Taylor Behl: A Virginia Campus Mystery // 641

0:00What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Going West. We have a college story for you guys today. We're very much going to be talking about like a school predator type of situation. Yeah, this is one of those cases where I mean every case infuriates us, but this one in particular just because of who we're talking about today really fucking irks me. Yeah, there's a lot of lies in this story. There's a lot of changed stories in this story. And there's also some surveillance footage, which we will be playing for you guys on YouTube. As always, we're always putting pictures and stuff up on YouTube. If you guys want to watch us there or if you're listening, you can check out our socials to watch that video and see other photos and see Taylor who we're talking about today.

1:04We're on Instagram at Going West Podcasts. We're also on TikTok as well as Facebook. So without further ado, this is the murder of Taylor Beale. So let's get into it. In September of 2005, a 17 year old college freshman disappeared after leaving her dorm, sending her family and the whole city of Richmond, Virginia into a frenzied search. As investigators unraveled her final days, reviewing dorm surveillance footage and sifting through her diary, they uncovered a web of secrets, deception, and one man who's disturbing past would ultimately change the course of the case forever.

2:06This is the murder of Taylor Beale, a Virginia campus mystery. Taylor Marie Beale was born on October 13th, 1987 in Vienna, Virginia, which is a western suburb of Washington, D.C. She was the only child of parents Janet and Matt who divorced before she was even two years old. With Janet now single mom to her only child, the two were exceedingly close and they really did everything together. They even moved abroad to the UK for a few years when Janet married her second husband and when they divorced, Janet and Taylor headed back home to Virginia. Taylor was bubbly and confident from a very young age and really prided herself on making those around her feel good about themselves. This is something that her friends actually attested to. They were like, she always made you feel better. Like she was, she was a really present friend. Her dad, Matt later remembered quote, she was a very kind girl. She was always concerned about other people. Well, after graduating from James Madison High School in the spring of 2005, she settled on attending Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

3:13Thus, she left home on August 19th, 2005, starting her freshman semester at just 17 years old, but her 18th birthday was just about two months away in October. Well, eerily, Janet remembers having a bad feeling about her daughter venturing out on her own so early and so young. But from everything Janet was hearing, Taylor was really enjoying her first few weeks on campus. On September 5th, 2005, two and a half weeks into the fall semester. I mean, this story that we're talking about today happened right after she got to college. Taylor's roommate Emma Ellsworth, who was at home at their dorm with her boyfriend, recalls briefly greeting Taylor while she grabbed her car keys and headed out. Emma spent the next day and night at her boyfriend so she wasn't home to see that Taylor also wasn't. So when she returned, she was shocked to find that there was no sign of Taylor, and she could tell that she hadn't been home since the previous day, which was Monday actually was Labor Day.

4:17None of her personal items had been removed or even disturbed since the last time Emma had seen her, including Taylor's daily prescriptions, her purse, and her cell phone, which are obviously like really important things in a person's life. Yeah, I always feel like if those items are left behind usually, it's kind of suspicious because typically you're not really going to go, you're not going to typically leave your prescriptions and your purse behind. Yeah, something's going on. Yeah, and the concern only continued to grow when Taylor missed her classes on that next day, Tuesday, September 6th. So afraid that something had happened while she was out, Emma called the campus police to report Taylor missing. And within hours, the VCU police notified Janet about her daughter's disappearance. Well, Taylor's mom Janet raced to the campus to inspect her dorm and of course, talked to Emma and the police. But initially, campus police seemed doubtful that anything nefarious had taken place, using that she had most likely taken off to stay with her friends or possibly a guy for a few days.

5:21So kind of pulling that age old note out of the playbook, you know, it's like, oh, she's probably just hanging out with a boyfriend running off of the boyfriend or whatever. Sometimes that is the truth by like Janet says you're about to read a really good quote that really puts us in a perspective. Yeah, exactly because Janet later questioned this, saying in an interview quote, and how could she do that without her purse, without money, without clothes? She hadn't gone off on a jolly like they were trying to make it sound. I got to use that to turn more on a jolly. I know, like on a little excursion or a little trip. I thought the same thing to two. I was like, oh, well, she spent a few years in the UK. So she probably picked that up. She did. She did, but yeah, she does make a really good point that she's clearly not off on a jolly like she doesn't have any of her things. Right. Well, on the evening that she was last seen, Taylor headed to the nearby village cafe to meet with her recent ex boyfriend. This guy's name is Jake Cunningham, which is actually sorry, this cafe is actually still there today. It's described as kind of like a funky local institution that's been around since 1956, and it serves food in dark wooden booths, and it even has a jukebox.

6:30Yeah, I saw this place was on diners, drivers and dives. Oh, it's like kind of placing. Yeah, it looks fun. Well, when Jake was questioned, he admitted that the previous weekend when Taylor was home staying at her mom's house, he had texted her saying that he wanted to break up. But within days, they were already considering getting back together. So by Jake's account on Monday, September 5th, 2005, he had taken Taylor to dinner at the village cafe and then walked her back to her dorm before catching a late night movie with some friends. And by the way, this alibi was verified by the friends that he had been with that night. So it did check out now a short while later, Taylor was spotted by a skateboarding friend named Kevin, who saw her walking on campus alone. He stopped to say hi and the pair chatted for a little bit and apparently Taylor shared that she was in a particularly impulsive mood and that she wanted to do something illegal. Now, he said that he wasn't sure what she even meant by this, but they parted ways shortly after that.

