Murder in Woodstock

Worst Possible Outcome

Back at what had become known as "Big Bird's House," Connecticut State Police investigators, who had already located a blood trail leading up to what they now believed were pull down stairs to a storage room inside a pagoda-like structure detached from the Carroll Spinney estate, found something else.

At the edge of the pagoda, around the corner, was an attractive wooden bench—another sacred place to perhaps sit and contemplate life's true meaning while staring out at the beauty of the landscape. Although it was winter and there was a good covering of snow on the ground, it wasn't hard to tell that during spring and summer, the immediate area was likely covered with wondrous flowers and imported botanical treasures to help relax the soul. Yet what troopers found near the bench was not so aesthetically pure and humble, as the ambiance around the pagoda itself would have generally served. In front of the bench was a "large area of blood-like substance," said an affidavit prepared by the one of the investigating troopers. Moreover, on one of the "support posts of the pagoda near the wooden bench" there was a second patch of a blood-like substance.

The blood appeared to be somewhat fresh.

It seemed rather obvious that something terribly brutal had taken place in or around the pagoda. With that thought in mind, troopers pulled down the stairs and proceeded to search the upper storage area.

As soon as the first trooper reached the top of the stairs, the reality of what had happened to Judy Nilan was clear: "Upon checking the storage area," wrote one of the troopers, "[we] located the deceased body of a white female ... who was wearing a yellow windbreaker, gloves, black colored spandex type running pants, which were pulled down to her knees."

Judy Nilan was dead.