Evil Next Door

by Amanda Lamb

  “They are doing things with DNA profiles that have never been done before,” Morgan’s friend told him with unbridled excitement in her voice.

  So Morgan took her advice and called DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota, Florida, and asked the director about the company’s capabilities. He was told they could determine the race of an offender from DNA to within only a tenth of a percent margin of error. Suddenly, Morgan started to calculate the possibilities of being able to cut an entire ethnic group out of his suspect pool with this information. But Morgan was getting ahead of himself as usual. He needed to know for sure that what they were telling him was true before he could move forward.

  “Prove it,” Morgan said to the scientist. He was never a man to accept anything without strong evidence, and sometimes even then he was still skeptical.

  The director of the company told Morgan to send him four blind samples from anyone in the police department, and they would analyze the samples to demonstrate their extraordinary capabilities. Morgan was game. He chose a white officer, a black officer, a Hispanic officer, and a Native American officer. The results the company returned were dead-on. Morgan had his answer.

  It took some wrangling, but Morgan finally got the SBI to agree to turn over a sample of the killer’s DNA to send to the laboratory in Florida. Three months later, he got the results from DNAPrint Genomics. It was as he expected. Ninety-two percent of the killer’s genotype was similar to the typical Indo-European genotype.

  “It meant he was a very white, white guy,” Morgan said, not mincing words.

  This piece of the puzzle didn’t tell investigators who their killer was, but it definitely told them who their killer wasn’t. It basically cut anyone of another race out of the suspect pool. And when your pool pretty much encompasses the whole world, anything that can narrow it down is a good thing.

  Mind Games

  Stephanie Bennett’s case involved the only reported combination rape-murder in the entire state of North Carolina in 2002. It was undoubtedly an unusual case for that part of the country, but Michael Teague, the police department’s psychologist, had a hunch they might be dealing with a sexual predator who may have struck before and could strike again. He believed the killer might be a traveler who had left a trail of victims throughout the country and refrained from committing similar crimes in areas that were too close together in order to evade capture.

  In his private practice, Teague specialized in counseling and rehabilitating repeat sex offenders. He knew from his training that sexual deviance and violence often escalated, and this knowledge increased his desire to help investigators crack the case. Teague believed police were dealing with a unique and dangerous criminal.

  “Everybody watching TV thinks it happens every night, but it’s very rare,” Teague said of sexual predators who killed their victims.

  Teague noticed from reading the autopsy report that Stephanie’s body was lacking major injuries other than the marks from restraining and strangling her. Strangulation is a very personal way to kill someone—a mode often used in domestic killings by enraged husbands or boyfriends, yet there was no indication Stephanie knew her attacker. Teague was intrigued. He thought this was especially unusual because he assumed the killer had had a gun that he used to make Stephanie acquiesce to his demands. Using the gun to kill her would have been much faster and easier than strangulation which, contrary to what is portrayed in the movies, takes more strength and precision than most people would imagine. The scenario made little sense. Teague drew on his years of psychological research and training as he started to develop a profile of the killer in his mind.

  “I couldn’t figure out what kind of guy could do all the horrible things he did to her and not bruise her more,” Teague said. “To do all of those extremely violent acts and not beat up on the woman is just so unusual.”

  Stephanie did have what could have been minor defensive wounds, slight scratches, and a carpet burn on her knee, but for the most part she had few injuries. This was not what Teague expected from a brutal rape scenario. For him, it was a red flag that immediately made him rule out previously convicted criminals. They tended to be the most violent offenders who, after spending years in prison, would be the most likely suspects to severely beat their victims and leave obvious injuries.

  Teague figured that the suspect in this case fit into a category called “the power-reassurance rapist,” also known in layman’s terms as the “gentleman rapist.”

  Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, author of the 1979 book Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender, first defined this type of sex offender by saying that the power-reassurance rapist was someone who was of average intelligence, not typically violent, and had social problems, especially with women. Groth went on to say that this type of offender often stalked his victims, forced them to engage in fore-play, and took trophies from the crime scene as reminders of what he had done. According to Groth, these offenders tended to fantasize about being in a romantic relationship with the victim.

  One thing this kind of rapist rarely did was to kill. This detail had Teague completely “befuddled,” he said of the situation. And when crimes didn’t fit into a normal pattern of psychological behavior, Teague knew they were going to be much harder to solve.

  Teague surmised Stephanie was one of a “pool of potential victims” whom the killer had zeroed in on and had possibly been stalking. Because her roommates were out of town, Teague figured that the killer saw a rare opportunity to commit the crime with Stephanie as the victim. He thought the killer may have even been stalking one of Stephanie’s roommates as well, but chose Stephanie that night because she happened to be home alone in the apartment.

  “I think he thought, ‘If one of those other girls doesn’t show up by 12:00, I’m going in,’ ” Teague said of the killer’s thinking. He believed the killer may even have been listening outside Stephanie’s apartment window that evening to her phone calls and realized from her conversations her roommates would not be coming home.