7:31Kevin too had a verifiable alibi for the rest of the evening following this short encounter. So, you know, Jake's checking out, Kevin's checking out doesn't seem like these two were involved. Well, lucky for investigators, Taylor kept detailed notes about her friend groups, the guys that she was talking to as well as her personal life. So, you know, this is sort of like a virtual diary that she's keeping here. In one online blog entry, she shared quote, I've drifted. Maybe not just me, but I've lost touch with some of my really good friends from the past few years. Well, these notes wound up being a treasure trove of information for the investigation because Taylor had written multiple entries about a man named Ben Folly. Now, Ben was a local amateur photographer who she'd actually met in her last year of high school during her campus visit, of course, to Virginia Commonwealth University as a hopeful student because, of course, as many college students do, she toured the campus like during her senior year.

8:36Yeah, but there's an interesting thing about this meeting. Yeah, so first, retired FBI agent and behavioral expert Clint Van Zandt, later described Ben as a quote, 38 year old bipolar indigent skateboarder and self-professed goth the web master. What the hell is that? God, the web master crazy self-titled probably just the cringiest person you've ever met. A God guy that's really good at the web. Worldwide web hackers. It's giving God backer. Well, Ben spent years living near the VCU campus and dated and befriended various students from the campus, even though he's in his late 30s, you're fucking weirdo. So he was known around campus for his very colorful dyed hair, his photography, and he had this really recognizable van that featured hundreds of stickers and like license plates on it. And he also had a reputation for liking younger women and sometimes girls.

9:37Yeah, not the 38 year old man with a creepy van hanging out around campus. Yeah, it's like it's one of those, we'll post a picture of it and you can see it on YouTube, but it's like he thinks his van is so cool and he's like, oh yeah, I'm known around town. I got my sticker van and I'm in my late 30s and I live next to a college campus and I talk to all these college kids and like edgy. Like come on dude, you're just grow up, you know, yeah, well, let's revisit the girls comment because Ben and Taylor met when he was 37 and Taylor was 17. So there's a 20 year age gap here. But here's exactly how they met in February of that year. Her father Matt Beale brought Taylor to VCU to check out the campus and they stopped by the apartment of a friend in former classmate of hers named Mike Chino, who happened to be renting Ben's spare room from him at the time. And Taylor was to spend the night there and tour VCU the following day. So that's how she came into contact with him was she was touring the campus and staying at his apartment essentially even though she hadn't known him prior.

10:42Right. And I'm going to talk in a second about like that situation and why she was staying with this college student in a second. Since Ben had this kind of strange reputation, he like Jake, cutting him of course and Kevin was brought in for questioning as one of the men who had been in Taylor's life at the time of her disappearance, you know, naturally makes sense, especially because he's kind of like a frickin weirdo who's like praying on college girls. Well, he explained that they shared a mutual interest in the other, but remember she's 17. He's 37 so weird. Like the fact that he's admitting like, yeah, we kind of liked each other like talking to the police dude. So Ben described her as beautiful and said that they had a lot in common and that they talked for hours the night that she disappeared. But I will say Matt later maintain this of course as Taylor's father Matt that he thought that Ben was in his mid 20s at the oldest and that it's possible that Taylor didn't know his real age.

11:43But she actually did know his real age and she said to a friend of hers actually that she knew that it felt wrong or that it was wrong that she was kind of intrigued by this older guy and she wanted to keep it a secret because it wasn't something that she was seriously pursuing. She was just really fascinated by him because he was kind of this intriguing artistic character like a lot of people felt that way about Ben. Well, that's the manipulative angle of this whole thing is that he's the quote unquote, you know, cool older guy that's kind of hanging out around campus and he's so artsy and he's into photography and he's like cool. Yeah, but he's like such a fucking douche. Well, right and we've talked about this. I can't remember what case this was and it might have been in Haley Buzz be a few months ago. I can't really remember. But when you're a teenage girl sometimes especially, you know, she's a freshman in college. So she's like she's living in a dorm. She doesn't live at home anymore. She's like in adult territory, but she's not a legal adult yet. And even if she was 18, like she's still really young and she probably thinks in her mind like, oh, yeah, he's older but like I'm mature. I'm in college.

12:53But the problem is like a lot of young girls, including myself, like I'm just kind of putting myself in my own teenage brain is that you don't realize that like you might be mature, but it's not okay. That a guy that's in his late 30s is interested in you as a 17 year old. That's not okay. The other part of this situation is like, what are you doing as Ben? What are you doing hanging out around campus? Like you're 37, 38 and you're still chilling. Like you're you're living with college students and you're hanging out with them and you're probably going to the same bars that they go to. You're probably like going to the same restaurants that they go to grow up. Move on with your life, bud. Well, I think that says a lot about him. And again, like I said, this kind of predatory angle that we're going to get into just like remember that he is surrounding himself with young people all the time and in a really creepy way. And it's going to get a lot worse too. Yeah. So, you know, going back to her dad, Matt, of course, again, Ben's roommate at that time was a guy named Mike and Mike had grown up with Taylor. They went to school together, but he was like a year older than her.

