A 61-year-old Smithfield man has been charged with first-degree murder in the 1985 strangulation death of a 22-year-old Jamestown woman, more than four decades after her body was found on a Newport sidewalk. William Morton was taken into custody outside his Smithfield home on Tuesday, October 6, and arraigned on the murder charge the same day.
Hillary Hellewell's body was discovered on the sidewalk in front of 25 Anthony Street in Newport at about 4:15 a.m. on May 19, 1985, according to newportri.com. Two men discovered her body that morning. A medical examiner determined she died from asphyxiation due to strangulation and found evidence of sexual assault, according to WPRI, and her death was ruled a homicide.
A DNA Trail That Went Cold, Then Warm Again
Investigators preserved biological evidence collected from the crime scene, and in 2004 developed a full DNA profile from material found on Hellewell's clothing. That profile was uploaded to the national CODIS database that same year, but produced no match, according to Newport Buzz. The database search still helped investigators eliminate several potential suspects over the years, even without identifying a culprit.
The case sat dormant until 2023, when Newport detectives and state investigators submitted the evidence to a private laboratory for additional testing. That testing pointed toward a family genetically related to material found on Hellewell's clothing, the same report notes. During an interview on August 13 of this year, investigators learned that two partial DNA matches had a paternal half-brother named Morton.
The Water Bottle That Sealed the Case
With Morton identified as a person of interest, investigators placed him under surveillance and began collecting his discarded trash. On August 21, investigators seized a water bottle Morton had drunk from at the Stadium Theatre concert. Prosecutors learned on September 24 that the DNA profile from the bottle was consistent with DNA recovered from evidence on Hellewell's pants, according to the same report.
Police then obtained arrest and search warrants and took Morton into custody outside his Smithfield home without incident. He was arraigned in Newport District Court on the first-degree murder charge and, per the report, ordered held without bail. Morton entered no plea, as is customary, and is due back in court on October 20.
A Prior Conviction and a Long-Delayed Reckoning
Court records cited in the same report show Morton was convicted in February 1987 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in a Newport park in June 1985, just weeks after Hellewell's killing. He was sentenced to 20 years, with seven years to serve, 13 years suspended, and 20 years of probation in that case.
Attorney General Peter Neronha and Ryan Duffy announced Morton's arrest this week. Neronha said Morton is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a right to trial. Duffy said the passage of time does not diminish the state's commitment to seeking justice for victims and their families, a sentiment echoed in the arrest announcement more than 41 years after Hellewell was killed.
Part of a Broader Cold-Case Push
The case is the latest success for Rhode Island's cold case unit, though accounts of the unit's origins differ: one report states the unit was created in 2023, while another says it formed in 2024 to address a backlog of more than 150 unsolved crimes. Accounts of its staffing also vary, with one report describing a four-person unit and another describing five full-time staffers, per What'sUpNewp.
The unit was funded through the state's fiscal 2024 budget and later supplemented by a $500,000 federal grant, enabling the kind of forensic genealogy work that cracked the Hellewell case.
Just last October, the same unit closed two other long-dormant cases, those of Debra Stone and Cynthia McKenna, though neither resulted in an arrest because the identified suspects had already died. In the McKenna case, investigators compared a male relative's DNA profile with DNA from an envelope.
