Crash Into Me Read online

  Crash Into Me

  A Survivor’s Search for Justice

  Liz Seccuro

  For Ava

  Have you come here for forgiveness? Have you come to raise the dead?

  Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?

  —U2, “One”

  Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One The Letter

  Two High Ambitions

  Three Darkness on Madison Lane

  Four Sweeping It Under the Rug

  Five The Legacy of Rape

  Six The Charges, the Arrest, and the System

  Seven The Media Beast and What She Eats

  Eight The Preliminary Hearing and Direct Examination

  Nine Cross-Examination and Redirect

  Ten Dark Days and New Revelations

  Eleven The Guilty Plea

  Twelve The Sentencing of William Beebe

  Epilogue Hope, Joy, and the Continuing Fight

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  As the freshman girl struggled on the filthy sheets, the stranger pounding into her, she looked to the left and saw a light outside the window. It was an ordinary streetlight that cast a blue-white glow on the revelers on the fraternity-lined street called Rugby Road. She screamed, but no one could hear her. Her breathing became shallow, caught in her throat. She realized now, covered in saliva, sweat, semen, and stale beer, that she might never leave this room. She wished for one thing: that her parents would find her, that they would learn what had happened to her and fight for her. She thought of her friends, her family, her life, and how happy it had been. She could let go. She could stop struggling. She stopped screaming and her arms and legs ceased their manic dance of defense. She said to herself, “It’s all right. You can sleep now. It won’t hurt anymore.” She swirled into the safe and warm cloak of unconsciousness and quiet.

  I know this girl. Somewhere inside me she is alive and not broken.

  This is her story.

  CHAPTER 1 The Letter

  The morning of September 8, 2005, began like any other. Isn’t it strange that the days that change your life immeasurably always seem to begin so ordinarily? Friends have talked about days in which they’ve experienced immense tragedy or great joy, and they remember how the day started with a decaffeinated latte, kisses, and an orange-juice normalcy that later seemed so bizarre in comparison. What is mundane and innocuous becomes alien.

  My family—my husband, Mike, an investment banker, and our two-year-old daughter, Ava—was preparing for a much-needed three-week working vacation in East Hampton, where we had rented a house for the remainder of the month of September. I hadn’t wanted to deal with all of those “summer people.” We wanted peace, so we put off our getaway until after Labor Day.

  We live in Greenwich, Connecticut, where life is usually easy and, frankly, filled with all of the material benefits that one could want, due to its high concentration of hedge fund operations and WASP pedigrees. The tree-lined main street, Greenwich Avenue, is home to some of the best shopping in the world; it’s often called a New England Rodeo Drive. Mere minutes from town, the Back Country boasts massive estates owned by the scions of money, both old and new, alongside the estates of members of the Hollywood elite—Ron Howard, Diana Ross, Mary Tyler Moore—who seek out the quiet enclave as a respite from the rigors of the typical Los Angeles entertainment business life. Here there are no paparazzi, no nightclubbing teen terrors. Perfectly highlighted and buffed trophy wives brush shoulders with preppy girls and young moms in the same boutiques and lunch spots. Convertible Saabs and Jeeps grace the town parking lots alongside more flashy cars such as Maseratis and Bentleys. There are no traffic lights in Greenwich; just police officers who wave the cars and pedestrians by. The old denizens of Greenwich felt traffic lights would be an aesthetic blight on the famous “Avenue.”

  Mike and I moved here from New York City in 2004, when Ava was just over a year old. I had attended high school in Rye, New York, just five minutes away over the state line, so I was quite familiar with the community. Mike fell in love with its obvious seaside charms, great schools, and wonderful people, and with its proximity to Mike’s office and the city life we loved, it felt like a perfect compromise. Still, sometimes it’s nice to get away from even the nicest suburb. That morning, in my home office on the second floor, I furiously typed e-mails to clients and vendors, letting them know I’d be out of town, but of course, available via BlackBerry, laptop, and cell phone. I am an event planner, so this is business as usual. I fill my weeks planning all manner of weddings, birthday parties, corporate events, product launches, and children’s parties. I’ve had famous clients and clients who live next door. I have an intense passion for what I do; unfortunately, that means that tearing me away from a computer is a losing battle for anyone who tries to do so. Getting caught up in work, I tend to run a good half hour late to everything, and my own family vacation was no exception.

