Pod Insights Park Predators The Conspiracy About this episode When a night-time drive into a national park in Georgia turns into the brutal scene of a stabbing, the FBI is quick to identify their prime suspects. When all is said and done, the truth of who really murdered Anthony Lee Miller in April 1991 remains a matter of whose story you believe.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:40 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and I found the case I'm going to share with you today after visiting Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in Georgia. This historic park is about a 25-minute drive south of Chattanooga, right across the Tennessee-Georgia border. A few months ago, I went there with my family and drove past the more than 1,000 monuments and gravestones that memorialize fallen Civil War soldiers who fought in the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. As we left, I glanced down from the elaborate marble and stone monuments and pulled out my phone. I searched online to see if any murders had ever occurred in the park in more modern times, and sure enough, there was one.
1:23 Speaker 00 In the spring of 1991, three people drove into this park, but only two came out. The details of the crime were so hard to find, I actually had to order hundreds of pages of court records from the National Archives just to figure out what happened. And more importantly, why? The cruel act of betrayal that was carried out in this case was difficult to read about. It was as violent and bloody as any battle that took place in the national park more than a century earlier. This is Park Predators.
2:36 Speaker 00 Shortly after 8:30 in the morning on Saturday, April 6, 1991, an FBI agent in northern Georgia named J. Wayne Sturdivan got a call that a jogger had found a man's body on a wooded trail in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. At that point in his career, Sturdivan had been working for the FBI for more than two decades, so I imagine death investigations were nothing new to him. But perhaps the specific location of this call did strike him as unusual. Because, you see, according to an article by the Calhoun Times, that particular morning, a popular footrace known as the Chickamauga Chase, was being held in the park. And there were some 2,000 people
3:19 Speaker 00 either participating in or helping out with that event. According to that article and court records, the location where the man's body had been found was off a trail in an area that at the time was known as Wilder Tower or Wilder Park. According to a website called the National Park Planner, that attraction is actually known formally as Wilder Brigade Monument, which, true to its informal name, is a real-life tower. It looks exactly like you'd imagine a Civil War monument looks like. It's an 85-foot stone tower that has a castle-like observation deck at the top. I posted a picture of it on the blog post for this episode if you want to check it out. In my opinion, it looks like a giant rook chess piece, if you're familiar with that game.
4:03 Speaker 00 Initially, the chief park ranger who'd first responded to the scene thought the jogger who reported finding a person on the trail was referring to another runner who'd perhaps experienced a heart attack or another medical event and collapsed. But the reality was far much worse than that. According to an affidavit FBI agent Sturdivan wrote, "When he arrived at the crime scene, he quickly walked to where the man was laying in the woods and took a look at him." The victim was most definitely dead, and due to the absence of any kind of weapon nearby, it didn't appear he'd taken his own life. There were multiple knife wounds to his upper body, including stab wounds to his neck. Evidence on and around his body indicated whoever had attacked him carried out the crime right there where they left him.
4:48 Speaker 00 Meaning, it wasn't like he'd been killed elsewhere and then dumped in the park. Court records explain that investigators found a billfold with the victim. And though I don't know for sure if this is what they used to confirm his ID, I do know that it didn't take them long to determine that the deceased man was a 21-year-old Chattanooga resident named Anthony Miller, who often went by Tony. After processing what they could at the crime scene, authorities removed Tony's body from the park and transported him to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's crime lab in Atlanta. There, a doctor conducted an autopsy. And the results of that examination were what most everyone expected, which was that Tony was a victim of a homicide, and his cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the neck.
5:33 Speaker 00 Later that morning, FBI agent Sturdivan, investigators from the GBI, Walker County Sheriff's Office, Fort Oglethorpe Police, and the National Park Service, who were working the crime scene, got the surprise of their lives when an 18-year-old woman showed up to the park claiming she knew who had killed Tony. This woman's name was Audrey Miller, and she was Tony's wife. She told investigators that his murderer was a man they lived next door to, named Kenneth. This turn of events was likely a huge moment for law enforcement. I mean, it's not all that often that someone comes to a crime scene and declares they know who the perpetrator is. So in short order, the FBI brought Audrey in for further questioning.
