Murder in Woodstock

Author's Note

Although I reached out to him, Jon Baker would not talk to me for this story. I'm told he is an extremely private person. In creating a profile of Judy Nilan's life, I relied on Jon Baker's powerfully written impact statement and Judy's obituary, along with an essay written by one of her former students. I spoke to a few people in Woodstock—who have chosen to remain anonymous—about Judy and the town itself, and those interviews, although brief, were very helpful.

I'd like to thank Marty Graham and Patricia Froehlich for speaking to me and providing that detailed insight I like to have when writing these crime stories. Beyond the interviews I conducted with Marty and Patricia, I relied on police reports, court testimony, arraignment reports, several affidavits, missing person reports and bulletins, and other reports generated by the Connecticut State Police and Plainfield Police. Several interviews the State Police conducted with witnesses were also very helpful to me, as were several advertisements on the Internet regarding an annual "Jog With Judy" road race that was held in her honor in Woodstock on May 5, 2007.

I wrote to Scott Deojay and his lawyer. I interpret their silence as a refusal to be interviewed. I'm told Scott Deojay, like many of the criminals facing life behind bars, has found Jesus Christ. In fact, in court, Deojay's attorney said that Deojay would be praying for Judy's family.

This pious declaration was nothing more than a disgusting, vulgar slap in the face to a family who asked for none of this. Like perhaps thousands of other families in this country touched by murder, Judy and her family were going through life on autopilot—giving to their communities and enjoying life as any upstanding American citizen should—when, in the blink of eye, everything changed.

Sexual predators in this country have run our courtrooms long enough. It's time we re-evaluated the laws in each state and made first offenses last offenses. I encourage anyone as outraged by this as I am to write to his or her local representative and demand change. The "animal running the zoo" mentality that we see in some of our courtrooms today, where sexual perverts, Internet predators, rapists and those who repeatedly abuse our children needs to be re-evaluated and changed. Period.

None of this, of course, would have prevented Judy Nilan's death. But Judy's murder should be a wakeup call to all of us, a cautionary tale, if you will, proving that even a simple jog can lead us into the mouth of evil.

Stricter sentencing laws can make a difference. Let's cast these deviants out of society so they can hurt us no more.

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