William Zachary BellCHATSWORTH, Ga. - As the police wondered why a man erupted into a jealous rage over her, Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard covered her tracks.
"It's someone that's very interested in me," she told Murray County Detective Andy Dill in January 2017.
A couple of days earlier, William Zachary Bell read through Vinyard's Facebook page. Several times over several months, Vinyard's trainer tagged her in posts, congratulating her on strong workout sessions. Bell didn't like what he saw from the trainer's page: pictures of women, including Vinyard, in tight workout clothes.
Bell, who now says he was high at the time, called the trainer around midnight. He said he was Vinyard's husband, and that he knew the trainer, Bernard Oostra, was sleeping with his wife. When Oostra pleaded ignorance, Bell called him a pervert. In text messages, Bell told him to hide his wife and kids. The trainer showed the messages to Dill, who charged Bell with making terroristic threats.
"He's just, like, delusional and knows that I work out with Bernie," Vinyard told the detective. "He's kind of like a compulsive liar. You know, somebody that says so much that after a while, you just dismiss what they say?"
But for two months at that point, just as her career as a judge was starting, she and Bell had been having an affair. She told Bell she planned to leave her husband, a developer who had just lost his state senate election. When Bell entered the Murray County Jail for a month for the messages with Oostra, Vinyard took his phone calls almost daily.
"When my world starts falling apart because of your dumba** moves, it's going to be hell to pay," she told him.
"I love you," Bell said. "I'll walk away right now."
"Are you surprised I have this side to me?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I knew you did."
"Just don't say my name in there," she told him on a separate call, recorded by the sheriff's office.
"I'm not, baby," he said. "I know better. I know better. I love you."
"[Murray County has] the same superior court judges, the same DA, everyone that I have to work with," she said.
Meanwhile, Vinyard gave the detective evidence against Bell. She showed him screen shots from a Facetime conversation she had with Bell before the arrest, in which he was holding a needle, presumably doing drugs. She also gave the detective a screen shot of texts allegedly between Bell and somebody else, in which he shared a picture of what he said was methamphetamine and claimed he would sell a bag for $1,000.
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. 
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. Vinyard's affair with Bell remained relatively quiet for about a year, until she filed for divorce from her husband, Billy Vinyard. During the legal battle, which ended in August, law enforcement sources told Billy Vinyard to look into Bell's arrest.
On Oct. 2, Whitfield County Chief Magistrate Haynes Townsend filed a complaint against Shana Vinyard with the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission, the board that disciplines judges for misconduct. Vinyard took a "voluntary leave" from her job the day after and has not returned to work.
The JQC cannot legally discuss a case. But a source close to the investigation told the Times Free Press that the charges against Vinyard stem from her relationship with Bell. In particular, the board wants to know whether she violated Georgia's second judicial canon, which states a judge "shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of their activities."
The JQC is also looking into whether Vinyard told a friend she was going to destroy evidence and lied on a warrant application that she eventually took out against Bell. When contacted by a reporter last week, Vinyard declined to comment.
"I'm scared for my life."
Vinyard became a magistrate in Whitfield County after winning a runoff election in July 2016. She would take office at the beginning of the following year. But weeks before she assumed the seat, where she could set bonds and approve warrants, she and Bell started talking, he told the Times Free Press.
Bell has a history of jealousy and threatening behavior toward women, court records show. In May 2000, a woman filed for a restraining order against him 2 1/2 months after they broke up. In the application, she wrote, "He can't tolerate the idea of me seeing someone else. I am scared to death of him." She later withdrew the application.
He was charged in July 2004 with terroristic threats and aggravated assault after he allegedly threatened to kill a man and ran him off the road. He was also charged with contacting a woman in defiance of a court order. In May 2011, he was charged with violating a restraining order that a separate woman took out against him.
Last week, Bell blamed his criminal history on diagnoses of depression and anxiety. He said he has struggled with drug addiction for much of his life. But, he added, "I'm better now than I've ever been." He said he's 18 months sober.
Bell, 38, said he first saw Vinyard on Facebook. They had mutual friends, and he thought she was beautiful. He added her, she accepted, and they began chatting.
