by Liz Seccuro
I was sickened by this information. I had never heard Burgos’s name, and when shown a photograph I could not recall his face. What he allegedly did to me was vile. But the story of what happened that night was about to get worse.
Another fraternity brother, Roger Messner, came under suspicion after a few of the brothers referred to me as “that girl Messner had sex with in his room.”
Messner, like Burgos, had been questioned early in the investigation. A blueblood from Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Palm Beach, Messner had attended the prep school Choate, and had lived in the same dorm as William Beebe in their first year at UVA. He told police he had no idea who I was. In fact, he said, he was a virgin at the time of the alleged crime, and had remained so until the following year when he met his wife-to-be, so he couldn’t possibly have raped me, or anyone else, for that matter.
But as the investigation progressed, witnesses began coming out of the woodwork regarding Messner’s behavior that night. He had been seen dragging me to his bedroom on the third floor, one floor above Beebe’s. The man who was Messner’s roommate in the house testified that he had found me bleeding and unconscious in their room, after Messner walked to the showers, naked except for a towel, high-fiving friends along the way. How I then got to the second-floor chapter room and sustained the rape by Beebe remains a mystery. Were the injuries I sustained caused by Burgos or Messner or Beebe?
Armed with this new information, Detective Rudman drove to Messner’s home in Wilmington, where he was living with his wife and children. When Rudman remarked, “Nice place you have here,” Messner replied with a wistful sigh, “Well, it’s all going to be gone in a year, isn’t it?” The investigative team found this very telling. Messner stuck to his original story, but immediately hired a Charlottesville defense attorney, Timothy Heaphy, the son-in-law of General Eric Shinseki, the former United States Army four star general and current secretary of veteran affairs. Heaphy, a former United States attorney, had recently turned to criminal defense in Charlottesville with a focus on white-collar crime cases. (Heaphy was also attorney to Kirk Fordham, the former chief of staff of the disgraced Florida congressman Mark Foley.) Served a subpoena, Messner appeared before the grand jury. Reportedly, he took the fifth on every question, on the grounds of self-incrimination.
George Allman, the former fraternity president, now a professor at a Texas business school, was interviewed once on the phone by Detective Rudman. When Worrell and Quagliana went down to Austin to interview him, he had already retained counsel with the help of Phi Kappa Psi’s national organization. He said he was not present in the house that weekend, and there was no reason to believe otherwise. Although he was one of the frat brothers who referred to me in interviews as “that girl Messner had sex with,” he refused to say anything more regarding Burgos or Beebe. He did admit to calling Beebe’s parents soon after, as Beebe was constantly drunk, using drugs, and threatening suicide. He cooperated no further in the investigation.
One witness, Bill Keller, came forward of his own accord once he heard about the case. A former lacrosse player, he was now an architect in Boulder, Colorado. He was incensed by the shame brought on the fraternity as a result of the rape. He remembered much of it and was willing to testify, refusing to let the bonds of brotherhood silence him.
Keller described to us a fraternity meeting mere days after the rape. The topic: the gang rape of a girl in the house—me. Other witnesses later corroborated this. A witness said William Beebe was present, curled up in a ball, sobbing, drunk, and possibly under the influence of drugs. George Allman, as he had said, called Beebe’s parents to come collect him. Keller also described a brawl breaking out at the meeting; punches were thrown. It was clear that the brothers were divided over whether to cooperate with any police investigation of the incident or to try to keep it completely quiet. As it turned out, this was a moot point, since the police investigation never took place.
During this brawl, according to witnesses, David Hazzard, the son of a United States senator, stated that he was embarrassed that such a thing could occur at his fraternity house and that they were all acting like a bunch of animals. He demanded to know exactly what had happened. Apparently because his father was a senator, people told him. Hazzard, by all accounts, slapped Nathan Burgos clean across the face. But when Rudman and Sclafani questioned Hazzard, he insisted he had not been there and had no knowledge of the incident.
