Police testify about searching home of ‘canal killings’ suspect
Detectives say they found violent pornography and “dozens” of knives among the towering piles of belongings filling the Sunnyslope home of accused “Canal Killer” Bryan Miller.
Miller, 49, is on trial in a death penalty double-murder case in Maricopa County Superior Court. He’s charged with murdering Angela Brosso, found beheaded and stabbed near a bicycle trail in November 1992, and Melanie Bernas, found dead in the Arizona Canal with a stab wound to her back and carvings on her chest in September 1993.
Both young women are believed to have been out riding their bicycles along Phoenix canal trails when they were attacked. Miller, who was arrested on Jan. 13, 2015, after a DNA breakthrough, has pleaded not guilty, citing reasons of insanity.
In court on Monday, Phoenix police detective Dominick Roestenberg testified he found “violent, bloody” printed pictures, many involving knives, when he searched Miller’s home after the arrest.
“Women bleeding. Women being mutilated. Cut. Stabbed,” he said, describing the images.
Former Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf said Miller’s residence was a “hoarding house” and only accessible via small trails running through the voluminous piles of stuff.
“I don’t even think we could get through the front door,” Schwartzkopf said.
Dozens of knives — including hunting and steak knives — were recovered from all over the house, found in the kitchen, laundry and bedroom, the retired detective testified.
On cross-examination, Schwartzkopf agreed there were a lot of belongings found all over Miller’s house, not just knives.
He identified photographs from the search showing numerous keychains, keys, Hot Wheels cars, cassette tapes and other items.
As he opened the state case last week, prosecutor Vince Imbordino said Miller killed Brosso and Bernas in accordance with “The Plan,” a document he wrote as a teenager.
The document detailed kidnapping, sexually assaulting, mutilating and killing a 17-year-old woman, Imbordino said. Miller’s mother was so disturbed when she found it in 1990, that she took it to Phoenix police.
The Plan was “characterized by some as fantasy,” Imbordino said, but “unfortunately that fantasy became a very harsh reality.”
Defense attorney Denise Dees said that at the time of the murders, Miller had complex dissociative disorders caused by childhood trauma, as well as autism spectrum disorder.
He was physically and emotionally abused by his mother, Dees said. As an adolescent, he was exposed to violent pornography in the form of “mondo-documentaries,” designed to disgust and terrify grown adults.
A VHS tape labeled “Shocking Asia,” one of the mondo-documentaries Miller says his mother screened, was also found in his house, according to a photograph shown to Schwartzkopf.
To cope, Dees said, Miller dissociated from reality from a very young age. He says he cannot recall what happened the nights Brosso and Bernas were killed.
Detectives focused on Miller as a suspect in late 2014 after a forensic genealogist ran the DNA sample found on Brosso and Bernas’s bodies against public ancestry databases and came up with the surname “Miller.”
Schwartzkopf surveilled Miller for a couple of days before devising a ruse to get him to a north Phoenix Chili’s restaurant. There, police seize his dishes and utensils in the hope of obtaining a DNA sample.
A DNA sample Miller left on a clear plastic mug was matched to the sample found on both bodies, Imbordino said.
Defense attorney Richard J. Parker objected on Monday to the mug being entered into evidence, arguing Miller had a reasonable expectation of privacy over his genetic information and police ought to have obtained a warrant before the Chili’s sting.
But the objection was dismissed by Judge Suzanne Cohen, who is presiding over the bench trial, which is expected to run through the end of the year.
Day five of the trial continues today with more police witnesses expected.