$50 Million Wrongful Death Verdict Against the Man Who Killed MacKenna Milhon
After trial: Williams is serving life without parole and will almost certainly never pay. The family applied to Missouri's Tort Victims' Compensation Fund for partial recovery.
Won by Donelan Law, LLC.
A Greene County jury awarded Rachel Crook $50 million in a wrongful death suit against Lonnie Williams, the man convicted of murdering her 19-year-old daughter, MacKenna Milhon. Williams is serving life without parole, and the judgment almost certainly cannot be collected from him. Crook pursued the case anyway, and has applied to Missouri's Tort Victims' Compensation Fund for partial recovery.
What happened
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.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Missouri Lawyers Media: 'Jury enters massive verdict for murder victim's family' (Jan. 22, 2024)·Archived copy
- 2.Springfield Daily Citizen: 'Greene County jury awards $50 million to mom of murdered teen'·Archived copy
- 3.OzarksFirst (KOLR): 'Mother of murder victim MacKenna Milhon awarded $50 million in damages'·Archived copy
- 4.KY3: 'Jury finds Springfield man guilty in death of Springfield teenager' (May 6, 2021)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Donelan Law, LLC
All Donelan Law, LLC proven verdicts →Donelan Law filed the wrongful death suit that won a $30 million default judgment for the children of Cassidy Rainwater, who was killed in Dallas County, Missouri in 2021. James Phelps and Timothy Norton, the two men convicted of her murder, never answered the complaint, and the children, represented by Springfield attorney Amanda Johnson, waived a jury trial. On January 25, 2024, 30th Judicial Circuit Judge Mike Hendrickson reviewed the evidence of damages and entered an interlocutory default judgment against both men for $30 million. Both defendants are serving life sentences and neither is reported to have significant assets, so the children are unlikely to be paid anywhere near that figure by Phelps or Norton.
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