Andrew Millyan, the 55-year-old South Grafton man who cruised, shall we say, into Manchester along Route 128 Thursday night, is being held without bail until Friday, when he will face a dangerousness hearing in Salem District Court.
That's good news for Cape Ann and other Massachusetts residents, who can at least be sure that this walking, driving time bomb won't be on the highways or anywhere else the rest of us roam this week.
But while he's cooling his heels awaiting his court hearing, a whole host of state bureaucrats — judges, parole officials, and the Registry of Motor Vehicles, for starters — had better be digging for some real, hard answers as to why this monster was free in the first place, let alone behind the wheel of a car with an apparently valid driver's license and careening toward Gloucester until he was stopped by Manchester patrolmen and nabbed by state police.
And while state Sen. Bruce Tarr and other lawmakers have a new poster child for significantly tightening parole, probation and sentencing statutes, these departments should prepare for some desperately needed housecleaning.
Millyan is the paroled killer who's also racked up seven drunken-driving convictions and is now facing an eighth charge of operating under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol after his escapade Thursday night. That's when he drove his Ford Taurus some 20 miles up Route 128 from at least Wakefield, where a caller first contacted police, to the Manchester exit for School Street — with no lights and banging into and off a number of guardrails along the way.
Once Millyan was stopped, Manchester and state police noticed him trying to stuff something into his jacket — later finding that it was four bags of marijuana. He also failed multiple field sobriety tests, police said, and was charged with driving under the influence of narcotics, and other violations.
All of that, combined with seven prior DUi convictions, should warrant a dangerousness hearing on its own. But Millyan's history shows that the state's dysfunctional criminal justice and tracking systems broke down long before Millyan started careening toward Cape Ann, and remain so despite some watered-down attempts at reform.
Reportedly a longtime member of the Devil's Disciples biker gang, Millyan was convicted of first-degree murder in a 1981 shooting inside Revere's Sandbar Lounge. Court records show that Millyan walked in with a shotgun looking for members of the rival Hell's Angels, fired — and gunned down an innocent bystander named Dana Hill, who wasn't part of any gang, but simply playing pool while waiting for his girlfriend, a bartender, to finish her shift.
Millyan served 20 years. Yet, despite his clear pre-meditation to kill through brandishing the shotgun, his conviction was reduced to second-degree murder and he was paroled in 2002 — another wise choice by the state's Parole Board. And now, 10 years later, he apparently had a valid license, court papers show, That's despite the fact that police, on top of the seven DUI convictions, had filed a report with the Registry of Motor Vehicles listing Millyan as an "immediate threat."
Any one of these systemic failures is worthy of a full investigation. Together, they deserve all residents' outrage, and a renewed call to lawmakers to again revisit a system that law-abiding residents frankly have few if any reasons to trust to protect their safety.
People in Manchester, Gloucester and elsewhere got lucky this time. Manchester police stopped him and, with state police, got him off the roads before anyone was injured — or worse. But how many Millyans are out there, thanks to our state's badly broken criminal justice and tracking systems?
It's past time our lawmakers revisited these issues and made the real, hard changes within our courts and records systems that can help ensure another Millyan is never unleashed on our highways again.
Ever.
