Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 29, 1994 TAG: 9406290143
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
Honaker, 44, has been in prison for nine years but has maintained that he is innocent of seven felonies stemming from a 1984 rape on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Nelson County. He is serving three life sentences plus 34 years in Nottoway Correctional Center.
Two separate genetic tests showed that semen recovered from the victim could not have been Honaker's.
Allen has not yet had a chance to review the request, which is several hundred pages, said Ken Stroupe, the governor's spokesman.
A grandson of an elderly Roanoke woman has written Allen, claiming that Honaker tried to rape her in October 1984. The grandson, who now lives in Charlottesville, asked Allen to consider the alleged attack before acting on Honaker's pardon request.
The woman told The Daily Progress of Charlottesville that she told Roanoke police that Honaker, who once lived near her, was her attacker. She said she decided not to press charges because Honaker was charged with the Nelson County rape shortly after her alleged attack.
|- Associated Press
by CNB