John Francis Wille

Victims

6 attributed - 2 MURDER CONVICTIONS: the 1985 murder of Frank Powe in Florida, carrying life, and the first-degree murder of eight-year-old Nichole Lopatta in Louisiana, carrying death. He and Judith Walters were also charged with the stabbing death of Billy Phillips. He confessed to the Lopatta murder and later RECANTED, maintaining he was in Florida at the time

Years active

1980 - 1985

Location

Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Alabama, USA

Method

Several

Status

Arrested with Judith Walters in the summer of 1985. Convicted in Florida of the 1985 murder of Frank Powe near an interstate rest area and sentenced to life imprisonment on December 13, 1985. Convicted in St John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana on December 6, 1986 of the first-degree murder of eight-year-old Nichole Lopatta, lured from an apartment complex in Terrytown in June 1985; the jury deliberated about two hours before choosing death by electrocution over life, and he was sentenced on December 8, 1986. The prosecution relied heavily on a taped confession in which he admitted raping and strangling her. He and Walters were also charged with the stabbing death of Billy Phillips, their alleged accomplice in the abduction. He was held on death row at Angola. HE LATER RECANTED, saying he had been in Florida when Lopatta was abducted and killed, and in September 2000 his lawyers went before an ad hoc judge in Edgard over four days of testimony intending to prove he could not have committed the crime. The outcome of that proceeding is not established here.

Wille was born in 1964 and travelled through Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Alabama with a companion, Judith Walters.

In June 1985 Nichole Lopatta, eight, was abducted from a street in New Orleans and killed. Her death, and a series of others across the four states between 1980 and 1985, were attributed to Wille and Walters.

He was convicted in Florida and sentenced to life imprisonment on December 13, 1985, and convicted in Louisiana of the Lopatta murder and sentenced to death in 1987.

The figure of six covers the deaths attributed across the four states; two produced convictions.

The Louisiana conviction has been through extensive appellate litigation over the years on the sufficiency of the evidence and the conduct of the trial, and the accessible material is largely court opinions rather than reporting. Nothing accessible records his current position, and this entry belongs on the re-check list.