FRESH ARREST OVER CHARLOTTE MURDER MAN HELD DAY AFTER KILLER’S CONVICTION
A MAN has been arrested by detectives investigating the murder of Charlotte Murray — just a day after her ex-fiance was convicted of her killing.
Following a four-week trial at Dungannon Crown Court, it took jurors just three hours on Tuesday to convict 48-year-old chef Johnny Miller of Charlotte’s murder.
The 34-year-old woman, originally from Omagh, was reported missing from the home she shared with Miller in Roxborough Heights in Moy in May 2013.
Her body has never been found.
Miller, who worked as a chef at the Cohannon Inn near Dungannon, had been engaged to Charlotte and was the last person to see her alive.
Yesterday afternoon, detectives from the PSNI’s Major Investigation Team arrested a 47-year-old in Moy on suspicion of assisting offenders, withholding information and perverting the course of justice.
He was interviewed and then released on police bail pending further enquiries.
The PSNI said it had seized a number of electronic devices for examination as part of the in
vestigation. Throughout Miller’s trial, he consistently denied involvement in Ms Murray’s murder, stating at one point: “I didn’t kill her, I definitely know that... no chance.”
He said he hoped Charlotte would “walk through the door some day and sort all this out”.
The prosecution, however, claimed Miller attempted to “lay a false trail” to make it appear she had simply run away from home.
He used Charlotte’s mobile phone to send messages in the weeks after her disappearance and posted on her Facebook page that she “had to leave”.
During the trial, it was claimed that Miller murdered Charlotte and bought an axe online to dismember her body, not as a Christmas present for his father as he had claimed.
Lawyers for the prosecution posited that Miller killed his former lover in a fit of jealous rage, because he had been “lied to, betrayed and cuckolded”.
Miller’s defence lawyer told the court that they could not be sure beyond reasonable doubt that Charlotte was dead.
However, this was rejected by the jury of eight men and four women, who found him unanimously guilty of her murder.
Speaking following Miller’s conviction, Charlotte’s identical twin sister Denise pleaded with her killer to tell the family where the body is so they can “bring her home”.
“We still don’t have Charlotte back. We are now appealing to Mr Miller to do the decent thing, the honourable thing, and let us know where Charlotte is so we can bring her home. Let us grieve properly,” she said outside Dungannon Crown Court.