Mystery On The Path - Simsbury, Connecticut

Summary

Small Town Murder: "Mystery On The Path – Simsbury, Connecticut"

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Episode Date: May 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, comedians James and Jimmie dive deep into the shocking murder of Melissa Joan Millen in Simsbury, Connecticut—a small, affluent New England town. The story weaves through the town’s history and idiosyncrasies before unraveling the details of a killing that confounded police for years. James and Jimmie maintain their signature blend of dark humor and respectful commentary as they examine the circumstances, investigation, and eventual confession that cracked the case.

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Simsbury, Connecticut: Setting the Scene

[05:05–13:00]

• Location: North-central Connecticut, near Hartford, population ~24,000.
• Affluence: Median household income $134,688, double the national average. Median home price ~$392k.
• Town Character:
  • Feels like a Hallmark movie.
  • "Safe, great schools, beautiful parks…very family-oriented, could feel boring if you’re single." (James, [08:16])
  • Very little nightlife ("It’s tough to pick them up at Chili’s every week." – Jimmie, [09:54]).
  • Hosts traditional events: Simsbury Celebrates, nativity scenes, comedy jugglers (to the hosts’ horror: "I would rather be beaten to death by 7,005-year-olds than watch a comedy juggler for five minutes." – James, [11:51]).

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The Murder of Melissa Millen

[13:00–24:30]

The Discovery

• Date & Time: November 20, 2014, around 8:00 pm, cold and dark.
• Scene: Woman found bleeding on Iron Horse Boulevard bike path. First believed to be a bike accident or possibly a hit-and-run.
• Initial Witness Impression:
  • "It looked like maybe this lady fell off a bicycle…she’s in the road bleeding." (James, [13:36])
  • No bicycle visible, which raised some doubts immediately.

Victim Background

• Melissa Joan Millen (b. 1960): Accomplished, athletic (triathlete), top executive at MassMutual, highly involved in local community, mother of two.
• Her Life:
  • Went to Harvard for an Executive MBA.
  • Senior VP at MassMutual, managed $1 billion+ in retirement assets.
  • By divorce, paid her ex-husband $8,000/month in alimony ("She is killing it." – Jimmie, [19:24]).
• Community Reaction: Her murder was headline news; small town, high-profile victim, no recent homicides.

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The Investigation: Dead Ends & False Leads

[24:30–34:10]

Suspect Triage

• First Look: Ex-husband—ruled out quickly with a rock-solid alibi and full police cooperation ([25:26]).
• MassMutual Angle: Investigated workplace enemies, possible professional motives. Exhaustive but fruitless.
• Stranger Theory:
  • Sex offenders checked (only four in the entire town, none initially matched).
  • The idea of a random attack seemed implausible but wasn’t ruled out.
• Frustration Builds:
  • "They closed down Iron Horse Boulevard and Rotary Park for four days…now it’s a priority that we really solve this thing…" ([34:12])
  • FBI and Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad involved.
  • "They have nothing…all these big theories are coming up shit." (James, [34:33])

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The Break: The Unlikely Confession

[37:19–58:20, 59:20–78:20]

Who Was William Winters Leverett?

• Background:
  • Registered sex offender, assault involving an 11-year-old as a teen in Colorado.
  • Moved to Simsbury with grandparents (him, 20; grandpa, published poet).
  • "Proximity pervert" joke: lived within 2 miles of murder ([37:06]).
  • Attended weekly sex offender therapy, worked at local Fresh Market.
  • Church involvement: befriends coworker Kerry, attends tiny evangelical home church.

How the Confession Happened

• Years Pass: Case runs cold for 4 years.
• 2018:
  • Kerry (coworker/friend) confronts him for minor lies.
  • He volunteers: "I committed a crime. … Do you remember the murder along Iron Horse Boulevard? … That was—I did that." (William, [55:19])
  • Kerry, stunned, takes him to their church pastors; he repeats confession.

Turning Himself In

• Date: September 19, 2018
• Scene:
  • "Walks into the lobby. He walks in in 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.'" (James, [60:52])
• Police Cautious: Unusual, delayed confession; they initially suspect it could be false/attention-seeking.

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The Murder: The Killer's Account

[61:09–77:44]

The Night of the Killing

• Mental State: Says he was “lonely,” “slightly angry,” just out of sex offender therapy.
• Preparation:
  • Had a new, unopened knife in car ("gift for grandma").
  • Wore cut-resistant gloves ("for driving; my hands were cold").
  • Knows the path well; some streetlights out.
• Spotting Melissa:
  • Sees her running, feels “mentally aroused.”
  • Pretends to jog towards her, bumps into her, then stabs her once in the chest—fatal wound.
  • "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." ([72:49])
  • She only exclaims, "Oh my god…oh my god," before dying ([73:09]).
• Aftermath:
  • He discards knife in a trash compactor at work days later.
  • Writes confessional letters but never delivers them.

Motive & Reflection

• Impulsiveness vs. Planning Debate:
  • Pre-meditation suggested (knife, gloves, disabling phone).
  • Police: “He left the house with a knife, cut proof gloves and disassembled his fucking phone. He knew what he was doing.” (James, [80:04])
• Why Confess Years Later?
  • Thinks he won’t be believed.
  • Confession may be partly about impressing his church friend ([74:13]).

