by Janine L. Weisman and Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current
October 6, 2026
DNA evidence collected by a special investigative unit within the Rhode Island Office of Attorney General has led to an arrest in the 1985 murder of a 22-year-old Jamestown woman in Newport.
It’s a case with special meaning for Attorney General Peter Neronha, who grew up in Jamestown and knew the victim, Hillary Hellewell.
“We knew each other at least from kindergarten,” Neronha told reporters at a press conference inside his Providence office Tuesday afternoon. “She was just an amazing and fun, energetic person.”
The press conference came hours after William “Billy” Morton, 61, of Smithfield, was ordered held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston at his arraignment in Newport District Court on a first degree murder charge in Hellewell’s death. Judge J. Terence Houlihan referred Morton to the public defender’s office for representation.
Morton entered no plea as is customary because the felony case must be transferred to the Superior Court. Morton’s next appearance in Newport District Court is scheduled for Oct. 20.
According to an affidavit filed with the court, the body of Hellewell was found lying on the sidewalk on Anthony Street, a side street off Bowery Street near the Newport Public Library, at around 4:15 a.m. on May 19, 1985. She was wearing a sweater, white painter’s pants and socks but no shoes, and a heavily soiled blue T-shirt was found near her head. An autopsy determined that she had been strangled and raped.
Police said Hellewell had left a party at a Friendship Street address with a male friend she had offered to walk home because he was heavily intoxicated, according to an affidavit filed in court Tuesday. Police said the man made it home but was unable to give an accurate or detailed account.
An FBI report cited in an affidavit submitted to the District Court indicates that spermatozoa was found on Hellewell’s white pants and the blue T-shirt.
“In 1985, Rhode Island did not have DNA testing capability,” reads the affidavit by Senior Cold Case Investigator Michael Naylor, who joined the AG’s cold case unit last February after retiring from Newport police as a detective captain.
In 2004, Newport police submitted biological evidence from Hellewell’s clothing to the Department of Health for testing, which found enough DNA in a sperm sample from the back seam of her pants to produce a full profile. Police collected DNA samples from several men who were close to Hellewell, including the man she escorted to his home along with others who had attended the same party on the last night she was last seen. All the men were excluded as matches to the DNA found on the pants, the affidavit said.
The DNA was uploaded to the national DNA database in 2004, but there was no match, the affidavit said.
In 2023, cold case investigators sent evidence from the case to a third-party private laboratory that specializes in reexamining DNA. The testing eventually pointed them toward a family whose DNA appeared to be related to genetic material found on the blue T-shirt and inside Hellewell’s pants. Investigators conducted surveillance and collected abandoned trash that identified two men who were only partial DNA matches. But their Y chromosome results showed they were closely related to the suspect they were searching for. During an Aug. 13, 2026, interview with another relative, investigators learned the two men had a paternal half-brother who was Morton, the affidavit stated.
Investigators began surveilling Morton in August, following him to his job in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, and later to his Smithfield home. On Aug. 21, they followed him and his fiancée to a Heart tribute concert at Woonsocket’s Stadium Theatre and entered behind them. They watched Morton drink from a water bottle and leave it on the empty seat next to him.
After Morton and his fiancée left the theater early, investigators seized the bottle he had left behind in the seat and turned it over to the Department of Health for analysis. A Sept. 24 report found that the DNA profile from the water bottle is consistent with the DNA results from the evidence on Hellewell’s pants.
At the time of her death, Hellewell’s father was chairman of the English Department at North Kingstown High School and the chairman of the Jamestown Zoning Board. Her mother was a first-grade teacher at Jamestown School.
“I know her sisters, and I knew her parents,” Neronha said. “I have my memories, but it’s really about her today and her family.”
No members of the family attended the press conference. Neronha said Hellewell’s family has requested privacy at “what for them is an extraordinarily difficult time.”
Neronha would not answer any questions about whether Morton attended the party where Hellewell was last seen or was interviewed by police in 1985. Her body was found about 1.2 miles away from the location of the party.
“Mr. Morton is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” Neronha said. “He has a right to trial and I want to be really clear about that.”
In February 1987, Morton was found guilty after a jury trial of sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl in a Newport park in June 1985. The park was only a block away from the location where Hellewell’s body was found the previous month, according to news reports. Morton was sentenced to 20 years with seven to serve and 13 years suspended, and 20 years of probation, court records show.
In that case, the teen said Morton had choked her unconscious after she accepted his offer to walk her home and that she regained consciousness as he was attacking her. She had only known him for about a week, according to the affidavit. At the time of his arrest in that case, Morton told police he was living in Pawtucket but had lived in Newport until two years earlier, the affidavit said.
We knew each other at least from kindergarten. She was just an amazing and fun, energetic person.
– Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, who grew up with Hillary Hellewell
The AG’s cold case unit is comprised of five full-time staffers — two investigators, two prosecutors and a paralegal — and now had an annual budget of $762,308.
The unit formed in 2024 after Neronha successfully persuaded state lawmakers to dedicate $155,000 in initial funding to dig into a backlog of over 150 unsolved crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA Program awarded the AG’s office a $500,000 federal grant in September 2024.
Neronha’s office announced it had cleared its first two cases, unrelated homicides that occurred in 1984 and 2007 in North Providence, in October 2025. The victims were both women and the suspects identified in each case were dead. Then an arrest in a 2005 sexual assault case from Hopkinton was announced in August, with a bail hearing for the suspect in that case now scheduled for Oct. 14.
At the Aug. 19 press conference announcing the arrest in the Hopkinton case, Neronha expressed hope that the unit would solve “a few more” cases before he departs office in January.
Neronha is not seeking reelection because he is term-limited.
Democrat Kim Ahern and Republican Alan Gordon are running against each other to be the state’s next attorney general.
Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.
