John Jefferson
Left: Willie Richard Ellington (Lee County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Tshey Bennett (Escambia County Sheriff’s Office).
An active duty U.S. Marine stationed off the coast of Florida was charged with first-degree murder after a woman’s body was found in nearby Alabama.
Willie Richard Ellington, 20, was arrested on Dec. 18 in Alabama the same day the body of Tshey Bennett, 26, was found in a pond in Mobile. Bennett, who Escambia County police said was working as an escort, was reported missing on Dec. 14. The investigation yielded information that connected Ellington and Bennett to a hotel in Pensacola, Florida. Bennett had last been seen alive on the block where the hotel is located on Dec. 13.
According to the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, Ellington was stationed onboard the NAS Pensacola off Florida’s west coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told Pensacola CBS affiliate WKRG that investigators believed Ellington was about to board a bus in Alabama, saying, “Our team quickly scrambled to the station and set up a surveillance operation. When the bus arrived, investigators spotted and apprehended a man matching the suspect’s description.”
Investigators found that Bennett had met with Ellington as an escort at about 4 p.m. the last day she was seen alive. The pair stayed at the Sweet Dreams Inn in Pensacola. When she was first reported missing, police determined that the “suspicious circumstances surrounding her disappearance” warranted a homicide investigation. Her body was found on Dec. 18 in a pond in Mobile, 50 miles from the hotel. Officials confirmed that Bennett was killed in Florida, not Alabama.
According to The Independent, Bennett was a mother of one child and once appeared on a reality show — HollyHoodTV’s “Skrippa Bootcamp” — that featured exotic dancers. Her cause of death was not made public.
Ellington was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of possession of child pornography. He is being held at the Lee County Detention Center without bail.
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