Mills' murder accomplice back behind bars

Jon Knowles, the former Lake City man who was a convicted accomplice in the murder of 14-year-old Robbie Mills in 1998, has taken a step backwards in his attempt to be paroled.

Jeff Lyons, public information officer for the NH Department of Corrections (DOC), said yesterday that Knowles had recently been moved from a halfway house in the Capital City where he has lived for the last four months back to a “transition work unit” on the grounds of the Concord state prison.

Lyons said he was not legally allowed to release information about what may have led to the reassignment but Wendy Mills, Robbie’s mother, said she’s learned from sources that Knowles was “out of place” — that is, he was not somewhere where DOC officials expected him to be — and that he “failed to observe the rules” related to his behavior at the halfway house.

Mills said she was also upset because after Knowles was found to be in violation, he was picked up by a police officer who brought him by cruiser to the Lakes Region (prison) Facility in Laconia.

For me, that’s a problem,” she said. “He was transported to Belknap County when one of the stipulations of his (pending) release was that he not have entrance into Belknap County… So obviously someone didn’t do his homework, which is not a good thing.”

Lyons admitted Knowles was brought to the Lakes Region Facility, which he said is standard protocol for an inmate with his type of security classification. “He was not an escapee,” he said.

Still as soon as local official realized the situation — and related it to the wide publicity the local murder case received 10 years ago this week — the prisoner was immediately transferred back to the transitional unit in Concord.

“We have to think of the prisoners’ safety too,” Lyons said. “We’re charged with taking care of their safety and it may not have been a safe place for him there.”

The city's Robbie Mills Sports Complex is located immediately adjacent to the local prison complex.

Knowles was granted parole at a hearing before the five-member NH Parole Board in late June.

But Lyons said the 28-year-old man has actually been living at the halfway house since February 27.

He said the facility would “normally be the last stage” before a prisoner is released into the public. Inmates are allowed to go out and get a job in the local community. They are also typically required to check in with their parole officers on a regular basis and participate in Alcoholic Anonymous and/or Narcotic Anonymous programs. “Other stipulations are not being able to move without getting permission from his parole officer, he can’t change jobs without informing his parole officer and he can’t drive a car without the parole officer’s permission.”

Knowles stipulation also required him to stay away from any relatives of Robbie Mills and to stay out of Belknap County.

But those preliminary stipulations, which were set by the parole board in June, are not all the terms related to his staying at the halfway house.

The official said there is normally a two-month process after the board’s initial decision that allows officials, behavioral scientists and others in the DOC system to create a more formal plan for each particular prisoner.

However Knowles violated the initial requirements of his parole so he was taken into custody and moved from the “C1” prisoner classification to the more restrictive “C2” on July 8. Now he’s back on the prison grounds, although Lyons said C2s are not behind the more “secure parameter” of the prison. They typically spend time cleaning up along roadsides, cleaning the prison yard and helping other state agencies as needed.

Lyons stressed that Knowles had not broken any laws, as far as he was aware, but was simply in violation of “house rules.”

The DOC spokesman said that it’s not atypical in such cases for the prisoner to be allowed to return to he Halfway House after 30 days. “But it also depends on if there’s bed space there,” he said. “We usually have 200 inmates on any given day that are in line for the halfway house so when one goes out another gets in. So he may never go back to the halfway house. It depends on whether beds are available. Or he could be paroled directly from the transition unit.”

On the other hand if the NH Parole Board is apprised of Knowles situation and decides it is a significant infraction, they could revoke his entire parole and he could be forced to serve out the remainder of his 20-year sentence, which would mean he would be unavailable for release until 2029.

That’s what Wendy Mills would like to see. She said that when she saw Knowles at his parole hearing in June nothing about his demeanor suggested to her that he had any regrets about tying her sons hands behind his back with the straps cut from his backpack and then standing by while Richard Douthart cut the youth's throat. The two young men had been drinking when Robbie Mills happened upon them on Aug. 2, 1998.

“I can honestly tell you in seeing that man walk in the same room, and looking at him and listening to him he’s not changed,” she said. “He’s not remorseful for what’s happened. You don’t see any remorse in him, and he could care less.”

Mills is also pinning her hopes on a comment she said one of the parole board members made to Knowles, indicating that if the young man appeared before the board again he would serve out his full jail term.

Douthart, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the state prison in Berlin, murdered Robbie Mills near the Boston & Maine railroad tracks off Messer Street. The teenagers body was later found in the brush between the street and the Winnipesaukee River.

Knowles turned himself into Concord Police and worked out a plea bargain with officials there. He got Douthart to admit his guilt in a phone conversation and later testified against the man convicted of the slayings.