Melissa Millan’s Death

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Melissa Millan was killed while she was on a run

Melissa Millan was stabbed to death during a nightly run.  She was an avid runner, a wonderful mother, and a professional business woman.  Who would want to kill her?  Was it someone she knew or was she a victim of a random attack?  Listen and find out.

Iron Horse Boulevard, Simsbury, CT Doug Kerr [CC BY-SA 2.0]
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Iron Horse Boulevard, Simsbury, CT Doug Kerr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

The Murder

November 20, 2014, in Simsbury, CT (a suburb of Hartford) was a cold night and Melissa Millan was taking her nightly run. This was a very normal occurrence for Melissa as she was an avid runner and competed in Triathlons. Melissa was 54 and a mother of 2. She was also a Senior Vice President at Mass Mutual Life Insurance. Melissa is described as a loving mother, a kind person, and an excellent businesswoman. 

She was running down Iron Horse Boulevard. There is a running/bike path and to one side there are trees and it runs along a road. It’s not a crowded area but it is a popular path and well lit most of the way.

Around 8 pm, about 2.3 miles into her run, someone came onto the path and attacked her, stabbing her once in the chest. Melissa fell over the guard rail between the path and the road and was left lying in the street. She was found by a passing car who called the police and an ambulance. She was still alive when she was found, but was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

Millan Investigation

Prior to the medical examiner’s findings police believed that it had been a hit and run. However, the medical examiner confirmed that she had been stabbed once in the chest. The police didn’t have much to go on. No witnesses came forward, and no DNA was found at the scene. The knife was not left behind and there was no trace of the killer.

Millan had divorced her husband in 2012. She had been ordered to pay him 8,000 per month in alimony, but police quickly ruled him out as a suspect. Police also looked into her work life. They thought she may have been targeted due to sensitive information on businesses that she had available to her, but no leads came up.

About 6 months after the murder police shared that they had some out-of-state leads and that the FBI was assisting with the investigation, but wouldn’t specify what the leads were. The police continued to follow any leads and conducted multiple searches around the area where Melissa was attacked, but the case soon went cold. An anonymous donor offered $40,000 to anyone giving information leading to an arrest, but still, nothing came through.

William Winter Leverett

Fast Forward to September 2018 – William Winters Leverett, 27, was working as an assistant manager at the Fresh Market in Avon, CT where he has been living since 2011. Earlier in 2011, he had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 2009 while living in Colorado. In August 2011, after his sentencing of only probation (10 years) and a $6,591 fine, he moved to Simsbury to live with his grandparents. When he moved to the neighborhood his grandfather, a poet by profession, sent a letter to all of the neighbors explaining that his grandson was on the sex offenders registry but William had just made a mistake and a misunderstanding stating that he was really harmless. 

This “misunderstanding” was William having inappropriately touched an 11-year-old girl on multiple occasions over a period of a few months. The girl was a friend of Leverett’s sister and when she would come over to the apartment to play.

When he arrived in CT he opened a farm stand selling organic fruits and vegetables but eventually got a job in the produce dept of a local grocery store. William had made some friends at the store including a woman named Kerri Bennett. It seems like they were just friends and Kerri had started bringing him to church services in 2014. In 2018 William changed his address from his grand parent’s home to the January Center. 

The January Center

The January Center is a rehabilitation service for sex offenders. When sex offenders are close to their release date they can be evaluated to assess their recidivism risk. When they are released or on probation, they can be housed there. There is one section for those finishing their sentence and another for those on probation. 

In September 2018, while William was under treatment, Kerri planned to meet with him because she could sense that he had something that he wanted to talk about, something bothering him.

Confession

In that discussion, he confessed that he committed the murder of Melissa Millan 4 years prior. Kerri brought him to the pastors of Open Gate Ministries in Windsor Locks and again he confessed. The church group convinced him to turn himself in, and he walked into a police station joined by 3 members of his church and confessed.

The night of the murder he had been at a therapy group for sex offenders and was feeling very lonely when he left. He says that he went to the trail looking for “human contact.” At the time he was dating someone, but he was scared that she would find out that he was on probation for the sexual assault. Leverett spotted Melissa running and drove past her because he found her attractive and he began to get “mentally aroused.” He parked his car near the trail to confront her on the path. 

Leverett then started to think about the fact that she was out of his league and that he can’t have her and he kept getting angrier and more anxious. William approached her in an unlit spot on the trail and stabbed her once in the chest. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away pulling the knife out. She then fell backward over the guardrail where she would later be discovered. Leverett claimed that after he stabbed Melissa she said, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” then fell silent.

Leverett then got in his car and threw the knife out the window on a side street, but he came back a few days later and got it. He then disposed of it in a trash compactor at work. 

Investigation

He led the police to where he had hidden one of the gloves he had been wearing that night, which still had Melissa’s blood on it. William explained that he had tried to throw the gloves into the rafters but he couldn’t get them to stick. He had thrown one in the trash and the other had gotten stuck behind a wall in the barn on his grandparent’s property, so he left it behind. William was also able to describe what Millan had been wearing that night and gave the police letters that he had written after the murder, confessing to his friends and family, but had never been sent.

William cleaned the boots he had been wearing and put them in a Goodwill bin a few months later. He waived his right to probable cause hearing and plead not guilty in 2018 and opted for a jury trial. His lawyer is having him examined by a psychiatrist.

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