  Investigators told Teague they believed the killer entered through Metro’s bedroom window. But then why did he take Stephanie out of her own bedroom and bring her to the floor in Emily’s room? Although Morgan thought it was because the killer wanted to be able to get out quickly, the same way he came in, Teague believed the suspect wanted the most amount of space to commit the crime. Because many power-reassurance rapists have a need to document their deviance in some way, Teague also felt strongly that the murderer may have videotaped the crime.

  “I’m almost positive he took pictures,” Teague said of the killer. It was a theory not shared by many of the investigators on the case.

  Teague’s belief stemmed in part from the way the bedding in Stephanie’s room was meticulously pulled back and laid on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was as if the killer had wanted the bed to be free and clear of any obstructions so that he could tie Stephanie up and photograph her. Teague believed the killer then moved the show into Emily’s bedroom, possibly onto her bed for more taping or photographs, then finally onto the floor.

  “I think his purpose was to create a film that he could get excited by,” Teague said grimly.

  There was no semen found on Stephanie’s bed or on Emily’s bed—only in and around the body as it lay on the floor in Emily’s room. Yet items were moved from Emily’s bed into the closet. This supported Teague’s theory that the killer must have used the beds for something other than rape. His hypothesis was that the killer took pictures first on the two beds, and then committed the various sexual assaults on the floor.

  “He was an organized offender,” Teague said. “He knew what he was going to do and how he was going to do it.”

  Teague was also still intrigued by the multiple pairs of women’s underwear found dumped on the bush in between Stephanie’s building and the next building over, about twenty or thirty feet from Emily’s bedroom window. At the time, investigators decided the underwear probably didn’t have anything to do with Step
hanie’s murder, that it was just a childish prank at the hands of a young boy, but Teague wasn’t convinced. His gut told him there was more to it.

  “Mighty coincidental that you had a bush full of women’s underwear right near where a woman was raped and murdered,” Teague said. “The odds of that happening are one in twenty thousand.”

  It was determined that a chocolate-colored pair of underwear Stephanie’s roommates said she wore frequently was also missing from the apartment along with the stereo, the laundry basket, and the money from her wallet. More than anything, Teague saw the underwear, and possibly the stereo, as trophies the killer might have taken from the crime scene, something by which to remember the event.

  “I think it actually has an emotional quality to it,” said Teague of the killer’s trophy taking. “I don’t know if it’s totally sexual, or if it was like, ‘Wow that reminds me of what I did.’ It has power to it.”

  That power was frightening. Although, Teague knew that serial killers were rare, he was starting to see signs that they might be dealing with one. An organized, trophy-taking rapist and killer was without a doubt a potential candidate for being a serial murderer.

  One idea to help investigators that Teague came up with was to hypnotize Stephanie’s roommates and the apartment manager who had found the body. The goal of the hypnosis was to see if the women could recall any strange individuals who had been lurking around the apartment complex in the days before Stephanie’s murder or if there was anyone in their lives whom they thought might be capable of such a heinous crime. Unfortunately, nothing the women said under hypnosis aided the investigation, though their thoughts did add to the complete picture the investigative team was building of Stephanie. Teague said Stephanie’s roommates, Dee and Emily, were so emotional about Stephanie’s murder, even under hypnosis, their grief overwhelmed any clues they might be able to offer.

  “Whenever they were talking about Stephanie, you could see their faces change,” Teague said of interviewing the women. “It was like you had turned on a light bulb. ‘Oh, she was this. Oh, she was that.’ It was very genuine. It wasn’t just like somebody had died early and we’re going to make her into a legend. Stephanie really touched people in a positive way.”

  It became apparent after talking to people who knew Stephanie she had an unstoppable magnetism. She was described as someone who was a “good listener” and someone who always put others first. These qualities in life had given her angel-like status in death. Her family and friends lamented over and over again that Stephanie’s death had left such a deep void in their worlds because she had subtly infused their lives with quiet compassion and grace.

  “She was very good at cuing in to people’s needs,” Teague said.

  Now if they could only help Stephanie in death the way she had helped others in life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Stephanie

  The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

  —RENOIR

  Stephanie Renee Bennett was born on April 30, 1979, in Rocky Mount, Virginia, to Mollie and Carmon Bennett. She was their second child—a little sister to brother Jay.

  Even from a young age, Stephanie’s personality was readily apparent to everyone who met her. She was sometimes timid at first until she got to know people, but as she warmed up, she endeared herself to everyone who crossed paths with her. As a result of her kindness and grace, Stephanie was voted “Miss Personality” her senior year at Franklin County High School. With her brown shoulder-length hair, deep brown eyes, and pearly white grin, she looked like she could have been a spokesmodel for Noxzema. She truly had a smile that could light up a room, in a girl-next-door kind of way. Stephanie had a talent for making people feel comfortable, as if they had known her their whole lives.

  Stephanie graduated from Roanoke College in 2001 and a short time later moved to Raleigh to take a job with IBM. It was a big step for a country girl who, by all accounts, had lived a sheltered life before relocating to North Carolina. But she was smart and ambitious and had a burning desire to show her family and herself that she could make it on her own.

