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

by M. William Phelps

  Tracy’s impression of a proper childhood was, she described, what she had seen on television, “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie.” The fantasy was important to her: The perfect family dynamic. Everyone loves, is loved and gets along.

  “That’s what a family is supposed to be like. The daddy is supposed to love and protect his family, not run around drunk with a gun threatening to kill everybody. And where were the police when you needed them? They certainly never answered Mama’s call for help.”

  That lack of love and affection at home during her formative years, Tracy added, “was the perfect reason for me to look for love elsewhere.”

  Just like the classic song says, Tracy concluded, after that last stand at the house, she “started ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.’ ”

  49.

  Jerry Alexander sat in the witness stand and stared at jurors. After being asked by DA Bob Lavender, Jerry described how he and Doug had been friends for about 10 years. They’d met right around the same time Doug was “saved” by the Lord. Though Doug had his issues like everyone else, he was a good guy, a close friend, someone Jerry said he felt he knew quite well.

  After that, Lavender didn’t waste time getting into the crux of why Jerry Alexander had been called. Lavender brought up the June morning when Jerry realized Doug’s truck had been dropped off the previous night.

  Jerry said he had not heard “anything” from Doug about dropping the truck off. The truck was not parked in the driveway one night when he went to bed, but the next morning, lo and behold, there she was positioned “backwards” on the side of Jerry’s driveway. Kind of strange and not the behavior he had been accustomed to as Doug’s friend.

  Walking outside, realizing whose truck it was, Jerry explained, he searched the yard, yelling Doug’s name.

  “I said (to myself) he got to be around here somewhere because he never brings his truck and just leaves it.”

  “Was he?” Lavender followed up.

  “No, I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

  Jerry said at one point he moved the truck, thinking how “weird it was that Doug had left the keys in the ignition.”

  Then it was onto the note/letter Doug had allegedly taped to, Jerry testified, “the driver’s side … taped on the side of the window.”

  “Who does the letter purport to be from?”

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

  “Did you take the note off the window?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jerry said he gave the note to the police after they arrived and started asking questions some two weeks or so after the truck had been parked in the yard. During that entire time, he had not seen or heard from Doug.

  As Tom Camp began his cross, he brought up several occasions where Jerry Alexander had charges lodged against him. Serious stuff. Felonies: aggravated assault and possessing firearms and obliterating the serial numbers off of them.

  Jerry said it was a long time ago: “Fourteen years.”

  After a bit of back and forth, Jerry explaining each charge and his version of what happened, Tom Camp changed the subject and said: “You don’t particularly care for Miss Fortson, do you?”

  “I have nothing against her. She’s always been good to me. Doug has, too. And I told them I wanted the best for their lives.”

  Camp implied that Jerry didn’t particularly like it all that much when Tracy, acting in the capacity of sheriff, had once visited his house to “break up an incident of domestic violence between you and your wife. Isn’t that correct?”

  “It was not violence,” Jerry said with a deep breath, a shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, people have problems in their marriage. Nothing physical.”

  “A fight between you and your wife, was it?” Camp seized on.

  “No physical violence.”

  They talked about the discrepancy in Jerry’s memory regarding when he saw Doug’s truck at his house and when he first told someone about it being there.

  Jerry mentioned at one point how he “had a feeling” that “something happened to Doug,” based on his knowledge of Doug being “real depressed a lot of the times.” He considered that Doug had parked the truck and run off into the woods to commit suicide, but dropped the idea after conducting a cursory search of the area, failing to find his friend. It wasn’t until the cops showed up two weeks later and Jerry learned that many of Doug’s birds had died from being left alone that he began to truly believe something bad had happened to his friend.

  Still, Jerry reiterated, he wasn’t thinking sinister activity. It wasn’t until the OCSD notified Jerry about finding Doug’s body, Camp made a point. “And then,” Tracy’s sharp lawyer added, “one of the first things that you started to do was point a finger at Miss Fortson.” Camp paused. Took a long few seconds to allow the statement to hang in the air of the courtroom. Then: “Isn’t that correct?”

  Jerry said he began to go down that road when the only other person who had shown up to help him search for Doug when he put out word was Jeff Bennett.

  “And you said,” Camp concluded, “that you and Jeff Bennett had just gotten together shortly before Mr. Benton’s body had been found. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No further questions.”

  Both lawyers made a few queries on re-direct and re-cross and Jerry was told he could remove himself from the courtroom. The judge then ended what had become a very long day of testimony.

  Tracy stood. Sighed. Bowed her head a minute. Rubbed her forehead. The testimony had been intense.

  “It was not easy to sit through all of that,” Tracy said later.

  According to Tracy, years later when we talked about the trial and Doug’s friends, it was Jerry Alexander who had the biggest impact on her.

  “Listening to him talk about his life and the things he had done, I couldn’t believe this was the same person,” Tracy said of a conversation she’d had with Doug once. “Doug told me that his life had been like a runaway freight train. He was heavy into alcohol and drugs. He knew he needed to make a change, but he needed help to do it. So he went to a friend and asked.”

