A Montana man currently serving a 100-year prison sentence for the 1983 murder of his wife also recently confessed to a second unsolved murder of a 19-year-old woman renting an apartment from him in 1968, according to The Associated Press.
Police said Courtney Brooke Atlas, now 79, was always a suspect in the murder of Pamela Ann Dorrington because he was her landlord, but they never found substantive evidence to connect him to the crime.
Atlas said he called Dorrington on Feb. 17, 1968 and told her there was a water leak in her apartment he needed to repair, according to the Helena Independent Record. Once he entered the apartment, Detective Jess Metcalf said Friday, Atlas confessed to strangling and sexually assaulting Dorrington before disposing of her body.
He told police he placed the body in a barrel in his car, and kept it in his car during the day while he taught flying lessons at a nearby hangar. After his lessons for the day were over, he drove to Hauser Lake and dismembered Dorrington's body, placed it back in the barrel and pushed it off a bridge.
Dorrington's family was consulted recently as police were considering giving Atlas an offer of immunity to the charges related to the murder if he confessed, according to Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton.
The offer led to Atlas confessing and describing the crime in detail because he has "found God" in prison and "wanted to clear that off his conscience" by telling police.
Atlas is still in prison serving the remainder of a 1984 sentence for murder and arson. He was convicted of murdering his wife, Donna, and burning down their home north of Helena with her body inside in an effort to collect a total of $250,000 in insurance policies after filing for bankruptcy.
For more reporting from The Associated Press, see below.
Part of Dorrington's torso was found near the boat dock at Gates of the Mountains Marina on Holter Lake four months later.
He left the barrel in the area while he went to a meeting and then returned later that night, disposing of her body by throwing the barrel off the York Bridge into the Missouri River northeast of Helena.
Atlas said he believed the barrel broke open when it hit a bridge support, Metcalf said.
"This was cold, this was calculated, and we're not giving all the details of this gruesome homicide," Dutton said. "It is difficult hearing what was done. He fantasized about her and acted upon it."
During his trial, experts testified that Donna Atlas was dead before the fire started, likely due to strangulation, and that an accelerant may have been poured on her body, court records said.
Atlas had denied killing his wife, even appealing his conviction, but admitted to it during his confession at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Detective James Ward said.
"He never went into detail about it, but he took responsibility for that," Ward said.
