Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Beyond the Apocalypse - Bryan Patrick Miller's Horrific Crime Spree

Episode Date: August 13, 2023

Self-proclaimed 'Zombie Hunter', Bryan Patrick Miller is found guilty of kidnapping and murdering two young women. His victims, whose murders occur ten months apart from each other, are attacked while bicycling along a canal in Arizona; they are each fatally stabbed, their bodies horrifically mutilated, and each are sexually assaulted. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack weave the cultural phenomenon of the 'zombie apocalypse' into a compelling narrative about Miller, whose gruesome acts leave a long-lasting trauma on his victims and their families. Further unraveling the complex psychology behind Bryan Patrick Miller's actions, they discuss his involvement in the steampunk movement, the importance of forensic science in his eventual capture, and the crucial role forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick played in identifying Miller as the murderer. They explore the depths of Bryan Patrick Miller's criminal mind and offer a comprehensive look into this unsettling case and the far-reaching implications of his actions. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time-coded Highlights: 00:20 - Joseph Scott Morgan delves into the intriguing concept of the apocalypse, illuminating how this theme has penetrated various aspects of pop culture, and introduces the case of Bryan Patrick Miller, a man who self-identifies as the 'Zombie Hunter'. 02:40 - Dave Mack speaks of the cultural phenomenon known as the 'zombie apocalypse,' shedding light on how it affects people's behavior and mindset, while Joe Scott emphasizes the trauma inflicted on the victims and their loved ones by Miller's horrifying actions. 04:20 - Dave delves deeper into Miller's background, uncovering his ties to the steampunk movement, including details about the former police vehicle converted into a ‘Zombie Hunter mobile’. 08:20 - The dichotomy between Miller's bold behavior and the façade of safety projected by his public persona.  09:31 - Joseph Scott Morgan reflects on his experiences at the American Academy of Forensic Science meeting, emphasizing the need for multidisciplinary collaboration in solving complex cases and highlighting the value of pooling expertise across disciplines.  10:20 - Drawing a stark parallel between a mountain lion attack and Miller's predatory behavior, Joe Scott shares a chilling anecdote. Dave builds on the analogy, introducing poignant details about Miller's victims and recognizing the diligent police work that eventually led to Miller's capture. 13:28 - Joe Scott and Dave delve into the gruesome specifics of Angela Brosso's murder, linking it to the infamous Black Dahlia case.  16:20 - Discussion of the necessity of meticulous planning and discretion when committing crimes and how these elements facilitated Bryan Patrick Miller's evasion of the law, underscoring the significance of biological evidence left by Miller and outlining its crucial role in securing convictions. 19:00 - Details of the horrifying act of necrophilia committed by Miller, the damning evidence that led to his arrest, and an overview of the timeline of the crimes against Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas. 24:20 - The meticulous physical assessment conducted at the crime scene of Melanie Bernas and the manner in which forensic experts deduced the type of tool used and the depth of the wounds.  26:30 - Dave Mack discusses Bryan Patrick Miller's criminal history, including a previous stabbing incident and his time in a juvenile correctional facility. 32:03 - The spotlight turns to Colleen Fitzpatrick, whose expertise and passion in forensic genealogy was instrumental in narrowing down the suspect, and the role of modern science in solving such complex cases.  35:50 - The alarming possibility of more undiscovered victims given the boldness of Miller's criminal patterns.38:00 - Information about the conviction and sentencing of Bryan Patrick Miller. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I'm fascinated by the fact that there are so many people nowadays seemingly obsessed with the idea of the apocalypse. It baffles the mind. It really goes to an old idea about where your treasure is stored up. That thing that you've invested time in, I guess, in your mind. Really, it goes to an old idea about where your treasure is stored up. That thing that you've invested time in, I guess, in your mind.

