by Amanda Lamb
TRUTH-SEEKING
Morgan was mad on so many levels. He was mad that Eric Miller had died. He was mad that Eric Miller might not have had the best care at the end of his life. He was mad that the woman Eric Miller trusted the most, his wife, might be responsible for his death.
Morgan wanted to know more about the group Miller went bowling with, particularly Derril Willard, in light of the romantic e-mails Willard had exchanged with Ann and Eric’s sudden illness at the bowling alley. If Willard had helped Ann, even if he had had second thoughts when the notion of killing an innocent man became too much for him to bear, then he was still the investigators’ best bet for getting someone to turn on Ann. If Willard knew something, if they could get him to talk, the case would be solved, over, done. But these were a whole lot of ifs.
Phone records started to dribble into the police department in mid-December after police made official requests to the wireless carriers. Like the e-mails, they showed an unmistakable pattern of communication between Ann and Willard. They revealed that Willard and Ann had called each other more than one hundred times between October 30, 2000, and December 2, 2000, the day of Eric’s death. Ann called Willard seventy-nine times. He called her just thirty-eight times. They talked for a total of an astounding 576 minutes. These were all just numbers, but important numbers to Morgan, numbers that added up to two things: an ongoing romantic affair, and possibly an accomplice in Eric Miller’s death.
They called each other at all hours of the day and night and talked for long periods of time. One twenty-four-minute call came just two hours before Eric Miller died. Then the calls abruptly stopped. In Morgan’s mind either Willard knew Ann had killed her husband and ended the communication himself, or more likely, Ann ended it because she had no more use for him.
It didn’t take a brilliant scientist to figure out this one. Morgan presumed Ann had been having an affair with Willard in order to gain his trust so that he would in turn help her kill Eric. Again, as Morgan believed that Ann never did anything without a purpose, he felt there had to be a core motivation behind the affair other than pleasure or insecurity. After all, she already had Carl Mackewicz, and who knows how many other men. Did she really need another lover?
And there was more—police found two hundred milliliters of an arsenic compound called sodium cacodylate in the lab where Ann and Willard worked at Glaxo Wellcome. They were told that this was a typical amount for the lab to stock on a daily basis. After consulting with experts, investigators learned that this amount of the compound was easily enough to kill someone. Although such evidence was all still circumstantial, proving that Ann and Willard had access to the poison that killed Eric it was very strong circumstantial evidence. In addition, investigators discovered that at the time Eric was killed there was no routine inventory taken, nor was there a system to monitor who was taking what from the lab.
All three of the men who attended the bowling outings were colleagues of Ann’s from Glaxo Wellcome. Very quickly investigators were able to catch up with two of them and interview them. Randy Bledsoe and Tom Councilor talked to the police; only Derril Willard proved elusive. To be honest, though, police were not exactly chasing Willard down. A month after Eric’s death, Sergeant Fluck told Morgan they were still trying to set up an interview with Willard and had left messages at his office, but hadn’t done anything else to pursue a face-to-face meeting. Morgan was astounded that they had not tried harder to pin Willard down.
“In my way of thinking, it was a mistake,” Morgan says. “I would have been sitting with my fat butt on Willard’s car every day.” And he means it.
Not unlike the way he got to know his victims, Morgan wanted to learn everything he could about Derril Willard so that he might understand how the man was caught up in Ann Miller’s complicated web of deceit. In his gut he suspected that Willard might be a victim as well, a victim of Ann Miller’s charm and powers of seduction, an unwitting partner in a plot to kill a good man. Morgan needed Willard’s help to unravel the web.
THE TURNING POINT
In late January, the men in charge of the investigation, Sergeant Jeff Fluck and Lieutenant Gerald Britt, were out of town. Captain Donald Overman was left to tend to the case in their absence. After meeting with Eric Miller’s family on January 19, 2001, Morgan said Overman became concerned that the investigation was lagging— that Derril Willard could be holding the key to the entire case, yet no one had made any real effort to get him to talk.
Morgan reasons that Fluck probably didn’t want to push Willard because he might have gotten scared and “lawyered up,” an expression for hiring a lawyer and shutting out the police. But still, it was clear to Morgan that without Willard the case could not move forward. Yet he knew that Fluck was right; Willard was a bright scientist, and chances were he was smart enough to know that his relationship with Ann had gotten him into real trouble.
“We got to get a statement from this guy, even if he lies,” Morgan said. “You have to expect that he’s going to lie, but you have to nail him down and stake him out.”
Again, it still wasn’t officially Morgan’s case. But as luck would have it, he was on duty that week, and Captain Overman needed a supervisor to oversee a search of Willard’s home. This is how Morgan says he got “pulled into the investigation through no fault of his own.” But it wasn’t like he put up a fight.
Detective Randy Miller drew up a search warrant in order to obtain legal probable cause from a judge to enter Willard’s home. At the same time, Morgan was strategizing about how to approach Willard. Even more of a concern was knowing that as soon as the search warrant was returned to the Wake County Magistrate’s Office, the media would get a hold of it. Key details of the case that investigators had been keeping under wraps for several weeks would suddenly become part of the public record.
