NORTH KINGSTOWN — Erica Boutelle’s world changed this Independence Day. She trusts a little less, worries a little more — and she locks the doors.

Boutelle was playing with her 11-month-old daughter on the floor of the baby’s upstairs bedroom around 11 a.m. when a man walked in brandishing a box cutter and demanding the car keys.

“My goal was for him to leave my premises. That couldn’t happen fast enough,” she said. “I told him ‘take anything, take anything you want. Please leave.’ ”

The police say it was convicted murderer Raymond Earl McWilliams, 45, who walked through the unlocked door of Boutelle’s home at 706 Ten Rod Rd. and stole her 2004 Ford Explorer after threatening to cut her with a box cutter.

In 1984, McWilliams was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with 25 to serve, after he pleaded no contest to second-degree murder for killing his 20-year-old neighbor, Peggy Flynn.

The police say McWilliams stabbed Flynn seven times as she gave him a ride on her way to work. A motorcyclist found her body beaten, bound and gagged on a wooded hillside the next day.

McWilliams told the police he stabbed Flynn, who lived in the same Ten Rod Road housing complex, after she refused his offer of a date.

Boutelle said she called 911 as soon as McWilliams, whom she did not recognize, drove away. She also called her husband, Greg.

“It’s scary,” Greg Boutelle said yesterday. “You never think this happens to you.”

The police released a description of the then-unidentified man to the media July 4, describing him as 38 to 40 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall with a faded tattoo on his upper right arm. He wore a brown golf cap backwards, a white T-shirt and beige shorts, and carried a blue duffel bag.

On Sunday, McWilliams’s father, Harold R. McWilliams Jr., told North Kingstown police that he suspected his son after reading the description, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

His father, a retired foreman at the state trout hatchery, told officers that his son asked him to rent him a vehicle so he could travel to Pennsylvania. His father refused and Raymond McWilliams left his father’s home at 1610 Ten Rod Rd. on foot around 10:30 a.m. July 4 wearing the same clothes described by the victim, the affidavit reads.

Boutelle picked Raymond McWilliams’ image out of a photo line-up of six men, the police said. District Court Judge Michael Higgins signed a warrant for his arrest that day.

The police arrested McWilliams moments after he arrived at his father’s house around midnight that night, according to the police. Warwick police found the Explorer in good condition yesterday morning on West Shore Road.

The police charged McWilliams with robbing Boutelle, entering her house with the intent to commit larceny, assault with a dangerous weapon and stealing the Explorer.

Wearing a blue and white striped collared shirt, gray shorts and sneakers, McWilliams said nothing as he appeared in District Court, Wakefield, and then in Washington County Superior Court as a probation violator yesterday afternoon. He did not enter pleas because the charges are felonies.

District Court Judge William C. Clifton ordered McWilliams, of 1610 Ten Rod Rd., held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions. He was referred to the public defender’s office.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen A. Regine asked that McWilliams be held for violating the terms of his probation and suspended sentence for the 1984 murder.

McWilliams repeatedly broke the terms since his release in 2002 after serving 18 years, Regine said.

Shortly after getting out, he received 18 months in prison for writing fraudulent checks and driving without consent, Regine said. He was released in November 2003, but returned to the ACI a month later after being arrested again for passing bad checks.

He was released in March 2004, but went back to prison for 3½ years that June on a domestic assault charge. Eleven and half years remain on the 15-year suspended sentence McWilliams received for the Flynn murder, Regine said.

When asked to comment yesterday, Harold McWilliams, Raymond’s father, said he’d let his comments to police in the latest arrest speak for themselves. He had defended his son as getting a “bad rap” and “changed for the better” at a parole hearing before his initial release in the Flynn case.

Boutelle hopes he stays behind bars this time around.

“It angers me more that he’s ruined my faith in mankind,” Boutelle said. “Now we can never leave the door unlocked.”

kmulvane@projo.com