Juror Thirteen site opened a 36-year-old cold case file on their message boards five weeks ago. Posting an article written by Lindell Kay of JDNews.com (The Daily News) out of Jacksonville, North Carolina.
After only a few days of the stories coming out about this cold case, two people were arrested for Miller's murder... one was a former police chief.
Motorists found the body of Sergeant William Donald Miller lying in the middle of the road on Western Boulevard halfway between Marine Boulevard and County Club Road on September 16, 1972.
He had been shot, according to an incident report of the time.
Authorities found Miller's car on the shoulder of the road with the engine running, the lights on, a blinker clicking, and a half-cocked pistol on the seat, according to a Daily News archived report.
The Sheriff's Department, the SBI, the Marine Corps and NCIS investigated Hayden for more than a year before Miller's homicide case turned cold. Investigators at the time could not find enough substantial evidence to arrest Hayden, according to the JAG letter.
Thirty-six years later, George Hayden, 57, a police chief at Cape Carteret and Belhaven police departments, was been charged with murder in Miller's shooting death, on September 9, 2008.
Also charged in the case is Vickey Miller Hayden Cooper Babbitt, Miller's wife at the time of his death, in Oregon. Babbitt was arrested in Oregon in mid-September and didn't fight extradition back to North Carolina.
Miller, Hayden and Babbitt were all in the Marine Corps in 1972. Miller and Babbitt were married, and the three were friends. In August 1972, Miller returned to Jacksonville from training in Okinawa in to find Hayden had moved in with Babbitt.
Babbitt left Miller to live with Hayden. On Sept. 16 of that year, Miller went to meet Babbitt, but was gunned down in the middle of Western Boulevard. Investigators say Babbitt lured Miller to the spot, possibly by faking car trouble, and then Hayden shot Miller twice with an M-16 - once in the head and once in the back.
The break in the case came from a key witness who has been in fear of his life over the 36 years since the murder. His identity is still being kept silent because of that fear.
"The horror on the face of the witness was unlike anything I have seen in my 42 years of law enforcement," said Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown.
Resources....http://www.jdnews.com/news/father_58726___article.html/miller_mcgee.htmlhttp://www.jdnews.com/news/slaying_58845___article.html/adds_family.htmlhttp://www.jdnews.com/news/bend_59399___article.html/hayden_homicide.htmlhttp://groups.google.co.za/group/alt.true-crime/browse_thread/thread/4dcc53ce3f7e2f10http://www.jdnews.com/news/hayden_59355___article.html/county_witness.html&cid=1244354972&ei=sW_JSOCuCYL0_AGk4rjSBA&usg=AFQjCNHkcEYPKlopzRu3mwc71WYY0V4GFw
3 comments:
Maybe you could make a 'Police gone right' website where you mark down all of the things cops do well every day. Maybe you could find a story about the child molestor they arrested, or the wife they saved from an abusive husband, or the kids they saved from some maniac with a gun. Everyone wants to focus on the bad apples and by doing so you take away the credit of all the good officers protecting the community. I hope that next time you need an officer they are busy ... because you obviously have no respect for what they do. And yes, I am the wife of an officer, and my husband works hard for 30,000$ a year to put his life on the line for assholes like you.
If you find the stories, I will post them on a new site...but good luck...it's hard to find those kind of stories because they don't happen as often.
I have nothing against good cops, it's the bad ones that I have problems with. Kudos to the officers that do the right thing, but it's rare to find those kind of officers, but I will admit, I have found a few of them and those are the officers I wish I could call when I did need help. Instead I get some asshole jerk that thinks he's better than everybody else, which makes all the officers look bad.
Your husband is putting his life on the line for himself. I didn't tell him to become a police officer, he did that on his own. And sad for him if he's really only making $30,000 a year...dumb ass on him. Is his life worth just $30,000 a year? Why are you letting him take the chance of leaving you without someone to hold your hand for that kind of money? I can think of a thousand other jobs he could do that pay much better and he can come home safe every night.
If your husband is one of the rare good guys, I hope he truely is making a difference.
See blog for William Miller
http://miraclesstillhappen36yearslater.blogspot.com/
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