Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Cat & Mouse

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

The death of Alma Napier was ruled an accident when her car was discovered overturned and smoldering one night in 1980. It would remain a closed case, until 1998 when two women help uncover that Alma���s death involved foul play and her murderer is on the loose. Check out our great sponsors! DON’T MISS VH1’S MY TRUE CRIME STORY - NARRATED BY REMY MA! ONLY ON VH1. CATCH UP ON DEMAND. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive! SimpliSafe: Claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off with Interactive Monitoring at SimpliSafe.com/coldcase   June's Journey: Download June’s Journey today! Available on Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as on PC through Facebook Games!

This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment. Alma Napier was 40 in March of 1980. She lived in a small town in California, population 6,000. It was small, but that didn't stop the people living there from going out and having fun. On March 25th, Alma went to a pub in the nearby town of Winchester. She didn't plan to drink, but she liked to play pool. The bar was busy all night into the early morning hours.

Alma had a disagreement with the bartender, and then another spat with a man she didn't know. They could have been arguing over the pool table. Or maybe he had too much to drink. Or it's possible he just gave her the creeps. No one knows for sure, because Alma didn't tell anyone else what they were arguing about. She couldn't, because that conversation was the last one she ever had.

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. At around 3 a.m. on March 26th, patrolman Steve Prolesnik was called to the scene of an accident on Highway 79. There was only one car, and it was still smoldering. It was on its roof, as I recall. It had been on fire. The female driver had been thrown loose from the accident. And just real dark, foggy, remote, and quiet.

Outside of the car, about 15 feet away, the driver was laying face down on the ground. Prolesnik checked her vital signs, but the woman was dead. He looked for identification, but the fire made it difficult. No ID or anything. And later on, with further checks, they got her name and address, Alma Napier, out of Nuevo area, which is locally here. I'm a good researcher, but I couldn't find Alma's obituary. I couldn't find any funeral arrangements. Nothing.

What I did find was a two-sentence mention in her local paper. The title was in large, bold letters. Car flips. Woman killed. They went on to say, she was thrown from her car when it overturned early Friday. Alma Napier was driving at Highway 79 in Benton Road at 3 a.m. when the accident occurred. That's it. That's the only public mention I could find about Alma's death. In the police file, her autopsy showed no signs of alcohol, but that didn't stop her death

from being ruled an accident. It was late and dark, and she'd been coming home from a bar. It was sad, but not uncommon. The case was closed and filed under accidents, and effectively, forgotten. In 1996, a man named Richard Craig Miller, who went by Craig, was on parole. He was convicted in 1982 for molesting his stepdaughter. Agent Nakane, Miller's parole officer, felt like something was off.

He was too good, too perfect. I have been doing this job 28 years, and I have seen all kinds. And I just didn't feel it was all there. Something was missing. Craig Miller reported that he was living with his parents. So Agent Nakane scheduled a home visit. The room was too clean, too perfect.

The bed was immaculate. Acting on a hunch, Agent Nakane asked Miller to get him something from the other room. He had a plan. I just moved the bedspread and put the pen on top of the pillow and then covered the bedspread. And he came back. And then I said, everything's fine and dandy, and left.

A week later, the agent scheduled another visit, where he discovered his pen in the exact same place he had left it. Wherever Craig Miller had been sleeping, it wasn't in his own bed. You can't confront him, because if you confront him, he knows you are onto him and he's going to start covering his track. Nakane requested surveillance on Miller, and Special Agent Steve Utter was assigned the task. We followed him from town to town. He had a young male juvenile with him for some reason, which was a concern to us.

Once we completed the surveillance, we had enough violations based on his companion, the young juvenile male, and the fact that he was obviously living somewhere other than what he had registered. We had enough to arrest him for parole violations. In California, the parole violation could have been ruled a felony, Miller's third, meaning a mandatory life sentence. Instead, the judge only sentenced him to seven years for violating sex offender registry laws. But Agent Utter disagreed with that decision.