Those moments that you sit around and you contemplate these things. And it's everywhere. You got it in video games and you even have people that do what's referred to as cosplay. And they are obsessed with it. As a matter of fact, by extension, that they will so embroidery their life, knit themselves together, if you will, with this idea, this persona that they create. Where you don't know where fact and fiction are separated. Today, we're going to talk about a fella that self-identified as somebody named the zombie hunter. He even rode around in an old unmarked police car with that written on it and it had been painted with bloodstains. We're going to be talking about the recent conviction and sentencing of Brian Patrick Miller.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave Mack, I spend a lot of time doing, let's see, how can I put this? Scratching my head. You sit back sometimes and you just think, what in the world is happening? And when this news kind of dropped about the recent conviction and sentencing of Brian Patrick Miller, I wanted to have a conversation with you about it today. Because I'm not going to say it beats everything I've ever seen, but it's kind of a very, very sad and tragic commentary, I think. The popularity of the zombie has been big for the last, I don't know, 15 years or so.

We've had TV shows, movies about zombies, the zombie apocalypse. If you look it up, you know, just do a quick Google search and you're going to see not only is there an entertainment factor of the whole zombie thing but there's also a real is wacko nut job a term a scientific term for what we're dealing with yeah you think about that and it kind of uh it goes to and i tried to tell my my students that i teach at jackville State and say, look, be very careful how you use the term crazy. Right. Because it kind of diminishes responsibility, I think, in one degree.

And then it doesn't really go to the heart of the issue. Because when you sit back, and particularly in this case with Miller, you kind of see how debased his worldview was and what terror and horror he kind of wrought people that were actually victims, these young ladies that were victims. You can see this as a death investigator out, you know, in forensics. When you go out to deal with family members, one of the things is it's one of those markers in life where you have everything that happened before and everything that happened afterwards. And these families are scarred forever and ever and ever by this guy's egocentric indulgence.

Brian Patrick Miller. I think it bears going into and realizing that while we have two murders, that's what he's accused of here and going to court and all that. Brian Patrick Miller. blood spatters on it well you know not real blood but fake blood and and it was his whole persona and actually he found himself in this character somehow and became part of the steampunk movement are you familiar with this at all steampunk yeah at least uh peripherally yeah steampunk it's a sub genre of science fiction that kind of think about Big Bang Theory for a minute, the TV show. And you have this show about these guys that are all about comic books and superheroes and the movies and all that. Steampunk takes, it's kind of from that same island, but it hops on a different boat and paddles a different direction. It takes this fantasy world and it begins incorporating cosplay, costume plays, and things like that, where they dress up in outfits that set them apart. If you can imagine a term, retro-futuristic,

they take this stuff from science fiction, and they fuse it together with 19th century outfits, machinery, industrial steam power. That's where the steampunk thing comes from. Brian Patrick Miller, he was very involved in the steampunk group in Phoenix for at least four years. And we know this because one of the guys who knew him as part of this group talks about him and talked about the kind of individual he was and what he liked to dress up. And he really took the dress up thing. That's where the zombie hunter came out of. It was part of his just dress up time, pretend. You know, anytime you have somebody, I think, that is developmentally stunted,

perhaps, it's an opportunity certainly to put on a mask. And you inhabit this environment and you become something totally different. You know, maybe your perception in life is that you don't have everything that's coming to you or I want to leave the old life behind and just for a moment I can inhabit this space and become something else. And one of the more disturbing things I saw about this, you mentioned the car. And the car is a former police vehicle. It's a sedan, a four-door sedan, as you can imagine. And things fitted with lights, Dave. And then it's got emblazoned on the trunk in particular. And the reason I say

it's emblazoned on the trunk, I've actually seen pictures of him at a couple of these conventions in Arizona and Phoenix where he's standing there and he's in his full regalia with a leather jacket on. He's got a gas mask on with an old helmet. Looks like maybe a French World War I helmet. And he's holding this kind of oddly configured weapon. You know, it's got multiple barrels that look like it would rotate or something like this. And he's standing there bearing ominous. But here's another piece to this. He was so emboldened. There are multiple images on the internet of him standing, having his picture taken with uniformed police officers that are providing security for this

