BOCA RATON, Fla. – Julie Wills was a model and aspiring actress. Her future seemed full of promise until someone went on the attack with a knife and savagely slashed her inside her home. Seventeen years later, her murder remains unsolved.
"She was obviously concerned that whoever attacked her was going to come back and try to finish the job," recalled Det. Brice Allen, one of the original Boca Raton police investigators assigned the case. "So, she somehow managed to close the door (sliding glass door). Then, she was able to crawl across the house to the kitchen. We can tell by the blood that she was going to the telephone. But at some point, her body gave up and she died here on the kitchen floor."
The Boca Raton Police Department reopened the case several years ago, but have yet to get a lead that would produce an arrest.
"My goal is to hunt this individual down and prosecute him before I leave," said Allen. "We've got new investigators, new eyes, and new ways of seeing things."
The decision to revive the investigation was prompted by recent advances in DNA technology and by the continued anguish of Wills' parents, Nancy and Art Crum. The Texas couple has been visiting their daughter's gravesite every week since her murder on April 12, 1996.
"She will always be with me," Nancy Crum said. "She would have wanted us to continue. We will continue until this murder is solved or we both die, because she would have wanted us to do this."