6:16 Speaker 00 She agreed to speak with agents and allowed them to search her and Tony's apartment and their 1985 Chevy Chevette. According to Agent Sturdivan's affidavit, Audrey told investigators that she and Kenneth had been having an extramarital affair. In the early morning hours of April 6th, several hours before Tony's body was found, she had driven Kenneth and Tony into the national park. When they arrived, she said Kenneth stabbed Tony inside the car and Tony ran off into the woods. Kenneth then chased after him, and a little while later, Kenneth returned to the vehicle without Tony. Audrey stated that Kenneth's blue jeans were soaked with blood, and when they got back to the Chattanooga area, he wiped blood from her and Tony's car, and they both changed out of the clothing they'd been wearing.
7:03 Speaker 00 After authorities questioned Audrey about what happened, they took a trip to her and Tony's apartment building in Chattanooga. Their unit was conveniently right next door to where 25-year-old Kenneth lived, and he was at home when law enforcement arrived around 1:00 p.m. Court documents state they quickly took him into custody after Audrey positively identified him to FBI agents as the person who'd killed Tony. When investigators took a look inside Kenneth's place, they found blood spatters in his bathroom next to the toilet and shower, a pair of tennis shoes that appeared to have been recently washed, and wet clothing. In a chest of drawers, they also found a pair of blue jeans that had dark brown stains on the knees and legs. In Tony and Audrey's unit, authorities collected a butcher knife and kitchen knife as evidence,
7:48 Speaker 00 and a bloodstained shirt Audrey said she'd worn at the time of the crime. In the couple's car, they found visible spatters of blood and a peach-colored cloth with traces of blood on it. According to court records, when authorities initially interviewed Kenneth, he gave a few different versions of what he said happened the night Tony was killed. In his first statement to the FBI, he reportedly said that he'd been fishing and drinking beer with a friend most of the day on Friday. By the late afternoon, they'd consumed even more beer, and eventually Kenneth said he'd fallen asleep until around 11:00 a.m. the following morning, which would have been Saturday the 6th. When agents confronted him with the information Audrey had provided, Kenneth changed his story and said that he actually remembered Audrey and Tony coming
8:32 Speaker 00 over to his apartment sometime around 9:30 PM on Friday. But then, after watching TV together for a little while, they'd left and he'd gone to bed. He denied ever doing laundry or washing his clothes that night. But not long after providing that version of events, he altered his story again, and now admitted to remembering Audrey being in his apartment in the early morning hours on Saturday, wearing a bloody shirt, and asking if she could store her clothing at his place. Upon further questioning, he added to his story yet again, and went on to state that he actually did remember riding to the park on Friday night with Audrey and Tony, but vehemently denied participating in the murder. He said it was Audrey who'd driven the group to the park, and then when they arrived,
9:17 Speaker 00 she'd started stabbing Tony inside the car. Kenneth said he was so freaked out by the incident that he ran from the vehicle like Tony had, but then a short time later, Audrey picked him up on the side of the road and took him home. And if four versions of a story aren't wild enough, Kenneth ended up giving a fifth statement to the FBI with additional details. His latest account included information about how Tony had come over to his apartment prior to the crime and asked him to join him and Audrey for a drive so Kenneth could act as a mediator for some marital issues the couple was having. I know, it just keeps getting stranger and stranger. But even with all this changing information from Kenneth, by April 8th, the FBI had enough to arrest both him and Audrey.
10:02 Speaker 00 Agents charged Audrey with conspiracy to commit murder, and she was held on a $100,000 bond. Kenneth was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy and received no bond. A few weeks later, in May, grand juries formally indicted both defendants, and they entered pleas of not guilty. Because Tony's murder occurred on federal land, the case was handled by the Federal District Court in northern Georgia.
10:28 Speaker 00 In the weeks after their arraignments, their defense attorneys filed several motions to suppress all the statements they'd made to the FBI, including a sixth version of events that Kenneth had offered up alongside his attorney in late May, just a few weeks after his arrest. In that version of the story, Kenneth said that pretty much everything he'd said before was the truth, with the exception that he now claimed that when he ran away from Tony and Audrey's car, he hadn't gone completely out of sight, but rather, he'd stopped not far from the trail where Tony was killed and actually seen Audrey carry out the crime. Both defendants' attorneys argued, though, that anything their clients had said about the crime prior to their arrests had been elicited by coercion.
