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Like, Seriously? Mica Miller · Dead Serious

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Dead Serious, a true crime podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Ames Murray.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast contains mature themes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your discretion is advised.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to Dead Serious.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is a like seriously mini sode where I take something I watched or read and I tell you exactly what I thought about it, whether or not that was requested.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I hope everyone is doing all right and surviving this freaking ridiculously hot ass summer.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot wait for fall.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right, today we are going to talk about the Netflix documentary, Death of a Pastor's Wife.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: This covers the 2024 death of 30-year-old Micah Miller in South Carolina.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when this one hit the news, and I remember thinking, this is going to be one of those cases where everybody watching knows what they're looking at.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the system is going to take a really long time to catch up.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So quick housekeeping, obviously, as all my cases are, this is a real case with real people.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Micah has a family who is still living this, and her husband, I don't know if he's really still considered that since he's remarried.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: John Paul Miller has been indicted on federal charges that he has pled not guilty to.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he has not been charged with anything relating to her death.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So everything that we're going to discuss is allegations and/or things that Micah stated in court filings.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: All right, here we go.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Micah grew up in Wichita, Kansas, one of six kids, four sisters, one brother.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Her mother remarried, and the family moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 2007 when Micah was 13 years old.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Her family joined a church called Solid Rock.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: 13.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on to that number because that's going to come up again.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: The pastor at Solid Rock was John Paul Miller.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: He was 15 years older than Micah, married, had children, and by every account in this documentary, extremely charismatic, friendly guy, fun guy, the guy who remembers your name.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Micah had a genuinely beautiful, beautiful voice.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And she joined the choir.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Her mother and stepfather divorced.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And at 16, Micah was made worship leader, which is the person in charge of the entire music ministry at 16.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: That job usually goes to somebody in their late 20s or 30s, somebody who has, you know, I don't know, graduated high school.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the documentary presents this as a girl with real talent getting recognized early.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that is all that it was at the time.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: But when you watch these three episodes and then rewind to that moment, it lands very differently.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is a teenager being elevated by the most powerful adult in her world and being made dependent on his approval for the thing she loved most.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Micah met a boy named Jeremy.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: They got engaged and they married on September 29th, 2012.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then Micah took a job as John Paul's assistant.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: She also babysat the Miller kids.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So now she works for him.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: She reports to him spiritually.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: She is in his house with his children.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: There is literally not one part of her life that he is not standing in.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: About three years into the job, John Paul starts texting Micah, come to dinner.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I want to show you how much I appreciate the great work you're doing.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And those texts get romantic pretty fast.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, John Paul tells a church member that he has had, and I want you to hear the phrasing here, a moral failure in his marriage.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: A moral failure, like he double parked, like he took two mints on the way out of the restaurant.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: The affair comes out to the congregation.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Micah texts her family, so they hear it from her.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Both marriages end.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: John Paul and his wife, Micah and Jeremy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the part that tells you a lot about who Micah was.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: She was not eager to run into his arms.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: She was drowning in guilt.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: She was devout.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: She believed she had done something unforgivable.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's a video in the documentary of John Paul on his lawn, basically frozen, just laying there, whimpering in this high, thin voice about how much he misses his family.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you got to remember that voice.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: It has a sequel.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It has several sequels.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, members are leaving Solid Rock and Drove.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So John Paul calls in Pam Mews, a fellow pastor who knew his father, Wayne Miller, also a former pastor.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And in the course of all this, we learn that Wayne Miller had allegations of his own, including sexual abuse.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: JP sends the congregation an email doing damage control.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: The documentary frames John Paul as a product of his father's failures.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Pam describes him as estranged and describes a man who was, in her words, a victim of his father's weaknesses.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, two things can be true at once, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: A person can be genuinely damaged by their upbringing.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: That can be true, but it's just not a coupon.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: It does not get redeemed against what an adult chooses to do to the people around him for the next decade.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Some time passes and Micah and John Paul get together for real.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: She literally gets his name tattooed on her body.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then a church member named Melissa comes forward and says she has been involved with JP too.