Small Town Murder - Mystery On The Path - Simsbury, Connecticut

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

This week, in Simsbury, Connecticut, a very successful woman is found dead on a bike path where she jogs, leading to the initial theory that she was hit by a car. But those theories quickly disappear, when a single stab wound is found, directly to her heart. It's a giant mystery, with no real suspects. But out of nowhere, a man walks into a police station, to make a full confession. Police don't think he's the murderer, and let him go. But was he telling the truth?? More investigating answers all questions, except one... Why???   Along the way, we find out that we have no idea where the various Connecticut colleges are located, that poetry may not be the best way to introduce a sex offender to the neighborhood, and that if someone confesses to murder, and shows you a bloody glove, maybe you should believe them!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and choo-choo. Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder Express.

They're always crazy, and this one is wild, just like the rest of them here. We will get started in just a moment. Before we do, head over to shut up and give me murder. dot com. Get your tickets for live shows, everybody. Do it. Especially here coming up. The next ones available with tickets are in September, September 18th in Milwaukee at the Pabst, which is a great venue. Beautiful place. And then the next night, the 19th of September in Minneapolis at the state theater, which is also awesome. So get in there. Get your tickets right now. Milwaukee, those are almost

gone. So get them now if you want. Minnesota, you need to get in there and get those tickets. Don't let Milwaukee embarrass you. Don't let them show you up. It's, you know. It's bad enough when the Packers beat the Vikings for you, but do you need it to be, do you need it to leak into your podcasting, too? Yes. It's enough of a rivalry. Let's go. Yeah, let's go. And I know they're in Green Bay, but they used to play in Milwaukee sometimes.

They played down there. It's a lot of fucking Green Bay shirts in Milwaukee. I'll tell you that much. That's where they're fans of. So do that. Listen to our other shows as well, crime and sports and your stupid opinions. Get yourself Patreon. That's where it's at Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you.

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You get one crime in sports and one small town murder. This week for crime and sports. We're going to talk about theme park disasters again. We needed another part of that. It's been a while. It's been a while. It's been a while before, since I've heard of people losing their legs on a roller coaster. I really feel like I need that this week.

My daughter oftentimes, spring break and summertime, asked to go to a theme park. And I every time say, no. Just play those episodes for it. You out of your goddamn mind. I'm not trying to be in a purple heart. You can very easily dissuade her from that. Here, play this. A lot of bodies in that fun.

And then for Small Town Murder, it is up to you. It's a poll, everybody. So it's up to you. You decide. Either we do Corey Richens part three, which is the sentencing and a bunch of new stuff that we found out that she was lying about. That's a lot of fun. Or we talk about the crash, the documentary and all the other documentaries that go with it and all the facts and everything that happened there. The McKenzie.

Two very hateable people. Sherilla. Very easy to hate either or. So you guys pick who you want to hate this week and then whoever it is will hate this week and then we'll wait to two more weeks and we'll hate the other one then. So that's how that works. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. is where you get all of that and more. And yeah, so in addition to that, you get all the shows we put out all ad free as well.

Everything. Crime and sports, your stupid opinion, small town murder. And then you also get a shout out at the end of the regular show where Jimmy will go ahead, mess your name all up. So that said, I think it's time. Good luck, everybody. That said, I think it's time here to clear the lungs and nose for me today. I am good and sick today. This is fun.

Are you poorly, Doc? Are you poorly? Sorry, Deadwood references. So it's all clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. We are going to Connecticut this week. Hey. Here it is. Going to Connecticut. We've had a bunch of Northeast states lately. We're going to Simsbury,

Connecticut. Where the hell is that? I think it's a town in the Sims game. I think it's where you build your house in the Sims game or PlayStation. Oh, I'm going to Simsbury and I'm going to build a house over here. Terrible things. That's what it seems like. This is in north central Connecticut.

It's outside of Hartford. That's the area here. It's about 25 minutes to Hartford. Is it a Yukon in Hartford? I think so. Is it in Yale's in New Haven, right? Yeah, Yale's in New Haven. I think it's.

I think Yukon's in Hartford. Bridgeport. Why do I want to say Bridgeport, Connecticut? I can't remember. No, because that's trying to think of Aaron Hernandez when we did crime in sports and where he was. So who knows? It really doesn't matter.

But it's an interesting thing to think about, though. Yeah. There's also, it's about two and a half hours to New York City. If you want to go down there. It's about an hour and 15 to Waterford, Connecticut. Our last Connecticut episode, Episode 661, serial killer desires. That was they were finding a bunch of women posed in a, certain way all over the place.

And it was pretty gross stuff there. Very interesting, too. This is in Hartford County. Area codes 860 and 959. Can't hold these people back with one area code. Median household income here, more than double the national average. We're actually just about double the national average. They got cash up there.

$134,688 is the median household income. Median home costs here, also a little bit high, but not as high as some of these areas. No, 392,000. 400. That's not that terrible. That's incredibly affordable if you're making $170,000 a year. Exactly. That's not bad at all. A little bit of history of this town.

In 1643, John Griffin and Michael Humphrey, they started a tar and turpentine business. Jesus. And then a few years later, an Indian guy named Mana Hananus started a fire which destroyed all the tar that belonged to Griffin.

Get out of here with your tar, God damn it. Another thing, on Tuesday, December 20th, 1859, the two-story patent safety fuse factory. Uh-oh. Located near the center of town exploded. Yeah. Just exploded. Just gunpowder. Yeah.

Killed seven women and one man. And the blast injured several other people, including the factory owner. The factory made cord fast-burning fuse. is used for blasting. So like dynamite, that fuse for dynamite, yeah, which resulted in the explosion, obviously. Fast-burning ones. Fast-burning.

Yeah, well, you know, that's funny. Just people with no fingers buying those all the time. Wow, I got nothing to lose. Fuck it. Built for the guy that doesn't have time for a speech after he lights the dynamite. No time for that horse shit. He doesn't want any hero coming in and putting it out.

This thing is going fast. Pouring water on it or licking his finger and hitting it. It's... Reviews of this town, because I've never been here. I don't know what this is all about. Here's five stars. Feels like a Hallmark movie sometimes here. I believe that.

That's a lot of these little quaint towns kind of feel like that. So many trees. It's so beautiful. Trees, they have little main streets and little shops on them. Shet loads of snow in the winter. Totally. A quaint New England town that caters to families is safe, has great schools and beautiful parks, lots of recreation around.

Could be boring if you're safe. single in looking for more nightlife. Yeah, this is a married with kids and a yard suburb. This isn't, I'm out trolling for, you know, trim over here. That's not what's going on. So there's that love that New York City is close by for when you want that excitement. Two and a half hours isn't that close. That's not close at all. That's a pretty good track there. That's all day round trip. Jesus. Yeah. I mean, you can take a train, I guess, but. He'll be exhausted. Here's two stars. I know a lot of underemployed middle-aged people, including myself, that have been unemployed and are having or have had to or have had a very hard time finding employment

in their field for what they're worth, which I don't think that's regional. I think that goes for everywhere. What's going on? Yeah. That's just America. Also, what's your worth? Who's to say? Doesn't the market determine that?

Well, yeah, what they're worth is, here's my mortgage payment. Yeah. Here's my car payment. I got my kids school. I'm worth whatever it costs for all the shit to wrong. That's what I'm worth. That's what my talent is worth. Absolutely.

