WA WA - Donna Mills, 16, found murdered, Everett/Mukilteo, 14 Oct 1980

[LalluviaPNW]

On Tuesday, October 14, 1980, teenager Donna Mills left home around 5:30 p.m. to pick up a jacket she had left at a friend's place in the Hidden Forest Apartments. The apartment complex was a 15-minute walk from her family’s house in wooded, suburban Mukilteo, Washington. She retrieved the jacket and was seen a short time later walking back towards her home, but never arrived.

Two days later, the 16-year-old was found strangled and nude in a wooded area just off a road she would have walked along on her way home.

It was probably still somewhat light out when she was attacked - sunset that day was 6:21 p.m. - although the overcast sky and the abundant evergreen trees in the neighborhood would have made her walking route somewhat dim.

Forty years later, this murder is still unsolved. Donna’s parents marked their 50th wedding anniversary in June 2008; her dad passed away just a week later. As of early 2021, her three sisters and their mom are still in the area and still praying for the murder to be solved.

With all the new forensic methods, why is this case still cold? There is little published about the case, although the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department put her photo and case summary on the Jack of Diamonds in their deck of cold case playing cards printed in 2008.
https://snohomishcountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1038/18---Jack-of-Diamonds---Donna-Mills?bidId=

The sheriff’s office isn’t sharing whether they have DNA or when the last time was they had physical evidence looked at. Do they even still have the evidence? We know evidence from at least one other cold case in the county was lost (see 1972 Jody Loomis case).

The investigators say all of Donna’s associates had alibis; they seem to be leaning towards it being a stranger. Here are some known rapists/murderers who were in the area during this time period, in order of likelihood (IMHO) of them being the culprit:

• Terrence Miller - convicted of the rape and murder of 20-year-old Jody Loomis 1972.
  
  
• Robert Raethke - convicted in 1985 for a series of rapes of young teenage girls (age 13-14) between 1982-1983.
  
  
• William Talbott II - convicted of the 1987 murders of 18-year-old Tanya van Cuylenborg and her 20-year-old boyfriend, Jay Cook.
  
  
• Jesse Pratt - pled guilty to kidnapping and assaulting his girlfriend in 1980, POI in disappearance of 19-year-old Virginia Rambus in 1985, and convicted of the 1986 murder of 20-year-old Carrie Love.
  
  
• Michael Kay Green - convicted of 1985 murder of 12-year-old Brenda Gere. Also convicted of a (1986?) assault on a woman in Seattle’s U District and the rape of a Lynnwood, WA woman, also in the mid-1980s.
  
  
• Gary Ridgway (Green River Killer) - convicted of murdering 49 women starting in 1982.
  
  
• Robert Washburn - pled guilty to the 1986 rape and murder of 13-year-old Jenny Bastian, Tacoma, 1986.
  
  
• Charles Hartman - awaiting trial for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Michella Welch, Tacoma, 1986.

 

[LalluviaPNW]

Of course it could be a culprit who hasn’t been caught for any other violent crimes, and I don’t have any information about whether any of the guys listed above have been ruled out by DNA or geography or any other reason. Those (admittedly big) issues aside, here’s why Terrence “Terry” Miller is top of my list, mostly similarities between Donna’s murder and the 1972 murder of Jody Loomis, for which Miller was convicted.

1. Similar distance from his home as the Jody Loomis murder (5.4 and 4.3 miles).
2. Both crimes occurred late afternoon/early evening of a weekday.
3. Appear to be crimes of opportunity, as the time and place of both Jody’s and Donna’s murders were not habitual times or places for them to be, as far as I can tell. Jody apparently usually got a ride to the horse pasture, and Donna was going to pick up a jacket that had been left behind by accident. In other words, the attacker of each was probably not lying in wait for them specifically, although Donna could have conceivably been followed. Jody was on a bike so it would have been harder to follow her.
4. Similar age of victim (16 and 20).
5. It appears that both girls were abducted off a street and taken into adjacent wooded area where they were raped and killed, and left there. Not moved via vehicle. Left close enough to the road that they were found fairly quickly (one hour - Jody, and two days - Donna).
6. Terry was known to be a habitual long-distance walker.

