William "Bill" Major

I am pretty sure this is one of the cases that I discovered while watching “Forensic Files,” which is in my opinion one of the best true crime shows. Unlike other shows this one is only thirty minutes long so there is little time to be bias and it fully sticks to the facts. They have portions where they interview people of course but again, it is full of facts. You can generally find the episodes fairly easy through different streaming apps, including YouTube so if you have not seen this show and you like true crime, which if you are here I suspect you do, it is worth checking out.

Helen “Marlene” Oakes had been married to Bill Major for about nine years in 1980. They had married when she was sixteen and he was about twenty-seven. By 1980 they had two children, eight year old Donald and four year old LaLana and were living in Verona Kentucky. It was said that both Marlene and Bill were known to see other people through their marriage. In fact, it was well known that Marlene was involved with a man named Glen St. Hillaire. He lived on their property and worked with Bill but even Glen says that Bill encouraged the relationship.

My research says that in 1975 Bill had been convicted for the molestation of two boys. This obviously happened while he and Marlene were married but I did not find any more information about this conviction, including how much time he was given in prison, if in fact he served any time. My assumption is that this may explain the four years in between the ages of their two children. I also have no information about what Marlene may have thought about this but it seems apparent that they remained together.

Sometime around September or October of 1980 Marlene that she had caught Bill sexually molesting their son and she apparently “lost it.” She reported it in her diary, something she did with everything, and gave it to Glen to hold on to. She confronted Bill and let him know she was planning to divorce him. She wrote later in her diary that Bill agreed to sign the divorce papers if the abuse was not made public. She wrote that if he changed his mind she would tell her mother-in-law (although at least one report says she said her sister-in-law).

On October 11, 1980 Marlene talked to her sister twice. In the first conversation she told her sister her plans to divorce and about the abuse. She also told her that she had proof of this and that if something happened to her that the authorities would get the information and that it was somewhere that Bill would never find it. Presumably she was talking about the diaries that were now in Glen's possession. She called her sister back later and told her that she and Bill had had an argument she was upset but apparently it was not the last argument of the night.

It was said that Marlene and Bill were arguing and Glen was apparently around when it started because it was said that he left to “cool off.” It was not made clear whether he had been involved in the argument or just a bystander. When he returned to the property in the early morning hours he noticed that Bill was home. Marlene's car was gone and when Glen talked to Bill he was told that Marlene had left and took the children with her.

It was not until a few days later that Glen learned that Bill had taken the children to a neighbor's home and told them that Marlene had left and abandoned the children. He then sold several firearms to another neighbor and had expressed that he planned to move back to his native Rhode Island. It is unclear whether Glen or Bill contacted the police first but around the same time they both contacted authorities. It was said that Bill reported Marlene missing while Glen technically did the same, he also filled investigators in on other things too, including Marlene's diaries. A search was made but authorities did not seem to feel as if anything was off. It seems however, that the only two things gone were Marlene and her car. Even her driver's license had been left at the home.

It is not clear what was done at that time or what investigators believed. But apparently Bill did in fact move to Rhode Island and took Donald and LaLana with him. On November 29, 1981 a hunter was out on some land at a farm about a mile away from where Bill and Marlene had lived when he came across the partial remains of a skull. They were able to determine that the skull likely belonged to a white female, approximately thirty years old (Marlene was twenty-five) and that she had died from multiple gunshot wounds. The skull or at least the portion found did not have any teeth and at that point there was no way to identify the remains. Over the years some suspected that it was Marlene but as DNA made strides there were different reasons that it could not be checked because of the deterioration of the bones.

In the meantime Bill was living in Rhode Island and had remarried. The children, who were living with Bill and his new wife, not only lost their mother, but a new nightmare began. While there had been the allegation from Marlene's diary about Bill abusing their son, Donald, it was in Rhode Island where he not only abused Donald, but also his daughter, LaLana. It was said that he would take the children with him to work and sexually and physically abuse them. In 1984 Bill's second wife went to authorities after the children had come to her with their claims. They claimed that Bill would tell them each that if they ever told anyone he would kill their sibling. The police came to the house to investigate and it was said that just days later he threatened LaLana at gunpoint to “keep her mouth shut.”

In 1985 Bill was convicted in Rhode Island for the abuse of his children. He was given a fifteen year sentence and his children went back to Kentucky to live with Marlene's mother. It is unclear whether she formally adopted the children but I can say that at some point Donald began using the Oakes surname. Whether LaLana did also is unclear as it appears the name I have found her under is a married name but I can only assume that she too took her mothers maiden name. Marlene's mother apparently never held back the fact that she believed her daughter not only was dead, but that Bill had murdered her. At some point she shared these beliefs with LaLana.

