Authors: Jeff Benedict,Don Yaeger
In tight with The Zoo’s owner, George Murphy, Simmons got himself and Mitchell in without paying the cover charge. Mitchell later told authorities that he and Simmons were ushered to a private downstairs lounge to join Murphy. According to Mitchell, Murphy repeatedly paraded women over to meet Simmons, lifted up some of the women’s skirts and grabbed their butts. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Mitchell told authorities.
Mitchell also told authorities that he recalled two young girls (Jensen and Scott) coming over to meet Simmons. Minutes after the bouncer introduced the girls to Murphy and Simmons, the bouncer brought Jensen and Scott back upstairs to the dance floor. He then asked the girls if they were interested in accompanying him to another nearby dance club called The Rave. In her police statement, Jensen said that while en route to The Rave, she and Scott discovered that Simmons, Murphy, and Mitchell were in a car following the bouncer’s vehicle.
According to Jensen, she and Scott did not like the crowd and the music at The Rave and asked to be taken back to The Zoo. When they attempted to get in the bouncer’s vehicle, however, Jensen said they were told the car was full and that they would have to ride back in Mitchell’s car. Jensen and Scott told the authorities that they protested, having only met the men an hour earlier. Nonetheless, they ultimately climbed in the back seat together and rode without incident back to The Zoo.
When Murphy dropped them off at The Zoo parking lot, the club was closed. The bouncer and Benson insisted that the girls come inside and play pool before heading back to Hilton Head. According to Scott, she and Jensen sat at opposite ends of the room watching Johnson and her boyfriend shoot pool. Scott also indicated that Simmons and some other guys were in the room as well. At one point, Scott saw Simmons approach Jensen and engage in conversation. Scott then went to the bathroom. When she returned, both Simmons and Jensen were gone.
Jensen told police that while she waited in the lounge for Scott to come out of the bathroom, Simmons took her into a stairwell and raped her.
The following account is based on Jensen’s formal statements to the police and her subsequent statement to prosecutors.
Simmons approached Jensen and persuaded her to walk with him toward a stairwell off to the side of the room. “George asked Wayne if he needed the key,” Jensen told authorities. “And Wayne said, ‘Yes, I need the keys.’ He started draggin’ me. I kept telling them [Simmons and George] ‘I have to go talk to Emily and tell her where I’m at.’ I was trying anything to get out of it and I told them, I said, ‘I have to talk to Emily. I can’t leave without telling Emily where I’m going first.’”
Jensen described the stairwell that Simmons brought her into as poorly lit and littered with cardboard boxes and debris. The walls were covered in spray-painted graffiti, and vomit was visible on the floor in places. Police photographs taken of the stairwell confirmed Jensen’s description.
“He started kissin’ on me and I told him to stop and I was tryin’ my best to push him away and he kinda had me,” said Jensen. “He had his arms wrapped around where I couldn’t move my arms out and I told him to stop. ‘I don’t want to do this. This is wrong. You can’t do this.’ He said, ‘Why?’”
Jensen told him that she was raised in a churchgoing family, that she was still a virgin, and that although she had boyfriends, she had never had sex with any of them.
“Well, I’m not every other guy you’ve ever had,” Simmons said, according to Jensen. “And he just kept on. So I started squirmin’ away from him on the floor.”
Jensen said that Simmons had her positioned on the third step of the cement staircase. “He was kind of like laying his upper part of his body on my shoulders and my back was going to the stairs and he pulled my underwear off and he unzipped his pants,” she told police. “I guess he pulled his penis out and he was still kissing on me and I was telling him to stop.”
In her interview with the police, Jensen stuttered as she described what happened next. “I was telling him how important it was … I, I’ve always been raised to … I couldn’t. I was saving it for a marriage. I didn’t want to.” The following excerpt is taken from a transcript of the detective’s interview with Jensen:
DETECTIVE
: How do you know he pulled his penis out with his hand?
JENSEN
: I saw him unzip his pants and pull it out and then he laid right back up on top of me.
DETECTIVE
: Okay. And then what happened after he got his penis out?