And then finally, two stars. There's no one-star reviews of this joint, by the way. Two-star, there are tons of restaurants, but the nightlife is awful. It's very family-oriented. So if you're looking to settle down and, you know, come, take it down a notch. This is a great place to go. But otherwise, it doesn't seem like it's real. It's tough to pick them up at Chili's every week.

Not a party town. Yeah. Yeah. The Applebee's waitresses can only do so much. You know what I mean? They can only go out with so many people. in this town, really. I mean, it's tough.

You're going to bang one a few times. Things to do here, they have Simsbury celebrates. This is their holiday affair here, where they have a whole town in all these different places, the library churches, the Scout Hall, all these different events. They have the Nutcracker. They have that. They're going to put on a thing of that. They have a live nativity scene, which is always creepy.

At Scout Hall, they're going to have a show called K. kinetic yukes, like ukuleles. Kinetic ukuleleys. I don't know how you would do that. But then there is selfies with Santa and Jingles the Elf. I like that better. Selfies. As long as Jingles is there, then it's fine.

I don't want it. Just to be. That feels like they're setting it up to rob them all. Right? Jingles the elf. That sounds like a horror movie. We don't have a camera. You can take selfies with us and get lost.

Take a fucking hike. He's drunk anyway and trying to fuck a chick so that she shits sideways. What did he say? I can't even remember, yeah. You're not going to shit right for a week. You're not going to shit right for a week. That's what it was, yeah. There's also performances by faculty and staff from the falsetti School of Music.

All right. Oh, boy. Family cornhole games with cider and donuts. Smoors and fire pits, they have. An ice carving demonstration. Jesus, this sounds bleak. Let me tell you. This performance is here by Bryson Lang, the professional comedy juggler.

Oh. Oh, God, Jesus Christ killed me. I swear to God, I'd rather, I would rather be, I would rather be beaten to death by 705-year-olds than watch a comedy juggler for five minutes. In the 80s, there was one guy that was pretty good. But it was, I mean, because it wasn't just the. the normal dumb shit, you know what I mean? I mean, it's normal dumb shit now. But he was like the originator of the normal dumb shit.

I remember there was a couple of guys that did an act together. That was like kind of a famous thing in the 80s. There was a guy that had like, he had a bowling ball and an egg and he called it like the, the natural enemy of the egg. I remember this. This sounds familiar to me, actually. And then he was like, then he juggled an apple with the bowling ball and an egg and he would take a bite out of the apple every time it came down. Yeah. And then the grand finale is to smash the egg on his face.

Yeah, he did like comedy shows. Like he was on like, I don't know if his evening at the improv, but stuff like that. He'd see him on tonight show. He was great. Shit like that. But then that turned into this shit. Now we have this, unfortunately, here. That said, let's talk about some murder here.

Okay. Crazy murder. Okay. Let's start out hot November 20th, 2014. It's 8 p.m. Yeah. In Simsbury here. It's dark.

Yeah, it's dark. out by night. It's November. It's cold and dark, by the way. It's dark as shit. Yeah. So, and there's going to be a light that's missing in this area, too, that'll contribute to the darkness. There's a car driving south on Iron Horse Boulevard. Now, the driver in their headlights sees a woman off to the side of the road lying on the road bleeding. And just caught it in the headlights. Yeah. So this driver calls 911. Mm-hmm. It calls 911. It says it looks like maybe this lady, fell off a bicycle.

She's in the road bleeding. So, you know, maybe you can want to send somebody out for that, possibly. Is she alert and everything? Is she talking? No, no. She fell hard. She fell hard, yeah. So we don't know.

But there's no bicycle right there that they can see. But he came to the conclusion that it was a bike. He said it looked like by this position and it's pitch blackout and he just put his headlights over a body. So I don't think he searched for a bike either. I mean, if you fall off a bike, the bike might go off that way. Sure. Sure. I've watched far too many of those where a killer leaves a body.

My first thing is, watch out everybody's in danger. Yeah. So the first responders show up here. Yeah. And they said that when the first officer showed up, several people were standing over a woman who was lying on her left side, covered in blood, next to the footpath near the Rotary Park playground. So now several people have gathered now. It started out with just the drive. Everybody's getting a look. Yeah, and the driver's still there. This, where it is, is a very common bike and jogging path.

Okay, yeah. Also, so there's a lot of, like, pedestrian activity on that path off to the side. And it's, like, one of the main roads in town, too. So there's a lot of car activity, too. Now, the officer finds the woman unresponsive, laying on her left side, like we said, bleeding from what looks, bleeding from what looks like the chest. Okay. Which is an odd injury to have falling off a bike.

Bicycle. She still has a headlamp on her head. She was out, you know, jogging. Yeah. I can see where you got it now. Still wearing a reflective vest. Okay. Her clothing all looks intact. She has her pants around her ankles.

Nobody tries to attack her or anything like that. There's no visible wounds on her hands or anything like that. It doesn't look like there's any kind of struggle. It looks like she must have just either fallen or they start thinking that possibly it's a hit and run at this point because they're not messing whether too much. They're waiting for the paramedics and everybody like that. So CPR is started. She's loaded into an ambulance, transported to a nearby hospital. She is, from what we understand, technically still alive when they load her into the hospital. I don't know how, though. Might have been a faint heartbeat or possible pulse, but she is pronounced dead at the hospital

before 9 p.m. So within an hour of the call coming in, she's pronounced dead. So we find out who she was and her name is Melissa Joan Millen, M-I-L-A-N. She's born October 30th, 1960, and she's a real go-getter, high-powered lady. Yeah, I mean, well, anybody who gets a headlamp in a reflective vest and goes out in the cold and dark, they're pretty into working out or whatever she's doing. And she's concerned about her safety, too. Exactly. She's to see her. She's all buttoned up. She has all the right equipment. She has everything she needs. was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Her parents are, oh, Bunny and, yeah, Bunny is her mom's name. And her dad's name is Tito. Nice. And she's raised in Simsbury. She has a couple of brothers. She went to

Simsbury High School. She was secretary of her senior class, co-captain of the cross-country team. She was in the orchestra. She did the string quartet. She's a very active lady here. Everybody says she's like a natural leader. She's always a leader of everything here. So she graduated from Simsbury and went to Middlebury College in Vermont and graduated in 84 with a Bachelor of Arts. She went into the insurance business right away. Okay. Entry level.

She worked at Sun Life and she, you know, started her assent in her career. And she does very well for herself, as we'll find out here. In 1999, she gets married at some point in here. She finds a husband who then they have a son named Zachary here. And she ended up somewhere in here going back to school, going back to Harvard, though. Wow. Where she gets an executive MBA, which is from Harvard. From Harvard, which is.

That's impressive. Very impressive, absolutely. But they take more people later in life like that, like in their third. I'm not sure if this was some sort of, like I said, I don't know if she was going five days a week and was there because she's working full time and has kids while this is going on. She's probably doing some online shit. Some kind of correspondence. It's 99, so that would be real. Oh, that wouldn't be online.

Yeah. Probably not. So she's got kids. She also does triathlons. Like, wow. I don't know where she gets time in the day when we talk about her life. Yeah. In 2001, she joined Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, Mass Mutual.

in Springfield, Massachusetts. That's where their corporate headquarters are, I guess. In 2002, she has a daughter named Victoria as well. Now, she's a triathlete. She trains with certain different groups that all do the things here. She competes in events all around the Northeast. That's like you running swimming, right? Yeah, I think so.

That's triathlete. She volunteered at the Connecticut Family Theater in West Hartford, where her kids took classes. She volunteered. She was like one of the soccer coaches. I don't know where she has time in the day for this, too. It's crazy. She's busy.

