William Dillow, Serving 45 Years for Raping 2 Pre-Teen Flagler Beach Girls, Is Murdered

It was one of the most horrifying stories Flagler Beach police had dealt with in years. Rhonda Lynn Wilkerson, a 49-year-old Flagler Beach woman, and William C. Dillow, her 27-year-old boyfriend, had been serially raping, molesting and threatening Wilkerson’s two preteen daughters, until the girls alerted a teacher at Old Kings Elementary in February 2014.

Dillow had developed an elaborate scheme to ensnare the girls in his grip, brutalizing them and shooting one of the girls with a BB gun, suffocating one of the girls on one occasion, and threatening to kill them if they told–or to have them killed if he was imprisoned.

Dillow, who lived in St. Augustine, where the brutality took place–in an RV next to his father’s property–and Wilkerson, were arrested in February 2014. Last May, Wilkerson was sentenced to 50 years. A few weeks earlier, Dillow–a convicted felon who’d served time for assault in New Jersey–was sentenced to 45 years in a plea deal. He ended up at Jefferson Correctional Institution, an 1,179-inmate prison in Monticello, just east of Tallahassee.

On Wednesday, Dillow was murdered by another inmate.

The Tallahassee Democrat, which first reported the killing, noted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was investigating the death, with help from the Florida Department of Corrections’ Office of Inspector General. Details surrounding the killings were not released. An FDLE spokesperson could not be reached late Friday afternoon.

When he was a 22-year-old felon serving time in New Jersey, Dillon had sought to correspond with women by mail, saying he was “in search of female viewpoints and opinions on a variety of subjects.”

“I love music, computers, play guitar and drums (you don’t want to hear me sing!). Will answer all letters. I’m lonely and enjoy corresponding,” he’d written.

He’d also written: “This is my first incarceration and last.”

Wilkerson, now 50, is serving her time at the Lowell Annex in Ocala.