Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
Speaker 2: and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
Speaker 2: experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
Speaker 2: other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
Speaker 2: on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
Speaker 2: administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Speaker 2: Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 1: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
Speaker 3: as well as the social media manager and co administrator
Speaker 3: for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
Speaker 3: in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Mind Over Murderer.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 5: We are joined today by Troy Hillman, author of Chasing
Speaker 5: Down the Zombie Hunter, the true story of a small
Speaker 5: town accountant an elite group of detectives in Arizona's most
Speaker 5: verifying cold case.
Speaker 4: Troy, Welcome to the podcast. Made you guys for having me.
Speaker 5: We are so thrilled to be able to talk about
Speaker 5: this case because it really is a doozy, and it's
Speaker 5: one that I think a lot of our listeners might
Speaker 5: be unfamiliar with. So before we get into your background
Speaker 5: and how you got involved with the case, start by
Speaker 5: talking to us about the case that a lot of
Speaker 5: Phoenicians know as the Canal killings, although now I think
Speaker 5: it's pivoting to be called the Zombie Hunter murders.
Speaker 4: Tell us about the Canal killings. So the first murder
Speaker 4: happened in November of nineteen ninety two. A young woman
Speaker 4: named Angela Brosso went for a bike ride at dusk,
Speaker 4: and that was a Sunday evening, and she never came
Speaker 4: back from her bike ride. And the next day officers
Speaker 4: saw that grizzly made a grizzly discovery on the right
Speaker 4: by her apartment complex, and she had been decapitated. Her
Speaker 4: head had been taken from the scenes and her bike
Speaker 4: as well as her walkman. So that's what officers found.
Speaker 4: Detectives converged and then just worked the hell out of
Speaker 4: the basically the investigation and came up with really nothing
Speaker 4: over the next ten months. And I must say that
Speaker 4: ten days after Angela was killed, the killer threw her
Speaker 4: head back in the canal and that was even more shocking,
Speaker 4: I think to the city of Phoenix, the state of
Speaker 4: Arizona that he would do something like that. So then
Speaker 4: ten months later, in September of nineteen ninety three, a
Speaker 4: seventeen year old junior at Arcadia High School went for
Speaker 4: bike ride, her name was Melanie Burtis at dusk and
Speaker 4: she rode from the Arcadia area, which is on the
Speaker 4: eastern side of Phoenix, up towards what was known as
Speaker 4: Metro Center, the north central side of Phoenix, and she
Speaker 4: was never She was found the next day, actually floating
Speaker 4: into the canal, redressed and had been carved on.
Speaker 2: Were you working the case right from the beginning, Troy.
Speaker 4: No, I actually I wasn't. Was in college at the time,
Speaker 4: back at the University of Illinois doing my accounting degree,
Speaker 4: which i fill to this day. It's a great degree,
Speaker 4: but I didn't really want to use it.
Speaker 5: Accounting definitely has its uses, but I think that you
Speaker 5: found a way to put your intelligence and skills to
Speaker 5: much better use. And I'm sure most of Phoenix would
Speaker 5: agree with my assessment on that one. So the type
Speaker 5: of killings that you saw here, these really brutal murders,
Speaker 5: was that normal for Phoenix at that time.
Speaker 4: No, I honestly, Kristin would say, it's not all for
Speaker 4: Phoenix at any time or anywhere. It was something kind
Speaker 4: of scripted out of a Hollywood It's just this level
Speaker 4: of brutality. And then we have this awful, horrific murder happen,
Speaker 4: and then another one ten months later, and then nothing.
Speaker 4: So you have nothing on the front end and you
Speaker 4: have nothing on the back end. So investigators were really
Speaker 4: just stretching their head. And then you had fear amongst
Speaker 4: the public saying, Okay, this is obviously a serial killer
Speaker 4: if he's doing these things at the heading and redressing
Speaker 4: and carving and these fantasies, so what are you doing
Speaker 4: about it? And thousands of tips came in internationally and
Speaker 4: they were able to triage each one, but they were
Speaker 4: really it was what was shocking was both girls were
Speaker 4: killed in the same manner, with the stab wound to
Speaker 4: the back, both were athletic women, and nobody could really
Speaker 4: find how he got away with it. Nobody saw anything
Speaker 4: but either scene, anything substantial.
Speaker 2: And both of these cases had occurred during the day
Speaker 2: and people were around, and yet no one seemed to
Speaker 2: witness anything that would have led them to a suspect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, both girls went out round of dusk, so there
Speaker 4: was light. And then I can't say exactly when the perpetrators,
Speaker 4: I know, build the victims, but yeah, he spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time with them. But this is November. The
Speaker 4: factor was in November in Phoenix and the weather's really
Speaker 4: starting to break, and you've got rollerbladers, you've got the bicyclists,
Speaker 4: you've got runners and walkers up and down those canal
Speaker 4: pass and people are just eager to It's kind of
Speaker 4: like the Winner back East when it breaks, very eager
Speaker 4: to get outside. So November in Phoenix is at a
Speaker 4: time where it's very recreational. So the fact that he
Speaker 4: was able to do all of this, drag her hundreds
Speaker 4: of feet and then get away with it that inexplicable.
Speaker 4: And then so the second murder was in a largely
Speaker 4: commercial area, but still there were workers at a amusement
Speaker 4: park which overlooked the scenes, and they were contacted and
Speaker 4: they said that we saw noth age, which is again
Speaker 4: it's just shocking and surreal that he was able to
Speaker 4: go undetected.
Speaker 5: Yeah you're talking about castles and coasters, right, yeah, yeah, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 5: when I first started visiting my aunts in Phoenix in
Speaker 5: the late nineties, Castles and Coasters was one of the
Speaker 5: first places that I wanted to go because how cool
Speaker 5: is it that you've got a neat, little amusement park
Speaker 5: right in the middle of the big city.
Speaker 4: I loved it.
