True Crime Chronicles: After killing his father's girlfriend a Benton County man will spend the rest of his life behind bars

Mildred L. Weiser was 47 years old on April 1, 1985, when she was shot in the head in a Benton County apartment she had shared for about a year with her boyfriend, Dennis Alford, and his son, Richard Alford.

She was born October 31, 1937. A Benton County cemetery record later placed her at Barron Cemetery, also known as Barnes Cemetery, with those same dates cut into stone.

The public record of her life is thin. What survives in court is that trouble had grown in that household, that she planned to leave, and that she was still in the rooms when the night ended.

Dennis went to a neighbor and asked for an ambulance and the police. When Officers Dunlavy and Towner arrived, he was outside yelling for help and walked them inside. They found Weiser on the floor, part in the hallway and part in Richard’s bedroom. A .25 caliber automatic was in her hand.

Both men said she had killed herself. Dennis was described as upset. Richard, then 21, was described as calm. He had been born September 8, 1963. Investigators Williams and Spradlin did not accept the small pistol as the source of the wound they saw. Dennis helped them look for other guns. In a closed closet in Richard’s bedroom, under books on a shelf, they found a .357 magnum.

That revolver became the state’s murder weapon. The search was done without a warrant. Hours later, at the station, Richard left the suicide story. He said the shooting was an accident and that he had done it.

A Benton County jury convicted him of first-degree murder and set the sentence at life in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Later inmate records list the sentence date as December 9, 1985. ADC booked him on December 31, 1985

Assistant public defender Michael Yarbrough of Bentonville took the appeal. The defense argued the closet search was illegal and that the confession had to fall with it. On February 16, 1987, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed in Alford v. State, 291 Ark. 243.

Justice Tom Glaze wrote that some details of how Weiser died remained unclear, that Dennis had impliedly consented to the search by calling for help, bringing officers in, staying cooperative, and helping them hunt for weapons, and that the discovery disputes did not require a new trial. The life sentence stood.

In 2014 Alford filed a federal habeas petition in the Eastern District of Arkansas, Alford v. Hobbs, case 5:14CV00076. On June 10, 2014, Judge J. Leon Holmes adopted a magistrate’s recommendation, denied the petition, and refused a certificate of appealability. No later public ruling has undone the Benton County verdict.

Weiser’s grave is in Benton County soil. Alford turned 63 on September 8, 2026. He has spent every adult year since December 31, 1985, in the custody of the State of Arkansas.

The first story told to police was that a woman shot herself with a pocket automatic. The story a Benton County jury accepted was that a 21-year-old man fired a hidden .357 and that a smaller gun was left in her hand.

Forty-one years later, the file is still open only in the sense that life has no calendar date next to it. The conviction is closed.

The woman who meant to move out never did.