Reasons to argue against Miller being Donna’s killer:
1. Jody was shot, while Donna was strangled.
2. Eight years between Jody’s and Donna’s deaths.
3. Miller has been described as slight and small in stature and would have more easily overpowered Jody, who was petite, than Donna, who was curvy and possibly taller than average. (Of course, we know he had guns.)

 

[LalluviaPNW]

Robert Raethke is also an interesting candidate. He is a convicted serial rapist but is not known to have committed any murders.

In 1985, Raethke was convicted of four counts of first-degree rape, one count of kidnapping and one count of attempted rape. In all of the cases, which occurred between 1982 and 1983, he grabbed teenage girls off of trails in wooded areas of suburbs in Snohomish County, Washington. (Donna Mills lived and died in Snohomish County.) Raethke lived less than two miles from the location of most of his attacks.

Raethke was incarcerated for these crimes until 2012.

“While in treatment in prison, the court documents said, Raethke said that if he had not been stopped he could have been another ‘Ted Bundy,’ who in the 1970s raped and murdered dozens of women in several states. The court documents said, ‘The defendant called himself 'the gentleman rapist,' saying that he was nice to his victims because he sometimes walked them back to the trail where he abducted them.’”

After his release from prison, he lived in sex offender housing in Snohomish County. In 2014 he was charged with a second-degree assault with sexual motivation for groping and kissing a stranger on a trail within a few miles of his home. He was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison. The victim was a 19-year-old girl.

Arrested: Serial rapist called himself 'the gentleman rapist', feared he could be like Ted Bundy

 

[LalluviaPNW]

Pros/Cons for William Talbott II for the murder of Donna Mills

Bill Talbott’s claim-to-fame is being the first murderer identified by genetic genealogy to be convicted. Golden State Killer De Angelo was arrested first, but his conviction followed Talbott’s. Signaling a 'new era' in forensic investigation, a man caught through genetic genealogy gets life in prison for 1987 double murder

Talbott’s groundbreaking conviction in June 2019 came for the 1987 murders of 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jay Cook. The young couple had traveled to the Seattle area from British Columbia, Canada, for what was supposed to be an overnight trip. The two were found about a week later, sixty miles apart and killed in different manners.

Jay’s body was found in tall grasses off of a trail in Monroe, Snohomish County, beaten, strangled, and asphyxiated with cloth and a pack of cigarettes stuffed into his throat. Tanya’s body was located in a ditch 60 miles north, in Skagit County. Her hands were bound and she had been raped and shot.

It is still unknown where Talbott came across the couple, as neither location of the bodies was near their known route. It is speculated that he might have met them in the SoDo area of Seattle, where Talbott’s trucking route took him and where Tanya and Jay had planned to sleep in their van outside of a business where they had an appointment the following morning.

Points in favor of Talbott being the murderer of Donna Mills:

1. Although I believe he lived in Woodinville at the time of both crimes, at least a 20-minute drive from where Donna was killed, Talbott is known to have driven extensively around the north Puget Sound area.
   
   
2. Talbott and his known victims had not met prior to the crime, as far as anyone knows. Donna’s murder is believed to have most likely been committed by a stranger.
   
   
3. There was a rape and a strangulation involved in both crimes.
   
   
4. Talbott was described as a big, very strong man, who would have more easily overpowered Donna than a slight man would.
   
   
5. While he would only have been 17 in 1980, Talbott’s father and sisters claim that he had been very violent in his youth, including at least one occasion in which he sent his sister to the ER. He had also sexually assaulted the same sister when she was around eleven and he was about 13.
   
   
6. "To Bob Gebo, an FBI profiler, it looked like the work of a seasoned killer. ‘It doesn’t match up with a first-time offender who has no experience in interpersonal violence,’ Gebo said.” The horrific cold case that might be solved by tracing the suspect's family tree
   

Points against:

1. Bill Talbott was only 17 at the time.
   
   
2. Donna was left close to where she had been attacked, not driven far afield as Tanya and Jay were.
   
   
3. Donna’s murder just seems a lot more quiet and clean than it seems Talbott would be, given his history of violence and anger.
   
   
4. We have no information leading us to believe Talbott had any reason to be in Donna’s neighborhood, more than 15 miles from his home.
   

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/talbotts-former-roommates-testify-in-double-murder-trial/