Speaker 5: The area is very familiar to me, and when I
Speaker 5: moved to Phoenix in two thousand and five, I did
Speaker 5: hear about the case, although right at that time period
Speaker 5: was when the baseline killer and the serial shooters were working,
Speaker 5: so I was hearing a lot more about those than
Speaker 5: I was about the Canal murder. But that was definitely
Speaker 5: something that was peripherally on my radar that this terrible
Speaker 5: thing had happened. So I guess my question for you, then,
Speaker 5: these are two really terrible cases. How did the case
Speaker 5: ultimately go cold for so many years?
Speaker 4: This was their bolt were pre DNA and DNA was
Speaker 4: just starting to become a thing. They found unknown male
Speaker 4: profiles on both victims clothing and then on the victims,
Speaker 4: and they were able to pair those and say it
Speaker 4: was definitively the same suspect. It was uploaded into the
Speaker 4: National DNA Clothed system in nineteen ninety nine early two
Speaker 4: thousand and there were no hits, so it just languished
Speaker 4: there sense and that's really how it became cold. And
Speaker 4: occasionally they would try to revive it with the media.
Speaker 4: Silent witnesses of allved. They tried different things to really
Speaker 4: get people to talk. It just the investigators did a
Speaker 4: great job of cataloging everything, but it just really had
Speaker 4: nothing to go on. The travailing opinion when we got
Speaker 4: to it was he has to be dad, and so
Speaker 4: at what point then do you join the investigation. You
Speaker 4: mentioned that you were in college before, ironically working on
Speaker 4: an accounting degree, but tell us a little bit about
Speaker 4: your joining the police force. So in I spent a
Speaker 4: couple of years auditing for a really large CPA firm,
Speaker 4: and I was really miserable. I was looking for something more.
Speaker 4: And again, it's a great career for some people, and
Speaker 4: that auditing is that traditionally it canapults you into other positions,
Speaker 4: whether you be his partner, work at a firm, a controller, CFO,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. We could do a lot with it,
Speaker 4: but I just wasn't interested. I'd been paying to his
Speaker 4: partner material I'd done really well in the CPA exams,
Speaker 4: but it just wasn't my cup of tea. So I
Speaker 4: started testing with local police departments and I ended up
Speaker 4: out here in Phoenix. And I always joke because my
Speaker 4: dad lectured me two thousand miles from Illinois to Arizona, saying,
Speaker 4: what are you thinking? What are you doing? You have
Speaker 4: a college degree, you have a CPA, you have the
Speaker 4: world in front of you, and now you're going to
Speaker 4: be a beat cop. He was supportive, but at the
Speaker 4: same time he was kind of like, are you out
Speaker 4: of your mind? And so I said, now this is
Speaker 4: what I want to do. I always joke. I put
Speaker 4: down my briefcase and calculator, picked up a gun and
Speaker 4: a badge, and started in phoenics at the academy. Luckily,
Speaker 4: I had some great people that I worked with. I
Speaker 4: had a Marine Corps, a veteran that was my tatpool
Speaker 4: to the academy, and he taught me. It was kind
Speaker 4: of like Shawshank Redemption. I taught him how to write
Speaker 4: and spell, and he taught me how to shoot and
Speaker 4: basically how to stitch on my shoes. And I try
Speaker 4: to think it's not you don't learn about in college
Speaker 4: one on one you don't learn about going through a
Speaker 4: police academy. So it was a new experience. So fast forward.
Speaker 4: I had some detective assignment. I did patrol in South Phoenix,
Speaker 4: did a detective assignment in financial crimes, and then promoted
Speaker 4: a sergeant. Had my eyes sat on financial crimes, and
Speaker 4: then I ended up getting a transfer to the administrative
Speaker 4: I was an administrative sergeant for the commander and the
Speaker 4: violent crimes bureau. And the violent crimes bureau was divided
Speaker 4: amongst homicide, robbery, gangs, assaults. I really got to know
Speaker 4: the homicide lieutenant because he was burded out on Excel
Speaker 4: spreadsheets like I did. And we had in comment and
Speaker 4: so he said in two thousand and eight, he said,
Speaker 4: Troy said, there's going to be an opening in cold
Speaker 4: case homicide. Would you come over and take over the squad?
Speaker 4: And I said no. I said, I've already seen enough
Speaker 4: dead bodies in patrol and I want to go get
Speaker 4: my nerd on as a financial guy. And he said,
Speaker 4: is we could really use your organizational and detail nature
Speaker 4: of a CPA in cold case homicide? And I said, okay,
Speaker 4: we'll give it a shot. I'll give it a year,
Speaker 4: and once I got in at first. The first six
Speaker 4: months I thought, this is horrible. I've got two detectives.
Speaker 4: I've got twenty five hundred cases. They don't even exactly
Speaker 4: they don't even know how many cases we have. They
Speaker 4: think twenty five hundred. Im, there's just a mess. But
Speaker 4: it just ended up being this Leve affair and it
Speaker 4: just took it on almost like a baby, and we
Speaker 4: figured out how to review cases and really we're kicking butt.
Speaker 4: We were solving twelve to fifteen cold cases a year
Speaker 4: and back into the seventies and really had a great
Speaker 4: relationship with the lab, had great detectives, Rock and Rolling,
Speaker 4: And so how we got started on the Cant murders.
Speaker 4: Twenty eleven, I get a media records request. I go
Speaker 4: to print it out and I get yelled at by
Speaker 4: the commander's secretary and I say, yeah, she's a very
Speaker 4: nice person, but she's coin of troying. You just burned
Speaker 4: through X number of boxes and toner on the printer,
Speaker 4: and you just burned through X number of rings of paper.
Speaker 4: What are you doing? And I said, I just turnted
Speaker 4: out the calend murders because I needed to go through
Speaker 4: them and line by line and make sure we redacted
Speaker 4: them doing so, I realized, wow, this is how did
Speaker 4: we not ever solve this? How did we not figure
Speaker 4: it out? Should we assemble a team and solve it?
