Agonized Confidante Leads Va. Police to Escaped Killer

When Robin Wolfe heard the voice of her best friend on the telephone last week, she began to shake.

It was Geoffrey Ward, a convict serving eight life sentences with no chance of parole for a crime spree that included raping a woman and a teenage girl, and strangling them with the cord to his electric guitar.

“I’m out,” Ward told Wolfe, then held up the receiver so she could hear trucks rolling by.

Ward had scaled the Powhatan Correctional Center’s razor-wire fences and was running wounded with a manhunt on his tail. He wanted to know one thing: Would she help him?

“I fell on my knees and prayed,” Wolfe said.

Wolfe borrowed money to drive to Virginia from her Iowa home. She packed a bag with medical supplies and called a friend for advice.

Then she called police to turn Ward in.

Prison authorities found him hiding in woods north of the prison 30 hours after he escaped into the dark, foggy countryside. He was waiting for Wolfe, whom he had called twice, including once from the crossroads near where he was caught.

“This was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,” said Wolfe, who asked that the name of her hometown not be released. “It was head over heart, because in my heart I wanted him to get out of there--to start a new life.”

A state official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed her story. But neither prison authorities nor state police would comment.

Wolfe, who admits that she was once romantically infatuated with Ward, said she feared that he would be killed by police.

“I think he knows that I love him with an unconditional kind of love and that I did what was best to keep him safe, keep me out of jail and keep my family together,” Wolfe said.

Authorities told her that she will not be charged.

Wolfe met Ward at the prison five years ago when she lived in Virginia. They became pen pals, and eventually began a Bible study course together.

Ward is now a family friend, and Wolfe considers him her best friend, she said. Her husband, Bob, accepts the friendship, and her two young sons adore the man they call Uncle Geoff, she said.

Ward, 38, is a troubled man who almost committed suicide, Wolfe said. But she said he is reformed--honest and deeply religious.

“He is not the killer that is portrayed in the paper,” she said. “One of the police asked me how I could befriend . . . a ‘predator.’ Geoff is not like that at all.”

Wolfe said she visited Ward on Sunday.

“I told him to please tell me he didn’t take advantage of how I feel about him,” Wolfe said, noting that Ward tearfully apologized for forcing her to make such a terrible choice.

“He knows it was wrong. He said he never should have left, and he never should have contacted me,” she said.