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Resolution & Aftermath

[77:44–80:49]

The Case Breaks

• Physical Evidence:
  • Police find the gloves he hid; DNA matches him and Melissa ([75:52]).
• Arrest & Outcome:
  • Arrested once DNA confirmed.
  • Pleads guilty in 2022: sentenced to 35 years (must serve all, release 2053), plus seven years “special parole.”
  • Family Impact:
    • “Their childhood was torn away. They were forced to grow up faster than any teenager or preteen should have to.” (Victim impact statement, [78:49])
  • Investigators admit: "Unless he walks in and confesses, this case is still never solved." (James, [80:35])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Simsbury’s Boredom:
  • "You’re gonna bang one [Applebee’s waitress] a few times." – Jimmie, [10:05]
• On Comedy Jugglers at Town Events:
  • "I would rather be beaten to death by 7,005-year-olds than watch a comedy juggler for five minutes." – James, [11:51]
• On the Unlikely Alimony Arrangement:
  • "Is she a shooting guard or an insurance lady? What’s happening?" – James, [19:27]
• On the Investigation:
  • "The Cold Case Unit…they solved nothing. If the church group doesn’t tell him to—if some chick doesn’t go, 'Why’d you order that book?'—none of this happens. That’s crazy." – James, [80:36]
• On the Killer’s Mindset:
  • "He said, 'There was hope developed as the evening went on, with the ultimate hopes of maybe, hey, I’ll meet a woman and…I could go somewhere.'” – James reading William’s confession, [65:26]
• On Police Work:
  • "They closed the dog park…FBI’s evidence response team…a serious operation. Four day search that produces ugats. Big old zero on that one." – James, [35:36]

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Major Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |------------|-------------------------------------------| | 05:05–10:55| Simsbury background, reviews, events | | 13:00 | Discovery of Melissa Millen | | 16:22 | Bio of victim | | 20:50 | Initial hit-and-run theory | | 21:47 | Stab wound discovered | | 34:12 | Investigation stalls; town in panic | | 39:02 | Introduction of William Leverett | | 49:33 | Leverett’s life in Simsbury | | 55:19 | Confession to Kerry, the church friend | | 60:52 | Goes to police and confesses | | 68:44 | Detailed description of the murder | | 77:44 | Discovery of glove, arrest, and plea | | 80:03 | Sentencing and community reflection | | 80:49 | Host wrap-up, reflection on justice |

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Conclusion: Host Reflections

• The case exemplifies small town safety illusions—sometimes, random senseless violence happens regardless of community profile or personal precautions.
• The investigation demonstrates how sometimes even the most qualified law enforcement task forces cannot solve a case without luck—or a confession.
• Stand-out moment: Hosts’ exasperation with the investigation’s failures, dark humor on Simsbury’s "exciting" features, and genuine sympathy for the victim’s family.

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For More

Listen wherever you get podcasts. ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com for show links, live events, and Patreon for bonus content.

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Summary captures all pivotal discussions and host commentary, omitting ad reads and non-content as requested.

Transcript

[Ad Host]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

Yay and choo choo.

[James Petregallo]

Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[James Petregallo]

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 upandgivemerder.com get your tickets for live shows, everybody, 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?

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's enough of a rivalry. Let's go.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, let's go. And I know they're in Green Bay, but they used to play in Milwaukee sometimes they played down there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So it's a lot of fucking Green Bay shirts in Milwaukee, I'll tell you that.

[James Petregallo]

Sure is. 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 CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month or above and you get everything we put out. I'm talking. As soon as you subscribe, you get almost 400 back bonus episodes you've never heard before. You can binge on that. It's like a whole other thing. And then you get new ones every other week, so they keep coming. You get one crime. That's right. You get one crime in sports and one small town murder. This week for crime and sports, we're gonna talk about theme park disasters again. We needed another part of that. It's been a while.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Boy, is that fun.

[James Petregallo]

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 summer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My daughter oftentimes spring break and summertime asks to go to a theme park and I every time say no.

[James Petregallo]

Just play those episodes for her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Are you out of your goddamn mind? I'm not a purple heart.

[James Petregallo]

You can very easily dissuade her from that by just here, play that scene.

[Jimmy Whisman]

A lot of bodies in that fun.

[James Petregallo]

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 Cory Richens Part 3, 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 MacKenzie two very hateable people. Very easy to hate, either or. So you guys pick who you want to hate this week and then whoever it is, we'll hate this week and then we'll wait two more weeks and we'll hate the other one then. So that's how that works. Patreon.com CrimeInSports 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. I think it's time here to clear the lungs and nose for me today. Mostly I am good and sick today. This is fun. Are you poorly, Doc? Are you poorly? Sorry, Deadwood references. So let'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. Hey, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Where the hell is that?

[James Petregallo]

I think it's a town in the Sims game. I think it's where you build your house in the Sims game. Your PlayStation. Oh, I'm going to Simsbury and I'm going to build a house over here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Terrible things.