Speaker 4: And I think at first thought, Hey, I can solve it.
Speaker 4: I'm a CPN realized no, I need a team.
Speaker 5: One of the most interesting parts of the book is
Speaker 5: as you go around and describe assembling your dream team
Speaker 5: to help you solve this. And you pulled together so
Speaker 5: many different types of people and they all of course
Speaker 5: worked together really well to eventually solve the case. Would
Speaker 5: you what do you think is the main saying that
Speaker 5: got you that final break in the case.
Speaker 4: So fast forward. The case took us about three and
Speaker 4: a half years to work and I always tell people
Speaker 4: we could have put down the other twenty four hundred
Speaker 4: and ninety eight cases that we're working on, and to
Speaker 4: tell the survivor's family with families, Hey, we're only dedicating
Speaker 4: our time to the Canal murders. So we were working
Speaker 4: all these cases, doing all these court testimonies, doing all
Speaker 4: these cold case functions, but we're also working heavily on
Speaker 4: the Canal murders. So three and a half years we
Speaker 4: first took a look at the cases. Every good cold
Speaker 4: case starts with what did we miss? In the original case,
Speaker 4: who did we miss? And there were a lot in
Speaker 4: there that they missed because of again, DNA was not
Speaker 4: really a thing. So we flew all over the country
Speaker 4: and got DNA and that had its own challenges, and
Speaker 4: then we'd get excited. It was a roller coaster ride
Speaker 4: only to get to call from the lab of it's
Speaker 4: not him, and so it was almost like bodyblow if
Speaker 4: you're in box A over those three and a half
Speaker 4: years and after a while you're just like, wow, we
Speaker 4: may not ever solve this. We did have some great
Speaker 4: help along the way. We got to fly back and
Speaker 4: talk to the VIDOC Society, which is we've talked about
Speaker 4: as that group out of that think tank out of
Speaker 4: Philadelphia nationalon of Law Enforcement. This brilliant group of people
Speaker 4: that kind of ap signs on your case and kind
Speaker 4: of directs you, Hey, what do you miss? What did
Speaker 4: you do? What did you do wrong? And they helped
Speaker 4: us and blatched onto profiler. I'll leave that to the book.
Speaker 4: Richard Walter was his name, extremely eccentric. It just he's
Speaker 4: his own. I don't know, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: met Richard, but he's quite an eccentric, brilliant guy, very controversial.
Speaker 4: And then we ended up using genito genealogy. We got
Speaker 4: a call from doctor Colleen Fitzpatrick and this is twenty fourteen,
Speaker 4: and this is four years before the Golden State Killer
Speaker 4: and STENY'STD really hasn't talked about it, but we're really
Speaker 4: pioneers and using genetic genealogy to solve a serial killer case.
Speaker 4: And we used it on Miss Kings and it was
Speaker 4: a huge breakthrough.
Speaker 2: Tell us that story about Colleen reaching out to you,
Speaker 2: because Colleen's told us the story, but we'd like to
Speaker 2: hear it from your perspective.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I again, we're body blow, head blow, we're
Speaker 4: just weary, and we get this call. I get this
Speaker 4: voicemail from one of my detectives, very in and sometimes
Speaker 4: I always joked as a sergeant when a detective really
Speaker 4: was didn't know what to do, they would just be like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'll give this to Serge. And so she forwarded with
Speaker 4: this email and said, hey, Serge, I really don't know
Speaker 4: what to do with this, but if you could, we
Speaker 4: could discuss it. And so it was basically Colleen and
Speaker 4: she said, hey, I'm going to be in town. I'm
Speaker 4: going to be staying at the Biltmore Resorts, and I'm
Speaker 4: going to be part of this LAPP DNA conference and
Speaker 4: I'm going to be lecturing, and I'd love to come
Speaker 4: talk to your squad. And so I immediately reached out.
Speaker 4: I started googlayer and figuring out who she was, and
Speaker 4: then I found out she had a PhD from Duke
Speaker 4: and was this brilliant person. And then I asked. I
Speaker 4: called over to Kelly at the lad who was my
Speaker 4: DNA supervisor counterpart, and I said to Kelly, I said,
Speaker 4: you know, look this about genealogy, my follow in law,
Speaker 4: the ancestry my dad does ancestry. Is there a correlation
Speaker 4: with law enforcement? She said yeah, I think it's going
Speaker 4: to be a thing. And she's I've been reading about
Speaker 4: it and this again, this is twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So she says, hey, I'll go. I had her team,
Speaker 4: her DNA team, Kelly's go talk to Colleen at the
Speaker 4: conference and give me a backstory to say, is she
Speaker 4: legit is? Can this before we even have her over
Speaker 4: to talk to us? Screen her out, so to speak?
Speaker 4: And she said, Troy, she's brilliant. I think she could
Speaker 4: help you.
Speaker 5: Very cool And for anybody who doesn't remember, Colleen Fitzpatrick
Speaker 5: is actually legitimately a rocket scientist, among the many other
Speaker 5: sterling qualities.
Speaker 4: That she has.
Speaker 5: And so when you met her, Troy, what did you
Speaker 5: think of her?
Speaker 4: She's this sweet older lady but just was very polished
Speaker 4: and spoke in a very direct manner. And I guess
Speaker 4: the feeling amongst my squad when she left was, Wow,
Speaker 4: that's awesome, But we really don't know Faul like she
Speaker 4: She explained it to us, but it completely went over
Speaker 4: our heads. And I just they say, we're a bunch
Speaker 4: of dumb cops, but we reasonably intelligent people. But yeah,
Speaker 4: she's a notch aboves most people. So how she takes
Speaker 4: a string of numbers or a strand and comes out
Speaker 4: with Ally's joke, Maybe it was the flux to past
Speaker 4: her from back to the future days. She puts it
Speaker 4: in there, She puts it in there, and then it
Speaker 4: spits out a surname. And the funny part of that
Speaker 4: whole thing was he wanted to charge us, and I
Speaker 4: knew as a sergeant. I'd been a sergeant long enough
Speaker 4: and played the government game. Aims that if she would
Speaker 4: do it on the house, then I could get it
Speaker 4: approved tomorrow. If she attached even a dollar to it.
