Tragedy in Pennsylvania, Justice in Rhode Island | Two Shocking Cases

On October 9, a shooting at a home on Perry Street in Erie, Pennsylvania, left at least eight people dead, and the Erie County Coroner has identified the gunman as 45-year-old Matthew Stone Sr. A motive remains under investigation. In Rhode Island, 61-year-old William Morton has been charged with first-degree murder in the 1985 killing of 22-year-old Hillary Hellewell in Newport. The case is headed to a grand jury.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:19Derrick Levasseur?

  And today, we are covering two cases at very different stages of the investigation. First off, in Erie, Pennsylvania, eight people, including two young children and a pregnant woman, were killed in a mass shooting before the suspected gunman apparently took his own life like they normally do, make the coward's way out. And we're going to discuss what investigators have learned and the questions that remain. Then, we're going to switch it up and head to Newport, Rhode Island, my backyard, where a DNA breakthrough has led to an arrest in the 1985 murder of 22-year-old Hillary Hellewell. More than four decades later, we'll take a look at how investigators identified a suspect

• 1:01Derrick Levasseur?

  and what comes next in the pursuit of justice for Hillary. Listen, two very different stories here. One is a tragic, the other one is a good ending, or we're getting to a good ending.

• 1:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I thought we'd end with something a little bit more positive, hopeful.

• 1:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, the Pennsylvania mass shooting essentially broke maybe 24 or 30 hours ago, and we're covering it now. We had a week off. A lot of you hit us up and we're like, where's Crime Weekly this week? So we appreciate you guys, you know, looking out for us and missing us on Friday and Sunday. But I'll tell you, it's tough to come back and have this be the start of what we're talking about when we're seeing you guys after a long week to have this tragic situation unfold. So we'll discuss that, we'll break it down, see where we go from here. And then we'll switch it up with this Rhode Island story, which I recently heard about in the news here. And it really does play into what Stephanie and I are trying to do with Criminal Coffee, where DNA, it keeps coming back to it. These cases that appear to be unsolvable are being solved

• 1:59Derrick Levasseur?

  because of evidence that was preserved correctly many, many years ago, 41 years ago. And yet now, the monster responsible is finally being held accountable, when I'm sure, in the back of their mind, they thought they got away with it. So.

• 2:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I've seen a lot of cold cases recently be solved, and it's great. There was, there was a one where two sisters went hitchhiking, and they went to a different state, and they were killed. And it's been decades that it hasn't been solved, and they finally solved it. But the guy who did it is dead.

• 2:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course.

• 2:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I hate, I hate that. At least this time, the person is not deceased, and that's important.

• 2:39Derrick Levasseur?

  And this is going to become more prevalent. We're going to have more situations like this. Obviously, you guys are a big part of that with Criminal Coffee, where we're donating to these unsolved cases that maybe have a DNA component to them. The financial barriers that come with these cases to get the money to actually run the testing, that's the biggest barrier to entry, and we're helping with that. And then also, now there's more state and federal grants that law enforcement agencies can apply for. So this existing DNA that they have in these, these back evidence rooms, and they necessarily don't have the money to fund them, this is how they're doing it. They're calling out for those grants, they're rerunning these tests, and they're having better results because of the advancements in science and technology.

• 3:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep, exactly. And hopefully that these things are getting solved. Hopefully, there's somebody still alive to face justice.

• 3:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, to have them stand in a court, absolutely.

• 3:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  But I think that's actually pretty rare now.

• 3:34Derrick Levasseur?

  When it's taken this long, for sure. Here's the good news. These types of cases are going to become more and more rare. Like these older cases in 1980s, 1990s, even the 2000s, the DNA testing wasn't great. So when they were run then, maybe due to the degradation of the DNA, or the quality, or the quantity, they weren't able to get positive results. But now, implementing these new strategies, these new sciences and technologies, they're able to get those positive results. So going forward, when new cases happen, and they have DNA, they're able to initially use these practices. So you're going to have less cold cases as we move forward, which is bad news for the bad guys.

• 4:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. Well, we'll see, we'll see. Hopefully now, a lot of the past cases will be resolved, and anything new going forward, the person won't get to live their lives for decades.

• 4:22Derrick Levasseur?

  They're seeing it, the bad guys are seeing it, right? Like, it's becoming more and more likely that if you commit a crime, and you didn't wear a hazmat, Sue, we're going to catch you.

• 4:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  I also think that, I don't know if we've talked about this, but I was just thinking about this the other day, how it's like, there was such a huge prevalence of serial killers, but now there's not. And how are we supposed to believe that these serial killers were like, I couldn't control myself? I had these voices in my head telling, but now the serial killers can control themselves? Now that they know that they're more likely to get caught, so that.

