No parole for woman in teen’s slaying in Alabama
Alabama officials swiftly denied parole Wednesday for a woman convicted of murder in the 1982 death of a 13-year-old girl who was abducted from a Georgia shopping mall, sexually assaulted, and injected with drain cleaner before being fatally shot.
After an emotional hearing, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole Boards took just 55 seconds to announce that it was refusing to free Judith Ann Neelley, 53. Neelley originally had been sentenced to the electric chair for the slaying of 13-year-old Lisa Ann Millican, but her death sentence was commuted, setting off a battle over her possible parole eligibility.
She will be eligible for consideration again in 2023. Neelley was not present at the hearing.
Neelley was convicted with husband Alvin Neelley of killing Millican, who was abducted from a mall in Rome, Georgia. The girl’s body was dumped into a canyon in northeast Alabama. Alvin Neelley died in a Georgia prison in 2005.
Calvin Millican told the board that his sister’s killing devastated his family and that Neelley should have gotten the death penalty.
“Judith Ann Neelley is a very cruel, sick person and needs to do her punishment for killing, taking lives,” he said.
After the hearing, Lisa Millican’s sister Tina Millican remarked that Neelley “is the true essence of evil.”
Millican’s mother, Frankie Mason, said she had hoped Neelley would be present at the hearing so she could see her face when she was denied parole.
Parole board members heard dueling depictions of Neelley during the 30-minute hearing: that she was a cold-blooded person who killed for sport or that she was an abused teen dominated by an older, controlling husband.