14:03So basically her dad said that he was a nice guy and that they were friends and he wasn't worried at all about Taylor staying there, especially that's why I just brought up that he thought that Ben was in his 20s because he thought, oh, it's just a couple of young college guys. Like he, he also recognized that Taylor was really comfortable in that situation. She was like, this is just my friend Mike, like everything's cool that Matt didn't like second guest the situation and didn't even second guest Ben thought that Ben and Mike seemed like nice guys. Yeah. Well, according to Ben, his interest or his relationship with Taylor was innocent. She wanted his help as a photographer hoping for content for her MySpace page. So he's kind of like, oh, yeah, I'm just a photographer. And I was going to like take some photos of her for her MySpace. Okay, still really weird, by the way, but he did admit that on the night that he met Taylor, they engaged in consensual sex, which of course would have been considered statutory rape per Virginia law. Yeah, so not consensual. No, Taylor later told her best friend, Glenis Kio about this encounter, like I kind of mentioned, but maintain that it was only a one time deal.

15:09This is when she's telling Glenis like, yeah, I know that it's wrong because he's older, but like I'm not going to do it again. This is what Glenis said. Yeah, and I don't want to date the guy either. Yeah, I don't want to date him. I'm intrigued with him as a person. I'm intrigued by him as a person, but I don't want anything to do with him in a romantic or intimate capacity again. So, so that is what her best friend said. Well, like Taylor supposedly requested, they wound up taking pictures together. Most of them were nothing special, though Janet remembers that one of them was particularly racy. So again, it's kind of like was that his idea and also why you taking racy photos of a 17 year old. It's just. Are you with us? Are you with us, Ben? When she was back in Vienna finishing out her senior year, you know, months earlier, Taylor and Ben did keep in touch through email and social media, and she also wrote about him in her online blog. He claimed to have communicated with her on the night of her disappearance, like I mentioned, though he said that he hadn't actually seen her just that they had spoken for a while.

16:12But that evening, she had apparently texted him asking to borrow his skateboard. So he offered to leave it out on his patio for her and said that around 11 p.m. he noticed that she had picked it up. So this is his first story. Yeah, he's saying that, oh, yeah, I loaned the skateboard. I just set it out for her, which kind of like, you know, it's like pointing the finger away from himself and saying that, oh, I didn't actually see her. I left it out front and then I came back out later and it was gone. So she must have come and picked it up. Yeah, she must have been by my place, but I didn't see her. Well, then Ben offered up another curious detail. So late that night, he was in downtown Richmond taking photographs in an alleyway, and he was apparently mugged and abducted. By Ben's explanation, someone came up from behind him, covered his head with a bag, and then threw him in their van later abandoning him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Sure, buddy. Really interesting story there when asked why he didn't report this occurrence. He shrugged it off by saying that he didn't think that the police would do anything about it.

17:15So initially, police wondered if the incidents were connected in the meantime, as they continue to investigate both Kevin and Jake were they were actually cleared of suspicion based on their alibis, but Ben's strange story gave pause to the investigators and they maintained their focus on him as a possible person of interest, of course, because it's already weird that you're hanging out with her. But now you're coming up with this weird ass story that doesn't make any sense. Well, 10 days after her disappearance, the Richmond police announced that they were taking over the investigation from the VCU campus police force. But with no developments whatsoever, the investigation stalled almost as soon as it began. That was until the morning of Saturday, September 17th, 2005, when Taylor's car, which was a white 1997 Ford S-Court, turned up on a street about a few days later. But a mile and a half or 2.4 kilometers from her campus, but strangely, her Virginia license plates had been removed and in their place was one soul Ohio license plate.

18:24A sent tracking dog searched the car and trace Taylor sent to a nearby family's farm. Now, the residents who happen to be the owners of this property are the aunt and uncle of Jesse Schultz, who like Kevin was like in this group of local skateboarders. So that's already pretty weird. When police came by to search the home, they found cocaine and then Jesse was arrested on drug charges and thought to potentially have a connection to Taylor's disappearance. They're like, we know that Taylor sometimes hangs out with you and the cars here, the cars here, and you've got cocaine on you. So what else do you know? But I will say that Jesse had an alibi and could prove that he was with friends that night. Jesse also maintained that to his knowledge, he had never even met Taylor. So even though he was a part of this skateboarding group, he had never actually hung out with Taylor. Yeah, just around her and in that same group, but yeah, he's saying to my knowledge, I have never actually met her hung out with her, which to be fair.

19:31She has been in this school start two and a half weeks ago. Like she hasn't been there for very long. So for them not to have met, it's not that unlikely. Yeah, and you know, every person in this story thus far, we've got Jake, Kevin and Jesse. They all have pretty strong alibis, but the one person who kind of doesn't really have an iron clad alibi is Ben. Well, detectives followed up on every possible lead, including dutifully scanning the security footage from the lobby of Taylor's dorm building. She could be seen leaving through the lobby at 1024 p.m., which is just after she saw and spoke to her roommate Emma. But on the footage, just three minutes prior detectives noticed a recognizable face. Ben Folly, he was clearly pictured in the lobby of the dorm. And we'll play this footage again, but it's just really strange because he's walking around the lobby. Like looks like he's waiting for somebody.

