Ex-Warren man is charged in double slaying

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

WARREN — A former city man whose story of committing sex crimes was not believed by a grand jury in March 2007 has confessed a double homicide from June 2007.

Police took Norris A. Mills, 42, most recently of Eagle, Utah, into custody Wednesday after he walked into the Warren Police Department to claim responsibility for the deaths of Andrea Reynolds, 30, and her uncle, John Freeman Jr., 50.

On Friday, a plea of innocent was entered for him in Warren Municipal Court to two charges of aggravated murder. Judge Terry Ivanchak set bond at $2 million and set a preliminary hearing for 10:15 a.m. Wednesday.

Reynolds and Freeman were found stabbed to death in their home at 2631 Front St. S.W. on June 11, 2007.

Neither Reynolds nor Freeman had been involved in illegal activities, police said. Freeman owned his own courier business, and Reynolds cleaned commercial businesses for a cleaning company, said former Councilman Robert Holmes III, who had been a friend to Reynolds for about 20 years

“They were the kindest people. They were plain people,” Holmes said.

Police declined to discuss the case much in 2007 or now except to say that it is unusual to investigate an 18-month-old homicide from a confession backward, and that investigators have spent a lot of time since Wednesday working on it again.

In February 2007, Mills also surrendered at Warren Police Department, where he talked of sexually assaulting children in Niles and Bazetta.

Police in both communities later charged him with raping juvenile girls, but a grand jury refused to indict him.

Mills had been living with his wife, Regina Mills, at Front Street Southwest, just before turning himself in to police in February 2007.

But Regina Mills said at the time that her husband surrendered because she had kicked him out of the house and he had nowhere else to go.

“He had no clothes, no friends,” she said.

runyan@vindy.com