April 10, 2024 • 37 mins
Summer Benton is a veteran homicide detective with the Atlanta Police Department. She has worked in various specialized units, including vice, narcotics, and hostage negotiation, before joining the homicide division in 2009. Benton has been featured on the TV show The First 48 and is known for her meticulous investigative approach and strong relationships within the department.
Resources:
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, chats with Summer Benton, a highly respected homicide detective with the Atlanta Police Department. Summer shares her process from arriving at a crime scene to solving complex cases, emphasizing the meticulous attention to detail and the importance of teamwork. With a heartfelt tribute to the role of family and community, Summer also discusses her upbringing, the influence of her parents, and her bond with her Labradoodle, Willa, highlighting the human side of police work.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [0:10] Sheryl gives a brief introduction of guest, Summer Benton
- [1:50] Summer details out her investigation process
- [6:30] Terry Porter case is described
- [12:15] Putting together a case without the victims remains
- [15:00] The critical role of timelines in solving cases
- [23:00] One special lady in Summer’s Zone 7… her mama
- [25:00] Solving crimes in the non digital age
- [31:30] Summer’s dog, Willa, and Work-Life Balance
- [37:20] “Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been. It goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training, or book learning, because all the theory in the world means nothing, if you can't read the street.” -D.S
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
We got the real deal. And I'm not just talking
a homicide detective. I'm talking about one of the most
respected across the country. I've had a chance to talk
to all kind of folks and often they asked me,
do you know some are bitten? And it's always such
a source of pride for me because, you know, hometown
(00:32):
make Atlanta look good, and she does. Y'all know her
from the first forty eight. But let me tell you
a little something about her. She joined the Atlanta Police
Department in December of two thousand and one. She has
worked vice, narcotics, she's a hostage negotiator, and then July
of two thousand and nine, she entered the homicide unit.
(00:56):
From there she got on the first forty eight. She
is a second generation law enforcement officer. And you know,
I just have to say, when you look at women
in law enforcement, you know we might be fifty one
percent of the population, but in law enforcement only about
fifteen percent. Or homicide detectives, she's got a pretty decent
solve rate, and we'll get into that too, But I
(01:18):
don't want to waste any more time because I want
y'all to hear from her. Please help me welcome. Some
are bent. There is so much to try to talk
to you about. I hope we can get it all in.
But like I said, I ain't gonna waste no time.
So here's the deal. I want to personally know your process. Like,
you get to a scene, what do you do first?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, I'm very happy that you asked me to join
the show. I'm extremely excited. Actually when I get to
a scene, first, I'm sitting in the car just taking
in my surroundings. And I'm a huge detail oriented person.
So got my notepad. I'm old school pen and paper,
and I'm writing down everything I see before I even
get out of the car. I want to know where
(02:03):
those crime scene tape is. I want to know if
it's a dark stiff, it's a nighttime scene, are the
lights on? Is there cameras anywhere? How many patrol cars
am I seeing? Are there witnesses outside? And I'm going
to write all of that down before I even step
out and start finding out who was my first responding
officer and then doing a walk through the scene.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I do the same thing. I don't get in a
hurry to get out of that car because there's so
much You're gonna miss and then as soon as I
get out of the car, I start taking pictures. But
I don't think there's anything more valuable you can do
than to just soak it in first.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, you have to you have to be able to
visualize everything, especially years down the road when you take
the stand, you can look back on your detailed notes
and your detailed reports and remember it like it was yesterday,
and so you're able to put yourself back on that
scene and tell the jury what you saw and what
everything you've ualized through the entire process. In the first
(03:03):
five or however many minutes, you're sitting in your car
and you're taking it all in.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So you don't just google the weather. You actually observe
it and write down what you know to be true.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Exactly, even to the point where you know, hey, there
is a light there, but it's not on and it's
out okay, so it's dark there. Let's you know note that,
because you're going to get asked those questions on the stand, sure,
and you don't want to miss it correct. And there
may be you know, somebody down the road who states
they were standing right there. They were standing, you know,
(03:33):
across the street and it's pitched dark outside and there
like I saw it like it was yesterday. Okay, I
was there and I couldn't see across the street. So that,
you know, you have to put yourself in the in
that position to where when you go into the case,
first off, you assume nothing. You do everything off of
(03:54):
facts and evidence and alone. So when I'm going into
that scene and I'm doing a walkthrough, im seeing where
all the evidence, I'm seeing where the video cameras are,
I'm seeing where possibly witnesses could have been standing. And
then I'm going to where they could have been standing
see if I could see what they were seeing. To
try to visualize everything that could have possibly happened during
(04:14):
the incident, because it's like a puzzle, you know. You
you know, when you first get a puzzle and you
dump all the pieces out, that's your crime scene. Your
job is to take all those pieces and put them
back in the correct spot. And if one piece doesn't fit,
then you know that doesn't go there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And you know, I just have to say, because this
is voice only, but I want people to know you're attractive,
you're smart. Oh well, thank you absolutely. I mean, because
it's it's relevant to what I'm thinxing of try to
showcase about you that you know, you're attractive, you're smart,
you work harder than anybody else in the room. And
(04:51):
the reason I think that's important is you don't fall
back on some of the things that you could use.
And I'll tell you, if anybody has a chance to
go back and watch every episode of the Verse forty
eight with you in it, here's what sticks out to me.
You're working constantly for the minute you get the call.
And the second thing is you are so appreciative. You
(05:15):
think everybody, the patrolman, the witnesses, people on the street
that may say, hey, you know, I'll help if I
can or whatever, but you take the time to individually
thank everybody. And I think that's so important.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And I think I'm gonna be honest with you. That
stems from my upbringing.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh I was going to give your mom and daddy
full credit.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
My mom and dad were very you know, if somebody
said something to me nice, or somebody you know, came
up to shake my hand, or somebody came up to
you know, give me a birthday gift, they will, Oh
what do you say? Thank you? You know it was
put into me at a very very early age that
you respect everyone, doesn't matter their status, their race, their smithcy,
(06:02):
the religion. You respect everyone. And that was huge growing
up in my family and I try to bring that
to work with me every day.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Well it shows, and I think that's another reason you're
so well thought of, because you know, you were that
young patrol officer and for that person to get any
kind of appreciation from you, you know, that builds them up.
I mean, it's a wonderful thing I think that you
do well. Thank you, Terry Porter. Tell us about that
(06:33):
case for you.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That was a case of man, mister Porter once I
and what a lot of people need to understand right
of that, and I know subconsciously they know this is
that we don't know our victims. So we don't know
our victims. We don't know our suspects, we don't know
our witnesses. So we're going into this, you know, unknowing
of everybody. We don't know victimology, we don't know anything.
(06:56):
So when I started to learn about mister Porter, he
was truly an amazingly great person who would have given
the shirt office back to anybody. I'm going to be
honest with you, and allow a lot of people say,
you know, you did really really good work. I got
really lucky with the video surveillance because nowadays everybody's like
(07:17):
everything's on video. Well not all the time the videos
are working, and not all the time the videos are recording.
