Crime Beat

by Michael Connelly

  Dorothy Miller said she met David Miller in Granada Hills in 1979. The recently divorced owner of a hair salon was raising two young boys and after she met Miller in an attorney’s office, a romance began.

  Dorothy Miller said her future husband told her that he had been divorced once and had just moved to the Valley from the Washington area where he had held government jobs, including being an aide in the Nixon Administration. He was raised in Sardis, Ohio, and wore an Ohio University ring. University officials last week confirmed that he attended the school but refused to reveal other information until Miller cleared up financial obligations to the school.

  Within six months, the couple moved in together and later bought a house on Aldea Avenue in Granada Hills. They weren’t formally married until Aug. 11, 1985, when they drove to Las Vegas and were wed in a roadside chapel. Dorothy Miller still has the marriage license. She says there was never any divorce.

  As a Valley-based lobbyist, David Miller initially specialized in representing the printing industry on state legislative issues. In 1987, his reputation as a lobbyist landed him a job as a legislative aide to Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), but McClintock said he fired Miller after six months because of unexplained absences and poor performance. Miller then opened an office called David Miller & Associates in the same building that housed the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce.

  His firm expanded to include developers as clients, and civic activities had him involved in chamber functions. He served a term as president of the chamber and then as president of the United Chambers of Commerce, an umbrella organization for 20 Valley chambers.

  Those who know Miller described him as a name-dropper who drove a Jaguar and stayed at first-class hotels while traveling. He took clients and business acquaintances out for pricey meals and picked up the tabs. Some said Miller told them he was an attorney, though there is no record of him as a member of the California Bar.

  “He was so good at stories,” said a businesswoman who knew Miller for years but who didn’t want to be identified. “They would get long and complicated. He could tell wonderful stories, but there was always the feeling that that’s what they were, stories.”

  It was unclear why Miller kept his wife away from his business and social interests. Dorothy Miller said that the story her husband told her was that the life he led in California was a front.

  His real work, he said, was for the CIA.

  “From the day I met him, he always told me CIA stories,” she said in a recent interview from Belle Vernon, Pa., where she now lives. “He told me it was freelance work. He was always involved in international incidents. Whatever was in the news.”

  Though admittedly embarrassed now, Dorothy Miller said she believed her husband. And there was some evidence that he was traveling abroad. He often brought back souvenirs from foreign countries and there were calls home that were put through by Spanish-speaking operators.

  Sometimes, he told her of international events that she saw on the news. Sometimes, he told her of events that never hit the news—like the time he came home with a cut leg and said he had been grazed by a bullet.

  “It was convincing,” she said. “He could explain enough and include enough details to make it believable. When I had questions he just told me I would have to trust him on it. He told me that a lot.”

  Dorothy Miller said she met few of the people her husband did business with in the Valley and never once set foot in the office because her husband said it would be a security risk. He explained that the business was a CIA front set up to trap a target in a web of unspecified international crime.

  But the trap was apparently never sprung. In 1989, David Miller moved his wife and her two sons to Orlando, Fla. She said he explained that he was closing the California office and selling their house because the family could be in danger.

  “He said it was for security reasons,” Dorothy Miller said. “He said, ‘You have to trust me.’”

  The Millers bought a new house in Orlando and Dorothy got a job at a local hair salon. She said her husband continued to travel, coming home for only a few days at a time and always regaling her with tales of international intrigue.

  What Dorothy Miller did not know was that her husband did not close his Granada Hills office and continued to live in the home they had shared there. And while it is unknown where all of his travels took him, it is clear his business and civic activities in the Valley continued until at least early this year.

  Business acquaintances said that until early this year Miller was heavily involved in establishing the San Fernando Valley Leadership Program, a 10-month seminar in which citizen activists and business and government officials spend one day a month learning about and discussing an issue of public importance, such as environmental health, transportation or crime.

  Participants in the program, sometimes numbering as many as 30, each paid $700 tuition when it was first instituted by Miller in 1987. The program, deemed a success by alumni such as Richard Alarcon, now Valley deputy for Mayor Tom Bradley, has been repeated every year since and the tuition has risen to $1,200. Inspired by its success, Miller & Associates began efforts to market the concept in other communities across the country.

  Heavily involved in the program and also anticipating an increase in his company’s lobbying and business consulting clients, Miller added Ross B. Hopkins, a former public affairs manager for Lockheed Corp., to his firm in November.

  But the anticipated boom went bust, Hopkins said.

  “He overextended,” Hopkins said in an interview. “He counted on some contracts coming in that didn’t come in.”

  Meantime, older sources of revenue—developments on which Miller had consulted—dried up as the work was finished and the contracts completed, Hopkins said. By early 1991, Miller was facing severe financial problems.

  One creditor was Jacklyn Smith, owner of a Glendora firm that sells supplies to printing companies. Smith said she had given Miller, whom she had known for several years, a $17,000 loan that he repaid in January with a check that bounced. He then supplied another check from another bank, which also bounced, she said.