  When I finally emerge from a steamy shower and jump into cargo pants and a tank top, I plunk a straw cowboy hat on my wet head as a final nod to the idea of vacation. Ava giggles uncontrollably at the unfamiliar sight of her vacation-mode mom. I double-check her diaper bag for the requisite supplies for the road, but then am drawn again to the monitor, just to check if the tiny e-mail envelope is blinking.

  “Liz!” my husband yells up the stairs. “Seriously, are you ever going to be getting into the car?!” Mike is a man who is right on time, all the time. A dead ringer for the golfer Phil Mickelson, he is tightly wound and probably more in need of a break than anyone else I know. The Hamptons wouldn’t have been his first choice—it’s known as a playground of the East Coast elite, and Mike, a southerner, regards it with some reverse snobbery. Although he insists East Hampton is elitist, I suspect he loves the beaches in spite of himself. Still, he’s taking this vacation to indulge me, and I love him for it.

  “Just one more e-mail and I’m ready. Promise!” I trill in my sweetest spouse-appeasing voice down the golf-green carpeted stairs. Tappety-tap, I e-mail a client who is getting married in October about some last-minute decisions on lighting and menu that I want her to make in the next forty-eight hours. Ava is ready to go, towheaded and sweet, wearing a pink-and-white-checked dress and tiny white sandals, her silky hair in a ponytail. She is playing in my office and prattling on about the beach, my hat, and the movie for the car ride. I imagine that she is wondering about this mysterious concept of “vacation,” since we have not taken one since she was fourteen weeks old. I turn to her, lift her off the ground, and spin her around, covering her tiny baby arms with kisses before setting her back down on my office floor. Flip-flops go on my feet and it is time to go.

  Send. Save. Log off. Shut down. I scoop Ava up under my arm, jostle her onto my hip, and descend the stairs with a giant portfolio of color and fabric swatches and storyboards slung over the other shoulder. Mike gives me a wry look.

  “Vacation, huh?” He stares at all the work I am schlepping, shakes his head, and gently guides me toward the front door before I can backtrack and double-check the stove, coffee maker, voice mails. “Let’s go, honey. Seriously, come on.” But as we fire up the car and queue up Finding Nemo for Ava, my obsessive-compulsive self takes over, yet again. We’re pulling down the circular driveway when I blurt it out.

  “Wait! I’ll bet the mailman’s been here. Get the mail, get the mail!”

  “Oh, Jesus, Liz, why? It’ll just be a bunch of Restoration Hardware catalogs and bills. Can’t it wait?”

  “No! You never know what’s there. Please, honey? Then we can go.”

  Mike sigh
s, puts the car in park, and ambles over to the mailbox in his khakis and polo shirt. Ava and I start singing a song, while she kicks the back of my seat and tries to grab the back of my cowboy hat. I peer out and see Mike rifling through the mail, which does indeed look to be a massive haul of catalogs, bills, and a few birthday party invitations for Miss Ava—a baby socialite, lately. I feel sheepish. Of course, he was right. The white metal mailbox slaps shut with a rusty squeak. Mike’s brow furrows a bit as he walks back toward the car. I give him my best movie-star smile in the hopes that he’s not utterly through with me.

  “Hey, you got a letter,” he says with an odd look, sliding it across my legs.

  I pick it up and flip it over. It’s an actual snail-mail letter—a relic!

  “Who writes letters anymore?” I ask as my eyes scan the postmark.

  Las Vegas. Funny, I know no one in Vegas. My eyes slide left to the return address, and the air is literally sucked out of my lungs. I struggle to catch just one cleansing breath, but it won’t come. There on the return address sticker, so neatly positioned in the upper left corner, is his name: William Beebe.

  The faintly feminine handwriting reads “Elizabeth Seccuro.” How does he know my married name, and what’s with “Elizabeth”? No one addresses me by my full name, except strangers and receptionists at doctors’ offices.

