BANGOR — Lloyd Franklin Millett, who was serving a 70-year sentence for murdering two women, died Tuesday night at the Eastern Maine Medical Center, the Maine Department of Corrections said Wednesday morning.
Millett, 51, died after being severely beaten May 24 by at least one other inmate while at the Maine State Prison. Before he died Millett was listed in critical condition. He was serving a life sentence for murdering two women in 1995, Terrie Lizotte, 39, of Canton in Turner, and Rachelle Anne Williams, 33, of Gorham, N.H. in Lewiston. He committed the murders over a weekend while a farmhand in Turner.
Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said a team of detectives led by Sgt. Erik Baker has been working the case since the assault but has yet to press any charges. McCausland said the detectives’ report would be forwarded to the Knox County district attorney, who ultimately will decide how to move forward with the case.
Williams’ body was found Nov. 6, 1995, in a field near the Ramada Inn in Lewiston, where she was attending a business meeting. She was last seen alive in a hotel lounge but disappeared after she left to go to a restroom and never returned. Williams’ raped and strangled body was found the next day.
Millett met his other victim, Lizotte, at a Turner nightclub on Nov. 3, 1995. Lizotte’s body was found in the closet of the trailer where Millett lived on the farm.
Lizotte’s body was found by Millett’s ex-girlfriend, who recently had moved out of his home but returned to retrieve her belongings.
In a 1995 interview, the farmer who hired Millett said there was a Frank he knew and a Frank he didn’t know.
The Frank he knew gave candy to young children, was gentle with calves and chickens. Showing an empty storage room where Lizotte’s naked body was found stuffed in a closet, that was the Frank he didn’t know, the farmer said.
Months before the killings, Millett showed up at the Turner farm asking for work. The farmer checked his references. He was told by other farmers and loggers Millett was a good, hard worker who had a drinking problem. “As long as he stayed away from alcohol, he’d be fine,” the farmer was told. He had no idea Millett had been convicted of rape in 1991. He hired Millett. Initially, things went well.
Millett and his girlfriend moved into the trailer on the farm. Months later, the girlfriend moved out. Millett’s personality changed, the farmer said. The farmhand was glum, stressed and constantly smoking.
On a Friday night, the farmer gave Millett a ride to Peru, which was the last time he saw Millett.
The next morning the farmer noticed unfamiliar tire tracks in the yard. He knew someone had been at the trailer the night before, but Millett was nowhere to be found. Saturday and Sunday, the farmer heard nothing.
On Monday, Millett’s sister called saying he was at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center for his drinking problem. That same day, Millett’s ex-girlfriend returned to the trailer to get her belongings.
She found a pocketbook she didn’t recognize, and went through it to try to find the owner. It was Lizotte’s.
The girlfriend went back to the trailer, to the storage room, and saw Lizotte’s body. “She was screaming,” the farmer said. He hoped the woman died from an accident, but that wasn’t what the authorities found.
Millett, a native of Rumford, pleaded guilty to both murders at one point in the case, though he later had a motion to reverse his pleas denied by the court. He was sentenced to 70 years in prison for Lizotte’s murder and a concurrent life sentence for killing Williams.
Millett had a lengthy criminal record before the murders, including the 1991 rape conviction for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison with four years suspended.
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