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

by M. William Phelps

  They discussed the tractor and its pointed implements.

  Where the “container” was located.

  How Rob Poston “poked some holes in the container” with the forks of his tractor and how, when he did it the first time, “a bunch of fluid of liquid ran out of it,” Camp said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And smelled pretty bad, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, very bad.”

  “And that smell was pretty consistent with the smell of a decaying body?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Camp brought in SA Terry Cooper, the GBI’s crime scene specialist Smith had worked with in the past.

  “And you and Mr. (Ben) Williams, you all just didn’t think about calling Mr. Cooper out there to the crime scene, did you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Camp spoke of how they all stood around and “tore up” the container without a crime scene specialist on site and Smith responded by saying, “they did,” meaning the GBI and Rob Poston.

  Smartly, Camp had Smith establish how Doug’s body was “face up” inside the container, which put his buttocks and midsection, where the wounds were ultimately found, on the bottom of the container, the same place Poston had poked at it with those forks.

  Even more interesting was a fact that had not been known until Smith talked about it: How they actually pulled Doug’s entire body out of the container out at the farm.

  “Did Mr. Williams have a camera with him on that day?”

  “I don’t think so. No, sir.”

  “You don’t ever recall Terry Cooper, the crime scene specialist, coming down there on that day prior to the container being hauled off?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Tom Camp paused. Gave Smith a quizzical look. A gaze, really, as if to say: Come on!

  Then, without anything further, Camp said he had no more questions.

  The judge recessed court for the day.

  40.

  The crime scene where Doug’s body had been recovered was an important point of contention within the scope of my conversations with Tracy Fortson. She had a lot to say about it. And to be honest, much of what she says about this particular portion of her case makes perfect sense. What’s more, Tracy has a tremendous amount of respect for Terry Cooper, having worked with the guy on a number of occasions.

  Tracy mentioned to me how, for example, “Oglethorpe County is full of old dirt roads that go for miles. A person can travel from one county to another and never touch asphalt. There are places where bridges do not exist, where creeks run across the road, always have. There are old rock quarries where companies have mined granite (before abandoning) the areas, leaving what looks like a bottomless pit full of water. Bodies have been recovered from such places as well as stolen cars.”

  There was one call, Tracy remembered, when a body was reported being found in a ditch.

  “This call got everyone’s attention.”

  They drove out to it: Sheriff Ray Sanders, investigators Mike Smith and Rollins Skelton and the Chief Deputy, Billy Melton, along with Tracy. Arriving at the scene, they noticed the body of a black male lying face up in the ditch. It appeared to everyone that the guy had been tossed out of a vehicle.

  So they secured the scene. As they did that, GBI crime scene specialist Terry Cooper was contacted.

  “I remembered Agent Cooper from the Police Academy,” Tracy explained. “He had taught a class on crime scene investigation while I was there.”

  Here she was, however, at this scene, now prepared to put that training into action.

  After waiting for what amounted to four hours for Agent Cooper to arrive, they “got down to business, literally,” in Tracy’s words. “We went into the ditch, up close and personal with this body that had been in this ditch for what looked to be at least 48 hours.”

  Decomposition had set in. The guy’s skin had leathered over from the elements and the insects had gone to work on him.

  “Most everyone was putting Vicks VapoRub under their nose, but I had been taught that doing that would cause your brain to associate the Vicks with the smell of human decomposition, so anytime you smelled Vicks, you would automatically smell human decomposition and I didn’t intend to have that odor association.”

  Working with Agent Cooper was the highlight of Tracy’s day, she said. Although it had been under tragic circumstances, “Working side by side with someone who was considered an expert in his field was exciting to me.”

  Her point was that policy and procedure, in that circumstance, had been dictated by the crime scene they had come upon. As a sheriff, one would evaluate. If there were any question or even a slight chance a homicide had occurred, one would call in law enforcement specialists before touching anything.

  “Although I will never forget the experience of working side by side with Agent Cooper on a murder case that day, never, in my wildest nightmares, would I have thought two years later Agent Cooper would be investigating … a murder where I was the accused.”

  I asked Tracy specifically about SA Ben Williams and Mike Smith being out at the scene that day on the farm. What she thought they might have done wrong. How the process they followed might have had a detrimental effect on her case later on.

  Tracy had a strong opinion about this. Speaking specifically about a search warrant associated with her case filed by SA Ben Williams, Tracy said: “SA Ben Williams just happened to be at the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s … at 3:45 p.m. when the call came in from (Rob) Poston? Then responded to the scene?”

  I don’t have a problem with an SA hanging around a local sheriff’s department talking to the cops he works with. Plus, Williams had been working on a case nearby and had stopped in. This is not unusual.

  “Williams and Smith attempted to remove the contents by the use of a tractor,” Tracy continued. “Why a tractor? Then a hammer and screwdriver were used to remove the bottom of the container, revealing a human body identified as Doug Benton. Who identified him? Who knew him that well? If his body were in an advanced state of decomposition, someone would have to know him very well to make that ID. Was his body in advanced state of decomp as the medical examiner stated or did Williams and Smith already know who was in the container?”

