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

by M. William Phelps

  The other odd part of Morgan’s testimony was the Jeff Bennett concrete information Tom Camp was able to get into the record.

  “We wondered how Jeff would have known that info before it was released,” Tracy added. “Jeff claimed that his friend (a local deputy) told him. I’ve always wondered why investigators were sharing confidential information with Jeff. That’s not normal protocol. At that point in the investigation, no one should have been eliminated as a possible suspect, Jeff included. In a proper investigation, investigators would never share confidential info with a citizen, especially in a murder (case). Nothing they did in their so-called investigation reflected proper procedure.”

  After thinking about it some more, Tracy needed to make an important point, she said.

  “Consider this: Jeff was a hunter; he had guns and knives. He had a boat painted in camo pattern. He was pissed off at Doug at that time. He had just as much motive as anyone else. Look, I am not saying that Jeff killed Doug, but he certainly should have been a suspect. And without knowing who actually killed Doug (at that time), they were giving pertinent information to a citizen, the ‘best friend’ of the victim?”

  None of it made sense from Tracy’s perspective.

  With all this talk about Jeff Bennett going on inside the courtroom, it was no wonder that as Tracy watched Charles Morgan exit the witness stand and walk toward the door, she turned to see the man in question himself walking through the gallery on his way toward the witness stand.

  Jeff Bennett.

  52.

  Tracy sat at her desk one Sunday afternoon when she “saw the most gorgeous man” she had “ever seen in a police uniform stroll across the atrium in front of me.” His name: Billy Jackson. Tall, dark, handsome. A lawman. A nasty combination of man equal to kryptonite when placed before Tracy Fortson by this point in her life. She couldn’t resist an older, good-looking man in blue.

  “I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He … wore that uniform like a glove.”

  Tracy didn’t utter a word to Billy on that day. She was far too smitten and nervous to open her mouth. But a few nights later, Billy just happened to stop by her desk, put his elbows on the counter, smile, and beckon Tracy over for a little chat.

  “I didn’t think I would be able to speak, at least not anything intelligible.”

  “I’m working surveillance on the roof,” Billy explained, “looking for people who tend to break into cars while the owners are inside the mall shopping. You mind if I use your phone to call in?”

  Tracy said sure. She was in another world. Disappointed it was an official visit, she was still thrilled to be talking to the new man of her dreams.

  When Billy finished his call into the police department, he struck up a conversation with Tracy.

  “Name’s Billy, nice to meet you.”

  “Uh, Tracy … My name is Tracy.”

  It was strange. Tracy had heard from a group of kids who hung around the mall that Billy Jackson had an “attitude” and was known for being “an asshole.”

  “They couldn’t have been talking about this same good-looking guy who was talking and smiling at me.”

  “Nice to meet you, Tracy. I enjoyed talking, but I have to get back to work.”

  Billy turned to walk away, but then turned back around and approached Tracy a second time.

  “You wouldn’t be interested in an old man like me would you?” he said.

  Tracy thought: Old man? You’ve got to be kidding me.

  Billy explained to Tracy how to get up to the roof, where he was working, adding, “Come up some time, visit me, would you?”

  “Uh, sure,” Tracy said.

  A day later, Tracy found her way up to the roof after getting lost and having a security guard friend show her the way. She stuck her head out of the trap door and took a look around. She saw Billy’s jacket and radio, but he didn’t seem to be around. So she left.

  “I was thinking I had missed the only opportunity I would ever have to talk to this man, but that was not the case.”

  Billy came back to the information desk some time later. After that day, his visits became more frequent and Tracy gave him her number and he started calling.

  “He began to ask me to meet him places after I got off work and take rides in his patrol car. One thing led to another. A month flew by and I was head over heels in love. I had never met anyone like this man. He was kind, considerate, loving, and passionate.”

  The only problem Tracy found out after a month of spending time together with Billy Jackson, all while sending little love notes to each other, the phone calls, and the “I love yous,” was that the new man of her dreams had a secret.

  He was married.

  53.

  His full name is William Jeff Bennett. Most everyone, however, called him Jeff. And after Bob Lavender asked the man the court had heard so much about since the start of trial how he knew Doug, “He was my best friend,” Jeff answered somberly.

  It was clear Jeff Bennett missed his old friend.

  They’d met in 1985, Jeff explained. He had known Tracy ever since Doug started dating her. About “eight months.”

  Jeff then explained how he visited Doug “just about every day” since they’d become friends. “We built a gym (in) his house.”

  Lavender quickly got into Doug’s handwriting, showing Jeff State’s Exhibit Number 47, a proven example of Doug’s writing. After asking if he was familiar with Doug’s handwriting, the DA asked Jeff to take a close look at the exhibit and “tell us if it’s his writing?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeff confirmed.

  They talked about Jeff and Doug’s workout schedule and how it became disrupted on May 23, 2000, the week before Doug went missing—the last day Jeff Bennett recalled seeing his friend alive.

  Lavender asked why they had stopped working out together.

