Anne Arundel County (Map, News) - A surveillance tape of a Baltimore City man holding the hand of a rape victim an hour before the incident occurred compelled the Anne Arundel prosecutor to drop the first-degree rape charge against him Friday.

Instead Eugene Waller, 50, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape as part of a plea bargain.

He cried hysterically and asked Anne Arundel Circuit Judge William Mulford II for a recess before entering an Alford plea, in which he maintained his innocence but conceded enough evidence existed to convict him.

Assistant State’s Attorney Laura Kiessling said she will ask for the maximum of 20 years in prison at Waller’s sentencing Tuesday. He could have faced life in prison if convicted of first-degree rape.

“Given the evidence, we felt this was an appropriate plea,” said Kristin Fleckenstein, spokeswoman for the State’s Attorney’s Office.

The victim, 23, buried her face in her boyfriend’s neck as the prosecutor recounted the rape and rushed from the courtroom following the plea.

The victim told Anne Arundel police she was waiting for a train at the Nursery Road light rail station in Linthicum in October 2007, when a man she didn’t know dragged her into the woods, held a weapon to her neck and raped her.

But a surveillance tape showed the victim and Waller trying to buy alcohol together at a Royal Farms store, Kiessling said.

“It showed them walking around the store and at one point their hands were held together,” said Waller’s attorney Elizabeth Palan.

“She did not appear to be in distress.”

When they learned the store didn’t sell alcohol, they rode together to the Nursery Road Station where the defendant bought beer at a local liquor store, Kiessling said in court. She said they then walked back along the tracks to drink the beer.

“At some point the defendant’s demeanor changed,” Kiessling said.

“He struck [the victim] ... and told her she would do whatever he told her to do or that he would kill her.”

Waller then raped the victim and forced her to perform sex acts on him, Kiessling said. The victim escaped by jumping naked into the Patapsco River and flagging down a motorist, police said.

Police later arrested Waller hiding behind a concrete slab in the river.

He told police the victim asked him for money to buy drugs and claimed he never touched the “stupid crack head girl,” according to court records.

DNA later linked Waller to the rape and an inmate at the Anne Arundel Detention Center wrote in a letter to the State’s Attorney’s Office that Waller had admitted to the rape.

Waller, who has two prior rape convictions, was mistakenly left off the state’s sex offender registry.

cpeirce@baltimoreexaminer.com