In what a local official called a "chilling" case, an active-duty Marine stationed in Florida was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday in connection to the death of a woman whose body was found in a pond in the neighboring state of Alabama.
Law enforcement arrested 20-year-old Pfc. Willie Ellington in Opelika, Alabama, on Dec. 18 just days after Florida's Escambia County Sheriff's Office was notified that Tshey Bennett, whom authorities described as an "escort," was reported missing. Ellington was also charged with possession of child pornography, according to officials.
After receiving the notification, investigators went to the Sweet Dreams Inn, a hotel just north of where Ellington was stationed aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, and where Bennett was last known to be.
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Investigators discovered that the door to Bennett's room had been left open, her car and cell phone were still on the premises, and the bedding from the hotel was missing, "which launched us into a potential homicide investigation pretty quickly," Morgan Lewis, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, told Military.com on Thursday.
Investigators reviewed security footage from the area, identified a vehicle rented to Ellington at the inn, Lewis said, and traced his movements to Alabama. Law enforcement discovered Bennett's remains in "a pond located in an abandoned neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama," the sheriff's office announced Wednesday on Facebook.
The same day, authorities -- assisted by local Alabama law enforcement -- arrested Ellington as he was "trying to leave town," Lewis said, on a bus in Opelika, which is located northeast of Montgomery near the Georgia state border.
Authorities believe that the alleged murder was premeditated. When they searched Ellington's phone, Lewis said investigators found child pornography and Google searches "pertaining to 'can someone scream when they're strangled? What is the statistic of prostitutes homicides being solved ...' and 'How does a dead body look in two days?'"
Lewis said that the exact cause of Bennett's death will remain unclear until an autopsy can be performed and, while there appeared to be "foul play" at the hotel, authorities did not yet know whether that is where she was killed.
"We believe that this was a person taking advantage of the situation," Lewis said, noting that investigators believe Bennett was working as an escort at the time of her death. "We believe that he intentionally sought out someone in that position in order to take advantage of it, to do what he planned to do."
It is unclear whether Bennett and Ellington knew each other prior to her death, according to Lewis, who added that it may have been "a random act." She added that Bennett's next of kin had been notified of her death, though a partner agency released information prematurely in the investigation.
"The investigation was complicated by information released/reported prematurely before we could notify the family and before investigators were able to locate the suspect," the Escambia County Sheriff's Office said in its news release on social media Wednesday.
The Pensacola News Journal, citing the Marine Corps, said that Ellington is a private first class and assigned to Marine Aviation Training Support Group 23 aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola. Marine Corps and Navy officials did not respond to Military.com's inquiries by publication time.
Lewis described the case as "chilling" and, now that authorities have located a suspect in connection to Bennett's death, said "we're hoping for justice for her and her family."
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