JENSEN
: He laid back on top of me and started kissing on me, telling me how important his career was and that I couldn’t tell anyone.
DETECTIVE
: And was he touching you at this time?
JENSEN
: Uh huh.
DETECTIVE
: Where?
JENSEN
: Um, he had lifted his … bird finger or maybe it was his index finger and he uh, lifted and rubbed me on my vagina and I squirmed away from him ‘cause it hurt ‘cause he was pressing down into me. I told him to stop. I think he tried to penetrate me there and he noticed that he couldn’t and that’s why he wanted to move up the steps.
DETECTIVE
: How do you know he tried to penetrate you there?
JENSEN
: I felt it on the side of my leg. He was pushing my leg out and I felt what I assume would be the head of his penis pressing into me.
In her supplemental interview with prosecutors, Jensen detailed the difficulty Simmons was having trying to have intercourse with her. “He started lickin’ his fingers. … All I remember from then on is just feeling something. It was like he was pushing down on me and then he was trying to get inside of me, my vagina and it just, I was trying my best to squirm, but you have 300 pounds on top of you. I guess he realized that the position he had me in wasn’t working for him. He asked me to move … so I said, ‘Let me up and I’ll move.’”
Jensen said that when Simmons let her up she grabbed her underwear and tried to dart for the door. “ ‘Unt, unt,’” she recalled him saying. “ ‘I already pulled those off for a reason.’ I said, ‘No, I’m going back downstairs to find Emily.’ And he said, ‘No you’re not.’ And he grabbed me and walked me back up the stairs and laid me down. That’s when he moved the brick. I guess it was in his way. He laid me down on the cement. He laid on top of me and went back inside. He, I guess, ejaculated before, “‘when we were on the steps cause it was all over on the back of my dress. Cause I remember when I stood up and put my underwear back on it felt wet.”
When Jensen recalled this part of the incident to the detective, he asked for clarification. The following excerpt is from the transcript:
DETECTIVE
: Was his penis still out?
JENSEN
: Yes.
DETECTIVE
: And …
JENSEN
: At that time it was.
DETECTIVE
: And was it still erect?
JENSEN
: Uh huh.
DETECTIVE
: Okay. Had you felt the wet spot on your dress yet?
JENSEN
: Yeah. I felt it the minute I stood up after he had, when he turned me around and I stood up to try and … walk off.
DETECTIVE
: Okay. Then what happened.
JENSEN
: … [H]e laid me down. That’s when I started telling him to stop. … And he said, “No. I only need a few more minutes.”
DETECTIVE
: Uh huh.
JENSEN
: And he pulled my dress up. He pulled my underwear down to my ankles and he kind of like I guess bent my legs up and spread ‘em out.
DETECTIVE
: Uh huh.
JENSEN
: And that’s when he I guess penetrated me, started moving a lot.
When it was over, according to Jensen, “He got up, zipped his pants and told me his phone number and said he would call me and we’ll talk about it.”
Near the end of her interview with the detective, Jensen was asked if Simmons hit or slapped her during the incident. “He not so much threatened me,” Jensen explained. “But just pretty much kept saying you know, my status against your status, you’re nothing.”
“Were there any other sexual acts?” asked the detective. “Did you have to touch his private part?”
“He tried to put it in my face one time and I told him no,” Jensen answered. “When he had my shoulders, it was right there in my face. And I moved my head away. I don’t know if he was making … that that’s what he wanted me to do or not.”
J
ensen’s friends drove her to Candler Hospital after the incident. Jensen was examined by a Dr. Pohl, to whom she recounted the incident. She then told him that she was a virgin at the time of the attack. According to police reports, Dr. Pohl found “redness in the vaginal area and that she had a tear in the six o’clock position in the vaginal opening.” A diagram was drawn describing the exact location of the injury, and then placed in the case file. Bruising was also detected in the mid-back area and on her neck, injuries which were photographed by a police photographer. According to a report filled out at the hospital, “Dr. Pohl advised … that these injuries are consistent with the Victim’s story.”