11:11 Speaker 00 Court filings state Audrey's attorney believed FBI agents had threatened her and made false promises of potential leniency if she cooperated. Her attorney also claimed that she had not been properly mirandized or notified of her rights before being questioned. In addition to those arguments, the defense attorneys also submitted requests to have their clients' competency evaluated. Because it turns out Kenneth had actually been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment prior to this incident. So his attorney felt it was definitely worth making sure he was able to understand what he was being charged with and everything that was going to happen in court moving forward. About two weeks after submitting that motion for competency evaluation, the judge granted the request.
11:56 Speaker 00 And what Kenneth's evaluation revealed painted a pretty unstable picture.
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12:38 Speaker 00 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
12:58 Speaker 02 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
13:05 Speaker 00 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
13:13 Speaker 03 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
13:15 Speaker 04 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
13:20 Speaker 05 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
13:25 Speaker 00 I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
13:42 Speaker 00 According to the forensic evaluation report for Kenneth that is in the court records I found, he came from a fairly rough upbringing. His parents had split up when he was a young boy, and after that, he bounced between several different states, spending most of his formative years with his dad, who he wasn't super close with. And then eventually, he went to live with his mom and stepfather. He also lived in a children's home for a year, and then with his grandparents, before eventually moving in full-time with his mom and stepdad, which he claimed wasn't a healthy environment. He eventually dropped out of high school and found employment working in factories and foundries in Georgia. In the mid to late 80s, as a young adult, he'd become certified as a welder, gotten
14:24 Speaker 00 married, and had a kid, but that relationship ended on bad terms. Shortly after that, he met another woman who he married and had two more kids with. At the time of the crime, he was still married to that woman and worked for a steel foundry. He claimed that things were going well in his life. Regarding his prior mental health problems, he told his evaluators that he'd been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility as a teenager because his mom believed he harbored anger over incidents from his childhood. As a young adult, he'd checked himself into two different hospitals for emotional and physical issues stemming from his divorce from his first wife and an alleged assault he claimed her relatives had carried out against him. He'd also been previously arrested for attacking a fellow college student with
15:09 Speaker 00 a rubber mallet and assaulting the former partner of one of his previous girlfriends. In both of those cases, though, the charges against him were dismissed. The only true conviction he had on his criminal record was for forgery, which he was not required to serve any jail time for. As a whole, the staff assessing his competency found Kenneth to be composed and aware enough to understand what he was being charged with and what the outcomes could be. Mental health professionals who evaluated Audrey noted the same thing about her: she was competent enough to stand trial. But that day would never come for Audrey. Because by mid-August 1991, she decided to take a plea deal. In exchange for her cooperation and testimony against Kenneth, she was eligible to receive
15:54 Speaker 00 a sentence of anywhere from 10 to 33 years. But she still faced the maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if the judge decided to throw the book at her. According to court records, Audrey and Tony had been married less than a year when Tony was murdered. They'd said "I do" when she was 17 and he was either 19 or 20. About a month and a half into their marriage, Audrey had started having second thoughts about whether she even wanted to be married at all. It was also stated in court records that she had a history of drug use and had attempted to die by suicide at least once prior to this incident. In a transcript from her plea hearing, she stated that after her arrest, members of her family had experienced harassment and threats from both Tony's loved ones and Kenneth's.