20:32But he was saying, Oh, I didn't see Taylor that night and they didn't have like a plan to hang out. I know I just put my skateboard out for them. Why are you in her lobby of her dorm building? Are you going to pray on a different college student? Or are you lying? Yeah, basically got his ass. So with Ben caught in the slide, he was brought back in to speak with police, but by his own admission in his subsequent police interview, he claimed that he conveniently remembered that he actually had seen Taylor on the night she disappeared right. Oh, you don't say whoa. Yeah, but that it had been brief and then they carried on with their evenings separately. So he's like, oh, wait, sorry. I didn't see her. And then I knew you meant you meant a couple days ago. Oh, right. That's right. I did see her, but again, it was just for a few minutes. And then we party ways. We didn't see each other again for them to like see this footage of him just completely loitering in the building. They're like you, but like they're really suspicious of him. So this was enough of a disturbing revelation that detectives refocus their efforts on Ben's potential involvement. So using Ben's admission of having slept with a minor because he's a dumbass.

21:44The Richmond police department secured a search warrant for his apartment. And this is really when things begin to shift because also that's when Ben's roommate Cheska Waterfield realized that her mounting suspicions on Ben were not unfounded. There was something wrong with Ben and to kind of clear this up real quick. So Mike, the friend of Taylor's that she went to high school with was at one point living with Ben, but by the time Taylor was actually in college, he was living with a roommate named Cheska. Yes, well, that's a really good thing to point out because there was also somebody living there after Mike moved out. So it was very much a revolving door. And that's part of how Cheska was even able to move in there because apparently Ben had like consistent financial woes. And he just had this revolving door for roommates, which I think is really interesting because in normal situations, like maybe you sign a six month lease or a year lease. And usually you don't want a revolving door of roommates. You want somebody who's going to stick around for a while and pay the rent and you don't have to deal with all these different people living your home.

22:52But the fact that in February of that year, fast forward to September, we now essentially have three different people living there during that time. That might say some things about Ben. Well, Cheska was set to attend VCU, which again is telling us that he has a freshman female living in his home, another really bad sign. And of course, Ben's place was near campus. When they met, she thought he seemed both laid back and actually responsible and admired his relationship with his daughters, who were actually eight and 12 at the time when Ben was 38. Because of course he has daughters, which is so, which is so disturbing when we, when we talk a little bit more about Ben, because it's like, whoof, whoof, really good point to make that he has an eight and a 12 year old with where the story is going to go. Well, apparently the girls even helped her move into her new room. So they sometimes were around still. There were things that Cheska found off putting about Ben as you can imagine, including his tendency to stay up through the night nearly every single night.

23:58He had a deep interest in what Cheska referred to as goth subculture and even ran a blog about the topic. This is where that goth webmaster thing comes in. He also enjoyed crafting skulls out of clay. He had like an obsession with skulls and he even says that he is an obsession with skulls, which is like, what is that even mean? At the time of Taylor's disappearance though, Cheska had been living with Ben for a few months and though they weren't like friends, friends, she mostly found him to be kind and respectful. According to Cheska, the project Ben was currently focusing most of his energy on was selling off the possessions of his previous tenant. This is again, not Mike, who had left behind hundreds of adult DVDs. So Ben was taking great care to sell them on eBay one by one, hoping to make some money off of them. And though he claimed that he found some illegal pornography within the trove that his ex roommate left behind, he assured Cheska that he destroyed all of those ones.

25:00And what a wild business venture like he's desperate for the cash. It's just crazy like to even think about the thought of people selling pornographic DVDs online is so like insanely crazy to me. Is that a thing? Yeah, okay. When you couldn't, when you couldn't get on the internet, I guess. Or maybe not as openly or why. Maybe not as common, I don't know, whatever. While Ben apparently once joked about having a quote, porn and chicken party, which is a reference to a now defunct student club at Yale University, who would meet up to watch porn and eat fried chicken together. What the actual fuck? I just have no words for that. Is everybody insane? Do we live in, do we live in an insane world? Okay, yes we do. Like college kids like yeah, it's good together. I want some porn and eat some chicken. Like what the hell? Yeah, we were talking about this recently. How insane it was or we were watching the shards and we're talking about how insane it is that like people used to go and watch porn movies in public like in theaters.

26:07Oh, yeah, like what that that's crazy. But this being college students just getting together and let's put on the telly. Alrighty, whatever floats here all about there a boner with the boys and some chicken. I guess. Okay, well, it's crazy that this idea was later turned into a made for TV movie on Comedy Central because that's just how random it was. It's just too funny not to make a bit about. Yeah, but mostly Cheska claimed that Ben seemed repulsed by the amount of pornography left behind as well as the subject matter, which sure. On the evening of Taylor's disappearance, Cheska claimed that she hadn't seen Ben and that she came home from work and then went to bed around 3 30 in the morning. The next day, which was September 6th, she came home from running some errands and spotted him on the couch and he was apparently doubled over in pain and he told her that he had been mugged earlier that morning. Well, though she sympathized and urged him to report the attack to the police, of course Ben refused.