event. I know a lot of people have pictures made with cops. That's part of the attraction of it. You know, you go down, our families had pictures made with New Orleans Police Department equestrian officers. You know, where there are beautiful animals there and you're standing next to them, you know, and those guys are smiling and we're smiling. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're guilty of anything. But I think that in retrospect, when you begin to look at what this behavior is that he engaged in, you begin to see a boldness about it. And maybe that boldness was, I don't know, facilitated or egged on by this cloak that he kind of threw around his shoulders

where you couldn't really see what lie underneath. Many years back, I was in attendance at the American Academy of Forensic Science meeting in a large city, which is where it happens. If you've never been, it's pretty amazing. You have forensic scientists from all disciplines that are there and you get together and you present papers and those sorts of things. And you can kind of walk in and out of these rooms and you can listen to what each one of these experts have to say about things they find of interest. I walked into a room one day at the conference and it was the odontology room, which is people that handle teeth,

you know, whether it's getting bodies identified or if it was back in the day relative to bite marks. And I walked in, and there was a forensic odontologist from out west that was speaking about arguably one of the most gruesome things that I'd ever seen. I saw the images from this. And it was images of a jogger out in Colorado, a young lady that parked her car in a parking lot. And she did her warmups, her leg stretches. She hops on the local running trail and proceeds to jog. And this trail kind of wound its way through this little park area and what she didn't know was that sitting up on a rock above this area that she was about to jog past was mountain line and that mountain line grabbed hold of her and did things that i can't even begin to describe

on the show and probably to add another layer of horror to this, there were two men that left about five minutes after she did. And when they got to that spot on that trail, there her lifeless body was, clenched in the teeth of this mountain lion. And he was ripping her to shreds right in front of these guys. Can you imagine the horror of that? In my estimation, Miller was kind of like that mountain lion because he victimized young ladies that were out riding their bikes. What we're talking about today, Brian Patrick Miller, the zombie hunter, he named himself that. He has two victims that we're dealing with. Two victims, two beautiful young women. Angela Brasso was 21 when she went missing, actually the day before her 22nd birthday. And Melanie Bernis was 17.

She was in high school. Their similarities, they both rode bicycles. Whether you're doing it for health, enjoyment, oftentimes the two are together, or you're competing for something. I mean, this is something a lot of people do in terms of staying healthy and enjoying. I was, I love riding a bike.

It's a fun thing to do, but in this case, both the women were by themselves at the time they came in contact with Miller. Now, Brian Patrick Miller called himself the zombie hunter was into steampunk created this whole persona. But you know what?

That came after the murders that he's accused of. Now, we're talking about 30 years ago. We're talking about in the early 90s. And police were able to collect evidence that even though they didn't really have a suspect, they had a broad net. But what they collected at the scene of the crime led to finding this guy. Angela Brasso left her home. She was living with her boyfriend, 21 years old, living in Phoenix. She goes for a bike ride around seven o'clock on a Sunday evening.

She doesn't return. Four and a half hours later, it's like 1130 at night. She was going to be back hours ago. Her boyfriend calls police. Now, you know, the first thing they're going to do is assume the boyfriend did something. That's just normal police procedure to look at the person they're closest to and starting with him. But it didn't last long because the next morning her naked decapitated body was found near the bike trail. Now, remember here, decapitated means her head had been removed from her body. And by the way, I read this line from the police report the first time because I thought they made a mistake. It said her abdomen and chest were cut open,

she was decapitated, and her head was missing. I got to tell you, I read the same thing, and you know what it made me think of immediately? It made me think of the Black Dahlia because that's what had occurred in that case that made it so very infamous. First off, they didn't know who she was, but you find a body, and I know this term

is normally associated with church, but her body was so desecrated. And I thought about this just for a moment, and I'm thinking, if you see something like this, is the killer living out some kind of fantasy in their mind? This is something that they're kind of acting out. And the Black Dahlia is, in true crime, It's up there in kind of the pantheon because they still don't know who did it. But people have always been aware of it. They've always been aware of it. And when I heard this, I was thinking, hmm, I wonder if that's where his mind was at the time. What would it take for somebody in this particular case?