• 4:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, I think they're getting caught before they have the opportunity to commit, you know, dozens of murders. There's still some out there, unfortunately. We're not there yet. But I agree with you, like, the, the ability to commit a crime and get away with it is, is less likely in today's world than it was 20, 30 years ago. That's just a fact.

• 5:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  They always acted like they couldn't control themselves, you know? Remember BTK? Like, he couldn't, he couldn't control himself. But now you're, you're all able to control yourselves because you know that forensic technology will have your asses in prison quick.

• 5:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. Yeah, that's a great point.

• 5:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  So y'all were lying when you said you couldn't control yourselves.

• 5:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 5:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  So that's, that's what I, I take away from it. But let's talk about what happened in Erie.

• 5:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, yes.

• 5:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  On Friday, October 9th, a family home on Perry Street in Erie, Pennsylvania, became the scene of a mass shooting that would leave eight victims dead, including two young children and their pregnant mother. The suspected gunman was also found dead inside, and according to relatives, he was the father and grandfather of several of the people that he killed. The investigation is still developing. Like Derek said, this is very new. But the information released so far gives us some understanding of what happened that afternoon, and also, an understanding of how much remains unanswered, which is a lot. So at approximately 4:50 PM, Erie Police received an alert from ShotSpotter. Now, this is a system that detects possible gunfire, which is interesting. I'd never heard of this before.

• 6:13Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm going to be honest with you, I had never heard of it either until this came up.

• 6:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that's very interesting. That's actually a good, a good thing, I would say, but yeah.

• 6:21Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, we don't, we don't have that, or we didn't have it in my police department, that's for sure.

• 6:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, maybe it's a newer thing? I don't know.

• 6:28Derrick Levasseur?

  It might be. I mean, you're looking it up right now, you can tell me.

• 6:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  It looks like they use a network of outdoor sensors mounted on poles or buildings to capture loud impulsive sounds, and the system calculates the exact location of the sound by measuring the time it takes to reach multiple sensors. So basically triangulation.

• 6:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, and it says it was started in 1996, so I definitely missed it. But I don't think it was heavily deployed when it first came out. It seems like there was a rebranding in 2023.

• 6:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so maybe they like improved the technology, so there weren't as many false positives, because I think that was an issue early on, but yeah.

• 7:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Fireworks and stuff.

• 7:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, or cars backfiring, who knows? But ShotSpotter is what kind of brought the police there. The officers responded to the area of East 7th and Perry Streets, where they found two women who had been shot outside a home. Now, investigators would later recover surveillance video and audio that helped explain how those two women ended up being there. According to Police Chief Rick Laura, the recordings captured muffled gunfire coming from inside the house. Two distressed women arrived, they must have heard the gunshots. They tried to get assistance from neighbors, and they pounded on the door. The gunman then came outside and called towards them, and as they approached him, he shot them before returning inside, which is absolutely insane.

• 7:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's a crazy thing about this case that I've really never seen before. The gunman luring people who were trying to help to come closer so he could take them out as well, instead of just staying inside the house, you know?

• 8:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's not something we hear often, maybe that he was looking for more time, and he was trying to get to the whistleblowers before they had a chance to notify anybody.

• 8:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Or notify law enforcement. I have more to say on this, but I'll let you continue with the facts, because I do think, you know, a lot of this can be explained based on the people that are committing these crimes.

• 8:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, family accounts and fundraising pages have identified those two women as 37-year-old Laura Roberts and her friend, 51-year-old Twyla Tanner. They reportedly went to the house to help Roberts' niece. Roberts was a mother of five and engaged. Tanner also leaves behind children and grandchildren inside the house. Yeah, inside the house, police discovered six more victims. A five-year-old boy and a little girl, just 22 months old, were found on the first floor. Two women and two young men were found in the stairwell area leading upstairs. The suspected shooter, a 45-year-old man, was found on the second floor with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

• 9:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  Police recovered a 40 caliber handgun registered to him. Relatives have identified the suspected gunman as Matthew Stone. That name has been reported by the Daily Voice based on family accounts. It was not included in the initial official announcements. But according to those same accounts, the victims inside were Matthew Stone's wife, 44-year-old Michelle Stone, their daughter, 24-year-old Angelina Stone, their sons, 19-year-old Matthew Stone II and 21-year-old Jonathan Stone, and Angelina's two children, Isaiah and Amiriana. Laura Roberts was reportedly Michelle's sister. So the woman who was shot, one of the women who was shot outside,

• 9:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  has been reported to being related to Michelle Stone, who's the wife of Matthew Stone, the suspected gunman.

• 9:54Derrick Levasseur?

  There's a connection there with all of them, yeah.

