What happened to Taylor Behl?

About 10 days into the search for Taylor Behl, the Richmond, Virginia police department issued an Amber Alert and announced it was taking the lead in the investigation, forming a task force which included campus police and the FBI. This was now no longer a “missing person” case.  It was a criminal investigation.

Chief Rodney D. Monroe, Richmond police department: We’re talking about a 17-year-old, 100 miles away from home, going into their 2^nd week at a university, and nobody has seen, heard, or could account for where she may have been.

Richmond’s Police Chief Rodney Monroe just joined the force this year from Washington D.C.

Monroe: I just kept having flashbacks of the Chandra Levy case. I was in Washington when she first went missing. And they just don’t disappear without a trace.

So now investigators were taking a different kind of look at those same people Taylor knew: including Ben Fawley. They searched his home and seized seven computers.

Monroe: There were several references to her. Pictures of her.

Magnus:  But nothing that led you to where she was?

Monroe: No. At that time.

Little did they know how crucial what was on those computers would be to the case.  In the meantime, there was more information coming to light about Fawley’s criminal past, including numerous convictions and violent behavior toward women.

Former FBI investigator and NBC analyst Clint Van Zandt believes whatever the teenager may have thought about Fawley, he clearly had the upper hand in his relationship with Taylor.  

Van Zandt: [Who he is] It’s diametrically opposed to how he tries to present himself on the Internet. At age 38, you’ve learned how to manipulate people.  You’ve learned how to understand what someone’s concerns, anxieties, challenges, sense of self worth what that might be.

Jessica Payton dated Fawley a few years ago when she was a college freshman at VCU, and says she often witnessed his dark side. 

Jessica Payton, ex-girlfriend: He’s like manic-depressive because he gets paranoid, has mood swings sometimes he has anger, he can’t control his anger he completely flips out kind of thing.

In fact, Fawley’s attorney said in court he’s on medication for a severe bipolar disorder. Fawley himself told the court he’s indigent and lives off a disability check. Jonathan Delano, whose housemate knew Fawley, says Fawley once broke into their house and bared his soul.

Jonathan Delano, knew Fawley:  I woke up in the middle of the night to find him standing in my doorway and he just started telling me his life story, about how he lived his life of crime about how he didn’t understand how to act any other way, he didn’t understand how to be anything but a criminal.

FREE VIDEO Matt Behl speaks out Oct. 10: The single suspect in the Taylor Behl kidnap murder is sitting behind bars, but has not been charged. MSNBC-TV's Dan Abrams talks with the victim's father, Matt Behl. MSNBC

Still, while Taylor’s association with Fawley may have been an unfortunate choice, there was no evidence he’d done anything to harm her.

The search went on. Taylor’s father Matt Behl was there too. 

Matt Behl: The difficult part is when driving around and see your daughter’s picture with the word “missing.”

In cyberspace, Taylor’s Web page filled with expressions of hope for her safe return from friends and strangers alike.

Then Saturday morning September 17^th, 12 days after Taylor disappeared, police caught a break.

Nolan:  There’s an off-duty lieutenant, and he was walking his dog. He noticed a Ford Escort. Now by this time, word of Taylor’s white Ford Escort had been circulating for a little while.  He saw it. He took a look at it. It had Ohio license plates on it.  But being a good investigator and a police lieutenant he took a closer look.  And he found out there was a registration tag on the vehicle from Vienna, Virginia.  Immediately he realized that he had found Taylor’s car.

It was parked on a street about a mile and a half from Taylor’s dorm room.  Police staked it out for a day to see if anyone would show.  And then they seized it.  Ironically Janet Pelasara, who until now had assumed the worst about her daughter, suddenly found reason to hope.

Pelasara: My hope that she was alive was back.

Police still didn’t have Taylor Behl, but they did have an enormous clue.

Nolan: They now had a vehicle. They knew that vehicle had stolen license plates on it. They know that Ben Fawley was someone who liked to collect license plates. He had written about it.

Van Zandt: If somebody drove her car other than her, you have to re-adjust your rearview mirror.  You have to move the seat back and forth.  You’ve got, and I know, a rich supply of latent fingerprints were found inside that car. You’ve got hairs and fibers.

On Monday evening, September 19^th, students from VCU gathered with candles on behalf of the missing freshman that few knew, but who was in everyone’s prayers.

Two days later, a lawyer for her family came and cleared out Taylor’s dorm room.  Whatever happened, the family didn’t want the teenager to come back to VCU.

On September 23^rd, 18 days after Taylor’s disappearance, police arrested Ben Fawley. Not in connection with Taylor, however— but because of what they’d found on those seven computers they’d seized from the father of two.

Chief Monroe:  Child pornography. I mean, it was quite graphic.

Magnus:  Movies?

Monroe:  And photographs.

Magnus:  That he had taken allegedly?

Monroe: No, that was on his system and in his possession.

16 counts of possession of child pornography, to be exact. Fawley pleaded not guilty. With that, he held behind bars.

Nolan: What they found were charges that they could file against Ben Fawley to put him in jail for at least a little bit of time.

Investigators conducted a second  and more disturbing search of Fawley’s home.

Magnus: They came out with boxes of very creepy stuff. 

Nolan: They did. They came out with sex toys. They came up with whips and chains. A machete. A hatchet. A gun cartridge. A number of things that taken in isolation can make the imagination run wild.

What they didn’t come out with was anything linked to Taylor Behl.

Nolan:  They found keys. They found a cell phone.  They found IDs.  None of them were Taylor Behl’s.

Magnus:  And he would not take a polygraph?

Nolan:  He wanted to take a polygraph, according to his lawyer.  But his lawyer told him not to. 

The police found out something else too: that Ben Fawley had what appeared to be an alibi for his whereabouts on the night Taylor Behl disappeared. It turned out that before she’d even been reported missing, Fawley himself had gone to the police and filed this report. In it, he said he was attacked.  It all happened, he said, during those first hours when Taylor Behl had gone missing. 

Magnus:  I’ll see if I can get this right, he said he was robbed by an unknown number of people, hit in the stomach by an unknown object and driven to an unknown location.

Van Zandt: Yes.

Magnus:  And rescued by an unknown man. And all of this happened during the hours right after Taylor Behl went missing. And if true, would certainly appear to give him an alibi for where he was during that time.  What do you make of it?

Van Zandt:  The only thing he was missing was a hammer and nails to build a better alibi than he seems to have built for himself already.

Investigators immediately set about figuring out whether Fawley’s report was true.  In the meantime they had him in jail— and by now were calling him a “person of interest” in Taylor’s disappearance.

But for all the manpower, all the searching, all the nationwide attention drawn to the case,  none of it had produced a 17-year-old brunette until two things came together:  Old fashioned-detective work and the new world of the Internet.

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