In 2012, she gets a divorce. Oh, no. Now, as part of the settlement, she is paying her husband monthly alimony. Wow. In the amount of, would you like to take a guess on the amount? $2,000 a month. $8,000 a month in alimony.

She is. Pilling it. She's paying him that. She means she's making a fortune. Fortune. Number one. But number two, she's paying money like an NFL running back for Alabama. Like, this is crazy.

Is she a shooting guard or an insurance lady? What's happening? That's incredible. That's nuts. So by 2014, she was senior vice president of the company. A huge insurance company. So she's doing great. She was the eighth highest paid person at the company.

Killer. Yeah, it sounds like it. So is her husband. Her husband's the 12th highest paid. Yeah, he's doing fantastic. She had a, she ran a retirement services portfolio. Yeah. And life insurance for corporate stuff has those kind of retirement things built into it.

She's got over a billion dollars that she's managing. She's got a team of analysts and she does, you know, she's real important in this business here. So the night of that we found her, November 20th, 2014, at 8 p.m. she went out, or a little before that, she went out to jog six miles as she does. Which, again, that's really, really. That's ambitious. Three back. That's ambitious for me. Yeah.

She's wearing all the reflective shit in the headlamp and she's safe and she does this all the time. So the police's initial theory is hit and run. It's got to be. They think she must have been hit by a car, the position of her body in the road. Because her body went like over a guardrail in the middle and ended up on the side. So they're like over the jogging path and into the road over the guardrail. So they're like there's no obvious, there's no weapon anywhere. There's no signs of a struggle or anything like that.

It looks like it had to be some kind of hit and run. Somebody hauling ass down the bike path, though. Knock her off or something. I don't know. So they secured the area. They canvassed the road. They, you know, looked all up and down the road forever. of vehicles with a collision, you know, any damage on them, blood or anything like that.

They got witness statements. Then, though, they get everything back from the hospital and they find out it's not a hit and run at all. Not even close to it. It's actually cause of death is determined to be a stab wound to the chest. One? One single stab wound to the chest. That's up close.

penetrating wound that punctured her heart and lung. Ooh. Killed her pretty fast. No other injuries. No broken bones. No skull fractures. No blunt. And her body tried to survive.

Apparently, yeah. Well, she's a very healthy woman. She's not, you know, she's in a prime of her life and healthy, too. So it's one single stab wound right in the chest. So it's very efficient as far as murders go. It's almost hit. Manworthy. Yeah, to be able to do one shot and know the person's done and walk away.

Walk off, yeah. That's a lot. So, yeah, it's either somebody's real, you know, just has a horseshoe up their ass. They're very lucky or, you know, as a murderer as far as a lucky murderer would go, hey, I got it in one shot. Or this is a very concerted effort and someone knows what they're doing. So the news breaks here. And it's a big deal because she's a senior vice president of a big company in the air. and stabbed on a public bike path in a suburban town on a weeknight.

Like, this is crazy shit. It wasn't three in the morning. It was 8 p.m. And you usually suspect a husband or a significant other in a case like this. But the last person that you want to suspect is a guy that's getting paid $8,000 a month. That's the thing. It would make sense if he died. They'd look at her.

Right. But the other way around is kind of strange. No, I want her to live forever. Do you want her to keep work? I want her to rise and rise and rise. I want to make so much money. Mass Mutual releases a statement saying Melissa was an incredible person and an outstanding leader. And we were fortunate to have her as part of our mass mutual family for more than a decade.

We're encouraged to learn that there are developments in her case and continue to keep Melissa and her family in our thoughts. Now, the developments are the fact that they found out she was stabbed and not run over. Now, the initial leads here. Okay. This is a town of, you know, what we say, 24,000 people or something here. You know, 24,000 people and not a lot of homicides. This was the first, you know, homicide since 2012. So it's a very efficient assassination style strike. That's what's so odd. So the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad comes in, because especially because she's a high-powered executive, that's also a possibility that they're thinking of this. This could be a big deal. This could be some international, you know, this could be some assassin sent over from Sri Lanka, a killer, and then get back on a plane. We have no idea.

Or there could be a man sitting in an Altoona McDonald's. Yes. With a big knife in his backpack. We don't know. So they come in, the Office of the States Attorney's General. Attorneys is briefed. The FBI will end up on this. But the first place, they look, ex-husband, just because that's the first one you have to look at.

Two, anybody maybe at Mass Mutual with a motive, maybe somebody that wanted her job, possibly, somebody who got fired, somebody who didn't get what they needed out of it. It's very rare that an executive ascends to an executive office and didn't step on somebody's fucking head on the way up. Yeah, exactly. You never know. And also, they want to look at sex offenders in the area. Oh. Just because it's a public thing. It's a woman.

And maybe, you know, they could have tried to sexually assault her in some way. And she, you know, wasn't having it. Maybe this wasn't the plan. Right. So who knows. Now, the ex-husband, he's paying her $8,000, or she's paying him $8 a month and sal in alimony. So, you know, they talked to him because they thought maybe, obviously, he wouldn't want her to stop paying the money. But maybe there's been friction because of this.

Maybe they've been fighting over it. Maybe she gets mad at him and then whatever. So who knows. But he's quickly ruled out as a suspect. He has a rock solid alibi. Yeah. And he's not... And he's doing great there.

So there's no evidence of anything. He cooperated with police and everything they wanted to polygraphs cleared him. Okay. So the problem is, though, as this investigation goes on and they find no other real suspects, yeah? Basically, everyone in Simsbury just assumes he did it. Oh, that sucks. Yeah.

There's a detective that says that he talks, he talks about the husband's experience after this, and he said that this poor guy basically had a shroud of suspicion. He said there are children who want to know what happened to their mother, and there's an ex-husband who had this shroud of suspicion hovering over his head the whole time. Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a better way to shop with Poshmark. Poshmark.com. Absolutely. There's so much cool stuff on Poshmark.

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poshmark.com slash small town murder and get $10 off your first purchase. That's P-O-S-M-A-R-K-com slash small-town murder. Now back to the show. So they were like it kind of sucks because we cleared it. Like as far as the police, he was not even, they never thought about him again. I almost have to put out a press release to stop fucking with this man. Well, they did too. I mean, they said he's been cleared as a suspect. It doesn't matter.

That's rumors are rumors. I mean, people whisper and they go, oh, because he got away with it because he makes $8,000 a month off of her. So he paid a guy. It's all small town horseshit. Then there's the mass mutual theory. She manages a huge portfolio with a billion dollars in retirement service. assets for Mass Mutual. She had access to information that maybe could have made her dangerous to somebody. You never know. So they looked at every business contact she had, everybody that worked

under her, every executive above her, her clients, the vendors, literally everybody that she has contact with at Mass Mutual, they even look at consultants, everybody, even people who work at other companies that may have talked to her once five years ago. What about you? So the state's attorney, deputy chief state's attorney, said, I hate to call anything a theory. Certainly, it's an aspect of her life that has to be examined because any person involved in any aspect of her life, personal or professional, might have some information we need to pursue and we will pursue. Okay. But nothing comes of that avenue either. It's not the ex-husband. It's not, it's not anybody that work. Frustrating. Frustrating. They have a mass vigil for her,

by the way. They're 100 people, but a big visual. This is a couple days after she's killed. She's described as a pillar of the community and her friends. And one person said, quote, regardless of her formidable responsibilities at home and work, she made every effort to mentor newbie triathletes and provide moral and other support to her team members year in and year out without fail. So they also set up the Melissa Millen Scholarship Fund as well. here at Middlebury College where she received her bachelor's degree.