They bonded over a love of politics. He said she bought him a patriotic fanny pack and a Donald Trump flag, which he still flies over his mother's home in Rossville. In December 2016, they met in person for the first time at an IHOP on Battlefield Parkway. When they stopped at a drug store, she bought him a Shawn Michaels wrestling action figure.
About a month later, Bell was in a rut. He said he was abusing Xanax and "hard drugs." He stayed up late playing XBOX at his mother's home and didn't work. When his mother kicked him out, Vinyard paid for him to stay in a motel. Around that time, he became convinced that she was sleeping with her trainer, Oostra.
Bell called Oostra just before midnight on Jan. 23, claiming to be Vinyard's husband. Oostra denied having a sexual relationship with Vinyard, but Bell was relentless.
"Hide your kids," Bell wrote. "Here comes the creeper."
"Will [sic] now you stepped Over The Line," Oostra responded. "You don't threaten my kids."
Bell then sent a screen shot of an AMBER alert that had popped up on his phone. He says the meaning of these messages were misconstrued - that he wasn't threatening Oostra so much as saying Oostra was a threat. Oostra and Dill didn't pick up on these subtleties.
"I was not in my right mind," Bell said last week.
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. 
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. When Oostra and his wife met with Vinyard, he said she gave them a similar explanation that she gave the detective: Bell was an acquaintance with an obsession. After the meeting, the Oostras felt there was something odd about Vinyard's demeanor.
"She was almost flattered that he was wigging out," Oostra said.
Over the next two months, Vinyard spoke on the phone with Bell frequently in jail.It's not clear whether she knew the calls were recorded, but the conversations reveal just how deeply stuck she felt. Bell cried through many of the calls. He begged her to forgive him and told her she was the most important person in his life. He promised to fix the problems he started, though he didn't have a plan.
During some calls, Vinyard told Bell she loved him. But most of the time, she scolded him - he put her in a bad position, he failed to treat his addictions and he preyed on women. She said he threatened to track her phone, somehow, and he wouldn't relent in his paranoia about Oostra.
"I'm scared for my life sometimes," Vinyard told him.
"You know" she said on another call. "A pretty face only gets you so far to the point where, actually, in the last couple of weeks, I didn't even find you good looking anymore. Because you were a monster."
"You're acting like a d*** p****," she said on another call. "Sitting there in jail, crying, calling us every 30 minutes, wanting us to do something to help you. What am I going to say when half of Chatsworth probably finds out about this?"
Nevertheless, she picked Bell up from jail after he pleaded guilty in the terroristic threats case. That night, he said he swallowed several pills of Xanax and doesn't remember much else. He said he woke up in a motel, to the sound of a manager banging on the door. He said he also had a voicemail from Vinyard, telling him he needed to check in to rehab.
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. "I'm cleaning up all my stuff"
Though he said he doesn't remember it, Bell also violated a restraining order against him two days after his release from jail. He commented on Oostra's Facebook post about a group work out. Then, he posted pictures of himself and Vinyard together on Facebook. She asked him to take them down, but he ignored her.
On May 1, 2017, Vinyard applied for a warrant against Bell in Walker County Magistrate Court. In the application, she wrote that Bell posted "fake 'screenshots' about me that he apparently created with an app." (During a deposition in her divorce this June, her husband's attorney presented pictures that she believed Vinyard referred to in the application. Vinyard conceded that the pictures were real.)
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. 
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. The next day, the Walker County Sheriff's Office arrested Bell after he crawled into his mother's house through a window. They charged him with criminal trespass. Deputies later transferred him to Murray County, where he faced a new charge of aggravated stalking against Oostra. (He later pleaded guilty and received a 12-month sentence.)
A friend of Vinyard's later provided investigators with screen shots of text messages, supposedly between herself and Vinyard. In one exchange, the day after Bell's arrest, the person - supposedly Vinyard - wrote that Bell left his cellphone at his mother's home.
"I'm cleaning up all my stuff on it then submerging it in water for a few hours," the person wrote.
Whitfield County Magistrate Shana Vinyard allegedly had an affair with William Zachary Bell. After the arrest, Bell said Vinyard accepted his call from the Walker County Jail. He said she told him their relationship was over. The affair has weighed on him, he said, and he wants JQC investigators to know he is willing to participate.
He hopes to run for public office one day, he explained, and he doesn't want this relationship to be a stain on his reputation.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.