[James Petregallo]

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 from the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's where Yukon is, right?

[James Petregallo]

Is it Yukon in Hartford?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think so.

[James Petregallo]

Or is it in. Yale's in New Haven, right? Yeah, Yale's in New haven.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think. UConn's in Hartford.

[James Petregallo]

Bridgeport. Why do I want to go to Bridgeport, Connecticut? I can't remember. No. Cause that's trying to think of Aaron Hernandez when we did crime and sports and where he was. So who knows? It really doesn't matter. But it's an interesting thing to think about, though. 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 fifteen to Waterford, Connecticut. Our last Connecticut episode, episode 661, Serial Killer Desires. You bet. 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, actually, just about double the national average.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They got cash up there.

[James Petregallo]

134,688 is the median household income. Median home cost here also a little bit high, but not as high as some of these areas. No. 392,400. That's not that terrible for.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Incredibly affordable if you're making $170,000 a year.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. That's not bad at all. A little bit of history of this town. In 19 or in 1643, John Griffin and Michael Humphrey, they started a tar and turpentine business.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

And then a few years later, an Indian guy named Manahananus 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 20, 1859, the A2 story patent safety fuse factory, uh oh, located near the center of town. Exploded.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Just exploded.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just gunpowder. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Killed seven women and one man and the blast injured several other people including the factory owner. The factory made cord fast burning fuses used for blasting. So like dynamite. That fuse for dynamite. Yeah. Which resulted in the explosion, obviously.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fast burning ones.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Built for the guy that doesn't have time for a speech after he lights the dyno.

[James Petregallo]

He has no time for that horseshit. He doesn't want any hero coming in and putting it out. This thing is going pouring water on

[Jimmy Whisman]

it or licking his finger and hitting it.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I believe that.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot of these little quaint towns kind of feel like that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So many trees. It's so beautiful trees.

[James Petregallo]

They have little main streets and little shops on them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Shitloads of snow in the winter.

[James Petregallo]

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 single and 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Isn't that close by? That's not close at all.

[James Petregallo]

That's a pretty good track there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's all day, round trip.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus. Yeah, I mean you could take a train I guess, but you'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 true. Regional, I think that goes everywhere.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What's going on?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's just America.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Also, what's your worth? Who's to say? Doesn't the market determine that?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, what they're worth is here's my mortgage payment.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Here's my car payment. I got my kids at School. I'm worth whatever it costs for all this shit to run. That's what I'm worth.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's what my talent is worth.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's tough to pick them up at Chili's every week.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're gonna bang one a few times.

[James Petregallo]

Things to do. Here they have Simsbury Celebrates. This is their holiday. Holiday affair here, where they have a whole town and all these different places. The library, churches, the scout hall, all these different events. They have the Nutcracker. They have that. They're gonna put on a thing of that. They have a live nativity scene, which is always creepy. At scout hall. They're gonna have a show called Kinetic Ukes. Like ukuleles. Kinetic Ukuleles. I don't know how you would do that. But then there is selfies with Santa and Jingles the Elf.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, I like that better. Selfies.

[James Petregallo]

As long as Jingles is there, then it's fine. I don't want it just to be.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It feels like they're setting it up to rob them.

[James Petregallo]

All right. Jingles the Elf. That sounds like a horror movie.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We don't have a camera. You can take selfies with us and get lost.

[James Petregallo]

Take a fucking hike.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's drunk anyway and trying to fuck a chick so that she's shit sideways. What did he say?

[James Petregallo]

I can't even remember.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you're not gonna shit right for a week.

[James Petregallo]

You're not gonna 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. Family cornhole games with cider and donuts, s' mores and fire pits. They have an ice carving demonstration. Jesus, this sounds bleak. Let me tell you this. Performances here by Bryson Lang, the professional comedy juggler. Oh. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Kill me. I swear to God, I would rather be beaten to death by 7005 year olds than watch a comedy juggler for 5 minutes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

In the 80s, there was one guy that was pretty good. But it was. I mean, because it wasn't just the normal dumb shit. You know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

Where.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, it's normal dumb shit now, but he was like the originator of the normal dumb shit.

[James Petregallo]

I remember there was.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I forget his name.

[James Petregallo]

Couple of guys that did an act together that was like kind of a famous thing in the 80s.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There was a guy that had, like. He had a bowling ball and an egg, and he called it, like, the natural enemy of the egg.

[James Petregallo]

I remember this. This sounds familiar to me.

[Jimmy Whisman]

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. And then the grand finale is to smash the egg on his face.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he did like, comedy shows. Like he was on, like. I don't know if it was Evening at the Improv, but stuff like that you'd see him on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He was probably on the show.

[James Petregallo]

He was great, shit like that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But then that turned into this shit.

[James Petregallo]

Now we have this unfortunately here that said, let's talk about some murder here. Cause we have crazy murder. Okay, let's start out hot. November 20th, 2014. It's 8:00pm in Simsbury here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's dark.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's dark out by now. It's November. It's cold and dark.

