On Oct. 6, 61-year-old William "Billy" Morton was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the 1985 killing of 22-year-old Hillary Hellewell in Newport, Rhode Island, Fox News reports. According to court records cited by Fox News, senior cold case investigator Michael Nayor of the Rhode Island Attorney General's office trailed Morton and his fiancée to a Heart tribute band show in Woonsocket on Aug. 21. Morton bought popcorn and two bottled waters, sipped one through the show, set it on the neighboring seat, and left it behind when the couple departed early. Nayor seized the bottle and submitted it for testing.

Fox News reports that two brothers heading to work at 4:15 a.m. on May 19, 1985 found Hellewell's body on a sidewalk along Anthony Street, clad in white painter's pants, a sweater and socks but no shoes. A medical examiner determined she died from asphyxia due to strangulation, and her death was ruled a homicide. The arrest warrant described a blood stain on the back of her pants and a heavily soiled blue T-shirt near her head. Swabs from an internal exam revealed spermatozoa, indicating sexual contact, per the warrant.

According to Fox News, evidence collected at the time was preserved, profiles were entered into the FBI's CODIS database during a 2004 review, and the Rhode Island Attorney General's Cold Case Unit, formed in 2023, reopened the case. New technology sent to a private lab traced a family line through DNA found on Hellewell's body and pointed to Morton, who was convicted in 1987 of a violent sexual assault in Newport 45 days after her death, two miles from where she was found. Fox News reports the water-bottle profile matched partial profiles from the sperm stain on her pants and the blue shirt. The same covert-playbook appeared in California, where ABC News' "20/20" reports police pulled Carlo Fuentes Flores's DNA off a Coke bottle at a restaurant, matching DNA in Nancy Woodrum's bedroom; he was sentenced to life without parole in February 2022 for her murder.

Fox News reports Morton was taken into custody Oct. 6 around 7 a.m. as he left for his job as a service technician at a Volkswagen dealership, and is being held without bond. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha said the case will go to a grand jury, with a status conference scheduled for Oct. 20. Fox News Digital could not reach Morton's attorney for comment. For a devoted cold-case audience, the reveal is the method: the same discarded-drink gambit that broke the Woodrum case in California, as ABC News detailed, now appears to have ended Newport's longest-running mystery.