  For me, Tracy’s argument here becomes weak and accusatory. I firmly believe that Doug’s tattoo was enough to identify him. As far as why a crime scene specialist had never been called out to that scene at that time (the bigger of the problems here), no one could answer that question for me.

  41.

  The following morning, July 11, 2001, Lavender called MCSD investigator Jimmy Patton, who had gone to Doug’s after a missing person report had been officially filed. Patton’s testimony was vital because Lavender needed to show that when the MCSD went inside Doug’s trailer on that first day, there was no smell of kerosene or gasoline. Yet, when they returned two days later, the first unusual condition they ran across was a potent, vapor-like smell of an accelerant. Think of standing by the side of your car while filling it with petrol. There’s no mistaking that aroma. The implication Lavender tried to get across became that someone had been paying close attention to the investigation, and might have been watching stealthily from afar, or had some insight into how law enforcement investigations worked. That person, so said the DA’s implicit theory, gauged how the investigation was progressing and decided to torch Doug’s trailer to cover up any lingering forensic/trace evidence.

  Patton said he went over to Doug’s with Amory Scroggins and Bill Strickland on June 17, hours after the missing person report had been filed. Subsequently pulling open the back door, they walked through the entire residence. At that time, nothing seemed unusual or out of whack. The house was quiet. Nobody was inside. There was no particular smell.

  And that was it from Patton. The scene, it could be said, had been set for the DA’s next witness.

  Tom Camp asked one question of Patton twice: the date. Was he certain it was the 17th?

 
; Patton said yes both times.

  Cody Cross walked into the courtroom and took his seat in the witness chair. MCSO Investigator Cross went over to Doug’s after his body had been recovered. It was here, upon entering Doug’s modular home, the smell of an obvious accelerant overtook Cross and the others as they entered.

  The other purpose of Cross’s testimony was for Lavender to begin entering all of the evidence they’d collected from Doug’s on that day. But before he got into any of it, Lavender asked Cross about a search they’d conducted at Tracy’s house.

  Cross went through each piece of evidence there and Lavender entered each into the record. As Cross and Lavender discussed each item, it felt as if a devastating blow to Tracy’s defense was being unleashed.

  They discussed that Walmart receipt. Rubber gloves. Guns. “A box of CCI brand stinger .22 caliber long rifle ammunition” (the same type of ammunition used, as far as ballistics was concerned, in Doug’s murder).

  Lavender asked Cross to explain what was now referred to as State’s Exhibit Number 19.

  “Yes, sir … a cartridge or a box of .22 long rifle hollow point ammunition.”

  Lavender then asked about a list of items Tracy purchased, which were detailed on a Walmart receipt, including a shower curtain.

  They went through each, one by one. Most of time there was no explanation needed; the fact alone of mentioning the evidence in the context of what jurors already knew from prior testimony was a shattering enough blow. For example, Cross said he found “three cans of spray paint.”

  “What are the colors?”

  “Black, green, a dark green and an off-beige color.”

  Camouflage.

  After several additional questions, Lavender entered a videotape into the record and asked Cross about it. There was some back and forth with the lawyers and judge regarding what was on the tape, but after sorting it out, Cody Cross stood and narrated as the tape played for jurors.

  He next talked about how they had videotaped the back porch area of Doug’s house and there “were some old tire impressions or what we thought were tire impressions in the grass there, but unfortunately, we never did get any pictures of it.”

  Inside Doug’s modular home, Cross explained, pointing to the screen, “That is the carpet and it was very wet and smelled of kerosene. … That is the cushion of the sofa. That, I believe,” he said, “is candle wax. That is actually a cushion. They tore the cover off the sofa cushion. … Candles. … Above it, a burned spot on the cushion.”

  Through the video and his testimonial narration of it, Cody Cross talked jurors through Tracy’s house and carport garage, the farm where the watering trough had been found, more detail inside Doug’s home and an area in back of that farm not too far from where the watering trough and Doug’s body had been recovered.

  Then it was on to Tracy’s truck: “Cement splatters and the scratches on the edge of the bed,” Cross said as the video showed all of it in real time. “That was sort of powdery cement right here, still in powder form.”

  All of the pieces formed a fairly clear picture—that is, if one was sitting, analyzing this murder, trying to find a way to pin it on Tracy Fortson. The concrete mix. Where she bought it. How much she had purchased. The shower curtain, later found inside her bathroom.

  On and on, evidence against the former deputy piled up.

  They talked about trees on the farm and injuries, if you will, to those trees and how likely it was that a wire or some other type of material had been tied around the tree so the watering trough could be pulled off the back of Tracy’s truck. Within that, Cross mentioned nicks and cuts and damage done to the tree and also Tracy’s truck. And when they matched Tracy’s truck—the height measurements—up to the tree, it all gelled.

