The shadow crawled into her North Raleigh apartment and took her by surprise. When it finally stole away, Bennett lay dead, raped and strangled just three weeks past her 23rd birthday. Raleigh police have investigated her death for thousands of hours, but they have little more now than 10 months ago. No face. No name.

The shadow trailed her family and friends, and as time gave them distance, they studied what it left behind. But until the light finds the shadow, they can only draw on their imaginations to picture the man with a world so empty that he had to destroy Bennett's.

Her father, Carmon Bennett, said: "A loser."

Her aunt Kaye Bennett said: "Only a coward would go into a young girl's apartment, break in and do what he did, in the way that he did it."

Her friend Emily Metro decided: "It's the devil."

The capital of Bennett's world was Rocky Mount, Va., population 5,100, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a three-hour drive northwest of Raleigh. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she and her older brother, Jay, relied on each other. She grew up tall and lean, with a country-girl wholesomeness.

As a high school senior, she was voted "best personality." In her freshman year at Roanoke College, 25 miles away in Salem, Va., she went to a sorority party where another student, Walter Robinson, instantly fell in love with her.

"She was beautiful. I was speechless," he said.

After Bennett earned her business degree, she announced that she wanted some independence, so with girlhood friend Deanna Powell and a college pal, Metro, she would live "somewhere different for a while," Powell said. They chose Raleigh.

They got an apartment in the Bridgeport complex off Lynn Road, on Lake Lynn. On July 1, 2001, the women packed their things -- Bennett took the shelf-top stereo she had in college -- and drove to Raleigh. The apartment managers said the promised second-floor unit wasn't available, so the women reluctantly took a three-bedroom on the first floor.

Bennett landed a job with an IBM contractor processing grant applications. The roommates cruised the malls and played the board game Cranium late into the night. Every other weekend, Bennett drove to visit Robinson in his hometown of Greenville, S.C., and by her birthday in April 2002, she decided to move there.

Over the weekend of May 17 to 19, Metro and Powell were in Virginia, Bennett in Greenville. She came home Sunday and spent that night alone in the Raleigh apartment. She worked Monday, and that night, alone again, she made broccoli for dinner and talked with Metro, Powell and Robinson by phone.

On Tuesday, May 21, Robinson called Bennett but got no answer. Powell and Metro thought it strange that she had not sent them e-mail. Powell sent a Raleigh friend by the apartment, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Police were summoned. A short time later, an officer called Carmon Bennett in Virginia with the news that the body of a white female had been found in his daughter's apartment.

By then, police Lt. Chris Morgan had arrived at the murder scene. Long a member of the department's Major Crimes Task Force, Morgan said that from the minute he walked in, he knew the boyfriend didn't do it.

DNA match elusive

The killer apparently knew Bennett was alone. He sneaked in through a window. He lay in wait, then he jumped her. He bound her wrists and ankles; the marks suggested handcuffs. He stuffed a pair of blue panties in her mouth. He wrapped a rope or wire around her throat. He twisted it from behind until he strangled her. He took $8 from her wallet, and he took her stereo. Then the shadow melted away.

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