16:39 Speaker 00 Her sentencing was scheduled for October 25, 1991, but before that happened, she had to take the stand against Kenneth. When his trial opened on October 7, the assistant U.S. District Attorney handling the case laid out the government's theory of why and how the crime had occurred. He explained to jurors that prior to the murder, Kenneth and Audrey had become sexually involved, and during that time, Kenneth had grown more and more hateful towards Tony. On the night of the crime, an argument between Audrey and Tony had boiled over, and Kenneth, who'd drunk alcohol for a good portion of that evening, had decided to attack Tony with a knife. In terms of some of the physical evidence presented in court, the government introduced a knife that belonged to Audrey,
17:24 Speaker 00 the clothing that she and Kenneth had been wearing on the night of the crime, photos of blood inside the passenger seat of Tony and Audrey's car, and the peach-colored cloth that was used to clean up the inside of the vehicle. Unfortunately, though, forensic tests on the blood spatter that had been found in Kenneth's bathroom were not able to say if it belonged to either Tony or Kenneth, or if it was even human blood at all. Authorities had also never found a pocket knife that Kenneth was known to carry on his person, so essentially, no murder weapon. The government also called several inmates who testified about how they'd overheard Kenneth bragging about the crime while he was in jail awaiting trial. But the real meat and potatoes of the case came out when Audrey took the stand. She testified to what she'd already shared with the FBI,
18:09 Speaker 00 which was that Kenneth had killed Tony after the trio arrived at the national park. She said that at the time of the crime, Kenneth was drunk. When she parked the car, she was in the driver's seat, Tony was in the passenger seat, and Kenneth was in the back middle seat. She said Kenneth ordered her to get out, but she didn't because she didn't understand why he wanted her to. But after that, Tony exited the car, and Kenneth ordered him to get back inside, which he did. Audrey said that Kenneth then asked her to help him hold Tony down while he killed him, which prompted Audrey to start crying. Moments after that, she said that Kenneth reached forward and yanked Tony between the seats of the car and began stabbing him several times in his midsection. Tony fought back and managed to get out of the car
18:54 Speaker 00 and ran towards an adjacent road, but then veered off onto a trail. As soon as he ran, Kenneth went after him and asked Audrey to turn on the car's headlights so he could see better, which she did. While Kenneth chased after Tony, Audrey said she shut the doors to the car, started the engine, and began blowing the horn so Tony could find his way back to it and jump inside. However, about a half hour later, it was only Kenneth who returned to the vehicle, and he was, according to Audrey's description, covered in blood from head to foot. She also observed that one of his middle fingers had been bitten and was swollen and bruised. She testified that after Kenneth got into the car, they immediately left the national park and drove back to the apartment building
19:37 Speaker 00 where Kenneth and Audrey and Tony all lived. While driving, he told her he'd cut Tony's throat and had broken the knife he used to carry out the attack. Once back at Kenneth's place, Audrey said she watched him strip off all his clothes, clean forest debris from his pockets, and then take a shower. He also discarded a pack of cigarettes that had blood on them and set several knives on the back of his toilet tank. After that, Audrey went to her mom's house and went to sleep. At no point did she call the police to report what had happened to her husband. She told the court, though, that as she drove out of the park, she thought Tony might still be alive, but wasn't sure. She had those same thoughts the following morning when she spoke with her mom and one of her brothers about what had happened.
20:22 Speaker 00 But the more time went by, the more certain she became that Tony was dead. Regarding the extramarital affair claims, according to Audrey, she and Kenneth had only been sexually intimate once, two days before the murder. She described it as something that just happened and said it was, quote, "the biggest mistake I ever made," end quote. According to her testimony in court, the trio had only known one another for two days before Audrey and Kenneth had their sexual encounter. Kenneth, by the way, like I mentioned earlier, was also a married man at this time, with a wife and kids. I have no idea where they were when this was all going down, but reading between the lines, I'm thinking maybe they weren't living with him at the apartment, since the source
21:04 Speaker 00 material says the units for that specific building were really small, like one-bedroom kind of deal. Anyway, after the murder, Audrey said Kenneth had told her that now that Tony was out of the picture, she was finally free to be able to have her own place and vehicle without someone else telling her what she could and couldn't do. In general, Audrey said even though her husband and Kenneth seemed to get along fine, Kenneth never really appeared to have a good opinion of Tony. In prior statements she'd made to the FBI, she'd said that Kenneth had asked her straight up if he could kill Tony because, in his opinion, he deserved to be killed. When asked about her and Tony's relationship, Audrey stated that she was a jealous person who didn't like the thought of her husband rejecting her.