• 9:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Angelina was pregnant with a baby boy. She planned to name Kyrie. A family friend said she was only days away from giving birth. So there was an issue when I was researching this, where I kept seeing different death totals, and I think that pregnancy might explain some of that inconsistency in reporting. Police reported eight victims, plus the suspected gunman, for a total of nine people found dead. But the coroner separately ruled the unborn baby's death a homicide as well. So including Kyrie, 10 lives were lost. There's also been some confusion about the police response. So some early reporting described a prolonged standoff. But the city of Erie has stated that investigators determined all the deaths occurred before officers arrived.

• 10:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the city said there was.

• 10:43Derrick Levasseur?

  No hostage situation, nothing like that.

• 10:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, no prolonged standoff. There was no additional gunshots fired during the police response. And maybe the sound some people believed were gunfire was actually flashbangs used by law enforcement. So that wasn't happening. But either way, officers said that initially, they had limited information about whether someone inside still posed a threat, but then they assessed the situation. They sought a search warrant, and they used a drone and a robot before entering. So they were very careful. And the Erie County Coroner, Lyle Cook, ruled the victims' deaths homicides and the suspected shooter's death a suicide. He also told the Erie Times News that no autopsies would be performed. And as far as I can tell, the reporting does not explain that decision.

• 11:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  But what authorities have not established publicly is why this happened. And we have some kind of context clues. We're going to take a quick break and we'll talk about that when we come back.

• 11:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  This episode is brought to you by Aura House. You know, when you walk into a really nice hotel and immediately notice how good it smells? I want that at home, but I don't want to have to book a hotel room.

• 11:52Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, preferably without the checkout time as well.

• 11:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. And I put, I, you know, the, the early checkout time, right?

• 11:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no, no, late checkout's fine, but not, it's egregious what they, what you, when they usually check you out.

• 12:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I do put effort into making my house feel inviting, the lighting, the decorations. But how it smells is part of that, too, especially when people are coming over. You don't want to spend all that time getting everything ready and then realize the strongest scent in the room is whatever you cooked last night.

• 12:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, no doubt. Even if the dinner was actually good, it doesn't need to stay all week.

• 12:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right. And Aura House, it's great. It's a cold air fragrance diffuser that uses the same technology a lot of high-end hotels use to make their lobby smell incredible. It fills a room with a scent covering up to 650 square feet with no flame, no heat and no wax. And I love the idea that consistent fragrance is going to be added without having to check my candles or, you know, remember to blow out my candles before leaving the house.

• 12:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Does it take a lot of maintenance, though?

• 12:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, actually, there's no water tank to refill or clean. And the magnetized setup means no pouring or measuring. So each fill lasts about 30 days and you can use the app to adjust the intensity or you can turn it off if you're not going to be home for a while. You can set a schedule so you can decide how much fragrance you want instead of walking into a room and being personally attacked by lavender. So I always set it, I always set it because I don't want it going all day when I'm not home. I'll, I'll set it from work about 20 minutes before I'm going to be home. And then when I walk in, it smells really good. And the diffuser itself is sleek, minimal aluminum. So it looks good sitting on a shelf and the oils are formulated without parabens or phthalates, with no ingredients known to be toxic to dogs and cats.

• 13:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, question that I'm sure everyone is asking. How do you choose a scent without smelling it first?

• 13:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, they have a scent quiz on their website to help you narrow it down. So there's bright, fresh options, earthy scents, hotel-inspired fragrances. So if you know you like a certain hotel smell, you can go and see if they have it. It's all depending on what you like. And if you don't love your first scent, they'll actually swap it out for free. So you're not stuck with something that sounded better in the description.

• 13:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 13:52Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 14:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so we're back. We've heard from Julius Wyndham, who is Amariana's father. And Julius described the gunman as a grandfather whose everyday behavior had not suggested he was capable of this kind of violence or this level of violence. But other long-term acquaintances described the shooter as having deteriorated over time. So those recollections kind of offer different perspectives about what state Matthew was in at the time of the shooting. But neither provides a confirmed explanation for what happened. The police chief, Laura, he suggested mental health could be a factor. However, police have not announced a diagnosis or a confirmed motive.

• 14:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  So I think that's kind of just speculation, but it's speculation that makes sense, right?

• 14:59Derrick Levasseur?

  It makes sense. And that's what I was referring to earlier when I said I would wait as far as a pattern of behavior that we see with all of these shooters, where they have these ideations of self-harm, they're going to kill themselves. And then before doing so, they decide to take everybody with them. I'm more concerned at the factors surrounding his behavior leading up to the shootings. When we talk about preventative measures, we live in a society, whether you like it or not, where if you do not have a felony on your record, you can go into a gun shop and within seven days, you can buy a pistol. Even right now with some of the gun reform that we have. And personally, I don't see that changing. I know AR-15s are not a thing at this point and, you know, getting assault-style weapons,

• 15:42Derrick Levasseur?

  you're not going to get those, but a handgun, if you're 21 years or older, you can buy one. So we can continue to work on that, but I think the bigger issue is finding ways to vet people. And this is something that's controversial. I get a lot of crap for it every time I mention it. But if you are someone who is experiencing mental health issues, there has to be a vetting process to ensure that not only at the time of purchase, but after the fact, there is a continuation of that vetting to ensure that if your health deteriorates, you are not in possession of a firearm, not only to not hurt yourself, but the people around you. And I know, I know I get a lot for that because it's such a vague statement. And I understand it, like when we say mental health issues, hell, I have mental health issues. We all do, right?

