A Connecticut Woman Was Killed While Jogging. A Confession Came Four Years Later.

The killing of Melissa Millan in 2014 shocked the town of Simsbury, Connecticut. An insurance executive and mother of two, Millan, 54, was stabbed while jogging and was found bloodied on a boulevard.

But investigators were stymied in their search for the killer, and the case only grew colder as the years passed.

Then, last week, a man walked into his pastors’ home and confessed to the crime. The man, William Winters Leverett, 27, of Windsor Locks, Connecticut, has been charged with murder. According to a police affidavit, he told authorities that he had spotted the woman while she was jogging and was attracted to her, but went into a frenzy as he approached her, and then stabbed her.

Leverett went to the Suffield, Connecticut, apartment of Mike and Colette Trazinski, founders and co-pastors of a small church, on Sept. 19.

The couple prayed with Leverett. Then he asked them if they remembered the story of Millan, who was found on Iron Horse Boulevard in Simsbury with a single stab wound in her chest around 8 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2014, and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Colette Trazinski told Leverett that she remembered hearing reports of the crime. “Then he confessed to us that he did it,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “We were just in shock and heartbroken, and we really couldn’t believe it because we could never even imagine that he could do something like this.”

Mike Trazinski added: “After that, we said, ‘Well, you know what you need to do.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know I’ve got to turn myself in.'”

Leverett went to the Simsbury Police Department that night and was interviewed by police for more than four hours. He cooperated as officials investigated his claims. On Monday, he was charged with murder. He is being held with bail set at $2 million.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, which was posted online by Fox 61, a local news outlet, Leverett told police that on the night of the murder, he had come from a sex offenders’ therapy group. Records from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation show that Leverett was convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 2009, when he lived in Colorado.

According to the affidavit, Leverett told police that when he came home from the therapy group, “nobody was there, not even the dog, and he was lonely.”

“He stated that he wanted to go for a walk along the path near Iron Horse Boulevard in hopes of finding someone to talk with,” the affidavit continued.

Leverett said he was driving when he saw a woman jogging. He did not know her but was “attracted to her physical features” and decided to park his car and approach her, the affidavit said. He referred to Millan as “way out of my league,” the affidavit said, and became angry and “went into a frenzy.”

“Mr. Leverett claimed that he only wanted a chance to speak with her,” it continued, “but that ‘something happened’ and the next thing he knew he had stabbed her in the chest with a knife he was carrying.”

Leverett said that Millan fell onto the road and that he thought he heard her say, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” before he drove off in his car, according to the affidavit.

Leverett told police that on the night of the murder, he had written letters confessing to the crime, though he never sent them. He also said that he had washed the blood from his clothes and tried to toss a pair of gloves into the rafters of a barn. One, he said, had gotten stuck there.

Last week, investigators found Leverett’s handwritten letters from 2014 — which referred to a “serious crime,” but not a murder specifically — and the glove in the barn, which was entered as evidence, authorities said.

Leverett is expected to appear in court Oct. 9.

In a statement provided to The Hartford Courant, relatives of Millan called her “a loving mother, a devoted daughter, a witty and compassionate sister, a loyal friend, an intelligent, successful businesswoman and mentor to many.”

“The arrest and arraignment of the suspect brings renewed grief, heartache and the knowledge that justice can never be served for the senseless act that robbed us of Melissa’s beautiful presence,” it said.

The Trazinskis, who said they met Leverett about four months after Millan was killed, said that church members were bewildered by his confession. “It was especially hard for them to hear that someone they knew could do this,” Colette Trazinski said. “So it’s not only us, but the whole community has been affected by this.”