[1] At the time of his birth, Godwin's father Sherman, an alcoholic, was imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth, prompting his mother, Hazel Johnson, to leave the state with the two boys and move to Idaho.
[3] His childhood was apparently normal until 1955, when the 8-year-old witnessed the tragic death of his mother, who perished in a fire while saving two other workers at a potato warehouse in Rupert.
Unable to control him, his adoptive parents sent him to the Idaho Youth Training Center in St. Anthony, from where Wood attempted to escape on eight separate occasions but was always caught and returned.
[3] In 1963, his father was released from prison and offered to take care of him, with Wood readily accepting and boarding the first bus to Shreveport, Louisiana, where Sherman had moved to.
[4] Wood would eventually be convicted of the charges and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, but would be paroled on August 18, 1971, for good behavior.
[3] After working again as a truck driver and for a short time on a tugboat in Southern Louisiana, he returned to Shreveport in 1987, where he married a woman named Yvonne and had a son in 1989.
Wood eventually moved to Grand Cane, but was forced to flee after a 14-year-old relative of his wife filed a complaint to the police, claiming that he had raped her at the photo lab where he worked.
[5] While there were initial suspicions that these were simple boastful confessions akin to Henry Lee Lucas, investigators considered them credible enough to look into Wood further.
This stemmed from the claim that the previous lawyer, Monte Whittier, had convinced Wood, a Mormon in the same congregation as him, that he could be forgiven through blood atonement.
[7] Justice Lynn Winmill denied the request, as in his view, while Whittier's conduct was indeed flawed, it was not severe enough to affect Wood's decision.