[Jimmy Whisman]

By the way. It's as shit.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And there's gonna 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. Just caught it in the headlights. So this driver calls 911 and calls 911 and says, it looks like maybe this lady fell off a bicycle. She's in the road bleeding. So maybe you want to send somebody out for that. Possibly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is she alert and everything is. She's talking?

[James Petregallo]

No, no. Unrestrained.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She fell hard.

[James Petregallo]

She fell hard. Yeah. So we don't know. But there's no bicycle right there that they can see.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But he came to the conclusion that it was a bike.

[James Petregallo]

He said it looked like by this position and it's pitch blackout. And he just put his headlights. 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. Who knows?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I've watched far too many of those where a killer leaves a body. My first thing is, watch out. Everybody's in Danger.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So the first responders show up here 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 driver.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Everybody's getting a look.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And the driver's still there. Where it is is a very common bike and jogging path also. So there's a lot of pedestrian activity on that path off to the side. And it's 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 bleeding looks like the chest, which is an odd injury to have falling off a bike. She still has a headlamp on her head. She was out jogging.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's moving. Yeah, I can see where you got it now.

[James Petregallo]

Still wearing a reflective vest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Her clothing all looks intact. She doesn't have her pants around her ankles. Nobody tried 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 with her too much. They're waiting for the paramedics and everybody like that. So CPR has 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Pulse?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, possible pulse. But she is pronounced dead at the hospital before 9pm 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 L A n. She's born October 30, 1960. And she's a real go getter. High powered lady. Yeah, I mean, well, anybody who gets a headlamp and a reflective vest and goes out in the cold and dark, they're pretty into working out or whatever.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's concerned about her safety too.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. To see her, she's all buttoned up. She has all the right equipment. She has everything she needs. She 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

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 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, entry level. She worked at Sun Life and she started her ascent 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 to Harvard, though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Where she gets an executive mba, which is from Harvard, which is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's impressive.

[James Petregallo]

Very impressive, absolutely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But they take more people later in life like that, like in their 30s.

[James Petregallo]

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. Some online shit, some kind of correspondence. It's 99, so that would be really.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, that wouldn't be online.

[James Petregallo]

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

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's running, swimming, right?

[James Petregallo]

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 one of the soccer coaches. I don't know where she has time of the day for this, too. It's crazy busy. Yeah. In 2012, she gets a divorce.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

Now, as part of the settlement, she is paying her husband monthly alimony in the amount of. Would you like to take a guess on the amount?

[Jimmy Whisman]

2,000amonth.

[James Petregallo]

$8,000 a month in alimony.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She is killing it.

[James Petregallo]

She's paying him that. So she means she's making a fortune. Fortune, number one. But number two, she's paying money like an NFL running Back for Alan Mooney. Like, this is crazy. Is she a shooting guard or an insurance lady? What's happening?

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's incredible.

[James Petregallo]

That's nuts. By 2014, she was senior vice president of the company, a huge insurance company. So she's doing great. She was the 8th highest paid person at the company. I mean, killer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, it sounds like it. So is her husband. Her husband's the 12th highest paid.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he's doing fantastic. She had a. She ran a retirement services portfolio. As you know, life insurance has. 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. She's real important in this business here. So the night that we found her, November 20, 2014, at 8pm, 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 three out, three back. That's ambitious for me. Yeah, she's wearing all the reflective shit and the headlamp and she's safe. And she does this all the time. So the police initial theory is hit and run.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's gotta be.

[James Petregallo]

They think she must have been hit by a car. The position of her body in the road. Cause 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Somebody hauling ass down the bike path

[James Petregallo]

though, knock her off or something? I don't know. So they secured the area, they canvassed the road. They looked all up and down the road for evidence of vehicles with a collision, 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. What is this? Not even close to it. It's actually. Cause of death is determined to be a stab wound to the chest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

1.

[James Petregallo]

One single stab wound to her chest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's close.

[James Petregallo]

Penetrating wound that punctured her heart and lung. Killed her pretty fast. No other injuries, no broken bones, no skull fractures, no blunt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And her body tried to survive?

[James Petregallo]

Apparently. Yeah, well, she's a very healthy woman. She's not, you know, she's in the 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's almost hitman worthy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. To be able to do one shot and know the person's done and walk away and that's walk off. Yeah, that's a lot. So yeah, it's either somebody's real, just has a horseshoe up their ass, they're very lucky. Or 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 area 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

[Jimmy Whisman]

was 8pm and you usually suspect a husband or significant other in a case like this, but the last person that you want to suspect is a guy that's getting paid eight grand a month.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing. It would make sense if he died, they'd look at her. But the other way around is kind of no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I want her to live forever.

[James Petregallo]

Do you want her to keep work? I want her to rise and rise and rise.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I want her to make so much money.

[James Petregallo]

MassMutual releases a statement saying, Melissa was an incredible person and an outstanding leader and we were fortunate to have her as part of our massmutual 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 what we say, 24,000 people or something here. 24,000 people and not a lot of homicides. This was the first homicide since 2012.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So it's a very efficient assassination style strike.