Following the exam, Jensen was given a prescription for a morning-after pill, advised to have a pregnancy test performed two weeks from the date of the incident, introduced to a rape crisis counselor, and interviewed by a police investigator. All of Jensen’s clothing (white shoes, a blue half-slip, white panties, a bra, an ankle-length yellow print dress, and two hair scrunchies) was placed in evidence bags to be turned over to the crime lab for inspection. The following day, those items, along with swabs taken from Jensen’s vagina and a white envelope marked “suspected semen from body” were shipped via UPS to the Forensic Sciences Division of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.
In the early stage of their investigation, Savannah police telephoned Simmons’s friend Elliot Mitchell to get his version of what happened that night. “It’s all bullshit,” he insisted, when informed that Simmons had been accused by Jensen of rape. He maintained that any sex that occurred was consensual.
There was corroboration that some kind of sexual act had occurred. In addition to the items received from the hospital, the crime lab also received three vials of Simmons’s blood, which he turned over at the request of prosecuting attorney David Locke. According to a Forensic Sciences Official Report dated November 18, 1997, “Chemical examination of the panties and dress reveals the presence of seminal fluid.” DNA tests performed on the semen taken from Jensen’s panties and dress were compared to the DNA testing performed on Simmons’s blood sample. The conclusion? “No more than 1 in 10 billion individuals in the Caucasian or black populations will exhibit the DNA banding pattern which is shared between Wayne Simmons and the semen stain(s) from the dress.” The report went on to conclude: “With a reasonable scientific certainty, it can be concluded that the DNA obtained from the semen stain(s) from the dress which matches Wayne Simmons originated from him or his identical twin.” Wayne Simmons does not have a twin.
A
t the direction of his lawyer, Simmons did not give a statement to police, nor did he submit to police questioning. However, his close friend Elliot Mitchell did. In his interview with authorities, Mitchell revealed that he asked Simmons whether he had intercourse with Jensen. According to Mitchell, Simmons replied, “No. I tried to but couldn’t get it in. She jacked me off and gave me a blow job.”
Mitchell told authorities that Simmons, after learning he had been accused of rape, later called him on the telephone and repeated his innocence. “No. I didn’t rape her,” Simmons said, according to Mitchell. “Do you see any scratches on me? And I sure didn’t bruise her. Did anyone hear any screaming?” According to the investigative summary of Mitchell’s interview, “Simmons also stated that he tried to put it in but couldn’t because she was too small. He said he got on top a couple of times but couldn’t get it in.”
The police were originally left with a classic “he-said, she-said” scenario. Incidental facts were important to the investigation. Thus Simmons’s insistence that he had difficulty penetrating Jensen supported Jensen’s claim that she was a virgin, as did Dr. Pohl’s finding that Jensen suffered a tear at the six o’clock position of the vagina, an injury that was also consistent with someone who had never engaged in intercourse previously. While none of this proves that Jensen was raped (she could have consented), her status as a virgin was crucial to how she might be perceived in front of a jury—so crucial that Simmons hired a private investigator to dig up evidence that she was not a virgin. He found none. In fact, there was no evidence that Jensen had any sexual history whatsoever.
Also informing the investigation was the location of the incident. It happened in a stairwell, as opposed to a hotel room, athlete dorm, or player’s bedroom. Would a teenage girl who went through high school as a virgin agree to have sex for the first time in a dingy, debris-filled, concrete stairwell that stank of vomit? And once there, would she willfully lie bare back on the cement steps while a man twice her size and whom she had never met previously lay on top of her while trying repeatedly to penetrate her—tearing her vagina in the process?
As prosecutors assessed whether to bring this case to a grand jury to seek an indictment, Simmons had another factor working against him—his own history. A background check performed on him in South Carolina and in Georgia turned up the following allegations:
• On June 25, 1989, Simmons was arrested and incarcerated for assault and battery after striking a girl “because she was ignoring him.” After the victim’s mother learned of the incident, she drove her daughter over to Simmons’s house to find out why he struck her daughter. “Simmons began to curse them and ordered them to leave his yard and at the same time shoved the victim with his hands,” according to the report.