So, yeah, the fund was established to support women with high financial needs here. So it's still going on, I believe, too. Yeah, smart ladies that don't have money, basically. So the investigation now, they have nothing. So they say, back to basics, basically. Uh-oh. Okay. A new theory that they have that's possible, they have to go back and look at the bike path itself.

Maybe there's something there they miss because all these big theories are coming up shit. So maybe the killer was familiar with the bike path and the street lamps were out in this particular area of the bike path. So maybe they were familiar with the bike path and selected a stretch where it was dark, essentially. So they said whoever attacked her had to have positioned themselves to intercept her in motion and didn't leave a weapon or any trace. So November 2015, a year later, they have nothing still. Oh, no. Nothing. So the Simsbury police, this is when they, they wait a year to do this.

They closed down Iron Horse Boulevard and Rotary Park for four days. Like we got, it's been a year. Like now it's a priority that we really solved this thing where they couldn't, shouldn't have done that. It could have done that back then, you know, two days into it. Okay, we have nothing. Let's close everything down. Like there's going to be a knife and DNA out here. Just sitting there.

We're no one seeing it for a year. And I'm sure the weather has had no effect on it. The Connecticut weather, the snowfall and the frost and the rains. They close the dog park. They close everything. The FBI's evidence response team is there. This is a serious operation. The chief of police said it's been almost a year since the death of Melissa on Iron Horse Boulevard.

The Simsbury Police Department has worked very closely with federal state and municipal law enforcement agencies, Melissa's family, friends, and acquaintances, community members, organizers, and private companies to find the person or persons responsible for this crime. The investigation has led us back to Iron Horse Boulevard. Jesus. I'm going to add where we should have fucking stayed in the first place because that's where the shit happened. Yeah.

Wow. An outdoor crime scene a year later. Going to be great. All sorts of shit. Perfect. Everywhere. They do a four-day search that produces Uygatz. Zero.

Is that right? Zero. I could have told them that. Big old zero on that one. There's also an anonymous donor offering a $40,000 reward, which is a decent chunk of change. By 2017, three fucking years. Three years. Finally, it's added to these Connecticut cold case units open file.

Shit. Which is crazy. The FBI is still involved. Everybody's still working on this thing. They, in November of 2017, on the three-year anniversary, NBC Connecticut's troubleshooters team reported that the investigators had identified a, quote, suspicious vehicle on surveillance video from the area on the night of the murder. Wow. They also said they collected more than 100 items of physical and digital evidence and have been provided to the state for reanalysis as well because by 2017, there's even more. sophisticated ways of analysis.

And every year it gets so much more for all this crime fighting shit here. So they're being retested, including the reflective wear and the headlamp that she was wearing. Go ahead. Now, one of the routes they went on was looking at registered sex offenders. Remember we said that? But they kind of dismissed it. Did it fast. Well, number one, there's only like four sex offenders in the whole town.

Yeah. So right there, it goes quick. It's not like they had 100 people to talk to. It's a 24,000 person town. You know, talk to one. You're almost done. Pretty upper crusty. You know what I mean?

Yeah, they probably know the other? Hey, you know that other pervert that lives down the street? How many perverts do you know that live in the neighborhood? We can probably just go to the meeting that you all go to once a week that's court ordered. Maybe that. Now, there is one guy who's a sex offender. He's a young man. And he is a sex offender registered living at his grandparents' address, which is less than two miles from the bike

path. Okay. So he's the one that they give the most credence to just because he lives so close by. He lives closer than any of the other perverts. Proximity. Yeah, it's a proximity pervert. That's what he is. That's how it goes.

So this is William Winters Leverette with two T's and no E, L-E-V-E-R-E-T-T-T. So that's him, Will, here. He was born in 1991. He was a pretty young guy. grew up in Colorado Springs, actually. Oh, there you go. In Colorado. Didn't graduate high school.

He started his senior year, realized he was failing and wasn't going to make it. So he just dropped out and took his GED. Sure. Which we've said, who cares? That's fine. If he's not planning on going to some college, that'll work. So he completes his GED while he's still 17. Now, the cops had already talked to him.

They interviewed him like day two of the investigation. Yeah. He said, I don't know what you're talking about. There's no physical evidence. He had no motive. He doesn't know where he's never met her. Why would he do this? And he was friendly in the interviews.

And his Colorado offense, why he's a registered sex offender, involved a child, which makes him a piece of shit and an awful person, but it doesn't project a, like, stranger adult woman attack. That doesn't predict that behavior at all. Usually that guy would be afraid of adult women or, you know, not. Was he an adult when he did that? He was 18. So.

Okay. On a child. And it's not like a 16 year old that he went to high school with. It's a child. It's an 11-year-old that he messed with. So that's not good. Not good at all. So they just moved on, the detectives.

They never, they were like, he diddled a kid. He's not going to go stabbo an adult woman. Those things don't go together. So a little bit about his history. In 2009, when he was 17, he was. He's sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl who was a friend of his little sister. Yuck. Now, right away, huge pile of shit.

Any 17-year-old boy that doesn't want two 11-year-olds to get the fuck as far away from them as possible so they can go smoke weed without someone telling their mom, I don't trust that 17-year-old at all. So I can try to finger another 17-year-old. Finger one, go jerk off somewhere. Yeah. Smoke weed, drink some of the fucking Blackberry schnapps mom has under the goddamn. I'm saying, whatever it is, you're going to tell mom if I do it, so fuck off. That's a healthy 17-year-old.

Yeah, digging into that E&J Brandy that's in the back of the fridge for fucking eggnog in December. Fuck, man. Yep, that's the one. So that's what it goes. So anyway, the little girl would come over to the house to play, and William inappropriately touched her on multiple occasions over a period of months. So this was a long thing here. They investigated him while he was still in high school. And according to his own statement during his confession later on or before that, he was investigated by the Colorado Springs Police Department and was arrested in 2010.

He pled guilty on May 23, 2011 to a single count of fourth degree sexual assault on a child. The degree doesn't matter there. That's just a bad charge. The degree is really irrelevant, I think, when you put sexual assault. on a child. I know what you did. Yeah. Colorado sentences him to probation.

Uh-huh. So no additional prison time beyond the pre-trial county lockup. Plus, he had to pay $431 in restitution. Well, I mean, that'll make it all better. Is that what innocence is worth? That should cover the therapy for the next 25 years, right? That should work. Good job, asshole.

Head on down to Walmart and buy yourself a new innocence for 437. It's aisle 12 in case you're wondering. He also paid $6,000 in additional fees, and he was required to give a DNA sample and register as a sex offender. He put it this way. He said, Colorado's, let me count them, really, really, really, really, really, really, really weird with offenses. He said that? He said that. They don't have a graduated structure.

So no matter what you've done, the sentence is always the same. And so he spent 16 months in county lockup awaiting trial. He said, I didn't serve time, but I did. I was just in county lockup, apparently rougher than real prison. And that you'll hear everywhere. County jail, way worse than prison. People in Arizona, that's a strategy of the prosecutors as they try to delay the trial long enough to where the people will plead guilty because they're so sick and dying and in the heat and everything else. from the county jail that they'll plead just to get to a prison that has food and air conditioning.

