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

by M. William Phelps

  The next day, June 5, a Monday, Tracy had to go to court and testify in one of her cases from being employed by the sheriff’s department.

  “Was there anything unusual when you got home on the afternoon of June 5?” Crecelius asked.

  “When I pulled up on the carport,” Tracy said, “I noticed that the concrete I had bought and the trough I had bought were gone, and then I thought that was kind of odd—until I opened the storage room door to get my key to unlock the (front) door and I saw my boots and chaps and leather jacket, things I had left at Doug’s.”

  Seeing those items she had left over Doug’s now on her storage room floor, Tracy explained further, made her realize Doug had brought them over and dropped them off in a gesture to say they were finished. This was common behavior on Doug’s part, she added. Doug would get angry after an argument and return all of her personal belongings in order to say it was over between them.

  as I wound down my interviews with Tracy, she had an epiphany with regard to the watering trough and concrete. I’d never asked her about the idea—based on the premise that we believe her—of someone having to follow her around, know when she purchased the concrete and watering trough and other items in order to set in motion framing her. As it turns out, she answered this question without me asking.

  “The trough and concrete went missing on Monday, June 5,” Tracy contends. “It was gone when I got home from court and I just assumed Doug had taken it since my clothes had been left in the storage room. Yet, they wanted to know why I didn’t report it stolen? It wasn’t ‘stolen’ if Doug took it. I knew he would give it back eventually.”

  That’s buyable. I can grasp this.

  Then the question becomes, however: “Who would have known the concrete and trough were there inside her car port other than Doug?”

  After all, there is no way Doug could have taken it.

  “Well,” Tracy said, “it just so happens that (a longtime deputy) … lived (not too far away from my house and) drove by my house twice a day. He hated me from day one, when I got hired, even though I’ve known him most of my life. He had told the sheriff that I would get him in trouble. I don’t know what he was referring to, but I guess I fulfilled that prophesy.”

  Tracy maintains that this same man once said: “The ‘Georgia state law stops at the Oglethorpe County line!’ ”

  Tracy never mentioned why Doug did not seem angry or upset while she was at his house the previous night for those two hours. It seemed that he’d gone from being angry with her to forgetting about the argument to now kicking her out of his life.

  It was after she saw her personal belongings from Doug’s in her storage room that the missing concrete and trough made sense, Tracy said. She figured in her mind that Doug had taken the items.

  Tracy stopped over to Doug’s that Monday night about 6. When she got there, she did not see any of the items she believed Doug had taken from her carport: the concrete mix, horse-watering trough.

  Doug was home, tending to his birds when she pulled in.

  “You need any help?” Tracy asked after getting out of her truck, walking over.

  “No!” Doug snapped. He was pissed. Tracy was under the impression he wanted her to leave.

  But she insisted on helping him.

  “No,” Doug said. He was adamant.

  “So I went home,” Tracy told jurors, having spent a total of 30 minutes at Doug’s.

  Had Tracy, the question became, asked Doug about the concrete mix or trough? She was there. She believed he had taken the items from her carport. Why not ask?

  “He wasn’t in a talkative mood at all,” Tracy testified. She couldn’t get him to respond to her, she insisted.

  The silent treatment.

  She never spoke to or saw Doug again.

  Tracy did, however, hear from him.

  It was the next morning. Tuesday. Between 8 and 8:30 a.m., Tracy claimed. She was home. “I must have been outside” when Doug called. He left a voicemail—her old-school answering machine (the kind with the cassette tape) was not working, so her calls rolled over to voicemail.

  Doug was firm, Tracy said. “Not to call him anymore, not to come over there anymore, that he didn’t need a woman, and he just didn’t want me back over there.”

  Tracy never bothered with Doug again after that, she said. It was nearly two weeks later, June 17, when a neighbor of Doug’s, Lisa Watson, called Tracy and asked if she knew where Doug had run off to because neither she nor Larry (Bridges) had seen him in quite some time.

  Tracy said no.

  It was the first time, Tracy testified, she’d learned Doug was “missing,” as she described it. She never mentioned a precedent: Like, for example, had she and Doug gone weeks without talking to each other in the past? Had they fought and not spoken for that amount of time ever before?

  Next, Tracy said she knew the guy who owned the land where Doug’s body had been found and also the guy who came across the trough while riding his ATV. She’d hunted on that land. But had not been out there for any reason since 1999.

  Crecelius made a point to then ask about the gate into the property, which had been driven through and busted open, law enforcement believed, somewhere near the time when Doug’s body had been dumped.

  Tracy explained that she knew how to get onto the property without having to bust open a gate.

  They talked about potting soil and grass seed Tracy had sitting around her house—common items most people have in their garage during summer months. The fact that Tracy owned a Stevens bolt action .22 rifle she kept in a spare bedroom and had never, “for any reason,” kept in her bedroom. In fact, she could not recall the last time she had even fired that particular weapon.

  Tracy admitted she bought all the paint they found at her house. The paint was actually for several birdcages she owned and needed to refinish, and for painting her mailbox, which had been painted that camouflage color a year before.