You've got a healthy 21-year-old young woman on a bike, and she is attacked while riding the bike. Uh, by the way, her bike was missing. That was one of the sides of this is that her bike was missing. And so was her head. Her body was found without its head. Now they found her body the next day. So we know that she left for the bike ride around seven o'clock the night before. And when they find her body the next day, she has been abused. They say she was sexually assaulted either before, during or after she was dead. But for her to be found near that bike trail with the person who commits this crime, be able to do all that damage right there quickly. I'm trying to figure out how this could happen.

Did he take her someplace else, damage and bring her back? How did this happen and how could it happen that people didn't see it? Nobody saw this? The watchword for this is privacy. Privacy and then I think probably close second is preparedness. This is not something that someone would go into without having planned extensively. Because when you're talking about desecrating, I want to continue to use that word in our conversation. When you talk about desecrating remains where you're literally removing the head of a fellow human being and then desecrating the remainder of the body. One of the assessments that was done on her, and this kind of rings in my ears, is the fact that her body was almost completely transected, which means you have an incision, if you will, that runs from east to west

across the axis of the body. And that's not something that you would undertake and not have the ability to hide what you were doing. You know, first off, if you're going to, much like the story about the mountain lion, if you're going to snatch a young woman, who's obviously healthy, she's healthy enough to ride a bike, right? Off of a bike and avoid any kind of detection, then you're going to have to have privacy in order to facilitate this.

And not just privacy, Dave, but just to the point of attack, the killer would have to have very intimate knowledge of the location. What's going to be the choke point here? Where are you going to lay in wait to ambush her as she's riding the spike and you're going to knock her off of it and then get the upper hand on her? And to my way of thinking, an individual that would do this would have to be prepared not just with what you're going to do with the body, with the desecration part, but we're talking about sexual assault. And here's the key. With the sexual assault, you've got sample that has been left behind. So, do you kill the individual first? And I think that that's probably what happened in this particular case.

Essentially, a stabbing. That's how it starts. You incapacitate them to the point where they are now deceased. Now you can do anything that you want to with a body. We know that Miller is the perpetrator, so he's already living in this fantastical world, right? And so, he has the facility about him to continue out this fantasy. You drag this poor girl's body off to a location where you can facilitate this and have your way sexually with the body. So now we've entered into the space of necrophilia now, sex with the dead, and you're leaving a biological sample behind, which to your credit, you picked up on just a few moments ago, Dave, where you talked about the police held on to this for years. I mean, years.

You're talking about a 30-year gap here. This can be very fragile evidence, but they were able, and I think they were so resolute in their investigation where they knew how important this would be if they could collect anything off of her but you know it's within a month after he does this horrible act that he goes after melanie bernas actually the reality of the timeline is that when they found rosso's body her head was not there they found her head a week and a half later 11 days later and i was wondering if the zombie hunter held on to her head as a trophy or something in his freezer and then put it out for them to find. Or if they just didn't find it at first because it was found a little ways away from where her body was discovered. And this is important. You know, most of the time when I think of Phoenix, Phoenix in particular, because it's so bloody hot.

I love Phoenix. I love Arizona. I was there in the Army at Fuwachuca many, many moons ago when dinosaurs were on the earth. And I love Arizona. It is an absolutely beautiful place. But I don't normally associate water with that area. But this Arizona Canal actually did contain water. So you begin to think, was the water moving swiftly, you know, but this Arizona Canal actually did contain water. So, you begin to think,