They don't fuck the air. Madison Street got overhauled because of that, I think. It's fucking disgusting the way they treat people there. It's gross. So he went on to explain that Colorado uses a 10 years to life probation framework, which means a minimum of 10 years of supervision with the possibility of lifetime probation depending on how you do in treatment. So they can let you off after 10 years or keep you on. Colorado is really trying to rehabilitate. table. So, yeah, so in August of 2011, he got out of the legal system there and his grandparents took him in in Simsbury. So he moved there in August 2011 at 20 years old.

Connecticut doesn't have the same thing. They don't have an equivalent of 10 years to life. So when it's transferred to Connecticut, they look at 10 years to life as 100 years of probation is what he said. Because Connecticut doesn't recognize the indefinite term of life. It's got to be a something. So it's 10 years. do 100, basically. So he had to offend a sex offender therapy group in Hartford every week. And that's a condition of his ongoing probation under Connecticut's deal. So he had to notify the state of any address changes and all that kind of shit. Sex offender shit. Yeah. Now, his grandparents here, they live on Goodrich Road, which is less than two miles from the bike path here.

and the grandfather is a poet and not just fucking around. Like he bought a house from poetry money. Like his living was made as a poet, which is very interesting. I don't even know how you make money off poetry, but I guess published things back in the day. Yeah, people buy books of poetry, right? Yeah, they must. So when William moves to Simsbury in August 2011,

his grandfather wrote a letter to all the neighbors on the block. A poetry. Yeah. A flowery language poetry. Poor shit. And hand delivered it to everybody. Very charming. Very charming sex offender notification.

It's a terrible use of poetry. It's the most. The most charming sex offender notification that they've ever received. I'll say that much right now. I believe it. Don't soften the blow of my grandson lives with me now when he fucked an 11 or tried to. I picture him like handed a letter over. And it's got like a.

You know, like one of those wax seals on it that's fancy, making it look nice. And then he does like a little song and dance out there about how his son won't rape your kid. And he won't rape your kid. He's doing better. Some, yeah. So he characterized his offense in Colorado as a mistake. There was a mistake. And he's saying William is really harmless, you know, don't worry about it.

Yeah. Whatever. There's a lot of crimes that are considered mistakes. but that one is, I mean, you can't mistake that. He's saying the arrest was a mistake, like the whole thing was a mistake. Not he made a mistake.

The whole thing was a mistake. He's actually a good kid and he's harmless and just things got out of hand. Everybody made a bunch of mistakes out there. Yeah. So the neighbors are pretty shocked by this. But nobody got crazy. Nobody said, you know, started a petition

or started freaking out or anything like that. They just went, well, we'll see what happens, I guess. We're going to do, basically. And his history did not set off the red flags for cops because, like we said, an adult victim profiles wrong. They're profiling who would do this, and that's not the guy usually. So, yeah, they said, I guess generally reoffense patterns generally treats child sexual abuse offenders and stranger violence offenders as very different things that don't overlap hardly ever. So when they ran down the list and they talked to him and let him go, they didn't even think twice about it. He had a job.

He lived with his elderly grandparents. He went to church. He went to his sex offender groups every week. Nobody had a problem with him. So they moved on. When he first came, when he was 20 to Connecticut, his plan was to start a small business. He opened up a farm stand selling organic fruits and vegetables. Sure.

That takes a lot of work. It also doesn't last because you probably have to know a lot about it. that shit to make it out a success. Probably seasonal. Well, you can't just be some 20-year-old kid from Colorado who's not a farmer. You know what I mean? You just start selling.

Everybody in Colorado is a fucking farmer. We're not selling fucking purple haze here, though. No, there are so much, that's probably the farmer market capital of America apart from Portland. Yeah, but everyone's not growing organic fruits and vegetables, especially 18-year-old sex offenders. He's not an organic fruit and vegetable. Seems like everybody's growing something and selling it.

I would bet that that's not his... Probably not his best thing. Probably not the thing he knows how to do it, 20, and just getting out of jail for sex events. So he's going to grow this shit in Connecticut? Does he... I don't know if he's growing it. He's selling it.

Irrelevant because it doesn't last long. August 2013, he gets a job at Fresh Market in Avon, Connecticut. Fresh Market is a little grocery store-type deal. So they had opened in 2012. So he starts in the produce department. He's very interested in fruits of vegetables. And then he moved up to front-end manager after a while. Nice.

So he gets a job. That's good money. Promotion. Now, a coworker called him, quote, kind of a weird dude. Yep. Yeah, I believe that. Right. Spring of 2014, he meets a woman at the fresh market named Kerry Bennett,

that'll end-Double T. She worked in the bakery. He was working in produce or the manager or whatever at the time. So they become friends. Now, Bennett was a member of a very small evangelical church run out of somebody's house. Oh. Yeah, someday there's going to be. We're going to hear about that someday.

I'll tell you that much. It was called Open Gate Ministries. Starting in 2014, she invited William to attend church services with her. Yeah. So he went. He became a member of Open Gate Ministries starting in March of 2015. Now, Kerry and Will are not romantically involved. There's no romance here.

Oh, but just friends. Just friends. I don't think he's real interested in her. Put it that way. No? No. Is she 11? She's too old.

Yeah. Yeah. 11 year old, people who want to fuck 11 year olds usually don't want to fuck adult women. Generally, yeah. So according to what William said, he said that she made it clear that she just wanted to be friends. He said later, I was attracted to her, yes, but I was just very happy being her friend. He was just happy somebody who was friends with him, basically. Right. So by the fall of 2014, he's 23 years old, working at the fresh market, living with his grandparents, attending his sex registry, sex offender therapy group in Hartford, hanging out with Kerry.

He drives a shit car. He carries a flip phone, a shitty track phone he's got. Oh. This is 2014, mind you. That's crazy. Yeah, there's that. Basically, he's from all, if you look at him from the, you know, 30,000. feet here, he is doing everything that he was told to do.

Yep. By the court. He got a job. He's not fucking kids. He's going to church. He's doing all the things that society says make you a good person, basically. Make you better. Yeah.

So the therapy group, he attended, the group starts around four or five and runs roughly until about 630. So on the day of November 20th, he drove himself there to the meeting and then drove home in Hartford, Hartford Rush Hour, took about 45 minutes. Yeah. So, like we said, the cops have already talked to him, didn't track. So as of 2018 here, William had changed his registered address from his grandparents' house to a place called the January Center, which is actually a Connecticut Department of Correction Facility located at the McDougall Walker Correctional Institute in Suffield. It provides sex offender treatment and reentry housing for offenders who are either near the end of their sentence or actively on probation.

So, do you get kicked out? We're not sure what's going on here. It's almost like a halfway house type deal. They can be housed there as a step down or as a transitional placement. So if you, like, if you are moving and you don't have a place to go where you can't, whether, you know, sex offenders are allowed to be. They'll let you live there for a little while. So you're not like a homeless sex offender, which is. worse, which nobody wants sex offenders just wandering the street home.

I want them inside behind closed doors. I don't need them ever being homeless. There should always be housing for them. Absolutely. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So that day, he went to the therapy group. So Kerry here, apparently in mid-September 2018, Carrie Bennett asked William to take a walk with her.

Yeah. She wanted to discuss with him some behaviors of his that had begun to bother her. They make her uncomfortable. Are you sucking my dick? No? Okay. Why are we talking about this then? You can just stop calling me back because we're not in a fucking relationship.

You don't need to take a walk with me and tell me my shortcomings. Thank you. Chick from work. You know what I mean? Like, what are we talking about here? Yeah. Like, we're not in a relationship. You don't do this.

