THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602240311
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Twenty-one months before he escaped from a maximum-security prison, Geoffrey Alan Ward wrote to the man who sentenced him to life without parole in 1987 and asked for a favor.
Ward, a confessed double murderer, told retired Norfolk Circuit Judge John W. Winston in May 1994 that he had been a model prisoner and wanted a chance at freedom.
The judge's response was terse and direct: ``I will never recommend release for you in light of the heinous crimes you committed before you came to my court,'' he wrote Ward.
It wasn't the first letter Winston had written on the subject. Seven years earlier, after sentencing Ward to eight life terms plus 140 years, he took the unusual step of writing to the chairman of the Virginia Parole Board to emphasize that Ward should never be considered for parole.
It was the only time in his judicial career that he took such a step, Winston said in an interview Friday.
``I did not give him the death penalty both because he would not be eligible for parole ever, and because he turned himself in when no one even knew who he was,'' Winston said. ``But I thought that, if someday the legislature changed its mind (by changing the law that makes Ward ineligible for parole), they should have my letter on file.''
Ward wanted the letter removed from his file. In a hand-written plea to Winston, he asked the judge to reconsider.
``. . . I'm writing you in hopes that you would extend yourself to examine my record and rescind your letter. I know this is a big thing to ask; my crimes were the worst a person could do. . . . However, I do pray and hope for the opportunity to live in free society again.''
Ward, who this week escaped from the Powhatan Correctional Center and was recaptured, had abducted, raped and murdered a 14-year-old Norfolk girl and a 38-year-old woman in separate crimes before moving to Massachusetts in 1984. Police had no suspects until he returned in 1986 and confessed so he could ``get right with the Lord.''
In his letter to Winston, Ward said he believed he had done the right thing when he turned himself in. But he asked the judge to take into account his ``excellent work evaluations,'' the fact that he had completed ``most of'' his treatment program and his ``very good relations'' with staff and inmates.
Ward was a welder in Massachusetts when he first confessed his crimes to Pastor Erven Burke of the Twin Cities Baptist Church in Gardner, Mass., near Townsend, where Ward grew up. ``He attended here for a period of time and made a profession of faith and was baptized,'' Burke said this week.
``But sometimes as he would leave (after church), he would say, `Something's really bothering me.' And we began to sit down and talk. And as we did, I knew he was probably going to confess to some kind of capital offense.''
Ward told Burke that playing the guitar in a Hampton Roads rock band influenced him to abuse drugs and alcohol and to break into homes and rape and kill women.
``He told me, `I'll probably get the death penalty. And that's probably fair and probably right,' '' said Burke. ``He felt like God had forgiven him and he needed to get it straight and repent and try and make it as right as possible.'' ILLUSTRATION: In 1994, Geoffrey Alan Ward, far left, asked Norfolk Circuit
Judge John W. Winston, left, to rescind a letter saying Ward should
never be paroled. Winston refused.
by CNB