Deadly Dose

by Amanda Lamb

  “What we found on Eric Miller’s computer was about as pure as the driven snow,” says Morgan, who’d expected as much. Eric’s e-mail communications were “vanilla” in nature, either work-related, or if they were personal, mainly focused on his baby daughter, Clare. There was nothing in Eric’s e-mail to suggest that he had problems in his marriage, nothing to suggest that he suspected his wife of infidelity. In fact there was nothing to suggest a conflict with anyone at all.

  For Morgan this was a key element because it showed that Eric Miller never saw anything coming. He had no idea that someone had put a target on his forehead. That’s why, even when he lay dying in a hospital bed, he would never have suspected that someone had poisoned him.

  In addition to searching Eric Miller’s computer, investigators searched his lab. There was no arsenic anywhere to be found. Clearly, this meant that the arsenic poisoning had not been the result of an accidental exposure. Something Morgan had always thought unlikely, but now the theory was finally disqualified.

  As soon as Morgan began reading the records from Ann’s computers, however, he got a very different picture of the allegedly loving spouse and now grieving widow. He discovered that Ann had a fantasy life so rich, so well crafted, that it had almost replaced her real life. The more he read, the more the inner workings of this woman’s mind amazed him.

  Ann had a flirtatious online correspondence with a coworker at Glaxo Wellcome named Derril Willard. There was nothing in the e-mails that jumped out and stated in black and white that Ann Miller and Derril Willard were involved in a romantic relationship, but according to Morgan, it was pretty clear from the tenor of the messages that one existed. He also knew that Ann was too smart to make her e-mails too obvious. Morgan said reading the exchanges was like hearing half of a conversation. The e-mails were filled with innuendo and private jokes that only the two of them could understand and clearly had to be based on earlier conversations the couple had had in person or over the phone.

  It just so happened that Willard was also one of the three men who had accompanied Eric Miller to the bowling alley on November 15, 2000. That was the night Eric got violently ill and had to be rushed to Rex Hospital the first time after vomiting and complaining of severe stomach pains.

  Morgan said investigators were hoping to find a “magic bullet” in these e-mail communications. They didn’t find it, but what they did find confirmed their suspicions that Ann Miller wasn’t the demure, conservative, religious woman she appeared to be. It wasn’t magic, but it was enough to begin to build a homicide case against her. Or so Morgan thought at the time. Little did he know just how rocky the road to justice would prove to be.

  DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

  On November 15 at 10:15 a.m., just hours before the bowling outing that Eric would attend with Derril Willard, Ann Miller sent Willard an e-mail full of flowery prose worthy of a greeting-card writer. As she talked about feelings, it was almost like Ann was manipulating him with her sappy language—telling him that his “beautiful blue eyes” stirred her soul, urging him not to fear crying, that his tears were like a diamond necklace around her neck, and insisting that while occasionally confusing, “emotions are awesome.” “I want to touch you in places that you knew not existed. Take you to places you’ve never been before. One thing I’ll never do is make you feel not wanted,” she wrote.

  Morgan strongly believed that Eric Miller got sick for the first time that fateful night at the bowling alley because someone gave him arsenic, probably in his beer. Given the apparent connection between Ann Miller and Derril Willard, it seemed likely that Ann had coerced Willard into participating in her evil scheme. In Morgan’s mind it was clear that in the e-mail Ann was greasing the wheel, buttering up Willard for what he was about to do, what she had asked and prodded him to do. Morgan believed even then, in the early stages of the investigation, that Ann used her power over Willard to rope him into a plot to kill her husband.

  And yet despite a lot of innuendo in the e-mails between Ann and Willard, the so-called magic bullet was still elusive. There was nothing concrete in the electronic transmissions linking the two directly, or even indirectly, to Eric’s death.

  “There was nothing talking about how Eric is a bad person, there was nothing talking about ‘let’s get rid of Eric and be together forever,’ ” says Morgan.