Once the scuffle was over, George Allman allegedly asked one of the brothers, Peter Melman, to call his father and arrange for personal insurance policies for each member of the fraternity “in the event that this should ever happen again.” This story led my team to wonder if gang-raping a freshman was part of some rite of passage during rush at Phi Kappa Psi: a tradition of sorts. Peter Melman was approached by police on a number of occasions at the gated community where he now lives in Annapolis, Maryland. When they rang the buzzer to his gate, he answered, “I don’t have to speak with you and I don’t have to let you in.” He never obtained legal counsel of record. The cops spent days sitting outside of his complex, but he never surfaced. When they would ring his buzzer, he would simply repeat the fact that he did not have to speak with them. According to Worrell, it was Melman whose testimony could perhaps have provided the most information about what happened to me that night. Worrell wanted to get his hands on the purported insurance policies. If they had indeed been taken out, there was a clear action against the fraternity. Perhaps we shall never know. Melman, it was discovered, maintains steady friendships with Burgos, Hammett, and Messner.
Up to that point, Beebe had contended that I was in a healthy condition when the encounter between us occurred. Given the new theories about that night, this is hard to believe. Some witnesses suggested that Beebe, known to be socially awkward and unsuccessful with women, was goaded into “having a turn” after his late return from the Grateful Dead show with Tuck Hammett and another brother. One witness said Beebe dragged me screaming into his room, but that after raping me, while I was unconscious, he and a helper took me into the bathroom and tried to clean me up. After cleaning me up, they wrapped me in the sheet and deposited me on the sofa back in Beebe’s room. Who helped him?
The evidence of witnesses who came into the room and saw me bleeding, who saw Messner strut to the shower to wash my blood off, suggests that a cover-up plan must have been hatched. This begins to explain the empty house that Friday morning. Fraternity houses are known to be filled to capacity the mornings after a party, since no one goes to class, opting instead to sleep off the hangovers or continue to party into the morning hours. Our best guess is that everyone was instructed to get out of the house that night before I awoke—if I awoke—so that no one would be found culpable. Probably they hoped that I had ingested enough of the green drink to have no memory, or even die in what could have been called an accidental overdose or alcohol poisoning. What they didn’t count on was that when I awoke, the extent of my injuries and amount of blood would be so evident and that I would remember my last attacker.
CHAPTER 11 The Guilty Plea
A week or so before the scheduled trial, Worrell called me to say that Beebe wanted to plead guilty to one count of felonious aggravated sexual battery, thereby taking the other counts of rape and object sexual penetration off the table. Well, of course he did. According to sentencing guidelines, if Beebe went to trial on the two felony charges, he was looking at a maximum sentence of life in prison. Although he was not likely to get the maximum sentence, it still made sense for him to cut a deal, and he was in a good negotiating position in light of the new information. The realities that made the crime worse for me—being raped by three men—made the situation a lot easier for him. Since I had no memory of the rapes by Burgos and Messner, my credibility would be called into question by the defense, yielding reasonable doubt that perhaps my memory of Beebe’s crime was also unreliable.
Accepting the plea made sense for the Commonwealth, too. Even given Beebe’s conf
ession on record, the other two rapes made the case against him much weaker. Drawn-out trials quickly become expensive, and there was the possibility that if he went to trial, we might not get a conviction. There was also hope that as part of the plea bargain, the Commonwealth could get Beebe to testify against Messner and Burgos, strengthening the case against them, which for now was not strong enough for an indictment. We had some statements, but not enough corroboration. If Beebe cooperated, his testimony and the information from his private investigator could be very valuable.
Negotiations for a plea deal began. In a criminal case, these negotiations don’t typically account for the victim’s wishes; a state or commonwealth can cut a deal with a defendant regardless of what a victim or victim’s family thinks. The victim is merely a witness, as I had been all along. Chapman and Worrell were kind enough to consult with me on my thoughts during the process. I am forever grateful that they brought me into the loop, although seeing just how this process worked was a bit of a shock.