• 16:27Derrick Levasseur?

  We all have things that we're dealing with. But there is a spectrum and there is something where if people are having thoughts of self-harm, that to me is an indication that maybe at that point, they should not be in possession of an item, a weapon, that can not only kill themselves, but everyone around them within a matter of seconds. To me, that seems commonsensical, but I know we'll get some pushback on it. So if this person, and I'm having to call him by his name, if there's any indication that they're experiencing some difficulties and that's reported, if law enforcement gets involved, there should be a practice or a process in place where at the time, those firearms can be removed for at least an extended period of time to until they're okay.

• 17:11Derrick Levasseur?

  We have something similar happen with domestic violence cases, where if someone is charged with, with domestic violence, their firearms are seized during that process. So it's something that already happens. And again, I know people are going to say, well, you know, I have this issue or that issue and I'm, I'm being treated for it. Why should I not have, be, be entitled to own a firearm? That's not what I'm saying. It's a case-by-case basis.

• 17:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's case-by-case. Yeah. And I mean, we don't know, we don't know what happened with him. So we can say mental health issues, the police have mentioned maybe mental health issues.

• 17:42Derrick Levasseur?

  It's still early.

• 17:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  We don't know. He could just be a bad guy and he could have been mad. And he could have, we don't know.

• 17:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Loss is cool and then decided to kill himself after the fact.

• 17:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And once again, I, I really, I don't know how you feel, but I'm going to say like a mental health issue would not excuse what happened here.

• 18:00Derrick Levasseur?

  No, God, no. I'm, I'm more looking at it from the perspective of how do we prevent this from happening? How do we at least, it's never going to be 100%, but how as a society do we do, move forward, just like we are in DNA? And we just talked about it in the opening and we're going to talk about it again. Like what, what can we deploy? What can we implement to try to decrease the number of these incidents? And there's multiple things. It's multi, it's a multi-pronged thing. I am a, a gun owner, but I also believe it is too easy to get a gun right now. Like, these are things that are not binary, where you can have kind of a middle-of-the-road, commonsensical approach to gun reform and mental health issues. Like, it could all be incorporated into a better decision-making process

• 18:43Derrick Levasseur?

  when it comes to handing over a firearm that has 10 to 15 rounds in it, 10 to 15 bullets, where you can, you know, people think that with a pistol, you're not going to kill as many people. I can tell you right now, and I've said it before, give me a pistol and two mags and I can do as much damage as someone with an assault rifle. So to me, it's, it really doesn't make much of a difference whether it's a pistol or an assault rifle, other than the distance that you can shoot from. So, you know, that's where I stand on that. And it's, it's something where we can't just stand by and go, oh, this is the world we live in now. We got to try to do something. I'm not going to say it's always going to work or be the right decision. But I can tell you right now that's sitting back and just saying, yep, it is what it is. That's not, that's not the right choice either.

• 19:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm just saying, like, if we find out that this guy was deteriorating, as some people have said, and members of his family or friends or whatever encouraged him to get help and he was resistant to that, if he himself noticed that there was some issues going on, he was resistant to seeking help. I, I don't really have any sympathy for any mental health issues that, that he was going through.

• 19:47Derrick Levasseur?

  You're killing little babies.

• 19:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  You have, you have, yeah, you have a responsibility to the people around you that if you're not doing well and you're in a position where you could harm them, you need to make sure that you're doing the right thing. And that's not what happened. So.

• 20:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Can I say one more thing that we kind of, we, we went over and I know people are going to have questions about the autopsies and the decisions not to have those autopsies? It's actually a lot simpler than you might think for anybody who's questioning that. Listen, we have cases all the time where we respond to houses or, you know, apartment complexes and it'll be an older person in their 80s with multiple medical conditions, where even in those cases, the, the pathologist, the medical examiner will decide not to perform an autopsy based on the circumstances surrounding it. This is kind of one of those cases where it's extremely tragic and yet it's very obvious what happened to these, to these victims. They were shot to death, right? So the autopsy is not going to reveal anything eye-opening

• 20:44Derrick Levasseur?

  that's going to change the outcome or the determination in this case. So for the sake of expedience and for, out of respect for the victims, because as I've talked about before, autopsies are not a pretty process. They are not something you want to experience. And personally, if it was obvious what happened to me, yeah, I, I'm all set on that as well. Because what they do when they, when they go in there, it's going to leave some marks. We'll just put it that way. So when it's very clear what happened and you don't need to go to that extreme to, to determine how they were killed, they will, for the sake of expedience and respect, bypass the autopsies because they're not needed. We know they were killed. They were shot to death.

