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

by M. William Phelps

  When they were out there on June 17, Scoggins had noticed a water hose lying on the ground. It had been left on, trickling and leaking water out of the nozzle.

  Which, unbeknownst to them, was so Doug could provide water to his birds. Not necessarily, as a general opinion would later become, mix concrete.

  When they arrived on June 20 and stood on Doug’s wooden deck, Scoggins said, they had a good overall view of the yard from a slightly elevated viewpoint. Any cop worth his weight begins an investigation of a potential crime scene the moment he steps out of his vehicle. Looking around the yard from the deck, the three of them noticed impressions near a few bushes on the side of the deck. And that water hose (left on three days before) had been turned off.

  “It appears that a vehicle of some type has been here,” Scoggins said.

  Smith and Williams agreed. You look down from the deck, there were faint tire impressions in the grass and the bushes had been crunched and pushed in where the vehicle had, they theorized, probably backed up to the deck.

  “There was one limb broken off of a bush,” Scoggins explained later, “… and an indentation … where the bush was broken right at the deck.”

  Interesting. Why would a vehicle back up to Doug’s deck? Especially while he had been, presumably by then, dead? After all, Scoggins never reported seeing the indentation or broken branches when he and Doug’s neighbor were out there poking around days ago.

  The three investigators walked into Doug’s home.

  By this time, GBI special agent and crime scene specialist Terry Cooper had arrived. The feeling was that something had taken place here. Cooper was going to go through the home, inch by inch, inside and out, to see if there were any indication as to what might have happened to Doug Benton—and one better, who might have been responsible.

  Cooper walked up and asked the three men if they had touched anything. Had they noticed anything out of the ordinary?

  They had done nothing more than wait, walk in, take a cursory look around and call in the CSS. They had to go in, of course, and determine if the home was safe for a CSS investigation. But beyond that hasty, superficial walk-through, they hadn’t touched anything. Several things looked out of whack, however, right from the get-go. The most distinguishable being the smell as soon as Scoggins, Williams and Smith entered Doug’s house.

  Fuel. Kerosene, diesel or gasoline. It was potent. Ubiquitous. Heavy. Thick in the air, like humidity.

  “Damn,” someone said.

  Not only that, but Scoggins mentioned something significant: he had not recognized the smell as having been in the home three days prior, which could only mean somebody had come into the house within that three-day span.

  Cooper took a walk around. He needed to find the source of the smell, which could pose a great danger just being in the house. As he entered the living room, immediately Cooper noticed a “discoloration” on what was a horseshoe-shaped couch. It was pink in color and that specific area of the couch cushion appeared to be more worn than anywhere else, as if it had been scrubbed.

  Latex gloves snapped on, Cooper walked over to the couch and went in for a closer look.

  Immediately, he noticed the discoloration was, in fact, where someone had rubbed and tried to clean the couch, wearing down the fabric. Then, near the armrest portion of the couch, in back of it on the carpet, lay a candle. Burned down to a green nub, with a “small scorch mark on the arm of the couch.” To the right side of the couch lay a second candle, this one inside “a little flat holder,” completely burned down.

  Not something you see every day.

  Cooper stepped back and, before doing anything else, photographed all of it. Then he bagged and tagged the candle, or, rather, what was left of it, literally having to cut it out of the carpet.

  Next, Cooper took a knife and carefully sliced open a section of the couch where he’d spotted the discoloration. He needed to see inside the cushion. Maybe there was a clue behind the idea of someone vigorously scrubbing a couch.

  Inside the cushion, Cooper spotted a “reddish brown stain.”

  He knew that stain. Had seen it before.

  Blood.

  CSS Cooper then took out his phenolphthalein test kit—a “PT kit” checks for presumptive blood—and extracted a sample of the partially dried material, just to prove his hunch.

  Indeed. A bloodstain.

  Whoever had scrubbed the couch was trying to get rid of the blood.

  After inspecting the entire couch, finding various areas saturated with blood—mainly confined to one end, Cooper had the couch moved out of his way. He wanted to get underneath the couch and see what secrets the carpet directly below might give up.

  He bent over, cut a section of the carpeting and peeled it back.

  More reddish-brown stains.

  Lots of blood.

  It was clear the blood had originated from the couch, by the armrest and to the right of it. A stream of blood had run down in between the cushion and the armrest, through the bottom of the couch and into the carpet, flowing through the carpet fibers and soaking into the padding. This could only mean one thing: a lot of blood had been spilled here. Someone cutting his or her finger, for example, would not produce as much blood as to drain through the couch cushion and into the carpet fibers and padding.

  Doug was murdered right here.

  Everyone worked under this theory.

  Cooper studied the couch. It appeared that someone—presumably Doug—was lying on the couch, his head against the armrest. The injuries must have been traumatic—a massive head injury of some sort, Cooper surmised. The head bleeds profusely, much more than most other sections of the body.

  Analyzing the situation, Cooper assumed that the person whose head had made the injury—considering the massive cleanup that took place after blood was present—had to have been there, on the couch, “Anywhere from [a few] hours to a couple of days.” More than that, the blood had dried. So it was also some time since the incident that had caused the injury had occurred.

