Booker T. Hillery: An Update

A Parolee Kills California Farm Girl Marlene Miller
(“Paintball,” Forensic Files)

When an individual has spent decades in prison, sometimes the case against him or her weakens whether it deserves to or not.

Unless it’s a serial killer or Nazi war criminal, the public loses interest in the crime and transfers its outrage to a newer case.

See Jane go. Turnover in the criminal justice system also can mean new officials who reweigh the credentials of courtroom experts. Or they might pay more attention to evidence that didn’t exist than the evidence that did.

It happened in the Jane Dorotik case even though police found her fingerprint in her husband’s blood and her tire tracks near his body. Her supporters pressed for her release because investigators didn’t find her DNA at the murder scene, and now she’s a free woman.

In the case of Booker T. Hillery’s conviction for Marlene Miller’s murder in 1962, racism in jury selection spurred the criminal justice system to take another look.

Named for historic figure. Booker deserved a new trial because of the systemic exclusion of blacks from grand juries at the time. But he also deserved his second murder conviction because, well, he sure seemed guilty.

That was back in 1986. For this post, I researched whether the legal system has once again looked favorably upon Booker T. Hillery.

I also went back further in time to find background information on Booker — whose name indicates his parents had much higher aspirations for him than jailbird — and to learn more about the prior rape conviction mentioned on Forensic Files.

Water bearers. So let’s get going on the recap of “Paintball” along with extra information from internet research:

Marlene Elinor Miller, born March 8, 1947, was a high school sophomore living with her parents and brother, Walter, near Hanford, California. She got good grades, belonged to the 4-H Club, and liked to sew so much that she owned scissors engraved with her name.

The Millers were responsible for tending to the area’s water supply. A canal used to irrigate local farms was located behind the Millers’ white framed house.

Essence of innocence. At least one member of the family had to be at the house at any given time in case problems came up with the canal, also known as the People’s Ditch.

On March 21, 1962, Marlene was at home sewing a dress to wear to a party or to wear on a date or her very first date — or maybe all three. (Media accounts vary.)

“The lights were on, the window shades were up, and the doors were unlocked” as Marlene worked alone in the house, according to court papers.

Horrifying discovery. When her parents got home, they found Marlene gone, the TV blaring, and the iron hot. Someone had opened a window in Marlene’s room and placed the screen on the grass.

Investigators believed Marlene didn’t hear the break-in over the whir of the sewing machine.

In the moonlit backyard, Kings County Deputy Sheriff O.R. MacFarlane found blood on the ground.

The next day, authorities drained some water from the ditch, revealing Marlene’s body.

Still chaste. Someone had violently ripped open her Levi cutoffs, torn her underwear, and tied her wrists. “A pair of large sewing shears bearing the name ‘Marlene M.’ was embedded up to the handles in her chest,” court papers say. Most other sources reported she was stabbed in the throat.

She had defensive bruises and had died of drowning, according to Forensic Files. But early court papers indicated that hemorrhaging from a punctured lung caused her death.

In a sign of the times, the court papers note that “the hymen was intact.”

Made it into ‘print.’ One of Marlene’s high school classmates reported seeing a black and turquoise car on March 21 near the same part of the ditch where Marlene’s body had turned up the next day.

The distinctive-looking 1953 Plymouth belonged to local farmhand Booker T. Hillery, age 35. He worked at the Ferreira family’s ranch, where Marlene occasionally babysat.

Police found his tire tracks and bootprints along with prints from someone’s bare feet, probably Marlene’s.

Transplanted Texan. So who was Booker T. Hillery?

According to the New York Times, Booker was the son of a sharecropper whose family moved from Texas to California sometime after World War II. A Hanford Sentinel account indicated he moved to California with his mother only in 1949.

As I suspected, Booker made an attempt at higher education. A 1954 Fresno Bee item identified him as a 23-year-old part-time student at Fresno State College.

Unfortunately, the article also named him as a suspect in a rape.

Phone ruse. On Nov. 30, 1954, Booker had gained entry to the home of the victim — a housewife of just 19 or 20 years of age with an 8-month-old baby — by asking to use the phone. He then pulled a knife and sexually assaulted her.

The police already had Booker’s picture on file because he had been briefly held on suspicion of manslaughter in 1953, according to an account in the Hanford Sentinel.

The rape victim picked Booker out of a lineup. So did another woman, who recognized him as the man who knocked on her door and asked to borrow tools, then threatened her when she said no. (She escaped unharmed.)

Back to the clink. Booker had a halfway-decent alibi. He was visiting his friend Louis Scott when the rape occurred, he contended, and his buddy backed up his claim. Nonetheless, he was convicted and ultimately served six years of his sentence.

He won parole from San Quentin in 1961 —only to become the No. 1 suspect in Marlene Miller’s murder in 1962.

The evidence against him piled up fast and high.

Gloves fit. There was the matter of a pair of damp mismatched milking gloves found outside the Millers’ house. One of them had a red lining that jogged Booker’s girlfriend’s memory. Allean Stallworth said she was with him when he bought the same gloves.

