Police Ask Rural County for Help in Behl Case

Richmond police are reaching out to Mathews County residents with the hope that they can provide details about the final hours of Taylor Marie Behl – the 17-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University student whose badly decomposed body was found in the coastal community last week.

Detectives are asking whether, between Sept. 5 and 17 , residents recall seeing a white, four-door Ford Escort or any car with personalized Virginia license plates “GRN ERTH,” or Virginia license plates JPC 2848, or Ohio license plates EP 34 KW.

“Investigators need to know when and where the vehicle was spotted and a description of who was driving,” police said in a statement released Tuesday.

Police wouldn’t say why they were hoping Mathews residents could help or how the requested information related to the investigation.

But when Behl vanished from her dorm room in Richmond shortly after 10 p.m. Sept. 5, her 1997 white Ford Escort, which she was known to park off campus, also vanished.

Nearly two weeks later, a Richmond police officer found the car abandoned in the city’s Fan District. Behl’s Virginia plates had been replaced with a stolen Ohio set, police said.

Then, when it had been more than three weeks since Behl was seen alive, Richmond police asked the public for help locating the “GRN ERTH” plates they said were stolen around the time Behl disappeared.

Mathews residents are in a position to help with the case, police said, because Behl’s body was discovered in the county Oct. 5.

Two VCU campus detectives – working on a task force formed to find the freshman college student – unearthed Behl’s remains in the Diggs area of the county, roughly 70 miles east of Richmond.

Benjamin Fawley is the only named suspect in the Richmond Police Department's criminal investigation into Behl's death and one of the last people to see her the night she vanished.
Fawley, 38, told police he last saw Behl around 9:30 p.m. the night of her disappearance. He later claimed he had been robbed and abducted in Richmond's Fan District around 5 a.m. the next day, Sept. 6.

In a police report filed 12 hours after the alleged incident, Fawley could not identify his attackers or the "dirt road" where he told police he was dumped following the attack. On his Web site, Fawley attributed the attack to the friends of an ex-girlfriend the same woman police say led them to Behl's body after identifying pictures Fawley had taken at the farm earlier that year. On a supplemental police report, Fawley subsequently told investigators that he had been rescued by an unknown Hispanic man at 6 a.m. and driven back to his home on Hancock Street in Richmond.

THIS IS CLEARLY THE MURDERER! The phony 'I was abducted and dumped on a dirt road' story is his attempt to cover up having no alibi and explain why there was all of this dirt (from burying the body) on his vehicles, clothes, etc.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.