$50 Million Wrongful Death Verdict Against the Man Who Killed MacKenna Milhon

In December 2019, MacKenna Milhon was 19 years old and living in Springfield, Missouri. She was stabbed to death by Lonnie Williams, then 33, who later confessed to police. In May 2021, a Greene County jury found Williams guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 100 years, and sent to the South Central Correctional Center in Licking.

For MacKenna's mother, Rachel Crook, the criminal conviction was not the end of it. She brought a wrongful death suit against Williams in Greene County Circuit Court, represented by Sarah M. Donelan of Donelan Law, LLC in Springfield, along with co-counsel Amanda N. Johnson, who has since returned to work at the prosecutor's office. A civil case against an imprisoned defendant with no ability to pay is a case most firms would decline. Crook wanted a court to put a value on her daughter's life, and her lawyers took it to trial.

The trial took place in January 2024 before Judge Derek Ankrom. It lasted a single day. Williams had no defense lawyer and represented himself, appearing by video from prison. Crook's attorneys presented testimony from a forensic pathologist with the Greene County Medical Examiner's office about what MacKenna endured before she died, and the jury heard from her family about the daughter, and the future, that Williams took from them.

The jury deliberated for roughly 20 minutes. By an 11 to 1 margin, it returned a verdict of $50 million for Rachel Crook. The award rested almost entirely on damages for MacKenna's pain and suffering rather than on economic losses, and it was reported as the largest civil verdict ever returned in Greene County.

The money is another matter, and this should be said plainly: the judgment almost certainly cannot be collected. Williams is serving a life sentence with no parole date and no meaningful assets. No insurance policy covers an intentional killing. Barring something unexpected, he will never pay any real portion of the $50 million.

That does not make the verdict an empty gesture. Crook has applied to Missouri's Tort Victims' Compensation Fund, a state fund that can pay a portion of judgments that cannot be collected from the defendants who owe them, so the verdict may yield a real, if far smaller, recovery. The judgment also stands as a public record. A jury of twelve people in the county where MacKenna lived and died heard the evidence and fixed the value of what was taken at $50 million, a number her mother can point to for the rest of her life.

The case was Crook v. Williams, tried in the Circuit Court of Greene County, Missouri, with the verdict returned on January 16, 2024. Lonnie Williams remains at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking, where he is serving life without the possibility of parole.