  “In the video, investigators are comparing a scrape on a tree where the trough was found to the bumper of my truck,” Tracy explained to me in 2016. “The scrape on the tree was not there when the farm manager took still photos of the trough prior to moving it (this comment I could not verify). The scrape they were comparing to my truck was made by (Rob Poston’s) tractor used to remove the trough.”

  After another round of questions relating to some of the evidence Cross had videotaped, Lavender had him explain how they found a notepad with some writing on it inside Tracy’s house. But before they could get into talking about what was written on the pad, there was an objection, which was ultimately sustained.

  With that, Lavender passed his witness.

  Tom Camp stayed on the evidence, not really getting anywhere other than to confuse the situation, which was perhaps his intention from the start. Tracy’s lawyer was stuck on the sofa inside Doug’s where all the blood and candle wax and kerosene had been found. He wanted to know if all of the blood had been collected and sent over to the lab.

  Cross said as far as he knew, it had been.

  Then Camp moved onto the search of Tracy’s house. He hammered on the idea of Doug’s killer using kerosene. He asked Cross about the kerosene smell at Doug’s and then moved on to Tracy’s residence, saying, “(Y)ou didn’t find any kerosene at all at Miss Fortson’s house, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. That is correct.”

  The one smart tactic seasoned defense attorneys employ quite often, especially when they sense a setback, is to question the evidence itself and how it was collected, including chain of custody. It’s the only way to supplant the notion of an internal problem into such seemingly unimpeachable evidence, which appears to be, if only by circumstance, burying your client. And in this situation—even for someone on the fence about Tracy’s guilt—you’d have to agree there was so much evidence pointing at her, it was hard to ignore. Much of it, on top of that, Tracy had no explanation for, other it all being planted.

  Camp asked about the inside cab of Tracy’s truck and pointed out what law enforcement had uncovered there, adding how, in the bottom of the floorboard, “There were lots of rocks and dirt and stuff in there as well, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And none of that was collected or tested at all, either, right?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  That statement was incredible, actually—evidence of perhaps dirt from the farm inside Tracy’s vehicle left untested. You have to ask why. Was it deemed unimportant? Had those CSSs scouring Tracy’s truck unknowingly brought it into the vehicle on their own shoes? There were so many questions. So many possible scenarios.

  None of which were ever answered.

  Still, it was an ideal way for Camp to point out that perhaps some shoddy police work had gone on here. That maybe tunnel vision took over as they focused on Tracy. In doing that, Camp suggested, could investigators have looked only to broaden their investigation into Tracy as a suspect? Why test what was found in the back bed of Tracy’s truck and not what you found inside the cab?

  Tracy told me: “They never found any articles or items (of mine) stained with blood. However, they claimed that there was cement residue in the back of my truck. Of course there was residue! I had 10 80-pound bags loaded into the back of my truck on Sunday, June 4, by … forklift. When I was trying to unload them by myself, without a forklift, one of the bags ripped as I was tugging it across the bed of my truck. I rinsed the bed out, but I didn’t scrub it or use anything to actually clean it. No reason to. I had no clue that I would be accused of mixing concrete in the bed of my truck. Had concrete been mixed in the bed of my truck, there would have been a lot more than just splatters or residue.”

  Back questioning his witness, Tom Camp added how crime scene specialists searching the inside of Tracy’s truck had come across an “item on the armrest … some sort of light dot or something and that wasn’t collected and no test was attempted on that.”

  “That is correct, sir,” Cross stated.

  This was an incredible statement on fact alone. CSSs had swept the inside of Tracy’s truck for forensic evidence and did not collect a “white dot” on an armrest?

&nbs
p; Why not?

  One of Tracy’s arguments to me has been the lack of forensic evidence inside the cab of her truck. If she had shot and stabbed Doug to death, why wasn’t there any blood found inside the cab of her truck, which she had supposedly used to transport his body out to the farm?

  One has to consider this.

  “There was no blood inside my truck, on my truck, or in the bed of my truck,” Tracy told me. “One of the reports claims there were deep scratches in the bed of my truck as if something heavy had been dragged from it,” Tracy added. “Yet there was no paint transfer from the metal bed of my black truck to the metal trough. I did not have a bed liner in my truck, therefore any metal-on-metal contact/friction would have left paint from one to the other.”

  Tracy is spot on with her comments.

  Tom Camp then asked Cody Cross a smart question, one surely any top-notch major crimes investigative squad member would have answered yes to. Camp wanted to know if any agency had gone out and purchased the same watering trough Tracy had allegedly used to bury Doug in to see if it matched up to the scratches left behind in the bed of her truck. Kind of like a set of teeth put up against bite marks.

  “No, sir, not to my knowledge,” Cross answered.

  Tom Camp’s job was to cast doubt on the evidence and how that evidence had been collected, how much of it was collected, what might have been overlooked, and what law enforcement failed to do. He was doing a superb job of that with his cross-examination of Cody Cross, who had to answer no to a lot of straightforward, Investigation 101 questions.

  Near the end of his cross–examination, Camp asked Cross, first warning him that he was about “state the obvious here,” if they had searched “anyone else’s home other than Miss Fortson’s and Doug Benton’s.”