Although he was sentenced to fifteen years Bill served eleven years in Rhode Island and he was then sent directly to Kentucky where initially he was to face charges related to his abuse against his son. Although he was held for a bit, I was unable to determine how long, charges were dropped when first authorities realized there was a statue of limitations on the charges and they did not feel they had enough evidence. But while he was being retained in Kentucky he had a conversation on the phone with his father. It said that the calls were not recorded. For me this fact seemed very odd to me until I thought about it being in Kentucky. I currently know of someone who is and has been in a county jail in Kentucky, which I am likely sure that Bill would have been, and while I cannot say that they do not record phone calls, I can say that their mail is “uncensored” and when approached about it they say they cannot stop something from being mailed to a particular address, which I also find odd but would make sense that the calls were said not to be recorded when Bill was in jail.

That being said, Bill's father claimed to authorities that he had confessed to murdering Marlene when they talked on the phone. Authorities knew that this alleged confession would not be enough to file charges and it was said there was “significant animosity” between father and son. My research then said that in March of 2000 Bill's father agreed to let his phone tapped and they had a conversation. My initial information indicated that this call was the “gotcha moment” and it led to Bill's arrest for murder. But, according to an appeals paper I found it sounded as if Bill did not trust his father's motives in the call and expressed that. In the call it was said that Bill had admitted to his father that he had previously admitted to the murder but he blamed it on the fact he was incarcerated at the time and emotionally unstable at the time of the confession. Bill and Marlene's daughter, LaLana stated that sometime after Bill's incarceration she confronted Bill about murdering her mother. She claims that he stated “if you think I'm going to tell you where your mother is buried, you're crazy.”

LaLana had become focused on finding her mother and finding out the truth. It was said that she was able to fully see the files that investigators had compiled and she basically did her own investigating. She had long learned about the skull that had been found not long after her mother had “disappeared.” She talked to investigators about what it would take to get testing done. It seems that it was not going to be just as easy as obtaining DNA but it was about comparing it to LaLana. There seemed to be an issue initially whether the state would pay for the testing, and it was sent for mitochondrial DNA along with a DNA sample from LaLana. In early 2001 it was reveals that the skull was a “maternal relation” to LaLana. There seemed to be no question that the skull belonged to Marlene.

In July 2001 Bill Major was official charged with the murder of his wife, Marlene and with tampering with evidence. Soon after his arrest Bill confessed, although like many murderers I do not know that his story was completely true. He told investigators that he and Marlene had argued in her car and that she had pulled a gun on him. He said they struggled, he took the gun from her and “lost it” firing it at her until it was empty. He said he took the body to the farm in which the skull was found, and dumped her into a sinkhole, covering it with dirt and pieces of rolled fencing. He stated he tossed the weapon in a nearby pond and pushed her car into the Ohio River near a ferry. He even drew a map to where he left her remains and yet still nothing but that portion of the skull was found.

Truthfully I am unsure how much of that story I believe. It is possible he shot her while in the car but he would have been covered in blood and it does not seem that he was gone a super long time and seems odd he would not have missed something. If it was her car then one can assume that she was in the driver's seat but he would have had to move the body to drive it away. Not to mention after doing all that he said unless he had help, which I never found evidence referring to this, he would have had to walk back to another vehicle somewhere, and again, he would likely have been covered in blood. Also, I do not necessarily believe that he dumped her body the way that he stated. It was learned that Bill had allegedly told several people, including Glen St. Hillaire, that if Marlene tried to end their relationship that he would murder her and had gone into details of how he would remove her teeth to make her body “unidentifiable.”

Despite his confession and other things when it came time to plead in the court he pleaded not guilty and took the case to trial. He had suffered a stroke in 1995 and was in a wheelchair at his trial. The jury took less than an hour to come to a guilty verdict and on July 28, 2003 Bill was sentenced to life in prison. But, in 2005 a appeals court reversed his conviction and sentencing. They did so because LaLana had testified about the abuse she suffered from her father and the threat he had made to her after things came to light in Rhode Island. Donald also testified to the abuse he suffered in both Kentucky and Rhode Island. The courts believed that the abuse suffered by the children in Rhode Island should not have been brought into the trial. Of course the abuse that Donald was said to have suffered in Kentucky played a key role, although Bill was never convicted for that. There was also evidence about firearms that the court said should not have been admitted because they were “factually unconnected” to the crime charged. I assume this was a reference to the firearms he sold to the neighbor just after Marlene had gone missing.

Bill was re-tried on the charges and was once again found guilty. He was given a life sentence for the murder and five years on the tampering with evidence charge. A 2009 appeal upheld the conviction and sentencing. On October 15, 2018 Bill Major died at the age of seventy-three in prison. It seems that no one claimed his body and he is buried at the State Reformatory Cemetery in Kentucky.