A twice-convicted rapist received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison Tuesday for raping a woman in the woods behind a Linthicum light rail station.
Eugene Waller, 50, of Baltimore, told his family members he loved them as he was taken away in handcuffs.
“I?ll miss you. I?ll be praying for you,” his 85-year-old mother told him. His daughter blew him a kiss.
Waller could have faced life in prison for first-degree rape, but he entered a plea Friday to a reduced charge of second-degree rape because a surveillance tape revealed Waller and the victim holding hands before the incident.
“The reason I pleaded guilty was because I didn?t want to end up with life in prison,” Waller told Anne Arundel Circuit Judge William Mulford II in an emotional ramble twice interrupted and redirected by his attorneys.
The defense instead asked Mulford to impose probation, but Mulford said Waller “would probably never be rehabilitated,” citing his two rape convictions in 1977 and 1983. Waller, who was mistakenly left off the state?s sex offender registry, must register as a violent sex offender.
Mulford also noted the impact the rape has had on the victim, who was a recovering drug addict.
“I have night terrors and cannot get his face out of my mind,” the victim said in a statement read by Assistant State?s Attorney Laura Kiessling.
“He deceived me into thinking he was a nice person, but his personality flipped like a light switch, and it was too late.”
The woman, 23, initially told Anne Arundel police she was sitting at the Nursery Road station Oct. 9, when a stranger dragged her into the woods, held a weapon to her neck and raped her, according to charging documents.
But a Royal Farms surveillance tape showed Waller and the victim trying unsuccessfully to buy beer before the rape occurred, said defense attorney Elizabeth Palan.
After riding the train to the Nursery Road station and purchasing beer at a liquor store, they walked behind the light rail station where Waller struck the victim and threatened to kill her. He dragged her into the woods and raped her, Kiessling said.
Waller was charged with indecent exposure on another light rail train in Anne Arundel days before the October rape, but he was acquitted on a technicality, as the train had passed over the county line.