27:11She later admitted that something just felt off about his story and she wondered if he was suffering from delusions, possibly just making it up, which it seems like he was. So she asked him if he could possibly describe what these attackers sounded like, but he couldn't do it. Before his attack, and while she had been working her job at a local restaurant, Ben claimed that he had a friend over to have sex, though he declined to name who this friend was. They did actually discuss Taylor's disappearance, though, but not his proximity to it. Ben really only said that Taylor was experiencing a bit of a rebellious streak at the time and that she had told him that she wanted to commit a serious crime before she turned 18, which obviously was a deadline that was approaching the following month. So let's talk about this whole Taylor wanted to do something illegal thing, just to kind of help further paint the photo of who Taylor really was, according to her friends and her family.

28:16She was not like a drinker. She didn't do drugs. She wasn't a party girl. Like she was very much a good girl. She was a great friend. Like she wasn't this kind of like bad girl who liked to like her making that comment that she wanted to do something illegal was just like, didn't make sense for her personality. But something that's really interesting to note is that Kevin said the same thing. Kevin also told police that she had claimed and he testified this in court. I'll tell you that Taylor said she wanted to do something illegal. Now what exactly that means if she wanted to pull some kind of prank or do something really crazy. I can't imagine it would be something insane that would wind her in jail and then prison while she just is starting her college career. I don't really understand this at all, but it is really interesting that two different people said that she said this. Yeah, I find that interesting too, but of course, like you said, we really don't know what that means. Yeah, we don't have elaborated exactly. We don't know the severity of what she was thinking in her mind of what she wanted to do.

29:22Off the bat, him saying that just sounds like, oh, you're just full of it and you're just trying to paint a certain picture. But the fact that two people said it is definitely worth noting, but I just I wish we had a little bit more on with the hell that's supposed to mean. Well, in the search of Ben's apartment for computers belonging to Ben, plus the brand new computer that Cheska had just bought for school, as well as weapons and sex toys were all removed from the home for further investigation. I think I can tell you later, remember that one of the FBI agents told her covertly in the middle of the raid because she's there this is her home, of course. If you were my daughter, you would not be staying in that apartment tonight knowing what we know. So sounds like they found some pretty damning evidence. Yeah, some pretty dark stuff. So although she actually really couldn't afford to do so, she packed her bags at very night and found a hotel until she could secure a different living situation. She took this very serious. Good on you Cheska because this guy is a creep. Yeah, because on one of his laptops, they found a massive amount of child pornography or of course child sexual abuse material featuring children as young as three years old.

30:31And this is going back to the comment that I made earlier about the fact that he has two daughters and their eight and 12. And he's got child sexual abuse material on his computers. Right. Disgusting. So on September 23rd, 2005, the Richmond Police Department arrived to arrest him for 16 counts of possession of child pornography and though been initially resisted, officers were eventually able to coax him outside. When questioned about their discovery, he maintained that the computers had been given to him from his previous roommate describing him as an older man who had passed away, which is kind of like we actually don't know who that is. So that could be a total lie, by the way. Like we don't have this guy's name. We didn't corroborate this. It might just be his. The next part that you're about to get into is why it's such bullshit that he's even saying. Yeah, so basically Ben claimed that he was just in the process of clearing them out and hadn't even stumbled upon the illegal pornography because he had been in the process of selling the legal pornography.

31:38First, even though according to Cheska, he had come across some illegal materials, but dispose of them. But then he's telling the police after saying that to Cheska. Oh, I didn't even know there was anything illegal in there. I've just been focusing on selling the legal porn on freaking eBay. Yo, okay, buddy. Yeah. So again, like he's he's he lies so much. Yeah, he's such a fucking liar. I mean, in Ben's own words, quote, he had a lot of pornography. And I was selling everything I was selling on eBay was legal legitimate adult porn. I did not find anything illegal. However, seized in the raid alongside the computers were dozens of CDs of duplicated child pornography materials copied from those computers with Ben's freaking handwriting on them. Yeah, it's like you're so cooked at that point. You can't even lie about this anymore. Like, oh my god. Which again, really makes me question the whole. These were all my ex roommates materials. Yeah, it was all his well, um, notes to Cheska or Taylor Ben had a prior arrest having spent three months in prison after assaulting a 20 year old VCU student only two years earlier in 2003.

32:48Yeah, when he was like 35. So this guy's just been doing this whole campus thing for a long time. But despite the mounting suspicions against him, they were not able to pin Taylor's disappearance on him. So in the weeks preceding his arrest, he told people that he wanted to help even passing out flyers and cooperating with police. There's this crazy like old CBS interview of him. And you know, this was a really big deal in Richmond. By the way, everybody knew about Taylor's disappearance. When the trial happened when we get to that, like so many people showed up. This was a huge case in Richmond. So he and many other people are out on the streets passing out flyers and the news is everywhere. They're talking to people about her disappearance, trying to get the whole picture because they don't know what happened to her yet. And there's this interview where it's of Ben and he refused to show his face so the camera like is pan down at kind of like chest to maybe his knees ish.

