Tuesday vigil will celebrate Andrea Will's life

For friends and relatives of Andrea Will, it's just not fair.

Her killer, Justin Boulay will walk out of a Danville prison Tuesday a free man after serving half of a 24-year sentence for strangling the Eastern Illinois University student on Feb. 2, 1998 with a telephone cord after he lured her to his apartment saying he had a birthday gift.

On top of that, Boulay, formerly of St. Charles and now 33, married in 2007 and will move to Hawaii and live with his wife on a college campus.

“I'm upset. It's all surfacing again, all these feelings, especially with (Boulay) getting out,” said Michelle Felde, Andrea's roommate at Eastern who now lives in Arlington Heights. “He's getting to have all these opportunities that Andrea never got a chance to have because he took it from her with his own two hands.

“It took four-and-a-half minutes for her to die. That's a lot of time for him to decide to stop, but he didn't. She spent her 19th birthday laying in a casket.”

Boulay and Andrea met at Quarry Beach, dated and were enrolled at Eastern in fall 1997. They broke up that December.

Felde, who lived with Andrea on the fourth floor of Lawson Hall, was one of the last people to see her alive.

Felde was on the phone when Andrea quickly left the night she died. Felde thought Andrea was going to study for an upcoming math test, but she never came back.

The next day, Felde had to tell people who lived in her dorm that Andrea, who would be 32 in February, was dead.

“She didn't tell anybody where she was going that night. If she would have, we would have stopped her. (Boulay) told her he had a birthday present for her,” Felde said.

“The only good that I find in all of this is we're going to remember her across the country (Tuesday night). Now she gets to have her voice heard too.”

Andrea's supporters have planned a candlelight vigil at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Peg Bond Center at the Batavia Riverwalk, 151 Island Ave.

But there also are more than 20 vigils planned from coast to coast, including one near a tree planted in her memory 12 years ago outside the Sigma Kappa sorority house in Charleston, where Andrea was a pledge.

“Sigma Kappa Sorority shares in the sadness and frustration felt by the friends and family of Andrea Will. We support their efforts to keep Andrea's memory alive and bring attention to the rights of victims of domestic violence,” said Andi Sligh, the sorority's national vice president for communication.

Sharyn Elman, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, said Boulay will be released sometime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The exact time depends on when authorities at Danville Correctional Center begin processing his release paperwork.

Boulay is being allowed to serve his parole in Hawaii because that's where his wife, Rachel Rivers Boulay, a researcher at the University of Hawaii's John A. Burns School of Medicine, lives and she has agreed to provide support for him, Elman said.

Boulay's parole will be overseen by Hawaiian authorities. He will be on three years of mandatory supervised parole, Elman said.

E-mail and telephone messages left Monday with Rachel Boulay were not returned.

Efforts to reach Boulay's parents at their Michigan home were unsuccessful. Andrea's parents also could not be reached for comment Monday.

Boulay served half of his sentence because he received one day of credit on his sentence for every one day of a good behavior while behind bars.

He was sentenced in May 1999 during a gap between truth-in-sentencing laws that mandate convicts serve 100 percent of murder sentences and 85 percent of other violent crimes.

Before her death, Andrea told Felde that Boulay was controlling and abusive. Now Felde's worried that Boulay didn't get any treatment while he was in prison, and she's afraid for his new wife and other women on the Hawaii campus.

She hopes that as a result of Tuesday's vigil and by speaking out, more women will exit abusive relationships.

“She was so beautiful and kind and artistic,” Felde said of Will. “People need to be aware. People need to hear her voice and people need to know that if they're in an abusive relationship, to get out.”