I felt that a life sentence in Craig Miller's case was appropriate, and I was very frustrated with the decision in the court. I looked at this guy's background, his psychological profile, his past offenses, and I felt that he was a very dangerous person. Agent Utter looked back through Miller's file, hoping to find something that might have been overlooked. Utter found a letter written by Miller's ex-wife, and also the mother of the girl he molested. She wrote a letter to the judge

trying to explain to him just how vicious Craig Miller is and that if any person deserves a life sentence, Craig Miller does. And it was when I reviewed that letter that I found information that implicated him in a homicide. Are you a fan of true crime? Then you have got to check out the Court Junkie podcast. Imagine being wrongly convicted for a crime you didn't commit. Or imagine your child's killer is still on the loose, even though there's enough evidence for an arrest. The Court Junkie podcast shines a light on the injustices of our judicial system

by delving into court documents, attending trials, and interviewing those closest to these cases. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Podcast One, Apple Podcasts, and many other podcast apps, so you can get new episodes every week. It was a five or six page letter, and the first four or five pages detailed his abuses of Barbara. His physical abuse, his sexual abuse, his emotional abuse. And then as an attachment to that letter, there was a one page description of a homicide that Craig Miller had told her he had committed. Agent Utter found and contacted Barbara to discuss the possible homicide. He said that he had run across my letter and that he felt like Craig Miller was capable of doing what I had said.

Barbara told Utter the reason she believed that her ex-husband had committed murder. The story started 18 years earlier, in 1980. Barbara had fallen in love with Craig Miller. He was just real easygoing and seemed very loving, and it was just an act. Shortly after the couple was married, the act stopped, and the abuse began. He would just randomly, just out of the blue, attack me. I've had him come home and strangle me until I was unconscious. And when I came to, I was laying on the floor,

and he stood over me, laughing was unconscious. And when I came to, I was laying on the floor, and he stood over me, laughing hysterically. And he said he knew he had to quit when my eyeballs and tongue were popping out. The abuse wasn't just physical. It was mental and emotional. One day, Miller showed Barbara a gun and loaded it in front of her. It was a.357 revolver and he put three bullets in it, one in every other hole, and he stuck it right here in my face and I could see him pull the hammer back. And I closed my eyes and then I heard it click. He would laugh and say things like, he could kill me and get away with it and no one would ever know. And then that's when he started talking and he said,

well, I killed this woman and everybody thinks it was an accident. Barbara said that while pointing the gun at her, Miller continued to tell her about his crime. The night he left a bar and followed a woman in his truck. He said he followed her ramming her car until she ran off the road. And he said that the car flipped and he got out. And what he told me was he went up to the car and she had her arm hanging out saying help me help me and he reached in his pocket took out his cigarette lighter and he goes like that

and lit it. According to Barbara there was another woman in his truck with him. She worked at the bar. This is Agent Utter. He gave her the name of someone who was there with him. She worked at the bar. This is Agent Utter. He gave her the name of someone who was there with him. Just a first name and described her as a barmaid at the Winchester Inn. She wasn't familiar with Linda, but she did remember the first name. Barbara was understandably afraid for her own life. She also wasn't sure if her husband was just trying to intimidate her or if he really had committed murder. Barbara decided not to go to the police. She tried to leave Miller shortly after, but he found her.

Here's Barbara again. He took me to his grandmother's mobile home in Yucaipa, where he held me. For three days, Miller beat and raped Barbara. I was sitting there at the table, already afraid for my life, when I happened to glance down, and I noticed this paper, and I remember that the paper was old. So it was obvious that there was something that, you know, somebody had been saving. And then I glanced down, and I saw this article,

and it described everything that he said he had done to this woman. The area, her age, the car ran off the road and caught fire, I mean the whole thing and I knew, I knew then he did it. He really did do it. Agent Utter searched through archives of old newspapers. I got down to April 1st and there was a small one and a half line entry in there that seemed similar to what she described for me. I gave that information to the staff there at the newspaper and they pulled the microfiche for me and I took a look at the article and it was the most similar thing I could find. Utter believed Craig Miller had killed Alma Napier, but he needed

to find the woman who might have been called Linda. He decided to start at the Winchester Inn, the bar where he believed she had worked. The former owner was able to give him a name, Linda Parrott. When Utter runs a background check on Linda, he discovers she does have a history with the law. Linda's daughter had been murdered, and she was a witness in the case. The first thing I did, since I knew her daughter was the victim of a homicide, I went to the Crimes Against Persons Bureau with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, and I contacted Detective Bob Creed, who was handling that investigation. This is Agent Bob Creed.

