In 1984, William Beebe drugged and raped eighteen-year-old Liz Seccuro at a University of Virginia Phi Kappa Psi party. Seccuro awoke the next day wrapped in a bloody sheet on the couch of the deserted fraternity house. She confirmed Beebe's identity by the mail on his dresser. Still bloodied and bruised, Seccuro reported the attack. Campus authorities and Charlottesville police treated her claim dismissively and obstructed her access to a proper investigation. Beebe claimed she had consented. Feeling stonewalled and hoping to move forward with the rest of her education and life, Seccuro stopped pursuing legal recourse.

Twenty-one years later, Seccuro pulled out of her driveway en route to a vacation with her spouse and young child. She stopped at the mailbox and found the following letter:

In a subsequent exchange of e-mails where Beebe explained that he was undergoing a twelve-step addiction recovery program, he confessed to a decades-old crime for which he was not under investigation and that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. “I want to make clear that I’m not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you,” he wrote, “I did.” Seccuro took this opportunity in 2005 to contact Charlottesville police. This time they properly investigated her claim. She pressed charges against Beebe.