Melbourne, Arkansas — After entering a guilty plea on Tuesday, a man from Oregon was given a 40-year prison term for the murder of a lady from Arkansas.
In November 2020, William Alama Miller was detained and charged with killing Rebekah Christian Gould.
Nearly 18 years ago, Gould’s body was discovered on a hillside along Arkansas Highway 9 south of Melbourne.
Gould, who was only 22 years old at the time of her death, had gone missing from her family in the days before her body was found in September 2004.
Police were able to establish that she had suffered numerous injuries before her death over the course of their inquiry into her abduction.
According to reports, the medical examiner for the Arkansas State Police determined that she was the victim of a homicide.
Miller admitted to hiding his pickup in a field behind a house in 2004 during an interview conducted with him at the time of his arrest.
He then knocked on the house’s front door and requested Gould’s permission to enter so he could use the phone.
Miller acknowledged that Gould entered her bedroom while he pretended to use the phone, grabbed a piano leg off a piano in the living room, and struck her repeatedly with the leg.
Then he said that once Gould passed away, he dumped her body along a highway south of Melbourne after loading her body into the bed of his truck.