The notorious Judith Ann Neelley, convicted in 1983 of torturing and murdering both Lisa Ann Millican and Janice Kay Chatman, is up for parole on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 and feasibly could be released from prison soon. The outraged family members of her victims are hoping to thwart any possibility of that actually happening.
Through a facebook message that was first thought to be a hoax, the Alabama Department of Pardons and Paroles contacted Cassie Millican [wife of Lisa’s brother Calvin] with a message to call them as soon as possible. “I didn’t think it was real, but I decided I’d call the number just to see what it was,” Cassie said. “It was real! I was told that Judith Ann Neelley was coming up for parole and our family could protest if we wanted to. The hearing will be in Montgomery and we will be there. We’re going to fight it as much as is humanly possible. We’ve met with District Attorney Mike O’Dell and he’s going to fight it too.”
Although Lisa Millican’s siblings have been approached for comment on many occasions they have never spoken out about the tragedy, until now. “My husband has been asked about this many times, but we’ve never spoken out about it, we never thought we’d have to tell people that they need to keep a monster in jail. Lisa was a very sweet, loving child, a momma’s girl that was very close to her siblings.”
Lisa Ann Millican was a teenager that only wanted to go to the mall (in Rome, Georgia). On that fateful day in September 1982, she somehow got separated from the group she was with and was standing outside the mall, no doubt feeling lost and confused, looking for her ride home. Judith Ann Neelley had already been trolling the mall, as was revealed later, looking for young girls to take home to her husband, Alvin Howard Neelley, Jr. Judith Neelley would approach a young girl pretending to know them. She’d say things like, “I’m new in town and I’m lonely. Do you want to hang out?” Lisa Millican, thirteen years old, naïve to the ways of the world, confused and alone, wondering where her ride was, became Neelley’s next target. When told that she’d be given a ride home, Lisa became the first to accept what she thought was an act of kindness.
Trusting in the kindness of a stranger turned out to be fatal for Lisa Millican. Over the next few days she was taken to a number of different motels where she was, stripped of her clothes and her dignity, tortured and raped multiple times, bashed in the head in an attempt to fulfill a fantasy of raping someone in an unconscious state, and finally taken to Little River Canyon, handcuffed to a tree, injected with Drano and Liquid Plummer in six different places on her body, and when that didn’t kill her she was shot in the back and pushed off the edge into the canyon where her body was left sprawled across a downed tree.
Lisa was robbed of her child hood as well as her adulthood. She never had the opportunity to grow up, fall in love, get married, or have children and grandchildren. She was robbed of the opportunity to see her siblings (ages nine, three, and one) grown up and have families of their own.
“Neelley, who had 2-year-old twins and was pregnant at the time of the murder, now gets visits from her children and grandchildren in prison. She gets to have a relationship with them,” Cassie said. “She doesn’t deserve to have what she took from Lisa.”
Judith Neelley was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama (1983), but her sentence was commuted to life in prison (1999). She is serving her sentence at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. Alvin Neelley was serving a life sentence at the Bostick State Prison in Hardwick, Georgia at the time of his death in 2005.
Alvin Howard Neelley, Jr., was born in 1953 in Georgia, where he was a car thief during his teenage years. Alvin divorced his first wife shortly before eloping with Judith Adams in 1980. Judith Ann Adams was the daughter of an alcoholic. After she met and married Alvin Neelley she began a life of crime, committing armed robbery across the country for which she was later caught and confined. She gave birth to twins while incarcerated at Rome, Georgia’s Youth Development Center.
Judith Neelley was arrested on October 9, 1982 for the murder of Lisa Ann Millican. Alvin was taken into custody a few days later. To avoid the death penalty, Alvin Neelley pled guilty to murder and aggravated assault in Georgia. He was incarcerated at the Bostick State Prison from 1983 until his death in November 2005. He was never tried for the murder of Lisa Millican.
Judith Neelley’s murder trial began on March 7, 1983, in Fort Payne, shortly after she had given birth to a third child while imprisoned. When Judith was convicted of the torture murder of Lisa Ann Millican, Judge Randall Cole sentenced the 18-year-old mother of three to death in Alabama’s electric chair. After the conviction for the Millican murder, Judith pled guilty to the murder of Janice Chatman.
Neelley appealed for a new trial, but it was denied in March 1987. Then in 1989, the United States Supreme Court affirmed her death sentence. “We received a call that Judith’s execution would take place within a few days, but three days before it actually happened her death sentence was commuted by Governor Fob James and changed to life in prison with a possibility of parole in 15 years. However, the Alabama Legislature passed a law in 2003 that made her ineligible for parole.
Time has taken nothing from the brutality of what Neelley and her husband, Alvin, did to Lisa. Cassie and her husband, Calvin (who was just 9 years old when Lisa was murdered) live in DeKalb County, Alabama, but the rest of the Millican family still live in Georgia. “They never left Lafayette,” Cassie said, “and they never forgot the child who disappeared from the shopping mall on September 25, 1982.”
“We thought this was all settled, with no possibility of release,” Cassie Millican said,
The Millican family will be in Montgomery on May 23 to oppose Neelley’s parole, and hopes everyone who was outraged by Lisa’s murder will write letters and sign petitions opposing Neelley’s possible release.
If you’d like to express your opposition to Neelley’s parole you can do so by writing a letter to:
Alabama Board of Pardons & Paroles, Victims Unit, 301 South Ripley St. Building D, P.O. Box 30240, Montgomery, Alabama 36130.
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