For nearly five years, their lives were held together by a single question: Who killed Eric Miller?
A father waited to learn who fatally poisoned his son with arsenic. A police lieutenant toiled with a complicated case that at times appeared stuck, with no progress made for months at a time. A widow lived silently in the shadow of suspicion, refusing to talk as she raised the couple's young daughter, left town and remarried.
The question hung over nearly every moment of every day, the longing for an answer intensifying last year after prosecutors charged the widow -- Ann Miller Kontz -- with murder.
When that answer came, it came quickly: Kontz stood in open court and surprised many by admitting she conspired with her lover to poison her husband. And suddenly, lives tied together by tragedy were freed by truth, each dramatically changed by the murder of Eric Miller.
""I don't think anybody is happy about any of this,"" said Chris Morgan, who led the police investigation and remained involved in the case after his retirement. ""But I think there's some sense of resolution.""
The 35-year-old Kontz will spend the next 25 to 31½ years in prison for poisoning Miller, a 30-year-old pediatric AIDS researcher at the University of North Carolina. He died in December 2000 after ingesting poisoned food and drink served up by his wife and her lover, Derril Willard, who worked with Kontz at drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. Willard committed suicide about a month after Miller's death.
Kontz expressed remorse in a statement read by defense attorney Joseph B. Cheshire V at the hearing Monday when she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
""I think Ann has always felt that she could never really be free if she did not accept responsibility and face the truth,"" said her other attorney, Wade Smith. ""And I think she wanted to do that.""
But Verus Miller, Eric's father, called her statement ""empty words"" that offered no reason why she committed the crime.
Now, Miller and his wife Doris, who live in Cambridge City, Ind., are focused on his granddaughter, Clare. She turns 6 in January and is being cared for by Kontz's sister in Wilmington, where Kontz eventually moved and remarried. He said it is too soon to talk about what comes next for her.
""The motivating factor in this was that it removed (Kontz) from Clare's life, guaranteed for 25 years,"" Miller said. ""And we felt that was an important enough reason to agree to the plea. This way, she will not be able to influence or harm Clare.""
The Millers have remained close to Morgan, a determined investigator who often wore fedora hats straight out of old detective movies. He delayed retirement for more than a year to keep working on the case and remained involved after he left the force in late 2004.
Comments