  That friend, Jerry, prayed with Doug. Picked him up for church. Was with Doug when he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. It was a turning point in Doug’s life. His entire outlook and demeanor changed.

  “It was the best decision he had ever made,” Tracy maintained. “He quit drinking and got away from the drug scene and the people associated with it. That friend, Jerry Alexander, as it turned out, was someone I had known for years.”

  50.

  With the divorce of her parents behind Tracy, in addition to all she had witnessed as a child growing up in such a volatile and violent household, one could say she developed a skewed view of relationships and love and marriage. A trait now deeply rooted in her consciousness. Either consciously or subconsciously, however, as she herself began to date, Tracy fell into a pattern. She termed it as “looking for love in all the wrong places.” But was it something much more profound than that rather simple explanation?

  Let’s go back to 1980. Tracy was 15, a few months shy of her 16th birthday. She was invited to her bestie’s sweet 16 birthday party. The bestie’s brother was there.

  “You wanna dance?” Tod Savino (a pseudonym) asked. Tracy had already dated her bestie’s other brother (who was her age), but that hadn’t turned out so well.

  Tod was older. Nineteen.

  “He was gorgeous,” Tracy told me. “No question about it.”

  Tod was tall, muscular, dark hair, hazel eyes.

  “He was wearing a tan velour shirt that was so soft to the touch, a pair of Levis and boots. He smelled of Jovan Musk for Men and FreshenUp bubblegum. What a combination—one I will never forget. I felt like Cinderella at the ball.”

  They walked out onto a b
alcony at one point during the party and Tod kissed Tracy. She saw stars and fireworks.

  “I was Juliet. I never wanted that night to end. I replayed it over and over in my mind. I talked about (Tod) all week long. I’m sure (my best friend) got sick of hearing me go on and on about her brother.”

  In the days after that party, Tod and Tracy became inseparable. Just crazy about each other, she said.

  “We were as in love as two people could be, but I was only 15 when we met, so even though we got really close a few times, we never had sex—until, that is, I turned 16.”

  After consummating the relationship, which they had planned and talked about for a long time, Tod and Tracy felt closer.

  “It was quite an experience. (Tod) had only been with one other person, but he was my first.”

  They were now planning to get married as soon as Tracy graduated high school. It was all they ever talked about.

  For her 16th birthday, Tod showed up with a deer rifle, a 30/30 Winchester model 94 with a leather sling. A man after her heart, she said.

  “Even though the wives or girlfriends were not allowed to go deer hunting with the men at (Tod’s) hunting club, he opted to take me to another place so we could hunt together.”

  Tracy began dreaming of nobody else.

  “But things have a way of changing,” she said. “And maybe it was me that changed? Maybe it was too much togetherness? But change did come. Rather than being happy when we were together, we started making each other miserable.”

  According to Tracy’s version, Tod became possessive and jealous. He didn’t want Tracy speaking to other guys, even at school. When they were out cruising through the parking lot where other friends hung out, Tod was constantly watching to see if Tracy waved or looked at another guy.

  “We got into terrible arguments about it.”

  There was one day when Tracy was at Tod’s house. His mother asked Tracy and Tod’s sister, Tracy’s bestie, if they wanted to go to the grocery store.

  “Sure.”

  They hopped in the car and left.

  “Where have you gone off to dressed like that?” Tod snapped when they returned.

  “What?” Tracy said. She was all at once perplexed and taken aback. This was a new level of control on Tod’s part.

  Tracy had worn shorts and make-up.

  Tod was “livid,” she explained. “I just couldn’t understand why he was so mad. I was with his mother and sister. We went to the grocery store, but he wasn’t having it. I had never seen him act like that.”

  This was the beginning of the end. Tracy felt smothered, like some sort of object Tod felt he had the authority to tell what to do, when to do it.

  She was 16 years old, for crying out loud.

  “Finally, I had enough. I could not do it anymore. I loved (Tod) with all of my heart, but I couldn’t stand the accusations and the isolation or the feelings I was having. It was only getting worse and I didn’t know how to fix it. So I told him it was over.”

  Even though Tracy was so young, she thought Tod was “the one. And I truly regretted that it didn’t work out, but I didn’t want to be miserable. I guess the ongoing mess at my house was a contributing factor. I wanted someone to love me and care about me, not treat me like a possession. I think I was looking for that ‘father-figure.’ But not my father figure. I wanted what I was lacking at home. So rather than dating guys my own age, I tended to be attracted to older, more mature men.”

  After she turned 18, Tracy started working behind the information desk at Georgia Square Mall. Her job included answering the telephone, assisting patrons and giving directions to customers. It was where, she later believed, the law enforcement bug first bit her.

  “My favorite part was dispatching the security officers and using the 10 codes on the radio just like the police department. I also interacted with the local county police when we were in need of their assistance. And so my infatuation with police officers began (while working that job in the mall).”

  She also met Joseph Tandy (a pseudonym), an older man who “caught my eye.”

  Joseph was at least a dozen years older than Tracy. But the age difference didn’t bother her.

  “I was infatuated. And hell, I was grown. (Joe) was one of the police officers who was hired by the manager of the movie theatre as security. My infatuation with him grew.”

