Man walks into Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, confesses to 10-year-old murder
Nearly a decade after Nicole Rose Scott was found dead and partially naked in a ditch alongside University Parkway in Lakewood Ranch, the man once suspected of killing her walked into the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday and confessed to deputies.
Benjamin Moulton, 43, detailed for homicide detectives how he killed Scott in a fit of rage, and was able to provide details about the homicide case that were never made public.
Moulton told detectives that he had since “found Jehovah and couldn’t live with the guilt anymore,” the sheriff’s office announced in a news release.
At about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Moulton walked into the sheriff’s office headquarters and told one of the Telephone Reporting Unit deputies working the front desk that he wanted to confess to a crime he had committed in 2011, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Surveillance video released by the sheriff’s office shows Moulton getting out of the backseat of a car, walking inside and later speaking outside with a deputy.
Scott was believed to have been a prostitute, and Moulton had been suspected of being a client of hers, but detectives could never determine a motive or find enough evidence to charge him when the murder occurred in 2011.
“We know that he had interactions with her back in 2011. We went to his home and questioned him but didn’t have evidence to put him at the crime scene,” sheriff’s office spokesman Randy Warren said. “We still don’t know where the crime occurred and that is part of our ongoing investigation. But we do know that he was with her in a vehicle and then drove her to the location.”
Moulton was charged with murder and booked into the Manatee County jail following his confession.
On Thursday afternoon, Moulton refused to make his first appearance in court on the charges. Circuit Judge Frederick Mercurio ordered that Moulton be held without bond after the Assistant Public Defender Anne Hunter said she would not challenge probable cause or pretrial detention pending an Arthur hearing.
“We are not conceding, however, to any Arthur standards. We will be setting a hearing down the road and have a full hearing,” Hunter said.
At an Arthur hearing, both sides argue whether a 1980 Florida Supreme Court ruling can be applied to allow for the defendant to be held in pretrial detention without bond if “the proof of guilt is evident and the presumption of guilt is great.”
Moulton was also ordered not to have any contact with the victim’s family.
On Dec. 11, 2011, Scott’s body was spotted by a man who had been riding a motorcycle on that Sunday morning where University Parkway ended at the time, near The Concession luxury home development. The area was desolate at the time and the man had walked into the wooded area to urinate when he spotted to the victim’s body.
Laying in a ditch, Scott was found with her pants around her right ankle and her shirt around her neck, according to the probable cause affidavit. Three feet away from her body lay her purse, bra and shoes. Also in the ditch, just two feet away from her body was a folding knife.
Scott had visible trauma to her face, and an autopsy determined she had been strangled to death and her body dropped off within two hours of being found.
Moulton’s name was not made public at the time detectives questioned him, and he had denied having anything to do with Scott’s death, authorities said.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 11:46 AM.