  Smith later made a complaint to Los Angeles police, and investigators are attempting to determine if Miller committed fraud by giving her the checks knowing that they would not be covered by his banks.

  Marge Russo, owner of a Reseda real-estate agency, said that she loaned Miller $6,500 for the purchase of a Palm Springs condominium, but that he also failed to pay her back. She has since filed a lien against him.

  According to records with the county recorder’s office, Miller stopped making mortgage payments on his home and foreclosure proceedings had begun. Records also show his company failed to make at least $4,500 in tax payments to the state.

  There were other debts as well. Hopkins said Miller stopped paying him and other employees soon after the start of the year. He said that on at least two occasions people came into the office looking for Miller and saying he owed them money.

  But after the first of the year, Miller was rarely in the office to greet clients or creditors. While his financial world was crumbling, his personal life was apparently quite active.

  Dorothy Miller said her husband spent the Christmas holidays in Orlando with her, but on Jan. 1 said he had to leave on a secret government assignment to South America.

  But acquaintances said Miller actually flew back to his life in California. And while on the plane he met 33-year-old Jayne Maghy, a divorced mother, with whom a romance blossomed as soon as the plane touched down in Los Angeles.

  According to Jodie Bowen, who describes herself as Maghy’s best friend of 10 years, Miller “wined and dined” Maghy, boasting that he was an attorney worth $4 million. There were front-row seats to The Phantom of the Opera, weekends at expensive bed-and-breakfast inns in Newport Beach, dinners at formal political functions.

  “He was Prince Charming,” Bowen said. “We had to go out and buy gowns for her so she co
uld go to some of these functions with him. And he was obsessed with her. He called her every day. She was not happy with her job and thought, ‘Here is someone who can take me away from this life.’”

  Miller and Maghy were married Feb. 16 in a Las Vegas chapel. Bowen was the witness and that weekend the new Mrs. Miller won $3,000 playing video poker, a lucky start to what would be an ill-fated marriage.

  David Miller did not keep the marriage a secret. Before the wedding, he had announced the marriage plans at a Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce dinner and after taking the vows he promptly called his associates from Las Vegas.

  “It had been difficult getting a hold of him,” Hopkins, his former associate, said of the period. “He was not in the office and I thought he was out trying to round up clients. Then he called and said, ‘Guess what? We’re married.’”

  A group of friends and associates gathered at Miller’s office on March 1 for a small reception for the couple. Hopkins said the happiness exhibited for the Millers was tinged with somberness. Some of those toasting Miller had not been paid by him in a month.

  “I felt very bad for the staff because they were having problems and here the guy was getting married,” Hopkins said.

  At least one of Miller’s friends believes that some people who knew him were uneasy about his marriage because his financial problems were becoming known. There were also rumors that he was already married.

  “The joke was that he wanted to marry her quick, before she found out the truth about him,” said a woman who worked with Miller on Chamber of Commerce projects. “Everybody knew he didn’t have any money. And I think some people specifically knew he was already married.”

  After the marriage, Miller’s financial problems quickly escalated, according to financial records and acquaintances. Business associates and creditors said it was increasingly difficult to contact Miller and recalled that in the instances where he was seen, he often became emotionally upset. Miller alternately explained that he was facing financial crisis or said he had cancer.

  Alarcon, Mayor Bradley’s Valley deputy, said that at a meeting of representatives of Valley political officeholders Miller tearfully announced that the Leadership Program would be his legacy in the Valley.

  “When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he had cancer,” Alarcon said.

  John Dyer, a business consultant who subcontracted with Miller to share office space with him, said that on the occasions that Miller did come to the office, his moods changed noticeably.

  “I think it was obvious to everyone who saw him that his state of mind had changed—changed considerably,” Dyer said. “He would have times of anger—open outbursts. And sometimes, he was open, his friendly old self.”

  Miller was finally forced to close his office April 18, Hopkins said. Faced with foreclosure and liens for unpaid debts, he and his new wife signed ownership of the Granada Hills house over to a bail bondsman named Bert Hopper on May 7, according to county records.

  The mortgage foreclosure was withdrawn, but other debt holders said they never got their money. Hopper did not return repeated phone calls for comment on the house transfer.

  Miller then moved his new wife to Sanford, Fla., a small town outside Orlando. Dorothy Miller said that by this time her husband had already moved her from Orlando to Belle Vernon, Pa., once again telling her that the move was required as a security precaution.

  But after making the move, Dorothy Miller said her husband stopped his routine of calling her every day. He also stopped making even infrequent visits home and she had no idea where he was. She said years of building suspicion finally got to her and she began making calls.

  First, she said, the CIA told her David Miller was not an employee, freelance or otherwise. Next, calls to Chamber of Commerce officials in the Valley revealed that her husband had been active in the area until only a few months earlier—until he had gotten married.

  “I thought, ‘That’s funny, since I already am his wife,’” Dorothy Miller said. “But nobody knew about me there. They thought I was a crazy woman.”