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Micah is humiliated.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: They break up.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: A few days later, they are back together.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Micah ends up getting implants.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you've ever been anywhere near a relationship like this, you know the rhythm.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Break up, love bomb, reconcile, repeat.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then we see a video uh that John Paul is filming of Micah talking, and it's kind of disordered, not making much sense, religious.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: He has her admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and acute psychosis.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the documentary makes the point that acute stress can precipitate an episode.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: She is released, and six days later, six, they get married, which means he now has her medical history, her diagnosis, and a marriage certificate.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: He has the paperwork.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And from here on, every single time Micah says something is wrong, he has a pre-built explanation ready to hand her family, her friends, her doctors, and the police.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is the whole play.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: That is the entire game right there at the six-day mark.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a woman named Charlotte joins the congregation and she becomes close with Micah.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: The two couples hang out.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Charlotte notices Micah has only like a certain amount of time that she can hang out, like maybe three hours before JP starts to text.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Then he calls.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And Micah tells Charlotte, hey, you can't call me before 11 in the morning because JP does not like her being up before he is.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Micah also confides in Charlotte about their sex life.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: There was an expectation of sexual activity every single day.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: She would say they would be sexual four or five times a day.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when the documentary cuts to his sermons, just endless preaching about a wife's obligation to satisfy her husband, that if she does not, he will find it elsewhere.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: That declining is sexual immorality.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: So he is building the theology in public that justifies the private conduct.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: He is preaching his own alibi from the pulpit every Sunday to a room full of people who think they are at church.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Later, Micah starts struggling to sing.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: She cannot hit certain notes, and some days her voice is gone altogether.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: According to the documentary and to Micah's own later court filing, JP had been giving her testosterone so that she could keep up with his sexual demands.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: He took her voice, the one thing that was hers.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: He literally took it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Micah goes and visits her sister, Sierra.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And while she is there, John Paul texts her a question.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't random.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you could kiss any woman, who would it be?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: She does not want to answer and he continues to push her.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So she finally says Charlotte because she felt like Charlotte is a safe answer.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: JP immediately accuses her of having an affair.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: He sends a group text to Micah and Charlotte about what a bad wife Micah is.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then he texts Sierra that he is coming to pick Micah up.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sierra is like, No, you are not.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: You are not welcome here.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: He texts back, uh, among other things, that he is armed and ready.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So Sierra calls the police.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: He never shows up.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: He set the trap, waited for her to step in it, and then fills her for it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was not jealousy.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was a manufactured offense.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So there would be something to punish.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then the love bombing.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Micah went home.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: One weekend, Micah texts her bamboo that she's turning off her phone so she and John Paul can have quality time.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Monday morning, a message goes out about what a wonderful weekend it was.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ten minutes later, Micah texts again.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was a lie.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was awful.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: He was standing there watching her type the first one, obviously.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're around November 27, 2022.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: JP texts Micah's family that she is having an episode and he is admitting her to the hospital.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: He will not tell them which one.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: He has her phone, so they cannot reach her.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: She is released.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: She goes back.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And she tells Charlotte he had been withholding her medication.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what the hell?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's telling the world she is dangerously ill and cannot be trusted while allegedly controlling whenever she gets treated.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Micah starts seeing a biblical counselor, Laura Hux.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Laura notices Micah describes herself entirely through his eyes, through JP's eyes.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: She's not spiritual enough, not good enough, just never enough.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Laura also notices that during sessions, John Paul texts Micah things he wants Laura to know.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so this next part.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Pam Muse somehow ends up on a text thread between John Paul and his friend Mark, where John Paul is asking Mark to pick up a woman from the airport who is coming in town to see him.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Pam confronts John Paul.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Tell the elders, or I will.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: He begs.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: She goes to the elders anyway.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the elders, unfortunately, seems like they have no real authority to do anything about it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then July 30th, 2023, Charlotte sees Micah for the first time in a while, and Micah is a shell of herself.