• 21:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think sometimes people want to know, toxicology-wise, like, was there anything in anyone's system? Kind of thing?

• 21:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Maybe for, maybe for the, the suspect, that might be something worth considering, like what was in his system prior to the self-inflicted wound. But for the victims themselves, even if they have something in their system. Doesn't mean it justifies or warrants what happened to him. So what do you learn from that?

• 21:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, was there some drugging of the people beforehand?

• 21:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Beforehand?

• 21:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe for that kind of thing that that people would want to know. But yeah, I, I agree. I think it's kind of unnecessary.

• 21:57Derrick Levasseur?

  It happens more than you think, to be honest with you, because there's already a backlog of, of medical examinations that need to be conducted. So when it's very obvious, hey, we have this, we have that, this person was shot in the chest or face, you can see how they were killed. It doesn't take a pathologist to determine cause and manner of death.

• 22:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, one part of the investigation has been focused on the two women who came to the house, the ones that were outside. When the police arrived, investigators do plan to examine their phones and speak with relatives to understand what they knew and what prompted them to go there. Cause it wasn't like they were just walking by and they were like, oh, we heard gunshots. Let's check. No.

• 22:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 22:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  They specifically went to that house because they were concerned about something. So something had concerned them enough to seek help. Establishing what that was may help reconstruct the events leading up to the shooting. I think that it would give some context there, but

• 22:45Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course, of course.

• 22:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  For now, the evidence describes an attack that killed members of three generations of a family, along with two women who reportedly came to help. The people left behind are facing the loss of partners, parents, siblings and children, while investigators work to answer the question that still hangs over this case, which is what happened inside that home before the first shots were fired and why?

• 23:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, extremely important. The why in this case, we know the how and the when and, and the what, but we need to know the why. It's extremely important, not only for the, everyone who has survived in this, in this situation and, and has questions, we need to get those answers for them, but also from a macro perspective, as I've said multiple times in this episode, what can we do? What can we dissect here? How can we pick this apart and try to find ways to prevent it from happening in the future? We're definitely sending our thoughts and prayers to everybody involved, not only the immediate victims and their families, but also the entire community. Many of you DM'd us and emailed us about this case and asked if we were going to cover it. And I responded to a couple of you saying that we were.

• 23:50Derrick Levasseur?

  This is why, because we know that the, the impact of these tragic situations goes far beyond the immediate people involved. So we're thinking of everybody involved in the situation, everyone impacted by it. And if there's a major development in this case, we will absolutely let you know. We're going to take one last break and we're going to come back and we're going to end on a more positive note, talking about a case that appeared to be just unsolvable, wasn't going to happen.

• 24:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, of course.

• 24:17Derrick Levasseur?

  1985, a year after you and I were born.

• 24:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Derrick Levasseur?

  No chance that this one's going to have a resolution. And yet here we are, we're going to talk about it next. We'll take this break, we'll be right back.

• 24:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode of Crime Weekly News. You know those subscriptions you sign up for because you need them for one specific thing? For me, it's newspaper subscriptions. I'll need them to research a case and it's some weird, like it's the Tampa Bay Times and I'm never going to want to know what's going on in Tampa Bay, except for right now. So you like subscribe and you get the three months for $1 or whatever, and then you totally forgot that you had it. And all of a sudden you're paying $29 a month for the Tampa Bay Times, when you don't even care what's going on there. That's, that's what happened. Apparently you, you signed up for a trial and now all of a sudden you and the subscription are still in a committed relationship.

• 25:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, so you've moved on, but the monthly payment hasn't.

• 25:07Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 25:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Including those subscriptions you forgot about?

• 25:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, yes. Rocket Money tracks recurring charges.

• 25:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Perfect, I need that.

• 25:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep, they, they track the recurring charges and they let users cancel unwanted subscriptions actually right inside the app with just a few taps. So that's going to save you time as well. When you spot something you no longer need, you can actually deal with it right then, while you're looking at it, instead of saying, I'll do that later, I'll call them later, blah, blah, blah, which is actually how it gets another three months out of you.

• 25:55Derrick Levasseur?

  I think we all know, I know, I know from personal experience, later can get very expensive if you forget.

• 26:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Every single time. And Rocket Money also automatically categorizes your transactions, so you can see where your money's going, because remembering a couple of takeout orders is different from seeing what all of them added up to over in one month. That's a lot. You can also set custom budgets and savings goals, whether you're planning a trip, saving for a bigger purchase like a house, or you just want a little bit more breathing room. Having everything organized makes it easier to see where you might want to make adjustments.

• 26:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it gives you something concrete to work with.

