What happened to Taylor Behl?

What happened is they moved forward... by going back.

Chief Monroe: By this time people were tired of seeing us.

But Chief Monroe said that’s how investigations go: You go back, talk again.  Look at pictures, again.  There were a slew of them on Ben Fawley’s Web sites. There were lots of skulls, and lots of young girls— but also pictures that seemed totally innocuous:  old buildings, flowers, landscapes and other rural scenes. 

Who’d have imagined one of these would break the case wide open?

Nolan: Two VCU detectives were interviewing and re-interviewing a woman who was an ex-girlfriend of Ben Fawley’s. They were showing her a series of photographs.  And this photo came up and this girl said, "Sure, I know that location."

The photograph was clearly taken in a rural area, one of a rundown shack and trailer. 

Fawley’s ex-girlfirend recognized it as being near her family’s farm, some 70 miles east of Richmond near the Chesapeake Bay.  Ben Fawley had taken that photo, she said.  So they knew he’d been there.

Chief Monroe: So many things could have been missed so easily... but to go to a location and find nothing but open field.  To be confronted with that and then to say, “Well, this is not enough, let’s walk.” You could’ve walked 50 yards, 100 yards, turned around and left.

But they continued to walk. And eventually found fresh human remains in a shallow grave.  Dental records confirmed it was 17-year-old Taylor Behl.

Pelasara, at a press conference: My mind still cannot absorb the fact that someone could do something this cruel and heinous to my 17-year-old. I’m positive the authorities will bring the sub-human to justice and I pray they receive the death penalty.

Police immediately sealed off the area and say it’ll be some time before they figure out exactly what happened there.

Monroe: Someone had to have put her there.

Magnus: She was buried. Do you know whether n fact she was murdered?

Monroe: Well, look at it this way, she couldn't have done what she did to herself. We know that we're investigating a homicide.

The body of Taylor Behl is now with the state medical examiner, who will determine a cause of death. Evidence from her car is at the FBI's forensics lab in Quantico. Among other things, police will determine if soil found underneath matches the soil in the place she was found.

Police are still holding Ben Fawley in jail on those unrelated charges, but have not charged him in the death of Taylor Behl.

Calls to Fawley’s attorney were not returned.

Magnus: Do you have any hard evidence linking him to Taylor Behl’s death?

Monroe:  I’m not gonna comment on that at this time. We feel comfortable we know what happened that night.

Magnus:  And he’s still a suspect?

Monroe: Yes.

It is a gut-wrenching time for the mother who joyfully sent her girl off to college just a few weeks ago, and now has only the past to comfort her.

Pelasara: I know that she and I had a wonderful relationship.  I know that she was bright, beautiful, and a delight to be around.

There is mourning for Taylor, on the VCU campus where students gathered Friday evening, and in the virtual world, in expressions of grief posted on her Web page. 

And there is this poem, put there by the 17-year-old last spring, which lingers on in cyberspace:

If you read this,
Even if I don’t speak to you often,
You must post a memory of me.
It can be anything you want, good or bad,
Just so long as it happened.

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