Though Cyberspace Takes the Rap, Behl Met Her Accused Killer in The Real World

The truth was that Taylor Behl had met Ben Fawley through 'real-world,' as opposed to Internet connections. Fawley used the Internet to maintain his own interest in Behl, to gain her attention, after meeting her when she visited Richmond while still a high school senior to check out VCU. Ben Fawley registered for a myspace.com profile under his "Skulz" screen name months after he met Taylor Behl. Taylor was one of Ben's handful of 'friends' listed on his own profile.

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Taylor Behl appeared to abandon her "tiabliaj" Livejournal until shortly after she had an assignation with Fawley in February of 2005, only to cease posting there again by the summer of the same year. That didn't stop people writing across the blogosphere from attempting to turn one of the most popular social networking sites on the internet into the cyber-equivalent of the bad side of town.

As far away as the Phillippines, bloggers were sounding the warning bells. Economist and I.T. Executive J. Angelo Racoma wrote, on October 11, 2005:

"Now I've read about bad things happening to people who meet via chat/e-groups, but this is the first time I know this kind of thing happening to people who have met thru blogs/social-networking sites.

People beware..."

Racoma's words were sensible and good advice to anyone on the internet for any reason, but being half a world away, he'd understandably taken the digg.com story at face value.

In the Livejournal community, "criminalmind," a blogger with the screen name "abstrackt" posted the following:

"Keep in mind that there are over 30 million people on this network so the odds are pretty good that you'll interact with some psychos and possibly some predators along the way (male or female). Just be careful and use common sense especially if you are female. I know 1st hand the amount of e-mails that women get every single day, half from guys posing as amateur photographers.

The romantic relationship between Taylor and Ben started online on Myspace..."

Again, the words of caution were appropriate, but based on an element of the Taylor Behl story that had essentially been taken out of context, misreported. Myspace.com was not the culprit — as far as many watching the story closely were concerned, Ben Fawley was the most likely candidate for that position. While the dire warnings about associating with people met on the internet were merited in general, they were based on a basic misunderstanding of the Taylor Behl story.

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Steve Huff can be reached via his web site http://www.HuffCrimeBlog.com/.

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