by Kerry Dougherty

Well, this is odd.

According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Virginia Beach judge who was a key player in the Virginia Parole Board scandal, is missing.

So to speak, anyway.

There is no Amber Alert. And no indication that Adrianne Bennett is ill. Instead, according to a front-page story in Thursday’s Times-Dispatch, she’s been on “extended leave” since mid-April.

Emails obtained through FOIA requests by the T-D between the Beach Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court’s clerk and other individuals reveal that Bennett has been deleted from the judges’ email chain and court employees have been instructed not to contact her with questions.

Cases Bennett was involved in are reportedly being handled by substitute judges.

Times-Dispatch reporter Patrick Wilson — formerly of The Virginian-Pilot — wrote that inquiries into Bennett’s sudden absence were met with “no comments” from court personnel.

Bennett, you will recall, was a Terry McAuliffe appointee to the parole board and was chair of that body until last April.

Virginia’s Parole Board shocked the commonwealth last year by releasing at least eight murderers. This website wrote a series of stories about some of the recently paroled killers, their crimes and the apparent lack of concern for public safety exhibited by the parole board. Among the convicts was a man who killed his wife in front of her two young children and a guy who kidnapped, raped and stabbed to death a 78-year-old grandmother.

The newly freed were a rogues’ gallery of murderers.

Earlier this year the Richmond paper reported that Bennett also released more than 100 parolees from supervision without any recommendation to do so from local parole officers.

In an email exchange with a staffer, Bennett called herself a “bleeding heart” and asked for more names to put on the list to release from supervision.

 “Wave that wand of power and let’s cut them loose. There needs to be a silver lining to all of this! Give me more!!!”

Wilson — an excellent reporter, by the way — ended Thursday’s story in a rather unusual way: He asked anyone with information about Bennett or Virginia’s Parole Board to contact him at the newspaper.

Stay tuned.