Criminal history dates back to early '70s

Franklin Wright has served several decades of his life in prison for rape, attempted escape, multiple assaults and armed robberies before police say they believe he escalated to homicide.

His criminal history in South Carolina dates back to the early 1970s when the then-17-year-old Beech Island man was sentenced to serve six years in prison for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

In January 1973, Wright pleaded guilty to breaking into the home of a Beech Island woman while she watching television. He grabbed her by the throat, threw her to the floor and tore her clothes before fleeing with a number of stolen items.

He served nearly three years in prison before he was paroled in November 1975.

In August 1976, he was charged with the rape and buggary, defined in the Aiken Standard at that time as unnatural sex acts, two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, house breaking and grand larceny.

He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

He dragged a woman away from a friend outside a bar near Clearwater to a wooded area where he beat her and repeatedly raped her.

She escaped and ran away screaming for help.

A man who lived nearby heard the screams and came out of the house. Wright continued to chase after and assault the woman until the witness confronted him.

The witness took the victim, described in written accounts as a "girl," into his home and called her parents. She was taken to the hospital.

Wright was arrested hours later.

He was caught after he broke into an Atomic Road home.

Twelve years later, in 1988, Wright was charged in Columbia for a first-degree burglary and several counts of armed robbery.

He was sentenced to serve seven years in prison.

Wright has been living back in Beech Island for several years and had been claiming to others around him that he had straightened his life out and had found God, according to man acquainted with Wright who wished not to be identified.