Reward offered in 30-year-old Lewiston murder

LEWISTON – The family of a Lewiston woman who was murdered 30 years ago offered a reward Monday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.

Dorothy Milliken, 26, was beaten to death on Nov. 6, 1976, in a parking lot next to a coin-operated laundry on Lisbon Street in Lewiston. Nobody was arrested in the case, but the family hopes a $5,000 reward will spur somebody to come forward.

Milliken’s daughter, Tonia Ross of Sabattus, was 7 years old when her mother was killed.

Ross checks in with police three or four times a year on the investigation and says finding an answer to her mother’s death has become an obsession.

“There are no answers,” she said. “We want to know who, and I want to know why.”

Milliken, a mother of three, was killed beside the former Beal’s Laundromat shortly after arriving to do laundry at about 2 a.m. An autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma to the head.

Police interviewed more than two dozen people as part of the investigation.

Ross said she has had to tell her daughters, who are 12 and 17, about the death that changed her life.

“I tell them, ‘My mother was taken away from me at a very young age,”‘ she said. “Family is the most important thing.”

Family members and Maine State Police called a news conference to announce the reward.