Speaker 4: It was going to be this fight, this battle up
Speaker 4: to chain of command. And so for seven hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty dollars. We battled for about three months and tried
Speaker 4: to convince the upper chain that this was going to
Speaker 4: be a thing, that we had vetted it out. We
Speaker 4: had talked to the prosecutors, we talked to the lab
Speaker 4: we'd talked to her, and they really weren't giving her
Speaker 4: any great secrets of the investigation. She just wanted the numbers. Finally,
Speaker 4: they reenlighted it and she was able to do her faith.
Speaker 2: And seven hundred and fifty dollars is the biggest bargain
Speaker 2: in the history of law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Too.
Speaker 2: It's not like she was asking for a lot of money, No, and.
Speaker 4: She deserved to get paid. I just knew the game,
Speaker 4: and I knew that if we could circumvent it. I
Speaker 4: also told her, I said, Colleen, the Canal murders are huge,
Speaker 4: and if you're this could make your career, This could
Speaker 4: make genealogy a sing And she said, I know, she said,
Speaker 4: but I'm sticking to it. Sever fifty dollars, and like
Speaker 4: I said, she deserved to get paid. And then so
Speaker 4: and we were we had volunteers wanting to write checks.
Speaker 4: We had we were going to take up a collection.
Speaker 4: But in government is marred with red tape. There's no
Speaker 4: way that even a private entity couldn't fund that. And
Speaker 4: we were getting whispers of voodoo and witchcraft, and you
Speaker 4: guys have lost your marbles. And to me, cold case
Speaker 4: has to be innovative. You have to. You can't just
Speaker 4: do what you did yesterday. You have to think outside
Speaker 4: the box and look at everything, put your ego at
Speaker 4: the door and say, let's go talk to the Vatox Society,
Speaker 4: let's go talk to Colleen. Let's use these experts and
Speaker 4: do innovative things. But that doesn't always go well in
Speaker 4: government because typically it's just what did we do ten
Speaker 4: years ago, We're going to do the same thing.
Speaker 5: So when Colleen did her saying put all the things
Speaker 5: through the flux capacitor, the surname that came out was Miller.
Speaker 5: Did that ring any bells for you guys? When she said, hey,
Speaker 5: it's somebody with the name of Miller. Did that immediately
Speaker 5: run up the red flags.
Speaker 4: I think the red flags were more of my extended
Speaker 4: family that were in town when I got the call,
Speaker 4: because I went screeching out of here to get to headquarters,
Speaker 4: out of my house to because I needed to do
Speaker 4: what the Vdocs Society told us and Richard told us
Speaker 4: was check the files. He's got to be in your files.
Speaker 4: Say this is a Bundi. They're always in the files.
Speaker 4: And so I had Mark, my organization detective. I said, Mark,
Speaker 4: would you go to the basement pull the millers and
Speaker 4: he said, came back and he's here you go. Would
Speaker 4: you like door closed or open? I'm like closing please,
Speaker 4: And so I spent the next few minutes looking the
Speaker 4: first couple of millers were I was like, nothing too exciting.
Speaker 4: And then I hit on this and it was filed
Speaker 4: six sixty eight and it was Brian Patrick's billow.
Speaker 2: And he had been a suspect in the early going
Speaker 2: of these murders.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and after the second murder, so they did something
Speaker 4: brilliant and they put out that the police farmer did
Speaker 4: they put out so the second victim was redressed in
Speaker 4: a small girl's bodysuit, and so they took a replica
Speaker 4: of that and they put it out to the media
Speaker 4: and they said, is anybody know. They tried to trace
Speaker 4: back where it was bought and then where it could
Speaker 4: be purchased, and then they also again put it out
Speaker 4: the media and tips came in from that. One of
Speaker 4: the tips identified Miller as having that particular bodysuit in
Speaker 4: his possession right around the time of the second murder.
Speaker 5: Oh god, this guy. So yeah, let's get into the
Speaker 5: Brian Patrick Miller of it all. The guy has a
Speaker 5: pretty interesting set of hobbies outside of murdering people, and
Speaker 5: he's got a pretty interesting nickname which lends its title
Speaker 5: to your book, The Zombie Hunter. Explain the hobbies that
Speaker 5: lend itself to the name of the Zombie Hunter, please.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, well, Milner was a big part. He was
Speaker 4: a local celebrity. He was creating around as this Zombie
Speaker 4: Hunter persona. He was really into comic con and he
Speaker 4: was really into steampunk. And in fact, we took a
Speaker 4: lot of flak once we were throbing into Miller from
Speaker 4: those groups because they said, Hey, we don't want you
Speaker 4: to think that we're all bad, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: we don't think the draw bad. We just think that
Speaker 4: a bad guy is hiding amongst you hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 4: So if that was interesting. I didn't even know what
Speaker 4: steampunk was. I had to research it. Maybe because I'm older,
Speaker 4: I just didn't know. But it's pretty neat what they do.
Speaker 4: And again comic CON's neat, and it's pretty prevalent. But he
Speaker 4: had taken this tricked out. He'd bought a police card auction,
Speaker 4: tripped it out and put zombie Hunter across the back,
Speaker 4: and it looked like a police car. He was very smart.
Speaker 4: He didn't put it. There's a code in the Phoenix
Speaker 4: that says you can't have a certain color otherwise you're
Speaker 4: considered a police officer on your patrol car. So he
Speaker 4: had the other colors. If he had green and red,
Speaker 4: that was amazing. But we had this this mannequin in
Speaker 4: the back that was bloody, that was hanging out, and
Speaker 4: so it was just all this hyped up seeing this
Speaker 4: he had. He was taking pictures with police officers and
Speaker 4: they didn't know at the time that he was a
Speaker 4: serial killer. He's got this small look on his face
Speaker 4: in all the pictures, so it was just it was bizarre.