  Then Crecelius asked about Painkiller, the so-called drug dealer Doug had been involved with.

  “Do you know whether or not (Painkiller) went to prison?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Did Doug have anything to do with him going to prison?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What?”

  “He gave evidence or assisted Madison County in the prosecution.”

  Crecelius asked if Doug feared Painkiller in any way after being part of the prosecution against him.

  “Yes,” she responded, without elaborating on context.

  They discussed the note and Tracy said she did not write it. Then, after a lengthy back and forth regarding Tracy not being angry enough with Doug to kill him, Crecelius looked down at his notes and passed his witness.

  DA Bob Lavender stood and began by asking Tracy for a timeline that weekend and where she went and if she and Doug had argued like that before.

  “I believe you said it was a nine-month relationship that you and he had,” Lavender asked at one point. “You all had had several break-ups like this, had you not?”

  “We had had several spats, yes.”

  “And you all had gotten into several arguments, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lavender’s line of questioning felt directed all over the place and went nowhere, actually. The DA had a hard time getting to the point of it all.

  As he continued, Lavender talked about Doug’s residence and the doors into it, the back porch, the steps up to that back porch, where Doug slept, and what he wore when he slept. None of it made much sense in the scope of Tracy killing the man.

  From there, Lavender asked about bullets and the weapon Tracy owned, if Doug was a hunter and if she knew Doug had weapons in his house.

  She answered yes to most of everything.

  But again, there was no punch line here—no “ah-ha,” Perry Mason moment. Lavender’s questioning offered nothing in the sense of adding to his case.

  Then, abruptly, the DA said,
“That’s all I have.”

  No 11th-hour reveal.

  No proof of Tracy’s alleged anger.

  No hard accusations.

  No prior record of violence in Tracy’s life.

  Apparently, Lavender was under the impression that the evidence he had against Tracy Fortson spoke for itself.

  67.

  After a state rebuttal witness, both sides rested. The judge then read a long, tedious charging document, likely putting half the courtroom to sleep.

  With short closing arguments out of the way, Tracy’s case—and her fate—was once again in the hands of a jury.

  It was 3:45 p.m. on March 25, 2004, when jurors started deliberations—and just after 8:30 p.m. that same night when they emerged with a verdict.

  Tracy was found guilty. On three counts.

  Not guilty on Counts 3 and 4, both of which were the aggravated assault charges.

  She bowed her head and shook it from side to side as each juror was polled, confirming his and her guilty vote. She’d fought, this time testifying on her own behalf, and lost for a second time.

  It was unlikely there would be a third.

  Tracy’s mother was allowed to speak. Sharon Hodges looked broken. She had been through so much, twice watching her daughter convicted of the most deplorable crime on the books.

  “I am Tracy’s mother and I would like to ask for mercy. Tracy is my only child and has one daughter who misses her very much. She has changed in her heart.” Sharon mentioned that Tracy had “found the Lord” and had been very active in prison conducting Bible studies, concluding, “For the sake of my family, her daughter’s sake and everybody’s sake, we just ask for mercy.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” was all the judge said.

  With that out of the way, the judge showed no mercy by sentencing Tracy to life, plus 10 years.

  Tracy Fortson was sent back to prison.

  68.

  “Speaking of carol benton,” Tracy emailed me in late 2016, bringing Doug’s mother back into our conversation, “I want you to speak to her … she deserves to know what your intentions are. You do realize that she has been put through hell over the past 16 years. She was devastated and has never fully recovered. It’s like an open wound that never heals, someone always reopens the wound.”

  This was the sort of direction, I’ll call it, I did not appreciate. I don’t need a convicted murderer telling me what to do, how to do it. Early on, Tracy was forever trying to dictate who I spoke to, what to ask and how I should treat them. It stank of control—which, of course, makes a guy in my position, looking for the truth—teetering on the fence with Tracy to begin with—wonder where the need for that control is rooted.

  I let her have it again.

  She wrote back.

  “If you think I am judging you,” Tracy said, “isn’t that what you are doing to me? I don’t have anything to compare. You may be a wonderful writer, journalist … I’m not saying that you’re not, I honestly don’t know. I would really like to believe you are very passionate about your work and you strive to reveal the facts in your research.”

  Here is the bottom line: I can judge Tracy all day long. That is never an issue when dealing with a convicted murderer, or any subject for a book. We all judge one another. It’s inherent in being human, for shit’s sake. She had already been judged by jurors in a court of law. Twice. She never understood or accepted the fact that what I think or how I feel about her does not matter.

  “I make observations, I have an opinion, I ask questions,” Tracy continued. “Sometimes I piss people off and sometimes I get defensive when I get lumped in the same category with ‘convicted murderers,’ like you got defensive with me for saying whatever it was that you didn’t like. But you’re right, unlike you, I have to prove that I am not what the State says I am.”

  Lumped in the same category with convicted murderers?

  I had to read it twice. Was this, actually, how she went about her life in prison? She had never been “lumped” into any convicted murderer category; she had been convicted of murder. That part of the argument ends there.

