Northwest Arkansas Community College student Rebekah Gould, 22, went missing from her boyfriend's Guion house in September 2004. Left behind in the house were all of her belongings and a grisly trail of blood-stained mattresses, bedding, and walls. Days later, her body was found near a highway and authorities concluded that she died of two fatal blows to the head combined with strangulation.
Investigators initially suspected Gould's boyfriend Casey McCullough, who remained a person of interest for nearly 16 years until his first cousin William Miller was linked to the murder. Miller failed a polygraph test and was tricked into confessing to the murder in November 2020. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was given a 40-year prison term.
According to the Arkansas Department of Corrections, William Miller is currently serving his lengthy sentence at the East Arkansas Regional Unit.
An upcoming episode of NBC Dateline is slated to chronicle Rebekah Gould's slaying from nearly two decades ago. The episode titled Secrets in the Ozarks will air on the channel at 9:00 pm ET this Friday, June 2, 2023.
Here's a look at the synopsis for the episode:
"When the body of 22-year-old college student Rebekah Gould is found a week after she vanished, theories about her murder run rampant through the Arkansas Ozarks. Dennis Murphy reports."William Miller, the first cousin of Rebekah Gould's then-boyfriend Casey McCullough, confessed to her murder
In October 2022, William Miller, who beat Rebekah Gould to death with a piano leg and then dumped her body on the side of the highway in September 2004, pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder in connection with the 22-year-old college student's killing. He was then sentenced to 40 years in prison and is currently serving his sentence at the East Arkansas Regional Unit.
According to the Daily Mail, Miller was arrested in November 2020 after returning to the US from the Philippines in connection with Gould's murder case from 2004 who was found bludgeoned to death by the side of a highway. The 44-year-old was arrested in Oregon, where he lived at the time, for murdering the 22-year-old sixteen years ago.
During an interview, Miller confessed to killing Rebekah Gould on the morning of September 20, 2004, at her boyfriend Casey McCullough's house. McCullough was his first cousin in relation. Miller allegedly concealed his pickup truck behind the house, knocked on the front door, and entered the house under the pretense of wanting to use the phone claiming he was having issues with his vehicle.
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported that an affidavit mentioned that "while he [William Miller] was pretending to use the phone, Ms. Gould went back to her bedroom to go to bed." The report further states:
"Mr. Miller advised that when Ms. Gould went back to her bedroom, he then retrieved a piano leg from a piano that was located in the living room. ... He then entered Ms. Gould's bedroom where he began to strike her multiple times with the piano leg."According to the same report, Miller claimed that after striking her twice in the head with the piano leg, he strangled the victim to death with a necktie, covered her corpse in a blanket, loaded her into the back of his truck, drove north, and dumped her body beside Arkansas 9 highway. Her body was discovered on September 27, 2004.
Rebekah Gould was staying at her boyfriend Casey McCullough's house at the time and was a student at Northwest Arkansas Community College. On the morning of the murder, that is September 20, 2004, she dropped off her boyfriend at work and then stopped by at a nearby convenience store which was the last time she was ever seen alive.
McCullough did not return home that night and only stopped by at the house the next morning to collect work clothes. He later claimed that he failed to see the obvious crime scene at his house, with a blood-stained mattress and pillow, sheets in the washing machine, blood on the walls, and large amounts of bleach throughout the house. That same day, Gould was reported missing.
NBC Dateline will further delve into Rebekah Gould's murder case this Friday.
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