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Police reports and family add new information in Mica Miller’s death

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Editor’s Note: This article mentions suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, resources or someone to talk to, you can find it on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website or by calling 800-273-8255. People are available to talk 24/7.

(NewsNation) – Mica Miller tried to end her marriage. She tried to get a restraining order against her husband. According to police reports obtained by NewsNation, she made at least eight calls to the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, police with complaints about her spouse, John-Paul Miller, in the weeks before her death.


Mica Miller was found dead on April 27 at Lumber State Park in Lumberton, North Carolina, about 70 miles north of Myrtle Beach. The Robeson County, North Carolina, coroner ruled her death a suicide.

In those police complaints, Mica Miller accused her pastor husband of stealing her car, installing a tracking device and hospitalizing her against her will. But the worst thing she told police was that her pastor husband began “grooming” her when she was ten years old.

John-Paul Miller, who is 14 years older than Mica, has strongly denied this claim. His attorney, Russel Long, issued a statement Thursday saying the idea of ​​”grooming” “couldn’t be further from the truth.” She moved to Myrtle Beach at age 15 and married when she was older At the age of 18, she married another man and divorced at the age of 21.”

Mica Miller’s sister Sierra Francis believes John-Paul Miller “groomed” her sister, although not so young.

“I would guess that she probably meant 2010, not ’10’ (years old),” she told NewsNation’s Banfield. Francis said her sister told her the “grooming” started when she was 14 or 15.

John-Paul and Mica Miller were married in 2017. They had been separated since January 2023.

John-Paul Miller’s lawyer defends himself

Long’s statement reiterates authorities’ conclusion that Mica died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a finding that “completely exonerates Pastor Miller of any wrongdoing.”

Long also wants the media to stop “spreading these harmful falsehoods.” “Any further distribution of defamatory and slanderous statements will be punished with legal action,” the statement said.

NewsNation’s Rich McHugh, reviewing Myrtle Beach police documents, found an officer’s report that provides context to a short video Mica recorded of John-Paul allegedly harassing her.

McHugh says the video and police reports obtained exclusively by NewsNation are “a glimpse into everything we … suspected – the struggles they’ve had over the last two years.”

Sierra Francis’ attorney, Regina Ward, says the family is considering some sort of civil lawsuit, possibly against Solid Rock Church, whose de facto owner is John-Paul Miller.

“He pursued everything that mattered to this young woman,” Ward told NewsNation. “She was brainwashed by this man. He abused her in every way possible.”

A statement was also released on Thursday Angela Brian Clark, who says she was a close friend of Mica Miller. She says her friend’s death “triggered a wave of emotions, speculation, pain, brokenness, sadness… for me. The stories that Mica told me personally are terrible.”

Clark notes that John-Paul Miller denies involvement in his wife’s death, but says, “You don’t have to physically pull a trigger to be responsible for someone’s death.”

A police timeline shows Mica Miller left her home just before noon on April 27, bought a gun, then called 911 three hours later and threatened to take her own life.

The sheriff’s office said John-Paul Miller was not in North Carolina the night before or the day of Mica Miller’s death. Surveillance video captured him in Charleston, South Carolina, at a sporting event.

The man may have heard suicide

In another incident Thursday, a man said he heard screaming and a gunshot in the park when Mica Miller is believed to have died.

Johnnie Jacobs revealed to NewsNation affiliate WBTW that he found the 30-year-old’s fanny pack with her ID inside and heard crying, followed by a gunshot and then silence.

“I heard a scream – a faint scream. I heard it for about two or three minutes and then the crying stopped,” Jacobs said. “If there had been a person crying out there where I could see them, I would have checked on them all day.”

Also this week, a waiter told NewsNation that John-Paul Miller left her a big tip and wrote his phone number on the restaurant bill — which led to the two exchanging flirtatious messages. This happened two months before Mica Miler’s death.

The server, which NewsNation would only identify by her first name, Christiana, says she and Miller exchanged text messages after Mica’s death.

He repeatedly asked Christiana to send pictures of herself, including bikini pictures, and called her “super hot.” The priest never asked for a face-to-face meeting, she said.

Another revelation from police reports: Mica Miller was the suspect in a now-closed theft investigation in which nearly $1,200 in donations intended for Solid Rock Ministries’ mission efforts in Africa were reported stolen.

Mica was suspected of having withdrawn the money from a church account and transferred it to her private account.

Police said the investigation was closed on April 8 after the prosecutor determined there was no probable cause and that the case was a “civil matter between the parties involved.” Miller’s name did not appear in the police report, but police confirmed she was the “perpetrator.”

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