ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996                TAG: 9607220054
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-1  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER 

STALKER'S OWN WORDS HELP JAIL HIM

TALE OF THE TAPE: A Roanoke man aided in his own conviction when police discovered he had documented on a tape recorder his every move as he stalked a Botetourt County woman.

``It's 9:48. I rode by again, and still nobody," Darren Swain spoke softly into his microcassette recorder. "No cars, Erica's car is not there. I can't tell if Rhonda's car is in the garage or not because the door is closed. But no lights are on."

Three minutes later, Swain pressed the record button again.

``9:51. I'm riding by, and I can't tell anything. S---, and this is Tuesday, so where is she?''

Swain continued to ride by and later called the Botetourt County home of Rhonda Reed and her daughter every few minutes that night of July2. Each action he took, he documented on his tape recorder.

It was an unusual move for a man twice accused of stalking, documenting a crime he had always denied. But Tuesday, when part of that tape was played in Botetourt General District Court, it aided in his conviction.

Judge E.C. Westerman Jr. sentenced Swain, a pharmaceutical sales representative from Roanoke, to a year in jail and ordered him to pay a $2,500 fine, the maximum penalty for the misdemeanor stalking charge. Wednesday, Roanoke County General District Judge Vincent Lilley gave Swain the same sentence on a contempt charge for violating his order of July 1 that he and Reed have no contact at all. Lilley dismissed a stalking charge against Swain.

Lilley wasn't the first judge to tell the couple, who dated for six years until they split up in February, to stay away from each other.

On April1, when Reed, who works in the First Union BankCard Center, first brought a stalking charge against Swain, Westerman told them to keep apart.

Swain and Reed, both in their mid-30s, testified Friday that they continued to have contact after that.

Reed said she talked to Swain from time to time and admitted to using Swain's answering machine code to check his messages. She also said she bought him a trinket, a ceramic lighthouse, and gave it to him just last month. Swain returned the gesture with a canteloupe.

Swain said Reed called him repeatedly. He read from a list of 30 calls he documented with his caller identification device.

But Reed said after Lilley's order, she vowed to have no further contact with Swain.

Swain, however, did not take the order so seriously. The same day, he was driving by the home of a friend of Reed's where he believed his ex-girlfriend was, according to the tape recording he made.

Asked why he made the tape, Swain said he was trying to get proof that Reed was really out to get him. He said it all goes back to a 3 a.m. call he got from Reed in April, during which Reed, who is white, allegedly said, "I'm going to nail your slave na--. You just watch me." Swain said he recorded the conversation, but couldn't get to the tape because he had been jailed without bond Wednesday.

Swain denied, as Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom had argued, that he was following Reed because he wanted her back.

But Branscom fired back with an entry from Swain's tape made just an hour after Lilley's separation order:

"She was out in the street ... and she had her swimsuit on ... man she really looked good. I've got to admit that. I still want her. And I've got to figure out how to do this."

The next night, Swain told himself, "Forget her, she's a loser," according to the tape. But for the next few minutes, he continued to drive by her house and call her, according to the tape. He was on the phone with Reed when Botetourt sheriff's deputies found him and the tape recorder at a grocery store pay phone.

Swain's attorney, Harold Eads, argued that the charges should be dismissed because Reed did not truly fear Swain, as the stalking statute requires. If she "feared bodily harm," he said, why did she continue to have contact with Swain all along? Eads said he will appeal the conviction to Circuit Court.

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