“We were very concerned about what bombs were out there,” Paul later said.
Ron waited until Dianna arrived, then headed for Gene’s house. “Sit tight,” he told Margo.
Margo was trembling, partly from the adrenaline that was still raging through her body and partly from the cool temperature of a Virginia night, so Dianna led her back to her Lexus and wrapped a blanket around Margo. Dianna didn’t really know what to say at a time like this, but she did her best to comfort her friend.
Gene called Mary Ann at 11:44 pm and told her to meet him at the nearby 7-11. She got lost on the way, so she paged him and he called her back around midnight to give her directions. When she pulled in next to him at the 7-11, he was sitting in the van she’d rented, which he’d backed into one of the parking spots out front.
He rolled down his window and told her to transfer all her belongings into the van and get in. She’d only handed him the bag with her new gun and ammunition when he blurted out, “Hurry up! We have to get out and follow them! We’re going to lose them!”
Gene took off before Mary Ann even knew what was going on. She tried to get in her car fast enough to follow him, but he was long gone, so she drove back to the Holiday Inn to wait for him to call.
From there, Gene sped home and called 911, reporting that he was hearing voices and that his estranged wife was trying to kill him.
“She’s got my kids. She stole my money. She put me in jail. She ruined me and now she shoots at me and tries to blow me up,” he said. “. . . She’s been in my house. . . . Both of my vehicles are gone. I had to get a vehicle from a friend of mine and they probably thought I stole it.”
Then Gene started talking about someone named Ed, who was in the house with him.
“Ed says we’ve got to go now,” Gene said, then hung up. When Janice Hetzel, the police department’s hostage negotiator, called him back, Gene said, “Ed says I can’t talk to you anymore. This has gone far enough.”
“Who is Ed?” she asked. “Please, Gene, tell me, who is Ed?” “Ed, Ed just comes and it is terrible,” Gene said, adding that
he couldn’t come out of the house because Ed wouldn’t let him. “Why?”
“’Cause we’re afraid.”
Gene demanded to talk to the police negotiator’s counterpart at Quantico and then, before he hung up, he said cryptically, “I grabbed a gun from some asshole, threw it down on the way out.” When he called back, he was speaking in a very different voice,
with an aggressive, angry tone.
“This is Ed. Give me that hostage negotiation bitch,” he said, then hung up again.
The negotiator called him back, this time with Gene’s attorney Reid Weingarten on the line.
“Gene?” Janice asked.
“This is Ed,” Gene said. “That punk motherfucker ain’t doin’ nothin’ no more.”
“OK.”
“I’m in charge. You got that?” “Ed?” Janice asked.
Reid jumped in. “Gene, I’m on the line, it’s Reid. Now what’s going on?”
“What?” Gene said.
“Can you hear us, Gene?” Janice asked.
Gene answered in a soft, confused voice, as if he were in a dream. “What?”
“Reid, do we know somebody named Ed?” Gene asked. “Huh? How does Ed fit in?”
“I don’t know.”
After Reid hung up, Gene told Janice he wanted help from his pastor.
“Bill has to come and get rid of the evil,” he said. “. . . He’ll make the Ed stuff go away. . . . I think Ed’s—I hope—I think I locked Ed in the garage.”
“You did?” Janice said. “That’s a good idea.” “What if Ed gets out of the garage?”
“Gene, you know that is not going to happen.”
Janice put the Reverend Bill Higgins on the line, who said he would meet Gene at Prince William Hospital, where Janice promised a doctor would check out Gene’s complaints of burning eyes, problems breathing, and chest pains.
“I’m not going to hurt anybody and Ed’s not going to hurt anybody else,” Gene said. “Ed, Ed, Ed said it was OK to open the door. . . . Will you help make the evil go away?”
“Yes,” the pastor replied.
Ron McClelland, who was standing with the other offi outside Gene’s house during the long series of calls, said later that none of them believed Gene’s act. In fact, they were all laughing at it.
“It was just so obvious that he was playing this role as Ed,” he said. “The role he was trying to come up with was pretty clever; it was the only chance he had, but he didn’t pull it off. . . . It was just ridiculous.”
Gene surrendered at 4:13 am. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance, then to jail.
Meanwhile, Gene had left a number of items in his wake in and around the church, including a pair of leg shackles in the hallway, some handcuffs in the grass down the street, and a large black gym bag in Edwin’s offi
Each of the bag’s four compartments was packed with a collection of obscure items, many of which were enclosed in their own plastic zipper-lock bags. Among the items was a bullet-proof vest labeled “E. A. Bennett,” a manual for a BB or pellet gun that looked like a semiautomatic pistol, and some pellets. The bag also contained a stethoscope, several syringes, four small bottles of saline solution, three costume eye masks with elastic straps, nine bandannas, two pairs of gloves, some ladies’ underwear, four drop cloths, baby wipes, a bottle of nail polish remover, a tube of Krazy Glue, two rolls of Ace bandages, some phone jacks, earplugs, a pair of handcuff keys, and a power converter cord that plugged into a car’s cigarette lighter.
Packaged separately was a collection of matches, match heads, fi hooks, a razor blade, and detonator caps used in explosive devices. They also found keys they later learned would open a locker at the Woodbridge NOVA campus, where Margo worked, as well as lockers at the Alexandria, Manassas, and Annandale campuses. Outside the church, police found a backpack marked with three vertical slashes that looked like the Roman numeral III. (This was the first of fi similar packs they would find in different locations. Each pack was labeled with its own set of vertical slashes from I to IIIIII, and contained its own set of particular items—swatches of tan carpet, of green-and-white striped dish towel, and of green towel. Each swatch was packaged separately
in a plastic bag with strands of hair loosely attached.)