• 26:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  Also, like tax time has been so much easier because all my accounts are like loaded into, into this one app.

• 26:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's a great point.

• 26:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I can have my accountant go through that instead of having to, you know, have him sign into all my accounts, which I don't really like. You can also get alerts for upcoming bills, large transactions and low balances, so you can stay on top of things without making a full review of your finances, another daily assignment. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills, so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/crimeweekly. That's rocketmoney.com/crimeweekly. One more time, rocketmoney.com/crimeweekly.

• 27:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so we're back. On May 19th, 1985, two brothers walking to work in Newport, Rhode Island, discovered a young It is a beautiful place. I will say that, a lot of great history, but on this day, not so beautiful. There was a young woman lying on a sidewalk. At first they thought she had passed out, but when one of them checked for a pulse, he couldn't find one. Her name was Hillary Hallowell. She was 22 years old and someone had sexually assaulted and strangled her. So for more than four decades, her family waited for an arrest that didn't come. Now investigators say evidence preserved from that morning has finally led them to a suspect with the help of a water bottle he left behind at a concert. So Hillary, she grew up in nearby Jamestown, one of three children.

• 28:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  She graduated from Proud High School in 1982, attended Rhode Island College and later transferred to the University of Rhode Island to study business administration. She had not completed her studies by the time she was killed. On the evening of May 18th, Hillary attended a gathering with friends on Friendship Street in Newport. According to reporting on the investigative affidavit, she left with a male friend who was heavily intoxicated and who she had offered to walk home. He made it home, but investigators said he could not give them an accurate, detailed account of the evening, because apparently he was too drunk.

• 28:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Too drunk.

• 28:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  I guess, which is like this drunk guy's having this young woman walk him home safely. Come on, what, what is this world?

• 28:43Derrick Levasseur?

  Already off to a bad start.

• 28:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Already off to a bad start. So around 4:15 the following morning, Eric and Stephen Frost found Hillary outside 25 Anthony Street while walking to their cleaning jobs. She was wearing a sweater, white painter's pants and socks, but no shoes, and a heavily soiled blue t-shirt was lying near her head. The medical examiner determined she had died from strangulation and found injuries indicating a sexual assault. Investigators collected biological evidence from her body and clothing and preserved the t-shirt. Now that evidence would become central to the case, not in 1985, because technology needed to identify its source. It wasn't available to Rhode Island investigators in 1985. Now, police interviewed people who knew Hillary and people who had attended the gathering.

• 29:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  They could not identify her killer. The investigation went cold.

• 29:32Derrick Levasseur?

  Which we, we hear a lot.

• 29:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  We hear it way too much. So in 2004, testing produced a male DNA profile from semen recovered from Hillary's pants. Investigators compared it with samples from several men connected to her, including the friend she had left with, but none matched. So the profile was entered into the national DNA database, but that also failed to produce a match. Then in 2023, Newport Police and the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office reopened the investigation. Evidence was submitted to a private lab and the new analysis generated a lead pointing toward a particular family. Investigators eventually identified two men whose DNA partially matched the evidence

• 30:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  and further work established that they had a paternal half brother named Willie Morton, who is known as Billy Morton. So by August of 2026, investigators were following Billy Morton, who was living in Smithfield.

• 30:29Derrick Levasseur?

  My backyard.

• 30:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  On August 21st, they followed him and his fiancee to a Heart tribute concert at the Stadium Theater in One Socket.

• 30:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Which is scary because that's where my children sometimes perform, which is crazy.

• 30:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Heart is a band. I don't know if people are too young.

• 30:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, Heart is a band and Stadium Theater is beautiful, by the way, when Socket, Rhode Island, which has a lot of history and the Stadium Theater is, is beautiful. It's gorgeous. Awesome place to attend if you ever get out this way.

• 30:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  So they followed him, they're watching him and an investigator saw Billy Morton drink from a water bottle and then leave it on an empty seat, which it's now abandoned.

• 31:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep, abandoned properly.

• 31:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  We've talked about this before and a lot of cases get solved with this kind of stuff.

• 31:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  So after Billy Morton left, the investigator collected the bottle. On September 24th, a laboratory report found that DNA recovered from the bottle matched the profile developed from semen on Hillary's clothing. On October 6th, police arrested Billy Morton, who's now 61 years old, and he was charged with murder. Now there's another significant part of his history.

• 31:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes, there is. Yes, there is.

• 31:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  In 1987, Billy Morton was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in Newport in June of 1985. This is shortly after Hillary's death. The teenager said he offered to walk her home, he choked her unconscious and assaulted her.

• 31:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, sound familiar?

• 31:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep. The attack happened in a park about a block from where Hillary's body had been found. Morton received a 20-year sentence with seven years to serve and the remainder suspended.

• 32:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, isn't that great, how that works?

• 32:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's really not great.

