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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 3: Good evening. On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: fifteen year old Paddy Desmond sneaked out through the basement
Speaker 3: of her house. She had a history of running away,
Speaker 3: and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave
Speaker 3: police reason to suspect she'd come home in a week
Speaker 3: or two. The year was nineteen sixty five. That night
Speaker 3: was the last time her family ever saw her. Conrad
Speaker 3: Eugene Miller was well known to local law enforcement. An older,
Speaker 3: married man with a child, Miller's association with Patty was
Speaker 3: questionable at best, yet he was the last person known
Speaker 3: to have seen her alive. And the suspect who Leice
Speaker 3: continued to circle back toward After nothing but false sightings
Speaker 3: and rumors, the case was moved to the backburner, where
Speaker 3: it stayed as decades crept by reality sunk in Paddy
Speaker 3: Desmond was never coming back. Then a tiny crack unleashed
Speaker 3: a flood of information and a mystery that had never
Speaker 3: quite been forgotten was solved. The book that were featuring
Speaker 3: this evening is Last Child Scene The Search for Paddy Desmond,
Speaker 3: with my special guest, journalist and author Maureene Boyle. Welcome
Speaker 3: back to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 3: this interview.
Speaker 5: Maureene Boyle, oh Dan, thank you very much for having
Speaker 5: me on. I really appreciate it. It's always fun to
Speaker 5: be on your show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Now, let's talk about the Desmond family.
Speaker 3: Anna Desmond and her husband and Patty and her five
Speaker 3: other siblings in Renfrew, Pennsylvania. You say about thirty miles
Speaker 3: from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 6: Tell us a.
Speaker 3: Little bit more about the family and how it came
Speaker 3: to be that Anna was a single mother.
Speaker 5: It's really quite tragic for the family. Anna's husband died
Speaker 5: when he hit his head on a block of cement
Speaker 5: in a tussle, and he died en route to the hospital.
Speaker 5: That left Anna a single mother of six children in
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties when this was a time when there
Speaker 5: weren't a lot of jobs for women, well paying jobs
Speaker 5: for women. But she would work very hard in anything
Speaker 5: that was available to put some food on the table
Speaker 5: and pay the rent for the children. It was a
Speaker 5: very difficult time the family. Clearly, Patty's older brothers had
Speaker 5: gone into the service, and at the time of Patty's
Speaker 5: disappearance was just her and her younger brother who was
Speaker 5: at home. Patty was a very shy girl. Her people
Speaker 5: described her as sometimes being bullied when she was in school.
Speaker 5: He was a bit quiet. She was a type of
Speaker 5: girl that people felt sorry for, but they also described
Speaker 5: her as a very lovely girl.
Speaker 3: You talk about December fifth, nineteen sixty five, and you
Speaker 3: talk about the last night that Anna ever saw her daughter.
Speaker 3: What was that night spent doing between the two?
Speaker 5: Patty's mother strongly disapproved of a young man who Patty
Speaker 5: had been seeing. The man was nineteen, Patty was just fifteen,
Speaker 5: He was married, and he had an infant child. There
Speaker 5: is she felt that this individual, Conrad Miller was too
Speaker 5: old for her high school daughter, Patty was just a
Speaker 5: sophomore in high school, and he had a reputation in
Speaker 5: the community, and not a very good reputation, and she
Speaker 5: really wanted one her daughter to stay as far away
Speaker 5: as possible from this married man. And Patty was having
Speaker 5: an argument with her daughter, I mean with her mother
Speaker 5: and Patty later that evening snuck out of the house.
Speaker 5: Patty slipped out of the house. She chopped in the
Speaker 5: car with Conrad and his three friends who were there.
Speaker 5: One of them was an individual by the name of
Speaker 5: Stormy Miller who was a distant relative of Conrads, and
Speaker 5: she got in the car with him. Miller dropped off
Speaker 5: his friends at one of their homes and they were
Speaker 5: going to hook up later on, and he took Patty
Speaker 5: else to a coal mine where they were going to
Speaker 5: quote unquote talk. This was an area well known by
Speaker 5: young people in the area where people would go drinking
Speaker 5: or neck and that was the last time anyone other
Speaker 5: than Conrad Miller had seen her. Later, Conrad had made
Speaker 5: some statements to a number of people about what happened next.
Speaker 3: Now, two people from Butler Township police questioned him and
Speaker 3: asked him about details about saying that he was the
Speaker 3: last person to see her, and he gave details about
Speaker 3: who he was with that night, which was Charlie Ladik
Speaker 3: and Larry Haskins. And like you had mentioned, his cousin,
Speaker 3: Stormy Miller. What were the statements by those three individuals
Speaker 3: that were with Miller as to what happened that night.
Speaker 5: The three of them again had said that they picked
Speaker 5: up Patty, they dropped Conrad had dropped them off to
Speaker 5: their vehicle, and they were going to meet up with
Speaker 5: them later. They never did meet up with Conrad, and
Speaker 5: afterwards Conrad had said that he had. Initially he told
Speaker 5: them that he had dropped Patty off at a fire
Speaker 5: hall and Patty was in another community and Patty was
Speaker 5: going to go to the home of a friend of hers.
