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

by M. William Phelps

  He first explained how a document examiner goes about studying a document. It was a meticulous science, actually. Took great patience and a jeweler’s eye for detail.

  The $64,000 question for Robinson was rather simple: Had he looked at the documents (Tracy and Doug’s handwriting as compared to the note left on Doug’s truck) and made a determination as to who wrote what.

  Robinson took several minutes to explain how he had gone about studying all of the documents. How it wasn’t just a matter of looking at one document and comparing it to the next. There was a process of tracing each common letter and not looking for similar characteristics but exact likenesses.

  In the end, Robinson—no surprise—said there was no way Tracy could have been the author of the note. He compared the samples of writing by explaining that they were like looking at “apples and oranges,” concluding, “There is no similarity at all.”

  During cross-examination, one new fact emerged. Lavender asked Robinson about the people involved in authorship of the documents and Robinson said who they were did not matter. He did not want to know anything about them so as to stay objective. For him, it was about the science alone.

  “Did you know that any of them suffered from any particular learning problems?” Lavender followed up with.

  “Well,” Robinson said, nodding his head in agreement, “it is obvious that one person doing the writing has a learning problem simply because of the misspelled words in it.”

  “Dyslexia, are you familiar with that?” Lavender countered.

  “I don’t know about that, no, sir.”

  “That’s all I have.”

  I asked Tracy to explain her relationship with Doug at the time he was murdered. This was an important question, in the end. We’ve heard from Doug’s “best” friends and what law enforcement uncovered: that Doug and Tracy were estranged, had been arguing all the time, and were not going to be getting back together. In the scope of a motive, that needs to be in place if you’re the prosecution. If Tracy and Doug are blissfully in love, however, Tracy would not have a motive to kill him.

  “One of the things that has always bothered me and continues to bother me to this day is when people referred to Doug and I as having a ‘rocky relationship.’ It’s in most court documents relating to my case. That statement was attached to my case when Jeff Bennett was questioned by law enforcement at the very beginning. Jeff told investigators that we were always breaking up.”

  All of which—these statements as Tracy explains them—is true. But Tracy had also said her relationship with Doug was rocky, if we take those police reports from her early interviews to be fact.

  “I would not consider my relationship with Doug as ‘on again-off again,’ ” Tracy continued. “We had different opinions about certain things and we didn’t always agree, but that didn’t mean we broke up every time we disagreed. The things we disagreed on were most often a matter of right and wrong, borderline illegal activity, and flat-out criminal activity I refused to go along with. We were a very private couple. We didn’t really hang out with other people. That is one reason, in my opinion, Jeff (Bennett) was so angry with Doug.

  “For anyone to say that they knew anything about our private lives or our relationship with each other, they were not telling the truth. Doug battled dyslexia; most people never knew that. This created a learning disability he had to deal with all of his life. It made it hard for him at school and it also made it hard for him when it came to getting a job, one reason for having his own business. He was not a social person, so we didn’t do the party scene and rarely went anywhere with other people. Jeff and his ex-wife were the only couple we ever went anywhere with and even then, it wasn’t often.”

  Tracy went on to say Doug’s battle with dyslexia did not mean he was stupid. She called him “business-minded.” A guy who was “always looking for a new way to make money.” Those ideas, however, were not always “exactly legal,” she alleged, which would always lead to a “disagreement” between them.

  “I was sworn to uphold the law,” Tracy explained. “I could not and would not participate in some of Doug’s schemes to make money.”

  Tracy said it was a few weeks into dating Doug when she realized that he, as she put it, “Wasn’t going to work every day like a normal person who owns his own welding business.”

  “How are you able to make a living without going to work every day?” Tracy asked Doug one morning.

  “I worked so many hours during the summer months, I can afford to take off for a while,” she claims Doug told her. “Besides, I have a guy on the job working under me. All I have to do is check on him every morning to make sure he is on the job.”

  To Tracy, this response sounded legit.

  Tracy talked about several “deals” Doug was involved in with various people he had known most of his life, one of whom was “a sheriff.” Tracy banged on about “corrupt behavior” going on here, most of which cannot be proven other than to say it would have been Doug’s word against those involved. She also claims one of Doug’s familiar “deals” was to file “fraudulent” claims against insurance companies. Tracy said she wasn’t aware of the specifics, but knew it was going on.

  Again, there is no evidence to support these claims other than, as of now, Tracy’s word.

  “So, as you can see, we didn’t always see eye to eye,” Tracy explained. “Our morals were different, to say the least. If Doug saw an opportunity to make money, he took it, right or wrong. I, on the other hand, was torn between my love for him and my conviction for doing the right thing. He didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing because he said that insurance companies were always ripping people off. The more I tried to get him to understand it was wrong, the more he defended his point.”

  This was one of the reasons, Tracy concluded, Doug always sat with his back to the wall, facing the door, like a cop.

  “He always felt someone was after him.”

  In Tracy’s view, when you talk about motive, why Doug was murdered, by whom, and how she could have been framed for it, “Well,” she says, “someone was always after him.”