was the water moving swiftly, you know, through this area? Was there some kind of release, you know, current release, you know, if they're using it as a drain or something like that, and it had migrated the head away from the body, and sometimes this will happen. Things kind of move along, and you're not necessarily going to find it, but, you know, that's very interesting. You know, you mentioned, are you holding on, you know, if you're thinking about the methodology here, if he is a trophy hunter, is he hanging on to the head in order to continue out this fantasy? And then maybe he just gets tired of it and disposes of it. And that's what I was wondering, because you mentioned how hot it is in Phoenix. I looked up the average temperature for this time of year in Phoenix,

and the temperature ranges from a high of like between 70 and 80 degrees, lows in the low to mid 60s. So it's very moderate temps in November in Phoenix. But again, that dry, also lacking humidity. Phoenix doesn't have much humidity. So we've got that. Now, we mentioned the second victim, Melanie Burness Abraso, being killed in September, or I mean November rather, of 92. Ten months later, second victim, Melanie Burness, is killed out on that same canal bike trail when it happened. And she was, the actual paperwork says, she was murdered with a knife. Police say that she was stabbed in the back and pulled off the bike. Now, her bike also was missing. She was attacked, sexually assaulted, and murdered with a knife. They found her body floating in the Arizona Canal near an interstate

overpass about a mile and a half from where they found Angela Brasso's remains 10 months earlier. Now, in this case, she was not decapitated, but her bike was missing. So, if he took the time to decapitate his first victim, do you think he either learned that that was a really difficult thing to do and to not do it again, or he was interrupted in the process? Yeah, I think that what you've got is you've got a, there is, you know, and they talk about this with serial perpetrators. You've got kind of a learning curve that goes on in a comfort level. They decide what they're going to do.

And there were so many stab wounds, which means that one wound attaches or connects to another and you can't really make heads or tails off it. You're fighting against the idea that this is so horrific and there might be some level of decomposition that's going on where it's hard to kind of separate one from another. But when you look at this precious 17 year old girl something different happened with her because when her remains were actually found and i don't know how many people really know about this a knife had been used to carve a cross into her chest. And not only had that occurred, but the initials WSC were carved into her body as well. And the police were never able to determine what WSC stood for. And I think that

when you find something like that at a scene, you're so compelled to go down that path. What kind of pattern can I recognize here? And it goes beyond just our physical assessment as to what kind of tool was used or how long did it take, how deep were the wounds, which is certainly something where they've done post-mortem or anti-mortem, you know, like in an individual being tortured. But it also goes to kind of forensically breaking down things like handwriting, for instance. And are there any commonalities in that location? Who's on my witness list here that might have a commonality with the letters WSC? Because that's a very specific marker. You scratch

your head over it. And it's very easy to get caught up in that that but sometimes it turns out to be a red herring The sheer horror that kind of inhabits the minds of those that may have lived in close proximity to the Arizona Canal. Man, there's no more peace to be found. And with Miller, this case remained unresolved for decades, Dave. When you sent me this story to look at, my first thought was, you're going to tell me that two women die under very similar circumstances and police are able to very early tell that the same attacker was involved in both, but they don't have a suspect? They don't have a suspect. You know that the person did both. You've got a general geography, geographically speaking, they're a mile and a half from one another in the same area. And it just was shocking. And that's why I pointed out that the detectives, those people on scene that collected evidence, they really did their job.

But now, again, it sat there for decades, unsolved, with people wondering, did the guy move on? Is he in jail? Or is he out there waiting and just getting away with stuff and we're not hearing about it? But we now know that when Brian Patrick Miller was 16 years old, this is May of 89, a couple of years before the first murder took place, he stabbed a 24-year-old woman. They were riding a bus together, didn't know one another, had never met before. They get at the Paradise Valley Mall there in Phoenix, and he stabs her in the back. He's charged, but he's the juvenile. He was convicted of aggravated assault, and he was imprisoned at Adobe Mountain Juvenile

Correctional Facility. While he was there, he became involved with a pastor who worked with the Paradise Valley Mennonite Church, and they had a prison ministry loving on young people who had committed heinous crimes, trying to show them that there's more to life than what you've done. Anyway, Miller becomes involved with the church and becomes deeply involved with the church after he is released from this juvenile facility. Because at 18, he's no longer a juvenile. They go to release him. And Joe, his mother rejects him. His mother will not take him.

