Jury recommends four life sentences

Published 7:44 pm Monday, July 26, 2010

A Suffolk jury recommended four life sentences for a man it found guilty of a November 2007 rape.

A Pughsville woman told the jury in a trial last week that she awoke about 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2007, to find Calvin Wolfe standing at the foot of her bed in the trailer where she lived alone.

The man ordered her to disrobe and then raped and sodomized her, prosecutor Marie Walls said. He mentioned he knew her daughter and the type of car she drove, and that he would kill her if she told anyone.

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After the man left, the victim drove to the Taylor Bend YMCA on Taylor Road in Chesapeake, where she called a friend, who called police. A sexual assault exam at Sentara Obici Hospital found evidence of blunt force trauma, and DNA analysis matched evidence on the bed to Wolfe.

At his trial, Wolfe said from the witness stand that he had consensual sex with the victim. However, that did not match the story he initially told investigators when interviewed in March 2008, Walls said.

“He told the detective he had not had any relations with her,” Walls said. “He changed his story once the DNA analysis came out.”

The victim collapsed in tears when the jury read its verdict, Walls said. The crime affected her entire lifestyle, she added.

“The victim has never been back to her trailer to live,” Walls said. “She has distanced herself from that home as best as she could.”

The jury recommended four life sentences for abduction, object sexual penetration, rape and forcible sodomy, plus 20 years for burglary — the maximum on each charge.

Wolfe also has 105 years to serve for similar charges in Chesapeake, including robbery, sodomy, rape and abduction. Those crimes occurred Oct. 11, 2007.