  As Tracy’s second trial continued and her attorney called his next witness, in walked an unfamiliar face to most inside the courtroom: Tracy’s now 18-year-old daughter, Elise Fortson, who stood with one hand up, taking the oath to tell the truth.

  [1] On this note, I will say that during my near year-long correspondence with Tracy, she wrote more than 70,000 words to me, none of which I could find to be an exaggeration or outright lie.

  64.

  Tracy sent me a one-word answer, responding to my previous email, in which I’d ripped into her insults and accusations.

  “Agreed,” was all she wrote.

  This shocked me.

  Then she continued to talk about her case.

  In total, I received more than 132 singled-spaced pages of text from Tracy. She discussed her life, the “lies” told by law enforcement and the prosecution, and just about everything in between. In reading it all, I decided to allow Tracy to explain her “innocence” in her own words (which you’ve read throughout the text). It is the only way to get her voice into this book. It was not easy to keep up with the back and forth, all of the “discrepancies” Tracy found in her trials and the reports generated by her case. A lot of it, to be honest, is unprovable. It is speculation and, again, forgive the redundancy, opinionated accusation made by a woman who has been convicted of murder.

  After that spat between us, I allowed some time to pass, after which I then decided to write to Tracy once more to see if she would continue with our correspondence. She answered right away. The past seemed to be behind us. She didn’t mention our last exchange.

  We carried on from there with an unspoken agreement between us: She would fight for her innocence; I would ask questions and allow her to have a voice within the text. If nothing else, Tracy has stuck to the same narrative all these years: A steadfast belief that she was railroaded a
nd framed for Doug’s murder. Her tenacity in this regard has never wavered.

  It is, as you have read, a hard concept to grasp without any tangible, hard evidence to back it up. Part of me wants to believe Tracy Fortson. But I just don’t have the proof.

  Tracy sent me names of Doug’s friends. Names of people involved, either closely connected or on the periphery of the case. I made contact with some, others could not be found. No one wanted to delve into the past. We’re talking almost 20 years ago. I’ve never run into such a shunning while writing a book.

  “I got a letter from a guy in prison years ago that claimed he was friends with (someone close to Doug) and he told me that (this person) had gone into Doug’s house after it was secured by police,” Tracy told me in May 2017. “He went through the police tape. The guy’s name (is Stan), but I never had a last name that I can remember. But if you ever have the chance to talk to (that person), it would be something I would like to know. Was he the person who went in the house in that timeframe after Doug’s body was found that they thought was me?”

  This is the sort of conjecture and disjointed “evidence” that is entirely impossible to track down. A guy in prison whose last name I don’t have, a prison I don’t know the name of, a family member going into Doug’s house after the murder.

  Tracy is hanging on the idea that it is all true.

  Where is the letter?

  She could not produce it.

  During the winter of 2017, I sent Tracy those documents I uncovered regarding the investigation into Bernadette Davy’s career after Tracy’s case had been adjudicated. She had never seen them, she said.

  Not long after, she sent a simple email: “My jaw is on the floor.”

  The documents were part of a later court record in a case challenging Davy’s expert testimony.

  “I had a very hard time getting information from the GBI,” Tracy told me after I sent her copies of the Davy documents. “It was as if they did not want me to have anything that would help me.”

  65.

  Elise Fortson looked a lot like her mother. A beautiful young woman with blond, shoulder-length hair, clear skin, penetrating blue eyes, a runner’s build. Elise had been a loyal defender of her mother’s innocence throughout the years. Sitting, testifying for her mother must have been difficult. Tracy had been behind bars since Elise was 15. Here Elise was, a legal adult, appearing in her mother’s murder trial.

  A student at the University of Georgia, Elise had lived with Tracy in Winterville at the time of Doug’s murder. As she began to recall one of the main dates in question, Sunday, June 4, 2000, Elise said she remembered she and her mom heading out to the mall. It was near noon, just as all the stores were opening, when Elise and Tracy pulled into the mall parking lot. Elise was being dropped off to meet up with friends. Tracy pulled up, kissed her daughter on the cheek, said she’d see her in a few hours and left.

  By 2:30 that afternoon, Tracy was back, in her black F-150 Ford pickup picking up Elise.

  Leaving the mall, they drove to a nearby Walmart. It was around 3, Elise testified, when they arrived. They spent about an hour inside Walmart and drove home.

  “Looking back on the weekend,” Tracy’s lawyer asked her daughter, “did your mother act unusual or out of the ordinary in any way during the course of that weekend?”

  “No, sir.”

  Defense attorney Crecelius then asked if Elise recalled her mother acting strangely at all on that Monday or in the days after.

  No. No. No.

  Crecelius brought up the dog pen Tracy was in the process of fixing at their home and if they were doing the work during that critical time period when Doug was murdered.

  “Yes,” Elise said.

  He asked about the changes Tracy was making to it.

  “We were going to lay a concrete slab underneath.”