She's no, you're not coming back. They had a bad relationship before, but she won't even take him back. And so the church, they took him in and he lived with a number of different members in the church. So think about this. We're talking about this young person going to juvenile for stabbing a woman he didn't know. He gets out. His mother says, you can't be with me. He kind of gets fostered out. Now he's supposedly an adult. In May of 1992, he's baptized in the church, baptized in the church baptized in the church and then what 120 days later he kills a woman yeah i was gonna say give me that day again he actually uh was baptized in may

of 92 and then commits his first well the first murder we know about, okay, happens in September of 1990. And that's where you think that maybe the cross came into play. I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. But we don't know. The only things we know are the things that we have heard about. I have a real deep feeling that there's a lot more that we need to find out about Brian Patrick Miller. But just starting with these two, I have questions about the deaths of both the women that he actually went to court over. And how, A, how come they couldn't solve this sooner? And B, how did they after years?

Case is cold, Joe. How do they solve a case? They have all the evidence collected in 1992 and 93. It's not like there's any more new evidence popping up at the crime scene. What was the difference between then and 2015 when they were able to make an arrest? Sometimes it's a matter, and as frustrating as this is, you have to wait for the technology to catch up. And this can be applied in a lot of, it's not just limited to DNA. There are a lot of other areas where in science, where we've had to allow technology to get

us to the point where we can explore new things and try to understand. You might suspect that there is something there. You've got these two young women, as you say, that are connected geographically. So, you know, you're fitting into a particular geographic profile. And then you've got methodology that you have to look at. You've got somebody that has a real interest in edged weapons here that go to, you know, we talked about the first victim where it seemed kind of frenzied. And I'm not talking about the young lady that he stabbed on the bus. But I am talking about the frenzied attack that you have with the first victim, and then you move on to the next victim where the individual is taking their

time. A matter of fact, taking their time to the point where they're using an edged weapon to carve an image of a cross, as you mentioned, and also initials into the body. You're on a completely different wavelength at that point in time. And so, you have all of that connection. Here's my thing. If you've got somebody that would be so bold in order to perpetrate these kinds of crimes, and you look back in time and see his attack on this woman on the bus. You think other victims out there, I think any right-thinking person would have to ask that question. Is there anybody else out there that they have not connected to him yet? So, the crux of this is the fact it was actually forensic genealogy that got this case solved. And in particular, I think probably historically, when we look at the history of

forensic science and where we are right now, have to wait for technology to catch up. Probably one of the giants in this field, Colleen Fitzpatrick, she lent a hand in this case because the police, they know, intuitively, you know that you got something here. Just can't seem to put the pieces back. And it just so happened that Colleen Fitzpatrick, who is in fact a forensic scientist that involves herself in forensic genealogy that works with, she's actually got a background in physics of all things, which is completely different than forensic genealogy, but it requires kind of a methodical approach to things. She was able to narrow the suspect field down based upon that evidence that they had collected

all those many years ago, Dave. When I was looking at this, there was an interesting moment that took place because it was a very cold case. And the detectives ended up going to a conference. It's at this exact same conference, Colleen Fitzpatrick. And they connected and said, can we send you some info? Can we send you this? We've got some DNA. Can you help? And she said, I'll try. And that's, I mean, happenstance. They were at the conference. A was in Phoenix. So, if this conference had taken place anywhere other than Phoenix, they wouldn't have been there. Yeah. And life is that way. And sometimes it happens that way. And it just so happened that the lives of these investigators that had this thing hanging on their books for a long time

that had remained, it wasn't cold for a long time that had remained. It wasn't cold to them. You know, people just kind of randomly throw out that term cold case many times. I apologize. That was really wrong for me to say because they were working it. No, I think a lot of people do. It is cold. Maybe tepid.