Speaker 5: At another time, he sort of expanded on the story,
Speaker 5: but no one quite took him seriously because he had
Speaker 5: been drinking when he would tell different stories, and they
Speaker 5: didn't think that some of the suggestions that he had
Speaker 5: made about something happening to Patty were true. They thought
Speaker 5: that was an exaggeration.
Speaker 3: Regarding Mary Rice, you write that Conrad Miller knew Mary
Speaker 3: Rice because there were neighbors at one time when there
Speaker 3: were children, and so the way that Patty met Mary
Speaker 3: was that Miller would bring Patty over to Mary Rice's home,
Speaker 3: and she said that usually typically that she would be
Speaker 3: applied with alcohol when he did bring her over to
Speaker 3: Mary Rice's. The idea that she would have stayed at
Speaker 3: Mary Rice's, that she wanted to stay at Mary Rice's.
Speaker 3: Mary Rice said she never came over. But it was
Speaker 3: also very interesting you write that Mary Rice he had
Speaker 3: only stayed at Mary Rice's home one time for a sleepover.
Speaker 5: Yes, that was Mary Rice was supposedly the house that
Speaker 5: Patty was going to be going to the night that
Speaker 5: she disappeared. Sometimes Conrad would take her over to Mary's
Speaker 5: house because keep in mind, this is a very small
Speaker 5: community where everyone knows everyone, so he in the past
Speaker 5: had taken her over to Mary's house. Mary had a
Speaker 5: sister that was about Patty's age. Police went to Mary
Speaker 5: Rice's house after Patty was reported missing, and Mary told
Speaker 5: them Patty never showed up at her house. She wasn't
Speaker 5: expecting her, and after police came to talk with her,
Speaker 5: Conrad had come to her house and said, I dropped
Speaker 5: Patty off down the road and she was coming to
Speaker 5: your house and Mary said, nope, she didn't come here,
Speaker 5: and that was the last time she said, kind of
Speaker 5: discussed Patty with her.
Speaker 3: Now, this case is frustrating for police because they have
Speaker 3: no body, they have no evidence that there has actually
Speaker 3: anything happened to Patty Desmond. But of course they are
Speaker 3: very very suspicious, but they can't do much. But what
Speaker 3: they hear, the rumors that they do here is that
Speaker 3: he likely buried her in one of these strip minds.
Speaker 3: He's abandoned coal strip minds that are everywhere in the area.
Speaker 3: Now we have to fast forward ahead two years later
Speaker 3: and the parole officer, Conrad Miller's parole officer is a
Speaker 3: man named Jack Wagner, and he happens to be at
Speaker 3: the Butler State Police barracks and he's talking to a
Speaker 3: trooper named Richard Balish about the disappearance because he had
Speaker 3: spoken to Patty's sister. Veronica tell us about this conversation
Speaker 3: and what Jack Wagner and this trooper want Conrad Miller
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 5: And they well, initially, as you said, Patty's sister had
Speaker 5: approached the parole officer saying, you know, it's been at
Speaker 5: three years since my sister went missing? What's going on?
Speaker 5: Where is she? And he went to the state police
Speaker 5: barracks and talked to people there saying, you know, the
Speaker 5: family is still wondering, you know, what's the story. So
Speaker 5: they did bring Conrad in and because he was on parole,
Speaker 5: they were able to bring him in because his paro
Speaker 5: officer requested it, and they interviewed him. Initially, he was
Speaker 5: it was a standard, just straight interview where he stuck
Speaker 5: to the story that he had picked Patty up at
Speaker 5: her house, that they went to the Strip mine, that
Speaker 5: he dropped her off at a fire hall, and that
Speaker 5: Patty was supposed to be going to her friend's house,
Speaker 5: Mary Rice. Mary of course knew Patty because her sister
Speaker 5: was also the same age. Conrad used to bring Patty
Speaker 5: to Mary Rice's house. Mary's sister said that Mary didn't
Speaker 5: like him bringing the teenage girl over. He would to
Speaker 5: give her alcohol and try to make her do things,
Speaker 5: you know, fact stupid for lack of a better word.
Speaker 5: So they were familiar with Patty. So when they say
Speaker 5: police are know what's going on there, they've already spoken
Speaker 5: to Mary Rice. When they bring him in and he's
Speaker 5: telling the same story that he told before when Patty
Speaker 5: first went missing, and clearly they don't believe him, but
Speaker 5: they have to figure out ways to get him to
Speaker 5: keep talking. So they're sort of choking around with him,
Speaker 5: trying to get his guard down, telling him, well, you know,
Speaker 5: we don't want to get quote unquote get you on
Speaker 5: having any type of sexual relations with the underage girl.
Speaker 5: We're just trying to find out where she is and
Speaker 5: what happened to her. But he stuck to his story
Speaker 5: that he did not know where she was, that he
Speaker 5: dropped her off there. He did finally agree to a
Speaker 5: polygraph to and the findings of that was inconclusive based
Speaker 5: on his mental capacity. They could not prove or disprove
Speaker 5: his story based on the polygraph.