  Tracy would “linger” around the theater after hours, she remembered, on weekends, knowing when Joe was getting out of work, so she could walk with him.

  “You are too young,” Joe said one night.

  “Come on, I’m 18,” she pleaded.

  “Too young, Tracy.”

  But Tracy persisted. Often as she could, she’d show up at the movie theater and try to talk Joe into hanging out. A relationship, at least in Tracy’s eyes, was developing.

  “Then he went and married someone else and I got the message,” Tracy recalled. “I also got my heart broke. I just didn’t understand. It never sunk in that he didn’t want me.”

  As life went on, Tracy began to realize something: “I attracted plenty of men, but it took a while to understand that although I was pretty and the men were attracted, they were only after one thing. What I wanted was of no concern to them. While I was looking for someone to fill that void in my heart, they were looking for a good time and that was it.”

  Then she met Billy Jackson (a pseudonym). “And,” Tracy said, “my life was changed forever.”

  51.

  OCSD investigator Charles Morgan was part of the search team that went into Tracy’s house in June 2000. As Morgan stepped into the witness stand after Jerry Alexander walked out of the courtroom, never once looking at Tracy, Morgan came across as your typical Southern sheriff. There was an almost comforting, Andy Taylor-like nuance in his demeanor, as if here was the friendly town cop, walking the beat, waving to everyone, keeping watch on his community.

  Morgan knew Tracy and she had once worked for him as a deputy. That alone, one might think, did not make Morgan the best witness for the prosecution, though there was hardly a cop involved in the case who, in one capacity or another, did not know (or hear of) Tracy Fortson.

  Charles Morgan was called to testify for one purpose: To discuss the duty belt found inside Tracy’s house. And just a few questions in, Lavender got down to it, asking Morgan to explain to jurors how familiar he was with Tracy’s duty belt.

  “Yes, as far as I remember, knowing Tracy and her duty belt, she carried a little pouch which contained a knife.”

  That was the line Lavender needed in order to make the assumption to jurors that Tracy had likely stabbed Doug, not the forks of the tractor.

  “Was that on the belt?” Lavender pressed.

  “No, it was not.”

  One more question and Lavender was finished. Morgan told jurors he knew Tracy carried a knife in her duty belt and yet when they recovered that same duty belt inside her home under a search warrant, the knife was nowhere to be found.

  Tom Camp stood.

  Morgan took a deep breath.

  Camp bypassed any question about the duty belt and went directly at several interviews Morgan had been present for, including Jerry Alexander and Jeff Bennett. Camp’s point as he got into questioning Morgan about those interviews was simple: Not long after Doug Benton’s body was found on that farm encased inside a tub of cement, Morgan got together with deputy Mike Smith and GBI SA Ben Williams to discuss what their next move should be. And “y’all talked amongst yourselves” and “decided it would be a good idea to interview a couple of folks right away?”

  “Yes,” Morgan said, then agreed that Jerry Alexander and Jeff Bennett were among those the three of them talked about and decided to interview first.

  “And you became aware that during the interview that Jerry Alexander was pointing a finger almost immediately to Tracy Fortson?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “You don’t recall that?” Camp had a strange, quizzical look ab
out him. That information was in the report: Jerry Alexander talking about the volatile relationship Tracy and Doug shared, mainly because of Tracy’s behavior.

  “No, sir,” Morgan reiterated.

  Onto Jeff Bennett.

  Morgan said he couldn’t recall if Jeff Bennett was pointing a finger at Tracy right away.

  “There were also a few facts that Jeff Bennett knew that were really a bit unusual for somebody to know at that point in time in an investigation—isn’t that correct?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Well, investigator Smith asked Jeff Bennett, you know, if he knew who might have done this and he (Jeff Bennett) immediately piped up that it must be somebody that was familiar with concrete. Do you remember him saying that?”

  Morgan said he “remembered something like that.”

  Camp dropped his shoulders. How could Jeff Bennett know such a thing? Camp managed to point out in his next question. Then, without hesitation, he added how everyone in the room listening to Jeff Bennett talk about concrete was “shocked” because the body had just been recovered in concrete. How could he have known that information?

  Dodging the main context of the question, Morgan said, “That was a little while after the body was found, yes, sir.”

  “Just a few hours.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Camp sat. Took a moment.

  The defense attorney was done with Morgan.

  At face value, Morgan’s testimony was stunning. According to what he had said, Jeff Bennett knew merely hours after Doug’s body had been recovered that there was concrete involved in the crime. How could someone uninvolved in the investigation know about the concrete?

  “As for Charles Morgan,” Tracy told me in 2017, “he was … (trying) to say that a knife was missing from a scabbard on my duty belt. I didn’t have a scabbard on my duty belt and I didn’t carry a knife, except for the little $5 pocketknife (21/2 inches long) that the sheriff bought me, which, incidentally, broke while in my pocket, and almost cut the tip of my finger off when I reached in for it. I had plenty of knives in my house … but they did not take any of my knives, which is also strange because they thought Doug had been stabbed.”