A United States Marine has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a former reality TV contestant found in an Alabama pond, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office announced in a statement.
Authorities allege that Willie Ellington, an active-duty Marine at Florida’s Naval Air Station Pensacola, killed Tshey Bennett while the latter was “working as an escort” at Pensacola’s Sweet Dream Inn. Ellington, 20, was the last person seen with Bennett before her disappearance. He was reportedly taken into custody shortly after Bennett’s body was found “in a pond located in an abandoned neighborhood” in Mobile, AL.
WKRG reported that Ellington was taken into custody while boarding a bus in Opelika, ÅL, which is roughly 230 miles from Pensacola. “Escambia County investigators tipped us off [that] their suspect might be on a bus scheduled to stop in Opelika,” Lee County Sheriff Jay 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.”
Authorities believe Ellington murdered Bennett in Northwestern Florida and then transported her body across state lines, about 50 miles from where she was last seen with the accused. According to The New York Post, Bennett was a contestant on the reality series Skrippa Bootcamp, which aired earlier this year. The show follows 12 exotic dancers living in the same house.
Ellington was a private first class in training for aviation, technology, explosive ordinance disposal, and combat diving, U.S. Marine Corps Captain Jacoby Getty confirmed to the Pensacola News Journal. In addition to the first-degree murder charge, Ellington was hit with a count of possession of child pornography after investigators took him into custody.