Speaker 3: It's very interesting how he talks about the victim. It's
Speaker 3: actually deplorable, but they get him to talk, as you say,
Speaker 3: and he says, you know, she wasn't a very good
Speaker 3: looking girl, so we were going to play a trick
Speaker 3: on my friend. And then, as you say, the trooper
Speaker 3: did a brilliant job. Lash I believe in saying that, listen,
Speaker 3: we don't care about that. Fooling around really disarmed Miller.
Speaker 3: Into admitting that, yeah, I was. I did mess around
Speaker 3: with her. You're right, and but you know, we were
Speaker 3: going to play a trick, but she was there, I
Speaker 3: was left alone with her, and then we were messing around.
Speaker 3: And then and then he asked a really salient question though,
Speaker 3: He said, did she say that she was pregnant? Did
Speaker 3: she say she was going to frame you? Did she
Speaker 3: say she was going to do something? And then the
Speaker 3: story of she said she was pregnant to him that
Speaker 3: she had told them that she was pregnant, that she
Speaker 3: was with some guy she wanted to get married, but
Speaker 3: he was so afraid because he had been accused before,
Speaker 3: he said, so he was just going to drive her
Speaker 3: right home. It's very telling how he talks about this
Speaker 3: victim and sort of can't help partially the truth creeping
Speaker 3: out in his very conversation with these troopers.
Speaker 5: That's a very good point there. He had his wife
Speaker 5: was sixteen, by the way, and he had fathered another
Speaker 5: child that was about the same age as his child
Speaker 5: with his wife, and he makes reference to that child
Speaker 5: in the interview. Thing he was, you know, kind of
Speaker 5: tricked into paying child support and that it wasn't his child,
Speaker 5: and he claimed in the interview with the police that
Speaker 5: Patty told him that she was pregnant, and he insisted
Speaker 5: it was not his but and he said that she
Speaker 5: had a boyfriend and she was going to run away
Speaker 5: with him, and that was it. That was one way
Speaker 5: of probably in his mind, of steering police away from him.
Speaker 5: After that, he claimed that he dropped her off. Initially,
Speaker 5: he had also told the police that he was going
Speaker 5: to quote unquote fix her up with some of his
Speaker 5: friends for sex, and that was something that she had
Speaker 5: absolutely no idea if that it was his intention, she
Speaker 5: had no idea of any of that, and clearly she
Speaker 5: thought that he was her boyfriend for lack of a
Speaker 5: better word.
Speaker 3: You're right that investigators spoke to the three people that
Speaker 3: were there, but they spoke specifically to Charlie Ladik, and
Speaker 3: he relayed some fascinating again you call his circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 3: but evidence where he said that a year after this,
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty six, that Miller had threatened in a bar,
Speaker 3: he had this bizarre dream that his wife was fooling
Speaker 3: around with Leydick, that Miller's wife was fooling around with Leydick,
Speaker 3: and he saw it in a dream and then confronted
Speaker 3: him and said, kill you just like I killed that girl.
Speaker 3: So that statement was with the investigators. Then they spoke
Speaker 3: to Larry Haskins, and Larry Haskins had said that Miller
Speaker 3: had said that he had killed Patty with a tire arm.
Speaker 3: So they had this very incriminating evidence that came from
Speaker 3: these two people. But still what they had said was
Speaker 3: is that Miller had said that he had buried her
Speaker 3: in a strip mine, and he had also said to
Speaker 3: another investigator that he would never find the body. So
Speaker 3: investigators were stymied, even though they had all this circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 3: even though they knew that he was a likely suspect,
Speaker 3: that they couldn't do anything. And in that time, you
Speaker 3: write this, Miller's criminal resume was growing in leaps and bounds,
Speaker 3: first in nineteen sixty seven with a Burger glary conviction
Speaker 3: where he did got two years and he did ended
Speaker 3: up doing a year. And you say that his criminal
Speaker 3: record expanded and continued over those ensuing years that this
Speaker 3: case was cold.
Speaker 5: His record each year seemed to have gotten grew and
Speaker 5: grew and grew, and the primes became much more serious
Speaker 5: as he got older. The good point that you made
Speaker 5: was that police just did not have any evidence that
Speaker 5: a crime had occurred, that Patty was dead. The statements
Speaker 5: that Miller made to his friends were suggested, and it
Speaker 5: involved a lot of drinking, and some of his friends thought,
Speaker 5: you know, it's it was just fraggy and because or
Speaker 5: that he was saying this to threaten them. But there
Speaker 5: was a feeling that, yes, he had something to do
Speaker 5: with her disappearance, but no one could prove it. And
Speaker 5: that was a big element of this crime. No one
Speaker 5: could prove that Patty was dead. Is we're talking about
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties. We don't have surveillance cameras, we don't
Speaker 5: have cell phones. All of the things that we would
Speaker 5: use today to track someone who is missing just did
Speaker 5: not exist in the nineteen sixties. And during the nineteen
Speaker 5: sixties a lot of teenagers went missing and were runaways
Speaker 5: and then would eventually return home, although that was not
Speaker 5: the case involving Patty. The stories that circulated, or should
Speaker 5: say the rumors that circulated of where Patty's body might be.
Speaker 5: One of them was that she was in the mine.