That was a hard case because you truly got to
know who he was as a person, and you got
to know his family and how loving they were, and
how if the person I arrested had just asked him,
he would have given it to him. He didn't have
(07:38):
to take his life. But that case, when we got
to the scene, there was such minimal evidence. It was
just him. There was no shellcasings, there was nothing for
us to really do DNA wise, there was no surveillance
cameras in the area. So that case started strictly off
of locating his car and on off his financials.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What made you head toward financials.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Because we knew that when we got there, he didn't
have his wallet on him, and according to his family,
he never went anywhere without his wallet. We were looking
for his truck, his SUV, and we weren't able to
locate it because LPRs, the license plate readers were just
coming into effect so they weren't all over the city
at the time, and even though we had his license tag,
(08:26):
it wasn't really hitting on anything. So I was like, well,
I need to do something. So I was able to
pull his financials and see that shortly after he was
killed his credit cards were being used, and so every
place that his credit card was being used, I went
back to see if there was video surveillance, and lo
and behold, there was video surveillance everywhere from the first
(08:49):
time that he tried to have his credit card used,
which was at an ATM and it got declined to
him going to a like a CBS or Walgreens type
place and using the card there, then going on a
shopping spree the next day at one of our malls
here in the city. We were pretty much able to
narrow down that window. Because the timeframe of homicides, that
(09:10):
timeline is so important.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
The timeline is beyond critical. I mean, that's your money
tree from the get go. So what you're doing now
is this footwork where you're trying to see is the
same person on every video? Am I going to be
able to get this person's face out there?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
That is correct? And also how far was the time
of we believe the homicide was to the time the
first credit card was being used, because at any point
in time, depending on that that timeframe was, he could
have hated it off to somebody else. Correct, So the
person that's using the card now could totally be innocent
of the murder. That was extremely important because we had
(09:51):
to do a timeline of that time of night. So
we went back out at that night and we drove
and timed it from that time until the time the
credit card was used at the first place, and it
matched up perfectly, which told us that the person that
was involved in Terry Porter's murder is the same person
(10:12):
that used his credit card on that first time.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Unbelievable. And you're going to be able to hand that
off to the DA to say, hey, I don't think
remorse is going to be a factor here.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Correct, because obviously if he was remorseful, he wouldn't have
taken his credit card.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, there wouldn't be a shopping spree. That is such
good work though, And again you talk about the footwork,
and you talk about going back and you staying on
this thing and driving it. That gave you such an
understanding of the perpetrator and it gave.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Us an understanding of the motive behind the crime too.
You know a lot of times people think, well, what
was the motive? Was it domestic? Was it gang related?
Was it an argument? Was it someone just snapped? This
motive was totally totally off. Agreed. They wanted what mister
Porter had. They knew that he had money. They stole
his very nice SUV and then used his credit cards
(11:07):
for thousands of dollars of merchandise.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean, how sickening this wonderful man who everybody loved
in a door that knew him. The community had such
a response when this happened over what a couple of
thousand dollars?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's it, Yeah, all over money. And you can't put
a price on the way.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It happens, right that all of a sudden you think, well,
I've seen all there is to see and then bam.
Well let's talk about something that was a bam for me.
I want you all to think about the type of
police report that would have to be done, the type
of an investigation in order for somebody to get a
(11:52):
conviction from murder when there is nobody all right, detective,
I know people sometimes say all you do is brag
on your guest. Yeah, correct, are you kidding? And this
is one of the reasons why if you want to
talk about homicide is you know the Super Bowl. Well,
(12:13):
what you were able to do in that Super Bowl
is unheard of almost everywhere. When you're able to put
a case together and convince a jury that, hey, this
person is not going to walk in that back door.
I just want everybody right now in Zone seven to
hear how you put together a case without the victim's remains.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
My first shout out needs to go to the missing
person's detective, a Detective Barber. She was working in it
as a missing person's case and she felt looking at
what she was looking at after speaking with the victim's family,
that something wasn't right. So she immediately brought it to
our supervisor's attention. And that's when I was brought into
(12:55):
the case to work it as a homicide case instead
of just a regular missing person's case. I have to
give a shout out to Detective Barber for that one.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, right on, And that's no in the street. That's
knowing your people, that's knowing you got your pulse of
it right there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the fact that she stayed on the case with
me up until the very end. You know, she was
not a homicide detective at the time, but she was
vested in this case, and she stayed with me every
step of the way, and we worked this case together.
The victim just basically vanished into thin air. And the
(13:32):
location that she was living at was with her boyfriend,
who was the one I ended up arresting her daughter
about I want to say, four or five days after
she was last seen. Her daughter lived in another state,
called down to the Atlanta Police Department and said, my
mom's missing, but her and her boyfriend have been having
some domestic issues. She hasn't shown up to work, which
(13:55):
is extremely odd for her. She worked at a medical
OBGI and location, and she had never missed a day
of work, had never been late. And if she had
been late, I think maybe they said it was like
maybe twice in the years that she had worked there,
she always called and said she was running late. But
they hadn't heard from her. And so the first thing
(14:16):
I did was I was like, Okay, somebody always uses something,
So let's go on her social media. Let's go into
her financials, you know, let's go into her cell phone,
get her historical called detail records nothing. She had not
used anything since the time that she had arrived back
at the apartment that she basically stayed at with her boyfriend.
(14:39):
So then I started doing some history on that particular address,
and I located numerous times where officers had been called
in the last couple of months of domestic disturbances. Basically,
the two were on the outs and they were having arguments,
and there was not any physical arguments at that point.
Everything was just verbal, and I was like, Okay, well,
now it's time to you know, we need to go
(15:00):
to warn and we need to get into that apartment
to see if anything and maybe she's in the apartment,
maybe something. So we did that and that's when we
called in a group that we use. It's a group
of civilians that volunteer their time and they're called at SAR.
It's out the Canine Team Search and Rescue, and we
(15:20):
called them in and basically it was because they have
two specialized types of canines. One is kadabra dogs where
they search for, you know, anybody who's been deceased, bones,
anything like that, and the other one is what they
called live fine dogs to where they can get a
scent of a person and then try to track to
(15:42):
where they are. So it's really helpful using them with
Mattie's calls or missing children. They can try to figure
out and get a scent and try to track them
at that point. So we called the men, and the
first time we called the men, we asked them to
bring in their specialized live fine dogs, and so we
were able to get into the apartment and get a
(16:02):
scent article that was hers and the team did their work,
but they were unable to locate any scent that did
not go from the front of the apartment to her vehicle.
She had not been anywhere else outside of and it
was two different dogs at that time. From her vehicle
to the apartment and back, that's where the dogs went.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Now that's interesting to me, right.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We even I said, well, let's just go ahead and
take the dogs all up and down the apartment complex.
It was two different buildings. Let's just see if they
alert on anything. You know, they did not, and can.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I just jump in real quick just to make sure
people understand what the detective is doing right now by
working two different dogs is so smart because it's not
like somebody can come back and say, well, that dog
was led, or you know, maybe that dog made a mistake.
That's why she's running two go ahead detected.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's like a peer review mm hmm exactly. So if
one dog hits on something, they bring in a second
dog basically to peer review it to make sure it's
something that was actually scented. Or if one dog doesn't
hit on anything, they bring in a second opinion. Basically,
I guess that's the lam in terms.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yep, that's the perfect way to say it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We weren't able to find anything, and at this point
we were still trying to get download all of the
video surveillance. This particular complex had seventeen cameras. It was
in a senior living facility, and anywhere you were on
that property, if you took two steps outside that building,
you were on camera. And since there was so much camera,
and we had such a large time frame, because we
(17:38):
didn't know technically when she had made it home, because
we were still waiting on her called detailed records, her
cel phone records, her historical ones. Because what people don't
realize is they don't come overnight. Sometimes it takes a week,
sometimes it takes three weeks to get some records back,
so we were still waiting on those, so we didn't
know exactly what time she had made it home. So
we were pulling over twenty four hours of footage on
(17:59):
seventy cameras and we had to go through all of
that footage, and we went through all of that footage,
and it took days for us to go through the footage.