First, Francis Lawrence came to Worrell and said that Beebe would agree to a plea of simple assault and serve six months. Worrell’s response was, “Are we talking about the same crime?” he later told me. Simple assault is akin to punching someone. I had to say, I admired their chutzpah.
The next deal on the table was aggravated sexual battery, carrying a sentence of one and a half years. When Worrell brought this to me, I started to weep. At this point, the whole process had been going on for nearly two years. My child had been two years old when the letter arrived and she would be four on Christmas, a scant month away. With all the fear, stress, and renewed panic I had experienced, I felt as though I had already served a long sentence myself. Although it wasn’t really up to me, and although the judge, regardless of the plea deal, can ultimately sentence the accused to any amount of time within the sentencing guidelines, I said I would feel better about a tougher sentence—maybe two years. Two years for aggravated sexual battery doesn’t sound like much, given the severity of the crime, but there were many other balls in the air at this point—we could not lose our shot at having some agency in all of this madness. It seemed to me, Mike, and the team that given the new information, this was the best we could hope for, unless the judge decided otherwise. Two years it was. And in return, William Beebe would have to provide the prosecution with information about the other two men and the rapes that occurred that night.
We flew back down to Charlottesville on the morning of November 13, 2006, the day before the scheduled plea date, and checked into the same suite at the Boar’s Head Inn where we had stayed when we went for our first interview with the Charlottesville police. We ordered room service, went to the gym, tapped away on our BlackBerrys. I was calmer than I had been in weeks. We walked over to the court the next day with Worrell, who took us around the back. Crunching through the fall leaves reminded me of being a student here. This was my first time in circuit court, and it was a much bigger, grander courthouse than the juvenile court, where I had given my testimony. Presiding over the proceedings was Judge Edward Hogshire, a kindly older man. Hogshire took a look at the plea agreement, conferred with both prosecution and defense, and began.
NOVEMBER 14, 2006
THE COURT: All right, so we need to have Mr. Beebe stand for arraignment.
Beebe stood up, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, and I was struck again by how very tall and large he was. He scared the shit out of me, even in a public place.
CLERK: Are you William Nottingham Beebe?
WILLIAM BEEBE: I am.
CLERK: The grand jurors for the Circuit Court for the City of Charlottesville in their April, 2006 term returned an indictment charging on or about October 6, 1984, in the City of Charlottesville, that you did, feloniously and unlawfully, sexually abuse Elizabeth Seccuro nee Schimpf, through her physical helplessness, in violation of Virginia Code Section 18.2-67.3. How do you plead?
BEEBE: Guilty as charged.
You could feel the eyes of everyone in that courtroom turn to me to see my reaction. I could hear a shift of people in their benches, a rustling of papers. I began crying, burying my head on Mike’s tweed-clad shoulder.
Hogshire went on to ask Beebe some basic questions about his date of birth, level of education, his understanding of the charges against him. He was asked if he was taking this plea willingly and had been represented fairly by his attorneys. He was asked if he was pleading guilty of his own free will and if he was, indeed, guilty of the charges. He was informed that by pleading guilty, he would waive the right to appeal the court’s decision. He was also informed that the crime he was pleading guilty to carried a maximum sentence of twenty years, regardless of the plea deal. It was standard stuff, but each answer seemed to bring us one step closer to a true end, after all this time.
THE COURT: All right, and, of course, it calls for you to plead guilty to the aggravated sexual battery indictment, and there is an agreed-upon sentence here, which is to be executed after the preparation of a pre-sentence report and that you and your attorneys have agreed on a maximum sentence of two years of active incarceration. Is that your understanding of the agreement?
BEEBE: It is.
THE COURT: The agreement also requires you to cooperate with the Commonwealth in this ongoing investigation as it relates to the other events which may have occurred on the date in question in this case. Do you understand that—October 6, 1984?