Speaker 5: It was another theory that she was buried under one
Speaker 5: of the highways that was under construction at the time,
Speaker 5: and of course they wouldn't be able to dig up
Speaker 5: the highway for her body, especially since her body wasn't
Speaker 5: there even if they had done that, so they were stymied.
Speaker 5: Everyone thought and were convinced in law enforcement that he
Speaker 5: had something to do with her disappearance and likely death,
Speaker 5: but no one could prove it. There was no body,
Speaker 5: and there was no clear and concise confession. His quote
Speaker 5: unquote confessions were a little bit squishy for lack of
Speaker 5: a better word. He would suggest that except for one
Speaker 5: where he said he hit her with tire iron, the
Speaker 5: other people he would talk to say, well, they'll never
Speaker 5: find her, so there wasn't enough evidence without a body
Speaker 5: to tie him to the murder at that time.
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Speaker 3: Write that in nineteen seventy he is convicted of a
Speaker 3: raping a thirteen year old. He's given fifteen years in prison,
Speaker 3: paroled in five years. Then in nineteen seventy five another
Speaker 3: rape which is described as barbaric, he was sentenced to
Speaker 3: ten to twenty years. He was released after eleven years.
Speaker 3: And this is nineteen eighty seven, I believe. And you
Speaker 3: introduce a central figure in this, a corporal Danny McKnight,
Speaker 3: who had joined the Pennsylvania State Police when he was
Speaker 3: twenty one years old, and he was the head of
Speaker 3: the criminal investigative Unit. And in nineteen eighty seven he
Speaker 3: got a very very interesting phone call. Tell us about
Speaker 3: this phone call he received.
Speaker 5: Danny was in his office at the time. Danny, at
Speaker 5: that time, he was ahead of his times, ahead of
Speaker 5: his time. In the law enforcement circles in the eighties,
Speaker 5: a lot of law enforcement agencies, particularly those that were
Speaker 5: set up in some of the more rural areas were
Speaker 5: not using a lot of them weren't using computers. The
Speaker 5: internet was not a thing. A lot of databases that
Speaker 5: we now take for granted just did not exist. But
Speaker 5: he saw the importance of computerizing things and creating databases,
Speaker 5: and he would use that in investigations. So he always
Speaker 5: liked to think out of the box, so to speak.
Speaker 5: He always wanted to try something different when it came
Speaker 5: to investigations. So he's sitting in his office. This is
Speaker 5: the type of investigator he is. But he's sitting in
Speaker 5: his office and he gets a phone call is transferred
Speaker 5: to him, and it is a young woman and the
Speaker 5: woman asks gives him a specific date and asks if
Speaker 5: if a woman went a teenager went missing on that date,
Speaker 5: And Danny said, well, I'll get back to you. And
Speaker 5: he checks around with some of the other investigators, particularly
Speaker 5: some of the old timers there, people with more time
Speaker 5: on the job, and one of the troopers comes up
Speaker 5: with a answer right away, saying, Patty Desmond. He goes
Speaker 5: gets back to the woman who called, and it turns
Speaker 5: out that the woman he called was the daughter of
Speaker 5: the suspect Conrad Miller, and he asks her some more information,
Speaker 5: and she, of course was an infant when all of
Speaker 5: this happened, but she tells him where Patty's body likely was.
Speaker 5: She eventually tells him where Patty's body likely was and
Speaker 5: how she obtained the information with someone else in her
Speaker 5: family who told him that Conrad had confessed to her
Speaker 5: years earlier in the nineteen sixties when the murder happened,
Speaker 5: so that gave them a very good idea of where
Speaker 5: to now move the case. However, this is the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 5: so they have to go back in time and reinterview
Speaker 5: some of the earlier suspects, I mean, so the earlier witnesses,
Speaker 5: and also check the story that Conrad's daughter has told
Speaker 5: them the location of where Patty's body might be. Who
Speaker 5: owns a property, who owned the property? Would Conrad have
Speaker 5: known about this property? And it turns out yes he
Speaker 5: did because it was a family owned property. What they
Speaker 5: were told was that Conrad had killed Patty and it
Speaker 5: brought her body to an abandoned house and set the
Speaker 5: house on fire. The investigators, Danny McKnight and gun Hall
Speaker 5: State Trooper gun Hall then went to the volunteer fire
Speaker 5: department in that area to check their fire records and
Speaker 5: found that yes, there was a fire at that house,
Speaker 5: but it was because it was abandoned. They just basically
Speaker 5: let it burn. And they checked the real estate records
Speaker 5: of the property and discovered yes, the property was owned
Speaker 5: by one of Conrad Miller's relatives, so that the daughter's
Speaker 5: story did hold up on as they checked the records.
Speaker 5: And then they went back and talked to her again
Speaker 5: and then talked to the person that gave her the information.
Speaker 5: And as a result of that and talking reinterviewing earlier
Speaker 5: witnesses from the nineteen sixties in seventies, they were able
Speaker 5: to get a search warrant for the property to do
Speaker 5: an archaeological dig to see if there were human remains
Speaker 5: in what was once an abandoned house.
Speaker 3: Let's Maureen talk about because we didn't go over this.
