Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [34]
Detectives have met with the victim, conducted an extensive interview with her, and conducted a timely and thorough investigation. Subsequent follow-up investigation of her report was offered to the Charlottesville City Commonwealth’s Attorney and based on that a warrant was sought for the suspect’s arrest.
On the evening of January 4, 2006, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. William N. Beebe of Las Vegas, Nevada, pursuant to a Virginia warrant charging him with rape in violation of Virginia State Code 18.2-61. A determination of his extradition status has not yet been determined.
The matter of his return to Virginia to answer the charge is currently being resolved by the Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office and the authorities in Nevada. UVA is now looking into what was done back then. It was not reported to city police.
UVA spokesperson Carol Wood released a statement that UVA had been “cooperating fully” with police, and had found documentation in the Office of Student Affairs verifying my complaint of 1984. However, Wood said, “We don’t comment on ongoing criminal investigations.”
And so it began, with a press conference ripple that became a wave of controversy.
* * *
How did we arrive at this point a little more than a month after the darkest days of the Thanksgiving holiday? The end of November brought so many emotions to my household. The e-mails from William Beebe continued to haunt me, and I would intermittently e-mail him. The correspondence was never friendly, to my mind, although my questions were sometimes benign. I was still afraid he might come after me, and I believed that if I stayed in close touch with the predator, he couldn’t sneak up on his prey.
Christmas loomed and I did the best I could, decorating a huge Norwegian spruce tree with masses of fairy lights, draping garlands over the banisters, and baking cookies. We took our annual holiday photos and I set about addressing Christmas card envelopes. I went to preschool holiday activities and continued my heavy client workload. But at night, in the quiet cold of Connecticut, I would still sit on my porch, looking at the stars and wondering when the next e-mail would come. Already, William Beebe’s reemergence was sending waves through my life. In early December, one of my dear friends, Sarah, brought her kids over for a play date with Ava. As the kids ran wild in the sunny playroom, we discussed preschool and holiday preparations. I hadn’t yet opened up to many people about what was happening, and I wanted my friend to know. I told her I wanted to show her something and ran upstairs to get the letter.
She read it, turned it over in her hands, and sighed.
“I’m so sorry, Liz,” she said.
“It’s crazy, right?”
“Yes, yes it is.”
But our discussion went no deeper than that. Instead, she looked at her watch, gathered her children, and begged off, saying she had to make holiday cookies for her daughter’s class.
I never received another phone call from her. I saw her at parties and the playground and she always greeted me with a pleasant smile, but there was nothing more there. Sarah was the first, but, sadly, not the only, friend to withdraw when I shared this new development. Many had known about what happened in college, but bringing it into the present was somehow different. Perhaps some people feel that tragedy is contagious and to see it happen to a friend is to acknowledge the possibility of its entering one’s own life. Regardless, it hurt deeply to lose friends I had considered a part of my support system.
Corresponding with Beebe had me thinking more about the past, and I’d been doing some Internet research on rape statistics at the University of Virginia and other colleges. Just Googling “University of Virginia rape” brought up an astonishing number of stories on blogs and in area newspapers of those who had been victimized at my