Charges in 1990 Inglewood slaying
50-year-old Pomona resident is being held without bail in the William Tillett case.
Police say Pomona man may not have acted alone in the slaying of 11-yearold William Tillett.
A 50-year-old man was charged with murder this week in the kidnapping and death of an 11-year-old Inglewood boy that dates back nearly three decades.
Inglewood police arrested Pomona resident Edward Donell Thomas last week in connection with the slaying of William Tillett. Thomas is being held in Los Angeles County Jail without bail.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Inglewood police Chief Mark Fronterotta declined to say what evidence tied Thomas to the case.
But Fronterotta said authorities do not believe Thomas acted alone. The chief, along with members of the Tillett family and Inglewood Mayor James Butts, asked that anyone with knowledge of the case come forward.
“Take a look at this picture,” said Hubert Tillett, the boy’s father. “And if anything jogs your mental Rolodex from three decades ago, please contact [police].”
According to authorities, William, a fourth-grader, was kidnapped about 3 p.m. on May 24, 1990, while walking 10 blocks home from school near Imperial Highway and Crenshaw Boulevard in Inglewood.
He had started walking about 20 minutes earlier with two friends. But about six blocks from his home, they went their separate ways. It was the last known sighting of William.
“Walking home was very important for him,” Anne Rodman, one of William’s teachers, told The Times in 1990, adding that “he was in that independent stage of the growing-up process.”
His parents, who ran the commissary at KCET in Hollywood, became worried when he didn’t call them at work. They reported the boy missing when they arrived home and he wasn’t there.
Roughly six hours later, a search by police, family and friends ended with news that the body of the 4-foot-8, 70-pound boy had been found in a dark carport in Hawthorne.
William’s wrists showed evidence that he had been bound before he was killed. The coroner later determined he had been suffocated.
Butts, who was deputy Inglewood police chief at the time, said that even in that era of drug-fueled bloodshed, the boy’s slaying shocked the city.
“To this day, when that name was said, it resonated with me,” Butts said Wednesday. “I knew the year. I knew where it happened. I knew where the child was found. It affected this entire community that way.”