Speaker 4: If he had been some just Joe Small working as
Speaker 4: a circle k Sork it may not have been as bizarre,
Speaker 4: but it got really bizarre when he's part of this
Speaker 4: group and he's just parading around with his gatlong gun.
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Speaker 5: Do you feel like that was him taunting the police
Speaker 5: by having that police persona and the cruiser and the gun.
Speaker 4: Was that him basically offering a middle finger to the police.
Speaker 4: Do you think? Yeah? And so what of the profile
Speaker 4: and beatoc pulled us? He said, these guys love the
Speaker 4: very intelligent. They loved to do these things called sarcastic ruses.
Speaker 4: They'll basically try to They think they're much smarter than
Speaker 4: the police. Wait, and a lot of them, I hate
Speaker 4: to say it, they get away with it for years.
Speaker 4: Typically they eventually screw up most of them. But yeah,
Speaker 4: he was basically in essence, it was a sarcastic ruse
Speaker 4: of saying, I chilled these girls in horrific fashion years ago,
Speaker 4: and you guys have no clue. You're sitting here taking
Speaker 4: a picture with me. And he probably he enjoyed that.
Speaker 4: There was a thrill to him.
Speaker 2: It's almost beyond hiding in plain sight. He's really making
Speaker 2: himself the center of attention at these comic con and
Speaker 2: events around Phoenix. Wouldn't he work parties and that sort
Speaker 2: of thing too with his zombie hunter persona, Yeah.
Speaker 4: He would. And he was also for a period of
Speaker 4: time working as security at Saint Vincent's de Paul and
Speaker 4: so he you know, part of a tip that came in.
Speaker 4: He was stealing women's undergarments, which is typically something that
Speaker 4: for working their way up what the thet Ox Society
Speaker 4: called the Helix would say. And basically, again he was
Speaker 4: just he other than him being a really skinny dude
Speaker 4: when at the time of the murders had not in
Speaker 4: the military. He was the perfect fit for these crimes
Speaker 4: because I think I mentioned in the book that we
Speaker 4: were looking for this military badass, this person that should
Speaker 4: very practically and efficiently take over too strong athletic women
Speaker 4: and then get away with it and spend a lot
Speaker 4: of time with him. So he was not that. He
Speaker 4: looked to me, he looked a lot like Dahmer in
Speaker 4: the photos.
Speaker 5: Yeah he does. Yeah, very upsetting. Are there other local
Speaker 5: crimes that you suspect he might be good for it?
Speaker 5: Doesn't seem likely that he would have stopped it just too.
Speaker 5: Angela and Melanie talk a little bit about the other
Speaker 5: crimes that you think or are at least pretty sure
Speaker 5: that he got away with.
Speaker 4: So there's a horrific chase of a thirteen year old
Speaker 4: disabled girl that was her name was Brandy Meyers. She
Speaker 4: was living in a neighborhood and what we call the
Speaker 4: Sunny Slope area in kind of North Phoenix, and she
Speaker 4: was stowing around collecting books. And it's a sad story
Speaker 4: because her sister had gone not collecting books, collecting money
Speaker 4: for books, but she had gone selling books a week
Speaker 4: prior with her sister and her older sister actually was
Speaker 4: younger sister, but went around with her. And so Kristen
Speaker 4: decided not to go with Brandy that day and Brandy
Speaker 4: was never seen again. Her body's never been found. And
Speaker 4: this is something that Brian told his ex wife Amy
Speaker 4: when we interviewed Amy, that basically he had committed this crime,
Speaker 4: that he had pulled her into his house and basically
Speaker 4: in horrific details, how he killed her. So that what
Speaker 4: we know he's good for because we have a confession,
Speaker 4: we just can't it's through the spouse, and we it's
Speaker 4: a nobody commicide and those are difficult. And then we
Speaker 4: also think there's a girl murdered down in a rock
Speaker 4: concert and Tucson prior to our first murder. Her name
Speaker 4: was Diana Viccari and she was found in a trash
Speaker 4: jumpster with basically cut up pretty horrifically. I think I
Speaker 4: can't prove it, but my feeling is if it was Miller.
Speaker 4: And then there's another several other there were several other
Speaker 4: attacks in the state of Washington when he lived there
Speaker 4: that those are documented. He didn't end up killing those women,
Speaker 4: luckily they survived. And then there's another one in Tempe
Speaker 4: that's possibly all. She was beheaded, and I think twenty
Speaker 4: thirteen that's still outstanding, so I know. And then one
Speaker 4: of the things that resonates is the FBI profile said
Speaker 4: killer would not stop, and that was back I think
Speaker 4: they did that in nineteen ninety five or six, So
Speaker 4: it's okay, how did he I don't think he stopped.
Speaker 4: I think he did it. He just maybe got better
Speaker 4: at concealing and the evidence and that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So talk to us about how you felt the day
Speaker 5: that Brian Patrick Miller was finally brought into custody. Did
Speaker 5: you have to run a victory lap around the around
Speaker 5: the police department, because I sure would have.
