Mill's mom grieves, discusses killers

The news that one of the man involved in the murder of her 14-year-old son 10 years ago today was recently found to be in violation of his preliminary parole requirements (see related story below) and placed back in the state’s prison for men did not really surprise Wendy Mills.

“It’s really kind of interesting,” she said during a Thursday interview. “It seems like every time the anniversary (of the boy’s murder) comes around something will always pop up, some weird kind of thing connected to Robbie.”

It was August 2, 1998 when young Robbie Mills was on his way home from a swim when he ran into Jon Knowles and Richard Douthart on Messer Street near the Boston & Maine railroad tracks. Evidence indicated the two young men — aged 17 and 18, respectively, at the time — hit the young man in the face and knocked him off the new BMX bicycle he’d worked and saved all summer to buy.

Robbie reportedly offered the young men a dollar and some change he had in his backpack but that did not satisfy them. He told them he had to get home to his mother. But they used a knife to cut off his backpack straps and tried him up. Then Douthart, who was sitting on the prone youngster, slit Mills throat. At first the boy didn’t die, so he did it again. The youngster’s body was discovered in some nearby brush a short time later.

“I couldn’t say this before,” the mother said. “I can only say this now because of where he is now but in his confession he (Douthart) said the whole idea (of killing Robbie), he said it made him feel like Superman. He wanted to see what it felt to kill somebody and it made him feel like Superman.”

Today Wendy Mills still lives and works in the Lakes Region. She’s close to Robbie’s paternal grandparents and his aunt, and talks to his father occasionally. (Mills and Robert LaPierre never married.) Her daughter, Robbie’s older sister Meggan, who graduated with an MBA in Business from Plymouth State University, is married with a child of her own now. Mills is engaged but confesses she’s in “no hurry” to get married at this time.

After 10 years, the emotions that would have once easily brought tears to Mills’ eyes have dried.

But that does not mean she no loner misses her son.

“Do I think about him? Everyday,” she said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what he’d be doing (at this time of his life). Trying to remember his voice is a tough one because you carry it around in his head, but you can’t really recall it.”

The contrast between young Robbie Mills and the two men who are responsible for his death is an irony his mother can still not escape. Mills was a big sports fan — especially a NASCAR fan — who was always active, his mother said. He wanted a new BMX bicycle that summer so he worked at the old Bonanza Steakhouse on Union Avenue to earn enough to purchase it.

In a recent interview published in The Citizen of Laconia, Douthart denied an earlier claim that the two men stopped the youngster to get his bicycle, saying they were simply inebriated and wanted to “mess with him.”

But the mother has her doubts about that story.

“I think part of it was they wanted the brand new bike,” she said. “You could have it and sell it for $20 or $30, for fast cash for booze or pot.

“Here was a 14-year-old boy out working and earning money,” she said. “And they were what, 17 or 18 years old? They both should have been out there working, taking care of their families. But it’s easier to get wasted. ‘We’ll go out and steal.’ Obviously they have a history of that. And that’s what they did… It was things they’d done before.”

Mills also doubts the convicted men’s assertions that they acted irrationally under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

“No, they knew what they were doing,” she said. “To cut someone’s throat — twice. And Jon Knowles cut the straps off Robbie’s backpack to try to tie up his feet — he couldn’t, because he wore size 13, big feet. Douthart was sitting on top of Robbie. They were going to do exactly what they were going to do.

“They were not decent people, that would be the easy way to put it,” the mother said. “I don’t think of them as human beings, they’re not human beings. Human beings care about each other and don’t go out and take a life of a 14-year-old child when you have your own kids. They both were living with people that had children.

“I don’t believe either one of them, I think they knew exactly what they were doing,” she added. “And Jon Knowles, his version of what happened I don’t believe it. He was more involved than what he said. As far as murdering Robbie, I think that was exactly what they planned on doing.”

Mills said that after hearing of Knowles recent troubles with his parole she’s written a letter to the Department of Corrections (DOC) to try to find out more details about what his infractions were. If there is another parole hearing she plans to be there — as she’s been at many previous ones.

In the meantime she struggles, not only with her own loss but also with the sense that her child suffered terribly and unfairly before he died.

“Was he afraid? That’s the part you will never know,” she said. “But at some point he’s on the ground, he’s been punched in the face and you don’t’ know what’s going though his mind. Of course he would be frightened to death… Someone’s pulling your hair back with a knife against your throat.

“But you’re not ever going to get an answer for the rest of it because we can’t ask him,” she lamented. “ What went through his mind? That is something I’m not ever going to know.”