21:46 Speaker 00 She said that prior to the crime, she felt like Tony was pushing her away, which is what had caused her to seek out her affair with Kenneth. However, under cross-examination, she also described Tony as a jealous person as well, and she said that he didn't like it when she talked with or flirted with other men. According to court records, this jealousy issue was only exacerbated by the fact that Tony had apparently shown interest in reconnecting with an ex-girlfriend during the time he was married to Audrey. And Audrey reportedly found out about that shortly before the murder. Tony reportedly attended the same junior college as his ex, and that's where they'd been spending a lot of time together, much to Audrey's dismay. But in all fairness, Audrey was also guilty of being unfaithful in her marriage outside
22:31 Speaker 00 of the affair she'd had with Kenneth. She testified in court that she'd been involved with at least two other men while she was married to Tony. She'd also sought out divorce attorneys and contemplated divorce more than once, but never moved forward. On the morning after the crime, before she went back to the crime scene, she'd visited a former fiance of hers who was someone Tony had suspected she might love more than him. During her visit with this ex, Audrey had even asked him to run away with her, like that very day. But in addition to prior relationship drama, money was also a stressor for Audrey and Tony. The Monday before the murder, they'd moved out of their respective parents' homes and into a new apartment.
23:14 Speaker 00 They both got jobs at the same Burger King fast-food chain restaurant, but after just two days, Audrey was fired. Because finances were tight, they'd asked a local church to help them out with their rent money for the month, and the church provided them with some. Audrey also testified that to stay afloat, Tony had pawned some of their belongings, which included their wedding rings, a TV, and a knife. And he'd stolen money from his parents and the Burger King. But you're probably wondering, how did Audrey manage to lose her job after only two days of working, if things were so dire financially? Well, according to court documents, she got super upset and jealous when Tony interacted with a female customer.
23:57 Speaker 00 Audrey's reaction to Tony allegedly flirting with this woman was reportedly so out of line that she ended up losing her job over it. But despite all these challenges, there were some good moments more recently in the couple's marriage. For example, over Easter, which was shortly before the crime, the couple had exchanged cards with one another. Tony wrote in his card to Audrey, which included a photo of the two of them, quote, "I know things seem bad, but our luck is going to change soon. Hang in there. Happy Easter. Your forever-loving husband, Anthony." End quote. Audrey penned in her card, quote, "Tony, I just want you to know how much I love you and miss you. This card is me and you.
24:42 Speaker 00 I love you, baby, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Love always. Audrey. Don't forget Easter, because I would love to get a card from you." End quote. However, despite these documented, isolated moments of tenderness between the couple, the defense's main strategy at trial was to try and convey to jurors that not only was Audrey and Tony's relationship volatile, she personally had little to no remorse for what had happened to him. In fact, Kenneth's defense attorney went as far as suggesting that she might be the real killer. To further drive that point home, Kenneth's attorney wanted to introduce prison letters that Audrey had written to other men within a week of the crime, which he felt proved
25:26 Speaker 00 she didn't care much for Tony and that she was a manipulative person. But these letters were not something prosecutors wanted jurors to see because they had the potential to tear down Audrey's credibility as a witness against Kenneth. Another detail Kenneth's defense attorney tried to get in at trial had to do with one specific aspect of Tony and Audrey's relationship, which, according to court records, allegedly involved satanic worship. I know, we're going there.
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26:33 Speaker 00 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms, with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
26:53 Speaker 02 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory: a baby factory.
27:00 Speaker 00 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
27:08 Speaker 03 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
27:11 Speaker 04 That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
27:15 Speaker 05 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
27:21 Speaker 00 I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
27:37 Speaker 00 Kenneth's defense attorney told the judge he planned to explore for jurors the National Military Park's history for being a place that satanic worshippers would visit. He alleged that Tony was involved in this kind of activity, and had introduced elements of satanic worship into his relationship with Audrey on the night he proposed to her. The defense went as far as trying to argue that a marking found on Tony's back when his body was discovered was in the shape of an upside-down cross, which the attorney claimed was a symbol commonly associated with satanic worship.