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Micah tells her about an ongoing affair between John Paul and Susie Skinner.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Susie is the widow of a Solid Rock member named Chris Skinner.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Chris's sister tells his story in the documentary.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Chris was paralyzed from the neck down after an accident.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: He met Susie when she became his physical therapist.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Chris is the one who brought her to Solid Rock.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then Chris wanted to leave.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: He did not like John Paul.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Susie wanted to stay.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And per the family's account, one day Chris went to confront John Paul because he believed John Paul was pursuing his wife.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hours later, Chris was found at the bottom of the community pool.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And John Paul and Micah were called to the scene before anyone else.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Skinner's death was not a rule of homicide.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: No one has been charged in connection with it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm giving you is what his family says and what the documentary lays out.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what it lays out is that a man who could not move from the neck down went to confront his pastor about his wife and was dead in a swimming pool by the end of the day.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the pastor got the call first.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can draw whatever conclusion you want.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have drawn mine, and I'm gonna guess we're on the same page there.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now we kind of come up to this unraveling where Micah does something that I find genuinely remarkable.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: She writes a marriage contract, an actual document spelling out what she needs from John Paul and stating that if there is another incident, it's over.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: She's leaving.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: He signs it, but he signs it because he knows she will not leave the church.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: He literally tells her, the church will split again.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you want?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: He put the destruction of an entire congregation on her shoulders as a price of her own freedom.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Three months later, Micah's brother Nate catches John Paul and Susie holding hands, getting coffee.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Micah tells Charlotte she is filing for divorce.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: She goes to pick up a box of her belongings, and inside the box there is a gun and bullets.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Make of that what you will.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Micah opened up to a friend named Bruna, and this is the really ugly part and just, I don't know, just disgusting.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: According to what Micah told her friends and later put in a sworn filing, John Paul paid homeless people to perform sexual acts on her and her MM, that after having sex multiple times a day, he would come at her again at night.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And when she would say no, he would turn on every light in the house until she gave in, that he kept photos and videos of her.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sleep deprivation is a documented coercion technique, and he was running it in his own house.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Micah started to speak publicly on Facebook about what was happening in their marriage, and the wheels came off.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: She was at lunch with her sister, and she looks up, and John Paul is at the window, the restaurant window, watching them.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: They go outside.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: He claims she has his laptop, which she does not.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: He says her doctor called him and then he leaves.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was a really weird encounter, actually.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then JP calls Micah's sister and says he has contacted the psychiatric hospital because Micah threatened to kill herself.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she has a limited window before police come get her, which was, you know, not true as far as she did not threaten to kill herself.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Micah called her sister.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Her sister's like, just come and stay with me.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: But John Paul calls Mike and says, let us just meet at the hospital and show them you're fine.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Micah goes.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: He does not.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Police are waiting and they took her out of her car and she was admitted.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: February 9th, 2024, Micah calls 911 asking for police to help her retrieve her laptop, her phone, and her car.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the doctors figure out fairly quickly that what they are looking at is a marital situation, not a psychiatric one.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they release her.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: The doctors clocked it in days.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, the man had been selling this story for years and people were buying it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: February 15th, 2024, another 911 call.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: This one is about John Paul impersonating Micah online.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Micah never goes home again after this.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: She stays with friends, Erica, Bruna, Charlotte, and Diana.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what follows is the stocking.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Flowers, text about how she is going against God's will and not being biblical, which, sir, have you met you?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: 53 calls in three hours.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Calls from Mark, his best friend, him turning up wherever she is.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: She finds a tracker on her car, removes it, finds another one.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then JP goes and posts a note of Micah on her Facebook.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Micah goes to the police, and what do they tell her?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because they are still legally married, there was no criminality they could act on.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's some backwards ass shit right there, let me tell you.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like seriously, that is the whole reason this show exists.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Micah did everything right, documents it, reports it, gets witnesses, gets a lawyer, and the law looks at a marriage certificate and trunks.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, he's in the pulpit preaching about his mentally ill wife and psychosis, building the narrative, still building it.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: A friend offers to fly Micah to her sister's house, but Micah says no.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: She's worried that JP will follow her there.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Micah gets serious.