  CALIFORNIA DREAMING

  Derril Willard was not Ann Miller’s only e-mail pal. Police also found e-mails between Ann and a man named Carl Mackewicz, a scientist she had worked with from San Francisco. He later became known as “Carl M.” to detectives who did not want to go to the trouble of correctly pronouncing his last name. From what investigators uncovered, Ann had a long-standing, long-distance relationship with Mackewicz dating back to 1997. It was a relationship that apparently continued throughout her marriage, a relationship that Eric Miller may or may not have known about. Morgan suspected that even if Eric had had an inkling, his concerns were quickly allayed by excuses and lies from Ann. Morgan was beginning to realize that Ann was cavalier, a risk taker to whom men were a sport, and it was a game she excelled at playing.

  “They [the e-mails] talked about really what I think you can describe as Ann’s fantasy world. The woman, for all of her faults, does have a vivid imagination,” Morgan says, paying Ann Miller a very rare compliment.

  In the early days of the investigation, Morgan says that Mackewicz repeatedly denied the affair with Ann Miller, a denial that would later come back to haunt him. Raleigh police detective Doug Brugger made an unannounced visit to San Francisco, where he confronted Mackewicz face-to-face. But Mackewicz wouldn’t budge. He refused to admit that there was anything more than a friendship between himself and Ann.

  But e-mails don’t lie, and there’s nothing truly private in cyberspace. Later, after many conversations with detectives on the phone, it would be these e-mails that would push Mackewicz to admit his real relationship with Ann Miller.

  On November 22, 2000, at 1:24 in the afternoon, while Eric Miller was seriously ill and lying in a bed at UNC Hospital, Mackewicz wrote to Ann. It was clear in the e-mail that Mackewicz knew nothing about Eric Miller’s illness. The tone was lighthearted as he asked about getting an invitation to Ann’s Christmas party and cashing in on an earlier promise for a glass of wine shared at a beach house in front of a warm fire.

  On November 23, 2000, at 8:55 in the morning, Ann responded that she had stopped off at the office for a moment. She described her husband’s illness as “deathly” and explained what a burden it was taking care of him, her daughter, and dealing with her in-laws at the same time. “I’d throw my own Christmas party if I thought you would come. I’d buy a house at the beach too. I could so use a friend,” she wrote. She urged him to call her at the house and said it was safe because her in-laws were “oblivious” to who was calling her.

  This particular e-mail stuck in Morgan’s head and would later haunt him when hearing about the antics of Scott Peterson as his wife lay dead beneath the murky, cold waters of San Francisco Bay. Morgan couldn’t shake the fact that while Eric lay dying, Ann was flirting online with another man in such a casual manner. It didn’t prove that she killed him, but it sure didn’t point to her innocence either. Quite the contrary. It wasn’t normal behavior for a woman who was supposed to be keeping a vigil by her sick husband’s bedside, but by this time Morgan had started to realize that very little about Ann Miller was normal.

  Investigators also found another interesting document on Ann’s computer. She had written a short story called “96 Hours—the West Edge.” Morgan would later discover that the story was a fictionalized version of a romantic weekend Ann Miller had shared with Carl Mackewicz.

  The passage was dated July 30, 1998, and was written in the first person. “I had an uneasy feeling about being there— but at the same time excited,” Ann wrote. She described the man in the story as sporting a few days of stubble, something that made him look rumpled and attractive, and the w
oman in the story wondered whether she and the man had similar thoughts about what the weekend would bring. They packed for a camping trip to the Redwoods, a place called Camp Meeker, and when they arrived they set up camp in front of the heater on the floor of the cabin. Then, “He told me where he hoped things would go—a bold gesture on my behalf but admirable he said. I wanted the same . . .” she wrote.

