A Water Bottle at a Concert: How DNA Cracked the 1985 Newport Murder of Hillary Hellewell

It was about 4:15 in the morning on May 19, 1985, when two brothers on their way to work came across a young woman on a sidewalk on Anthony Street in Newport, Rhode Island. She wore a sweater, white painter’s pants and socks. No shoes. A heavily soiled blue T-shirt lay near her head.

Her name was Hillary Hellewell. She was 22, from Jamestown, the daughter of two local teachers. The medical examiner ruled that she had been strangled. For the next 41 years, nobody was charged with her death.

That changed on Oct. 6, 2026, when Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and Newport Police Chief Ryan Duffy announced that a 61-year-old Smithfield man had been arrested and charged with her murder. The way investigators say they got there, through a family tree, a set of half-brothers and a water bottle left on a theater seat, is one of the more remarkable cold-case stories of the year.

The Night Hillary Hellewell Disappeared

According to police accounts cited by Rhode Island Current, Hellewell spent the evening of May 18, 1985, at a party on Friendship Street in Newport. She left with a male friend who was heavily intoxicated, offering to walk him home.

The friend made it home, but he could not give investigators a detailed account of the night. Hellewell’s body was found about 1.2 miles from the party, on Anthony Street off Bowery Street, near the Newport Public Library.

An autopsy found she had been strangled and sexually assaulted. An FBI report cited in a court affidavit found biological evidence on her pants and on the T-shirt found near her head. Investigators had evidence. What they did not have was a way to read it. Rhode Island had no DNA testing capability in 1985, according to the affidavit written by Senior Cold Case Investigator Michael Naylor.

So the evidence went into storage, and the case went cold.

2004: A Profile Without a Name

Nearly two decades later, the science caught up. In 2004, Newport police sent the clothing evidence to the Rhode Island Department of Health. A sample from the back seam of Hellewell’s pants produced a full DNA profile.

Investigators then did the logical thing. They collected DNA from several men who were close to Hellewell, including the friend she walked home that night. Every one of them was excluded.

The unknown profile was uploaded to CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database, which holds profiles from convicted offenders, arrestees and crime scenes. There was no match. “There was no match,” Neronha said at the press conference, summing up two decades of frustration in four words.

For many cold cases, that is where the trail ends. A full DNA profile is powerful, but only if the person it belongs to is already in a database.

The Breakthrough: A Family Tree

The case was reopened in recent years under the Attorney General’s Cold Case Unit, a small team that today includes two investigators, two prosecutors and a paralegal. Investigators sent the evidence to a private laboratory that specializes in reexamining DNA. Officials have not named the lab or described its exact method.

According to the affidavit, as reported by Rhode Island Current, the new testing pointed to a family whose DNA appeared related to the genetic material on the T-shirt and pants. This is the core idea behind investigative genetic genealogy: instead of finding the suspect directly, you find his relatives and work your way back.

Investigators surveilled members of that family and collected discarded trash. Two men turned out to be partial matches. Their Y-chromosome results, which trace the paternal line, showed they were closely related to the man investigators were looking for, but neither was him.

The key came on Aug. 13, 2026, during an interview with another relative. Investigators learned that the two men had a paternal half-brother: William Morton.

A Concert, a Water Bottle and a Match

Starting in August, investigators followed Morton, the affidavit says. They tracked him to his job in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, where Fox News reported he worked as a service technician at a Volkswagen dealership, and to his home in Smithfield.

On Aug. 21, 2026, they followed Morton and his fiancée to a Heart tribute concert at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket. According to the affidavit, investigators watched him drink from a bottle of water and leave it on the empty seat beside him. When the couple left the show early, investigators collected the bottle and turned it over to the Rhode Island Department of Health.

A Sept. 24 lab report found the DNA on the bottle consistent with the profile from Hellewell’s pants. The Department of Health said it “is consistent with the previously reported partial profiles” from the evidence.

Collecting abandoned items like cups, bottles and cigarette butts is a common and legally accepted technique in American policing. Courts have generally held that people give up their privacy interest in something they throw away in a public place. It is how investigators in many genetic genealogy cases confirm a lead before making an arrest.

The Arrest and the Charge

At about 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 6, officers from multiple agencies were waiting as Morton left his Smithfield home for work. They executed arrest and search warrants, and the arrest was made without incident, according to Newport Buzz.

At his arraignment in Newport District Court, Morton was charged with first-degree murder and ordered held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston. Judge J. Terence Houlihan referred him to the public defender’s office. He did not enter a plea, because a felony case like this must move to Superior Court. His next District Court appearance is set for Oct. 20, and Neronha said the case will be presented to a grand jury.

Neronha was careful to say what the arrest is and is not. “Mr. Morton is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” he said. He declined to say whether Morton attended the party that night or whether police spoke with him in 1985. Officials have not described any motive or any relationship between Morton and Hellewell.

A Prior Conviction From the Same Summer

Court records described in news coverage show Morton has a prior record. In February 1987, a jury convicted him of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in a Newport park in June 1985, about six weeks after Hellewell’s death. The park was about a block from where Hellewell was found, according to Rhode Island Current. The teen told police Morton choked her unconscious after she accepted his offer to walk her home.

He was sentenced to 20 years, with seven to serve and the rest suspended with probation, and his appeal was denied by the Rhode Island Supreme Court in 1989. That earlier conviction is not evidence that he committed the 1985 murder, and how much of it a jury could hear would be decided by a judge.

“She Was Just an Amazing, Fun, Energetic Person”

For Neronha, this case was personal. He grew up in Jamestown and knew Hellewell. “We knew each other at least from kindergarten,” he said, describing her as energetic and fun.

Her father chaired the English Department at North Kingstown High School and the Jamestown Zoning Board. Her mother taught first grade at the Jamestown School. She had sisters. No family members attended the press conference, and Neronha said the family has asked for privacy.

Chief Duffy said the passage of time “does not diminish our commitment to seeking justice for victims and their families.”

Why Cases Like This Are Getting Solved Now

Rhode Island’s cold case effort is still young. The unit started with modest state funding and a backlog of more than 150 unsolved crimes, and received a $500,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2024, according to Rhode Island Current. Its annual budget is now about $762,000.

Neronha said DNA technology has helped his office solve four previously unsolved cases over the past year, “with more on the horizon.”

The Hellewell case shows why. The evidence was collected properly in 1985, stored properly for decades, profiled in 2004, and then reexamined with tools that did not exist when the crime happened. We have seen the same pattern play out elsewhere, from a 1982 fingerprint card that helped solve a 1978 murder to the arrest in the Christy Dawn Myers cold case after 28 years.

Genetic genealogy also raises fair questions about privacy, since it relies on the DNA of relatives who were never suspected of anything. Supporters say the technique only produces leads, which still have to be confirmed with traditional evidence, exactly as investigators say they did here with the water bottle.

The bottom line is that the case against Morton will now be tested in court, where the state must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. For a family in Jamestown that has waited 41 years, the next step comes Oct. 20.

Anyone with information about unsolved cases in Rhode Island can contact the Attorney General’s Cold Case Unit tip line at (401) 468-2233 or email riagcoldcase@riag.ri.gov.