And then when her call detailed records came in, we
were able to narrow down the timeframe that we were
looking for. We were able to locate a time I
think it was around six thirty or seven thirty PM
that she see her pull up in her suv. She
(18:21):
gets out and she walks right into the building. She's
never to be seen again. About four o'clock the next morning,
a little bit after four am, you see the suspect
come out, and you see him go to his truck,
and then he comes back and he's like in the
shadows of one of the cameras because the cameras all
had lights on the top of the poles, so you
(18:41):
could see his shadow figure and he was trying to
cover one of the cameras with a black plastic bag.
And then he goes back into the building, and around
seven thirty that same morning, he comes out. He pulls
this truck out and then he backs it into the
trash compactor area to where now you can't even see
in the bed of his truck. And when he had
(19:03):
originally pulled in, the bet of his truck was empty.
About twenty minutes later he pulls out and the bet
of his truck is filled with stuff. And so when
we confronted him about it, he said he was taking
He was the maintenance man, and that he was taking
stuff to the dump that had been cleaned out of
residents who had passed away, which is a plausible theory
(19:24):
because that could have happened. The only problem is is
there was a large trash bin, like an open dumpster
type bin in the back of that complex where they
would dump their trash, but he purposely didn't go there.
He thought he was smart because he left both his
work and his personal cell phone at home, so he
didn't think that we could track him. What he didn't
(19:44):
realize is that we were tracking him through license plate readers.
We had gotten him all the way down to a
couple of different locations outside the city where his license
plate was hitting on tag readers. Her phone was pinging
in the exact same locations. So we got another search
warrant and went back into the apartment and we did
luminol and that bathroom lit up. Now we've got blood.
(20:08):
But of course once it's been luminol, a lot of
people may or may not know that. You can't really
DNA after that. But we knew we had blood. We
had blood on the floor, we had blood on the
door knobs, we had plood on the counters, we had
blood on her brush. Based off of the I went
back and looked at some of the bodycam footage from
previous incidents and then compared them to the photographs of
(20:30):
the crime scenes. When we did the luminol, all the
rugs were different, which means he had replaced the rugs.
We knew at that point that she's deceased, we just
hadn't found her body. So every place that her phone
was pinging, we again called out ads ARE, and at
this point we were asking them to bring the cadaver dogs.
(20:52):
And so we spent a couple of different days throughout
the last couple of years searching all up until a
week before the trial come to find out he had
already spent twenty eight years in prison for murder. He
had been out for about little under two years, and
the murder was so similar because the first murder was
(21:12):
in Clayton County. He had killed his roommate, and what
he didn't know is his roommate at the time had
called nine one one. Basically it was heard over the
nine one one call and when officers got there, he
had already wrapped the roommate's body up in the rug.
And so based off of the similarities, we were able
to bring that into trial. After a little over a
week of a trial, he was convicted on the murder charge.
(21:36):
The judge stated that no uncertain terms, that she knew
that if he ever got out again, he would murder again,
so she made sure that he would spend the rest
of his life behind bars.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Outstanding, outstanding, excellent, And again I agree with you the
team work the other detective in missing person sharing and
staying with you and seeing this thing through the two
of you all again, knowing the streets, knowing that pulse,
knowing what things are about. You cannot overstate the importance
(22:08):
of that.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And I'm just thankful for her hard work that when
it was brought to me, there wasn't much I needed
to do backwards. I just needed to go forwards.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Love it. And you know, I want to point out
for everybody listening to you talking, you keep saying we,
and I think that is so important for people to understand.
I tell my children, I married somebody smarter than me.
The two of y'all are smarter than me. That puts
me in a great position. Baby, when they're you kidding,
(22:41):
I want to be the dumbest person in the room.
But when you have people that you admire and you
trust that are going to help you and show up
for you, I mean, that's what Zone Heaven's all about.
I mean, you know this because you're APD. But that's
why I named the podcast what I did because we
got six police zwns in Atlanta. But that Zone seven, Baby,
(23:04):
those are your people.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Those are your people. Those are definitely your people.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yes one, and listen talking about your people, I just
have to bring one thing up. You are so accomplished
and you have specialized training and you are seasoned, you're
a veteran, but there is somebody that you call every
now and then. That's a part of your original zone seven.
(23:29):
Tell everybody why you sometimes call your mama.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I call my mama and I call my daddy. So
I call my mama. And it's so funny. Every time
I catch a case, within twenty four hours, my mom
calls and goes, did you catch a case? Yes? I did.
She always goes, well, who died? I'm like, you don't
know them, mama, If you.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Just don't know them, but what a lovely heart, what
a precious person.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
That's a sweetheart. Yes, and you know, and I'll tell
her a little bit about the case. But I remember
when I first made it to homicide, she did not
have the stomach for it. So she's like, no, no, no, no,
just go to your dad. Just go to your dad.
And so I just go, you know, into my dad's
office and be like, let's talk. But my mom, I
call her, well one. My mom is one of my
best friends. We talk every day. We see each other
(24:17):
once a week for family dinner. I like being able
to call her because she is a part of ATSAR.
She is a member of Alpha Team Canine Search and Rescue,
and she just recently retired her canine, Bonnie, who was
named after my grandmama. And Willa overhere. My dog was
named after my great aunt. You know, whenever I need
something like today, she's or tomorrow she's training. But last
(24:38):
week she was on a search for APD and they
ended up finding the body of a missing person.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So we're very, very thankful for even civilian volunteers who
come out and help us in our time of need,
because we, as police officers, we can't do it all.
I caught a case a couple of years ago, and
that was right when our nominal one call system went
down and all the cameras in the city went down.
It was a really big ordeal. And so I'm looking
(25:07):
around and I'm like, we have no cameras, we have
no recordings, no no on one calls. So I'm on
scene and I call my father. You were policing back
in the non digital age. What would you do? I mean,
I knew I needed to do a neighborhood canvas, and
you know, there were certain things I could do. And
he just laughs at me. I could hear him laughing.
(25:29):
He put the phone down and walked away and was
laughing so hard. And I was like, this is not fun. Me.
I'm in the middle of a crime scene and I'm
you know, but I'm very thankful that I'm so close
to my parents. But my dad has that knowledge because
he's retired APD, but he has that crime scene knowledge
(25:50):
of pre digital age and that's where a lot of
us get it from my partner, Detective Thorpe, and I'm
and he just recently retired. But there's no better way
to solve a case than leave your desk, go to scenes,
talk to people, canvas, neighborhoods, talk to family. You can't
(26:12):
solve your homicide from behind your desk.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I love the fact that your daddy had to put
the phone down and walk away laughing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
But it's not like I was six years old, eard.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
But here's the great thing. A lot of the things
that you're talking about, you can tell people, and you
can give instruction and you can give advice, but there's
some things you can't teach. And one of those things
is common sense what your daddy has. And he's got
this reputation that everybody knows, but he can tell you
go talk to people. And that's something he did give you.
(26:50):
That's something that is instilled in you, that is natural
for you, that I think is a gift.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
And I was talking to him like, dadd, it's like
one o'clock in the morning. I don't want to make
these people up. He's like summer because I'm the same way.