Speaker 4: We were so that our police department at the time,
Speaker 4: since we've since moved, but our was a tiny bo rundown,
Speaker 4: very ugly concrete building, and there was a beautiful, pristine
Speaker 4: lab across the street. So we were in a conference
Speaker 4: meeting for a go over a grant or something. It's
Speaker 4: pretty boring, pretty low level, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: the door busted open, and it was Kelly from the
Speaker 4: lab and her team who were like, wait when you guys,
Speaker 4: we got we come to you because your lab is
Speaker 4: nice and this is a pit over here, so what
Speaker 4: are you doing here? She said, you got them. It's him,
Speaker 4: It's Miller, And so there were there was this look
Speaker 4: of this police and and just kind of again and
Speaker 4: so we have three and a half years of our
Speaker 4: lives we're working on this case. We all hugged. It
Speaker 4: was a moment of excitement, and then the wheels just
Speaker 4: came off. Once I told by Lieutenant you had everybody
Speaker 4: in there. You had like chiefs high five of each other,
Speaker 4: and just the best senn hundred fifty dollars we ever
Speaker 4: shed was one of them said yeah, we yeah, I
Speaker 4: told you yeah. And the wheels and then the swat team.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of people on the department that
Speaker 4: had that have kids, that saw what this guy did
Speaker 4: these women and they wanted to help. So you had
Speaker 4: people coming out of the woodwork, and so I think
Speaker 4: we had three SWAT teams alone to go to arrest him,
Speaker 4: and then a couple other SWAT teams go to his house.
Speaker 4: So it was amazing to see that kind of teamwork
Speaker 4: come coll ask although as a supervisor, we're trying to
Speaker 4: make sure it doesn't get out of control. As a
Speaker 4: serial killer investigation, you need to be very careful because
Speaker 4: this is going to be picked apart by defense attorneys
Speaker 4: as you move forward to trial.
Speaker 2: What was the actual flip of the switch there the
Speaker 2: day she came across from the beautiful lab building across
Speaker 2: the way. What had happened? What's the precipitating event that
Speaker 2: finally creates the link.
Speaker 4: So we had basically used a horase to get his
Speaker 4: DNA and then I'll leave that part for the book.
Speaker 4: But she came and basically pulled us said it was
Speaker 4: a direct match to the unknown male profiles or seamen
Speaker 4: basically from back in the day. The ninety two and
Speaker 4: ninety three was I don't know how many they get
Speaker 4: into like trillions, like one in a trillion chance that
Speaker 4: it's not him. So it was there was the Landslide.
Speaker 4: It was like, yeah, this definitely is him, Go get him.
Speaker 4: Kind was that before he does any more damage.
Speaker 5: I still have plenty of friends in Phoenix, and I
Speaker 5: remember a couple of them calling and texting and saying,
Speaker 5: oh my god, they finally got the Canal killer because
Speaker 5: they knew I was in true crime and very aware
Speaker 5: of it. But it took what felt like short of
Speaker 5: forever to get him into a courtroom. Talk a little
Speaker 5: bit about the really long process to get him into
Speaker 5: a courtroom and sort of the drama that included getting
Speaker 5: him there. And I know that COVID is at least
Speaker 5: a part of that, So talk a little bit about
Speaker 5: that process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Because so capital murder cases, genuinely we're talking death penalty,
Speaker 4: it takes years and typically I think William my team
Speaker 4: said this will be about five years out before we
Speaker 4: see this go to trial. It did. It was, I
Speaker 4: was just but it ended up being eight pagonizing years
Speaker 4: for the family. There was COVID, like you said, but
Speaker 4: there's also a lot of legal maneuvering what I go
Speaker 4: home playing for Shenanigans. That bas we're just trying to
Speaker 4: figure out, basically, how to share his life and not
Speaker 4: get the deal death Kelly. To be honest, I was
Speaker 4: hoping he would lay everything on the table and then
Speaker 4: they would just put him in there for national life.
Speaker 4: He would tell everything else he's done in his life.
Speaker 4: But that wasn't up to me. That was up to
Speaker 4: the prostitutors and the families, and it was decided that
Speaker 4: he was definitely going to be a capital murder death
Speaker 4: penalty case, and our prosetutors, I must say, did a
Speaker 4: phenomenal job. Vincent Berdido and his team they just disappeared
Speaker 4: because they were going to get attacked at various levels
Speaker 4: and they were ready for every attack.
Speaker 5: So he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Do
Speaker 5: you buy the insanity for him?
Speaker 4: Yeah? His theory. Basically, they paid a psychologist a lot
Speaker 4: of money onto the sense side to put up the
Speaker 4: what William referred to as the longest PowerPoint ever created.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't have that's oar fastiest show, and so they
Speaker 4: basically said that he had this period where he blacked out,
Speaker 4: And so I thought about that. I'm like, Okay, if
Speaker 4: he blacked out during the murders, then how was he
Speaker 4: able to basically take the woman's head and then refrigerate
Speaker 4: it or freeze it or do whatever he did, and
Speaker 4: then drow it back in the canounts? And is he
Speaker 4: blacked out for ten days? Yeah, like it is to me,
Speaker 4: it just didn't make it didn't hold water. And then
Speaker 4: he's got it. If you go to his home, he's
Speaker 4: got a picture of a woman's head in the freezer
Speaker 4: on the front of his refrigerator. So it's okay, I
Speaker 4: do I'm not all this is not adding up to
Speaker 4: blacking out. No, this is this was savage, this was fantasy.
Speaker 4: This was and then everything in his house really painted
Speaker 4: a picture of the true diabolic creature that he is.
Speaker 4: This very much woman hating. He got his rocks off
Speaker 4: of killing and hurting women.
Speaker 2: Did he ever offer any additional motive? I know none
Speaker 2: of this is ever going to make sense to those
Speaker 2: of us that are saying he's saying and thoughtful people,
Speaker 2: but did anything come out in the interviews with him
Speaker 2: that indicated anything beyond his hatred of women.
Speaker 4: And I always think that there seems like with every
Speaker 4: serial killer there's a connection with their mother, and certainly
Speaker 4: that was paraded out on trial, and he set that
Speaker 4: to sense. In the interview, he kind of talked about
Speaker 4: how his mother mistreated him, and she, of all things,
Speaker 4: was a detention officer for the county where we live
Speaker 4: in Americapa County. So he described that he would beat her.
Speaker 4: She would beat him with his belt, the duty belt,
Speaker 4: and just all kinds of things. But again, I don't
Speaker 4: buy that too much because it's like, there's plenty of
Speaker 4: people that are mistreated and you know, and turn out
Speaker 4: to be decent citizens, not killing. And these were fantasies.