Speaker 3: This is a horrifying revelation that Connie, his daughter was given.
Speaker 3: Conrad Miller's daughter gave up this information, but we didn't
Speaker 3: talk about. After eleven years, after his second rape, after
Speaker 3: all of these suspicions of murder, this daughter took him
Speaker 3: in to her home with her two children and her
Speaker 3: husband as part of the parole. And then her mother
Speaker 3: lived nearby and came and told her a horrifying story
Speaker 3: which prompted her, the daughter, to finally come forward and
Speaker 3: practice case.
Speaker 5: Yes, and that was just very chilling to Connie. Connie
Speaker 5: opened up her home to her father. Connie is a
Speaker 5: very religious young woman and she felt that everyone deserves
Speaker 5: a second chance, and after all, it was her father
Speaker 5: he needed a police to stay, so she opened up
Speaker 5: her home to him. Her mother lived on the street
Speaker 5: and her mother was not pleased that he was he
Speaker 5: was living there, and her mother then told her that
Speaker 5: he had confessed to her and told her details of
Speaker 5: what he had said to her and where Patty's body
Speaker 5: likely was where he told her Patty's body was.
Speaker 3: There was details he gave her about that night and
Speaker 3: the ensuing days, but also when he first came back
Speaker 3: to the trailer, and the mention of this gun that
Speaker 3: he had left a trailer with and what happened with
Speaker 3: that gun when he returned. So tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about the details that he gave to Shirley, his wife,
Speaker 3: and then imparted later to the daughter about that evening
Speaker 3: in question.
Speaker 5: But he had at a bayonet and The bayonet was
Speaker 5: eventually given to Connie's one of Connie's relatives, her father.
Speaker 5: She was not certain what that was used for. She said,
Speaker 5: he did have a gun that night, but you know,
Speaker 5: in that area of Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, it's not
Speaker 5: unusual for people to have guns in their vehicles, So
Speaker 5: that was him having a gun would not have been
Speaker 5: a real major red flag to investigators. However, the fact
Speaker 5: that he had this bayonet that was sword like bayonet
Speaker 5: that they were very intrigued with and wanted to be
Speaker 5: able to recover that to see if there was any
Speaker 5: blood or anything like that on it.
Speaker 3: You talk about the dig, the arrangements to make this dig,
Speaker 3: and the professional help was needed. So the investigators went
Speaker 3: to see the district attorney, David L. Cook, and he
Speaker 3: suggested people at the Pittsburgh School of Anthropology. And so
Speaker 3: you'd write that May fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, McKnight and
Speaker 3: hall sooke with Shirley and got all this information and
Speaker 3: also they also got an incredible amount of information about
Speaker 3: his personality and what he was, what the marriage consisted of. Basically,
Speaker 3: when his child was born, he was nowhere to be
Speaker 3: seen and didn't show up at the hospital. His marriage
Speaker 3: was characterized by him partying continually like a child and
Speaker 3: not paying attention. In fact, that when she mentioned divorce,
Speaker 3: he said no, and there was They heard about a
Speaker 3: report of him being so angry that he tried to
Speaker 3: drive his wife and daughter off the road and possibly
Speaker 3: kill him, I imagine, because he was so angered. So
Speaker 3: she finally did get a divorce once he was in prison.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes she did. And you know, I suspect she
Speaker 5: didn't get a divorce much earlier because he was so
Speaker 5: young when she first got married that it took a
Speaker 5: while for her to get up the resolve to end
Speaker 5: the marriage. He was after the first child was born.
Speaker 5: He just continued to the party. He was not the
Speaker 5: know the doting father who was not described as the
Speaker 5: doting father you were asking about. The University of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 5: What they needed to do at that point was to
Speaker 5: prove that Patty's remains were at the site that they
Speaker 5: were told he brought her. They could not just take
Speaker 5: someone's word for What they did was they got in
Speaker 5: touch with the Department of Archaeology and a group of
Speaker 5: grad students had agreed to do an archaeological dig at
Speaker 5: the site of the house they believed Patty's remains were,
Speaker 5: and this was really unusual at the time for the
Speaker 5: state police, particularly in that part of the state. What
Speaker 5: they did was a group of grad students I headed
Speaker 5: Dennis turk Maatt, who is really well renowned in the
Speaker 5: field of archaeology forensic archaeology. They did a modern day
Speaker 5: archaeological dig at the site and painstakingly sifted through the
Speaker 5: dirt there to try to find remains. One of the
Speaker 5: problems that they faced right away was that after the
Speaker 5: original fire, the area was bulldozed over for safety reasons clearly,
Speaker 5: so they had to get that first layer off and
Speaker 5: then keep going down further and further and further until
Speaker 5: they did find bones, fractured fragments of bones of human
Speaker 5: remains at the site, not enough, you know, it was
Speaker 5: not like a full skeleton. And what they discovered later
Speaker 5: and what they suspected based on what they found, was
Speaker 5: that the Patty's remains were set on fire in the
Speaker 5: house and it was her killer pended the remains sort
Speaker 5: of chopped up the remains as it was burning, which
Speaker 5: was just gruesome that someone would do that too, such
Speaker 5: a young girl. So they were able to identify remains
Speaker 5: as a young woman, most likely a teenager female, based
Speaker 5: on the fragments of both the remains that were found.
