Ex-wife of 'canal killings' defendant testifies that she feared her husband would kill her

Bryan Miller, the man accused of murdering two young women as they cycled along Phoenix canals 30 years ago, told his ex-wife if he didn't love her so much, he would like to kill her, she testified Thursday.

Amy Miller told the Maricopa County Superior Court this week that her relationship with Miller started with a chaste date at a theme park and Sunday mornings at church.

But their imperfect marriage changed significantly after Miller was charged and eventually acquitted of stabbing a woman in Washington state in 2002, she said. She came to believe if she stayed with him, she would "end up at least seriously injured, if not dead."

"And I couldn’t leave my daughter that way," she said.

Amy Miller took the stand late Wednesday and testified through Thursday at her former husband's double murder trial, which has been running since October.

For their first date in November 1996, she said, they went to Castles N' Coasters by Interstate 17 and Dunlap Avenue, followed by dinner at the Olive Garden.

State seeks the death penalty in killings

It wasn't the first time the theme park had been mentioned at the marathon trial. In November 1992, the decapitated head of Angela Brosso was found caught on a metal grate in the Arizona Canal where it flows by Castles N' Coasters.

Brosso's mutilated body had been found 11 days earlier, by a bike path near the Cactus Road apartment she shared with her boyfriend. She had suffered a fatal stab wound to the back and was subjected to a frenzied knife attack as or after she died.

In September 1993, the body of 17-year-old Melanie Bernas was found in the Arizona Canal, close to where Brosso's head was located. Like Brosso, she had been killed by a forceful stab wound in her back.

The seemingly random murders of two young women, who had each been out riding their bikes along Phoenix canals when they were attacked, shocked the city.

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

The cases were connected by forensic evidence in 1994, but soon went cold as detectives struggled to land on a suspect. Two decades passed before fresh DNA analysis led them to hone in on one man: Bryan Miller.

Miller was charged in 2015 with kidnapping, murdering and attempting to sexually assault Brosso and Bernas. The state is seeking the death penalty. Miller, who would have been 20 in November 1992 and is now 50, has pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity.

His attorneys say he was in a "trauma state" at the time of the murders — a splintered-off part of Miller's consciousness where he stored dark fantasies provoked by his childhood abuse — and that his autism and general immaturity meant he was functioning at a child's level, unable to grasp that his actions were wrong.

Miller was 'epitome of a gentleman' on first date

Amy Miller said religion loomed large in her teenage years. She and her sister were being raised by their grandmother, an ordained minister in the Methodist Church, and attended church two or three times a week, as well as engaging in Bible study and prayer each morning.

She didn't date during school and was not rebellious, she said. "I very carefully followed all the rules."

She joined the Air Force after graduating in 1996 — her family couldn't afford college, she said, and she enlisted in the hope of eventually becoming a teacher — but it was a brief stint.

"Basic training did not go well for me," she said. After about a month, she was back in Phoenix, and a few months after that, she got a call from Bryan Miller, who worked with her aunt.

Their first date went well. Miller picked her up, opened her door, pulled out her seat. "The epitome of a gentleman," she said. They organized another date, and then another.

On the third date, Amy said Miller told her he had been to juvenile detention. He was vague on the details, she said, telling her it was "embarrassing" and he didn't like to talk about it, and she was left with the impression it was something minor.

Miller was incarcerated at 16 for stabbing a woman in the back at Paradise Valley Mall in 1989, an attack highlighted during the trial.

They got engaged on New Year's Eve of 1996, not two months after their first date. On the same night, they shared a kiss for the first time. They had only ever held hands before.

“I remember that," Amy said, "because he actually asked permission before he held my hand the first time.”

After getting married, they moved to Washington

As their relationship developed, Amy said, they talked less and less about God. Miller would often arrange for them to go to the movies or hang out at a friend's house on Sunday mornings, meaning they couldn't go to church.

“I have a tendency to do the things other people want me to do. The things that will make them happy," she said. "And that included going along with his plans even if they were on Sunday morning when I’d rather go to church."

She also felt strongly about no sex before marriage, she said, while Miller felt differently.

She said he was persistent, and they did end up having sex once before marriage, which resulted in her grandmother kicking her out of the house. Soon after, she and Miller married.

They struggled financially and often fought about money, she said. In 1998, the couple moved to Washington state after Miller's mother, Ellen, suggested she could get her son a good job there.

Amy said she was concerned about the move, both because Miller had told her his mother had abused him as a child and because she would be far away from her family with limited means of contacting them.

But once they arrived and moved in with Ellen, she said, Miller and his mother got on fairly well and seemed to enjoy each other's company, which she hadn't been expecting.

"Having been told about the abuse he had gone through as a child, it was my opinion logical that they would find it at least difficult or awkward to live together again," she said. "And that did not seem to be the case."

She got pregnant and their daughter was born. In 2002, Miller was arrested and charged with stabbing a woman. This was when she found out the real reason behind his stint in juvenile detention, Amy said.

Things changed after Miller's acquittal in attack

Miller spent about eight months in custody before he was acquitted. After his release, Amy said, two major things changed in their marriage.

The first was their sex life, as Miller introduced concepts like bondage and knife and needle play, she said. Amy testified that she wasn't keen on doing these things, but she didn't protest, at first due to her religious ideas of what a wife should do and be.

"I pretty much felt it was my job to do what he wanted me to do in that role as much as any other," she said.

Later in their marriage, she said, she was too scared to say anything.

"I was avoiding any confrontation with him at all at that point." she testified. "And I wanted to be as compliant as possible, so I would stay where he loved me enough not to kill me."

The second change was that their fights escalated, becoming louder and harder to get over, Amy said. She recalled Miller as being more likely to yell, or hit a wall, or slam his fist down on the table.

After they moved back to Phoenix, in 2003, Amy said Miller told her that he had been the one who attacked a girl with a knife off a trail near their apartment in Washington — a separate incident to the one he was arrested in.

She said Miller's "difficult temper" and his tendency to become "frightening when angry" were part of why they eventually separated in 2005.

She recalled one incident in which they were planning to go on a family outing but it erupted into an argument.

Amy said Miller grabbed their young daughter out of her arms and strapped her into the car as Amy tried to get her back before he locked the doors and started driving away.

Amy said she was holding on to the back door handle as he drove away. Miller continued to drive and drag her until she couldn't hold on any longer and fell off. He came back with Sarah a short time later, she said, and she told him she was upset at him for putting her in danger like that.

"What did he say?" the prosecutor asked.

"That he didn’t think I was stupid enough to hold on to the door handle," Amy said. "And I should have let go."

Her testimony will continue later in the trial.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Canal-killings defendant's ex-wife feared she would be killed