Chad Woodson couldn’t conquer his demons

Chadwick Aaron Woodson never knew his biological parents, and he didn’t seem to be interested.

Steve and Daisy Woodson of Stuarts Draft adopted the mixed-race boy after his birth in Roanoke on July 21, 1985.

When Woodson was a pre-teen, his adopted mother gave him a letter from his birth mother, but Woodson never opened it, says Rebecca Diane Lucas, whose daughter had a child by Woodson and was murdered by him.

Woodson was brooding and quiet, Lucas says, but mostly controlling toward her daughter, Angela.

“He had issues” that were compounded when he drank beer, she says.

The Woodson family declined interview requests through their attorneys.

Lucas says when Angela announced in late 2002 that she was pregnant by Woodson, “I cried.”

“I said, ‘Angela, you’ll never know over the next 18 years what your life is going to be like,’ ” says the 48-year-old unemployed divorcee. “But she really took to motherhood.”

Rebecca Lucas says the Woodsons, who now care for Angela’s nearly 3-year-old son, C.J., used to bring the toddler by to visit. But that stopped after Lucas complained about C.J. calling his grandfather, Steve Woodson, “daddy” and after she learned the toddler had received a toy gun for his birthday.

“There shouldn’t be any guns in that house. And they should tell him what happened to his mother and daddy,” Lucas says.

One day, she plans to tell C.J. about April 25, 2004.

“I’ll say, ‘Your daddy was sick, he had mental problems,’ ” Lucas says. “ ‘When your momma left him, he couldn’t handle it.’ ”