BEEBE: Yes, sir, I do.
THE COURT: It says, as long as you cooperate with that investigation in good faith and that the information provided to the Commonwealth is useful, the Commonwealth agrees to recommend a further reduction in your sentence, which will be at the discretion of the Commonwealth. Do you understand that?
BEEBE: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: All right, so I’m going to find that the plea was entered into freely and voluntarily and you have a seat with counsel. Mr. Worrell, if you will please summarize the Commonwealth’s evidence in the case and the basis for the agreement.
At that point, Worrell briefly summarized the events of the night in question. It was hard to listen to, but I remained calm, focusing on the soothing qualities of Worrell’s voice. But although I kept my focus on Worrell, I became aware that William Beebe was staring straight at me, intentionally and unabashedly. And I was not the only one who noticed—members of the media would later report on this, too, this unblinking stare. It was the most unsettling sensation I have ever experienced.
Worrell went on:
WORRELL: There is—and at the time of the preliminary hearing so the Court is aware, Ms. Schimpf’s recollection of how that happened is different from Mr. Beebe’s recollection of how that happened, in that Ms. Schimpf at the time of the preliminary hearing testified that there was force involved and Mr. Beebe said that there wasn’t. Part of the nature of this agreement is to acknowledge that there are—well, divergent facts about what happened and how it actually got to where it did where Mr. Beebe confesses to and admits to a sexual assault with Elizabeth Schimpf, who was there in his room at that fraternity house. And so that was really what drives the Commonwealth to seek some resolution of the matter, other than the charges that were initially levied. What I can also say is that it also became clear during the course of our investigation and the Court became aware through other hearings that we’ve had in this Court that the Commonwealth believes that other sexual assaults occurred that night, not by Mr. Beebe, but by other individuals in that fraternity and that’s what we’re continuing to investigate. And Mr. Beebe has agreed to cooperate with the Commonwealth in as far as he can in telling the Commonwealth what he knows and what he recalls of these particular events. And that too is particularly important to the Commonwealth because we believe that the matter doesn’t end here, that there are other things for the Commonwealth to do and other individuals to pursue. Mr. Beebe’s agreement to participate in our investigation and help us as best he can is important to the Commonwealth. But the major driving force, other th
an Mr. Beebe’s participation, is the fact that in a jury trial, as the Court’s well aware, you can almost never guarantee yourself a result. Here in this particular instance Mr. Beebe admits that he has committed a felony offense, he committed a felony sexual offense against Ms. Seccuro, then Schimpf, and has agreed to serve a penitentiary sentence, the precise length of which is unknown at the moment depending on what happens with the other cases.
THE COURT: All right, thank you, Mr. Worrell. Comments from the defense on the evidence on the plea agreement?
QUAGLIANA: Judge, the only thing—the only thing I would add on the issue of the sentencing guidelines is that Mr. Beebe appears before the Court this morning with no criminal record. He’s been a law-abiding citizen for the 22 years since this occurred. We think that this plea to the aggravated sexual battery more closely approximates the facts of this case. Courts have difficulty accommodating the complexity of human situations and circumstances, but we think that this charge more closely approximates what happened 22 years ago. It acknowledges the role of alcohol, which I bring up not to diminish Mr. Beebe’s responsibility and all that, but it is an important factor in the case. Youth and other things that—that we think are better encompassed by a plea to aggravated sexual battery. So—thank you.
Blame youth. Blame alcohol. Blame the victim.
Judge Hogshire accepted the plea, and set March 15, 2007, as a sentencing date. Beebe was free to go until that date, as long as he complied with the terms of his bond. It was also agreed that Beebe would be free to travel out of state until that date, which was an unorthodox consideration for most accused felons awaiting sentencing. But from what I understood, Beebe had actually been living in Florida while out on bond, helping to care for his mother, who was very ill.