33:48And you can see the grasp of these missing flyers in his hand. And he's getting like blustered by the interviewer asking questions. And even the interviewer is like this guy's really weird and he's getting, he's going like, oh, like he's doing like the. Yeah, I think I'm James from love on this vector. Love you. Love that Joe. But he's doing this kind of like, oh, like getting frustrated visibly on camera saying he doesn't want his face shown. So he's he's doing a lot of really freaking weird ashtag. It's again like that. I hate to keep bringing it back to this one, but the Lauren Gettings case where Stephen McDaniel. Remember, he gets interviewed by the news and once they kind of like they give him a certain like certain amount of information and he immediately gets really flustered and he starts like almost kind of tearing up and freaking the fuck out because at that point like he knows he's going to be caught. Yeah, same thing with the Kenyamone case that we just covered a few weeks ago when somebody in that story was interviewed and he's acting very strangely as well like.

34:52It's so interesting to put yourself in the middle of an investigation like that. And I think some of these idiots think that they're going to get ahead of the situation by putting themselves out there on camera, but you know, it's like it just kind of kind of like makes you look even more suspicious when you do things like that. 100% like just be like, no, I don't want to be interviewed. Don't be like, yeah, but don't get my head. Well, at the time Ben didn't even have a valid driver's license, but when he did, he drove a boxy rundown van that was covered with bumper stickers and various out of state license plates. A vehicle, which was so unique, it was actually profiled for the local news because they're like, look at this weirdo's van over here. It's kind of unique. So investigators wondered if this could help make sense of how he'd obtained plates to switch tailors out, which of course it seems like that was the situation he was collecting different license plates. Well, they came up with a unique approach to the whole situation. They located a recent ex-girlfriend of bins. This is Aaron Crabel. 24-year-old Aaron had dated him previously and recalled that he was a reformed bad boy who enjoyed telling her stories of past crimes, car jackings, and just his general colorful history, which I'm sure he probably used that to try and impress like younger girls around campus.

36:15Oh, God. I hate this guy. But Aaron grew very tired of Ben's jealousy, his insecurity, and his possessiveness. So when she caught him breaking into her apartment with a hammer and a can of frickin' mace, she did not wait to see what he was going to do. And she officially cut off their relationship. Good. Good call. Yeah, good call. And in one picture, she was able to point out that Bennett snapped a photo of this dilapidated shed and camper on her parents sprawling rural property. Her family's property was a rural outpost in Matthews County about an hour and a half away from Richmond. So on a hunch here, they see this photo and detectives decided to head to the scene. And there in the brush barely even concealed from the elements in a shallow grave was Taylor Beale.

37:15She was found on October 5th of 2005, one month to the day since she went missing and just eight days before her 18th birthday. She was still wearing the black sweatshirt that she had been seen wearing on the night she disappeared, but her hands had been bound with duct tape. And unfortunately, due to this severe heat and humidity of the late summer, and of course the animal activity, a cause of death could not be determined. What a crazy situation. They decide on a hunch. Let's talk to the ex-girlfriend. They're looking at photos with her and she points out, hey, that's my family's property. And I watch this interview of her and she kind of says that everybody kind of got the chills and that it was this weird spooky moment. It's like, I wonder if this is going to be relevant to something and then it was. Yeah, I mean, what? Such a crazy like epiphany to have like, oh, I wonder where this person, you know, at this point they believe that Ben was probably involved. But they're like, I wonder where he would hide a body or where he would try to discard a body and then just so happens to pop up in a photo.

38:20I think also with his photography, it's kind of like in some ways a look into his brain, like things that caught his eye, things that he wanted to remember. Sure. So they're kind of thinking of it that way. Like, oh, this intrigue too enough to take a photo of it. Does it intrigue him enough to return to? Hey, that might be a good place to get her out of the area and dispose of her somewhere that maybe no one's going to find her. I got to say that is some damn good detective work. It's easy that that ended up even being the place. Well, two of the delight of prosecutors, Ben decided to tell the truth, hoping it would offer him some kind of bargaining chip as he faced significant prison time on those child pornography charges. Oh, but did he told the truth? No, I'll tell you right now. I don't think he did. Well, let's let's talk about what he did say. So Ben explained that on the night 17 year old Taylor died. She had come by his house distraught about the breakup with her boyfriend Jake and looking for comfort and distraction.

39:24According to Ben, the request that she told her friend earlier in the night that she wanted to do something illegal was coming from wanting to frame her ex boyfriend Jake for whatever illegal activity she was going to get into. Like, oh, I want to do something illegal so that it can frame Jake again. Yeah, but again, we don't know like what that would have been and if this is even true. So it's like unfortunately we don't have like any kind of like further insight on that. Well, Ben claimed that she was hurt by the breakup that she felt embarrassed and slided and that she wanted revenge. The pair, meaning Ben and Taylor were intimate as his apartment. This is his admission and he then walked to her dorm to pick up her keys. According to Ben, he was drinking heavily at the time, which was kind of strange because according to his roommate Cheska, he didn't drink like at all. Ben says he waited in the lobby while she retrieved her car keys from upstairs, which as we know, he did look like he was waiting on that surveillance footage in the lobby. So this would make sense. Ben explained that she had also brought with her a piece of paper that she had printed out with a sex act on it that she was curious to try, which was breath play or erotic asphyxiation.

