On a Thursday evening, a light snow lay over central Anne Arundel County. More snow, mixed with freezing rain, was falling through a post-twilight mist. At 7:30 p.m., Melissa, a 28-year-old kindergarten teacher — wife and mother of two young sons — walked from a physical fitness class at the Anne Arundel Community College into a night of Gothic terror.
At the conclusion of the evening’s physical fitness class, Melissa went down to a locker room, where she put on a pair of blue jeans over her tights and leotard. She donned a pair of zippered boots and put on a suede jacket with a fleece lining. Carrying the shirt which she had worn
to the gymnasium, she telephoned her husband at 7:25 p.m. to notify him, because of the icy road conditions, that she was on her way home. She left the building alone and walked across a parking lot about as large as a football field. The lot was lit but it was dimly lit. She observed no one else on the entire lot. When she reached her automobile, she threw in her shirt, started up the motor and then got out to scrape ice from the windshield.
She noticed two black males approach her from the middle of the lot. They asked her if she had a cigarette. She replied that she had not. They withdrew. She went on to scrape ice from the rear window. Becoming aware that the two males were lingering ominously nearby, she started to get worried and opened the car door. Suddenly both males grabbed her and blurted out:
“You are coming with us.”
She yelled, “No, I’m not.”
As they dragged her toward the middle of the parking lot, she resisted by kicking, jumping and trying to hit. She took sudden hope when she spied the headlights of an approaching car. She lurched toward it and started to scream, hoping that someone would stop” and render assistance. The car did stop. The driver opened the passenger door of his two-door Pontiac and the other two black men pushed Melissa into the car. As she was shoved into the back seat, she started screaming louder and trying to resist. The driver reached over from the front seat and pulled at her shoulders, forced her head down between the bucket seats onto a console between them. The rest of her body was on the rear floor. The driver started strangling her and then pushed a place on the back of her neck. She started to lose consciousness.
She then agreed to stop screaming:
“Please, just let me breathe, I won’t do anything, just let me breathe.”
With the driver behind the wheel, a second black man on the front seat, and the third
one in the rear with her, the car drove into the night.
The car drove on for between 10 and 12 minutes. The three men drank from a communal bottle. The
young woman pleaded:
“You don’t know me. What do you want with me? You don’t know me. I have two children at home.”
The brutal explanation followed sharply:
“Mother fucking whitey, we are going to get you, dirty white bitch.”
The man in back, whom she heard referred to as Mike, unzipped and removed her boots and pulled off her jeans. The man in front, whom she
heard referred to as Tim ripped off her leotard and her bra as Mike then tore off her tights. She was completely naked. The driver, whom she heard referred to as Joe, then turned the car from the main road and proceeded on a dirt road to a lonely wooded area. The car then stopped and turned off all lights.
Joe and Tim got out and left their prisoner alone with Mike. The man commanded:
“Suck on me.”
She replied: “No, I can’t do that.”
He renewed his demand:
“You dirty bitch, suck on me.”
She repeated: “No, I can’t.”
He then said:
“Where is that gun and we’ll see about that.”
He grabbed her head and pushed it down upon his dick and she complied. When the blowjob was completed, Mike pushed her back onto the seat and proceeded to fuck her. He then left the car and joined his confederates outside, leaving Melissa momentarily alone.
The respite was fleeting. Joe got back into the front seat on the driver’s side. Mike took the front passenger seat. Tim then moved into the back with the frightened young woman. He commanded:
“Suck on me.”
She begged: “I’ll be sick.”
He angrily ordered:
“Mother fucker, you are not going to be sick.”
She insisted: “I will. I can’t do that.”
He then said:
“Where is the goddam gun?”
Melissa winced as something sharp, from the direction of the front seat, poked into her naked ribs. Tim inquired again as to the whereabouts of the gun. Mike responded:
“Don’t worry about it” and continued to push something into the ribs of the young teacher. She then submitted to Tim’s desire for a blowjob. When that act was finished, she was pushed again onto the back seat and subjected to yet another fuck, this time by Tim.
Throughout the course of both violations by Tim, the two in the front seat continued to drink.
Joe then opened the left front door and got out of the vehicle, so that he could change places with Tim. During the exchange, he took off
his pants, then laid Melissa on the back seat and subjected her to a third fuck.
The orgy of sadism was not yet at an end. The sixth and seventh abuse were to be brutishly simultaneous. Mike changed places with the Joe for another turn at the terrorized woman. She was now suspended between the front and back seats. Her head and shoulders rested on the
back seat; her torso stretched onto the console between the bucket seats of the front. Mike demanded that she “suck on him again.” With her head down on the back seat, she again submitted. Tim, not yet sated, was meanwhile mounting her body as it extended through to the front
of the car and again fuck her, even as his companion was abusing the same body inches away.
When all appetites were ultimately slaked, the threesome announced to their young captive:
“We are going to read about you in the paper tomorrow.”
Melissa read that sentence, in her mind, as a warrant of death. One of the attackers volunteered:
“I’d like to take her home with me.”
Another said:
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Joe bound her hands behind her with her belt; he covered her eyes by tying her tights about her head. With that, she was unceremoniously shoved out of the car and her predators drove off. Her clothes were strewn in the snow at her feet, as she trembled — bound, blindfolded and naked — in the desolation of the empty night.
Then the young teacher managed to untie her hands and to remove the blindfold from her eyes. She found her jeans and boots and put them
on. Although her suede jacket was later found not too far away, she missed it in the dark. As she groped for her clothing in the snow, she heard a car on the road and fled into the woods, terrified that her attackers were returning. Later, spying a distant light, she made her way to an inhabited house trailer. She immediately called her husband and the State Police.
An examining physician at the University Hospital found that the Melissa was suffering from tender bruises on her left thigh, on her left arm and upon her thorax. Scratches were found on her back. A vaginal smear revealed sperm cells, notwithstanding the fact that Melissa was in the midst of her menstrual period.