Speaker 5: They found fragments of every part of a body, but
Speaker 5: not a full skillton.
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Speaker 7: there were very very small bone fragments, but as this
Speaker 7: started off, it was very encouraging because Dirk Matt initially
Speaker 7: said that that no matter what, there would still be
Speaker 7: some intact bones, that fire would not be able to
Speaker 7: destroy these bones completely. So they did a careful archaeological dig,
Speaker 7: again you say, which was the first for this police department,
Speaker 7: probably many in the state at all, and they found
Speaker 7: between thirty and forty parts which we couldentify as being
Speaker 7: part of a specific part of a body. And so
Speaker 7: they basically knew that this was the remains of Paddy Desmond,
Speaker 7: and as such they made arrangements to make the arrest
Speaker 7: of Conrad Eugene Miller.
Speaker 5: Didn't they Yes, they did, because at this point they
Speaker 5: had sufficient cause to get an arrest warm because number one,
Speaker 5: there had been earlier stories, so that pointed them into
Speaker 5: the right direction of him. But most importantly, they had
Speaker 5: the statements directing them to the specific location where the
Speaker 5: remains were found there, so they were able to get
Speaker 5: an arrest warm. A judge signed it, and then a
Speaker 5: team of state troopers staked out the rooming house that
Speaker 5: he was staying in and waited for him to return,
Speaker 5: and then arrested him.
Speaker 3: You talk about July first, nineteen eighty seven, and right
Speaker 3: away he has his first attorney is a guy named Gettleman.
Speaker 3: And right away, again this is just the preliminary to
Speaker 3: see if there's enough evidence to hold them over. And
Speaker 3: despite his attorney giving some vigorous defense, right from the
Speaker 3: onset of this preliminary, he was held without bond.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's true, and you know, and that is not
Speaker 5: unusual in murder cases suspects. I have not seen a
Speaker 5: case yet where, at least cases that I've covered in
Speaker 5: the past, where anyone accused of murder is free on bail.
Speaker 5: I think there's only been one case where someone was
Speaker 5: allowed to be free on bail. But it's very, very rare.
Speaker 5: So it was not a surprise that he was held
Speaker 5: on bail or a no bail in the case.
Speaker 3: This is a potential death penalty case, as you write,
Speaker 3: as of nineteen seventy two, a Supreme court in Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: tell us what the status of the death penalty was
Speaker 3: and the likelihood of Miller being convicted with the death penalty.
Speaker 6: Yea.
Speaker 5: At that point in time, death penalty was sort of
Speaker 5: in a boggy area. It had been overturned and reinstated,
Speaker 5: and the courts needed to determine whether this actually qualified.
Speaker 5: Number one is the death penalty case and number two,
Speaker 5: if the death penalty would have been in effect at
Speaker 5: the time of the killing, was it were those cases overturned?
Speaker 5: It was ultimately decided that this was number one not
Speaker 5: a death penalty case, so that was taken off the table,
Speaker 5: and then they started to say, Okay, what evidence was
Speaker 5: available and what were the chances of winning a conviction
Speaker 5: in this case?
Speaker 3: The idea that he was very, very angry. He had
Speaker 3: his daughter and wrote a letter once he was arrested
Speaker 3: and said he would never forgive her, and she wrote
Speaker 3: back and said, you've got to confess and to what
Speaker 3: you have done. So and then you explain that there
Speaker 3: are three types of murder charges in Pennsylvania, first degree,
Speaker 3: second degree, and third degrees. Some times that third degree
Speaker 3: would be called manslaughter in another state. Can you explain
Speaker 3: the sentences and the sort of the parameters of what
Speaker 3: would be considered first, second, and third degree murder?
Speaker 5: What they had determined in this case is that this
Speaker 5: was not a first degree murder case under Pennsylvania law.
Speaker 5: We have to remember each state is very, very different
Speaker 5: when it comes to the different degrees of murder. So
Speaker 5: they had there had been some discussions with the defense
Speaker 5: attorneys to figure out, Okay, can we win here or
Speaker 5: can there be can we win a conviction, can we
Speaker 5: win an acquittal? And they had settled on a decided, Now,
Speaker 5: what's we're going to pleet out the case so that
Speaker 5: there would not be a trial. What he pled guilty
Speaker 5: to is something called murder in the third degree as
Speaker 5: opposed to first degree, second degree or any other things
Speaker 5: in with third degree murder was eligible for parole. He
Speaker 5: could wrap up his case in fourteen years based on
Speaker 5: the sentence that he was given. So it became a
Speaker 5: matter of did they want to roll the dice and
Speaker 5: risk getting a much serious, longer sentence of twenty years
Speaker 5: or go for fourteen years, And that's what he did.
Speaker 5: He put guilty to third degree murder and he was
Speaker 5: given to the fourteen year sentence, But that also made
Speaker 5: him eligible for parole a bit earlier, so he was
Speaker 5: parole eligible, but he would wrap up his sentence after
Speaker 5: fourteen years.