  Stephanie’s family and friends finally broke their silence several months after her death and spoke to the media. They hoped by putting a personal face on the tragedy, someone who had information about the case might be prompted to come forward.

  “She was my angel,” said Jay Bennett, Stephanie’s older brother, to WRAL. “I was closer to her than any other person in the world.”

  Carmon Bennett said his daughter had a special love for the outdoors, especially for the rolling hills of Virginia and its sparkling blue lakes. In many ways, she was a typical twenty-something young woman—she liked to read books, talk on the phone, and go shopping with her mother, Mollie Hodges. Although her parents divorced when she was a child, they remained in the same area, and Stephanie was able to have a close, loving relationship with both of them, as well as with her stepmother, Jennifer.

  At a vigil held in Stephanie’s memory on July 1, 2002, Carmon pleaded directly with the killer for the answers he was so desperately seeking.

  “I want to know Stephanie’s last words. Did she say anything that would comfort the members of her family?” Carmon said choking back tears. “Did she pray? You took my daughter; please give me some peace in knowing these things. We will not quit searching until our questions are answered.”

  Unfinished Love

  “Steph, she listened,” said Walter Robinson, Stephanie’s boyfriend, in an interview with WRAL reporter Besthoff and photographer Flowers on August 9, 2002, in Greenville, South Carolina. Walter’s boyishly handsome face, dark blond hair, and blue golf shirt made him look like a happy-go-lucky fraternity boy on his way to a keg party, but it was clear from the way he choked up right out of the gate that he carried a heavy burden. “She just always seemed to be able to say the right things at the right time.”

  “From the get go, you could tell [how] upset he was,” Besthoff recalled. “Very genuine. I remember how my photographer and I felt sorry for the guy. He was in a real state of grief.”

  Walter decided, as Stephanie’s family had done, that he needed to let people know more about the woman he loved, the woman with whom he’d planned to spend the rest of his life with before she was so brutally murdered. A DNA test had cleared Walter as a suspect in the case early on, and he was ready to let the world know Stephanie was more than just another murder statistic.

  Walter and Stephanie had met at a sorority dance at Roanoke College where they were both students. They came separately to the event with other dates, but somehow Walter had mustered up the courage to introduce himself to the attractive, demure brunette across the room. He asked her to dance, and she turned him down. She told him she was afraid his date would get upset and didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Robinson said that first meeting personified the woman he would soon get to know and ultimately love.

  “She always cared about everyone else, she didn’t think of herself,” he said smiling with tears in his eyes.

  The couple had planned on eventually getting married, though they had not actually gotten engaged yet. Walter had never even bought Stephanie a piece of jewelry, until Christmas 2001, when he decided to buy her a ring, not an engagement ring, but a promise ring of sorts to symbolize their future together.

  Carmon Bennett more than approved of his daughter’s relationship with Walter. He considered the intelligent, witty young man to be part of his family. He felt confident that Walter, whom he described as a “fine person from a fine family,” would respect his daughter and take good care of her.

  “Stephanie never asked for anything,” Walter said. “She was always content with what she had. I know she wanted more things, but she wanted to do it for herself.”

  Walter’s eyes welled up with tears as he struggled to find the words to describe exactly what Stephanie meant to him.

  “She was always smiling,” he said. “She was a happy person. She was looking forward to her life i
n the future, our life. She was excited about doing things on her own.”

  After the two graduated from college, Stephanie went off on her own to take a job with IBM in Raleigh. Walter headed to Greenville, South Carolina, to pursue a graduate degree in engineering at Clemson University. They continued dating, but the distance was a strain on the relationship. After a year of long-distance romance, Walter finally convinced Stephanie to move to Greenville so they could be together again. The plan was for the two to eventually get engaged, married, and live happily ever after. “We wanted to be together. It just seemed like when we were around each other, when we were together, everything was right. Everything fit,” Walter said.

  Walter knew he wanted and needed to be closer to the beautiful, gentle, understanding woman who seemed to find the good in everyone and everything. He said Stephanie’s excitement about life and her positive outlook made him a much better person.

  “She’ll always be with me. She’ll always be in my heart. It’s just hard to grasp the concept right now that I’m not going to be able to see her, I’m not going to be able to smell her hair, hold her hand,” Walter said looking straight into the camera lens.

  Walter’s tone changed from sweet reminiscence to anger when he was asked about the man who took Stephanie’s life.

  “Somebody that does something like this is just an animal,” he said, his words drenched in rage. “I want him dead, and God have no mercy on his soul.”

  “He was very sincere,” photographer Flowers said about Walter. “I think Stephanie was truly the love of his life.”

  Even then—back in the infancy of the investigation—those who loved Stephanie had faith the case would eventually be solved. Even Walter, who wished out loud he could trade places with Stephanie, felt that justice would ultimately be served. He had no way of knowing just how long that would take.