We felt that this may be a good time to approach her, just because of the situation that she was in. She was dealing with the murder of her daughter. That was her mindset. And then we had this murder from years ago. And this may help Steve with his interview. On May 22, 1998, Utter, Creed, and District Attorney Levine all sat down for an interview with Linda. I'm here about another investigation we're conducting. I'm looking into something that happened a long time ago. Okay, we need to go way, way, way, way back to 1980, to when you were a waitress at the Winchester Inn. Bartender.

Bartender. And this particular incident happened in March of 1980. It resulted in the death of a woman. Is this sounding any more familiar to you? Yes. Linda had kept Craig Miller's secret for so long, it practically burst out of her. I don't remember if he mentioned car accident or I had mentioned something about a car accident,

but anyway, the word car accident, and I knew. Tell you exactly what happened. I mean, I'm brain dead, but I'm not that brain dead. Craig Miller. And then I said, Craig Miller, because that was the name, that was the one thing that had stuck with me for 18 years, was that name. It was March 25th, 1980. Linda met a woman she didn't know playing pool at the Winchester Inn. She didn't like the way I was shooting pool. In other words, she was getting beat and she was getting upset over it.

And she kept at me, at me, at me about the pool game. And it's like, you know, I don't really want to get into a fight tonight. So I just left the table and went back up to the bar. Miller had been at the bar with his friend Mark Ackerman. They had a few more beers and then decided to leave. Linda got into Craig Miller's truck and Ackerman got into his own car. Both cars pulled onto Highway 79 toward Ackerman's house. As we were going up Simpson Road, we noticed that somebody was behind us with their headlights off. So Craig went on up the road and he flipped a U-turn to where his headlights were shining on the car and we saw it was her. Alma Napier was her.

The three cars pulled out onto the highway. Ackerman pulled in front of Alma's car, and Craig Miller followed her closely behind. Linda didn't know what to do. He just started hitting the back end of her car, but their speeds were staying, like, even. So no matter how fast she went, he stayed right behind her and just kept tapping the back end of her car. For five miles, Miller continued to bump into Alma's car with his truck. According to Linda, his behavior appeared to be escalating. And after she got in front of him, then you could see the adrenaline pumping.

I could see the veins in the side of his neck just throbbing. And that's when it became intense, because it was like, well, who in the hell does she think she is? The three cars were heading for a dip in the highway and a sharp right curve where Miller rammed Alma's car one last time. When he hit the car, all I saw was her fly over to the right side of the road. She hit the dirt, and you could just see the car just flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping.

Miller pulled over, and he and Linda walked down to the ditch where Alma's car landed. It smelled like gas, and Craig Miller took out his lighter and tossed it into the car. All of a sudden, the inside of the car just went foof, just went into a ball of flame. And when it did that, I turned my head this way, and when I turned my head to the left, I saw Alma laying over in the dirt. Linda tried to check Alma for a pulse, but Miller dragged her back to the truck and drove away, leaving Alma lying in the field. Linda and Barbara's accounts

were almost exactly the same, which made for a compelling case. Craig Miller was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He was found guilty and given a sentence of 15 years to life. Barbara still has emotional scars caused by Craig Miller that will always be a part of her.

I feel better that he's off the street. He doesn't belong on the street because any time he's on the street, he's going to hurt somebody. As far as justice, you can't take back the things he's done. You can't fix any of the damage that he's done. You can't bring back the murder victim. So, in my mind, it's not justice. Linda Parrott also felt little relief or closure from Miller's conviction.

Is it over with? No, I don't feel that it's over with. Not as far as I'm concerned. I can only speak for myself because I still deal with a lot of issues. I still deal with Craig and that night. You know, it's not something that just, it doesn't go away. So the longer you wait to tell somebody, the longer it takes to get over it. Agent Utter was thankful that Barbara and Linda were brave enough to share their experiences. So Craig Miller won't be able to hurt other women. Without Linda's statement, I would not have been able to corroborate Barbara's statement. Without the letter, none of this would have happened at all.

That letter got things started. I think there was a lot of bravery on the part of both Barbara and Linda to come forward and be honest. And I think those things combined and made that case. Craig Miller is currently incarcerated in the state of California. He was denied parole in 2014 and 2017. His next parole hearing is April 9th, 2020. This is our last regular episode of Cold Case Files until the summer, but make sure you check out next week's episode. It's something special that you won't want to miss.

Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me, at Brooke Giddings, on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. Thank you.