I wouldn't tell a woman. Let me tell you what's wrong with you. I got some things that we really need to discuss. When you chew your cereal out, fuck you. Yeah. It's crazy. Other than when you're in the break room, you fill in the fucking blank. It's crazy.

So here we go. According to this, she talks about small lies. Carrie was concerned about a few minor lies about will not, basically having said that he had not done the same thing, most one thing is buying a book, which I told her I didn't buy, but I actually did buy, and then telling her that the letter that came

that had the order form that allowed me to get the book that I didn't know much about when, in fact, I did. So literally little lies. He said he bought a book and he didn't buy a book and he did. And she's going to sit him down and talk to him about it. Depends on the book. But yeah. What are we talking about?

Mind your business. Yeah, but it's an anarchist cookbook or some shit like that. If it's hot young kids or some shit, that's the name of the book, then yeah, that's a book we got to talk about. But otherwise, how to groom children. Yeah, for dummies. Then, yeah, we'll talk about it. Yeah, he bought a book he didn't tell her. When the mailing order arrived with the order form, he told her he didn't know what it was and she caught it as a lie.

Okay. Second, his driving. She was concerned about how he was driving. I don't give a fuck what you think. Mind your business, lady. Unless you're in the pastures. My eyes are closed, then shut the fuck up. Yeah, that's right.

If a wheel comes off or something, let me know. Give me a nudge. Kerry, stop making me defend a pedophile. Isn't that sad? Isn't that sad? Fuck. But if you said, hardcore living room evangelical church member or pedophile, I'd have to think long and hard about that,

who I'd rather hang out with for five minutes. Like if I had to have a conversation with one of them, I'd go, fuck, that's hard. That's really hard. This is going to be nauseating either way. At least a sex offender will pretend he doesn't want to fuck kids in my presence, and maybe we can talk about baseball for 10 minutes, whereas this person, there's going to be a lot of Jesus. I don't want to hear. Gary, I got a feeling you don't got a lot of friends.

Yeah. He told her on the walk. he said that he was not able to keep secrets. And he said, I told her there was something that she did not know about and that she did not, that I didn't think she would understand or be able to forgive me for. You think this book and this driving stuff. You think me making left hand turns with no directional is fucking bad. Wait until I tell you this. Yeah.

So Kerry said, I don't think so. There's nothing you could say that'll make me not forgive you. What are you talking about? So he said, well, I committed a crime. And she said, no, you didn't. You didn't commit shit because he's a real quiet kind of normal guy. So she's like, no, no. He told her, he told her no.

She said, are we going crazy or something? He said, I'm not going crazy. He said, you know, I've told you about my sex offense and you know about that, but there's something worse. What? And she said, why? Would you do kill somebody? Like, what are we talking about here?

You know, and he said, quote, I said, yeah. And she said, who was it? And I said, do you remember the murder along Iron Horse Boulevard? And she said, yes. And then I said, that was, I did that. And she's like, she kind of looked at me blankly. And she said, what do you mean? And I said, I killed that woman.

Why did she need clarity? Are you, because it's out of left field. She's literally like, I'm a little annoyed with you getting a book order form saying you didn't know something about it. And he's like, I killed a bitch. You're like, what the fuck? What do you mean you killed somebody? Yeah, this is crazy. She said, are you sure you're not going nuts here?

And he said, I'm pretty positive of what I did. I know what I did. So they get back to their cars and Kerry turns to him and turns to William and said, what are we going to do now? And William said, well, I think you know what we have to do. I'd be afraid he's going to murder me right now. Well, you know what we have to do. You've got to die.

Yeah, I would come to if he said, you know what we have to do. So, Kerry said, I think we need to go talk first. Uh-huh. And she called her pastor, Michael Trisinski, the co-paster of Open Gate Ministries. And Michael and his wife and the other co-pastor Collette ran the church out of their home. And it's just a few people that would come to this church. Not a huge congregation here. So Kerry called Collette, one of the pastors.

And according to William, quote, she called our pastor and she said, I need you, I need you to sit down with me. I need you to sit down with me and said, I need you to sit down. Will and I have something. I forget exactly what she said, but something along the lines of extremely important to talk about or extremely serious, I think was her exact wording. Yeah. So she just started this to fucking sidestep taxes and now she's got a, yeah. She's got something. Yeah.

Oh, boy. So she agreed to meet with them. and according there was some time before the meeting so he and Kerry they had to kill some time on the way they said well I'll meet you at my house but not for an hour so they said what do we do so they stopped for ice cream that was a weird as licking the cone well you know how do you have a normal conversation now with this person over ice cream you know I don't know how to work child child molesting murderer that he's a name to let's have some vanilla what are you just wow I'll have, you know, double scoop, Rocky Road, put it up there. He said, we had a little extra time, so we stopped to have a last ice cream together before we went to talk to our pastor. They got to the house and here they are.

The pastor said she came over with Will, asked if we could pray before we started, then Will pretty much told us, asked us if we remembered the case of the woman being stabbed in Simsbury, and I had a vague recollection of it. He pretty much told us that was him that he had done it. So he said, the Collette, the pastor said, we were stunned. My first question to him was, Will, are you sure you did this? And he said, yes, I'm sure. And then Colette's husband, the other pastor said, you know what we have to do? And he said, Will said, yes, I have to go to the police and turn myself in.

So Collette said he was very childlike, very trusting of others. He opened up to us about his life, his past, when he's gone through. We would have never expected this. They said he's a very good member of the church, very helpful. This is a very trusting type of guy. So September 19th, 2018, 9 p.m., Michael Trisinski, another member of the Open Gate Ministries, and Kerry Bennett all get into a car with Will. They drive to the police department.

And at 915, on a Wednesday night, they walk. into the lobby. He walks in and a blue shirt with three people, stands at the dispatcher's window and says, I'm here to turn myself in for the murder on Iron Horse Boulevard almost four years ago. Whoa. Imagine you're the dispatcher. You're like, what's that? Holy shit. So he was like, okay, sure. So the church people hug him and then he goes back behind the glass there. Now, here we go. This is what happened. And he's willing to talk. So he goes in. He said, he woke up in his grandmother's house or grandparents' house on Goodrich Road in Simsbury. He was scheduled to attend his weekly sex offender therapy group in Hartford that afternoon.

The group started at four or five, ran until about 6.30. He said he tried to text the woman he'd been hoping to spend time with. Now, we don't know if this is Kerry or somebody else. That's the other thing. We think it might be somebody else because he mentioned something about a woman he met months before who was going to find out about his registry. And we knew Kerry knew about that. Sure, yeah.

Yeah, which is why she recruited him to the church because she's like, you're down pretty low. You need some help. Yeah. Want to have somebody tell you about Jesus in their living room? Well, I got the place for you. That's fucking crazy. So he said he tried to text this woman. He said that it was simple text, just how are you at normal greetings, and she didn't respond.