• 32:07Derrick Levasseur?

  And being sarcastic for anybody who can't see my face.

• 32:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  And here's the thing that bothers me. The MO was the same, the location was the same. Did nobody put two and two together at that point? Did no investigators put two and two together or wonder? I wonder if Billy Morton is responsible for this other death

• 32:23Derrick Levasseur?

  No, I'm with you.

• 32:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  With the same MO right around the corner.

• 32:25Derrick Levasseur?

  I got no excuse. I agree.

• 32:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he served seven years of a 20-year sentence.

• 32:31Derrick Levasseur?

  And by the way, This was only like, it wasn't like it happened 15 years later where you could make an argument that hey, because it's not digitized, you may not have known about this previous case. This is two years later.

• 32:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, it was, he was convicted two years later.

• 32:46Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what I'm saying, but it happened in 1985.

• 32:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  This happened in June of 85.

• 32:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. So right around, okay. So even closer. And so.

• 32:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  So a month, a month after Hillary.

• 32:55Derrick Levasseur?

  My point being, there is a 99.9, actually, we're just gonna call it a hundred percent. There were officers who worked this first case, who are also working this one and never put two and two together. The only thing I'll say is maybe as this unfolds, we will find that there was some investigation done. I don't know. It doesn't appear that way.

• 33:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Why? Then they let him out? They let him out after seven years for sexually assaulting a 15 year old girl?

• 33:23Derrick Levasseur?

  That, there's two different things here. One, we're horrible that this connection wasn't made at the time. I would love to see the internal workings to see if there was something that was done and they just couldn't make a connection because of the lack of advancements in DNA technology and science at that time. But that's for them to put it out there. If that's the case, they need to say, yeah, he's been on our radar for this case since then, but we didn't go forward. However, because of this crime, they could have easily got his DNA and compared it to the sample they had with no issues whatsoever. So I don't see a good excuse here. However.

• 33:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  And seven years, he's let out in seven years. He goes to prison in 87, what's seven years after 87?

• 34:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. So, so 94, 94?

• 34:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  I bet you there was some DNA technology available by 1993, 1994, where they could have been like, hey, before we let him out on this one, let's check his DNA against this one.

• 34:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, the real advancements, and you know this, we've been talking about it a lot, happened within the last like five or seven years where it just got crazy good. But it does look like from what we were saying that in 2004, they had a sample that they, they tried to, that they tried to analyze against someone and there was no matches at the time. Again, no excuses here. You gotta do it religiously. Now the advancements with the technology, it's there, it's available. But let's do, talk about some positive stuff, okay? They get this sample, it's semen, right? They use a DNA database, they do a genealogy investigation, right? Which is what we really highlight on Criminal Coffee. Genealogists

• 34:57Derrick Levasseur?

  come in, take that DNA sample, there's not a direct match, but they find multiple relatives linked to the killer, linked to the suspect, right? And so at that point, maybe you say, oh, you know, it's, there's not much we can do, or you know, nobody's gonna talk. But then, and I know this firsthand, there's a lot of work to track someone down and follow them for hours and hours and days until they, until they slip up and drink out of a coffee cup or a water bottle and leave it behind in a place where you can grab it, whether it's a pizza crust or a cigarette butt, right? So they did that, they're sitting in that stadium theater, they grab it, and it took many years, but he finally slipped up and

• 35:38Derrick Levasseur?

  they got him. I, we all wish it was sooner. We all wish it was the day after it happened. But I am glad to see that this person who is still relatively young, I'm saying that because I'm 42 and he's only 61, but I'm glad to know that.

• 35:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's not like 90, you know?

• 35:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Exactly. He's gonna spend a significant amount of time behind bars, God willing. And who knows if he's connected to other cases as well. Maybe not just in Rhode Island, but Massachusetts, New England area. Now they need to go back and look at where he was living for the duration of his life.

• 36:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  I would say if you, if you did it a month after.

• 36:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. How many types of crimes like this did he carry out? How many other victims out there do we have where the cases are unsolved? Because if he's lived anywhere else, you can cross-reference cases from those areas and see if there's a pattern. So this is a, this is an onion that needs to be peeled back a few different layers. But overall, this is a good story. The fact that they got the guy, there was some good investigative work done now. I'm sure that this guy thought he got away with it and he was sadly mistaken.

• 36:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. It makes, it makes me happy that he probably thought he got away. He probably went to prison for seven years for that, the poor assault of that 14 year old girl, that 15 year old girl. And he was like, well, I've served my time for both of these things now. He like, he probably justified it that way, you know, but.

• 36:59Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And I don't want to make this episode about it, but, but I think we all agree. Seven years for sexually assaulting and choking a young woman unconscious.

• 37:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  A 15 year old girl, a child.

• 37:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, you're right. I stand corrected. A child and you're out after seven years like nothing happened. But that, that, that, that child who is now a woman has to go through life.

