38 Years Later, Linda Slaten's Murderer Was Just Arrested Thanks To Genetic Genealogy Testing.

Linda Patterson Slaten

On September 4th, 1981, at 8:35 a.m., Lakeland police officers were called to 303 Brunnell Parkway, Apt. No. 31. John Allen, a maintenance worker for the Lakeland Housing Authority, called the police after he was alerted by Linda’s sister, Judy Butler.

Judy had walked to her sister’s apartment to see if she wanted to meet for coffee, and when Linda didn’t answer the door, she started to walk back to her apartment. As she did so, she noticed that the screen from her sister’s bedroom window was missing. When she looked through the opening, Judy saw her sister lying on the bed with what appeared to be a wire hanger around her neck.

When officers arrived, they found 31-year-old Linda had been strangled to death with the hanger. Her dress was pulled down from the top, and up from the bottom, exposing her bleeding female body parts. Her underwear and shoes were on the rug below her feet.

There didn’t appear to be any signs of struggle in the bedroom or on the bed, but the south-most window was not locked and the screen was removed.

Linda's two children, 15-year-old Jeffery and 12-year-old Timothy, then 12 years old, were sleeping when officers arrived.

Jeffery told police that the last time he saw his mother was when she went to her bedroom sometime after 11 p.m. He turned off the television shortly after midnight and fell asleep. He told police he didn’t hear anything during the night.

Timothy also said he heard nothing that night either and that he went to bed when his mom did.The family had moved into the apartment about two weeks before Linda's murder.

Vaginal swabs and sperm from Linda's body cavity were collected.

In 1981, FDLE authorities could not find a DNA match in any established law enforcement databases to the swabs collected during the autopsy.

In December 2018, DNA from Linda's case was sent to Parabon for testing. The resulting report indicated that the person who most likely killed Slaten was a man named Joseph Mills. 

July of this year, LPD started monitoring trash collected from his home for the purpose of obtaining his DNA. Once the trash was collected, the Lakeland Police Crime Lab sent the items to be processed by FDLE, including two cotton swabs, two adhesive patches to colostomy bags and a plastic spoon. 

On August 9th, FDLE reported that the DNA profile obtained from the original vaginal swabs was consistent with the DNA profile collected from the adhesive on the colostomy bags.

The fingerprints taken from Linda’s window also were a match to Mills’ prints, documented for an unrelated arrest in January 1984.

On December 12th, 58-year-old Joseph Clinton Mills was arrested by Lakeland Police Department detectives and charged with the murder and sexual battery of  Linda. 

Back in 1981, Mills was 20 years old and Timothy's football coach. The day his mother was killed Timothy was picked up by Mils and taken to practice at Winston Elementary. 

Around 8-8:30 p.m., the coach brought Timothy back to the apartment. He ate dinner and went next door with his mother to play cards with the neighbors.

Around 11-11:30 p.m., Timothy and his mom went home, and he saw his brother Jeffery in the living room watching TV. He went into his bedroom in the northwest corner of the apartment and went to sleep.

Mills was interviewed in 1981, but investigators had no clue that he was the perpetrator of Linda's murder.

Yesterday, it was announced that Mills had been indicted by a grand jury on charges of first-degree murder, burglary and two counts of sexual battery, in addition to perjury charges for his testimony before jurors last week. Under oath, Mills told the grand jury that he had never been inside Linda’s Lakeland apartment and had never had sexual relations with her.

But in a statement to detectives after that court appearance, Mills contradicted himself, admitting that he had “consensual sex” with Linda, stating that when he went to her apartment on September 3rd, 1981, he parked down the road and crawled through her bedroom window. He said that Linda already had the wire hanger around her neck and that the two engages in "wild sex." He stated he twisted the wire hanger around her neck tighter and tighter while engaging in sexual intercourse with Linda until she lost consciousness. When he was finished he left through the same window.

Linda's son's are grateful that their mother's killer is finally caught, but are flabbergasted that he was the coach. 

“He was my football coach, and I trusted this man. He would take me to the games and brought me home afterwards,” said Tim Slaten, now 50. “I saw the crime scene, it is still burned in my brain today.”