  The e-mail trail revealed that Ann and Mackewicz had met in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, New York, and the Outer Banks—all without Eric’s knowledge. At this point Morgan knew they were not dealing with an ordinary woman, but with someone who had a powerful ability to manipulate the people around her, maybe even the police. In all of his years as an investigator, Morgan had never encountered someone quite like Ann Miller, someone with the power and grace to manipulate almost any situation, any person. He vowed right then and there that he would not be manipulated by her.

  Eric Miller’s life insurance policy would pay a mere $100,000. Even a person of little means would know this kind of money didn’t go very far. So if Ann Miller did kill her husband, it was certainly not for money. The policy wouldn’t pay for her fantasy life, that’s for sure. Morgan kept rolling the motive around his mind like a numbered Ping-Pong ball in a lottery cage. As he read and reread the e-mails, it would have been easy to think Ann had killed her husband for another man, or even other men. But Morgan was convinced this was not the case. In his opinion Ann Miller wasn’t that simple. Her motive was not one that could easily be discerned using the logic of a normal person because she wasn’t a normal person.

  “I think she killed Eric so that she could fully explore and experience the kind of life that she fantasized and imagined,” says Morgan as he looks wistfully out the window in his study, ignoring the barking dog in the distance.

  It was a life Morgan was determined to make sure that Ann Miller never got a chance to enjoy.

  "ANN TIME”

  In black Magic Marker on the dry-erase board where investigators listed facts about the case, Morgan clearly remembers one phrase jumping out at him: ANN TIME. It came from an interview that Detective Debbie Regentin had conducted with a woman who’d attended a marriage preparation course Ann and Eric had taught at St. Francis of Assisi, the Catholic church they belonged to in Raleigh.

  The very fact that a woman whose marriage was such a sham was teaching this course in the first place struck Morgan as yet further confirmation that Ann was a master of deception. But at the same time it made sense because it helped complete the image that the Millers were so happy and in sync with each other that they wanted to share their joy with others about to enter into holy matrimony.

  Apparently, Ann told the woman that one of the major things she missed and had sacrificed in order to be a wife and a mother was having time to herself. According to Morgan, Ann admitted to the woman that she was remorseful about letting go of her personal time in order to fulfill her responsibilities at home. She even complained that Eric was not a full partner in child-rearing or housekeeping duties.

  “Apparently this lack of ‘Ann Time’ had had a profound effect on Ann,” says Morgan with more than a hint of disgust in his voice.

  None of this information jibed with what other people had told detectives. Family, friends, and neighbors all said that the Millers were a happy couple with normal marital issues, but nothing that would raise red flags. In fact Morgan was told by numerous people that Eric was more than a part-time contributor when it came to household chores and taking care of baby Clare, that he often pitched in to do more than his share and in the process lightened Ann’s load significantly.

  Morgan said Eric would always drop off Clare at Bright Horizons day care in the morning and that Ann would pick her up in the afternoons. Day-care employees told investigators that because of the flexible schedule he had as a researcher, Eric would drop off Clare late in the mornings so that he could spend a couple of hours with her first. To Morgan, Eric sounded like a doting father and husband.

  While it may not have been clear to everyone at this point, a motive was starting to form in Morgan’s mind. Two simple words—“Ann Time.”

  TWO

  Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

  —ALDOUS HUXLEY

  “I liked the doctor at first, but later I didn’t like her anymore, ” Ann Miller told Detectives Debbie Regentin and Randy Miller that first night in the interview room as she cried in between her words. She was describing Eric’s experience at Rex Hospital just before he was moved to UNC Hospital.

  “Doctor?” the detective asked.

  “Mohan. She said he’s going to die, he’ll be dead,” Ann said.

  “Who did she tell that? The day that he left Rex?” the detective followed up.

  “Yes. I didn’t know if I should move him or not and I didn’t want him to have to go through all that. Again he [Eric] told me he can’t do that anymore, he said, ‘I don’t want to get up and go through all of that again, because I can’t go through all the doctors,’ and he said ‘Ann, I want to be here,’ the doctor really recommended it and said what we should do is move him,” Ann said.