This thought would stick with Morgan for years like gum that he couldn’t scrape off the bottom of his shoe. He knew that a talented local newspaper reporter for the News and Observer, Oren Dorell, was a well-known “search-warrant grazer,” who would find the information and put it on the front page of the newspaper above the fold for everyone to see.
The search warrant contained information about the bowling outing, what was thought to be arsenic in the beer, and the romantic relationship between Ann and Willard. Specifically, it stated that the two other men at the bowling alley that night saw Willard purchase the beer and pour cups for everyone with the exception of one man who did not drink. This meant that the cup of beer that Eric drank from went directly from Willard’s hands to Eric’s lips. While the warrant didn’t spell it out, the obvious conclusion that anyone reading the warrant would draw was that Willard must have put the arsenic in Eric’s beer.
Based on this information, Morgan wanted to arrest Willard for attempted murder. It occurred to Morgan that if the police had enough probable cause to search Willard’s home, they had enough probable cause to arrest him. In fact, Morgan considered this the right thing to do. It would put Willard where they wanted and needed him—behind bars, in their custody, and hopefully willing to bargain for his freedom with the truth. But again, his wishes fell on deaf ears. Morgan says the assistant Wake County district attorney handling the case, Tom Ford, did not believe there was enough evidence to charge Willard and that a premature arrest could irrevocably damage the case.
“To say that I perceived Tom Ford as a developing problem in this case is a huge understatement. I mean Tom Ford was the problem in this case initially,” states Morgan.
Investigators in Wake County were used to working closely with prosecutors. With few exceptions, cops didn’t make arrests in serious cases without the approval of the district attorney. Prosecutors also had a different standard; probable cause wasn’t enough. Before an arrest in a high-profile case, they wanted to make sure there was enough to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt in front of a jury. Morgan didn’t always like the process, but he understood how it worked and had come to accept it. M
organ was beginning to worry that a case might never be made against anyone in Eric Miller’s death.
Morgan believes that part of Ford’s reluctance stemmed from having difficulty dealing with the medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Clark, who seemed to be perpetually putting Ford off. Clark was in charge of Eric’s autopsy, and would be the key witness if the case ever went to trial. Dr. Clark would be the one to testify as to Eric’s cause of death. But at this point, Morgan says, neither investigators, nor Ford and his colleagues at the D.A.’s office, had been able to get straight answers from the medical examiner.
“He [Clark] played with them, he put them off. And Jeff [Fluck] and even more so Tom Ford could not believe he was actually treating them this way,” Morgan said. “I’ve dealt with Clark before and I knew how he was. The thing is he likes to play that game. He likes to make sure that you know he’s smarter than you are, which you know in my case, I was perfectly willing to admit.”
Morgan says Ford was not as willing to play Clark’s game, and as a result, a standoff that almost derailed the investigation occurred early on.
In Morgan’s mind everyone, but especially Tom Ford, was approaching the case from the perspective of the legal hurdles it would pose down the road.
“You can’t investigate homicides on that basis,” Morgan says indignantly. “The investigation of killing another human being has a rhythm of its own and . . . it can’t be neatly categorized.”
Morgan says that’s why veteran investigators are needed to peel through the layers of a homicide case as opposed to “slick-sleeved rookies” who don’t have the blood on their hands that comes from years of turning over dead bodies.
Morgan asked the question even though he knew what the answer would be. “Can’t we go ahead and lock this guy up, let the chips fall?”
Under North Carolina law, officers have the right to arrest anyone if they believe there is probable cause to do so, but this doesn’t mean they do it without the prosecutor’s permission. Morgan has looked back on this decision countless times and wondered what if? What if they had arrested Willard? Would things have turned out differently?
It’s a question that’s haunted Morgan probably more than any other he asked himself during the entire course of the investigation. It’s a question he still asks himself on a regular basis years later. But like a good soldier he followed orders and went to Willard’s house with only a search warrant, without an arrest warrant in hand.
“I better go with the flow and do things as I’ve been instructed to do,” says Morgan of his thought process at the time. A thought process that he later deduced was fatally flawed.
THE APPROACH
On Sunday morning January 21, 2001, all the investigators involved in the operation to confront Derril Willard met at the police station. Sergeant Fluck and Lieutenant Britt had returned to town and were told by Captain Overman that the search would take place regardless of whether or not everyone agreed it was the right course of action at this point. As a result of this perceived usurping of their power, there was a palpable feeling of tension in the air, recalls Morgan.
The plan was for Morgan and Detective Brad Kennon to head to Willard’s house in North Raleigh with a team of investigators to execute the search warrant. Morgan had handpicked Kennon, one of his best detectives, to help him on this mission. Two other investigators would head to the Miller house and speak to Eric’s family about what was going to happen. This move was in preparation for the fact that much of the information in the case was about to become public record as soon as the search warrant was filed, and the police did not want the Millers to be blindsided by headlines the next day.