  Cooper noticed something else when he peeled the carpet back: a far more profound aroma of kerosene.

  He followed it.

  “It started underneath where the couch was located and it comes across the floor toward the location of the wood-burning heater,” Cooper later said.

  A scenario was taking shape. Someone, no doubt Doug’s killer, had murdered him on the couch where he was, likely, asleep. Then tried to clean up the mess. Not having much luck, Doug’s killer perhaps poured kerosene over the couch and the carpet, leaving a trail toward the wood-burning heater. Then he or she placed a candle on the carpet near the couch and lit it, hoping when the candle burned down and the flame ignited the kerosene, the entire house would go up in flames.

  Only problem was the candle had burned out and failed to light the place on fire—leaving behind all of the forensic evidence CSS Cooper was uncovering and collecting.

  So much accelerant had been poured over the inside of Doug’s residence (actually a modular home, or double-wide trailer, he had put several additions on) that Cooper’s latex gloves were wet from cutting and lifting the saturated carpet off the floor.

  It had definitely not been there three days ago, either.

  Looking around the dining area of the trailer, Cooper found something else. In the hallway leading to a bedroom was a “built-in type (set of) cabinets,” Cooper called them. There were two cords inside one cabinet, an electrical and a white cord of some sort. But that wasn’t what caught the CSS’s attention, however; it was a stain on the doorknob.

  Cooper popped off several more photographs and took a closer look at the stain.

  Blood.

  As he studied it, Cooper noticed different shaped “ridges” and curves, much like a fingerprint. Before Cooper swabbed the stain to preserve it, he lifted an impression, in case it could be later used to compare against other fingerprints, either found inside the trailer or elsewhere.

  Taking the impression,
however, Cooper realized there was no way a print was coming from it. Whoever had left the impression had worn, by Cooper’s estimation, latex or rubber gloves. Now that he had a better look at it, he could see the impression was smooth, with no ridges.

  Still, the stain told the CSS something about the crime scene. Whoever had come into Doug’s house and murdered him, scrubbing the couch, cleaning up, trying to light it on fire, it seemed that same person (or persons) had done a careful job of trying to hide his or her identity—along with trying to cover up the murder scene.

  21.

  Carol Benton arrived in town to the news that her firstborn son had been murdered. It was devastating to hear, of course. Carol and Doug had been close. Even though she had moved north to Lansing, Michigan, Doug stayed in touch and visited Carol and his brother when he could. A Christmas baby, born on Dec. 25, Doug would have turned 39 that year. Carol was thinking about this as she pulled into the parking lot of the OCSD.

  In a letter to the governor of Georgia six years after Doug’s murder, Carol wrote that her son, for reasons neither she nor her late husband could fathom, “Was an alcoholic and drug user for many years.” Distancing herself from her son’s issues, Carol added how Doug, by her estimation, had been “brought up right and didn’t learn his bad habits from us.”

  Still, that was the “Douglas” of yesteryear, Carol continued. Because, as his friend Jerry Alexander had told police already, Carol reiterated: “In 1992, Douglas became a Christian and turned his life over to Christ. At that time, I believe he experienced a miracle cure of all his addictions. I know for sure he never used addictive drugs or alcohol after that.”

  Carol was proud of her son. Beating an addiction was no easy task. Then again, Doug had always been a doer. He set his mind to something, he completed the job. Whatever it was.

  As she began to consider the loss of her son, Carol talked about a moment years before Doug’s murder when he experienced some sort of portend.

  It was 1996. Carol and Doug’s dad were at home. A package arrived.

  “What’s that?” Carol asked.

  “Let’s open it and find out.”

  It was from Doug. A videotape. Carol popped it into the VCR. A message from their son. How nice. How special. How personal.

  Doug stared down the barrel of the camera and began talking: “God doesn’t promise us tomorrow,” Doug had said on that video, “and all that any of us has is … right now.”

  Thinking about this taped message later, Carol reflected that she believed Doug “had made a strange statement about his possible early death.” Almost like he had a feeling he would not live a long life. It was two years later, in 1998, when Doug’s father passed. Death seemed to be on Doug’s mind. For Carol, when she looked back, she saw a different scenario.

  “Doug never mentioned to either of us that he was involved in any undercover work fighting drugs. I found this out after his death and (it) may explain the strange video from all those years before.”

  What was Carol talking about? That the things Doug had been involved in scared him so much and were so serious that Doug thought he might be one day killed over it all?

  Carol believed Doug had kept this from his parents so as not to worry them.

  “He may have been very ashamed of his association and knowledge of the drug world in a three-county area, but was using this to help the FBI.”

  Was Doug Benton a confidential informant for law enforcement?

  22.

  Back inside Doug’s Trailer, something interesting was taking place. GBI special agent Ben Williams, along with two colleagues, searched Doug’s house after the crime scene team finished collecting fingerprint and blood evidence, fibers and candle fragments, along with other items they deemed important in the search for Doug’s killer. GBI had just inventoried a curtain sash—the curtain itself missing—and some papers titled “To Whom It May Concern,” along with a Remington Speed master rifle, Model 552, and a piece of paper with 35 names on it.