I don't want to be woking up at one o'clock
in the morning. But I know the neighborhood I'm met
in another majority of the people here probably can be
leaving for work in a couple hours, and I don't
want to have to, you know, disturb their sleep. But
I also have a homicide to solve. So you're in
a dilemma. And it was one of those moral things
(27:19):
for me, where Okay, should I just sit out here
for five hours and wait for people to start leaving
so I can then start knocking on doors? Or do
I go ahead and start knocking on doors?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What did your daddy tell you to do?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Go knock on doors? I was like, oh, amen, right on,
I went knocked on doors. He goes, don't stand out
there for five hours? Okay? And I knew I mean,
And the thing is is that I knew this, h
but I just I wanted to respect people's privacy and
I wanted to respect people's sleep. Basically, m H.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Well, you're also going to scare the daylights out of
some people.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, and I didn't want to do that. I would
rather than get a good night's sleep. And then Hi,
I'm a homicide detective. Right outside you wanted to We
had somebody shot last night and they're dead. Because if
you tell somebody I don't want to talk in the morning,
they're not going back sleep.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
And you know, you've had the opportunity to work with
some folks that I think people in Zone seven no,
Vince Felasquez and David Quinn. You've worked with other people,
those two specifically for me, and I've watched them many
many times in person. Naturally can talk to anybody. It
doesn't matter if it's somebody on the street or if
(28:30):
it's somebody in the White House. They are the same,
they are even they are caring. They're just authentically who
they are. They're never any different ever, And you know
it works, It works so beautifully when you're paired up
with that right person. And like you were talking about
Detective Thorpe, when you have that chemistry, sugar, you can't
(28:51):
beat it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And one thing, like before you go into inner interview,
especially when it's a suspect interview. You really need to
know who that person is before you walk into that interview. Yes,
you know all about the case because it's your case,
but do you know anything about the person?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Are they going to talk to you because you're a female?
Would they talk to a male more than you? Or
a male detective? Should I send in a mother figure?
You know, people don't think about that. Sometimes when they're
watching us on TV, they're like, well, why did they
send that person in and the lead detective didn't go in.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I'll tell you why, because your ego is not that important.
You've got your priority straight. And if somebody else can
connect with that person, so be it.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Exactly. We all are on the same team. We're all
going for the same goal. Doesn't matter who crosses the
finish line, as long as that finish line is crossed.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Mm hmmm. I think sometimes that takes some new folks
a little while to learn. They think they have to
know everything, they think they have to do everything, and
that's not possible. And the analogy that I have given
to my own children is I can throw a party tonight,
but if I include my sister Charlene, the music just
(30:08):
got better. If I include my sister Sheila, I've got
more chairs and tables. If I include my sister Schaern,
we got nice china, y'all. If I include Shelley, let
me just say, the party got better. Okay, those of
y'all that know Shelley know what I'm talking about. So again,
(30:31):
I can throw a party or I can have an
epic event if I include other people. And that's what
I see, and that's what I have always seen with
Atlanta Homicide.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
We work really really well together, and we take new
detectives under our wing. You know, we have a new
detective right now and he is going to shine. He
is showing amazing progress Detective York. And you know, even
before he got to homicide, he would do anything to say, hey,
I heard you guys caught a case and you're looking
for this type of car. He would have already given
(31:02):
us by the time I got back to my office,
and there would be a car that we were looking for.
He'd already searched all this information. Is like, here, your
car's popping here, now popping here. Now, I'm like, and
you're not even in homestelling yet, but hey, come on,
come on to my desk.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yes, come to my desk, give me some. I'll tay
love it. I'll take it all day. Well, now, I
don't want to tell your personal business, but you do
have a special female in your life. Can we please
talk about Willa?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yes we can. And for everybody out there that doesn't
know who will is. Willa is my three year old.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Labradoodle, the most precious labradoodle.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
An amazing gift that I got in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
When I watch you, and especially over social media, when
I see the two of y'all together, she is such
a vital part of that work life balance that I
preach about.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Well, the first year of her life, she actually was
at the office with me every day, and what we
learned was that no matter how bad a crime scene was,
when we got into the office, she lit us up,
She made a smile. It was like a stress reliever.
Automatically as soon as we walked back into the office
that there was a dog there that just wanted to
(32:18):
say hi and play with everybody. And it gave us
a good five to ten minutes of not thinking about
work to where we had basically were able to balance
our emotions back down. And that was the whole reason.
I had brought her in from seven weeks old until
she was a year old. And at that point, you know,
when a dog gets to a year old, they're like
in they're terrible twos. I'm like, okay, we're gon have
(32:39):
to back this off a little bit. At that point,
I had a gate that was blocking off my cubicle
and had to you know, she was one of those
that wanted your attention twenty four to seven. I'm like, okay,
I'm gonna have to take you home now because you're
getting the terrible twos. But you know, I still try
to take her to the office about once a month.
People requesting her to come to the office. They're like, hey,
(33:02):
I call her, you know, a case and it's pretty bad.
Can you bring williby? Sure, you know, and I take
Will to the office. But on social media you may
see me in a photo and Will is not far
from me. The two of us come together. I love
dogs more than anything, and I'm very, very thankful to
have her because when I come home at that every day,
(33:25):
I may have had a stressful day or you know,
really horrible crime scene. She's always happy to see me.
She's done complain and she's just jumping all over me, like,
are we gonna go for my rot walk now? Or
you know, gets me out running every day. And I
don't think I could probably do this job emotionally without
(33:48):
that companionship.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I have a dog Traveler and we named her that
because she goes everywhere with us.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
That is awesome. What kind of dog?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
She's a sheephoo whoa Oh honey, she is seven pounds
of fury, let me tell you. And all she wants
to do is be around us. I mean, COVID was
the greatest thing in the world to her because Walt
and the kids were home twenty four to seven, you know,
but when we've had her fifteen years and Caroline was
five and we had just picked her up and we
(34:18):
were in the car and everybody's kind of taking turns
holding her and you know, you don't ever know, you know,
how are they going to be in the car or whatever,
and she was just so fabulous. I mean, no Barkin,
no crying, no Biden, no nothing, and walk kept saying,
you're such a good traveler, You're a good traveler. Well, Caroline,
only being five, thought that was her name, and so
(34:40):
she just started saying, I love you, Traveler. You know
you're You're a sweet girl traveler. So we just called
her traveler. But she's been everywhere with us except Argentina
because they had, you know, that incubation process or whatever
where they had to take her for thirty days and
we just couldn't do that. But I meant quarantine. Whatever
I said was wrong. Where'd I say incubation? Okay? See,
(35:04):
that's why I can't be our pio? What'd she say?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Tell you what? The day I went and picked up
Will We picked her up in Jackson, Georgia, my mom
and I. I was so nervous because I hadn't had
a puppy in so long. I'd had Colonel with my
first dog when I was in my early twenties, and
he died at fifteen years. After fifteen years, but he
passed away. And then in twenty twenty, I had had
(35:31):
a dog named Indy for about eight years and I
loved every minute of it. But twenty twenty was a
hard year for a lot of people. COVID and protests
and police departments including Atlanta. We were put on twelve
hour shifts, off days canceled, and so I knew I
couldn't keep him in the house for twelve hours, so
I asked my parents, you know, could y'all watch him
(35:52):
while we're having to deal with these details? And they're like, yeah, sure, wasn't.
