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Paradise Lost VCU student Taylor Behl leaves behind a grieving nation--and clues

October 9, 2005 1:06 am

O HEADSTONE marked the shallow grave that held the remains of Virginia Commonwealth University coed Taylor Marie Behl. In fact, her grave was never meant to be found. Nonetheless it was beside a picturesque stream in the woods off a little-used dirt road in rural Mathews County that Taylor was cruelly laid to rest.

In fact, it was the remote and picturesque nature of this location that led authorities to her body--and the tragic conclusion to this case.

Taylor Behl was not your typical college freshman. She had weathered family and personal challenges while traveling internationally and experiencing Europe as a resident and a student. When she graduated from high school she counted 15 different schools she had attended around the world. By most standards she was a savvy young woman who could handle big-city streets, to include Richmond, where she enrolled at VCU.

It appeared to be a good fit, Taylor and VCU, that nonetheless ended sometime after 10 p.m. on Labor Day. Her first semester at college had ended almost before it began.

Taylor spent Labor Day with her family, and, with $40 in her pocket from her mom, drove back to VCU that evening to have dinner with a friend. Enter Ben Fawley, aka "Skulz," a 38-year-old bipolar, indigent father of two who acknowledged an ongoing intimate relationship with 17-year-old Taylor (in itself a violation of state law), to include being with her the afternoon she disappeared.

Fawley told police that he had intimate contact with her that same evening, after which he lent her a skateboard and walked her back to her dorm at 10 p.m. Finding her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend in her dorm room, she said she was going skateboarding with friends. She grabbed her cell phone and the keys to her '97 Ford Escort and left her dorm--never to be seen alive again.

Twenty-six hours later, Taylor's roommate reported her missing to authorities, who initially handled the matter as a routine missing-person case. After all, 850,000 people are reported missing in the U.S. every year, with most quickly accounted for.

Some believed her to be a runaway, until her car was found within a mile of campus 12 days later. A sharp-eyed police officer spotted her abandoned car--now with Ohio license plates that had been reported stolen from a Richmond resident a few months before.

Now the investigation became national in nature, with police considering the strong likelihood of foul play.

Suspect No. 1 is former Ohio resident Ben Fawley--an unemployed "amateur photographer" who likes to take pictures of young children. A convicted felon who previously served three years in jail, he was arrested in Richmond two weeks ago and charged with possession of child pornography--relating to movies found on one or more of the seven computers in his home depicting young children engaged in sexual acts with adults.

Fawley, who had just changed his long, dyed blond hair to a short, dyed black hairstyle (something like a reverse Scott Peterson change in style and color), has a prior arrest record that also includes assault and battery on women.

On the morning after Taylor's disappearance, Fawley, a self-described "prolific Goth web master" who "collects" auto license plates, told police he had just been beaten, robbed and kidnapped by unknown assailants. He said they put a bag over his head, stuffed him into an unknown car, and drove him to an unknown location, where he was left on an unknown dirt road. He was "saved" when an unknown good Samaritan, in his case a Hispanic male, found him along the road and drove him back to Richmond.

Although having just been robbed, Fawley told police that he was still somehow able to buy gas for his rescuer's car. The investigating officer indicated Fawley "should be on medication for bipolar disorder and was intoxicated prior to the listed events."

One wonders now, however, if any cuts, scratches or other injuries allegedly sustained by Fawley could instead be evidence of his possible assault upon someone the night Taylor Behl disappeared.

As a former FBI agent, I know that "if someone lies about the little things, they probably lie about the big things." Law enforcement's job was to determine if Fawley's alleged alien-abduction-like report was true, or just a wild story concocted to provide him with an alibi for the night of Taylor's disappearance.

At least one other suspect was developed after a police dog followed a scent from Taylor's car to the residence of the suspect. He took a polygraph test and gave deceptive responses perhaps similar to those attributed to Fawley.

Whether Taylor's ultimate fate rested in the hands of one, two or more will now be determined by investigation.

But what really happened to Taylor Behl? We can't assume anything in an investigation, as that leaves loopholes that criminals can crawl through. The FBI has forensically processed her abandoned car and developed a number of latent fingerprints--prints that will be matched to those of Taylor, Fawley, and anyone else believed to have been in her car.

Soil found on the car's undercarriage has supposedly been matched to soil at the "disposal site," law enforcement's way of depersonalizing such a location so as to allow them to separate their emotions from their mission--identify the person who put Taylor in her grave.

Police will get the fingerprints and DNA of Fawley and any other suspects--but if he and others acknowledge a friendship with Behl, to include having been in her car, what would their fingerprints or DNA prove?

It depends, is the answer. Where were the prints found and how did they get there? Whoever put Taylor in that grave was not a professional criminal--and he didn't count on the ability of law enforcement to put a puzzle together, in this case using the pieces provided by the primary suspect himself, Ben Fawley.

Between Taylor's cell phone records and her Internet writings--plus those of Fawley and others--a circle of friends and associates of the missing student was developed. For many, the Internet has become the equivalent of a private diary that in reality is open to the public.

In her writings, Taylor revealed herself as a normal but vulnerable person, one whom a predator who hung around in a college town with people half his age could potentially target and take advantage of.

We all seek certain similar things in life, to include friends, love, and affirmation. These goals are also known to predators--who use such knowledge as they cast their emotional nets in a target-rich environment like a college town. They do this in an attempt to develop an inappropriate relationship with someone too trusting, and perhaps too confident in his or her ability to distinguish between the good and the bad people in this world. A fatal error in judgment, in some cases.

The authorities have completed their processing of the crime scene where Taylor's body was found. It was done slowly, methodically and professionally. They were led to the scene by Ben Fawley himself, at least by his Internet activities. He had posted a number of pictures of both young girls and scenic locations, and those pictures were shown to the people identified as belonging to his and Taylor's circle of friends.

It was Fawley's ex-girlfriend, someone he suggested might be responsible for a previous assault on him that he reported to police, who recognized a picture of a farm in rural Mathews County. She said that the property was adjacent to land owned by her parents; a place that Fawley had been to before.

This prompted investigators to check out the location, where continued good police work led them to the gruesome discovery of a recently dug grave, and ultimately Taylor's body.

Such a crime scene is really the victim's last chance to speak for herself. A chance to somehow convey the identity of her assailant--and the police and the FBI agents at the scene needed to listen closely. Most offenders make the usual classic mistakes at a crime scene. They take something to the scene, they leave something there, or they take something away. This "something" is many times physical evidence that can positively link them to the crime, in this case the death of a young woman who still had her whole life ahead of her.

The interviews, the statements of witnesses and suspects alike, as well as the physical evidence, will all come together to tell us what happened to Taylor Behl the last night of her life. But beyond the medical and the scientific, the "why" can never be fully explained.

How do we explain evil? Essays and books have attempted to explain man's inhumanity to man without success. Evil is like mercury--it flows in the direction that it's tilted--and whether we equate evil with Milton's image of Lucifer, or simply look to a Hitler or a Ted Bundy to get our heads nodding in agreement, it is still usually beyond explanation.

In many cases, a criminologist or a psychiatrist will define evil as consistent with a sociopathic personality--someone who lives life without a functional conscience. Others will simply say that what appears to be evil is really a mistake that someone made in the heat of a moment. Something they'd take back if only they could.

In the death of Taylor Behl, there will be no "take backs." No matter the motive ultimately associated with her death, hers is a life that cannot be restored--and the course of history, as in any such loss, has been permanently affected.