[James Petregallo]

That's what's so odd. So the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad comes in because. Especially cause she's a high powered executive. That's also a possibility that they're thinking that this could be a big deal. This could be some international. This could be some assassin sent over from Sri Lanka to kill her and then get back on a plane. We have no idea.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Or there could be a man sitting in Altoona McDonald's.

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

With a big knife in his backpack.

[James Petregallo]

We don't know. So they come in. The Office of the State's Attorneys is briefed The FBI will end up on this. But first place they look, ex husband. Just because 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. She who got fired. Somebody who didn't get what they needed out of it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

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.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, exactly. You never know. And also, they want to look at sex offenders in the area just because it's a public thing. It's a woman, and maybe she could have. They could have tried to sexually assault her in some way and she, you know, wasn't having it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maybe this wasn't the plan.

[James Petregallo]

Right. So who knows? Now, the ex husband, he's paying her eight grand, or she's paying him eight grand a month in alimony. So 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, and six grand a year.

[James Petregallo]

And he's doing great there. So there's no evidence of anything. He cooperated with police, did everything they wanted, took polygraphs, cleared him. Okay. So the problem is, though, as this investigation goes on and they find no other real suspects, basically everyone in Simsbury just assumes he did it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, that sucks.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. There's a detective that says that 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Poshmark.com.

[James Petregallo]

absolutely. There's so much cool stuff on Poshmark. It's the joy of the heart hunt. You're looking for stuff that you want to find. There's. It's so much fun. I love it. I really do. Because maybe there's a list of things that you're looking for, pieces, clothes that you're looking for, things that you maybe missed out on, something you're trying to track down, something you used to have that you want to have. But once you get on Poshmark you'll find it all. That's the thing. I found this really cool leather jacket. I was looking for like an old school leather jacket at a certain type and they had exactly what I was looking for. Something. I was like, no store has this. Nobody makes this anymore. It's exactly what I want. And it's at Poshmark. So you gotta everybody get on Poshmark and check it out. You're gonna find really cool stuff. Poshmark is the leading fashion resale marketplace shaped by real people in real style. That's right. Millions of new and pre loved items. From daily wardrobe staples to vintage and luxury fashion archive worthy pieces you thought you missed forever. Current essentials and one of one vintage finds. It's all there. I'm telling you, they have everything. They have all their really great brands too. You want like Louis Vuitton, you want Prada, you want coach, you want stuff like that's all there. They have it and they have different models and everything. It's so great. You're gonna love it. And when you're ready for a closet refresh, you can earn real money selling the pieces you're ready to part with. Reaching more than 80 million users on the platform. Like I said, I found the jacket I was looking for. You're gonna find the thing you're looking for too. No matter what it is. Something new, something old, something borrowed, something blue. It's all here. It's all at Poshmark. You can do it. Find what feels like you. Shop and share your style on Poshmark today. New deals and styles are listed every day, so don't wait. Download the Poshmark app and use code Smalltown Murder when you sign up to get $10 off your first purchase or shop now at poshmark.com Smalltown Murder and get $10 off your first purchase. That's P O S H-M-A-R-K.com SmalltownMurder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody, just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you about our SafeST sponsor, SimpliSafe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

SimpliSafe.com S I M P L I

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

So they were like, it kind of sucks because we cleared him. Like as far as the police, he was not even. They never thought about him again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Put out a press release to stop fucking with this man.

[James Petregallo]

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, he got away with it because he makes eight grand a month off of her. So he paid a guy. It's all small town horseshit. Then there's the massmutual theory. She manages a huge portfolio with A billion dollars in retirement service assets for MassMutual. 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 @massmutual. They even look at consultants, everybody. People who work at other companies that may have talked to her once five years ago. Right. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

But nothing comes of that avenue either. It's not the ex husband. It's not anybody at work.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Frustrating.

[James Petregallo]

Frustrating. They have a mass vigil for her, by the way. 100 people, but a big vigil. 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 who 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. Bike path itself. Maybe there's something there they missed because every. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like we got.

[James Petregallo]

Like, now it's important. Like, now it's a priority that we really solved this thing where they shouldn't have done that. They could have done that back then. You know, two days into it, okay, we have nothing. Let's close everything down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like there's gonna be a knife and DNA out here just sitting there where

[James Petregallo]

no one's seen it for a year. And I'm sure the weather has had no effect on it. 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 and 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

I'm gonna add where we should have fucking stayed in the first place because that's where the shit happened. Wow. An outdoor crime scene a year later. Gonna be great. All sorts of shit everywhere. They do a four day search that produces ugats. 000 big.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I could have told them that.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Three fucking years.

[James Petregallo]

Three years. Finally it's added to these Connecticut cold case units. Open file shit. Which is crazy. The FBI's still involved. Everybody's still working on this thing. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Good.

[James Petregallo]

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 fit? Well, number one, there's only like four sex offenders in the whole town.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Talk to one, you're almost done.

[James Petregallo]

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?

[Jimmy Whisman]

We could probably just go to the meeting that you all go to once a week. That's court ordered.

