Students who knew Mesa still could not believe the news, despite his arrest and impending trial. One told reporters that he'd attended high school with Mesa and believed he was not the kind of person who would kill anyone, but others said he'd often been in trouble. A former roommate had even seen him swipe money from other students. Still, Mesa was friendly and respectful, and generally considered to be a nice guy. It was difficult for students to ponder a person who had vowed to dedicate himself to the deaf, yet had looked around for just the right person to kill and calculated the best way to do it. He did not even form a plan to just rob them, which he'd apparently already done without discovery. Murder had been on his mind.

But then the story emerged about Mesa's suspension from the school the year before. He had taken another student's debit card and used it to the tune of several thousand dollars. But he'd been allowed to return. And this would not be the only disturbing pre-trial revelation.

Charged with two counts of felony murder, one while armed, along with some robbery and burglary charges, Mesa was held without bail for his preliminary hearing. He showed no reaction as he answered the charges, but like the thief in the night that he was, he already had plans to slip off his responsibility. He had admitted to robbery, yes, but the murders had been motivated by something else, he would say. He started writing to several people he believed could assist him in his scheme.

The trial was set for November 2001.

He starved her for the rest of the day, and finally gave her a meal of water and potatoes.  Cameron hung her for a while and then put the head box back on.  She had no idea when he was going to come or go, or what he had planned for her.  She was allowed to use a bedpan, and was then stretched out on a rack, where she lay immobile for hours. 

Another whole day went by before Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire was allowed to eat again.  Cameron forced her to drink some water and eat an egg salad sandwich.  She ate it but the day was hot and humid, so she declined to finish a second one.  He angrily reminded her that she ought to be grateful.  She protested that she was full, but she quickly learned that a slave did what she was told, no matter how she felt. 

For her disobedience, Cameron hung her up again with some leather cuffs and whipped her until she passed out.  When he finally took her down, she was still not hungry and she was in extreme pain, but she forced herself to eat the rest of the food.  Satisfied, he tied her up, replaced the head box and left.  Carol was deeply relieved to finally be left alone, but still very much afraid.

Perfect Victim

This was to become her routine: a single meal for the day, torture, isolation, and uncertainty.  "She existed in a grim black limbo," wrote Christine McGuire and Carla Norton in their book on the case,  Perfect Victim: The True Story of the Girl in the Box by the D.A. Who Prosecuted her Captor. "Helpless."

"Sometimes I thought I was just going to go crazy," Carol said.

Robert Lee Bennett
Jr.
(Fulton County
D.A.'s Office)

As reporter Richard Greer noted, the name of Robert Lee Bennett Jr. was "meaningless to most Atlantans, his right to privacy as great as any other little-known person's." What if Bennett was not the Handcuff Man? By publishing his name, would the newspaper be invading his privacy? Would it be subjecting an innocent man to an unwarranted public notoriety? Some feared it would compromise the privacy of innocent citizens in the future. Because of this concern, previous stories on the Handcuff Man had not only refrained from mentioning his name but had left out information that might lead readers to identify him.

But some in the newsroom argued that public safety was at stake. They pointed out that there were many documents connecting the wealthy local attorney to the Handcuff Man's cruel crimes against gay hustlers. Bennett had been arrested for kidnapping an undercover officer posing as a hustler. When his ex-wife sued him for divorce, her lawyer Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire and several men had accused him of being the Handcuff Man. And, as Greer wrote, "State archives contained more than 400 pages of documents providing solid links between Bennett and the sadistic acts of the Handcuff Man."
Editors at The Atlanta Journal Constitution, however, still were not satisfied that publicly naming him as the suspected torturer was justified. Then his most recent victim picked his photograph out of a group of photos. And a victim of years previous also fingered him. That did it.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a story naming Robert Lee Bennett Jr. as the suspected Handcuff Man.

The next day, Tampa police requested information from their Atlanta counterparts, and they later charged Bennett with an attack on a Florida man, who had been doused in gasoline and lit on fire. The victim had survived, but the injuries were so severe that both of his legs had to be amputated.

"In retrospect I have no doubts," Greer later said. "Considering the information we had by the time we published Bennett's name, our natural fears should have been allayed. Our prime concern should have been prodding the police to enhance the safety of the young men who were at risk."