Judith Ann Neelley was just a teenager when she met and then married Alvin; an ex-con 11 years her senior. He was a petty car thief not long out of prison and proceeded to make Judith not only his wife, but his accomplice and partner in crime. Little did he know, it would be she who taught him a few things about being evil. What began as merely sexual deviation would eventually lead to kidnapping, assault, torture, and the death of two innocent women; one of which was only a 13 year old child…
In the beginning Alvin had convinced Judith that she should atone for her supposed infidelity by procuring a sexual partner for him, the first of which would be her own sister. When finding women who were willing to engage in their sexual games proved difficult, they simply decided upon a more direct approach. Riding in two separate vehicles and communicating via CB radio, the self proclaimed outlaws would cruise the streets in search of suitable sexual partners for Alvin. Whenever he saw a female who caught his attention, he would radio Judith and instruct her as to his choice. And it would be at this juncture that Judith would approach the potential target and attempt to befriend them.
Lisa Millican was a 13-year-old juvenile who was at the mall on an outing with a group of girls from a shelter for abused and neglected children, when she was approached by Judith and subsequently agreed to go riding around with her new friend. Little did she know, it would be the last ride of her young life. Instead of being taken on a joyride like she thought she would be, her new friend proceeded to deliver her to a motel room where she was introduced to the sick and twisted sexual deviant named Alvin. At first Judith attempted to convince the young girl to have sex with her husband, and that they would all have fun together. Lisa refused– and so, what couldn’t be gained by cajoling would then be taken by force.
Over the next few days Lisa would be subjected to physical and psychological torture, sexual assault, humiliation and unspeakable degradation. She was repeatedly raped and abused by both Alvin and Judith Neelley, made to sleep naked and handcuffed on the cold and dirty floor of the motel bathroom. After the two assailants were finished using her, Judith escorted her into the woods in Little River Canyon National Preserve. Upon entering the woods, Judith instructed Lisa to lie on the ground and place her arms around the base of a tree and then handcuffed her, at which point she proceeded to inject liquid drain cleaner into the neck of Lisa Millican with a syringe. After several injections failed to produce the desired result, Judith marched a crying and pleading little girl to the edge of what is known as Little River Canyon in DeKalb County Alabama , where she shot her in the back with a pistol and tossed her body off the cliff… This little girl survived days of torture, multiple rapes and seemingly endless abuse, was injected with drain cleaner,shot and thrown off a cliff and still managed to survive long enough to leave evidence of her struggle to crawl out of the canyon. While Lisa was struggling for life at the bottom of Little River Canyon, Alvin and Judy had moved on to other victims.
The Neelley crime binge continued when they abducted a young couple in Rome, Georgia. They shot John Hancock, then raped, tortured and murdered his fiancée, Janice Chatman. Hancock survived, and his description of the killers’ car led to the arrest of the Neelleys. Alvin took a plea in the Chatman murder in Georgia to avoid a death sentence. (He died in prison in 2005, at age 52.) Judy, who gave birth while awaiting trial, was convicted in Alabama of the Millican murder and sentenced to death. After spending the next 16 years on Alabama’s death row and only days away from her scheduled execution then governor of Alabama, Fob James, commuted Judith’s death sentence to life in prison which would theoretically make her eligible for parole.
While the above summary explains the circumstances surrounding Judith’s conviction, and who Judith is, these photos would require something of a footnote to explain when they were taken and for whom. At one point in 1987, Mrs. Neelley had returned to the DeKalb County jail in Fort Payne, Alabama for a court appearance involving her appeal. and interestingly enough, while Alabama’s most notorious female prisoner was being held there, so was one of Alabama’s most notorious male prisoners. Convicted killer Bobby Ray Gilbert was not only being housed in the same unit as Judith, but was literally only a matter of yards away from the cell she was being housed in. What started out as a greeting and friendly conversation would, over the next two and a half years, bloom into the most hopeless of romances. Judith Neelley, sentenced to death, and Bobby Ray Gilbert sentenced to multiple life without parole sentences for his own murder convictions are generally not the ingredients of your average romance novel, but these two would make the best of a bad situation and would spend the next two and a half years corresponding on a daily basis. Naturally, they could not write to each other in a direct fashion, as inmates are not allowed to correspond with one another. With the use of a middle-man who forwarded all of their correspondence, nicknames and code words, they maintained consistent communication right up until the day Judith attempted to send Bobby a collection of pictures she had taken for him. These pictures were recognized by the mail clerk at Donaldson Correctional Facility and all communication was therefore blocked between Mr. Gilbert and Mrs. Neelley.
4x6 photograph of Judith taken October 17, 1987 from Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. On the back, Judith has put a lipstick kiss and wrote, “I’ll always love you Squire Snake, your lady, Sparky”.