A month later, my dad called says, you're not getting
your dog back, okay. So I was like, now what
am I gonna do once I don't have an animal
to go home too? So I found a labordod breeder
online down in Jackson, Georgia, and I was like I
(36:14):
immediately fell in love with Willa immediately. She had sent
me a picture of all the entire litter and I
was like, Nope, that one's mine. And when I went
down to get her, I was so nervous. I was like,
oh my gosh, what if I'm not going to be
a good mom to a puppy. I was like, do
I have everything I need? And my mother's looking at
me like we just went to the store. We bought crates,
(36:35):
we bought food, we bought treats, we bought two bags,
we bought toys, we bought you know. I'm like, I know,
but do I have enough? She's like, oh my gosh,
You're gonna spoil this child.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I mean, all you gotta do is love them, and
that you're gonna do. The res the toys and the trees,
you know.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
And she is the unconditional love back.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Mm hm yep. Just when you described going back in
the station or coming into the house, that's everything. Detective
Summer Benton, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Oh you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote. Homicide is the major leagues,
the center ring the show. It always has been. It
goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training or book learning, because
all the theory in the world means nothing if you
(37:33):
can't read the street. David Simon, I'm Cheryl McCollum and
this is Zone seven.
We got the real deal. And I'm not just talking
a homicide detective. I'm talking about one of the most
respected across the country. I've had a chance to talk
to all kind of folks and often they asked me,
do you know some are bitten? And it's always such
a source of pride for me because, you know, hometown
(00:32):
make Atlanta look good, and she does. Y'all know her
from the first forty eight. But let me tell you
a little something about her. She joined the Atlanta Police
Department in December of two thousand and one. She has
worked vice, narcotics, she's a hostage negotiator, and then July
of two thousand and nine, she entered the homicide unit.
(00:56):
From there she got on the first forty eight. She
is a second generation law enforcement officer. And you know,
I just have to say, when you look at women
in law enforcement, you know we might be fifty one
percent of the population, but in law enforcement only about
fifteen percent. Or homicide detectives, she's got a pretty decent
solve rate, and we'll get into that too, But I
(01:18):
don't want to waste any more time because I want
y'all to hear from her. Please help me welcome. Some
are bent. There is so much to try to talk
to you about. I hope we can get it all in.
But like I said, I ain't gonna waste no time.
So here's the deal. I want to personally know your process. Like,
you get to a scene, what do you do first?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, I'm very happy that you asked me to join
the show. I'm extremely excited. Actually when I get to
a scene, first, I'm sitting in the car just taking
in my surroundings. And I'm a huge detail oriented person.
So got my notepad. I'm old school pen and paper,
and I'm writing down everything I see before I even
get out of the car. I want to know where
(02:03):
those crime scene tape is. I want to know if
it's a dark stiff, it's a nighttime scene, are the
lights on? Is there cameras anywhere? How many patrol cars
am I seeing? Are there witnesses outside? And I'm going
to write all of that down before I even step
out and start finding out who was my first responding
officer and then doing a walk through the scene.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I do the same thing. I don't get in a
hurry to get out of that car because there's so
much You're gonna miss and then as soon as I
get out of the car, I start taking pictures. But
I don't think there's anything more valuable you can do
than to just soak it in first.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh, you have to you have to be able to
visualize everything, especially years down the road when you take
the stand, you can look back on your detailed notes
and your detailed reports and remember it like it was yesterday,
and so you're able to put yourself back on that
scene and tell the jury what you saw and what
everything you've ualized through the entire process. In the first
(03:03):
five or however many minutes, you're sitting in your car
and you're taking it all in.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So you don't just google the weather. You actually observe
it and write down what you know to be true.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Exactly, even to the point where you know, hey, there
is a light there, but it's not on and it's
out okay, so it's dark there. Let's you know note that,
because you're going to get asked those questions on the stand, sure,
and you don't want to miss it correct. And there
may be you know, somebody down the road who states
they were standing right there. They were standing, you know,
(03:33):
across the street and it's pitched dark outside and there
like I saw it like it was yesterday. Okay, I
was there and I couldn't see across the street. So that,
you know, you have to put yourself in the in
that position to where when you go into the case,
first off, you assume nothing. You do everything off of
(03:54):
facts and evidence and alone. So when I'm going into
that scene and I'm doing a walkthrough, im seeing where
all the evidence, I'm seeing where the video cameras are,
I'm seeing where possibly witnesses could have been standing. And
then I'm going to where they could have been standing
see if I could see what they were seeing. To
try to visualize everything that could have possibly happened during
(04:14):
the incident, because it's like a puzzle, you know. You
you know, when you first get a puzzle and you
dump all the pieces out, that's your crime scene. Your
job is to take all those pieces and put them
back in the correct spot. And if one piece doesn't fit,
then you know that doesn't go there.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And you know, I just have to say, because this
is voice only, but I want people to know you're attractive,
you're smart. Oh well, thank you absolutely. I mean, because
it's it's relevant to what I'm thinxing of try to
showcase about you that you know, you're attractive, you're smart,
you work harder than anybody else in the room. And
(04:51):
the reason I think that's important is you don't fall
back on some of the things that you could use.
And I'll tell you, if anybody has a chance to
go back and watch every episode of the Verse forty
eight with you in it, here's what sticks out to me.
You're working constantly for the minute you get the call.
And the second thing is you are so appreciative. You
(05:15):
think everybody, the patrolman, the witnesses, people on the street
that may say, hey, you know, I'll help if I
can or whatever, but you take the time to individually
thank everybody. And I think that's so important.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And I think I'm gonna be honest with you. That
stems from my upbringing.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh I was going to give your mom and daddy
full credit.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
My mom and dad were very you know, if somebody
said something to me nice, or somebody you know, came
up to shake my hand, or somebody came up to
you know, give me a birthday gift, they will, Oh
what do you say? Thank you? You know it was
put into me at a very very early age that
you respect everyone, doesn't matter their status, their race, their smithcy,
(06:02):
the religion. You respect everyone. And that was huge growing
up in my family and I try to bring that
to work with me every day.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Well it shows, and I think that's another reason you're
so well thought of, because you know, you were that
young patrol officer and for that person to get any
kind of appreciation from you, you know, that builds them up.
I mean, it's a wonderful thing I think that you
do well. Thank you, Terry Porter. Tell us about that
(06:33):
case for you.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That was a case of man, mister Porter once I
and what a lot of people need to understand right
of that, and I know subconsciously they know this is
that we don't know our victims. So we don't know
our victims. We don't know our suspects, we don't know
our witnesses. So we're going into this, you know, unknowing
of everybody. We don't know victimology, we don't know anything.
(06:56):
So when I started to learn about mister Porter, he
was truly an amazingly great person who would have given
the shirt office back to anybody. I'm going to be
honest with you, and allow a lot of people say,
you know, you did really really good work. I got
really lucky with the video surveillance because nowadays everybody's like
(07:17):
everything's on video. Well not all the time the videos
are working, and not all the time the videos are recording.
