Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410240061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
"It was an anniversary that I was not looking forward to," he said.
After four months of deliberation, Gov. George Allen issued a pardon for Honaker, saying that new genetic tests convinced him that Honaker, 44, was not the man who abducted, raped and sodomized a woman at gunpoint in Nelson County in 1984.
Word that Honaker's clemency petition would be granted leaked out Thursday, and the prisoner spent a sleepless night anticipating the announcement.
His anxiety ended early Friday.
"At 8:30 the [prison] control-booth officer called me over to the window and said, 'Ed, pack your stuff. You are leaving.'"
After gathering his belongings, Honaker was escorted by a guard across the prison yard he had crossed by himself several times a day for the past decade.
"They said they had to escort me because I was no longer a prisoner, and they didn't want to be responsible if anything happened to me," he said.
The governor called at 10:28 a.m. Honaker remembers only two things from his conversation with Allen: "In a nutshell, he said I was free to go ... and he also said he was sorry."
Accompanied by Kate Germond, an investigator from Centurion Ministries, the prisoner advocacy group in New Jersey that has led the crusade for his release, Honaker walked out of Nottoway Correctional Center at 12:30 p.m
His first stop was at a convenience store for a Coke and cigarettes.
He said then that the realization of Allen's announcement hadn't hit.
"Ed, are you numb? I am," Germond said as her rental car cruised down U.S. 360 toward Richmond.
Honaker said he isn't angry with the state. "I won't lie to you and say I'm not bitter, but as far as harboring any feelings that are going to eat at me for the rest of my life - no."
He fidgeted with his empty soda can in the back seat: "I wanted a glass bottle because I like the taste of the drink better in one of those; you can't get glass bottles in prison," he said.
Honaker's hair was almost completely black when he was locked up, but now only speckles of the original color are visible. He put on 25 pounds in prison.
Even sunglasses don't hide the deepening crow's-feet that surround his eyes.
So, what was prison like?
"I can describe it in two words: an earthly hell," he said. "Oops, that's three," he chuckled.
A few miles down the road, Honaker recognized a sight that become familiar in the past 10 years.
"Hey, there goes a correctional officer, white shirt," he said. "Yes, sir, I can spot them like a bad dime."
Honaker's second stop: a shopping mall outside of Richmond, of course, to buy a new outfit to wear in front of the media barrage he was preparing to face.
"She wants me to wear a tie, but I don't want to," Honaker said in the car. "I've only worn a tie once in my life and that was to my father's funeral."
"I don't care what you wear, Ed," Germond shot back from the front seat. "You can wear yellow and black and look like a bumblebee for all I care."
"Maybe I will," he responded. "Hell, I was country-raised. I went barefoot till I was 6; it don't matter what I wear."
Honaker says he's not worried about the future.
"I've survived 10 years of prison, and I think I can survive what's ahead of me now," he said.
A trained welder, Honaker said he plans to settle in the Martinsville area with his girlfriend, a high school English teacher he met on a blind date at a prison dance five years ago.
Honaker said from the outset of his case that he wasn't the man who committed the 1984 rape in Nelson County. Asleep with her boyfriend in a parked car on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the 19-year-old victim was abducted by a camouflage-clad man. She was driven to a cabin and repeatedly raped and sodomized on the tailgate of a truck.
Four months after the assault, Honaker was identified as the rapist by the victim and her boyfriend. Honaker's defense was based on family and friends who said he was in Roanoke when the rape happened. Honaker also said he was unable to produce sperm because of a 1977 vasectomy.
He was convicted and sentenced to three life sentences on Feb. 7, 1985.
Two years ago, Honaker asked Centurion Ministries for help. In March, the organization released the first round of DNA results, which were unavailable at the time of Honaker's trial. Those tests ruled out Honaker and the victim's then-boyfriend as possible sources of the semen taken from the victim. The conclusion was that a third man had to be involved.
Allen then had state police interview the victim again. She told investigators that shortly before the attack she had sex with another man, who became known as the "secret lover."
The secret lover's sperm appeared to match the evidence from the rape. State forensics experts said that meant his sperm could have "masked" Honaker's semen in the test, meaning they weren't able to eliminate Honaker as the rapist.
More recent genetic tests, however, further broke down the DNA samples and indicated that the secret lover's DNA samples did not exactly match the evidence from the rape.
That evidently was the proof Gov. Allen wanted. "I have proceeded with great care and caution," he said Friday. "I'm satisfied today that I've made the right decision."
Barry Scheck, Honaker's attorney, said he feels certain the victim really believed, and probably still does, that Honaker was the attacker.
"This is a case of mistaken identity, not a case where two people said, 'Hey we're going to frame someone.'"
An hour after leaving prison, Honaker walked into a department store for the first time in the '90s.
He was flanked by two photographers and a reporter, but the store personnel hardly noticed their celebrity guest as he tried on sport coats.
"Ed, what colors do you like?" asked Germond's husband, Mark.
"It used to be blue, but it no longer is," he said. "In prison, that's all you get. Small blue or large blue. If you are a large person you get a small blue; if you're a small person, you get a large blue."
Honaker finally settled on a tan, camel-hair jacket and a yellow sport shirt. He didn't buy a tie or slacks.
"I'm comfortable in jeans, I really am," he told Kate Germond, who paid for the new threads.
At the mall Honaker saw the first of many ways that society has changed.
He began to light up a cigarette as he approached Hecht's department store, only to stop cold after reading a sign on the door.
"'No smoking.' You've got to be kidding," he said. Honaker lit the cigarette anyway, took a quick drag and tossed it onto the asphalt.
The newly freed man said he won't visit or talk to his relatives, including his three teen-age children, for several days.
"I need some time to myself; I need to reacquaint myself with Edward Honaker."
While he was in prison, Honaker said, he started several novels that he hopes to get published. He said his books were "in the horror genre," but that they weren't nearly as scary as getting accused of a crime he didn't commit.
He said he has a publisher interested in a book about his ordeal.
As for the immediate future, Honaker said he can't wait to resume his favorite hobby - bow-hunting.
"There's been a lot of animals chuckling in the woods in the last 10 years, and it's time for that to stop," he said with a grin.
"Did you say you wanted to go out and kill something, Ed?" Kate Germond asked.
"When you say it that way, I kind of lost my desire," he responded.
by CNB