  My heart skips several beats, and when it starts up again, tears slide down my face.

  William Beebe. My rapist.

  “Honey? Honey? What is it? Who is this person? What’s wrong? Talk, please talk to me. Talk, honey. Say something. What’s happening?”

  Mike is all over the place, looking wild-eyed and afraid. I must look as white as a sheet. I am subtly aware of rivulets of sweat escaping from under the silly cowboy hat. I start to hyperventilate and rummage in my handbag for a Xanax. Ava is in a tailspin; she can sense her mama is wrecked. I can distantly hear Mike try to calm her down. After what seems like an eternity, I flip the letter over. Out wafts the sickly scent of vanilla as I unfold a burgundy-bordered sheet of ivory paper. I blink, and then I read.

  Sept. 4, 2005

  Dear Elizabeth:

  In October 1984 I harmed you. I can scarcely begin to understand the degree to which, in your eyes, my behavior has affected you in its wake. Still, I stand prepared to hear from you about just how, and in what ways you’ve been affected; and to begin to set right the wrong I’ve done, in any way you see fit.

  He invites me to contact him at any time. He signs it, “Most Sincerely Yours, Will Beebe.”

  Out slides a shiny white business card with a red and blue rendering of the Statue of Liberty. It reads “Liberty Realty” and “William N. Beebe, Realtor,” with his address, phone, cell, and e-mail address below. It flutters to my feet. Perhaps I am imagining this whole thing and it’s some sick prank. Silently I hand the letter to my husband, who has calmed down for Ava’s sake and mine. He reads it with no expression. He knows. He begins to nod slowly. I can hear the hum of the car engine again, and the sounds of Nemo drifting from the backseat. Normal sounds; everyday sounds. Slowly, I exhale as the Xanax starts to take effect, but within a minute or two, the sobbing takes over, silently wracking my body. “Let’s go,” I say. Mike puts the car in gear, while looking at me intently as if to ask whether or not we should leave. I read his look and nod a silent “yes.”

  Pulling off down the circular driveway toward town and I-95 South, I cease crying and go completely silent. Ava falls asleep after thirty minutes and we turn off Nemo. I just sit and stare ahead at the road. I’m numb. It isn’t until we reach Exit 72 in Manorville, Long Island, some three hours later that I come to life again. “Can you imagine this?” I ask Mike again and again.

  “I know, sweetie, I know. It’s terrible,” he responds repeatedly.

  “I mean, have you read this thing?” I continue to ask, incredulously.

  We stop at a Starbucks. I pace back and forth outside on the patio, Ava on my hip. She’s eating a cookie and I’m chugging a black iced tea and clutching the letter in a sweaty palm.

  Mike encourages me to climb back into our car and we drive on to our rental in the Northwest Woods of East Hampton. I’m tired and dazed, but still very relieved to be away. “Away” for me now means something completely new. It means away from that mailbox. Away from the possibility that Beebe could show up in person at my home. Away is good, and we settle into a routine.

  We spend most of the first week together, but Mike’s job requires him to return to the city to work some days out of his office. I had hoped that he could stay the whole time, to protect me from … myself. Outwardly, I seem like a calm, tanned, and happy mom on vacation, but the demons swirling in my mind are slowly taking over, and memories I have tried to suppress for so many years are now as clear as the movie I rented last week. In fact, the memories are just like a movie on a constant loop. I see myself as a freshman at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Over and over, in slow motion, I see myself struggling under this stranger and I cannot for the life of me press the STOP button. That’s the only way I know how to describe it.

  When Mike is around during the week, we get a sitter and go to dinner, then walk the beach at Ditch Plains in Montauk for hours, snapping photographs or just simply touching fingers and breathing, looking at each other for a safe haven, a decision, something. The letter goes with me everywhere.