  Dorothy Miller said that when her husband did finally telephone her in midsummer, she confronted him and he admitted that he had remarried. She said she cut off all communication with him and asked the police in Belle Vernon to investigate.

  Meantime, David Miller had taken his new wife and her parents to Europe in June despite his financial burdens. It is unclear how he paid for the trip. Vince Bertolini, also a former United Chambers of Commerce president who had worked with Miller, said he happened to run into his old friend June 26 in the lobby of a hotel in Rome.

  “It was very strange,” Bertolini said. “He told me he was representing the Kuwaiti government, resolving issues from the Persian Gulf War. It was kind of off the wall.”

  Bertolini said Miller also acknowledged that he was having financial difficulties and said the experience taught him that “you really know who your friends are.”

  After returning from Europe, the marriage of David and Jayne Miller foundered. Police said the two separated after repeated fights and each sought restraining orders against the other. Jayne Miller said in court documents that her husband had repeatedly threatened to kill her.

  Suspicious of her husband’s dealings and debts, Jayne Miller next hired private detective Bob Brown to make inquiries. Brown said Jayne Miller told him her husband had claimed to be a tax attorney in California who moved to Florida to work at Disney World.

  Brown made routine computer checks and found David Miller’s name linked with the name Dorothy Miller on car and house titles and tax rolls. He found no record of the couple being divorced.

  “I told Jayne that it looked like this guy already had a wife,” Brown said. “It looks like he had two houses, one here and one in California. He had evidently been commuting back and forth between wives.”

  Using Brown’s information and old phone records left behind by her husband, Jayne Miller tracked down Dorothy Miller in Pennsylvania and the two confirmed each other’s existence. Dorothy Miller said Jayne Miller told her that she was determined to confront their shared husband and expose him by going to the media with the story of the high-profile bigamist.

  “I told her he was dangerous and warned her to stay away from him,” Dorothy Miller said.

  Brown said he gave his client the same warning. And her friend Bowen sent her a plane ticket so that she could move back to California.

  But Jayne Miller would never take the flight. On Sept. 15, according to Sanford police records, Jayne Miller called her husband and told him she was removing his property from a self-storage locker and that he would have to come and pick it up.

  Brown believes his client planned to empty her husband’s property out of the locker and then leave before he arrived. She may also have felt less fear of her husband because a month earlier she had insisted that he turn a handgun he owned over to police for safekeeping and he had agreed to do so.

  However, Jayne Miller was still at the storage facility when her husband arrived. According to police, the couple began arguing about Miller’s other wife and he struck Jayne Miller in the face. When she walked to her car, saying she was going to call the police, David Miller calmly walked back to his car and got a handgun, police said.

  Miller walked up to his wife’s car and fired six times through the driver’s side window at her, police said. He then walked around to the other side of the car and fired once more into the car, police said. Two cabdrivers who had been called by David Miller to help him take away his belongings said they witnessed the shooting and tried to aid Jayne Miller, but she was dead. They also held her husband and the gun until police arrived.

  Sanford Police Chief Steven Harriett said the gun Miller used to kill his wife was the weapon he had checked in at the police station Aug. 27 for safekeeping. However, Miller had reclaimed the weapon three days later. Harriett said the department had no authority to keep the gun from him. “We had no basis to know what he was g
oing to do with it,” the police chief said.

  Brown said he doubted his client knew her husband had retrieved the gun before going to the storage locker.

  “She would never have gone there if she knew he had the gun back,” he said. “She made a mistake and paid for it.”

  Harriett said that while his investigators are aware of the accusations of bigamy and fraud surrounding Miller, they are not actively investigating the suspect’s activities before the killing. “It’s interesting and intriguing, but not pertinent to our case,” he said.

  Some who knew Miller believe that more will remain unknown about him than what is known.

  “It’s so frustrating,” said Dorothy Miller, who is now living on welfare. “David did a lot of things nobody can explain or that they thought he would never have been able to do. . . . He’s a bad person and what he did wasn’t right.”

  There is also at least some frustration and guilt in the Valley. The woman who worked with David Miller on Chamber of Commerce functions said she believes that there are many who knew him who now wish they had voiced suspicions about his previous marriage and financial problems.

  “I firmly believe that all of us knew it, but nobody wanted to take responsibility,” she said. “No one wants to be connected with it now. They just say he was a nice guy and they are shocked. Nobody wants to open up and say we should have told poor Jayne.”

  NOTE: A Florida jury later rejected David Russell Miller’s insanity defense and found him guilty of murdering his wife. He was sentenced to life in prison.

  THE STALKER

  MAN CHARGED IN 1982 DEATH ALLEGES POLICE VENDETTA

  LOS ANGELES TIMES

  February 25, 1991

  JONATHAN KARL LUNDH says he feels like a character in a suspense novel—an innocent man accused of a heinous crime and left to use his own wits to clear himself.

  “It’s like a cheap dime-store novel—I can’t believe what they are doing to me,” Lundh said from behind the bars of Los Angeles County Jail.