But it's still in your mind as an investigator. It's there. You're thinking about it, and it's very hard, I think, in the memory of an organization like a police department to forget cases like this, where you've got a decapitation, you've got bodies that have had, let's face it, words, images that are carved into them. And you don't want to forget that because it kind of stands out. And just as I spoke just a moment ago, for people involved in a case like this, you're thinking, look, this is happening here. Geographically, we have a profile, but has this extended out any further?

Is this occurring anywhere? And many people in the populace believe that, well, if I have captured DNA at a scene, automatically it's going to be solved. Well, here's the problem, the rub, as they say. It's like a latent print. You can grab as many latent prints at a scene that you want, but if you don't have anything to compare it to, it ain't worth the gunpowder to blow it to hell. And it's the same thing with DNA sample. If you don't have anything to compare it to, you've got a problem. And there's two separate categories of DNA. You have what's referred to as a forensic DNA database, which means you've got cases that are open out there. We've got a DNA sample.

We don't have a profile. And you have known. You have known offenders that have tiebacks and they've gotten samples on individuals, say that are sex offenders, where they've taken samples, they've married those up to items that they've collected at scenes, and they know those individuals. The problem is, is that with these two cases in Phoenix, you know, they didn't have anybody to compare it to. And so, that's where Colleen Fitzpatrick comes in. You know, they didn't have anybody to compare it to. And so that's where Colleen Fitzpatrick comes in. You know, this person that's trained as a physicist, which is amazing to me, but she has a true passion for forensic genealogy. She's able to narrow the scope now. And that's, you know, all roads lead back to Miller in this case, Dave. And that was the part that really got me when we were looking at this, Joe, and again, mentioning the fact that it had been so many years and she is able to, from October of 2014 to December, two months time, emailing back and forth. This information finally came out during

court proceedings, but there are emails indicating that police were providing information and she was providing it back and forth as they communicated. And she was able to narrow it down. And it wasn't just a matter of getting the last name. It was getting the geographical location and everything else. And the police wisely pointed out, well, he was a part of our large group of potential suspects, but we didn't have a way to narrow him down because if you don't have his DNA, you've only got the DNA of the person who committed the crimes. You don't have anybody to compare it to. That's where she comes in and she did. And it was just, it still is remarkable to me what she was capable of doing. Joe, there are other indicators that

maybe Miller never stopped stabbing women, never stopped surprising them. We've got evidence that he did a number of things prior to, as we mentioned, we had the 16-when-he-is-16 stabbing a woman getting off a bus. He did leave Arizona for a while and went to Washington State, and we've got some cases there. I don't think this is the end of the story for Brian Patrick Miller. Yeah, it's terrifying on many, many levels. But let me throw a little beam of sunlight in here. Now they've got an evidence trail. And if there are other cases that are out there, you can bet your bottom dollar that they're going to look at him to see if he's connected to anything that has happened in that corridor on the West Coast,

perhaps. Maybe he's connected to other things. And look, there are cases out there, Dave, he could, and you can say this about anything, you know, anybody could be connected to it, but maybe it fits some kind of pattern relative to sharp force injuries, geographic familiarity, typology when it comes to the victims, if they look a particular way, if they like riding bikes, for instance, or if they're in a defenseless position where the area has been scouted out. Sometimes with these cases, you're not going to have a sufficient DNA sample. Maybe there could be cases where women have been attacked and cut up, where the fantasy

didn't involve completion of the sexual act, where you have an individual that's engaging in just a straight-up necrophilic event where he's having intercourse with the deceased. Maybe he's gotten a little bit wiser at this point in time. Remember how we talked about the first victim here? This young lady was about to turn 22 years old, and you had the frenzied attack. There is a learning curve, and you can see with this precious 17-year-old how it changed over that period of time. And I think that that's very telling, and you never know. Maybe he'll be attached to some other cases that might be out there. I do know this. Brian Patrick Miller has been convicted, and he's now been sentenced

to death in Arizona. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.