Speaker 3: Yes, he could be eligible for parole in seven years
Speaker 3: out of the fourteen in that plea agreement. And he
Speaker 3: also got away with being determined that there was no
Speaker 3: premeditation or intent to kill in not in the commission
Speaker 3: and not in the commission of a felony. And so
Speaker 3: he got off pretty easy in this plea agreement because,
Speaker 3: as we mentioned, he sat there again with the assay
Speaker 3: distance of his mother. So talk about premeditation in terms
Speaker 3: of the disposal and the murder of Paddy Desmond, maybe
Speaker 3: not the murder, but the post murder activities in that
Speaker 3: he sat there and stirred that fire, in the belief
Speaker 3: that he could burn those bones into oblivion and not
Speaker 3: be arrested ever for this heinous crime. And so he
Speaker 3: got very lucky with that plea agreement. Usually be ten
Speaker 3: to twenty years in this third degree, and yet he
Speaker 3: had the ability to get parole in seven years. You
Speaker 3: write about the victim impact statements, even though I mean
Speaker 3: this is a plea agreement, but yet at the time
Speaker 3: there was the ability to write statements, even talk to
Speaker 3: a parole board and voice their opinions as to whether
Speaker 3: he should be released. But also at when he was
Speaker 3: on this stand for this plea agreement, their impact statements
Speaker 3: were important, especially for Miller's family. Can you explain the.
Speaker 5: Impact statements for give the victims and their families that
Speaker 5: chanced to address the court to let people know how
Speaker 5: this crime has affected them, and in some cases it
Speaker 5: can help when it comes to sentencing. Obviously, in this case,
Speaker 5: the sentence was agreed upon as part of the flea
Speaker 5: And one of the reasons why that the prosecutors did
Speaker 5: agree with this flea was there was a great unknown
Speaker 5: of what would Miller argue in terms of how Patty
Speaker 5: was killed. Was it an accident, did he panic? Could
Speaker 5: they prove that it was premeditated? They they didn't have
Speaker 5: enough evidence in that regard, but they were able to,
Speaker 5: based on the evidence, clearly prove third degree murder. So
Speaker 5: as a result, that was why he put guilty to
Speaker 5: that when it comes to I think Patty's mother gave
Speaker 5: a very impassioned statement to the or and she was
Speaker 5: very upset that he got what she considered a very
Speaker 5: light sentence. You know, she spoke to how it affected
Speaker 5: her family, you know that how he had taken something
Speaker 5: away from them, and how unfair it was that you know,
Speaker 5: he could go out on parole, and you know, the
Speaker 5: family still has to live with her with her death.
Speaker 5: And she was she said that if he did it,
Speaker 5: if he's out on parole, she believed that he would
Speaker 5: do it again because he was out got away with
Speaker 5: the killing of her daughter for so long. The murder
Speaker 5: had affected her entire family that it had torn them apart.
Speaker 5: She had, you know, acknowledged that it may have also
Speaker 5: affected his family, but she didn't believe, or she didn't
Speaker 5: know if he even cared about how it affected his family.
Speaker 5: And and that was it.
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Speaker 3: Now you talk about that, in nineteen ninety four, Assistant
Speaker 3: District Attorney David Hepting wrote the parole Board to oppose
Speaker 3: Conrad Miller's release on parole. What did the parole board
Speaker 3: have to say with that recommendation?
Speaker 5: He was denied parole. Miller wound up serving the full
Speaker 5: fourteen years. He wrapped up his sentence, so he was
Speaker 5: not released on parole.
Speaker 3: Now you write about once he's released from prison, his
Speaker 3: only contact is with his namesake, which is Conrad Junior,
Speaker 3: and he gets in trouble, a foul of the law
Speaker 3: again after for his fourteen year sentence, and he writes
Speaker 3: that he eventually cycles through the court and probation system
Speaker 3: yet again, he had to complete a drug and alcohol
Speaker 3: treatment program. He pled guilty to driving under the influenced,
Speaker 3: possession of drug paraphernalia, and retail theft. He did another
Speaker 3: eighteen to thirty six month sentence. Again, he was charged
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine and he was directed to
Speaker 3: complete a sexual offender assessment and continue on probation. And
Speaker 3: there was always a restitution order of a little over
Speaker 3: eight thousand dollars. So you write that he would make
Speaker 3: payments of twenty five dollars a month and bring a
Speaker 3: big bag of change, including pennies, into the office to
Speaker 3: pay off this, but still didn't make any headway with
Speaker 3: this fine. And to show his just his personality, he
Speaker 3: fought every inch of the way, thinking that they were
Speaker 3: not entitled to find him or to give this restitution order.
Speaker 3: So he fought that restitution order all the way and
Speaker 3: spent his time doing that and never did pay the
Speaker 3: restitution order. But bellafile of the law, he continued to
Speaker 3: do that. And yet you write that he still wound
Speaker 3: up with a girlfriend and some sort of life once
Speaker 3: he was released after spending almost entire life in prison.
