While DuMond remained free on bail awaiting trial, police were summoned to his home, where the bleeding suspect told them that several men had pushed their way in and castrated him. Some authorities were skeptical, theorizing that DuMond had castrated himself in a ploy for mercy -- to claim, once castrated, that he would no longer be a threat to women.
For a while, the local sheriff kept DuMond's testicles in a fruit jar on his desk, with a sign: "This is what happens to men who go bad in my county." DuMond sued the sheriff over that humiliation and won a $110,000 judgment. The sheriff went to prison in an unrelated extortion case and died there.
DuMond was sentenced to life in prison for rape, plus 20 years for the kidnapping. Clinton ignored his pleas for parole or a sentence reduction.
...many evangelicals were encouraged that DuMond had claimed a religious conversion, and that many joined Cole in writing to Huckabee about DuMond's situation.
The clincher, he said, was their belief that DuMond had been "saved."
"All of them thought Wayne was innocent," said Cole. "And the governor knew about it. We talked about it together. But Mike was very careful. He was cautious about saying too much. In an elevated position like governor, you've got to be careful."
Huckabee said the DuMond case was already "on my desk" when he became governor in July 1996. He announced that he was considering a commutation. Later, he acknowledged, he wrote a letter to the prisoner saying parole was a better option.
"Dear Wayne. . . . My desire is that you be released from prison," the governor wrote. "I feel now that parole is the best way. . . ."
The rape victim, Ashley Stevens, became enraged. She and prosecutor Fletcher Long met with Huckabee at the Capitol. They warned him that DuMond would strike again.
At one point in the meeting, Stevens recalled, she stood up, put her face next to Huckabee's and told the governor: "This is how close I was to DuMond. I'll never forget his face, and you'll never forget mine."
The meeting ended, and Long, a Republican, could tell the governor was unmoved: "Most of what I think about him would be unprintable. His actions were just about as arrogant as you can get."
