A descent to murder

Partner thought teen was demon ‘sucking life out of him’

A HUNTER Valley man has been found guilty of murdering his teenage girlfriend in a descent into psychosis brought on solely by his drug use.

Jordan Miller strangled 18-year-old Emerald Wardle in 2020 in a Metford home belonging to his family.

His three-week murder trial heard the university student was psychotic when he believed his girlfriend was a demon “sucking the life out of him”.

Miller, 22, admitted killing the teen but argued he was suffering an undiagnosed mental illness, such as schizophrenia, and had a defence of mental health impairment available to him.

But the jury rejected the call to find a “special verdict” in which they could have found Miller not criminally responsible because of a mental health impairment.

The jury also rejected the defence argument that he did not intend to kill Ms Wardle, but rather “another” being that was not human, as well as a partial defence of excessive self-defence.

Instead, they found that Miller’s mental state was a substance-induced psychosis solely due to his “chronic” cannabis use and an LSD trip 11 days before Ms Wardle died.

Yesterday’s guilty verdict was followed by audible gasps in the Supreme Court in Newcastle after a harrowing two years for families of the couple.

The trial had heard Miller had told triple-0 operators and police at the scene that he had killed a demon that was sucking the life out of him.

He told detectives in a recorded interview hours after killing Ms Wardle that he felt he was in a coma or matrix and the only way he could escape was either killing himself or Ms Wardle.

And Miller produced several outbursts in court the day following his arrest, including repeatedly saying he was “a murderer” in a monotone voice before adding: “I wrapped my hands around Emerald Wardle’s throat”.

Ms Wardle’s mother, Tania Simshauser, told the court her daughter had referred to Miller as a big, calm genius. “[Emerald] told me she loved him, she thought the world of him,” Ms Simshauser said.

Miller was remanded in custody to be sentenced at a later date.