By  Seamus McGraw

August 8, 2006

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MATHEWS, Va. (Crime Library) —  Ben Fawley, the 39-year-old amateur photographer with a Johnny Depp haircut and an alleged penchant for pornography, will plead guilty Wednesday to second degree murder in the death of Virginia Commonwealth University freshman Taylor Behl.

Ben Fawley

Lawyers for Fawley, who has admitted to authorities that he killed the 17-year-old whose body was found last October dumped on a farm in a remote corner of rural Mathews County, but has insisted that her death was an accident, released details of the tentative plea deal late Tuesday. Under the terms of the deal, lawyers confirmed, unrelated federal child pornography will be dismissed, and in exchange, he will plead guilty to second degree murder. The deal is expected to be formalized Wednesday.

Though Fawley has long maintained that he strangled the young woman accidentally during consensual sex, prosecutors succeeded earlier this year in convincing a grand jury to indict him on a charge of first-degree murder, a charge that if he was convicted, could have landed Fawley behind bars for life.

Taylor Behl

Prosecutors and defense attorneys had apparently been quietly haggling over the details of the plea bargain for a week, even as the publicly battled each other over issues arising from Behl's autopsy. The state medical examiner, after nine months of delay, released a report last week declaring that Behl had been the victim of a homicide but which failed to determine a precise cause of death.

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