That was a hard case because you truly got to
know who he was as a person, and you got
to know his family and how loving they were, and
how if the person I arrested had just asked him,
he would have given it to him. He didn't have
(07:38):
to take his life. But that case, when we got
to the scene, there was such minimal evidence. It was
just him. There was no shellcasings, there was nothing for
us to really do DNA wise, there was no surveillance
cameras in the area. So that case started strictly off
of locating his car and on off his financials.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What made you head toward financials.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Because we knew that when we got there, he didn't
have his wallet on him, and according to his family,
he never went anywhere without his wallet. We were looking
for his truck, his SUV, and we weren't able to
locate it because LPRs, the license plate readers were just
coming into effect so they weren't all over the city
at the time, and even though we had his license tag,
(08:26):
it wasn't really hitting on anything. So I was like, well,
I need to do something. So I was able to
pull his financials and see that shortly after he was
killed his credit cards were being used, and so every
place that his credit card was being used, I went
back to see if there was video surveillance, and lo
and behold, there was video surveillance everywhere from the first
(08:49):
time that he tried to have his credit card used,
which was at an ATM and it got declined to
him going to a like a CBS or Walgreens type
place and using the card there, then going on a
shopping spree the next day at one of our malls
here in the city. We were pretty much able to
narrow down that window. Because the timeframe of homicides, that
(09:10):
timeline is so important.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
The timeline is beyond critical. I mean, that's your money
tree from the get go. So what you're doing now
is this footwork where you're trying to see is the
same person on every video? Am I going to be
able to get this person's face out there?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
That is correct? And also how far was the time
of we believe the homicide was to the time the
first credit card was being used, because at any point
in time, depending on that that timeframe was, he could
have hated it off to somebody else. Correct, So the
person that's using the card now could totally be innocent
of the murder. That was extremely important because we had
(09:51):
to do a timeline of that time of night. So
we went back out at that night and we drove
and timed it from that time until the time the
credit card was used at the first place, and it
matched up perfectly, which told us that the person that
was involved in Terry Porter's murder is the same person
(10:12):
that used his credit card on that first time.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Unbelievable. And you're going to be able to hand that
off to the DA to say, hey, I don't think
remorse is going to be a factor here.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Correct, because obviously if he was remorseful, he wouldn't have
taken his credit card.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, there wouldn't be a shopping spree. That is such
good work though, And again you talk about the footwork,
and you talk about going back and you staying on
this thing and driving it. That gave you such an
understanding of the perpetrator and it gave.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Us an understanding of the motive behind the crime too.
You know a lot of times people think, well, what
was the motive? Was it domestic? Was it gang related?
Was it an argument? Was it someone just snapped? This
motive was totally totally off. Agreed. They wanted what mister
Porter had. They knew that he had money. They stole
his very nice SUV and then used his credit cards
(11:07):
for thousands of dollars of merchandise.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean, how sickening this wonderful man who everybody loved
in a door that knew him. The community had such
a response when this happened over what a couple of
thousand dollars?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
That's it, Yeah, all over money. And you can't put
a price on the way.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It happens, right that all of a sudden you think, well,
I've seen all there is to see and then bam.
Well let's talk about something that was a bam for me.
I want you all to think about the type of
police report that would have to be done, the type
of an investigation in order for somebody to get a
(11:52):
conviction from murder when there is nobody all right, detective,
I know people sometimes say all you do is brag
on your guest. Yeah, correct, are you kidding? And this
is one of the reasons why if you want to
talk about homicide is you know the Super Bowl. Well,
(12:13):
what you were able to do in that Super Bowl
is unheard of almost everywhere. When you're able to put
a case together and convince a jury that, hey, this
person is not going to walk in that back door.
I just want everybody right now in Zone seven to
hear how you put together a case without the victim's remains.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
My first shout out needs to go to the missing
person's detective, a Detective Barber. She was working in it
as a missing person's case and she felt looking at
what she was looking at after speaking with the victim's family,
that something wasn't right. So she immediately brought it to
our supervisor's attention. And that's when I was brought into
(12:55):
the case to work it as a homicide case instead
of just a regular missing person's case. I have to
give a shout out to Detective Barber for that one.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, right on, And that's no in the street. That's
knowing your people, that's knowing you got your pulse of
it right there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the fact that she stayed on the case with
me up until the very end. You know, she was
not a homicide detective at the time, but she was
vested in this case, and she stayed with me every
step of the way, and we worked this case together.
The victim just basically vanished into thin air. And the
(13:32):
location that she was living at was with her boyfriend,
who was the one I ended up arresting her daughter
about I want to say, four or five days after
she was last seen. Her daughter lived in another state,
called down to the Atlanta Police Department and said, my
mom's missing, but her and her boyfriend have been having
some domestic issues. She hasn't shown up to work, which
(13:55):
is extremely odd for her. She worked at a medical
OBGI and location, and she had never missed a day
of work, had never been late. And if she had
been late, I think maybe they said it was like
maybe twice in the years that she had worked there,
she always called and said she was running late. But
they hadn't heard from her. And so the first thing
(14:16):
I did was I was like, Okay, somebody always uses something,
So let's go on her social media. Let's go into
her financials, you know, let's go into her cell phone,
get her historical called detail records nothing. She had not
used anything since the time that she had arrived back
at the apartment that she basically stayed at with her boyfriend.
(14:39):
So then I started doing some history on that particular address,
and I located numerous times where officers had been called
in the last couple of months of domestic disturbances. Basically,
the two were on the outs and they were having arguments,
and there was not any physical arguments at that point.
Everything was just verbal, and I was like, Okay, well,
now it's time to you know, we need to go
(15:00):
to warn and we need to get into that apartment
to see if anything and maybe she's in the apartment,
maybe something. So we did that and that's when we
called in a group that we use. It's a group
of civilians that volunteer their time and they're called at SAR.
It's out the Canine Team Search and Rescue, and we
(15:20):
called them in and basically it was because they have
two specialized types of canines. One is kadabra dogs where
they search for, you know, anybody who's been deceased, bones,
anything like that, and the other one is what they
called live fine dogs to where they can get a
scent of a person and then try to track to
(15:42):
where they are. So it's really helpful using them with
Mattie's calls or missing children. They can try to figure
out and get a scent and try to track them
at that point. So we called the men, and the
first time we called the men, we asked them to
bring in their specialized live fine dogs, and so we
were able to get into the apartment and get a
(16:02):
scent article that was hers and the team did their work,
but they were unable to locate any scent that did
not go from the front of the apartment to her vehicle.
She had not been anywhere else outside of and it
was two different dogs at that time. From her vehicle
to the apartment and back, that's where the dogs went.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Now that's interesting to me, right.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We even I said, well, let's just go ahead and
take the dogs all up and down the apartment complex.
It was two different buildings. Let's just see if they
alert on anything. You know, they did not, and can.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I just jump in real quick just to make sure
people understand what the detective is doing right now by
working two different dogs is so smart because it's not
like somebody can come back and say, well, that dog
was led, or you know, maybe that dog made a mistake.
That's why she's running two go ahead detected.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's like a peer review mm hmm exactly. So if
one dog hits on something, they bring in a second
dog basically to peer review it to make sure it's
something that was actually scented. Or if one dog doesn't
hit on anything, they bring in a second opinion. Basically,
I guess that's the lam in terms.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yep, that's the perfect way to say it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We weren't able to find anything, and at this point
we were still trying to get download all of the
video surveillance. This particular complex had seventeen cameras. It was
in a senior living facility, and anywhere you were on
that property, if you took two steps outside that building,
you were on camera. And since there was so much camera,
and we had such a large time frame, because we
(17:38):
didn't know technically when she had made it home, because
we were still waiting on her called detailed records, her
cel phone records, her historical ones. Because what people don't
realize is they don't come overnight. Sometimes it takes a week,
sometimes it takes three weeks to get some records back,
so we were still waiting on those, so we didn't
know exactly what time she had made it home. So
we were pulling over twenty four hours of footage on
(17:59):
seventy cameras and we had to go through all of
that footage, and we went through all of that footage,
and it took days for us to go through the footage.
And then when her call detailed records came in, we
were able to narrow down the timeframe that we were
looking for. We were able to locate a time I
think it was around six thirty or seven thirty PM
that she see her pull up in her suv. She
(18:21):
gets out and she walks right into the building. She's
never to be seen again. About four o'clock the next morning,
a little bit after four am, you see the suspect
come out, and you see him go to his truck,
and then he comes back and he's like in the
shadows of one of the cameras because the cameras all
had lights on the top of the poles, so you
(18:41):
could see his shadow figure and he was trying to
cover one of the cameras with a black plastic bag.
