Cold case heats up

The long arm of the law reached across the continent and decades to slap the handcuffs on Vickey Babbitt of Sisters last week.

The 58-year-old Sisters woman was arrested Tuesday in connection with the 1972 murder of her then-husband, Marine William "Bill" Miller.

Deputies from the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), U.S. Marshals and agents of the Onslow County (North Carolina) Sheriff's Office made the arrest at Babbitt's home at 6657 Ponderosa Loop in the Plainview subdivision just east of Sisters.

Babbitt's former husband George J. Hayden, was arrested Monday, September 8, in Beaufort County, North Carolina.

Babbitt and Hayden are accused of murdering Miller on September 16, 1972.

The Jacksonville Daily News of Jacksonville, North Carolina, reported that Marine Sgt. Bill Miller returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam to find that Hayden, a friend and also a Marine, had moved into Miller's mobile home with Miller's wife, Vickey.

The woman left with Hayden after the sheriff's department evicted him at Miller's insistence, the newspaper reported.

Vickey Babbitt allegedly lured Miller to a meeting in a parking lot where he was shot in the head and the back with an M-16 rifle.

Hayden and Babbitt were suspects in the killing from the beginning, but were never charged and the case went cold.

Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown noted in a press release that "much credit for new life being breathed into this case goes to the Jacksonville Daily News reporter Lindell Kay. It was two separate cold case articles Mr. Kay did in the Jacksonville Daily News that inspired a key witness to come to the Onslow County Sheriff's Office with specific evidence that lead to the solving of William 'Bill' Miller's murder..."