Kriti Mehrotra
After 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood suddenly disappeared while riding her bicycle home from Norwich Corners Church in Sauquoit, New York, in 1993, the entire nation was left baffled to the core. That’s because, as explored in CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Unending Search for Sara Anne Wood,’ she was likely abducted less than half a mile from home before being horrifically abused and killed. After all, suspected serial killer Lewis Lent has since actually confessed to kidnapping, sexually assaulting, as well as murdering the young girl for nothing but his own depraved satisfaction.
Lewis Lent Largely Lived on the Fringes of Society
Although a native of Reynoldsville in upstate New York, Lewis Lent truly lived a rather nomadic lifestyle upon dropping out of Watkins Glen High School around 1967 when he was in the 10th grade. He actually primarily lived in Florida for the ensuing six years before finding himself in a small town in New Mexico, where he was arrested in June 1976 on charges of embezzlement and theft. As per reports, he had apparently been employed to pick up some tires for delivery, only to never fulfill it — yet, the charges were dropped once it came to light he himself had paid for this.
According to records, Lewish then ostensibly dabbled between Pennsylvania and Virginia at varying times prior to settling in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for a while sometime in the early 1980s. We say “for a while” because, by the time 1996 rolled around, he had been in North Adams, Massachusetts, for at least seven consecutive years, working tirelessly as a janitor for a multiplex. He purportedly had his own keys, had a shift that kept him awake during the early morning hours, and was long gone when employees came in to start a new day, meaning his social interactions were almost non-existent.
A Failed Kidnapping is What Led to Lewis Lent’s Arrest
It was around 7:10 am on January 7, 1994, when 12-year-old Rebecca “Becky” Savarese of Pittsfield came across a terrifyingly calm stranger on a busy intersection while she was walking to school like normal. As per her own accounts, he stood beside her, quickly took out a gun, and pointed it right at her before ordering her to get into his truck a short way away if she wanted everything to be okay. However, knowing there was no way she could let herself be taken, the tween came up with the brilliant idea of faking an asthma attack and fleeing while her perpetrator was distracted.
As if that’s not enough, despite her young age, Becky even had enough awareness of what had happened that she memories every possible feature of her assailant while finding a safe space. Little did she know a partial witness was also simultaneously contacting the local police with three digits of the truck’s license plate that they had managed to gather as it was fleeing the scene. So, with their combined statements as well as additional evidence, nearly two years later, in 1996, then-45-year-old Lewis Stephen Lent Jr. was arrested and charged with her attempted abduction.
This janitor initially denied knowing Becky or anything about her ordeal, only to confess a short while later. What’s more is that the ensuing search of his vehicle produced a lot of disturbing evidence, making investigators wonder precisely how many kids he had actually kidnapped over the years. After all, it yielded Becky’s backpack, a loaded revolver, a knife, what he called a “snatch kit” – comprising duct tape as well as a clothesline rope – and candies. Furthermore, a search of his home revealed an intricate private chamber that he was admittedly constructing by himself for the sole purpose of abusing any future victims before he eventually killed them.
Lewis Lent Has Confessed to Two Homicides and Is Now Serving Life Behind Bars
It was back in 1996 itself that detectives questioned Lewis about Sara Anne Wood’s disappearance, especially since her ordeal took place a mere five months before Becky’s less than 100 miles away. Again, while he originally denied having any hand in the matter, he later confessed in excruciatingly horrific detail — he said he abducted her and sexually assaulted her before eventually killing her. However, he has never revealed the correct location of her remains, so despite the authorities’ best efforts to find her from the little piece they received, her remains have sadly not been found.
Moreover, it’s imperative to note that Lewis has also confessed to the 1990 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Pittsfield native James “Jimmy” Bernardo, who was last seen outside a cinema. According to his own confession, he took the young boy to his home, taped him to his bed, and assaulted him before hanging him off a dirt road 200 miles away in rural Newfield the next morning. The tween’s nude body was found by hunters on November 21, 1990, 30 days after he first went missing. We should mention that in 2013, Lewis confessed to killing 16-year-old disabled Jamie Lusher in 1992, just to recant it later, as he had done many times before, leading officials nowhere. However, he did maintain he often used to drive around for hours and miles on end, “hunting” for children to kidnap.
Therefore, Lewis has since only been convicted of three major crimes. On January 7, 1995, he was found guilty of the attempted kidnapping of Becky Savarese, for which he was sentenced to 17 to 20 years the very next day. Then, on June 3, 1996, he surprisingly pleaded guilty to the abduction and murder of Jimmy Bernardo, as a result of which he was immediately sentenced to life in prison without parole. Finally, on October 16, 1996, he pleaded guilty to charges revolving around Sara Anne Wood’s case in New York, for which he was sentenced to 25 years to life before being sent back to Massachusetts to serve his penalty. So, today, at the age of 73, he remains incarcerated at the medium-security Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he is expected to remain for the rest of his natural life.
Read More: Where is Sara Anne Wood’s Family Now?