And then he goes back into the building, and around
seven thirty that same morning, he comes out. He pulls
this truck out and then he backs it into the
trash compactor area to where now you can't even see
in the bed of his truck. And when he had
(19:03):
originally pulled in, the bet of his truck was empty.
About twenty minutes later he pulls out and the bet
of his truck is filled with stuff. And so when
we confronted him about it, he said he was taking
He was the maintenance man, and that he was taking
stuff to the dump that had been cleaned out of
residents who had passed away, which is a plausible theory
(19:24):
because that could have happened. The only problem is is
there was a large trash bin, like an open dumpster
type bin in the back of that complex where they
would dump their trash, but he purposely didn't go there.
He thought he was smart because he left both his
work and his personal cell phone at home, so he
didn't think that we could track him. What he didn't
(19:44):
realize is that we were tracking him through license plate readers.
We had gotten him all the way down to a
couple of different locations outside the city where his license
plate was hitting on tag readers. Her phone was pinging
in the exact same locations. So we got another search
warrant and went back into the apartment and we did
luminol and that bathroom lit up. Now we've got blood.
(20:08):
But of course once it's been luminol, a lot of
people may or may not know that. You can't really
DNA after that. But we knew we had blood. We
had blood on the floor, we had blood on the
door knobs, we had plood on the counters, we had
blood on her brush. Based off of the I went
back and looked at some of the bodycam footage from
previous incidents and then compared them to the photographs of
(20:30):
the crime scenes. When we did the luminol, all the
rugs were different, which means he had replaced the rugs.
We knew at that point that she's deceased, we just
hadn't found her body. So every place that her phone
was pinging, we again called out ads ARE, and at
this point we were asking them to bring the cadaver dogs.
(20:52):
And so we spent a couple of different days throughout
the last couple of years searching all up until a
week before the trial come to find out he had
already spent twenty eight years in prison for murder. He
had been out for about little under two years, and
the murder was so similar because the first murder was
(21:12):
in Clayton County. He had killed his roommate, and what
he didn't know is his roommate at the time had
called nine one one. Basically it was heard over the
nine one one call and when officers got there, he
had already wrapped the roommate's body up in the rug.
And so based off of the similarities, we were able
to bring that into trial. After a little over a
week of a trial, he was convicted on the murder charge.
(21:36):
The judge stated that no uncertain terms, that she knew
that if he ever got out again, he would murder again,
so she made sure that he would spend the rest
of his life behind bars.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Outstanding, outstanding, excellent, And again I agree with you the
team work the other detective in missing person sharing and
staying with you and seeing this thing through the two
of you all again, knowing the streets, knowing that pulse,
knowing what things are about. You cannot overstate the importance
(22:08):
of that.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And I'm just thankful for her hard work that when
it was brought to me, there wasn't much I needed
to do backwards. I just needed to go forwards.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Love it. And you know, I want to point out
for everybody listening to you talking, you keep saying we,
and I think that is so important for people to understand.
I tell my children, I married somebody smarter than me.
The two of y'all are smarter than me. That puts
me in a great position. Baby, when they're you kidding,
(22:41):
I want to be the dumbest person in the room.
But when you have people that you admire and you
trust that are going to help you and show up
for you, I mean, that's what Zone Heaven's all about.
I mean, you know this because you're APD. But that's
why I named the podcast what I did because we
got six police zwns in Atlanta. But that Zone seven, Baby,
(23:04):
those are your people.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Those are your people. Those are definitely your people.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yes one, and listen talking about your people, I just
have to bring one thing up. You are so accomplished
and you have specialized training and you are seasoned, you're
a veteran, but there is somebody that you call every
now and then. That's a part of your original zone seven.
(23:29):
Tell everybody why you sometimes call your mama.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I call my mama and I call my daddy. So
I call my mama. And it's so funny. Every time
I catch a case, within twenty four hours, my mom
calls and goes, did you catch a case? Yes? I did.
She always goes, well, who died? I'm like, you don't
know them, mama, If you.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Just don't know them, but what a lovely heart, what
a precious person.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
That's a sweetheart. Yes, and you know, and I'll tell
her a little bit about the case. But I remember
when I first made it to homicide, she did not
have the stomach for it. So she's like, no, no, no, no,
just go to your dad. Just go to your dad.
And so I just go, you know, into my dad's
office and be like, let's talk. But my mom, I
call her, well one. My mom is one of my
best friends. We talk every day. We see each other
(24:17):
once a week for family dinner. I like being able
to call her because she is a part of ATSAR.
She is a member of Alpha Team Canine Search and Rescue,
and she just recently retired her canine, Bonnie, who was
named after my grandmama. And Willa overhere. My dog was
named after my great aunt. You know, whenever I need
something like today, she's or tomorrow she's training. But last
(24:38):
week she was on a search for APD and they
ended up finding the body of a missing person.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So we're very, very thankful for even civilian volunteers who
come out and help us in our time of need,
because we, as police officers, we can't do it all.
I caught a case a couple of years ago, and
that was right when our nominal one call system went
down and all the cameras in the city went down.
It was a really big ordeal. And so I'm looking
(25:07):
around and I'm like, we have no cameras, we have
no recordings, no no on one calls. So I'm on
scene and I call my father. You were policing back
in the non digital age. What would you do? I mean,
I knew I needed to do a neighborhood canvas, and
you know, there were certain things I could do. And
he just laughs at me. I could hear him laughing.
(25:29):
He put the phone down and walked away and was
laughing so hard. And I was like, this is not fun. Me.
I'm in the middle of a crime scene and I'm
you know, but I'm very thankful that I'm so close
to my parents. But my dad has that knowledge because
he's retired APD, but he has that crime scene knowledge
(25:50):
of pre digital age and that's where a lot of
us get it from my partner, Detective Thorpe, and I'm
and he just recently retired. But there's no better way
to solve a case than leave your desk, go to scenes,
talk to people, canvas, neighborhoods, talk to family. You can't
(26:12):
solve your homicide from behind your desk.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I love the fact that your daddy had to put
the phone down and walk away laughing.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
But it's not like I was six years old, eard.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
But here's the great thing. A lot of the things
that you're talking about, you can tell people, and you
can give instruction and you can give advice, but there's
some things you can't teach. And one of those things
is common sense what your daddy has. And he's got
this reputation that everybody knows, but he can tell you
go talk to people. And that's something he did give you.
(26:50):
That's something that is instilled in you, that is natural
for you, that I think is a gift.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
And I was talking to him like, dadd, it's like
one o'clock in the morning. I don't want to make
these people up. He's like summer because I'm the same way.
I don't want to be woking up at one o'clock
in the morning. But I know the neighborhood I'm met
in another majority of the people here probably can be
leaving for work in a couple hours, and I don't
want to have to, you know, disturb their sleep. But
I also have a homicide to solve. So you're in
a dilemma. And it was one of those moral things
(27:19):
for me, where Okay, should I just sit out here
for five hours and wait for people to start leaving
so I can then start knocking on doors? Or do
I go ahead and start knocking on doors?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What did your daddy tell you to do?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Go knock on doors? I was like, oh, amen, right on,
I went knocked on doors. He goes, don't stand out
there for five hours? Okay? And I knew I mean,
And the thing is is that I knew this, h
but I just I wanted to respect people's privacy and
I wanted to respect people's sleep. Basically, m H.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Well, you're also going to scare the daylights out of
some people.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, and I didn't want to do that. I would
rather than get a good night's sleep. And then Hi,
I'm a homicide detective. Right outside you wanted to We
had somebody shot last night and they're dead. Because if
you tell somebody I don't want to talk in the morning,
they're not going back sleep.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
And you know, you've had the opportunity to work with
some folks that I think people in Zone seven no,
Vince Felasquez and David Quinn. You've worked with other people,
those two specifically for me, and I've watched them many
many times in person. Naturally can talk to anybody. It
doesn't matter if it's somebody on the street or if
(28:30):
it's somebody in the White House. They are the same,
they are even they are caring. They're just authentically who
they are. They're never any different ever, And you know
it works, It works so beautifully when you're paired up
with that right person. And like you were talking about
Detective Thorpe, when you have that chemistry, sugar, you can't
(28:51):
beat it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And one thing, like before you go into inner interview,
especially when it's a suspect interview. You really need to
know who that person is before you walk into that interview. Yes,
you know all about the case because it's your case,
but do you know anything about the person?