Speaker 4: And if you go back, there was a letter. There's
Speaker 4: so much to these investigations. They're just massive. But on
Speaker 4: his eighteenth birthday, his mom shows up at juvie and
Speaker 4: says don't let or shows up actually at a precinct
Speaker 4: and said, don't let him out of juvie. Look at
Speaker 4: this letter, and this letter basically detailed this plan, this
Speaker 4: is when he's seventeen, of how he's going to basically
Speaker 4: kill a woman he constructor and eater, so this is seventeen.
Speaker 4: He's fantasizing about this. So to me that he was
Speaker 4: we missed him in the system. There were judges in
Speaker 4: the juvenile system that said he had sexual deviancy issues.
Speaker 4: So we missed in a big way. And I say
Speaker 4: we the system because we probably can't obviously detain somebody well,
Speaker 4: especially once they're eighteen, but we should have done some
Speaker 4: more to help this kid poop.
Speaker 5: So I was very interested by the fact that Miller
Speaker 5: waved his right to a jury trial, which turned his
Speaker 5: case into a bench trial. And maybe this is again
Speaker 5: because I'm saying or reasonably so, I would have figured
Speaker 5: that with a jury trial you'd have a better chance
Speaker 5: of getting off unreasonable doubts, because at least one person
Speaker 5: in twelve might think, well, maybe that guy was terribly abused. Instead,
Speaker 5: his lawyer, I assume, allowed him to say, sure, let's
Speaker 5: make it into a bench trial. What did you think
Speaker 5: about that decision for him to waive a jury Entirely.
Speaker 4: My personal opinion was dumb. I just couldn't. I could.
Speaker 4: I still can't wrap my head around it. Why how
Speaker 4: would take those odds of one of the twelve creating
Speaker 4: a hung jury any day over going in front of
Speaker 4: a judge and let alone, if you knew that the
Speaker 4: judge was going to be Suzanne Cohen, who is a
Speaker 4: very seasoned sexual assault prosecutor, a homicide prosecutor, was very distinguished.
Speaker 4: She was very fair in the trial. But knowing you're
Speaker 4: up against that somebody that's not going to see your
Speaker 4: wello out of bs so to speak to me again,
Speaker 4: I would rather convince somebody on the jury that to
Speaker 4: feel sorry for me about how my mom has treated
Speaker 4: me and that kind of thing. Still to this day,
Speaker 4: don't know why he did that.
Speaker 2: That was one of the most baffling things for me too.
Speaker 2: I could not believe he decided to go with a
Speaker 2: bench trial. You've just got the one judge sitting up there.
Speaker 2: And as you said, Judge Cohen was fair, but she
Speaker 2: I had also probably seen it all and heard it
Speaker 2: all in her years as a prosecutor and then as
Speaker 2: a judge. I thought, speaking of insane, I thought, this
Speaker 2: guy has set himself up to have a zero chance
Speaker 2: of escaping responsibility for these horrific murders.
Speaker 4: Yeah again, I think he Sometimes they think they're smarter
Speaker 4: than everybody else. And maybe he thought he was going
Speaker 4: to gain the system. I thought his defense team did
Speaker 4: a great job of muddying the water enough to basically
Speaker 4: create a Hey could could he have? He had all
Speaker 4: these issues. I was obvious so they did that. They
Speaker 4: were just trying to spare his life. They didn't want
Speaker 4: the death penalty. I don't blame them. I think again,
Speaker 4: this is all directed by him, and I think he
Speaker 4: sinspired them. I heard and basically for his appeals, he's
Speaker 4: said no more of you guys.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have a moment in the courtroom where
Speaker 5: you were like, oh God, I don't know how this
Speaker 5: is going to go, or were you sure that you
Speaker 5: know it was going to go?
Speaker 4: In law enforcement's favor, there's that old saying it ain't
Speaker 4: over till you know it's over, over till the fatty sings,
Speaker 4: kind of saying I was not sure. I thought we'd
Speaker 4: put together a great case. But I've been to enough
Speaker 4: trials to see the technicality create a major issue. So
Speaker 4: I think William and I. William had to attend every
Speaker 4: day of the trial. He's one of my detectives, and
Speaker 4: I was there most of the time. But I family responsibility.
Speaker 4: That kind of thing, so I couldn't be there all
Speaker 4: the time, but we were both like fingers crossed through that.
Speaker 4: When Susan Cohen, judge was reading the verdict, we're just like,
Speaker 4: I hope this goes away for the first Listen to
Speaker 4: the families they've been drowell.
Speaker 2: Did they attend the trial itself?
Speaker 4: Actually, they were able to attend virtually. The Melanie, the
Speaker 4: younger victim's mother, was a nurse and she had moved.
Speaker 4: She said, I can't live in Phoenix anymore after the murder,
Speaker 4: as she had moved to another state, and Angela, the
Speaker 4: first victim's mother, had never moved. They were quite away
Speaker 4: the way, so they again they were able to attend virtually,
Speaker 4: And I think that was good for them not to
Speaker 4: have to really see him, but not to have to
Speaker 4: be in a court with him.
Speaker 2: That actually might be the ideal solution for a situation
Speaker 2: like that, or it would be horrible to be sitting
Speaker 2: day after day, probably feet away from the man that
Speaker 2: was charged with killing their daughters. And maybe the virtual
Speaker 2: setup is maybe the best interim step. They could see
Speaker 2: and hear what was going on without having to be
Speaker 2: in the room with this greet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree, and that brings up that I've become
Speaker 4: friends with Harley Feldman, and Harley his daughter was brutally
Speaker 4: murdered in Scottsdale, Arizona, in I believe it was twenty
Speaker 4: thirteen or twenty fourteen. They ended up solving that using
Speaker 4: familial DNA in twenty eighteen. It was the first case
Speaker 4: of Arizona that had been used to use familiar DNA.
