'Canal killings' trial: Accused was sane, expert says, and 'carefully executed' deaths

The man accused of killing two young women as they cycled along Phoenix canals 30 years ago was sane at the time of the murders, a court-appointed expert testified.

Forensic psychologist Dr Leslie Dana-Kirby said Tuesday that in her opinion Bryan Miller had several mental disorders in the early 1990s, but none that left him incapable of understanding that murder was wrong.

Miller is accused of murdering 21-year-old Angela Brosso in November 1992 and high school student Melanie Bernas in September 1993. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

He has pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity, and says he has no memory of killing either woman.

His attorneys argue Miller was acting under a dissociative “trauma state” created by childhood abuse, as well as being unable to comprehend his actions due to his autism and general immaturity.

In her testimony, Dana-Kirby said the murders of Brosso and Bernas were sexually motivated and in her view not committed by somebody in a dissociative state.

"I think they were planned and they were carefully executed," she said.

"He evaded detection and arrest for a long time.”

30 years later:The man accused in the Phoenix canal killings goes to trial in deaths of two women

A cold case in the deaths of two women

Miller was arrested in 2015, more than two decades after Brosso and Bernas were killed.

Brosso never returned home after heading out for a bike ride on the eve of her 22nd birthday. She was mutilated and beheaded after death, her body found close to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend the day after she went missing and her head located in the Arizona Canal 11 days later.

Nine months later, Bernas was found dead in the same canal. The high school student was last seen by her mom the night before. She had a similar fatal stab wound on her back to that inflicted on Brosso, as well as shallow cuts to her throat and on her chest.

The murders were linked by forensic evidence in 1994, but with no suspect, the case grew cold. Twenty years later, fresh DNA analysis led police to Miller, now 50.

He faces charges of murder, kidnapping and attempted sexual assault in relation to each woman.

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Expert doubts claims of amnesia

Dana-Kirby said in her view it was "exceedingly unlikely" Miller was suffering from dissociative amnesia that prevented him from remembering the murders.

"It could be argued that he is so distraught by his actions during these crimes that he has now suppressed all memory for them," she said.

"The reason why I don’t think that is likely is one, the time frame. The question comes in, when? When did he suppress the memory? Did he forget the first one and then commit the second one, and then forget that one too?"

Based on her professional experience, Dana-Kirby said, trauma survivors do not typically forget traumatic experiences in their totality.

"They may forget bits and pieces," she said. "It may have a fuzzy or dreamlike quality to it. But it’s atypical to forget everything.”

"If he did forget these incidences because he was so horrified by them," she added, "it still suggests he appreciated the wrongfulness of them.”

She said in her view, Miller denied remembering the murders not to avoid a conviction, but to maintain plausible deniability.

She pointed to a police interview in January 2015, conducted soon after Miller's arrest, in which he had continued talking after police left him by himself in the room.

"I think what he said to the camera during the interrogation, after he was left alone, it’s pretty telling to me," Dana-Kirby said.

“What struck me most was some of the things he wanted to say. And I will say, because it is true, that one of the very first things he said was, ‘I didn’t hurt anybody.’”

He went on to issue a message to his daughter, she said, saying something along the lines of: “Please don’t believe what they tell you about this.”

And to his best friend: “You know I could not have committed these crimes.”

One more than one occasion, Dana-Kirby said, Miller told the camera "I'm a good person. I'm a decent human being."

“And that’s why I think he doesn’t want to acknowledge these crimes," she said.

A tendency to 'play the victim'

Dana-Kirby described Miller as having a tendency to play the victim.

"I could just see it again and again, he has a tendency to minimize, rationalize, justify, excuse his own culpability in anything," she said.

She said the murders were "very consistent" with a document that has been referred to throughout the trial as "The Plan."

The court has heard evidence Miller wrote the document as a teenager and that his mother took it to Phoenix police after discovering it in 1990.

It outlined in detail a plot to "kidnap, rape, torture, terrify, kill, eat and save some body parts" of a teenage girl, Dana-Kirby said.

"It was extremely graphic and very violent."

Expert sees 'adult antisocial behavior'

Miller's insanity defense is centered on diagnoses of dissociative disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

Various experts have diagnosed him with several other disorders including depression, anxiety, PTSD and complex PTSD, and hoarding disorder.

Dana-Kirby said she believed at the time of the murders Miller had persistent depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, hoarding disorder, a sexual sadism disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

The latter two, she said, cannot be used to support an insanity defense.

She said in her view Miller was not impaired by any of these disorders to the extent that he couldn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong.

Under cross-examination, Dana-Kirby walked back her diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder.

She agreed the information she had reviewed did not support a diagnosis of conduct disorder in Miller’s youth, a necessary precursor to antisocial personality disorder.

“By the strictest definition, I don’t think I have enough data points,” she said, adding that she suspected if she had more information — in particular, had she been able to interview Miller’s mother, who died in 2010 — that the criteria for conduct disorder may have been met.

She said she would instead diagnose Miller with a different condition known as adult antisocial behavior.

Her testimony continues Thursday.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Expert says accused in 'canal killings' was sane