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Are they going to talk to you because you're a female?
Would they talk to a male more than you? Or
a male detective? Should I send in a mother figure?
You know, people don't think about that. Sometimes when they're
watching us on TV, they're like, well, why did they
send that person in and the lead detective didn't go in.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I'll tell you why, because your ego is not that important.
You've got your priority straight. And if somebody else can
connect with that person, so be it.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Exactly. We all are on the same team. We're all
going for the same goal. Doesn't matter who crosses the
finish line, as long as that finish line is crossed.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Mm hmmm. I think sometimes that takes some new folks
a little while to learn. They think they have to
know everything, they think they have to do everything, and
that's not possible. And the analogy that I have given
to my own children is I can throw a party tonight,
but if I include my sister Charlene, the music just
(30:08):
got better. If I include my sister Sheila, I've got
more chairs and tables. If I include my sister Schaern,
we got nice china, y'all. If I include Shelley, let
me just say, the party got better. Okay, those of
y'all that know Shelley know what I'm talking about. So again,
(30:31):
I can throw a party or I can have an
epic event if I include other people. And that's what
I see, and that's what I have always seen with
Atlanta Homicide.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
We work really really well together, and we take new
detectives under our wing. You know, we have a new
detective right now and he is going to shine. He
is showing amazing progress Detective York. And you know, even
before he got to homicide, he would do anything to say, hey,
I heard you guys caught a case and you're looking
for this type of car. He would have already given
(31:02):
us by the time I got back to my office,
and there would be a car that we were looking for.
He'd already searched all this information. Is like, here, your
car's popping here, now popping here. Now, I'm like, and
you're not even in homestelling yet, but hey, come on,
come on to my desk.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yes, come to my desk, give me some. I'll tay
love it. I'll take it all day. Well, now, I
don't want to tell your personal business, but you do
have a special female in your life. Can we please
talk about Willa?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yes we can. And for everybody out there that doesn't
know who will is. Willa is my three year old.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Labradoodle, the most precious labradoodle.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
An amazing gift that I got in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
When I watch you, and especially over social media, when
I see the two of y'all together, she is such
a vital part of that work life balance that I
preach about.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Well, the first year of her life, she actually was
at the office with me every day, and what we
learned was that no matter how bad a crime scene was,
when we got into the office, she lit us up,
She made a smile. It was like a stress reliever.
Automatically as soon as we walked back into the office
that there was a dog there that just wanted to
(32:18):
say hi and play with everybody. And it gave us
a good five to ten minutes of not thinking about
work to where we had basically were able to balance
our emotions back down. And that was the whole reason.
I had brought her in from seven weeks old until
she was a year old. And at that point, you know,
when a dog gets to a year old, they're like
in they're terrible twos. I'm like, okay, we're gon have
(32:39):
to back this off a little bit. At that point,
I had a gate that was blocking off my cubicle
and had to you know, she was one of those
that wanted your attention twenty four to seven. I'm like, okay,
I'm gonna have to take you home now because you're
getting the terrible twos. But you know, I still try
to take her to the office about once a month.
People requesting her to come to the office. They're like, hey,
(33:02):
I call her, you know, a case and it's pretty bad.
Can you bring williby? Sure, you know, and I take
Will to the office. But on social media you may
see me in a photo and Will is not far
from me. The two of us come together. I love
dogs more than anything, and I'm very, very thankful to
have her because when I come home at that every day,
(33:25):
I may have had a stressful day or you know,
really horrible crime scene. She's always happy to see me.
She's done complain and she's just jumping all over me, like,
are we gonna go for my rot walk now? Or
you know, gets me out running every day. And I
don't think I could probably do this job emotionally without
(33:48):
that companionship.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I have a dog Traveler and we named her that
because she goes everywhere with us.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
That is awesome. What kind of dog?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
She's a sheephoo whoa Oh honey, she is seven pounds
of fury, let me tell you. And all she wants
to do is be around us. I mean, COVID was
the greatest thing in the world to her because Walt
and the kids were home twenty four to seven, you know,
but when we've had her fifteen years and Caroline was
five and we had just picked her up and we
(34:18):
were in the car and everybody's kind of taking turns
holding her and you know, you don't ever know, you know,
how are they going to be in the car or whatever,
and she was just so fabulous. I mean, no Barkin,
no crying, no Biden, no nothing, and walk kept saying,
you're such a good traveler, You're a good traveler. Well, Caroline,
only being five, thought that was her name, and so
(34:40):
she just started saying, I love you, Traveler. You know
you're You're a sweet girl traveler. So we just called
her traveler. But she's been everywhere with us except Argentina
because they had, you know, that incubation process or whatever
where they had to take her for thirty days and
we just couldn't do that. But I meant quarantine. Whatever
I said was wrong. Where'd I say incubation? Okay? See,
(35:04):
that's why I can't be our pio? What'd she say?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Tell you what? The day I went and picked up
Will We picked her up in Jackson, Georgia, my mom
and I. I was so nervous because I hadn't had
a puppy in so long. I'd had Colonel with my
first dog when I was in my early twenties, and
he died at fifteen years. After fifteen years, but he
passed away. And then in twenty twenty, I had had
(35:31):
a dog named Indy for about eight years and I
loved every minute of it. But twenty twenty was a
hard year for a lot of people. COVID and protests
and police departments including Atlanta. We were put on twelve
hour shifts, off days canceled, and so I knew I
couldn't keep him in the house for twelve hours, so
I asked my parents, you know, could y'all watch him
(35:52):
while we're having to deal with these details? And they're like, yeah, sure, wasn't.
A month later, my dad called says, you're not getting
your dog back, okay. So I was like, now what
am I gonna do once I don't have an animal
to go home too? So I found a labordod breeder
online down in Jackson, Georgia, and I was like I
(36:14):
immediately fell in love with Willa immediately. She had sent
me a picture of all the entire litter and I
was like, Nope, that one's mine. And when I went
down to get her, I was so nervous. I was like,
oh my gosh, what if I'm not going to be
a good mom to a puppy. I was like, do
I have everything I need? And my mother's looking at
me like we just went to the store. We bought crates,
(36:35):
we bought food, we bought treats, we bought two bags,
we bought toys, we bought you know. I'm like, I know,
but do I have enough? She's like, oh my gosh,
You're gonna spoil this child.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I mean, all you gotta do is love them, and
that you're gonna do. The res the toys and the trees,
you know.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
And she is the unconditional love back.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Mm hm yep. Just when you described going back in
the station or coming into the house, that's everything. Detective
Summer Benton, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Oh you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote. Homicide is the major leagues,
the center ring the show. It always has been. It
goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training or book learning, because
all the theory in the world means nothing if you
(37:33):
can't read the street. David Simon, I'm Cheryl McCollum and
this is Zone seven.
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