  I continually asked Tracy for “factual” information about her case that might help prove her innocence—however big or small. Anything. Just something I could sink my investigative talons into and begin to clearly see what she has been screaming about all along. Much of what she pointed out never fell into either the black or white column we like to see in journalism. There was always that ambiguous, gray area.

  “Let me say this,” Tracy wrote not long after. “As of right now you say the state’s evidence supports my conviction. Facts? Not even close. Let me know when you finish looking at the information (we) sent you. Then you let me know if you feel the same way. In the future … I will try to refrain from being too critical and judgmental. Maybe I was the one not being fair.”

  That “information” one of her family members sent to me, again, was Tracy Fortson’s interpretation of the facts. It’s explosive, of course. But the validity of it has to be questioned at face value—the key revelation within those documents cannot be backed up by signed affidavits or public court testimony under oath.

  This new argument she was so anxious to get me to see consisted of two sources allegedly recanting their testimony at trial, and Tracy’s alleged accusation of coercion by cops to keep both of these witnesses quiet and sticking to a carefully structured narrative to frame her from day one. More than that, in a new motion Tracy was now alleging that a key witness “was coerced to testify” against her. That new evidence Tracy presented? A nearly two-hour recording of a conversation between one of Tracy’s family members and the same witness, in which she was now alleging that witness had been intimidated and influenced by the prosecution before her trial.

  As she described it to me, “My long and weary battle, one that I will continue to fight,” fell on what she called an Extraordinary Motion for New Trial and a Motion for DNA Testing, which Tracy, acting as her own lawyer, wrote and filed herself in September 2015. After that filing, Tracy was granted a hearing, which took place on July 7, 2016, overseen by Superior Court Judge Thomas Hodges. That late 2016 decision against her by the Supreme Court of Georgia for Discretionary Appeal was in response to the Extraordinary Motion.

  “The District Attorney waited until the day of the hearing to file the state’s response,” Tracy told me.

  I thought: Why would you want to show your hand anytime sooner than at the last moment, especially if you have no legal reason to?

  The response by the State of Georgia to Tracy’s Extraordinary Motion is a straightforward document, as these things go. The witness’s name she alleges to have been “coerced” to testify is all over the state’s response. I think it’s inappropriate to use it here, simply because after several attempts to talk to this person, I got nowhere.

  The opening paragraph references what is an alleged phone call between a family member of Tracy’s and this witness. “The State,” it turns out, “was not furnished with this recording until June 8, 2016,” 18 months after the so-called recording had been made. Because that same witness never signed an affidavit claiming he or she was the other voice on that call, however, the state could not verify its authenticity.

  Rightly so.

  “(The witness) was not under oath at the time (he or she) allegedly made these allegations and was unlikely told the conversation was being recorded,” the state wrote in its reply, going on to explain how Tracy’s “assertions” are nothing more than “unsworn allegations.”

  This is true. Accusing someone of a crime—or, rather, several law enforcement officers—is not the same as proving it. Saying a witness was coerced and lied because he or she was scared for his or her life is not the same as that witness walking into a courtroom and testifying to those allegations under oath, putting the entire incident on record.

  What’s more, Tracy hangs her hopes, in many respects, on that same witness’s testimony at trial, along with his or her
conversations with police during the investigation into Doug’s murder. Yet, as the state contended in its sarcastic response to that statement in the Extraordinary Motion, “(The witness’s) trial testimony consisted of a whopping six pages.”

  Throughout his or her testimony, the witness does nothing more than discuss Doug’s handwriting, several interactions with him, and how he or she had seen checks ($) Doug had written to Tracy.

  In the Extraordinary Motion, Tracy alleges perjury by the witness and others during both of her trials. But as the state points out, “(The witness) has not been convicted of perjury, nor even charged.”

  Alleging perjury and proving perjury are, of course, two different things. Tracy’s accusations might very well be 100 percent factual, but without any evidence to back her statements up, they fall flat.

  “Along with his response to my motions,” Tracy told me, speaking of the prosecutor’s reply to the Extraordinary Motion, “he included an affidavit from the former Medical Examiner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Dr. Kris Sperry. Dr. Sperry’s affidavit contained false statements,” Tracy alleged to me. “1. He claimed to be the medical examiner that performed the autopsy on Doug. He was not.”

  That’s an unfair characterization of line #3 in Sperry’s affidavit, of which Tracy is referring to here. In the hard copy of the affidavit Tracy sent me, somebody—presuming this was Tracy—highlighted with yellow marker line #3, in which, according to Tracy’s read, Sperry erroneously and maliciously contends to being the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Doug Benton.

  Here is the unedited version of that complete line: “I was the medical examiner for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) who performed the autopsy of the decedent, later identified at Douglas Benton,” Dr. Kris Sperry writes in the affidavit.

  Read that line again.

  In it, Sperry, who admittedly takes on “hundreds of cases” as a paid forensic expert (many medical examiners, to the chagrin of many of their colleagues do this) all over the country, is stating for the record that he is the medical examiner for the GBI—not the pathologist who actually performed the autopsy.