A South Carolina woman who shot and killed herself at a North Carolina state park last month accused her pastor husband of grooming her from the time she was 10 years old until she married him at 24.
According to a police report obtained by WPDE, Mica Miller, 30, told police earlier this year that John-Paul Miller “stole” her car while she was “involuntarily hospitalized.” The incident began on February 8, the report said, when Mica Miller said she left her car in a Walmart Neighborhood Market parking lot.
When she was discharged from the hospital two days later, hospital staff told her that her husband picked up her purse and keys while she was there. When she went back to the Walmart parking lot, he car was gone. She reported it stolen on February 21.
According to the report, Mica Miller told detectives she had known John Paul Miller since she was 10 years old and that he had “groomed” her while she was working for him at his Solid Rock Church. The grooming continued, she said, until they married in 2018.
When police contacted John Paul Miller, he told them that he and his wife weren’t legally separated and that she “suffers from mental health disorders,” claiming that they happen yearly near Christmas when she “becomes reckless and spends large amounts of money when she stops taking her prescribed medication.”
He claimed the car he took from the Walmart parking lot was marital property and said he wasn’t willing to return the car until time for his wife’s “reckless episodes” had passed.
Myrtle Beach Police closed the case, determining that they were legally married and not separated and taht the vehicle was marital property.
Mica Miller was found dead on April 27 at Lumber River State Park in North Carolina, as CrimeOnline reported. While family members believed John Paul Miller was involved in her death, Robeson County deputies found that Mica Miller bought the gun she used to kill herself from a Myrtle Beach pawn shop just before driving across the state line to Lumber River, where she called 911 to tell dispatchers she was “about to kill myself” and wanted to make sure they could track her phone so her family could find her.
The sheriff’s office further confirmed that John Paul Miller and a woman he was having an affair with were in Charleston, South Carolina, at the time of his wife’s suicide.
A second report obtained by WPDE says that Mica Miller was the offender who allegedly transferred Solid Rock Church money — $1,199 collected for a mission in Kenya — into her personal account. The report, filed on March 13, ends with “an investigation will follow,” but it’s unclear if it was started or completed.
The Horry County Police Department also released reports earlier this week for incidents in which Mica Miller complained of harassment and said that she was “afraid for her life,” WPDE said.
The Robeson County Sheriff’s Office met with Mica Miller’s family earlier this week to share the information about their investigation into the suicide. They offered to meet with John Paul Miller as well, but he refused to come to North Carolina for such a meeting and asked them to come to him. The sheriff’s office said it has no plans to go to South Carolina.
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[Featured image: John Paul and Mica Miller/Facebook]