28:11 Speaker 00 This whole suggestion that Satanists or a satanic killing might be involved was somewhat supported by Audrey, who testified that she'd seen a figure wearing all black in the woods the night of Tony's murder. She claimed that she was the only person in the group who noticed this figure, and it had stared in the trio's direction for about 10 or 15 minutes before eventually disappearing into the tree line. In the end, though, satanic-worshipping theories and all, the one crucial thing missing from Audrey's testimony was that she claimed she had not actually seen Kenneth murder her husband. She admitted to being present when Tony was killed, but did not actually see the fatal act happen. An inconsistent aspect of her version of events, though, was the fact that she stated
28:56 Speaker 00 Kenneth had killed Tony to liberate her from her marriage. Yet, she also said nothing had occurred between the two men prior to the killing that amounted to a fight or verbal argument. For example, she testified that just prior to the crime, her, Tony, and Kenneth had all been hanging out at Kenneth's apartment together, and during that time, everyone was getting along fine. During their drive to the national park, neither man had seemed upset nor mad with one another. However, Tony and Audrey had verbally fought about their marriage. So, really, if there was any fighting going on at all, it was between Audrey and Tony, not Kenneth and Tony. What's even more bizarre was that, according to Audrey, she and Tony had literally just met Kenneth.
29:40 Speaker 00 This is a fact that was really undisputed in court. Her story was that Kenneth had just spontaneously decided in a drunken moment to kill a man he barely knew after sleeping with his wife. But a theory the defense suggested was more plausible was that Tony was gonna leave Audrey on the Friday night before he was killed, possibly in order to rekindle his relationship with his ex. And under no circumstances was Audrey gonna allow that to happen. Even though she'd wanted out of their marriage too, she'd wanted it to end on her terms. Evidence that supported that theory were Tony's personal belongings, which had been found in the backseat of the couple's hatchback when it was photographed by authorities after the crime.
30:22 Speaker 00 All of his stuff being packed into the car like that could have been interpreted as him readying himself to leave the relationship. The prosecution's argument, on the other hand, was that Audrey and Kenneth's brief affair was what prompted them to conspire to eliminate Tony, period. Because Audrey had already taken a plea deal and was the prosecution's key witness against Kenneth, they needed jurors to really see her as more of a participant in the aftermath of the crime versus a direct contributor herself. When questioned if she'd planned to convince Kenneth to kill Tony, she responded, "No, she had not." When the case went to jurors in mid-October, it didn't take long for the panel to find
31:05 Speaker 00 Kenneth guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy. A few days later, Audrey was sentenced to 30 years in prison, plus five years probation for her role in the slaying. In December 1991, Kenneth's attorneys asked the court to give him roughly the same amount of time in prison that Audrey got, but a judge ultimately sentenced him to life in prison plus 60 months. He appealed his conviction in January 1992, but a few months later, it was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals, meaning he was not going to get a new trial. In 1993, Audrey wrote a letter to the assistant U.S. attorney who'd prosecuted the case, claiming her lawyer had coerced her into pleading guilty, and she wanted to basically take it all back.
31:50 Speaker 00 But that request went nowhere, and in 1997, six years after her conviction, the court denied a follow-up petition she'd submitted to have an appellate attorney appointed on her behalf. Kenneth appealed his conviction again in 1997, 2000, and 2005, but all of his requests were later denied. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, he died behind bars in February 2015 at the age of 49. Audrey Miller served nearly 26 years before being released early in May 2017.
32:24 Speaker 00 Unfortunately, no matter how hard I searched, I wasn't able to find much personal information about Tony Miller. He was only 21 years old when this crime happened, so really, just starting out in life. He celebrated that milestone birthday nearly two months before he was killed. And from everything I was able to gather about him, it seemed like he was trying to live a productive life. He was newly married, had gotten a job to try and make ends meet, and was likely feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. But unfortunately, it seems he and Audrey just couldn't quite navigate the tumultuous nature of their relationship. What was going through his mind in his final moments, running through the dark woods of the national park that night as he was suffering from his horrific injuries, is heartbreaking to think about.
33:09 Speaker 00 I can't imagine what he was experiencing. Probably betrayal, fear, and sadness. The inscription on his gravestone at Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga lists him simply as "son." And though I wasn't able to find any family members who've spoken publicly about his case, I have to imagine that after his death, they missed him dearly and might have wondered what his life could have amounted to, if only he'd gotten the chance.
33:41 Speaker 00 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
34:00 Speaker 00 I think Chuck would approve.
34:06 Speaker 00 In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow, a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
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