HELENA – A Montana State Prison inmate serving a 100-year sentence for killing his wife in 1983 has confessed to killing a 19-year-old Helena woman in 1968, the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.
Courtney Brooke Atlas, 79, confessed to killing Pamela Dorrington, who went missing in February 1968. Part of her body was found near the boat dock at Gates of the Mountains Marina on Holter Lake four months later. Atlas was Dorrington’s landlord.
Atlas was convicted of deliberate homicide and arson in the death of his wife, Donna, in a July 1983 house fire north of Helena.
He had filed for bankruptcy in early 1983 and was the beneficiary of homeowners’ insurance and his wife’s life insurance, which totaled $250,000, according to Montana Supreme Court records.
During his trial, experts testified that Donna Atlas was dead before the fire started, likely due to strangulation, and that an accelerant may have been poured on her body, court records said.
Atlas is being held at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby.