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