Suspect in ’04 slaying returned to state

The man arrested in the 2004 death of college student Rebekah Gould was extradited to Arkansas and locked in the Izard County jail as of Monday evening, according to the county sheriff’s office.

William Alma Miller, 44, is scheduled for a circuit court hearing today in Izard County on a first-degree murder charge, according to a bench warrant filed Tuesday.

Charles Melton, sheriff’s office chief deputy, said Tuesday that he had no additional information to release in the case, which has received widespread interest inside and outside Arkansas over the past two decades.

Prosecutor Eric Hance said Tuesday that Miller’s name has appeared in the case file since Day One, but he was only recently identified as a suspect.

Gould was found dead Sept. 27, 2004, on an embankment off Arkansas 9 south of Melbourne, according to an Arkansas State Police news release in November.

At that time, the search spanned much of Izard County after her family reported her missing, the Arkansas State Police said.

Since Nov. 7, Miller was being held in the Lane County jail in Eugene, Ore. A special agent with the Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, who was assigned to the case, sought Miller’s arrest after learning that he had returned from an “extended stay” in the Philippines to his residence in Cottage Grove, Ore., according to the state police news release.

Miller is being held without bail.

Miller was visiting Izard County from Texas in 2004 when Gould disappeared, according to state police.

The state police noted that Gould’s death was never classified as a “cold case.”

Before her death, Gould was a student at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville and had transferred there from Melbourne’s Ozarka College shortly before her death, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in 2004.

According to accounts tracing her final days, Gould and her sister Danielle had driven to Melbourne from Northwest Arkansas in September of 2004.

Gould was to spend the weekend with her boyfriend and stay at his residence in Guion, a town approximately 17 miles south of Melbourne.

Gould disappeared after she dropped him off at work on Monday, Sept. 20. Her vehicle was found at his house with her purse and keys inside.

The last reported sighting of Gould was when she visited a local convenience store. She was reported missing the next day, and her body was found at the bottom of an embankment six days later, the Democrat-Gazette reported at the time.

The case has been intensely chronicled by recent truecrime podcasts, books and blogs.

Gould’s sisters have criticized how some of those media have portrayed the case and the detectives investigating it.