40:35He's saying that she printed this out, which I know this is 2005, but kind of an interesting detail. He claimed that she was very interested in kinky sex and bondage and that he had never engaged in that before he had slept with her. Despite the fact that Taylor was 17 with very little experience and that there were bondage accoutrements removed from Ben's home. So it feels like he's lying about a lot of this, right? Yeah, it's all of that stuff. Anything that happened that night was probably at the insistence of Ben. I think he's completely full of shit because he's already been caught in a bunch of lies and he continues to lie over and over and over again. Well, I think this particular lie is to set himself up for the rest of this story is to kind of say all of this was her idea and I didn't have experience in this, but again, you have bondage. Equipment, if you will, in your home, but you've never used it and she's the one who wants this. It's just like I don't believe you. So when questioned about this very thing, he changed his story again saying that he actually had engaged in rough sex before just not with breath play.

41:45So he's like, well, yeah, I've dabbled in bondage actually. Yes, but just not breath play. So it's like he says something he's caught in a lie and then he says something else that's probably also a lie. So it's like a different lie. Well, then they left the dorm room together and Taylor drove them to a remote rural pull out and parked again. This is according to Ben also according to Ben's subsequent interview on true crime with Aphrodite Jones quote, she knew that I had not with that type of thing, but that I had done things with somebody else and she was a little bent that I would go there with one person, but wouldn't go there with her. What she wanted to do was outside of my comfort zone. Yeah, I hate this guy so much. I know it was your idea. I know it was you. Don't even lie about this. I know it was you. Yeah, he also admitted that they were both high saying that he had taken oxycontin, oxycodone, aterol and something else. Ben alleged that Taylor threatened to go to the police with a rape accusation because he wouldn't engage in breath play with her.

42:49So he begrudgingly agreed. Yeah, right. Like come on again. It's all like she made me do it. I just there's no there's no way that Taylor is like you won't do breath play with me. Fine, I'm going to go to the police and I'm going to get you in trouble like there's absolutely no way. We'll get this. Ben was asked in this interview why he continued to change his story and he said quote, I gave it to them in bits. Yes, I omitted certain aspects of it because I did not want to admit that I was present when somebody died. I completed the story as I went read a few chapters. If you want to put it that way at a time. This isn't a story, Ben. This is real life. Well, in his mind, it is a story. I mean, he's making up a story anyway. He claimed that she passed out when they were engaged in sex, which was exactly what she wanted. Intermittently, he had even placed a bag over her head in order to achieve the desired effect.

43:51In another interview following her death, Ben told 48 hours quote, she wanted me to put the bag over her head. We tried that several times. I held it over her nose and her mouth. At first, I thought she was laughing because she fell off the seat. We had fallen off the seat several times that night. I thought everything was fine and dandy, but she was passed out. And that's what she wanted. He claimed that he considered calling 911, but that he panicked and feared retribution and blame for something that he insisted was an accident. He added defensively quote, I definitely did not murder Taylor. Am I the direct cause of her death? I very well could be. But am I guilty of murder? No. Yes. So this is when we need to revisit the whole thing about him getting mugged and the fact that his roommate walked in on him and he was keeled over in pain. Yeah. That was just after she went missing after Taylor went missing and was subsequently killed. So, you know, we really have to think about this.

44:53If he was in pain and had potentially been hurt by somebody, but not so much so, oh, yeah, it was mugged, but I didn't want to go to police because I didn't think they were going to do anything. No, you weren't mugged. You didn't want to go to police because the person who most likely hurt you was Taylor while you were killing her. Yeah. And Ben is such a storyteller. He's always got some wacky, zany story that he's going to tell people. I'm sure half the shit that he said to the girls and women that he was grooming on campus were all BS too. You know, but it's like he thinks that this is a believable thing that he's just I'm in an alleyway taking photographs and like some people just put a bag over my head and threw me into the back of a van. That's like something that happens in action movies. That's not real life, buddy. Nobody actually cares enough about you to abduct you. And I'm sure that the situation was actually the fact that Taylor probably kicked his ass a little bit as he was trying to kill her.

45:55Right, defending herself, which really paints a different picture than the one that he is telling. Well, he was a little bit more cavalier in his very frantic final interview with police telling them that he had, quote, flipped out and that he had placed his hand over her mouth and told her to shut up. He also explained that the duct tape binding her wrist had been consensual, but for some reason couldn't explain why her arms were bound behind her back. Yeah, you know, the real quick. The whole I flipped out and put my hand over her mouth and told her to shut up. That's probably the only honest thing that Ben has said this entire time. Yeah, well, there was no evidence that she was interested in any sort of rough sex. I'll say. And actually her best friend, Glinnis maintains that even by 17 year old standards, quote, she was approved. So obviously we can't be sure what exactly Taylor was interested in, but on her devices in her little online journal that she had in conversations with friends. She never expressed anything close to what Ben is claiming to be true about her.

47:01Yeah, Ben was more interested in those things than her. Yeah, and like her friend, Glinnis literally said, I know for a fact that she would not have been interested in that. And this is her best friend. So I kind of want to believe Glinnis here and not Ben, right? Yeah. Well, Ben maintained that he checked Taylor's vital signs to ensure that she was still alive and at the time she was still breathing. So he started driving them back to her campus. But when he checked again, she had stopped breathing. So panicking, he avoided getting help and instead drove home when inside by himself kept drinking and later fell asleep with Taylor's body still inside her own vehicle parked outside his home. The next day, he says he headed out to that property belonging to the family of his ex-girlfriends Aaron in Matthews County and left Taylor's body there. He claimed that he was in a completely panic state of mind and that he wasn't thinking clearly.

