2 Crimes, 3 Trials
Gene pleaded not guilty. His attorneys said he suffered from a dissociative identity disorder and that his alter ego, “Ed,” was behind the church attack. Gene said he had been driven temporarily insane after Margo had an affair with best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, whose sexuality was not publicly known at the time.
The author behind hit crime novels about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell met Margo in 1991 while taking an FBI training course in Quantico, Va., where Margo taught interview techniques. Gene alleged in divorce papers that Margo became “infatuated” with Cornwell. When he learned of the affair, he said it drove him “nuts.” He started following the pair to "candlelight dinners,” supposedly seeing them hug and kiss in their cars. When he confronted Margo about the affair, he says, she laughed and asked why it took him so long to uncover.
Journalists later noted similarities between Cornwell's life and her novels: Cornwell’s protagonist, Scarpetta, had been having an affair with a married FBI agent in Quantico named Benton (not dissimilar to Margo’s surname, though Benton is male). Scarpetta had also given her lover a Mont Blanc pen, much like a gift Cornwell had given Margo.
The night before Gene asked Margo for a divorce, the pen Cornwell had gifted her had disappeared from her desk at work, along with two photographs of the women together, per a memo Margo wrote to her superiors. The couple got into an argument as Gene called Margo unloving and noted that she didn't have a photo of him at work.
The next morning, Margo called the FBI to accuse her husband of theft. A paper trail later showed that Gene had faked the sale of a property and charged the FBI $17,000 for relocating. He was indicted on charges of conspiracy and theft of government property. But when Margo took the stand, she changed her tune. "No one has done anything wrong here, your honor,” she told the judge.
A mistrial was declared and a second trial held. This time, Margo admitted on the stand that before she testified the first time, Gene shot her with a stun gun, gagged and tied her up. She said he put her in his van and a motel for two days, saying she would never see their daughters again if she spoke against him in court. He was convicted, served 12 months in prison and was released in 1995.
In 1996, he was on trial again, this time for his wife’s attempted murder at the church, among other charges.
A Setup?
The Washington Post reported that the police found Gene had placed an advertisement in a newspaper in February 1996 offering his services as a trainer of private investigators. A woman from Annandale, Va., Mary Ann Khalifeh, responded, and after she got certified as a PI, Gene told her that she would be helping him with a case of insurance fraud involving Margo and Clever. However, Khalifeh would need to insure her own life for $1 million with Margo as the beneficiary, for which Gene would pay the premium. Khalifeh told police she took out the policy naming Margo and one of her and Gene’s daughters as beneficiaries.
At the church where Gene tried to kill Margo, investigators found a gym bag which had, among other items, razor blades, needles, syringes and a key to lockers on Northern Virginia Community College’s campus, where Margo worked and Khalifeh had been enrolled in a course. In one of the lockers, investigators found a pipe bomb. While Gene did not confirm his intentions with Khalifeh or what he planned to use the gym bag for, one theory was that Gene intended to leave not one but three bodies: Clever’s, Margo’s and Khalifeh’s. The life insurance, which would have gone to Margo after Khalifeh’s death, would then go to Margo’s daughter, who would be living with Gene.
Gene’s attorney said that he was consumed by his fear that his daughters would be raised in a “homosexual household.” “At the center of this issue is Gene Bennett’s desperate and sad effort to protect his children … from Marguerite's alternative lifestyle," Weingarten told The Washington Post.
In 1997, a jury convicted Gene and recommended a 61-year sentence for his crimes. Circuit Judge Richard Potter brought Gene's sentence down to 23 years. At his sentencing, Gene told the court that undercover work at the FBI had damaged him psychologically. “I was one of the best. Now I'm a walking case history [for] the downside,” he said.
After the verdict, Margo said she was relieved and wanted to move on with her life. She went on to work for the University of California, Berkeley Police Department and was named chief in 2013. She retired in June 2022.
Cornwell denied having an affair with Margo for one year before admitting to a “very brief” relationship in an interview with Vanity Fair in 1997. She has since “come out” publicly and married a woman named Staci Gruber, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 2026, her books were turned into a television series starring Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis and Ariana DeBose.