  “What do you suppose that list is?” one of investigators wondered.

  “Not sure,” another responded.

  Far as they could tell, all of the names on the list were male.

  23.

  Things were starting to look suspicious to me,” Tracy said later in a letter to the media explaining what was going on in her mind at this time of the investigation, oddly adding next, “and I was definitely upset over Doug’s disappearance.”

  Tracy had been staying at her mother’s house with her daughter, Elise. She received a call from her cousin, Cindy Farmer (a pseudonym), while there during the time the investigation into Doug’s murder was pumping full steam ahead.

  “They found Doug’s body in a lake at Roddy’s (that farm) and they think you did it,” Tracy later said her cousin told her over the phone.

  “I felt a roaring in my ears and I could not speak,” Tracy recalled feeling in that moment.

  How could they think she’d had anything to do with Doug’s disappearance or his death? Where was this accusation coming from? It seemed too early to even make a statement like that.

  “Someone I know at the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Office called me and told me,” Cindy said.

  “It was then,” Tracy concluded here, “that I realized just how serious things had gotten.”

  Tracy had a relative who worked for a lawyer out of Athens. Tom Camp was a seasoned criminal defense attorney. Maybe it was time to make a call and lawyer up, just in case.

  “My family rallied around me and we retained Tom right then,” Tracy said. “I knew what was coming at me: a runaway freight train.”

  24.

  CSS Terry Cooper made a significant find on Doug’s truck when he analyzed it inside Tommy James’s wrecker lot. Cooper photographed the entire truck before touching anything. Then, as the CSS began searching for evidence, one of the first things he noticed was a piece of tape used to attach the note that Doug supposedly had left on the driver’s side window. But it wasn’t just any piece of tape.

  Before analyzing the tape, however, Cooper read the note. In almost grammar-school-like handwriting, messy and scribbled, perhaps made by a child just learning to write (or even made to appear that way), the note said:

  Please take care of my truck for me(.) I have to leve (sic) town for awile (sic)(.) I know I can trust you. I will call you when I can(.) Don’t say anything to anybody. Thanks(,) Doug. Don’t try to call me. I will call you. Hide my truck if you can.

  Cooper was more interested in the tape, which he photographed. It was not your run-of-the-mill Scotch tape we all use to wrap gifts—but a very specific type of tape Cooper immediately recognized.

  He slowly peeled it off the glass. When he realized what kind of tape it was, Cooper stopped. An idea struck him. So he walked around the garage where the truck had been parked.

  “Has anyone else processed this truck?” Cooper asked. He was confused. The tape had momentarily thrown him off.

  “No,” he heard over and over.

  It might have seemed like a bizarre question. But there was no good reason for a CSS to reprocess a scene a colleague had already completed, Cooper explained later.

  What had made him think the truck had already been processed?

  It was “fingerprint lifting tape.” Whoever had attached that note to Doug’s truck had the same tape a CSS might use to lift fingerprints from windows, doors, knobs and any other surface or object. Who would have access to such tape? If Doug had attached the note, why would he use fingerprint tape?

  Cooper seized the tape. He then had a good look at it and dipped a sample into Crystal Violent, a chemical solution that reveals fingerprint impressions on the sticky side of tape or any adhesive material.

  He found nothing more than a flat outline of possibly a finger.

  Cooper took the tape and poured magnetic powder on the smooth side of it. Maybe he could get an impression there?

  Both areas provided “smooth impressions.”
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  Gloves again.

  Why would Doug Benton wear latex gloves and use fingerprint tape to secure a note to his truck?

  None of this made sense.

  Cooper took Doug’s note and applied a purplish colored chemical called n-hydrine, mainly used on porous objects, to check for prints on the note itself. Paper absorbs moisture and amino acids. This chemical extracts the impression, lifting it from the surface.

  After applying the solution, Cooper found nothing.

  25.

  Attorney Tom Camp Called Tracy at her mother’s house. In her letter to the media later on, Tracy had the date wrong, but the phone call had to have taken place somewhere around June 20 or 21, Tuesday or Wednesday of that same week Doug’s body was found.

  “Madison County has a warrant for your arrest,” Tracy claimed Tom Camp told her. “You need to meet me at the Sheriff’s Office to turn yourself in.”That was quick. Within hours of Doug’s body being found encased in concrete and an investigation going on as fluid as the Mississippi River—evidence being collected, tests being conducted and a murder weapon not yet determined or found—Tracy Fortson was arrested for Doug Benton’s murder. It screamed of cops putting on blinders and focusing the investigation on one suspect, rather than allowing the evidence to direct them to a person. Why make haste of an arrest? If Tracy were the top suspect, where was she going, and why wouldn’t you want to question her more—without the scar of a warrant hanging over the interview?

  According to Tracy, after she hung up with Tom Camp and realized she was going to have to go down to the sheriff’s department, she took a deep breath and thought about the days ahead. Her family was looking at her “longingly,” she remembered, as she hung up the phone and collapsed into a nearby kitchen chair.