So he went to the therapy. group, drove there attended. He left with a headache. He said he left around 6.30. And they said, well, how are you feeling when he left? And when he left. And he said, well, I had a headache. And I felt, quote, unquote, lonely. Lonely. So he walked to his car in the lot, got in the driver's seat and says he was holding his flip phone, but the phone fell out of his hand and hit the pavement. And the battery popped out of the back. Remember that that happened with flip phones? Now, his story is why they don't have any cell phone data is because there's no he said well he was just didn't feel like reassembling his phone didn't feel like oh pop no easy it is to go click they click right in i understand i was so

defeated that day the battery popped out and i said fuck it fuck it he said i was just like oh well i'm not going to deal with this now so i put it in my car and forgot about it all right um he said most people get convicted one of the cops later on said most people get convicted because of their cell phone. So this part right here is very, very strange. Question. Yeah. So no cell tower pinging. We'd have no idea where he is. He goes home, according to him, he goes home at 7 p.m. gets there. He's alone at his grandparents' house. He said he didn't know where they were, possibly visiting a neighbor or doing something. Even the dog, which he says he was looking to play with the dog, he's looking for some kind of

interaction with people. His grandparents are gone. He doesn't have any friends. He said, so he was looking for the dog, but the dog they must have taken with them because the dog's not there either. Fuck. He described the dog as sweet and fun. There's no... Sounds like he's going to molest it. Yeah. That's how you describe a fucking 11-year-old.

Sweet and fun. Sweet and fun. He was very kind and he loved peanut butter. But that means there's zero affection in this house to a man who's craving some right now, and that's horrifying. Yep. He said, my grandparents weren't home, so I was a little lonely there. He stayed at the house for somewhere between five. five and 15 minutes, didn't eat, didn't make any phone calls, didn't put his shit back together, his phone, nothing.

He said five, maybe 10 minutes, probably five to 10 at most. 15 minutes would be a lot is the way he put it. Got back in his car, drove down into town. So Iron Horse Boulevard is a stretcher road that parallels the historic rail corridor through Simsbury. The road with the rail trail next to it and the bike path runs alongside the road are called Simsbury Greenway. or Iron Horse Boulevard. That's what it is. So it runs north and south through Simsbury.

There's a post office at one end, small commercial buildings, all that kind of shit along the sides. You can picture it. There's a rotary park. That's the name of it with a playground in the middle of this. The bike path runs along the east side of the road

with a guardrail separating the path from the road. Okay. So the street lamps in the path were at intervals. Some were blown out. So some were dark and stretches. but everybody, this is a safe path in a very upscale, nice neighborhood. People walk their dogs, they bike,

they jog, this is very common. He says, I got back in the car and drove to the center of town, then drove down Iron Horse Boulevard. My intention was to be around people. Yeah? See people walking their dogs and hopefully have some kind of contact

with a woman. That's what he said. He said, the hope developed as the evening went on. They said, he said, he said, and with the ultimate hopes of maybe, hey, I'll meet a woman and I could go somewhere. That's what the detective said. And he said, that was not my ultimate hope. There was hope that developed over the course of the evening. That was a hope. So he didn't leave the house looking

for to get laid. But as it developed, he's like, maybe I'll find a chick that'll talk to me. That's a fascinating fellow that leaves the house and hope gets bigger. Whereas usually, hope just starts to dwind. Oh, yeah. Well, we'll find out what he did first. Yeah. You'll see how it goes. So the first man on the path here, he parks at the the Simsbury Post Office, which is a free spot on a side street. He didn't want to pay for the meter. He gets out of his car, walks down the bike path. So he starts walking up and down. He encountered one person because it's cold out. It's getting late. So he ran into a man walking a white dog. He said the man was friendly. The dog was large and friendly. He asked the guy what kind of

dog it was. He couldn't remember four years later what kind of dog it was. He just said it was a white guy with a white dog. That's all I can remember. But that's the only human contact he said he had in this path, a brief conversation with a guy and a dog. So he said he walked the boulevard for about 15 minutes, then went back to his car. He said, he corrects himself in the interview about whether this was his first time on the path. He initially told detectives it was his first time. Then he said, actually, you know, I've told you, I told you I hadn't been there before. That's actually not true. I just remembered I had started riding my bike up and down that path early in the morning.

I had just gotten a new bike earlier in the morning. So he was on that path earlier in the morning with his bike. So he talks about the route he would take and all that kind of shit. So he said he's been doing this route for a couple of months. Sure. So, yeah, when he had the energy in the mornings. So he knew the path, he knew the parking, he knew where the lights were out. He knows the whole fucking path.

It's familiar. There's also a knife in his car. Why? They said, why is a knife in your glove compartment? And he said, well, I bought the knife weeks earlier intending it as a gift for my grandmother, but I just hadn't given it to her yet. Oh, boy. Just keep it in my glove compartment as you do. He told detectives that the package had never been open and the knife had been sitting in his car still in its retail packaging until that night, which is interesting.

He said, when I brought the knife with me, I do believe I was feeling maybe a slight bit of anger. Not really sure why. I don't know. And they said, anger at who? And he said, I don't know. It was something I really can't explain, just a feeling. So he goes back, pulls out of the post office parking lot in his car, starts driving south down Iron Horse Boulevard. He approached the intersection where the crosswalk crosses the boulevard, got to a stop sign, started to turn.

His headlights sweep across the bike path, and he saw a woman running. There's a cow. Reflective vest headlamp on. He said, as I was out driving, my headlights. caught a woman running in the path. She was very attractive about 5-5, wearing tight pink and black running clothes. She had a headlamp on.

I became mentally aroused. Wow. Anybody with a headlamp on, I'm like... Yeah. And a fucking reflective vest, which those are always the hottest. And I see guys on the road like spreading tar. I almost jump out and fucking stick it right in their mouth.

I can't help it. I can't believe you have the restraint. I come right in my pants. It's hard. Well, I know. I grip the steering of the road. The only reason I don't get out. Try squeezing the steering wheel as hard as you can and get some of it out.

I'm just sopping. He said, I drove a little further down, parked in a dark alley, passed people's choice, and got out. Yeah. He said she's wearing joggers clothes. I remember them being pink and black in either a polka dot it or stripe shape, just to know athletic type of clothing as a runner would do. He said, my headlights and her standing underneath a light busted over her head, and I saw her. So he drove past her kept going south. He drove down a small alleyway off the main road.

He'd used this parking spot before on earlier visits to the bike path, he said. He parked, turned the car off, and he said he couldn't remember if he took his keys or not. But he said at this point, he was sexually aroused, but not physically, mentally. Yeah. He said, I would say I was getting aroused, at least mentally aroused, you know, in my mind. I wasn't at the point of, like, getting hard or anything. Wow. He also is wearing cut-resistant gloves that, like, butchers wear, you know, so that you don't stab yourself.

Yeah. That's where he works at the fresh market. He uses those for produce or butcher departments to prevent injury when you're cutting fruit or boxing meat or whatever the fuck. He said he was wearing him when he was driving because his hands were cold. So he's wearing those gloves. Oh, my God. He's giving so many reasons why he planned this. They said, and the gloves you were wearing were coincidentally cut-proof gloves because those are the kind you wear at work.

And he said, those are the only ones I had in my car at the time. I used them for driving. Yeah, driving clubs. That's normal. So, ridiculous. So he crossed Iron Horse Boulevard running east across the road back toward the bike path, pretending to be a jogger. He's holding this sheathed knife in one hand and walking. It's in a plastic sheet still that it comes in from the store.

You know, those, the plastic ones. he said that he was running northbound in the opposite direction. She was running and he approached her from the front. And most nights it's well lit, but they said there was lights from the businesses across the roads, but the street lamps and this exact stretch were out. So he timed it so they came right in the darkness. Now, we're not sure how that happened, by the way. We don't know if he put a street light, a lamp out or what here, but that was just out.

He said it was right in that pretty much directly across from my car where those darkened street lamps were. He positioned himself on the left side of the path near the wood line so that as Marlissa approached, she would pass him on her right near the guardrail. She was about 15 feet away when he started running toward her. So he ran into, he bumped into her on purpose. Yeah. He said, I bumped into her. And they said, how? He said, I just kind of ran too close.

