Keller - Cold Cases Solved Volume 5: 18 Fascinating True Crime Cases

In the small town of West Gardiner, Maine, in the early 1970s, the Dill family was living an idyllic life. The six siblings and their parents were exceptionally close, making for a happy family unit. Home life was active and fun and there were outings and picnics, often embarked upon on a whim. The town itself was quaint, picture book pretty and safe. It was as youd imagine a perfect life to be in rural America and it was all about to end.

At around 9 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, September 16, 1973, two Maine State Police detectives arrived at the Dill residence in West Gardiner. Robert and Janice Dill were asked to step outside so that the officers could speak privately with them. What they had to share was devastating. The body of a young woman had been found beside her car on Whippoorwill Road in nearby Litchfield, a location so remote that the locals called it Purgatory. The car was registered to the Dills oldest daughter, Debbie, and the police needed them to come down to the morgue to identify her body.

Thus began a descent into hell for the Dill family. The body at the morgue was badly beaten, her facial features battered and bruised. Janice and Robert only recognized their 18-year-old daughter by a small scar on her forehead. Questioning the officers, Robert learned that his daughters car had apparently run off the road and that she had then been attacked with a hammer, beaten so savagely on the head that there were holes punched through her skull. Debbie had never stood a chance, but shed put up a fierce fight. Blood and skin cells were retrieved from under her fingernails. Since the body was found with its lower garments removed the suggestion was that this was a sexually motivated attack although the autopsy results would be inconclusive.

Robert and Janice Dill returned to their home that day broken. Still, there was a terrible duty to perform. They had to tell their children that Debbie was dead. That task fell to Robert, but he could not bring himself to utter the word murder in reference to his oldest child. He told Debbies siblings that she had died in a car accident. That family secret would prevail for the next seven years.

In the meantime, there was a homicide investigation to run, a brutal killer to be taken off the streets. The obvious place to start the inquiries was with those closest to the victim. According to the Dills, their daughter had recently become engaged to a young man named Kenneth Gillman, who happened to be a Lewiston police officer.

Brought in for questioning, Gillman said that hed last seen Debbie when she left his apartment just before 1 a.m. Sunday morning. Debbie had brought along some wedding invitations to show him, and this had led to some tension between them. Ken had told her that she was moving too fast. He wasnt sure if he was ready to settle down just yet.

Might that have been a motive for murder? Had he and Debbie argued about their conflicting relationship goals? Gillman said no and he had the perfect alibi to back up his denials. Hed been working a shift and had attended to several verifiable complaints, including a domestic disturbance. That eliminated him as a person of interest.

The next suspect to emerge in the Debra Dill investigation came straight out of left field. Two days after the murder, on September 18, police received a report of a man behaving strangely at a local restaurant. Taken into custody, the man continued his bizarre ranting, telling the officers that he had gotten into a fight with a man and had struck him with a hammer. Then he said that hed argued with a woman wearing brown slacks. That caused the officers to sit up and take notice. Debra Dill had been killed with a hammer and had been wearing brown slacks at the time of her death. Had the police just lucked out in trapping their killer?

The answer to that question was no. The man did have a hammer, which the police found lying beside his car. That hammer had blood on it, but it was not Debra Dills blood. The police had learned in the interim that the suspect was a former mental patient. His known movements at the time of Debbies murder meant that he could not have killed her. Since they could not link him to any crime, he was free to go.