Although it had a Raleigh mailing address, Willard’s house was in the county, not in the city limits. This meant that the Wake County Sheriff’s Office had jurisdiction and that a deputy would have to assist in the execution of the warrant. The latter official stationed himself down the street from the house while Morgan and Kennon pulled up in their car. It was an unmarked Crown Victoria, but they were unmistakably cops coming to call on Derril Willard.
Willard answered the door with his two-and-a-half-year -old daughter, Kelcey, wrapped around his leg. Kelcey had bright blue eyes and white-blond hair, and it was easy for Morgan to see even in that brief moment as the door opened that Willard and his daughter were closely bonded.
“She was just a little angel terribly intimidated by my large rotund self standing at the door,” Morgan says with a somber touch of humor.
Kelcey wasn’t the only one who was intimidated. Morgan saw something in Willard’s eyes, something he will never forget, and something he now wishes he had paid more attention to at the time. Not unlike the detectives who interviewed Ann Miller that one and only time, Morgan never realized he would get only this one crack at Willard.
“He had the look, very much, of a man who expected to be handcuffed and taken to jail. And I’ve often looked back and thought in retrospect, what would have happened in this case if I had followed my first instinct, if I had not been afraid of starting a firestorm?” Morgan says. “Because I think he was starting, for lack of a better term, [to] wake up and smell the coffee. I agree arresting Derril Willard that morning would have been pushing the envelope, but I still believe in my heart of hearts it would have gotten a positive result.”
But as Morgan hadn’t been given the authority to arrest him, even if Willard had offered his wrists to be handcuffed and said he was ready to go, there would have been nothing Morgan could have done.
So instead of making an arrest, Morgan explained to Willard that they needed to search the house, but first they wanted to have a word with him alone in the Crown Vic. Morgan specifically told Willard that they needed to speak with him out of the presence of his wife. Willard asked no questions about why they were there, or what they wanted to talk to him about, because surely he knew. He had been expecting them for some time.
Morgan pictured Willard in the days following Eric’s death peeking out through his blinds to see if an unmarked police car was sitting in front of his house. He imagined Willard readjusting his rearview mirror every time he saw a blue-and-white pull in behind him on the highway, wondering if this was it. Would the cop turn on his lights and pull him over and say, “You’re the guy we’ve been looking for. Ann Miller told us all about you”?
Another person who proabably had been expecting the police was Willard’s wife, Yvette. Seconds after Morgan and Kennon arrived at the door, Yvette joined her husband in the front hallway. She stood behind him and listened as Morgan explained their intentions. Investigators would later learn that Willard had already told his wife about his relationship with Ann Miller—on December 7, 2000, just five days after Eric Miller’s death. Morgan suspected that Yvette Willard also thought he might lead her husband away in handcuffs.
Willard appeared unsure whether he would be returning home. He looked anxious, pained, like a man who was carrying a very large burden on his shoulders. He asked Morgan if he would be coming back after the chat in the car. Morgan assured him that he didn’t need to take his toothbrush with him, not yet.
Morgan claims Derril Willard was exactly what he’d pictured a midlevel researcher for a big pharmaceutical company would look like. Willard was pale, with tousled brown hair and a scraggly graying beard, an intellectual type. He wasn’t the sort of guy Morgan would probably go fishing or share a beer with, but he immediately pegged Willard as a good guy who had become tangled up in something much bigger than himself, something he had no control of.
Morgan had done his research—Derril and Yvette Willard had their only child later in life than is usual, after Yvette turned forty. The stress of work combined with the energy drain of having a young child at a mature age had taken its toll on the couple. It was clear to Morgan even before it was ever confirmed that Yvette Willard already knew something about her husband’s relationship with Ann Miller when she came to the door that day.
Willard agreed to go to the car with M
organ. He was ushered into the backseat as Morgan took his spot in the front passenger seat and then turned around to look the man in the eyes. Morgan had rehearsed this meeting many times over the previous forty-eight hours, yet what he had planned to say didn’t seem right at that moment. Instead, he went off script and said the first thing that came to his mind.
“I said, ‘Derril, you’ve been used,’ ” Morgan recalls. “ ‘I think you’ve been used by a woman.’ Derril looked directly into my eyes and said, ‘Yeah, and she’s done a good job of it.’ ”
And then came the words every investigator dreads to hear. Derril Willard told Morgan that he could not say anything more until he talked to his attorney. Just as Sergeant Jeff Fluck had predicted, Willard had “lawyered up” and nothing else was coming out of him. As if that was not bad enough, Willard told Morgan that Rick Gammon was his attorney—another high-profile, high-priced, criminal defense attorney in Raleigh. He was a former Raleigh cop who was still admired for being able to straddle the thin blue line even as a very capable and well-respected defense attorney. Morgan and Gammon had been friends on the street when they were young beat cops on patrol. Morgan knew that Gammon wouldn’t let Willard talk to them about what he had for breakfast, let alone about his love affair with Ann Miller. Gammon would protect his client at all costs.