  “Because, basically, I didn’t want to come over there anymore if she was going to be over there.” Jeff gave a slight glance over to Tracy, who sat motionless and expressionless, staring at Doug’s old friend.

  “Had there been some problems or something?”

  “Well, they had been having problems for a long time. I didn’t want to get involved.”

  Strangely, after a few additional, inconsequential questions, Lavender passed his witness.

  Tom Camp went straight at the place where he thought he could do the most damage: “And you all worked out a lot together, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And also did steroids together, correct?”

  “We have in the past.”

  “You got pretty upset with Doug about Miss Fortson, correct?”

  “Yes. I was pretty upset, discouraged, because seeing what was going on in the relationship.”

  Camp mentioned Jeff telling Sheriff Tom Lutz when they first chatted how he had told Doug not to call him to work out until he severed his relationship with Tracy.

  “That is right,” Jeff testified.

  Camp wanted to know why it was Jeff never “showed any concern whatsoever about him being missing until” about two weeks after Doug was last seen.

  Jeff Bennett told jurors he mentioned to Doug in May that when he had broken ties to Tracy “once and for all” to call him. They could then resume their schedule. Once she was out of the picture, Jeff said, he would be glad to “come over and start working out” again. “Until then,” he added, “I will not come around anymore because you are playing a dangerous game and you are not going to include me. The last time I saw Doug, I told him that.”

  Jeff took a breath. Sip of water. Continued.

  He added how he spoke to Doug on the phone that spring and explained his feelings. Doug was upset by the call. He said, “ ‘Will you please come back and start working out with me again? I need my workout.’ Sure, Doug,” Jeff told him, “I would love to.” Doug replied, “‘It’s OK. She said she would leave us alone. She wouldn’t bother us.’ The last time I worked out with Doug was May 23 and I am pr
etty sure it had come to a head again. And I said, I am not coming over there again.” This was the reason, Jeff continued, why he had not spoken to Doug during those two weeks he was missing. He was upset with his friend. They’d had a falling out. At some point near the two-week mark, however, after not hearing from Doug, Jeff told jurors he actually picked up his phone and called him. It was near mid-June. Jeff just wanted to “see how (Doug) was doing.” But he “couldn’t get him.” Days later, Jeff found out Doug had been missing. Then he found out Doug’s birds had died. “I said, ‘Oh, God.’ I knew immediately right then, you know, (that) she done it and I said it” to Lutz. “I said, ‘Oh, my God, his girlfriend finally done something to him.’ ”

  “That’s right,” Camp countered. “You immediately started pointing a finger at Tracy Fortson.”

  “I couldn’t help it. After everything that I had seen all of that year, I couldn’t help it.”

  Camp then dropped a rather interesting fact into the conversation, trying to drum up some sort of motive, perhaps: “Is it also just a coincidence that your wife wound up being the (administrator) of his estate?”

  “His mother asked us (if we) would we do it and (my wife) accepted the job. I said I couldn’t do it. So my wife took the job over.”

  “That’s right, your wife did it, not you … because that wouldn’t look real good, would it?” Camp said.

  “Excuse me?” Jeff countered, clearly upset and angered by the weak accusation.

  “That wouldn’t look real good, would it?” Camp repeated.

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “No further questions.”

  54.

  When Tracy found out the man of her dreams was married, she freaked out. She was hurt, of course. Angry as a rabid raccoon, too. She couldn’t understand why Billy Jackson had lied to her. She thought they’d share a deep connection.

  “Why? Why would you do this to me?” Tracy asked Billy next time she saw him.

  “I don’t love her,” Billy said. “We’re getting a divorce. We don’t even sleep together anymore. I love you. I want to be with you. I’m leaving her. It’s been over for a long time.”

  Instead of running for the hills, however, Tracy said she “believed him.” She bought the story.

  “I was just like an infatuated, love-struck, 18-year-old. He loved me, not her. We were going to be together.”

  One day, Tracy decided to show up at a Little League baseball game to watch Billy, the new love of her life, coach the kids. He had always talked about how much he loved coaching. Here was the neighborhood cop coaching the neighborhood kids. It certainly added some credibility to Billy’s integrity in Tracy’s eyes.

  As she walked toward the field, Tracy could not believe what she was staring at. By this time, the revelation that Billy was married had blown over and he had convinced Tracy she was the only one for him. At home, Billy told Tracy, he was going through the motions and going to divorce his wife. It was just going to take time.

  “Not only was he married,” Tracy explained, reflecting on that Little League game. “She was pregnant.”

  This led to another confrontation with Billy.

  “I cried, we argued, but he was relentless, telling me: ‘She thinks it was an act of God. I wasn’t even supposed to be able to have kids. I was injured. We haven’t slept together since. I’m leaving after the baby is born.’ ”

  Tracy couldn’t let go. She said she “held onto those promises like a lifeline.”

  No matter how many lies, how many times she caught Billy doing something he said he wouldn’t, Tracy hung around for more.

