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WINCHESTER EVENING STARSaturday, September 30,1978Diggs Receives 40 Years in Rape, RobberyBy SUSAN BUEKEStar Staff WriterFRONT ROYAL - Ralph Lewis Diggs, 20, changed his plea to guilty yesterday on a charge of raping and robbing a young Front Royal woman, and was sentenced to 40 years in the state penitentiary by Judge Duncan C. Gibb.The maximum sentence Diggs could have received was life imprisonment on each charge. A plea bargain agreement a calling for a 20-year sentence for each offense, ar-ranged between Commonwealth’s Attorney Edward Greco and J. Daniel Pond, Diggs's attorney, was accepted by Judge Gibb.The offenses took place against an 18-year-old woman on Feb. 2 in a Front Royal professional office.Sgt. John Good of the Front Royal Police Department testified yesterday that the woman told him she was closing the office around 5 p.m. on that day when a black man came up the stairs and asked if she had an appointment in her book for “Robert.” When she went into the office to check, Good said, he followed her in.GOOD SAID the woman toldhim that the man asked her forher, then took approximately $35 in coins and currency from her.Acting on the description given to him by the woman while he was questioning her, Good said, he brought some photos to her house and laid them out on the table. She identified Diggs as the man who had raped her. Good said.Police went to Diggs’s house on Parkview Drive that night, Good said, where they were admitted by his mother, who saidher son was upstairs sleeping. Diggs was taken to headquarter5; and questioned, then gave police a statement saying he had been in the area, but denying he had been at that particular office.Good said that police used a search warrant to confiscate clothing from his home which matched the description the woman had given them of what the man had been wearing. Blood tests, also obtained by warrant, linked Diggs to the rape, Good said.Good testified that Diggs told him he had been drinking that day, and using drugs.SGT. PAT Farrell then told the court that on Feb. 6, Diggs gave police a statement admitting hp had assaulted the
Newspaper Details
Winchester Evening Star
Winchester, Virginia, US
Sat, Sep 30, 1978
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Nancy H.
VA, USA 18 May 2021
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