Hartford, CT: Man Had Threatened To Kill Wife Before Murder-Suicide, Police Said

By CHRISTINE DEMPSEY, cdempsey@courant.com

7:56 PM EST, November 10, 2010

HARTFORD

In January, Sandria Ellison-Walters' husband told her that if she was unfaithful to him, he would kill her and then kill himself, police said.

He was arrested and spent the next 8 months behind bars awaiting trial. But last week, just six weeks after he was released into a family-violence program, Noel Walters carried out his threat.

He fatally stabbed Ellison-Walters on Nov. 3 on Albany Avenue in Hartford and hung himself outside a nearby post office, police said.

Since the beginning of the year, Walters had been arrested twice on charges stemming from incidents involving his wife, court records show.

Walters' first arrest was Jan. 12, after a "visibly shaken" Ellison-Walters came to the police station to file a complaint.

While lying in bed with her at 12:45 a.m. that day, she told police, Walters had said that if she were unfaithful to him, he would kill her and then kill himself. The previous night, Walters had asked her if she knew where he could buy a gun, Ellison-Walters told the officer.

Police talked to Walters, who admitted mentioning something about someone's life, then charged him with second-degree threatening. They made sure he didn't have any guns.

Walters remained in pre-trial custody for months, records show, with bail initially set at $8,000.

On May 27, while he was in jail, he was arrested again. This time, he was charged with violation of a protective order, according to court records.

He had written two letters to Ellison-Walters from the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, a police report says. He had attempted to disguise the fact that the letters were from him by putting another inmate's name in the return address, police said.

He signed his name on the letters, though, and wrote that he missed Ellison-Walters, the report states.

Walters was not supposed to contact his wife in any way. Ellison-Walters told police she was "scared of Noel" and wanted no contact with him, police said.

His bail went up by $10,000 after the May 27 arrest.

In July, Walter's public defender applied on Walter's behalf for a family-violence education program, according to court records. But on Aug. 26, Superior Court Judge Carl Taylor denied the application. The reasons weren't clear Wednesday.

On Sept. 23, a public defender asked another judge to reconsider, and Judge Dawne Westbrook granted his admission into the program, the records state. The judge could not be reached Wednesday.

The family-violence education program is a 9-week course intended to break down problematic behaviors and build healthy behaviors. It is meant for first offenders or second offenders who had been arrested on charges that were not serious.

Walters was discharged from custody on Sept. 23, according to Andrius Banevicius, a state Department of Correction spokesman. He killed Ellison-Walters and himself six weeks later.

When Hartford police released the names of the victims this week, Chief Daryl K. Roberts made a written statement: "My sympathy and sorrow is with the victims' families on the loss of their loved ones.

"Domestic violence is a crime that not only affects every family member … but every member of our community."