[James Petregallo]

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 cause he lives so close by. He lives closer than any of the other perverts. Proximity. Yeah, 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. So that's him. Will here. He was born in 1991. He's 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, 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. He said I don't know what you're talking about. There's no physical evidence, he had no motive, he doesn't know her, 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 like stranger adult woman attack. That doesn't predict that behavior at all. Usually that guy would be afraid of adult women or was he an adult

[Jimmy Whisman]

when he did that?

[James Petregallo]

He was 18.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

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 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 stab an adult woman. Those things don't go together. So a little bit about his history. In 2009 when he was 17, he sexually assaulted an 11 year old girl who was a friend of his little sister.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yuck.

[James Petregallo]

Now Right away. Huge pile of 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

[Jimmy Whisman]

year old so I can try to finger another 17 year old.

[James Petregallo]

Finger one, go jerk off somewhere, smoke weed, drink some of the fucking BlackBerry schnapps mom has under the goddamn sink. Whatever it is you're gonna tell mom if I do it, so fuck off. That's. That's a healthy 17 year old.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Digging into that E and J. Brandy that's in the back of the fridge for fucking eggnog in December.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck, man. Yep, that's the one. So that's when 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I know what you did. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Colorado sentences him to probation, so no additional prison time beyond the pretrial county lockup. Plus he had to pay $431 in restitution. That'll make it all better. That innocence is worth that should cover the therapy for the next 25 years, right? That should work. Good job, asshole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Head on down to Walmart and buy yourself a new Innocence for $4.30.

[James Petregallo]

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 weird with offenses they don't have. 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, is they try to Delay the trial long enough to where the people will plead guilty because they're so. Just to get out of there 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 fucking know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Madison street got overhauled because of that.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Colorado's really trying to rehabilitate people.

[James Petregallo]

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 gotta be a something. So it's 10 years to 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. Now, his grandparents, 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. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yes. People buy books of poetry, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they must. So when William moves to Simsbury in August 2011, his grandfather wrote a letter to all the neighbors on the block. Poetry. Yeah. Flowery language poetry. Horseshit. And hand delivered it to everybody. Very charming. Very charming. Sex offender notification.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Terrible use of poetry. Don't soften.

[James Petregallo]

The most charming sex offender notification that they've ever received, though I'll say that much right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I believe it's. Don't soften the blow of. My grandson lives with me now and he fucked an 11 or tried to.

[James Petregallo]

I picture him like handing the letter over and it's got like a. You know, like one of those wax Seals on it, it'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. Anyone? He's got a ukulele. He's doing better. 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, whatever.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's a lot of crimes that are considered mistakes, but that one. Yeah, well, he's saying mistake that.

[James Petregallo]

He's saying the arrest was a mistake. Like the whole thing was a mistake. Not 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Everybody made a bunch of mistakes out there.

[James Petregallo]

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'll keep an eye on him. What are you gonna 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 re Offense 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What is that?

[James Petregallo]

He opened up a farm stand selling organic fruits and vegetables. Sure.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That takes a lot of work.

[James Petregallo]

It also doesn't last because you probably have to know a lot about that shit to make it not a success. You can't just 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? Just start selling it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, everybody in Colorado is a fucking farmer.

[James Petregallo]

Well, we're not selling fucking purple haze here though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, there are so many. That's probably the farmer market capital of America apart from Portland.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, but everyone's not growing organic fruits and vegetables, especially 18 year old sex offenders.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Seems like everybody's growing something and selling it.

[James Petregallo]

I would bet that that's not his.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Probably not his Best thing?

[James Petregallo]

No, probably not. The thing he knows how to do at 20 and just gotten out of jail for sex offenses, that's all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So he's gonna grow this shit in Connecticut? Does he have.

[James Petregallo]

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 and vegetables. And then he moved up to front end manager after a while.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

So he gets a job.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's good money.

[James Petregallo]

A coworker called him, quote, kind of a weird dude. Yep. Yeah, you got that right. Spring of 2014, he meets a woman at the Fresh Market named Kerry Bennett. Double N, 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 small, very small evangelical church. Run out of somebody's house. Oh, yeah, someday there's going to be.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's something wrong there.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, they're just friends.

[James Petregallo]

Just friends. I don't think he's real interested in her, put it that way. No, no. Is she 11?

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's too old.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah. 11 year old people who want to fuck 11 year olds usually don't want to fuck adult women generally.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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 was friends with him, basically. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, there's that. Basically he's from all. If you look at him from the 30,000ft, here he is doing everything that he was told to do 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Basically make you better.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So the therapy group he attended. The group starts around 4 or 5 and runs roughly until about 6:30. So on the day of November 20th he drove himself there to the meeting and then drove home. In 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 registered 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 and reentry housing for offenders who are either near the end of their sentence or actively on probation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So they get kicked out.

[James Petregallo]

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 are moving and you don't have a place to go or you can't. Whether sex offenders are allowed to be temporary housing, they'll let you live there for a little while so you're not a homeless sex offender. Which is worse, which nobody wants sex offenders just wandering the street. I want them inside, behind closed doors. I don't need them ever being home.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There'll always be housing for them. Schools.

[James Petregallo]

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

[Jimmy Whisman]

to bother her that make her uncomfortable.

