Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 31, 1994 TAG: 9401310117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium
In what law enforcement officials say may be the oldest rape case prosecuted in the state, Lewis Wood pleaded guilty Jan. 18 in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to two counts of crimes against nature, two counts of taking indecent liberties and one count of rape during the summer of 1962.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay Linn nearly $50,000 for the cost of her therapy.
Linn said she tracked Wood down in December 1992 because she needed to hear her abuser, a trusted Navy buddy of her father's when her family lived in Virginia Beach, acknowledge what he'd done to her - on tape.
Armed with a tape recorder, she knocked on the door to his mobile home outside Fort Payne, Ala. Wood, 67, answered the door and identified himself.
"I'm Anita Linn. . . . Do you remember what you did to me?" Linn said.
"Unfortunately, yes," Wood said.
Afterward, Linn said she realized she needed more than a simple acknowledgement and took the tape to the police.
Linn, 39, of Chesapeake, said Wood abused her between April and August 1962, most often at her house. She said he forced her to perform oral sex in the first episode. "I can still remember my father calling for me to come to dinner the whole time," she said.
More incidents followed, and Wood filmed her during some of them and then forced her to watch the films. "He'd show me those films on the white wall of our living room, nudging me when he wanted me to see something," Linn said.
"I can't figure where I missed the clues," said her father, Lloyd Linn.
Anita Linn said she had nightmares and flashbacks after the abuse, and when she began to date in high school, the pain was almost unbearable.
She married and had a son, but when her husband was transferred to Tidewater, she said her life spun out of control. They found a house in Chesapeake, but it wasn't far enough from the memories. "This just couldn't stay down anymore. It just struck too close to home," she said.
She immediately found a therapist to help her. It was the first time she had gotten professional help.
It was in therapy that she announced she was going to find Wood. With the help of friends, a Virginia Beach detective, and a private investigator, she located him in Alabama.
When she arrived in Fort Payne, she told Detective Sgt. Andy Hairston what she planned to do and he warned her not to confront Wood.
A few hours later, Linn walked into Hairston's office saying, "I got him! He told me everything he did to me on tape," Hairston recalled.
After listing to the tape of their 50-minute conversation, Hairston said he was dumbfounded. "You know what they say about people swallowing the hook? Well, he swallowed the hook, the fishing rod and everything else," he said.
Linn, now divorced, is a business administration student at Tidewater Community College and has been accepted at Norfolk State University to study accounting.
She said she can, for the first time, look back and see some good in her past.
"I am very proud of what I have done," Linn said. "I have taken my power back. I'll never forget what he had done to me, but he'll no longer affect my life."
by CNB