to his house on that Saturday to impound Doug’s truck and take the note. He firmly believed Doug had gone out into the woods and killed himself. He spoke to a few friends, a local sheriff he knew, and decided to get a group together and search the woods. One of the men Jerry got hold of wound up calling Tracy. But it seemed to him that she didn’t care. Or, rather, she didn’t see an urgent need to go out looking. Tracy never showed up to help—even though, according to the friend who had called her, she said she would.
“I talked to (a deputy I knew),” Jerry explained. “And he said Tracy was supposed to come and help us look. But she never showed up. That is the only reason it gave me suspicion.”
Mike Smith asked Jerry about Doug and Tracy’s relationship. Could he add anything? The pendulum, it seemed, was doubling back toward Tracy, law enforcement leaning in a direction of Tracy perhaps wanting Doug out of the picture. Tracy would later contend this focus on her as a suspect came out of left field. Why would law enforcement accuse her so quickly?
When you look at what investigators were being told, the urge is always to follow the evidence. How could they not begin to think Tracy might have had something to do with Doug’s murder? If nothing more, they needed to run it down, separate truth from rumor. Eight out of 10 people murdered are killed by someone they knew. The odds were, Doug knew his murderer.
Jerry had plenty to say in regard to Tracy. He called Doug and Tracy’s arguments “huge” spectacles. He said Doug had told him about a time when Tracy took a gun to herself and then pointed it at Doug.
“I told Doug on many occasions,” Jerry added through tears, “that he needed to leave Tracy alone and get away from her.”
Jerry then talked about how Jeff Bennett once told him Tracy hit her ex-husband with a pipe. Yet, in the same breath, Jerry also brought Ray Sanders, the sheriff, into the conversation, adding, “Doug told me he was going to get Ray Sanders because Ray ran his mouth. … Doug really needed someone to talk to.”
Smith asked about Tracy, specifically. Her demeanor around Doug. Her overall character.
“She’s really insecure,” Jerry said. Then he mentioned how Tracy had called the house one night and spoke to his wife. Jerry’s wife had been the one to explain to Tracy that Doug’s truck had been parked at the house since early June.
“I remember Tracy once coming over the house and telling my wife I didn’t want her in the house and she told me that I should leave my wife alone because all she wanted was money. She caused a lot of marital problems for me.”
They discussed the past few days. Went over information the sheriff’s office had collected and some of what GBI SA Williams had just learned. For one, the magnetic sign on Doug’s truck—his business name and number—had been taken off the side doors. This felt odd. Also, the seat inside Doug’s truck had been pushed back farther than its normal position for Doug to drive.
“Doug had gotten Tracy to file the sexual harassment (suit) against Ray Sanders because of something that had happened a long time ago,” Jerry said.
Williams wrote as Jerry spoke, detailing this conversation in several reports.
“Chuck Haster,” Jerry said, “he is someone you need to talk to.” Chuck (a pseudonym) was a guy Tracy had once lived with. Jerry knew him. “Tracy pulled a gun on him when she used to live with him. He has not seen her in a long time, but might have something for you.”
Later that same day, SA Williams got hold of Jeff Bennett and explained Doug was dead. It wasn’t a suicide, Jeff was told.
Silence. Jeff said nothing for a few moments.
Then, “Tracy had something to do with (it),” Jeff Bennett blurted out.
20.
The next morning, Tuesday, June 20, a multi-agency team secured the proper paperwork and gathered to head out and search Doug’s house. There was a second crime scene somewhere. Doug obviously was not murdered on the grounds of that cattle ranch. Early word coming from the medical examiner’s office was that Doug had been shot and, possibly, stabbed. The autopsy was going to take some extra time due to, mainly, the fact that Doug’s body had been encased in concrete.
MCSD investigator Amory Scoggins was part of the team headed over to Doug’s. Scoggins had gone into Doug’s house on June 17, the day Doug had been reported missing by his neighbor, Larry Bridges. When Scoggins went in that first time, there were several “things,” he later referred to them, that felt “unusual” as he walked through Doug’s home.
“As far as entering the residence,” Scoggins said of that earlier search on June 17, “nothing I guess you would say that would catch your nose. It looked like just a general residence.” However, there was an odd piece of equipment that stood out to the investigator as he made his way through: a blower inside the house. “I don’t know if the air conditioner was frozen up or what, but there was a blower at that particular time, which was circulating the air.” Scoggins thought perhaps there was some sort of raunchy smell
Doug had been trying to get rid of, adding, “But as far as any overt odors, I did not smell any.”
Still, it seemed strange—save for maybe a flood of some sort, which there clearly hadn’t been—for a blower to be left on inside the house of a man who had not been home for, all indicators pointed, about two weeks.
Walking in on June 20, three days later, there was a different feel—and an entirely different smell—to Doug’s house. By now, the team knew Doug had been murdered. Here, they were looking to see if that crime had taken place inside his house and what, if any, evidence might have been left behind. Suddenly, with the discovery of his body and a period of time in between law enforcement visits, that blower Scoggins noticed several days before took on new significance.
“Our scope of looking for a missing person is a little bit different than after you have a homicide investigation started,” Scoggins noted.
Alongside Scoggins were SA Ben Williams and OCSD deputy Mike Smith. Each jurisdiction, each law enforcement agency, was properly represented.
There had been some confusion about which side of the house was the back and which might be the front. There was a wooden deck—a “platform,” Scoggins called it—built on what they soon figured out was the front entrance to the home. They called this the main entryway. Doug lived in a mobile/modular home and there were two ways he could enter, both of which could be considered a front door.
TARGETED: A Deputy, Her Love Affairs, A Brutal Murder Page 6