He hit her with his left shoulder or elbow to the broad side of the left side of his body. And she stopped running. Now, she didn't say anything, he said. She didn't scream. She didn't say, what the fuck's wrong with you? She was just like, oh, maybe she was zoned out and just like, oh, shit, ran into somebody. In his words, she just seemed like she was going to keep running. Oh, so my bad and keep going.

He said he pulled the knife out of his sheath with its left hand, holding the sheath, drawing the blade with his right and just stabbed her once in the chest for no reason. She didn't even say anything. Oh my. Stabbed her. Pretty much fatal on impact.

Punctures her heart and lung. He said that the blade was still in her body when she put both of her hands on his torso and pushed him like to push away basically. He said she was smaller than I was so when she pushed me

the knife came out and stayed in my hand and she tumbled over the guardrail which is how she ended up in the street. So they were like very interesting. He didn't move and she basically pushed herself off the knife and fell over. So wow, she fell in the road. It was still in his right hand, the knife. So he said at that point is the first time she said anything.

He said he was trembling and shaking and his teeth were chattering. And she said, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. And then that was the only thing she said when she fell out. Fuck. That was it. She went silent. He said, I had already figured out what I'd done and was regretting it instantly. Wow.

So they said, so when you walked across the street, your intention was to either scare or harm her, and he said, yes. They said, your intention about bringing the knife was related to your anger, and he said, yes. They said, when you stepped out of that car, was your intention to harm this woman? And he said, harm or scare? I'm not sure which. Maybe just scare. The knife would have successfully achieved that, but when I drew it, this is where my line of thinking and events gets a little fuzzy in my own mind. I drew it and I plunged it in and that was it.

Yeah, he had murder on his breath. He said, I would consider myself frenzied at that point. So he said, I don't know if I had the intention of killing necessarily, but I think I had the intention of stabbing. What in the fuck, man? Then the cop who says to the camera in the room, it seems at least maybe the motivation for confessing. has a little to do with, has a little to do with impressing this girl that he likes. They're thinking carry out in the fucking waiting room there. That's just my opinion.

And you listen to the confession, he seems to waver in and out of details, almost like confessing might totally not be his sole intention here. But I'll let everybody decide as you listen to it. Basically, that's the other thing, too. He might think, well, church people love it when you fuck up because then they can pull you in further. I don't know what he's thinking. So, um. So is he saying this confession?

may be false just to impress her? Or is he saying, this may all be true, but he's still trying to get laid. That's the other thing. We don't know. So he drove away. By the way, he threw the knife out the window. He'll end up retrieving it at some point and destroying it in the trash compactor at work a few days later. So that's when the driver sees the body a few minutes later, calls 911.

It was very fresh. They think it's a hit and run. Then they find letters. William had written two letters because they want proof. They're like, listen, you're saying all this, but you don't have a murder weapon. All you have is a story and some church people that you might be trying to impress with this story. So we're not positive you did this. You might just be a whack job.

That happens all the time. It's a problem. They're crazy. So they found letters that were addressed to his friends and family dated November 20th, 2014 confessing to the killings. They've been sitting at the grandparents' house ungiven for four years. But they said maybe he wrote the letters and predated them before he came down to the station. Four years of, yeah. How about some solid proof?

What do you got? He said, I'll take you to the glove. They said, we love to see that. So they follow him. He takes them to a barn on his grandparents' property. And there's a small accessory structure that sits in a lot, basically. It's a little outbuilding for storage. And in the wall, there's a crevice that he described.

And there is the glove, right where he said it was. So there seems to be blood on the glove. love, but it's been there for four years, so they don't have DNA results. They don't know shit. So they release him. They let him out of the police station. They send him home. They don't have proof.

They think he might be a whack job. So they said that mental health grounds, false confession, this could be terrible. And it would be terrible to announce that we arrested a guy. And it turns out we look like assholes. So they sent him home, but they followed him everywhere he went. They just kept him under constant surveillance. They said he went to work, went home. went to his sex offender thing.

Police watched him do all his normal shit. Then Sunday, September 23rd, the DNA results come in from the glove, showing a mixture of DNA, likely matching three sources. Okay. William, obviously, an unidentified third party. And Melissa. Uh-oh. He says no other reason to be in contact with her. So now that they have DNA, basically, now it's not, what if he's lying?

Now they're like, okay, he did it. So they arrest him. He's held on $2 million. Bond. Yeah. One of the, his co-workers said, yeah, he was kind of a weird dude, but nothing gave me the vibe that he was going to do something like that. He pleads not guilty. Okay.

Here. Then they start, they offer him a plea deal. 35 years in prison plus 10 years of special parole. That's where somebody has to come finger your butt hole like once a month just to make sure the temperature. It's called special parole. It's really just a fuck. Yeah, very special. He rejected the deal.

Really? Really? That's balzy. Then he turned it down. Then March 22, he said, okay, fine, I'll take 35 years plus seven years of special parole. That's fine. Instead of 10, they went down to seven. That's what he got out of waiting two more years of sitting in jail. So in sentencing here, they said it's everyone's nightmare because there's no way to protect yourself against this kind of crime. I'm grateful to the fact that the defendant confessed, at least the victim's family will have closure after eight years of waiting because this is now 20. They were never going to solve this. Yeah, they said she described it as a, quote, sad, scary case, and it could have happened to anyone. Oh, my God. Yeah. Her brother called her, Melissa's brother called her a devoted and loving mother. And Melissa's murder threw our family into a triage and survival mode to deal with both our individual and collective grief and loss.

They also said about her two kids. Their childhood was torn away. They were forced to grow up faster than any teenager or preteen should have to. There's even a letter from her son saying, I've said little about my mom since she died. It's not that I've wanted to erase my mom, but her absence has been too painful to acknowledge. Right. Brutal. In mitigation, they say, well, he's mildly autistic and is immature and social interactions and has limited ability to regulate his emotions.

Okay. We can't murder people. That's crazy. his lawyer told the court that the act was impulsive and spontaneous. William says, I would like to say to all of you, I'm truly sorry I am for the pain I've caused your family over the last several years. I can never forgive myself,

but hopefully this sentence brings you some amount of justice and closure. Again, truly sorry for the pain I've caused you. Okay. The judge says, nothing I can do with sentencing because you guys agreed to it. You, sir, may fuck off. 35 years in prison, seven years of special parole upon release. He must serve the entire 35 before he's eligible for parole. Oh, fuck.

They don't have parole eligibility for murder convictions in Connecticut. So he gets three years credit for time served. Projected release date September 23rd, 2005 53. So he'll be 62. He's going to get out. Yes. And it's absolutely intentionally. He left the house with a knife.

cut proof gloves and disassembled his fucking phone. He knew what he was doing. What's the fuck out of here? Melissa is buried at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Cemetery in Hartford County. By the way, the cold case unit, they didn't solve Jack. They solved shit. They solved nothing. They said they had the FBI.

Everybody, nobody solved the case unless he walks in and confesses this case is still never solved. Oh, fuck. It's still just an unsolved, horrible thing. if the church group doesn't tell him to, if some, if some chick doesn't go, why'd you order that book when you told me you didn't? None of this happens. That's crazy. That book must have been horrible. Must have been really sexual.

Or too science based. Something. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. What's this about? Fucking science. I don't like that. So anyway, there you go, everybody.

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