  One night, yet another of insomnia (a legacy of the rape that has lasted for over twenty years), I go swimming at three A.M., blasting Coldplay’s X&Y for an hour by the pool. Exhausted, I dry off, throw on pajamas, brush my teeth, and stumble into our bed, leaving the letter on the terrace dining table where we have been eating grilled fish and burgers each night. Sleeping fitfully, I am not aware that morning has arrived until I hear a yelp from the deck, where Mike is cleaning up from our Scrabble game the previous night. The humidity on Long Island is legendary and oppressive, and my letter is now soaked, the ink on the outside running in tiny streams down the envelope. I’ve read the letter countless times by now and it’s committed to memory, but for whatever reason, I feel I have to preserve that piece of paper. We rush it inside like a trauma victim and blot it with dishtowels. It dries with a crunchy finish, but it’s intact, and the spidery handwriting is still clear.

  From then on I’m even more vigilant, rarely allowing the letter out of my sight. (When I go through snapshots now from that late-summer vacation, I see a photo of me in a bikini, with a pink crocodile bag in front of me, and, yep, that’s the letter right on top.) I won’t even go swimming in the ocean unless someone is watching the bag with the letter. This means that Mike and I have to take turns swimming with Ava, the three of us never playing in the surf together as a family. The letter goes out to dinner with us. I unfold it and surreptitiously read it in restroom stalls all over East Hampton, just to make sure it’s still the same and hasn’t morphed into something else. If you recite or read anything enough, it begins to lose meaning. I realize I am slowly—well, maybe quickly—losing my mind. But after thinking and stewing and not sleeping, I’ve made a decision: I am going to reply. I need to know he’s actually in Las Vegas and not creeping outside my door. That’s it. End of story.

  I’m not sure Mike would support this decision, so I decide not to tell him until after I’ve done it. My rationalization is that this happened to me before meeting him and it is my right to handle the situation however I please. I don’t feel guilt, just a sense of great purpose.

  On September 19, 2005, after putting Ava to bed, I’m sitting with my legs dangling in the pool, staring at my shell-pink pedicure in the turquoise water. Puffing surreptitiously on a contraband Marlboro Ultra Light (I quit years ago), I click out the e-mail on my BlackBerry with my thumbs.

  SUBJECT: Your letter

  Mr. Beebe: I am in receipt of your letter. Please tell me how you can live with yourself. Tell me why you did what you did to me. My life was terribly altered by the fact that you raped me and I want to
know why you did it and why you are reaching out to me now. Why didn’t you just confess to Dean Canevari? Every decision in my life has been colored by wanting to feel safe. Now I don’t feel safe again. How can you live with yourself? What do you want from me? Do you know what kind of a mess I became?!

  I don’t sign it. I reason he’ll know who it’s from.

  I look up at the trees, exhaling the pungent smoke. The backlight on my BlackBerry goes off and I cannot read my words. Panicked, I hit a button and they reappear.

  After five minutes of swirling and splashing my legs around in the pool, I hit SEND.

  The little checkmark, which means my mail has been sent, appears on the tiny screen.

  Immediately, I regret my decision.

  During the week, Mike is back in the city and Ava and I spend time together at the beach and the pool. She calls me Mama Dolphin in the pool and I try to impress her with some dolphin-style cavorting and diving. She thinks this is hilarious. I put her in the stroller and take her shopping in town. Retail therapy is a tried-and-true salve for me and I resurrect and polish off this talent with a vengeance. We go to Pomodoro’s for pizza and spaghetti and read Clam I Am by Dr. Seuss almost every night. She loves it because she loves all things ocean.

  “Mama—read the part about the ocean being gray!”

  She’s a sweet angel. I hate putting her down for the night because I am left to go downstairs to my room or to the pool with my questions, a BlackBerry, the letter, some fine Long Island wine, and no one to talk to. But I don’t want to talk about it. Yet. I told Mike after sending the e-mail that I had replied for my own sense of security, and he just nodded, not pressing me further. But as we try to enjoy our vacation, I obsessively check the BlackBerry. My biggest fear is that my time here in East Hampton will end and I will return to Greenwich to find William Beebe inside the house, hiding in my broom closet, the classic bogeyman. Or, worse yet, standing on my front porch, looking pathetic and southern frat-boy hangdog, begging for forgiveness in person. It strikes me how little I know of this person and his motives, and this scares the shit out of me. I certainly knew his motives back then.