‘Why? Why did you do this?’

Mother haunted by son’s role in death of 90-year-old Samuel Rende

Jacqueline Kurta didn’t shy away from that most awful of questions.

“Do I believe that my son killed Sam? Yes.”

Sam would be Samuel Rende, 90, of Hazelwood, a Marine veteran who was fatally shot Saturday morning while sitting in his black pickup truck in Greenfield. He was parked outside Calvary Cemetery, waiting to pay his respects to a friend who had just died.

Her son would be Anthony W. Miller, 27, who, police say, turned over to detectives Mr. Rende’s bloodstained gold ring, a gun — and a confession. Miller had once harbored dreams of being an aeronautical engineer, his mother recalled, having joined the Navy before finishing 12th grade at Seneca Valley High School and then earning his GED diploma.

Ms. Kurta said Tuesday that she prayed for both her son and Sam Rende’s relatives.

“My heart is extended, my condolences are extended to the Rende family,” Ms. Kurta said. “I feel absolutely horrible for the Rende family, I do, and I just want them to know that I am truly, truly sorry for what has happened, because no one deserves that, no one.”

She said she knew her son had troubles — mental health issues, possibly drugs, some arrests — but she never imagined that he would be charged with killing someone.

Much less Sam Rende, a man who she said had tried to help her son since the two of them met several years earlier.

“My family is actually hurting for them very much so, and my son, he’s very mentally sick. I never thought that Tony — I call him Tony — I just never thought that Tony would resort to this horrible crime . ... He hadn’t taken medication for a little while, and I kept telling him, ‘You need to be on your meds, you’ve got to take your meds, Tony.’ He’d keep saying, ‘It’s OK, Mom, I’m all right.’

“I tried everything as a parent to get him back to where he needed to be. And how do you help someone who feels there’s nothing wrong and there is?”

Ms. Kurta, 50, of White Oak, said that she found her son’s reported confession, detailed by detectives in a criminal complaint, to be compelling evidence, along with the ring that police found in Miller’s

sock shortly after the killing. The ring had dried blood stains on the inside.

“Tony did admit to it. They did find Sam’s wedding band on Tony,’ Ms. Kurta said.

She said that she and her son spoke by phone Sunday evening. He called from jail.

“He was very quiet, and I was really, really trying not to have a breakdown on the phone, and that didn’t happen. That’s all I’ve been having, are breakdowns,” Ms. Kurta said.

“He said, ‘I love you, Mom.’ I said, ‘I love you, too, Tony, and we’re gonna get you help.’ ”

“I said, ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ He wouldn’t answer me. He said, ‘I love you. I have to go.’ ”

A day earlier, on Friday, there was no homicide charge, no jail cell, no prospect of years behind bars. There was only a guy who needed his mom.

“He said that he was hungry. I tried to get him to come back to my house to stay with me and my husband, but with Tony not being on his medication, it was like everyone had to walk on eggshells, and that’s not a way to live. So I took him and got him something to eat on Friday,” Ms. Kurta said.

They went to Qdoba on the South Side.

“I gave him some warm clothes, ‘cause I knew he was staying outside, which breaks my heart. There’s nothing that a parent can do. I can’t drag him to stay with me or take his medicine.”

It had been a roller coaster like that for years, Ms. Kurta said. First he left the Navy, she said, a dishonorable discharge, and things went downhill from there.

“He came home, and I don’t know what happened to my son, because physically he looked OK, mentally, I don’t know what happened.”

Miller had some rocky times, a history of citations and arrests dating to 2011. Guilty pleas to simple assault, resisting arrest, public drunkenness, DUI, theft, receiving stolen property, stints in jail, time at Torrance State Hospital, which serves psychiatric patients.

“When Tony was on his medication, and I’m not saying it because he’s my son, he was the greatest guy, he had the most beautiful smile, very positive, very energetic,” Ms. Kurta said.

But when he didn’t take his medication, she continued, he became dark, paranoid, feeling disrespected. Right after he left Torrance, she said, he stayed with her.

“Everything was going great for a while, and then, boom. He stopped taking his medication again. Living in abandoned houses, living in the woods, And then he had told me he had met Sam Rende.”

That was a name Ms. Kurta remembered from her days managing a bar in West Mifflin. Rende had done prison time for criminal conspiracy after being charged with involvement in a 1978 contract killing in West Mifflin that led to a series of highprofile arrests of the region’s organized crime figures. He pleaded no contest in 1985, and prosecutors dropped the homicide charge.

Despite the shadow cast by his long-ago association with killers and gangsters, Rende had a reputation of someone who was gregarious and could help people out.

“Tony did tell me that Sam was gonna help him get some work,” she said. Tony had been with a friend in Hazelwood, where Rende lived, and Ms. Kurta said that somehow the two of them connected. Rende’s son, Perry Rende, said Monday that his father used to give Miller $10 here and there to help him get by.

Two days before Christmas, Miller ran into trouble again. Court paperwork shows that he was charged with simple assault. Police said he whacked a guy in the leg with a crowbar at a South Side homeless camp under a bridge on East Carson Street. Witnesses told police that Miller attacked someone three tents over from him. He was charged by summons and released.

Later that week, Miller and his mother had their lunch.

“Him and I talked for a while. And he gave me a hug that, it was odd, it was just like a hug that I may not see him for quite a while. Just a very, very intense hug from my son. And I told him that I love him. And he said, ‘I love you, too, Mom.’ And the next time I heard anything was Saturday when I received a telephone call from a detective. And it’s just heart-wrenching. It’s heart-wrenching.”

That morning, police said Miller told them, he took a .40-caliber pistol and shot Rende in the head, took the ring and a wristwatch — though not the $600 in cash Perry Rende said his father had on him — and left with his black Labrador retriever, Chynna. Police picked him up a short time later.

Her son always spoke highly of Rende, she said.

“Maybe Sam said he’s not giving him anything and Tony had a stolen weapon on him and figured if Sam won’t give it to him, he’ll just take it,” she said. “In my heart of hearts I want to believe that Tony did not intend to kill him. Scare him, maybe, but kill him, no. I’m having a very hard time grasping that.”

Ms. Kurta said it feels like she’s in a nightmare. And she knows the Rende family does as well.

“I’m praying for them,” she said, “and I’m praying for Tony, too.”