Also in this particular pack were two pairs of latex gloves; some mail addressed to Eugene Bennett and Elizabeth Akers (Margo’s middle and maiden names); a quart-size plastic bag of a black mixture that turned out to contain ammonia-based fertilizer, fuel oil, and pyrodex, a black powder often used to make illegal pipe bombs; a set of keys marked “Reston”; and a note typed in capital letters
that read, “Evidence—Evidence—Evidence. Do not disturb these items. Contact Lt. M. Bennett, NVCC Campus Police, 878-5744. Evidence—Evidence—Evidence.”
Next to the backpack, police found a gray gym bag, which contained an on-off power switch, still in its original packaging; a pair of men’s black rain rubbers; an alarm clock; a paintbrush; and a bottle of ibuprofen.
Over the next few weeks, as Margo heard more about the vast array of items that Gene had planted around the region, she could not help but draw on her FBI training to conjure up all kinds of theories about the horrors Gene had had in store for her, including a scenario reminiscent of a serial rapist she’d heard at Quantico that involved Krazy Glue-ing the victim’s eyelids shut. But she wouldn’t fully understand his scheme until the prosecutors pulled all the pieces together in their closing arguments at his trial seven months later.
Around 3 am, Margo called Kathy Farrell from Dianna’s car. “This is Margo; are you awake?”
“Give me a minute,” Kathy said groggily, roused out of a deep sleep. “Yes?”
“Gene tried to kill me tonight.” “Oh, my God.”
Once Kathy got her bearings, she told Margo to try to get some sleep and come to her offi in the morning. By then, Kathy said she would have figured out what they should do to get a jump on the divorce and custody case.
Ron returned briefl to tell Margo that he had gotten a search warrant for Gene’s house and to stay put for the time being. Margo climbed into the backseat and caught some light sleep for about forty-fi minutes.
Dianna was parked too far away for them to hear the loud enthusiasm of the bomb technicians and police offi who had gathered at the bottom of the hill in the church parking lot. After taking a sample of the black mixture from Gene’s bag for testing,
they rendered the remaining two pounds safe by destroying it. They laid down a concrete strip, poured out the powder, lit a fuse, then whooped as they watched it go up in fl The white doughy material in Edwin’s fanny pack turned out to be harmless Play-Doh.
The two women had watched the sun come up before a police offi told them they were free to go.
Back at the townhouse, Margo took a thirty-minute catnap and a shower, then called her boss to tell him she needed some time off to help the police with their investigation. He told her to take whatever time she needed.
As Margo and Dianna were leaving for Kathy’s offi Carly and Letta came home with the girls after spending much of the night hidden away in the basement at Beth’s sister-in-law’s. Beth had taken them there so that no one, including Margo, would know where to find them.
Lindsey was too young to understand what was going on, but Allison, who was very much aware of the danger Margo had been in, ran into her mother’s arms.
Margo hugged each of her daughters tightly.
“Your dad tried to hurt me last night, and now he’s in jail,” she told them.
Allison would always remember how a female offi had come down the basement stairs in the middle of the night, silhouetted by the hallway light above, and asked if Gene had any guns in his house.
“I know this is a big night for you,” the offi said. “I just want you to know everybody is safe, your mom is okay, and I don’t want you to worry because we’ve got more guns than he does.”
Kathy had decided to petition the court for an emergency hearing to get temporary sole custody and a restraining order that would prevent Gene from contacting Margo or the girls until permanent custody arrangements could be made. Margo didn’t want Gene calling the house collect from jail.
Kathy said she’d been wondering all these months why Gene had been dragging out the divorce proceedings. “I was waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said.
“Well,” Margo replied, “it just dropped.”
It was finally clear what Gene had been up to. His scheme would have negated the need for the three-day divorce nonjury trial, scheduled for July 15. Margo’s death would have made it irrelevant.
Ron went to the hospital around 5 am, where Gene kept mak-ing nonsensical statements, including a mumbled reference to room 116.
“Don’t go there,” Gene said. “Why? Who’s there?” Ron asked. “Suzanne; it’s really bad.” “Where’s the room?”
“Near I-95.”
Ron went directly to the Holiday Inn near I-95 on Dumfries Road to see if the person registered in room 116 was okay. The front desk called the room and got Mary Ann on the phone. She’d fi fallen asleep, and now the phone had woken her up again. Mary Ann had called the police in the wee hours to report that her boss was missing, along with a gun she’d just purchased, which
was now in his possession.
At 8:15 that morning, when the dispatcher told Ron and his partner, Sam Walker, that Mary Ann had called, the detectives looked at each other, intrigued and yet puzzled by the new development.
They immediately returned to the Holiday Inn and met with Mary Ann in her room. She told them her version of what had happened on Sunday, culminating with the strange meeting at 7-11 with her boss, Edwin Adams.
Ron and Sam figured that the man she described was Gene Bennett, so they took her to the station and showed her a lineup
of six male suspects’ booking photos. She pointed to Gene without hesitation.
From there, Mary Ann took Ron to where she’d last seen Gene’s Dodge Dynasty, on Commerce Court in Manassas. After it had been impounded, investigators searched the trunk and found another blue backpack, this one labeled IIIIII.