Speaker 5: Yes, he met a woman, it's my understanding. He's now
Speaker 5: living with her. He moved out of the area and
Speaker 5: is I assume, living a much calmer life. His girlfriend,
Speaker 5: I have been told, is very religious. So he may
Speaker 5: have found God, and you know, and hopefully he has
Speaker 5: found some peace and is acknowledging some of his past
Speaker 5: crimes in his soul and his heart. But it does
Speaker 5: not take away the pain of the family and what
Speaker 5: they've gone through. And however his life continues or ends,
Speaker 5: it is still the family of the victim who still
Speaker 5: carries the scars of what he had done. That when
Speaker 5: fifteen year old Patty Desmond, you know, snuck out of
Speaker 5: the house and hopped in his car.
Speaker 3: Now back to the person that really two people really
Speaker 3: practice case in terms of coming forward, that being Shirley
Speaker 3: and her daughter Connie. But you talk about that when
Speaker 3: Shirley's mom died in twenty eleven and when her brother
Speaker 3: passed away in twenty and fifteen, Conrad Miller went to
Speaker 3: the funerals and she said it was awkward. But when
Speaker 3: her father died in twenty and sixteen, what was Miller
Speaker 3: told to do at that time by the family?
Speaker 5: He was told to stay away and he did.
Speaker 3: You say that? You write about eight years ago that
Speaker 3: Miller contacted Shirley. What did he have to say to
Speaker 3: her at that time? What did he ask her for?
Speaker 5: He did ask for her forgiveness, and he said, it's
Speaker 5: a very difficult thing to ask for, you know, to
Speaker 5: get forgiveness, to forgive someone who had hurt you and
Speaker 5: it hurt so many other people for so long.
Speaker 3: You briefly, you briefly spoke to him. What did you
Speaker 3: ask him and what did he have to say to you.
Speaker 5: He did not want to discuss what happened. He didn't
Speaker 5: want to talk about the case. He said, you know,
Speaker 5: what's passed is past, and that he was very reluctant
Speaker 5: to say anything beyond that. You know, I think he
Speaker 5: was trying to just put it all behind him, because again,
Speaker 5: this was not a really high profile case when Patty
Speaker 5: went missing, and even when he put guilty there was
Speaker 5: maybe a handful of stories about the case at that time.
Speaker 5: So I think he may be just hoping to just
Speaker 5: live out his wife in obscurity.
Speaker 3: Right now, you right near the end of this book
Speaker 3: that each year, and estimated six hundred thousand people go
Speaker 3: missing in the US. The National Missing and an Identified
Speaker 3: Person System reports that forty four hundred unidentified bodies recovered yearly,
Speaker 3: with a shockingly one thousand of the remains unidentified after
Speaker 3: one year. Before I let you go, tell us about
Speaker 3: the impetus for this book, the origins of this book,
Speaker 3: and how it all occurred.
Speaker 5: I was working on my second book, The Ghost, the
Speaker 5: Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunt for
Speaker 5: his killer, and that was set in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 5: New Bedford in Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and while I was
Speaker 5: in the Saxonburg Butler area, I was talking to Danny McKnight,
Speaker 5: who was a road trooper at the time that the
Speaker 5: Saxonburg chief was murdered, and he told me about this
Speaker 5: case and how unusual it was, and I was intrigued
Speaker 5: by it. I didn't start working on it right away.
Speaker 5: I did some more research and he had some additional
Speaker 5: information on the case. I found it intriguing and that
Speaker 5: it was the impetus to this. It is part of
Speaker 5: the offshoot of my second book. What's interesting also is
Speaker 5: when we think of horrific murders, very often people will
Speaker 5: think of large cities or communities right off of large cities,
Speaker 5: and both Saxenburg and the general area where Patty went
Speaker 5: missing and was later found dead, this is rural and
Speaker 5: this was an area where people generally felt safe, where
Speaker 5: they would leave their doors open, and these are not
Speaker 5: this is not what happens in their community. I think
Speaker 5: that is what was also very very shocking to people
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 3: And like you say, this is not even though it's
Speaker 3: thirty miles from Pittsburgh. This is a world away from
Speaker 3: a front page story in the newspapers in major cities
Speaker 3: at that time.
Speaker 5: Yes, and you know, when Patty went missing, there was
Speaker 5: a whole different attitude of missing teenagers. It was always assumed,
Speaker 5: in most cases, it was assumed that the child was
Speaker 5: a runaway. And you know, I like today where we've
Speaker 5: got you know, Amber alerts and social media alerts and
Speaker 5: postings about missing children almost daily. Back then it was
Speaker 5: very very different. So a child could go missing and
Speaker 5: other people community over would not know about it.
Speaker 3: Yes, extraordinary story. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 3: for coming on and talking about Last Child Scene, the
Speaker 3: Search for Patty Desmond. Maureene Boyle, is there a website
Speaker 3: that people might take a look at and do you
Speaker 3: do any social media?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 5: It would be Maureenboylewriter dot com. And I've got I'm
Speaker 5: on Twitter and Instagram. On Instagram it is Maureen Eboyle.
Speaker 5: It's one of those things I always have to check Twitter.
Speaker 5: It's Maureen Eboyle number with number one. You can also
Speaker 5: find me on Facebook with just my name.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Maureene Boyle, Last Child Scene, the
Speaker 3: Search for Patty Desmond. Thank you very much for this
Speaker 3: interview and you have a great evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me, thank you, and good night.
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