  Crecelius asked about a horse. Did her mother own a horse?

  “Yes.”

  “Where was that horse kept?”

  “Down the road from our house in a pasture.”

  Crecelius talked about a creek running through the pasture, which had dried up. Wasn’t that was the reason why Tracy needed a watering trough?

  Elise agreed.

  It made sense: that is, Elise’s testimony. I mean, why would Tracy bring her daughter to the Walmart to purchase items she was going to use in a murder plot later on? The fact that she purchased the watering trough and the creek bed had dried up seemed logical. However, for Tracy to have been set up and framed, it would mean that whoever was going to kill Doug and then frame her for the crime would have had to know when she purchased those items, thus opening up the opportunity to kill Doug and set the frame job into motion.

  “Had she ever talked about putting a large watering trough in that pasture?” Crecelius wondered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lavender objected. “Hearsay!”

  “That is all I have,” Crecelius concluded.

  Lavender had very little. He asked a few questions about Elise’s memory of that time and if Tracy had anything in the back of the pickup when she picked her up at the mall.

  None of which Elise could recall.

  After Elise was released, Crecelius and Tracy looked at each other. Talked a bit amongst themselves. Tracy shook her head in the affirmative.

  “You ready?” Crecelius asked his client.

  “I am.”

  Tracy walked up to the witness stand. There was only one way to tell this story: from her mouth to jurors’ ears.

  66.

  Tracy Fortson was 39 in 2004 as she stepped up to the witness stand to tell her story. This was going to be Tracy’s chance—likely her last—to finally speak publicly about her case.

  She looked tired, relaxed, confident.

  Crecelius got right into it with the standard set-up questions, allowing Tracy to state on record that she did not kill Doug Benton.

  “Did you shoot Doug Benton?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you stab Doug Benton?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you conceal the body?”

  “No, sir. I did not.”

  Tracy came across poised, without sounding arrogant or unsympathetic. She wasn’t crass in any way. She seemed rather resolute and steadfast in her belief that she had been wrongly accused.

  They spoke about the relationship she and Doug had. Tracy agreed it was “rocky.” Then talked about how she hunted in an area around Doug’s property, before mentioning all the various items she’d transport in the back of her truck within the scope of a normal day during the course of a normal week.

  How her truck—like most—had exterior scratches.

  How the dent on her bumper did not occur when she was removing a horse-watering trough full of concrete and Doug’s body, but when she’d “hit a deer.”

  How she had no idea there was any damage to the rear bumper of her truck.

  How she’d cracked the back taillight on her truck not backing into a tree while dumping Doug’s body, but by hitting a peach tree in her yard.

  How she’d seen Doug on that weekend in question, June 3 and 4, and they’d gone out to eat.

  Crecelius stopped her there, asking specifically about the evening of June 3, 2000.

  Tracy said: “We watched a movie. First of all, we had to take care of the birds when we got there and then we watched a movie.”

  “And what movie was it?”

  “Yes, sir,” she testified: “ ‘An Officer and a Gentleman.’ ”

  Tracy said she left Doug’s on that night about midnight, returned about 1:30 a.m. They’d gotten into an argument during the movie, adding, “I got my feelings hurt and I went home.”

  Crecelius wanted to know why she would go back to Doug’s house if they’d argued and Doug had hurt her.

  According to Tracy, she “figured” after being back home for a time that Doug would be “more mad” if she didn’t go back.

  Tracy said she spent th
e night in Doug’s bed. While Doug, as usual, slept on the couch. She claimed she left Doug’s around 6 the following morning, June 4, Sunday. Drove home. Took Elise to the mall. Then stopped at that farm supply store to purchase the trough, a mineral block for her horse, and some concrete for a dog pen she had been working on. She described the entire trip into the store, why she needed those items, even recalling what she was wearing on that day: jeans and a T-shirt.

  As she spoke, if I’m a juror, I am asking myself one question: Why would a killer choose a store to buy supplies for a murder close to the scene and where she knew the clerk and could be easily identified?

  After a few more questions, Tracy explained how she unloaded all of the items she purchased at the farm supply store by jumping up on the back bed of her truck while it was backed up to her carport. Then she slid the bags of concrete mix off her truck and onto the floor of the carport, likely leaving concrete dust and residue in the bed of her truck and on the floor of the carport.

  After dropping the mineral block for her horse off at the pasture up the road from her house, Tracy said she picked up Elise at the mall and headed over to the nearby Walmart.

  She bought a shower curtain and other household items for her bathroom because she needed them. In fact, she added, after getting home, she replaced the shower curtain and placed the old one in the trash outside.

  By then it was somewhere near 5 or 6 in the evening, which was when she got back into her truck and drove over to Doug’s.

  When she arrived, Doug was feeding his birds.

  Tracy claimed she and Doug did not “fuss” about anything upon her return. She felt they were on good terms; the argument from the previous night forgotten. She stayed about two hours, left Doug’s and drove home. She remained at home and never spoke to Doug again that night.