  Billy started to take Tracy into the clubs. Tracy wasn’t old enough, but Billy was a police officer, so there was never any problem getting her in.

  “And we danced. I loved dancing with him. He was fun and exciting. The relationship was exciting. … As time went on, we continued to meet after I got off work. He came to my house while he was working and I would cook dinner for him. My face glowed every time I saw his patrol car coming down the driveway. He was taking a chance by coming to my house while on duty … but it didn’t seem to matter to him.”

  The relationship became Tracy’s life. Every chance Billy had, he poured on the charm. They met at the Waffle House one night, a favorite place to go after the bars closed. Tracy had injured her ankle in the days before and wasn’t feeling well.

  “I’m not much in the mood to talk tonight, Billy,” she said.

  Billy carried on an entire conversation by writing notes back and forth on a Waffle House napkin, “Looking into my eyes, never saying a word. No one else has ever done that. It was the little things like that, little nothings that meant so much. I kept that napkin in a shoebox for years, along with all the other notes he left for me.”

  At Easter that same year, Tracy took off to Savannah with a friend to visit her friends’ parents. Billy was waiting for them in Athens and presented Tracy with a little yellow stuffed bunny, along with a Happy Easter card upon her return.

  “He made me feel special, like no one had ever done before. He called me at work just to say, ‘I love you,’ and when I got off work, he was usually waiting for me in the parking lot. I would immediately look for his patrol car as I walked out. Sometimes he would hide his car and make me think he wasn’t there, and I would be disappointed, then he’d drive out from behind a corner of the building and turn his blue lights on to surprise me.”

  It was a whirlwind romance, Billy sweeping Tracy off her feet almost daily with some sort of special surprise.

  Months went by. The butterfly kisses and unicorns and rainbows passed. The relationship turned into what Tracy saw as “normal,” or, as normal as it was going to be with Billy still married. Then, out of nowhere, Tracy said, she saw a jealous side of Billy come out. He started to question where she was, who she was with, why she wasn’t home at certain times. She’d walk out of work with a fellow security officer friend. Billy would roll up in his patrol car and say, “Who is that guy? What are you doing with him?”

  “Just a friend, Billy. Relax.”

  Tracy gave a friend a ride home from work one night. Billy followed. Pulled her over afterward.

  “Unacceptable,” he said after she explained they were just friends and he needed a ride home.

  “He didn’t care who it was,” she recalled. “He did not want me to give another man a ride anywhere.”

  This caused a big argument between them, which carried on for a few days. Tracy had not seen this side of Billy and it bothered her. “Plus, how could he be jealous when he still had a wife at home? Of course, he had an answer for that. ‘I don’t love her anymore. I love you. You’re my girl and I don’t want you with any other guys and that includes giving someone a ride. You can’t trust anybody. What if that guy had tried to take advantage of you and I wasn’t here?’ ”

  The problem for Tracy, which she could not have known, was that she accepted the behavior within the context of someone who was co-dependent: Wow … he truly loves me to care that much. She felt comfortable being treated this way. It spoke to her low self-esteem at the time.

  As the relationship progressed, another odd behavior presented itself to Tracy. Billy pulled his gun on someone inside a club one night when the dude pissed him off. It took several security guards to pull Billy off the guy. Someone called the local cops and Billy was reprimanded at work. Put on probation.

  “I knew that he had a temper and he wasn’t one to mess with, but I had never known him to pull his weapon in a public place.”

  Billy continued to cross the line. He was now getting into trouble on a regular basis, in and out of work. Whatever was going on with him, Tracy said, she was “oblivious to it.” Billy started to spend evening at her house while he was supposed to be on duty.

  There was one day near this time that stood out to Tracy. She hadn’t heard from Billy at all the entire day, which was unusual. He would call all day, every day and make random stops by her house to say
hello.

  “I was worried. It wasn’t like him to not call or stop by.”

  Midnight came. The phone rang.

  Billy.

  He was drunk. Sitting behind the bar at the 5th Quarter, a club in Athens that Tracy and Billy frequented.

  “I’m sorry, baby, but I’ve been at the hospital all day,” Billy explained after Tracy asked where he had been. “(My wife) had the baby. A girl.”

  Billy was crying. He said he needed a ride home from the bar. Could Tracy come and get him?

  “So you call me?” Tracy exploded.

  “Baby, can you come and get me? I can’t drive home.”

  Tracy thought about it. “OK, Billy. I’ll be there.”

  When she arrived, Billy decided to drive his brother-in-law’s car home instead of leaving it at the bar. His brother-in-law had already left, hours before.

  “Follow me,” Billy told Tracy.

  “No way, Billy. You’re wasted.”

  “Follow me!” he insisted.

  There was no talking him out of it.

  So she followed.

  Billy made it home without being stopped or crashing the vehicle.

  “I didn’t hear from him for a week after that. When he finally called, he told me that (his wife) had complications and he had to stay with her, taking her back to the hospital on one occasion. The baby was fine.”

  Tracy did not know how to respond to this. What could she say?