[James Petregallo]

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? What are we talking about here? Yeah, like we're not in a relationship. This is 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 I really need to discuss.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We're not talking when you chew your cereal out. Fuck you.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Depends on.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, what are we talking about? Mind your business. How about that?

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's an Anarchist Cookbook or some shit like that.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, for Dummies. Yeah, we'll talk about it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he bought a book. He didn't tell her when the mailing 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't give a fuck what you think.

[James Petregallo]

Mind your business, lady.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Unless you're nosy church asshole, eyes are closed. Then shut the fuck up.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's right. If a wheel comes off or something, let me know. Give me a nudge.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Other than that, Kerry, stop making me defend a pedophile.

[James Petregallo]

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. If I had to have a conversation with one of them, I'd go, fuck, that's hard.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's hard.

[James Petregallo]

That's really hard.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is gonna be nauseating either way.

[James Petregallo]

At least the sex offender will pretend he doesn't wanna fuck kids in my presence. And maybe we can talk about baseball for 10 minutes. Whereas this person. There's gonna be a lot of Jesus. And I don't wanna hear, Gary, I

[Jimmy Whisman]

got a feeling you don't got a lot of friends.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You think this book and this driving

[James Petregallo]

thing, you think me making left hand turns with no directional is fucking bad? Wait till I tell you this. 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 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

And she said, why would you do kill somebody? Like, what are we talking about here? 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? What do you mean? And I said, I killed that woman.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why does she need clarity?

[James Petregallo]

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? What the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What do you mean you killed somebody?

[James Petregallo]

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 says. Turns to William and said, what are we gonna do now? And William said, well, I think you know what we have to do. I'd be afraid he's gonna murder me right now. Well, you know what we have to do. You gotta die.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. I would come to if he said, you know what we have to do.

[James Petregallo]

So Kerry said, I think we need to go talk first. And she called her pastor, Michael Tracynski, the co pastor of Open Gate Ministries. And Michael and his wife and the other co pastor, Colette, ran the church out of their home. And it's just a few people that come to this church. Not a huge congregation here. So Kerry called Colette, one of the pastors, and according to William, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. So she just started this to fucking sidestep taxes and now she's got a.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she's got something. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh boy.

[James Petregallo]

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. It was as weird as licking the cone. Well, you know, how do you have a normal conversation now with this person over ice cream? I don't know how to work.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Child molesting murderer that he's accused. Let's have some vanilla. What are you. Wow. Fuck.

[James Petregallo]

I'll have double scoop rocky road. Put it up there.

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[James Petregallo]

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 Colette said, he was very childlike, very trusting of others. He opened up to us about his life, his past, what he's gone through. We would have never expected this. They said he's a very good member of the church, very helpful. He's a very trusting type of guy. So. September 19, 2018, 9:00pm Michael Tracynski, 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 9:15 on a Wednesday night they walk into the lobby. He walks in in 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

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 at his 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 4 or 5, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure he knew.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, which is why she recruited him to the church. Because she's like, you're down pretty low,

[Jimmy Whisman]

you need some help? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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? Normal greetings. And she didn't respond. So he went to the therapy group, drove their attendant. He left with a headache. He said he left around 6:30. And they said, well, how are you feeling when he left? 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 happening 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 going pop. You know how easy it is to go click. They click right in.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I was so defeated that day. The battery popped out and I said, fuck it.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck it, he said. I was just like, oh, well, I'm not gonna deal with this now. So I put it in my car and forgot about it. Mm. All right. 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. So no cell tower pinging. We have no idea where he is. He goes home. According to him, he goes home at 7pm, 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. Sounds like he's gonna molest it. Yeah, that's how you describe a fucking 11 year old. Sweet and fun.

[Jimmy Whisman]

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.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He said my grandparents weren't home, so I was a little lonely there. He stayed at the house for somewhere between 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. Fifteen 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 stretch of 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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, he said, 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 to get laid, but as it developed, he's like, maybe I'll find a chick that will talk to you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a fascinating fellow. That leaves the house and hope gets bigger, whereas usually hope just starts to dwindle.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Well, we'll find out what he did first, and you'll see how it goes. So the first man on the path here, he parks at the Simsbury post office, which is a free spot on a side street. He didn't want to pay for the meter. 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 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, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's familiar.

[James Petregallo]

There's also a knife in his car.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why?

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

I just keep it in my glove compartment as you do. He told detectives that the package had never been opened 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 gal, 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 five' five, wearing tight pink and black running clothes. She had a headlamp on. I became mentally aroused.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. Anybody headlamp on?

[James Petregallo]

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 stick it right in their mouth. I can't help it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I can't believe you have the restraint. I come right in my pants.

[James Petregallo]

It's hard. Well, I, I know I, I, I grip.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The only reason I don't get out.

[James Petregallo]

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, past people's choice and got out. He said, she's wearing joggers clothes. I remember them being pink and black in either a polka dotted or striped shape. Just 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. He said, I would say I was getting aroused, at least mentally aroused in my mind. I wasn't at the point of getting hard or anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

He also is wearing cut resistant gloves that like butchers wear, really, 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 them when he was driving because his hands were cold. So he's wearing those gloves.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh my God. He's giving so many reasons why he planned this. Yep.

