Published On: February 1st, 2023Categories: Connecticut News

A New Haven man was sentenced Tuesday to 120 years in prison, more than three decades after he brutally murdered a father and son in their home in Hamden, officials said.

Willie McFarland, of New Haven, appeared in court in New Haven Tuesday and was sentenced to 120 years behind bars by Judge Elpedio N. Vitale, who described McFarland’s crimes as having “a demonic level of violence and terror,” according to the Division of Criminal Justice.

McFarland was found guilty in November of the murders of Fred Harris, 59, and his son, Greg Harris, 23, who were found nearly decapitated inside their home in Hamden on Aug. 27, 1987, records show.

Vitale, who called McFarland, “an unqualified menace to society” sentenced the 55-year-old to 60 years in prison for each murder, to run consecutively, officials said.

McFarland confessed to the Harris’ murders more than 20 years ago while he was in prison for a sexual assault conviction, but investigators lacked enough crime scene evidence at the time to charge him in connection to the slayings.

Although investigators knew for years who was responsible for the father and son’s slayings, his arrest didn’t come until 2019 when new and more advanced DNA testing confirmed that McFarland was at the scene of the crime on the night of the killings, explaining why he knew intimate, never released details about the crimes, according to court records and police officials.

At the time of their deaths, both men had been bound with telephone wires and had their throats slit, a violent scene that investigators said stays with them to this day.

They were also both stabbed and Greg Harris had been violently sexually assaulted, records show. The killer, records show, wore yellow gloves and tried to clean some parts of the home and the knife he used.

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McFarland has a criminal record, with charges including sexual assault, assault, having a weapon in an institution and escaping from custody, records show.

McFarland eventually told investigators that he had gone to Harris’ home under the guise of needing a knife to cut a rope off of his car, but he turned the knife on the father and son and forced himself inside their home. Then, he tied them up and interrogated them before killing them.

Police records show that his goal was to rob them of cash or a gun he mistakenly believed were in their house.

Investigators for years tried applying for warrants to arrest McFarland for the murders, but lacked enough evidence. McFarland at one point needed to be physically restrained while in custody in order to obtain his DNA, records show.

State’s Attorney John P. Doyle, Jr. said in a statement after the verdict that a jury finding him guilty was “the result of a 35-year quest by dedicated investigators and prosecutors who never gave up their search for justice for the victims of these horrendous crimes.”

McFarland has been in custody since August 2020 and has been held at the Cheshire Correctional Institute, according to the Department of Correction.

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