THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 3, 1996 TAG: 9607030525
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 123 lines
It sounds like a plot from one of Patricia Cornwell's best-selling crime novels: a bitter divorce between crack ex-FBI agents, allegations of an adulterous affair complete with candlelit dinners and romantic rendezvous and finally - a showdown with a shooting, in a church.
This time it's not a novel.
It's a real-life tangle involving ex-FBI agents and - according to allegations made in court papers - Cornwell, one of the nation's most successful authors.
Cornwell became romantically involved with the female FBI agent, while the two agents were married, according to allegations made by Eugene Bennett, the male agent, and filed in court papers now under seal. The contents of the papers were confirmed by Paul Ebert, a Prince William County prosecutor.
The prosecutor got involved because Bennett - once a highly regarded undercover FBI agent - took a minister hostage June 23 and threatened to blow him up with explosives, according to police. Then Bennett enticed his estranged wife, Marguerite, to the church. Recognizing a trap, she shot at him. Eugene Bennett fled, and is now in jail awaiting a psychiatric exam and facing more than 30 years on assorted charges including abduction.
``We were doing real well,'' Bennett said of his career and marriage in a jailhouse interview. ``It all got spoiled.''
Cornwell, 39, is not talking about the case despite repeated requests by Knight-Ridder. ``She is not available for comment,'' said Christine Bailor, a spokeswoman for Cornwell, who lives in Richmond.
Marguerite Bennett also declined comment.
Earlier this year, Cornwell received a reported $24 million contract from G.P. Putnam's Sons for three more novels about Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner who hunts serial killers with the FBI. Cornwell is about to launch another series about a policewoman and a female police reporter, set in Charlotte.
In her six crime novels to date, Cornwell has highlighted her heroine's work with FBI agents. In her current paperback best-seller, ``From Potter's Field,'' Scarpetta, who is single, has an affair with a married FBI agent, Fenton Wesley. Scarpetta's niece, Lucy, is a lesbian computer genius who works at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va.
Cornwell grew up near Montreat, N.C., about 15 miles northeast of Asheville. A longtime family friend of Billy and Ruth Graham, she wrote a biography of the evangelist's wife. She also graduated from Davidson College and worked at The Charlotte Observer as a police reporter and a clerk for about two years. She currently sponsors $80,000 worth of writing scholarships for Davidson students.
Eugene Bennett, 41, joined the FBI in Atlanta in 1981. He became what's known as a deep-cover operative - an agent who poses as a crook to catch other criminals. Sometimes long-term undercover work gives agents psychological problems, experts say, but Bennett is not blaming anyone but himself.
``I'm responsible for what I did,'' he said, wearing handcuffs and an orange jail jumpsuit.
During his stint at the FBI, Bennett worked on operations that resulted in more than 300 convictions and the recovery of more than $12 million in property, according to papers at the U.S. District courthouse in Washington.
In 1984, he married a fellow agent, Marguerite, a specialist in interrogating suspects and hostage negotiations. In 1987, they moved to the Washington area because Marguerite Bennett had gotten a job at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Bennett was assigned to the White House at first, and then to a unit that investigated Soviet spies, according to U.S. District court records. The Bennetts also had two daughters.
Meanwhile, Cornwell was working in obscurity in Richmond, trying to get published as a crime novel author. Divorced from her husband, Charles Cornwell, a former Davidson College professor, she finally got her first novel, ``Postmortem,'' published in 1990. It won major awards. In 1991, her second book, ``Body of Evidence,'' was published to growing popular acceptance.
During this time, Cornwell began to cultivate contacts with the FBI, including agents at the FBI Academy at Quantico. She has said she wanted to learn more about the latest in crime-fighting techniques.
There Cornwell met Marguerite Bennett, according to papers in the Bennett divorce action filed by Eugene Bennett. A Washington radio station, WTOP, furnished Knight-Ridder copies of portions of the court file it had obtained before the records were sealed earlier this week. Ebert, the Virginia prosecutor, confirmed their authenticity.
``Mrs. Bennett met and became totally infatuated with Patricia Cornwell,'' the papers filed by Bennett allege.
``Mrs. Bennett began spending a great deal of time with Cornwell in late 1991 and in 1992, Mrs. Bennett would secretly meet with Cornwell for romantic candlelight dinners, would visit Cornwell's Richmond home, accepted expensive gifts and clothes from her and spoke with her on the phone constantly,'' the papers said.
``Mr. Bennett followed Mrs. Bennett to several of these rendezvous during this time period and observed Mrs. Bennett and Ms. Cornwell hugging and kissing in their vehicles,'' the papers said.
Bennett confronted his wife. He said in the papers that ``Mrs. Bennett admitted the affair . . . (and) asked Mr. Bennett why it took him so long to figure things out.''
In 1992, as their marriage worsened, Marguerite Bennett told FBI superiors that her husband had falsified a $17,430 expense voucher. FBI officials brought criminal charges against him for stealing government money.
In 1994, after pleading guilty, Eugene Bennett received a one-year prison sentence for submitting the fraudulent expense voucher. In 1995, after leaving prison, he continued with a divorce action he'd previously filed, hoping to get custody of his two daughters.
His wife left the FBI and now works as a campus police supervisor at a Virginia community college.
Earlier this year, Eugene Bennett said, his efforts to patch his life up after leaving jail began to fall apart. He began having spells where he couldn't remember what he'd been doing, he said. He had such a spell Sunday night, he said, and can't remember anything.
According to police and arrest warrants, this is what happened:
Sunday night, Bennett took hostage Alva Clever, his wife's minister, at a Methodist church. Clever was scheduled to testify at an upcoming Bennett divorce hearing. Bennett tied the minister up, shackled his ankles, and put a device around his waist that Bennett said was explosives. Bennett forced Clever to telephone Marguerite Bennett. When she came, she fired her pistol and her husband fled. Police later arrested him.
Bennett's lawyer, Jeffrey Gans, moved for a psychiatric examination on the grounds that Bennett has had blackout periods and an alternate personality named ``Ed.''
In his interview, Eugene Bennett said he had one time told his wife that he wanted to work things out: ``We don't need to turn this into a train wreck.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Patricia Cornwell is a best-selling author, and the reason an FBI
agent cited for divorcing his FBI-agent wife. by CNB