Sheila Mills’ daughter could not reach her mother, prompting the police response that uncovered a homicide inside a Northwoods home.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — When Sheila Mills’ daughter could not reach her mother on Aug. 16, 2025, she asked police to check on her. Officers responding to the Northwoods home found Mills dead, beginning an investigation that a year later resulted in Darryl Greenlee’s conviction for first-degree murder.
Greenlee, 61, Mills’ former boyfriend, was convicted after a weeklong jury trial of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of the 64-year-old woman. The jury acquitted him of first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. Greenlee is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 23, 2026, and local reporting said the murder conviction could bring life imprisonment without parole. The verdict marked the latest major step in a case that police initially encountered not as a reported shooting but as a welfare check for a woman whose daughter was worried because she could not make contact.
Northwoods officers went to the 4400 block of Begg Boulevard at about 12:50 p.m. that Saturday. Inside the residence, police found Mills dead on the floor. Charging documents said her hands were bound behind her back and she had been fatally shot in the head. She was pronounced dead at the scene. With no surviving victim able to describe what had happened inside the house, investigators turned to the circumstances leading up to the killing, surveillance around the property, physical evidence and the movements of people they believed had been there earlier in the day.
The investigation quickly reached back to the previous day. Authorities said Mills and Greenlee had been in a relationship that charging documents characterized as turbulent. On Aug. 15, Mills ended that relationship in a text message, according to prosecutors. The timing became a central part of the case because investigators said Greenlee appeared at her residence early the following morning. At about 6:30 a.m., the complaint said, he knocked on a window and called for Mills’ attention. Authorities said she answered the front door and that Greenlee then forced his way into the residence.
Investigators also identified Kevin Shelton as a second man allegedly connected to events at the house. Shelton was charged separately and had not been found guilty in the material reviewed for this report. Prosecutors alleged that he was seen leaving Mills’ residence while wearing a mask and gloves. They further accused him of taking Mills’ car and using her debit card to withdraw $140. The vehicle was later returned to the residence, according to reporting based on charging documents. Shelton faced charges including murder, robbery, burglary and armed criminal action, along with an accusation tied to the use of the debit card.
For detectives, surveillance around Mills’ home provided a way to reconstruct portions of the morning without claiming to show everything that occurred inside. The criminal complaint said investigators did not observe other individuals entering or leaving the residence during the relevant period. Prosecutors relied on those observed movements as one part of the case connecting Greenlee and Shelton to the scene. The surveillance account also tracked activity involving Mills’ vehicle and showed Greenlee leaving the area, according to authorities.
A discarded trash bag provided another evidentiary thread. Investigators said Greenlee was observed throwing a bag into a nearby garbage bin after leaving Mills’ residence. Police recovered it rather than treating it as ordinary trash. Authorities said a tequila bottle found inside was tested and carried Greenlee’s DNA. That physical evidence became part of a larger circumstantial picture that included the breakup message from the day before, Greenlee’s alleged arrival at the house the next morning, surveillance evidence and the discovery of Mills several hours later.
The daughter’s welfare-check request sits at the dividing line between the unseen events investigators were trying to reconstruct and the homicide case that followed. Before officers entered the residence, Mills’ family knew she could not be reached. After police went inside, authorities had a death scene and a narrow period of time to examine. Investigators eventually obtained charges against two men. The charges were issued in 2025 and later made public after a judge unsealed them, according to local reporting. Both defendants were initially reported held on $2 million bond.
By the time Greenlee went to trial, prosecutors had to convert that investigation into evidence capable of proving individual criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury did not return guilty verdicts on every count. Greenlee was acquitted of first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary, even as jurors found him guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. The mixed result means the final account of his trial must distinguish the murder conviction from property and entry offenses the jury did not find him guilty of committing.
The murder conviction nevertheless resolved the most consequential accusation against Greenlee. Prosecutors had argued that Mills was killed the day after she ended the relationship, and the jury found Greenlee guilty of first-degree murder. Reporting on the verdict said the trial lasted about a week. Greenlee now moves from the trial phase to sentencing, where the court will determine the punishment attached to the convictions. No sentence had been imposed in the latest verified reporting reviewed for this article.
Shelton’s case does not move with Greenlee’s. Although prosecutors have tied both men to the same sequence of events, Shelton’s charges require their own adjudication. His trial had been scheduled for Sept. 28. Authorities accuse him of conduct involving the homicide and Mills’ property, but those allegations remain unproved unless established in his case. Greenlee’s conviction cannot substitute for a verdict against a different defendant, even where the prosecutions arise from the same death and rely on overlapping evidence.
The chronology established by authorities is brief but consequential. Mills ended the relationship Aug. 15. Investigators said Greenlee appeared at her home early Aug. 16, first trying to get her attention from outside and then forcing his way in after she opened the door. Surveillance and other evidence were used to track activity at the property during the morning. By early afternoon, Mills’ daughter was concerned enough to ask police for help. Officers arrived at 12:50 p.m. and found Mills dead. That sequence became the framework around which investigators built the case presented at Greenlee’s trial.
The case also demonstrates the importance of the welfare check in the investigative timeline. Police were not responding to a contemporaneous emergency call from inside the home in the accounts reviewed. They arrived because a family member recognized that something was wrong when Mills could not be reached. That request led to the discovery of her death, the preservation and examination of the scene and an investigation that expanded to surveillance footage, DNA evidence and alleged financial activity involving Mills’ debit card.
More than a year after that request brought officers to Begg Boulevard, Greenlee awaits sentencing as a convicted murderer. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 23. The acquittals on robbery and burglary remain part of the jury’s verdict, while Shelton’s separate charges remained unresolved in the verified material reviewed for this report.
Author note: Last updated Sept. 29, 2026.