Murder in Woodstock

Prior Bad Acts

It was learned months after Scott Deojay was arrested for Judy Nilan's disappearance that in 2004 he had broken into a house in his native town of Plainfield and raped a woman. In a sense, because of Deojay's possible role in the death of Judy Nilan, he had been collared for the 2004 rape, which had gone unsolved for two years.

Addressing those new charges later in court, State's Attorney Patricia Froehlich said, "This man is an incredible danger to the community."

State's Attorney Patricia Froehlich

Plainfield, Connecticut, best known for its Dog Track off Interstate 395, is a small town by most standards. Part of Windham County, with approximately 14,500 residents, Plainfield's population is mostly made up of people in their mid-thirties who either grew up in town or moved in with a relative born and raised there. The median household income for Plainfield is around $45,000, with real estate prices and prime living space coming in at just under $200,000. Like Woodstock, the community prides itself on its rather tight-knit populace, many of whom attend church, work hard and support local charities, sports and other community-related programs. People like to be left alone. They take pride in living in a part of Connecticut known for its laid-back lifestyle, farming and tranquility. Crime rates in town are low—so low, in fact, that during the past ten years there were only three murders in Plainfield, all of which occurred in the span of twelve months. Rape, too, is another crime Plainfield residents don't have to worry too much about: between 1999 and 2005, there were 15 reported rapes.

Plainfield, Connecticut

One of those rapes took place on the night of June 19, 2004, when a local woman was attacked in the comfort and safety of her home by an "armed man" who, after disabling her telephone, "sexually assaulted" her and then went through the house and took what he wanted. The description the woman gave Plainfield Police at the time fit Scott Deojay to a tee.

Deojay had lived in the same neighborhood where the rape occurred. It was the type of neighborhood, people later told a reporter from the Norwich Bulletin, "where doors often were left unlocked."

Plainfield Police got high marks after the rape was reported. They set up roadblocks in the region and stopped people, asking questions, seeing if there was someone in town who knew about the crime. "They never gave up," one resident told me later when I walked around asking about Scott Deojay.

It was that dogged gumshoe police work and the courage of the victim to come forward that finally led police to Scott Deojay. And when Judy Nilan turned up dead and DNA became part of the case, Deojay looked more and more like the man they were looking for in Plainfield. Soon, lab results matched the DNA from the Judy Nilan case with Scott Deojay for the rape and burglary in Plainfield.

From the cops and the state's attorney's office's viewpoint, Scott Deojay was a repeat sexual offender who had graduated from rape and burglary to murder.