Man Sentenced In South Windsor Murder
A career criminal who fatally strangled and stabbed a woman last year, leaving her to die at the Connecticut River in South Windsor, was sentenced to 35 years in prison today.
William Walters of Windsor Locks was sentenced in Superior Court in Hartford before Judge David Gold, who said this is effectively a life sentence.
Walters is 46 and is not eligible for parole.
On April 24, Walters pleaded guilty to murder in the July 5, 2007 death of Debra Vigneau of Somers.
William C. Walters Police said Walters had been having an affair with Vigneau, 50, when they got into an argument by the river in South Windsor last year. Police said Vigneau, concerned that Walters was seeing another woman behind her back, threatened to throw his car keys in the river if he didn't tell her whom he had been talking to on his cellphone.
Police said Vigneau also threatened to report their affair to Walters' wife. He responded by lunging at her and killing her.
Police found Vigneau's body in some brush on the side of Vibert Road, which leads to the dock. They found Walters soon afterward at the Windsor Locks home of another woman he had been seeing. That woman told police that he showed up with blood on his clothes and tried to wash the blood off with a shower, police said.
Court records show that Walters has an extensive criminal record and was on parole through 2010 in connection with a 2003 arrest charging him with escape, first-degree larceny and failure to appear in court.
In a statement to police after the killing, Walters' wife, Rose Walters, said her husband had called her shortly afterward and told her that he had killed someone because she had been picking on him, police said.