[James Petregallo]

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, yeah, driving gloves. 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 the 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 in 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 lamp out or what here. It 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 side, 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 15ft away when he started running toward her. So he ran into. He bumped into her on purpose. 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 was like, oh, shit. Ran into somebody. In his words, she just seemed like she was going to keep running. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my.

[James Petregallo]

Stabbed her. Pretty much fatal on impact. Punctures her heart and lungs. 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 over. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, he had murder on his brain.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What in the fuck, man?

[James Petregallo]

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 impressing this girl that he likes. They're thinking, Carrie 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

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?

[James Petregallo]

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. People confess that are crazy. So they found letters that were addressed to his friends and family, dated November 20, 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Four years? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

How about some solid proof?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What do you got?

[James Petregallo]

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 in there is the glove right where he said it was. So there seems to be blood on the glove, 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. 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 his co workers said, yeah, he was kind of a weird dude, but nothing gave me the vibe that he was gonna do something like that. He pleads not guilty here, then 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 butthole like, once a month just to make sure the temperature. It's called special parole. It's really just a fucking thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, very special.

[James Petregallo]

He rejected the deal.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

That's ballsy. Then he turned it down. Then March 2022, 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 of the fact that the defendant confessed. At least the victim's family will have closure after eight years of waiting, because this is now 2022, when they're going to court.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They were never gonna solve this.

[James Petregallo]

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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

In mitigation, they say, well, he's mildly autistic and is immature in 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 how 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 and brings you some amount of justice and closure. Again, truly sorry for the pain I've caused you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

The judge says, nothing I can do with sentencing because you guys agreed to it. You, sir, may fuck off. 35 years in prison, 7 years of special parole upon release. He must serve the entire 35 before he's eligible for parole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, fuck.

[James Petregallo]

They don't have parole eligibility for murder convictions in Connecticut. So he gets three years credit for time served. Projected release date, September 23, 2053. So he'll be 62.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's gonna get out.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, and it's absolutely intentional. He left the house with a knife, cut proof gloves and disassembled his fucking phone. He knew what he was doing. Get the fuck outta 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ever. Oh, fuck.

[James Petregallo]

It's still just an unsolved horrible thing. If the church group doesn't tell him to. 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.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That book must have been horrible.

[James Petregallo]

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. That is Connecticut. Simsbury, Connecticut. If you like that show, get on whatever app you're listening on and give us five stars. Netflix, give a thumbs up, do all that good shit for us. Shutupandgivemerder.com is where you get all your tickets for live shows. September 18, Milwaukee at the Paps. Those are almost gone. Get those tickets while you can. And September 19th in Minnesota, in Minneapolis at the state theater. Get those tickets right now. Don't let Milwaukee embarrass you. Do that. Get in there. Shut up and give me murder.com. get all your merchandise. Also Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, Boston. Tickets all there as well. Get in there, get your tickets. Come hang out with us. Follow on social media. Smalltown murder on Instagram, small town pot on Facebook is where you do that. Definitely get yourself. Patreon, what are you waiting for? Hey, patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. You get everything we put out soon as you subscribe. Hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. New ones every other week. One crime and sports. One small town murder. You get them all. All of it. That's right. Every damn drop of it. This week is no exception here for crime and sports we are gonna talk about the theme park disasters, which is one of our favorite things to revisit about twice a year. Crazy shit that goes on in theme parks. I think there's some Disney stuff we're gonna to which will be fun. For small town murder, it's viewer's choice. The poll is up on Patreon. Either the crash documentary, the Mackenzie Shahrilla whole thing or Cory Richens Part 3 Sentencing with a bunch of new information that we knew nothing about that makes her look 10 times worse. It's awesome. So either one of those, that is patreon.com crimeinsports plus you get everything we put out ad free and you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. Do that. You want to follow us? ShutUpAndGiveMurder.com takes you everywhere you want to go. Social media, all that shit. Keep coming back, keep coming out and keep hanging out with us because until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bye.

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[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody listening to small town murder out there. Hi, good to see you out there. I'm here with Jimmy too. And this is an ad, but not an ad for a product. This is an ad for the best updates. Yes, come see a live show. The 2026 Tour. All the tickets are for sale right now. Starting out with February 21st in Nashville, March 6th in Durham, March 7th in Atlanta. Phoenix is sold out. We do have tickets though to your stupid opinions on 21 March. Salt Lake City sold out. Denver has tickets. Be there on May 2. May 29 Buffalo sold out. Royal Oak, Michigan. May 30 we have September 18 Milwaukee, September 19 Minneapolis, October 3 in Dallas, October 16 in San Jose, October 17 in Sacramento, November 13 in Tarrytown. November 14 in Boston. Come see us. The live shows are spectacular. Come join all of the other STM people. You're going to meet so many people. You're going to have fun. Make some new friends like crazy and make some new friends come out and see us. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you go for those tickets. Get them right now while they're hot.

[Jimmy Whisman]

See you on the road.