Speaker 4: But he's been in trial. I think it's still willing
Speaker 4: to trial, and I feel a horrible he is. Him
Speaker 4: and his wife are phenomenal people, just get solid people,
Speaker 4: and to have to go through that and see the
Speaker 4: killer is to me beyond I agree.
Speaker 5: I like to sume idea, were the families given the
Speaker 5: opportunity to make victims impact statements and did they Actually.
Speaker 4: They did, And I've only my mother died during this investigation,
Speaker 4: and I don't I'm not a crier. I'm a tough cop.
Speaker 4: But that was that brought me to well, very close,
Speaker 4: if not to tears. And one of the statements, especially
Speaker 4: from Melanie's sister, said, if you tune into this trial
Speaker 4: for the first three weeks or after the first three weeks,
Speaker 4: you would have thought that that Brian Miller was the victim,
Speaker 4: and she refocused this back to her sister and Angela
Speaker 4: the other victim. And I thought that Vincent Berdino did
Speaker 4: a great job. He during his closing statements, he put
Speaker 4: up pictures of both girls, both women, and said, these
Speaker 4: are the true victims. So it refocused everything back to
Speaker 4: them because it was central. That's so many months were
Speaker 4: spent by the good doctor with the parapoint talking about
Speaker 4: Brian's illnesses and his mental health and that kind of faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the two of us are both just rolling our eyes.
Speaker 2: This had to be so horrible to listen to this
Speaker 2: doctor go on for days about how what a tough
Speaker 2: life that Brian Patrick Miller has had and how he
Speaker 2: deserves every consideration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the one. In fact, one of my sarcastic detectives
Speaker 4: coined the phrase the doctor talks a lot. That's what
Speaker 4: he said, and it was I'm sure the guy his
Speaker 4: heart's in the right place. He had the job to do,
Speaker 4: but I know he made thousands of dollars on the back.
Speaker 4: So the citizens trying to basically show that Miller was
Speaker 4: this good person. He's quiet and he's reserved, and he'd
Speaker 4: never heard a fly and look he's got this daughter.
Speaker 4: But meanwhile, I'm just I can't escape what I saw
Speaker 4: in the house and what I saw on the crime
Speaker 4: scene photos, and I'm just like, Wow, this is a
Speaker 4: true monster. You can't let all the spoken beers see
Speaker 4: through that.
Speaker 2: Were any of the original detectives that had worked the
Speaker 2: earlier incidents, because we're way back to the early nineties
Speaker 2: with Angela and Melanie, Were any of them still around?
Speaker 4: Yes, A gentleman by the name of Russ Davis. He
Speaker 4: was an original case agent, so it was his case
Speaker 4: he had retired and talked to him. He was a
Speaker 4: tell of a good detective, very thorough. He retired in
Speaker 4: ninety seven, so about five years after the first murder,
Speaker 4: in about four after the second, and that case haunted him.
Speaker 4: He worked the crap out of those cases. Mike Miischliss
Speaker 4: was the scene agent. He had retired in twenty eleven
Speaker 4: kind of or twenty ten when we took over the case.
Speaker 4: Both and matter of fact, Mike testified at trial and
Speaker 4: he did a great job on the scene. I always say,
Speaker 4: if the original investigators and the lab and the CSI,
Speaker 4: if they don't do their job right on the front Edge,
Speaker 4: then we've got no shot on the back end as
Speaker 4: a cold case team. Pseudos to them for doing what
Speaker 4: they did over the years, and even the sotos, the
Speaker 4: lab work, everything was just had to be sixteen otherwise
Speaker 4: it would have been attacked.
Speaker 5: Miller was given the death penalty as his punishment deservedly.
Speaker 5: I would say, do you think he's actually going to
Speaker 5: see an execution data. I know that penalty cases get
Speaker 5: a ton of appeals. Do you think we're actually going
Speaker 5: to see a day where we have an evening news
Speaker 5: story that Brian Patrick Miller has been executed.
Speaker 4: That's a great question. I look at the appeals that
Speaker 4: I look at the different political governors get in say
Speaker 4: I'm not doing them, or I'm doing them. This last governor,
Speaker 4: I think two have so far have actually been executed
Speaker 4: under her watch. But Miller, I don't even know his
Speaker 4: first appeal has gone through. I don't think it's gone
Speaker 4: through Edge where so it just takes it just takes years,
Speaker 4: as a twenty years. I wish that he would just
Speaker 4: lay it all out there and tell all and get
Speaker 4: it off his chest. And that would be because we
Speaker 4: never did find and we kept telling us that beat
Speaker 4: Ox society that these guys have a layer where they
Speaker 4: go back to and they relive, and they fantasize, and
Speaker 4: they keep pictures and videos that we never were able
Speaker 4: to find that, and I cover that in the book.
Speaker 4: We beat the bushes, so to speech, and did not
Speaker 4: sign anything like that. But my guess is he has
Speaker 4: it somewhere. Why not.
Speaker 5: The book is Chasing Down the Zombie Hunter by Troy Hellman. Troy,
Speaker 5: where can everybody find your book?
Speaker 4: It's available in all formats on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles,
Speaker 4: Simon and Schuster published it, and even in Walmart, Target.
Speaker 4: Pretty much any major or any book retailer has it.
Speaker 4: I would appreciate it. And if you'll always say if
Speaker 4: you like the book, please give me a good rating
Speaker 4: on Reads and or Amazon.
Speaker 2: And we're going to be seeing you at Crime Con
Speaker 2: in a matter of a few months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited. It'll be my first time and as
Speaker 4: a great event with a lot of people that are
Speaker 4: trying to do good things to basically spread the word
Speaker 4: and help with these cases. We are looking forward to
Speaker 4: seeing you there. Troy. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you both.
Speaker 5: That is going to do it for this episode of
Speaker 5: Mind Ever Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
Speaker 5: see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Speaker 1: Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
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