  “Why did she say he was going to die?” the detective asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ann said.

  “Did she tell you why she thought that?” he said.

  “Because his heart function was low, and if he was going to need a transplant,” Ann uttered once again sobbing, “that they wanted [him] to go over there and they wanted to move him before he was too weak. They didn’t wait. They had done a bone marrow and they did a CAT scan and a sigmoidoscope and they put him on drugs that I told them not to. They wouldn’t, they weren’t listening to me. He went crazy one night and they had to tie him down.”

  Snippets from Ann’s police interview that first night continued to permeate Morgan’s brain. What she said, how she said it, what she didn’t say. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the clues were all there; he just had to put them in some kind of order.

  For example, UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill did a second set of heavy-metals testing on Eric Miller when he was moved there from Rex Hospital on November 21, though the results weren’t returned immediately. Eric was discharged from UNC on November 24 and appeared to be getting better. But when Eric became violently ill with the same symptoms and was readmitted to Rex on December 1, a doctor from UNC called the Miller house to tell Ann that the test results were finally back from Eric’s previous stay at UNC and that they were positive for arsenic. Ann gave the UNC doctor Dr. Mehna Mohan’s pager number at Rex.

  “Yes, when he called I told him to call Dr. Mohan. I went back to the hospital. Eric was real white. He said, ‘Dr. Mohan,’ she went running to him,” Ann said, weeping in the interview room, “She said: ‘Eric, somebody’s trying to kill you.’ And she told him . . . she terrified him; I can’t believe she told him. How could she have done that?” Ann said, barely above a whisper.

  DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?

  Morgan listened to every word Ann Miller said that night, over and over, the night of her first and only interview with police. Ann’s voice was so low on the tape, barely audible in fact, that it had to be sent to the State Bureau of Investigation to be enhanced. From that enhancement a transcript was made. Morgan must have read that transcript a hundred times until it was dog-eared, coffee-stained, and faded. He dissected Ann’s words over and over, picking apart her story piece by piece.

  When someone dies, life goes on. Morgan was acutely aware of this fact. It goes on just as furiously and frenetically as it did prior to the person’s death. We would all like to believe that subtracting ourselves from the universe would topple the earth from its axis, but in reality, the world keeps spinning and so does everything else.

  Within a week of Eric Miller’s murder, Chris Morgan’s squad had another death to investigate. Cedric Brame could not have been more different from Dr. Eric Miller. Morgan said Brame was a drug dealer, and a not a very good one at that. Brame had been g
iven a second chance twice before the shooting that ended his life. Prior to this, Morgan said Brame had been shot on two other occasions and somehow miraculously lived to tell the stories. This time he was not so lucky.

  “It’s not a mystery that Cedric’s dead,” Morgan says, shaking his head. “The mystery is that he lived as long as he did.”

  Morgan said Cedric died the way he lived. But Eric Miller, on the other hand, lived an exemplary life by all accounts. He was a model employee, good father, son, sibling, friend, and husband. There was nothing in Eric’s background to suggest that anyone would dislike him, let alone hate him enough to kill him.

  This struck Morgan as unusual. Most victims have something in their past or present that might trigger negative reactions from others. Not Eric Miller. In Morgan’s mind Eric was probably the purest example of an innocent victim he had ever encountered.

  THE FAMILY TREE

  Chris Morgan realized that in order to solve this murder, detectives needed to know Eric Miller personally. At this point Morgan was still on the outside edges of the investigation, but he eventually got to know Eric through his family, by talking to his friends and colleagues. Morgan had gotten to know many victims this way. He inhaled the small details of their lives that made them into the people they were before they were killed.

  Did they wash their own cars, or go to the car wash? Did they drink diet soda or regular? Did they listen to country music or soft rock? For some people this may sound tedious; for Morgan it was his job. He may have never actually met them in life, but in some ways he knew the victims better than the people who spent their entire lives with them.