48:01But strangely, when Taylor's car was searched with a cadaver dog, there was no hit for decomposition inside which really called his account into question. If her body had been there all night and into the next day, there would have been proof of decom. Absolutely, because yeah, that whole store, this another part of his lie. He's concocting yet another story. She didn't, she didn't die inside that car. Well, guess what? When confronted with this evidence again, because every time he's given evidence to contradict his statement, he makes up something else that still doesn't make sense. Because Ben said you couldn't smell her remains because I cleaned it with bleach before abandoning it. But there were no remnants of bleach having been used in the vehicle either. So like, how many times can you lie? Seriously. Well, Janet maintained that his version of events was absolutely untrue. Saying with disgust quote, I don't believe that Taylor would go willingly with this man to have an intimate encounter.

49:04She told Girlfriends that after the first time, she had absolutely no interest in him other than a friendship. It just couldn't have been an accident. There's just absolutely no way. Now, let's circle quickly back to that Ohio plate. You know, the one by the way that had been stolen off a local VCU students car who was from Ohio two months before Taylor was killed. That plate that was found on her car stolen two months earlier. So this could potentially seem like proof of pre-meditation. But I will say Ben, as we know, you know, he had those out of state license plates on his van. He was like an avid stealer and collector of license plates. So it's very possible that he just had that one in his possession, got rid of her plates, swapped it out for the Ohio and hoped that no one was ever going to check that bid number. Yeah. And that he was going to get away with it. He's like, I've already got a bunch of stolen plates. I, you know, I'll just use this one. Well, on August 9th of 2006, Ben accepted a plea deal because he was afraid of the 90-year sentence that he was facing on the child sexual abuse material charges.

50:13Thus, he was charged with second degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison for Taylor's killing. It's crazy for, I mean, I guess it makes sense that's one count versus 16, but 16 counts of child pornography. 90 years, one count of second degree murder, 30 years. Yeah. Kind of crazy. Well, he told multiple people in the aftermath that the admission that he made was merely a strategic move on his part. However, he also wrote a lengthy letter to an ex-girlfriend which included the passage, quote, people are right, something is wrong with me. All the thoughts of death and killing in my head, and now it's true, I've killed. But he seemed to actually regret this decision to confess in all of this because within two years, he had partnered with a defense attorney to try and poke holes in his own confession. His defense attorney Hayden Fisher maintained their position that Taylor was responsible for her own fate, and that she had been taking a fixer, which is an SSRI for anxiety and depression, which can cause suicidal ideation.

51:18But that's not even what they're claiming. They're not claiming that she asked me to kill her because she didn't want to live. They're saying that's not even their argument. Yeah, that wasn't even the original argument. Well, Hayden Fisher told the press, quote, Mr. Folly's version of what occurred is consistent with his mental examination. Is consistent with the autopsy. Is consistent with the medication that was found in Taylor Beale's brain. We don't have her cause of death though. Yeah, it was undetermined. It was homicidal violence. They couldn't determine the cause. Exactly. Janet actually argued that Ben was just grasping at straws to get his sentence lessened, saying that Ben, quote, answered all the questions the judge gave him during the plea so that, you know, he did know what he was doing at that time. On Ben's behalf, Hayden filed a petition for an appeal on the grounds that his Alfred plea, in which the defendant proclaims their innocence, but acknowledges the body of evidence against them, was, quote, misguided and ill-conceived advice. So, kind of saying that the original defense attorney didn't do a very good job, apparently.

52:23Hayden also acknowledged that this defense attorney was given to him from a court-appointed attorney. So, it was like, oh yeah, it was court-appointed, so therefore they didn't do right by ban or whatever. But the petition was denied. Aaron Crabel received a $20,000 payout for her assistance in this investigation, and she used this to establish a fund for women in crisis. And she now works as a licensed clinical social worker as well as a therapist. And thank you so much to Aaron for being of assistance in this investigation because he actually really did crack this one open. She did. She was amazing and still is. Yeah. Taylor's mom Janet wrote a book entitled Love You More, The Taylor Beale Story, about her pursuit of justice for her daughter. Taylor's body was laid to rest on what would have been her 18th birthday. But because Ben took that deal, his release date is currently set for November 14th, 2031.

53:28Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Let us know what you think about it. I can't believe that a person like Ben actually would have the opportunity to be released in 2031. Just the fact that he had all those child sexual abuse material charges alongside, you know, a second-degree murder charge. Like, this guy should never get out. They should just throw away the fucking key. It's so disappointing. Like, five years is so soon from now. Of course, obviously he was put in prison a while ago, but it is really disappointing because I understand that they needed to offer him this plea deal so that they could get information because if he didn't confess and they wouldn't have known what they know. But then it also feels like, well, your confession was useless because you lied throughout the whole thing. They already had her body. They already had found her car previous as well.

54:30It's almost like we didn't need to offer him this plea deal. Did we? And now he's just going to be out and he's a six son of a bitch. Yeah, I mean, that really is kind of a fine line for me. Like, at what point do we offer this deal? At what point is it benefiting us? It doesn't seem like it was really benefiting them, like you said. No, he should not be free. So, let us know your thoughts on this case. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this one. And we will see you again next time. Alright, guys. So, for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger.