Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [40]
At my computer the next day, I logged onto the corrections center system and typed in his name. Checking the local news stations online, I watched Beebe’s arrest footage, but couldn’t bear to look at the actual mug shot. I had not seen him since the pizza delivery in 1986. I struggled mightily with that photograph—and still do. It’s like staring at the face of evil.
Beebe spent six days in the Vegas jail before being extradited to Virginia. A Charlottesville judge set his bond at $40,000. I felt renewed frustration when Beebe quickly paid the amount and was free again, pending trial.
Beebe hired two well-known Charlottesville criminal defense attorneys, Rhonda Quagliana and Francis McQ. Lawrence, of the firm St. John, Bowling, Lawrence & Quagliana. Ms. Quagliana was a beautiful and accomplished woman, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law who was married to a local judge. Men accused of rape often choose female defense attorneys, who might make them seem more sympathetic to juries. Quagliana was a good choice for Beebe and she answered the charges with all guns blazing.
“It was a too-much-to-drink college sex event,” Quagliana told the Hook, “and it was something that had plagued his conscience for a long time.” She said that when Beebe admitted the rape in his e-mails and to police, he was simply following the advice of another victim “who was trying to help him understand where Miss Seccuro was coming from and what her thinking was.” In her account, Beebe was shocked when I filed charges, because he had only been “trying to do the right thing … Unfortunately, young people in college do things they regret,” she said. “He was trying to apologize for one of those things.”
Quagliana promised that details would emerge to exonerate her client. “This was bad behavior, poor judgment, immature, and all those other things,” she said, “but it was not a rape.”
Interest in this case, and controversy surrounding it, was just heating up. A tsunami was headed toward Greenwich. It was called the media.
CHAPTER 7
The Media Beast and
What She Eats
C ommonwealth of Virginia v. William Beebe was the name of the case—the Commonwealth was bringing charges against someone who had broken its laws. I had been just seventeen at the time of the rape, so it was a case of sexual assault against a minor, and as such, I was referred to only as Jane Doe in the filings. Still, my anonymity did not last long. I hadn’t anticipated how much interest the media would have in my case, or how quickly they would find me. It didn’t help that someone at the Charlottesville juvenile courthouse had neglected to black out my real name in two instances on the indictment. On the day of Beebe’s arrest, Chief Longo held his brief, somber press conference on the steps of Charlottesville City Hall. Almost immediately, our home phone—which had always been an unlisted number—and even my cell phone started ringing off the hook with reporters asking for comments. My BlackBerry was abuzz with further requests. I didn’t want to make any public statements, and I definitely did not want to say anything that might jeopardize the case. We didn’t know what to say on the phone except “She is not available.” But the media do not give up easily. By the next morning, the AP wire had picked up the story, and life as I knew it came to an abrupt end. The phone calls were just the beginning. Two days later, laden with a sleepy two-year-old and an SUV filled with groceries, I turned into my driveway in the early evening. At the bottom of the hill on Lake Avenue, news trucks were idling with their lights off, as if I would be too stupid to notice. I gunned my engine and hightailed it up the hill. Parking alongside the house, instead of in the garage, I left my groceries and sprinted into the house through the rear kitchen entrance with Ava in my arms. I slammed the door, locked it, and lowered all