Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [62]
Another especially compelling witness failed to cooperate. When I was shown a composite photograph of Phi Kappa Psi members, I identified Francis Woller as the individual who may very well have been the person who lifted me into Beebe’s waiting arms. I also recalled that he had been in the second-floor party room and had actually been tending the bar for a while. As it turned out, Woller worked as a trader at a leading bank. Detective Rudman came to New York several times to interview him and was rebuffed each time, since Woller worked on a locked trading floor. Worrell and I discovered that Woller was the son of a much-loved elected government official. His father was a dear friend of President George W. Bush.
Worrell placed a call to Woller’s father’s office, admonishing him to tell his son to cooperate with authorities in the investigation. I was impressed with Worrell for standing up to this man. But for a long time, it had no effect. Woller went abroad on an extended work assignment of almost a year. However, when he returned, he hired himself a Charlottesville attorney and made some gestures of cooperation. He admitted to having purchased the strong grain alcohol that was in my green drink. He said he had been sent out to do so. He had nothing else to add.
John Block, the Dateline producer, who had been following the investigation and doing some detective work on his own, wanted to ask Woller further questions. He waited outside Woller’s posh New York City apartment each day. Block told me that Woller, exasperated, allegedly said to a Dateline reporter, “What’s in it for me to help this girl now?” His attorney sent a “cease and desist” letter to me in August 2008, disputing every word his client told police and threatening me with legal action should I disclose anything about his client.
There was another witness, Tuck Hammett, who had been missed by the Charlottesville police in the initial flurry of interviews. All these years later he was living alone on the outskirts of Charlottesville, in Albemarle County’s quiet tranquillity. I did not know him, nor had I met him on the night in question. As it turned out, Hammett had been at a Grateful Dead concert with William Beebe the night I was raped, before coming back for the party. Hammett was no longer a student at that time. He had graduated, but remained a fraternity “adviser.”
Detective Rudman and another officer caught up with him at his home in the country. Hammett was sitting on his porch, smoking a joint, when the car pulled up.
“Hey. I was wondering when you guys would find me!” he exclaimed.
The officers went inside and questioned him at great length. What they heard would be the basis for many other interviews and re-interviews of previously uncooperative subjects. Hammett spoke of “that girl the three guys had sex with” and described me and the three, believing it to be consensual. He told the story of how he had returned from the Grateful Dead show with Beebe and one other brother and how a girl was being “passed around” for sex. Hammett would be subpoenaed as a witness at the April grand jury. I don’t know what he testified, but at that point only Beebe’s actions were under scrutiny by the jury.
While the officers were at his house, Hammett mentioned that the RV parked on his lot belonged to one Nathan Burgos, a fraternity brother he remained good friends with. The name was familiar to the cops.
Nathan Burgos had been interviewed earlier in the investigation since he was listed in the yearbook as a Phi Kappa Psi brother, and the investigation had naturally started with any known members who were likely to have been at the house that night. Burgos, upon being interviewed by police, claimed to know nothing about the night in question, but other witnesses certainly remembered his being there. Burgos was older than most brothers owing to a tour in the