• 37:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Suffers with that for her life.

• 37:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Knowing that the person who did that, her family members as well, that the guy who's responsible for that trauma is out at a theater, enjoying the night out.

• 37:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, watching a hard tribute band.

• 37:33Derrick Levasseur?

  In the same state where you reside. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Life in prison. See you later.

• 37:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm good. You will never have the opportunity to do this again to anybody else. It's a one-strike-you're-out deal. You get convicted of the crime and this is what you're capable of? You are no better than a murderer. Cause in a lot of ways, you took something from that, from that young girl that she'll never get back.

• 37:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Never. Yeah. And, and had you killed her like Hillary, would that even have been a thing? I mean, apparently that didn't deter him from doing it again, right? He wasn't like, oops, I killed somebody. Like, maybe I should stop. No. So you're, you're a psychopath. You're done.

• 38:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

• 38:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, we have the, the conviction that's established, the conviction for the 15 year old girl in 1985, a month after Hillary. The allegation that he murdered Hillary still has to be proven in court. Authorities haven't publicly explained how Morton allegedly encountered Hillary, whether they knew each other or whether he attended the gathering. He's being held without bail. He has a status conference scheduled for October 20th. But for Attorney General Peter Neronha, the announcement was personal. He grew up with Hillary in Jamestown. He remembered her as a fun, energetic person. Her family requested privacy, did not attend the conference. But Neronha also recalled meeting retired Newport investigator James Evan Hazel, years after the murder. Hazel pulled out his wallet and inside he was still

• 38:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  carrying the unidentified DNA sequence associated with Hillary's case. So there's a lot of people, you know, we could say, we could say the police didn't do great by putting one and one together in 1985, but there were a lot of investigators who carried this with years. Yeah.

• 39:14Derrick Levasseur?

  It's, it's Michelle Norris for me. It's something I think about all the time. And a lot of the people who worked Hillary's case at the time, they carried it with them as well. And I'm glad to see that for, for their families and everybody involved, because this can impact a lot of people, the entire community. There's some resolution. It's not gonna change the outcome, but hopefully this time, he doesn't get out. He shouldn't get out. And he spends the rest of his life behind bars. And as I always say, guys like this, when they go to prison, it's, it's not a good visit. We'll just put it that way. You guys can do the math.

• 39:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, he's already been there, so he can enjoy that.

• 39:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And he's going back and you know, somebody who has nothing to lose may pay him a visit. Oh, that would be a terrible thing.

• 39:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it'd be really heartbreaking.

• 39:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Sorry, not sorry. Overall, this is what it's all about, right? Like Criminal Coffee, DNA testing, raising funds, raising awareness, not giving up on cases that seem hopeless. There is, there is a possibility now, the science is so good, that even in cases where there's a minimal amount of DNA, if it was preserved correctly, which kudos to the Newport Police Department at the time.

• 40:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 40:19Derrick Levasseur?

  By doing that the right way, they were still able to use that DNA many years later. And we have a, we have a good outcome in this one, hopefully.

• 40:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So I mean, at this point, after 41 years, Hillary's case is moving into court, where the evidence behind that arrest is going to have to be tested. But hopefully they have enough evidence to, to prove it.

• 40:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I hope they do too. Shout out to Peter Neronha. I've seen him, obviously met him multiple times. I think he was, I don't remember what his role, he wasn't the AG when I was there. But if he or anybody from his team, and I've talked to people from his team before, if they, they see this, or if there's any other cases where they're similar to Hillary's and you, and you feel like you could do something with that DNA now, and you're just looking for the funding, hit us up. We're available. We'd be happy to contribute in any way possible. Guys, that's gonna do it for us. Crime Weekly News. We're gonna be back later this week with Ashley Flynn, part one. We're happy to be back and shout out to everybody that I've met over in the UK. Stephanie, they were very sad that you weren't there, by the way. Almost felt like.

• 41:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was also sad.

• 41:20Derrick Levasseur?

  They were like, oh, hi Derek, but where's Stephanie?

• 41:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  I was sad as well.

• 41:24Derrick Levasseur?

  It was, it was a bittersweet moment, but it was great to meet you. It was great to be over there. And I'm sure we'll be back at some point. But as always, it's great getting to sit down and interact with you guys and talk about what we're doing and the impact it has on you. It means the world to us and it motivates us to do more. And we got some things planned for you guys. TBD on that. If you're part of Patreon, then you already know.

• 41:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  You already know some, some stuff.

• 41:47Derrick Levasseur?

  You already know there's some of the stuff we got going on, but.

• 41:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's some stuff Derek won't let me tell.

• 41:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Nope, not yet. It's coming though. It's coming soon. And we will let you guys know. Until then, guys, please, everyone stay safe out there and we will see you later this week.

• 41:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  See you later this week. Bye.