The other glove came from a pair sold for $1.29 at a local army surplus store, where the manager knew Booker as a customer. Police found a sales slip from the store dated January 22, 1962, in the backseat of Booker’s car.

Booker’s employer, Joe Ferreira, remembered hearing him say that he had lost a glove.

Drive-by. Walter Miller Jr. testified that money found in Booker’s possession matched a $10 bill, $1 bill, and nickels stolen from his room on the night of the murder. (Granted, that part of the evidence sounds a little shaky, unless Walter actually memorized the serial numbers.)

A witness saw Booker, who was staying in the Royal Hotel in Hanford, driving in the direction of the Millers’ house on Tenth and Elder avenues on March 21.

The defense argued that Booker always drove that way to and from work — and on the night of the murder, Booker’s car was following co-worker Frank Costa’s car. But Costa couldn’t verify his alibi because Booker’s car dropped out of sight during the drive that evening.

Some other dude did it. Booker admitted to police that he washed his clothes and a white leather jacket (Caleb Hughes) at a laundromat at 10 p.m. on the night of the murder. Manure had spattered his clothes while he was milking a cow, he explained.

Frank Costa, who worked with Booker on the ranch that day, said no such thing had happened.

Still, the defense pushed a theory that the killer was one of Marlene Miller’s classmates and that she willingly left the house with that individual.

Courted. After nine hours of deliberations, a jury convicted Booker T. Hiller of the murder.

Judge Meredith Wingrove sentenced him to death in the gas chamber.

From his cell, Booker worked furiously on writs and appeals. A radio interview referred to him as a “self-trained prisoner lawyer.”

Meanwhile, in 1972, Booker got a lucky break. The California Supreme Court ruled executions cruel and unusual punishment, and all death sentences in the state were converted to life in prison.

Poor composition. The state later revived capital punishment, but previous death sentences weren’t reinstated —there would be no date with a potassium cyanide pellet for Booker T. Hillery.

Booker got another big break, this one of his own making, in 1986.

Twenty-four years after Marlene Miller’s murder, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, ruling that Kings County’s systematic exclusion of blacks from grand juries like the one that indicted Booker was “a grave constitutional trespass.”

Notoriety problem. Of the 49,000 Kings County residents at the time, about 2,000 were African Americans who were mostly “poor farm-workers” like Booker. The justice system presumably could have found at least one or two jurors from his peer group for the 1962 grand jury, had it made an effort.

For the 1986 retrial, there would be three black jurors — and a change of venue.

“There’s not a 5-year-old down there [in Kings County] who hasn’t been told who Booker Hillery is,” defense lawyer Clifford Tedmon argued.

Booker’s trial took place in Monterey County. His bail was set at $500,000.

Play ball. His personal appearance made a splash in court. “Booker wore a cardigan, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses” making him look “more like an attorney than an accused killer.”

But a spiffy exterior couldn’t compensate for the forensics. The old footprint and tire track evidence held up.

Plus, debris from the Millers’ carpet — vacuumed up right after the murder and kept in police storage — held microscopic football-shaped particles identical to those found in Booker’s Plymouth. They were identified as spray paint on fiber.

New witness. The defense suggested the “paintball” evidence could have been contaminated over the years.

But the prosecution had another bombshell. A surprise witness, former sheriff’s deputy Lowell Reightley, testified that he overhead Booker telling another prisoner, “I didn’t mean to kill that girl.”

And investigators had rounded up most of the 115 people involved in the first trial and were permitted to read aloud the testimony of the 21 people who had since died.

Send him back. Jurors had trouble making a decision at first, but Monterey Superior Court Judge John M. Phillips insisted they keep trying.

They ultimately found Booker guilty, and he got 25 years to life.

By 1989, Booker had been denied parole 10 times. Before one of the hearings, 15,000 people signed a petition asking the board to keep him behind razor wire.

Hillery was “the bogyman incarnate here — the guy parents would tell their kids about when they were warning them about not talking to strangers,” said Kings County prosecutor Patrick Hart. 

High marks. But the general public’s conviction eventually began to wane. According to a 1993 LA Times article:

The clean canvas that made Hillery’s violence look and feel so shocking is quite splotched. Murder is no stranger anymore, and that, combined with the perpetual dose of mayhem delivered by television from nearby Fresno and the world beyond, has finally ended Hanford’s rural innocence.

Despite that he attempted to rape a male cook in San Quentin in 1976, by the time he came up for parole on July 29, 1993, there were reports from California State Prison Salerno that Booker was a model prisoner. His lawyers maintained that he made a good candidate for release because he had a supportive family and job skills.

Record setter. But Marlene’s brother, Walter, sent a video-recording about the pain the murder and perpetual court actions caused his family.

Hillery was denied parole.

A number of accounts refer to him as the longest-serving male prisoner in the Golden State.

Regardless of whether or not his story inspires any new sympathizers, his final chapter did play out in the custody of the California Department of Corrections — in a prison medical care facility in Stockton.

He died at the age of 91 on January 16, 2023, according to Find a Grave (thanks to reader Sister Veronica for sending in the tip).

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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