Cold case heats up

[unhappycamper]

William Miller poses beneath a sign he made during a 1968 tour in Vietnam. Miller was killed Sept. 16, 1972, in Jacksonville, N.C., not far from the main gate at Camp Lejeune where he was stationed. Two people, including his widow, now face murder charges in connection with his death.


Cold case heats up
By Trista Talton - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 22, 2008 5:53:41 EST

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — Sgt. William Miller was home barely a month from a yearlong deployment to Okinawa when motorists found his body on a roadway not far from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in September 1972.

He had been shot with an M16 — once in the head and once in the back — and left there to die. Authorities made no arrests in his murder.

But 36 years later, a story in a local newspaper highlighting cold cases in the Jacksonville area prompted a witness to come forward. In early September, authorities in North Carolina and Oregon arrested two former Marines in connection with Miller’s death: his widow and the man she later married.

Vickie Lynn Miller Hayden Cooper Babbitt, the mother of one of Miller’s three daughters, and her alleged accomplice, George Hayden, a former police chief once married to Babbitt, face charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Babbitt, 58, was arrested at her home in Bend, Ore., and extradited to North Carolina, where she remained in jail until Dec. 9. She was released on a $400,000 bond. She agreed to turn over her passports and submitted to electronic monitoring. Hayden, 57, was arrested at his home in Belhaven, N.C., and released from jail Nov. 7 on a $350,000 bond.


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/12/marine_caughtupdated_122208w/%2e