Lucille Miller
Lucille Marie Miller (née Maxwell) (January 17, 1930 – November 4, 1986) was a naturalized American housewife and mother who was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of her husband in what prosecutors alleged was a real-life case of Double Indemnity to obtain the proceeds of a life insurance policy that paid double the face value for accidental deaths.[1]
Lucille Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lucille Marie Maxwell January 17, 1930 |
| Died | November 4, 1986 (aged 56) |
| Children | 4 |
| Motive | Insurance money |
| Criminal penalty | Life (paroled in 1972) |
| Details | |
| Date | October 7, 1964 |
| Location(s) | Alta Loma area, San Bernardino County, California |
| Killed | 1-2 |
| Weapons | Volkswagen Beetle fire |
The case was featured in a 2014 episode of the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember and Deadly Women
Background
At the time of the murder, Lucille Miller was just a few months shy of 35 years old, married to dentist Dr. Gordon "Cork" Miller, a mother of three, and pregnant with their fourth child.[1] The Millers were Seventh-day Adventists (SDA), and had met and married when they attended the SDA-owned Walla Walla College. The family had recently moved from Oregon to a new house at 8488 Bella Vista Drive in the then-unincorporated Alta Loma area of San Bernardino County, California due to Cork's stated desire to attend the medical college at the nearby SDA-owned Loma Linda University Medical Center so he could move from dentistry to general medicine.[2][3]
Their oldest child, Debra J. Miller recalled that her father wanted to be an airline pilot, but had reluctantly followed her grandfather into dentistry in order not to have college funding cut off. Cork had also showed signs of depression and suicidal behavior, including one incident where Lucille hid the keys to the couple's 1964 Volkswagen Beetle with Debra, and had been taking sedatives to help him sleep at night.[3]
Case history
On October 7, 1964, Lucille Miller had poured Cork a glass of milk to settle his stomach, and discovered she needed to make a late night trip to the store to purchase milk so the children would have it for breakfast. Cork asked to come along. He was sleeping next to the passenger door, which she locked to ensure he didn't fall out. They went to an all-night Mayfair Market where she purchased the milk. At about 12:30 AM on October 8 on the way home, Lucille claimed, the Beetle had a tire blow out, causing the car to catch fire as she drove off Banyan Street above a lemon grove. She claimed she tried to break a window but the fire was too hot to reach in and unlock the door, and that she then used a big tree branch to try to move her husband out of the car, but he was fast asleep. She then went to get help on the deserted section of Banyan Street and finally found a house from where the police were notified.[4]
The initial evidence matched her story, until authorities more closely examined the skid marks, much shorter than they normally would be in a loss of control as Lucille reported. Also, they noticed an empty can of gasoline lying on the back seat sideways (while the charred milk cartons were still standing upright and not jostled by the sudden stop), that the car was still in low gear (unusual for a 35 MPH crash), and that the car had dug in (implying someone had tried to push the car the rest of the way over the embankment).[4]
She was arrested later that day and held pending charges. A complaint was filed October 13, and an indictment for first-degree murder was returned October 20.[5]
Further investigation led to the discovery of the $125,000 (some sources say $140,000) life insurance policy with the double indemnity clause for accidental death, their financial problems (just over $64,000 in debt, including the nearly $30,000 mortgage for the Bella Vista house), and an affair Lucille had with lawyer Arthwell Hayton, a widower father of three, one of them a friend of Debra.[3][6] Debra said Hayton's wife, Elaine, had also died under mysterious circumstances.[3]
Trial, conviction and appeal
When the case went to trial in January 1965, no woman (let alone a pregnant one) had ever been executed in California, and there was much media speculation if she would be the first woman to go to the gas chamber.[1] (Nellie May Madison was the first California woman to be sentenced to death in 1934, but her sentence was reduced to life.) Except for articles about that year's Academy Awards nominations and Stan Laurel's death on February 23, no other story dominated LA-area headlines in early 1965 more than the Miller trial.
Miller was convicted on March 5, 1965, and sentenced to life imprisonment.[1] Her conviction was upheld on appeal to the California Supreme Court in 1966, and also by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 (with F. Lee Bailey as part of her legal team).[5]
After serving seven years of her sentence, she was paroled in 1972.[3] Her attorneys, convinced of her absolute innocence, continued to appeal her conviction.[6]
Aftermath
Joan Didion wrote a 1966 essay about the case, "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream", which appeared originally in The Saturday Evening Post as "How Can I Tell Them There's Nothing Left" (a quote from Lucille Miller the morning of the fire); it was included in her 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem.[2][3] In addition to the trial, the essay contains details of the fire, the Hayton affair, and a brief biographical sketch of Lucille and Cork Miller. Didion would later meet Lucille Miller's daughter Debra in 1996.[3]
Debra, Guy and Ron Miller all married, but had no children. Debra and Ron both became teachers (Ron is also a writer), and Guy became a third-generation Miller dentist. Kimi Kai Miller, born in June 1965 during their mother's incarceration at California Institution for Women in Corona, CA, died at age 25 from lung cancer, leaving two children.[3]
Debra and Ron were two of the on-camera interviewees for the "Accident on Banyan St." episode of A Crime to Remember which first aired on December 16, 2014 on Investigation Discovery.[4]
Arthwell Hayton married Wenche Berg, his children's governess.[6]
San Bernardino County never further investigated the death of Elaine Hayton, which had been ruled an accidental overdose of sedatives, despite the discovery of the affair between Lucille Miller and Arthwell Hayton and the fact both their spouses had high levels of sedatives when they died.
Death
Little has been revealed about Lucille Miller's post-parole life, except that the prison-educated stenographer and model prisoner had three job offers in Los Angeles upon her release from prison and that she planned to change her name.[6]
Lucille was also "hopelessly entangled" with her kids until her death on November 4, 1986, as Debra reported in a 2006 newspaper article she wrote about her mother's case.[3]
References
- McDonnell, Margaux (December 16, 2014). "Man Dies in Car Fire, Wife Suspected of Murdering Him for Insurance Money". crimefeed.com. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
- Klinkenborg, Verlyn (January 29, 2005). "Rereading the Landscape of an Essay by Joan Didion". New York Times. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- Miller, Debra J. (April 2, 2006). "A Mother's Crime". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- A Crime to Remember, Season 2 Episode 6, "Accident on Banyan St.", December 16, 2014.
- "MILLER v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA (appeal)". law.cornell.edu. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
- Kissinger, Jesse (July 23, 2013). "The California Room". The Paris Review. Retrieved 21 March 2017.