Willie Richard Ellington, active marine charged in the murder of missing Florida woman and aspiring reality star, Tshey Ronaie Bennett, whose body was discovered ditched in an Alabama pond. Incriminating web searches led to authorities focusing on the suspect who met the victim while she worked as an escort at a Pensacola motel.
An active-duty Marine has been charged with the murder of an aspiring reality star and working escort after the woman’s body was discovered in an Alabama pond after she was reported missing last week.
Willie Richard Ellington, 20 – who was stationed at NAS Pensacola, on Florida’s Gulf Coast – was charged with first-degree murder and possession of child p*rnography Saturday, according to a Facebook release via the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday.
Ellington is alleged to have murdered 26 year old woman, Tshey Ronaie Bennett – a mother of one – after the pair met up at the ‘Sweet Dreams Inn’ (yes … the irony) in the town of Pensacola around 4 p.m. Friday, December 13th, police stated. Investigators believe that the victim was working as an escort at the time of having met the alleged suspect.
Ellington who was registered as a visitor at the motel on the day Bennett ‘was working’ became a focal part of the investigation, with a search warrant of the man’s search records, unsettling investigators according to WKRG.
“Things like, ‘What does a dead body look like after two days? How many prostitute murders go unsolved in a particular time period? If someone is strangled, can they talk, can they yell, can they scream?”, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons told the outlet.
Simmons said that based on these web searches, the sheriff’s office concluded there was clear intent by the suspect to harm Bennett.
Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones who worked in tandem with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in Florida were able to arrest the man as he traveled into Alabama.
‘Escambia County investigators tipped us off their suspect might be on a bus scheduled to stop in Opelika,’ Jones told the outlet.
‘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.’
Officials then found Bennett’s body – who they say was murdered in Northwest Florida before her body was dumped in a pond over 50 miles away across state lines in an abandoned neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama, Wednesday, December 18th.
Police did not specify how the victim’s body ended up in the pond along with the cause and manner of her death. It remained unclear if the suspect had confessed to the murder and revealed where Bennett’s body might be.
The working girl’s death follows Bennett having made an appearance earlier this year on Season 1 of the HollyHoodTV series Skrippa Bootcamp – a reality television show that followed the lives of 12 women and their exotic dance careers, according to WRBL.
Ellington is being held at the Lee County Detention Facility and will face extradition.
No murder motive was immediately known.