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: She hires an attorney, Regina Ward.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love her.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get to her in a second.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Micah posts online that she is doing well and she is grateful for her friends.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And she tells people plainly that she is afraid of JP, that he will kill her, shoot her, and tell everyone she did it herself.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: April 25th, John Paul is served with divorce papers.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Micah had also written a two-page statement supporting a restraining order, laying out the allegations.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: The homeless men, new photos of her shown to church members, photos of him injecting her with testosterone, and her fear of him because of prior gun violence.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: April 27th, Micah has a new job and she's worried that JP might show up.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: She is staying with Diana at 10:13 a.m.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: She tells Diana she's going for a drive and will be back to get ready for work.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: At 11 a.m., Diana checks on her.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Micah is fine.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: 11:30, 8 a.m.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Micah leaves for work.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: She calls her sister.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Her sister cannot pick up and texts back.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I missed you.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: 12 p.m.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: She is at a pawn shop in Myrtle Beach on camera, buying a gun with her debit card.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: 12:40 p.m., driving north on the interstate.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: She stops for gas in Mullins, South Carolina.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: 2:54 p.m., she calls 911 and asks the operator if they can trace her call.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: She says she's about to kill herself and she wants her family to be able to find her.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: The operator says, Hold on, you know, we're trying to trace you.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Micah then hangs up.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: A few hours later, a man finds a body in the water at Lumber River State Park.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: At 10:39 that night, police come to Diana's door.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Susie Skinner calls Diana, and it is John Paul on the phone asking what happened.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So Diana didn't call him.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how does he already know?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: He texts Micah's family.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'll read this as it was written.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is what happens when you try to encourage someone to force the person they love and tell them they don't need medicine and that they're not ill when they are.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Good job, Francis family.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely disgusting.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Micah's body has been in the water for a matter of hours, and he is over there scoring points.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: April 28th, the next morning, JP holds a service.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which who does that, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he plays the piano, his friend Mark sings.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: An hour goes by, two hours go by.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then he tells the congregation that Micah has died.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: States that it was self-inflicted before that was even official.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Instructs everyone to just leave and not speak about it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he walks out.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Another pastor steps up and starts praying.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: April 30th, he wants Micah's belongings from Diana.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Nate, the brother, and one of the sisters pack up her room five minutes after they leave.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: He calls the police because Diana would not let him into the apartment.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: JP asks Laura, the biblical counselor, for her session notes.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and this was my favorite, we're back to the uh attorney, Regina Ward.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: JP calls her.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's all pleasant.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I believe my wife hired you.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Regina says, let us get our facts straight.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know she hired me because you were served divorce papers two days before she died.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: He tries, Well, I think from how you are talking to me, you do not know everything about our marriage.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Regina responds with, Yeah, why don't you fill in the gaps for me?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ma'am, ma'am, I would like to buy you a coffee.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he starts.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful marriage.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: She threatens suicide many times.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: On her medication, she would never text another man.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Off of it, she fell apart.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the whimper again.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Same whimper.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: He brings up her lithium and says a toxicology will be back soon.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Regina says, Well, what about the autopsy?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: That'll tell us more than toxicology.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And JP responds with, Oh, no, we have already donated her eyes.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: He had it all lined up.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Cremation services, fast, fast, fast.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: May 5th, eight days later, he holds a memorial and Preaches.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: More whimpering, more wiping away tears that are not there.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Great acting, truly.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: May 7th, 10 days after her death, Robeson County ruled a suicide and closed the case.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Micah's siblings went through her phone and found searches for directions to the pawn shop and to the state park.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: The family's position is that she was lured there.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then the reporter Rich McHugh from News Nation started pulling threads.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: He retraced her debt.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Lumber River State Park is hours from Earl Beach, a place with no connection to her.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Face down in water with very little current, two spent casings and a live around on the bank, her body about a hundred feet from them.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: He interviewed John Paul, who shut up with a binder, a fucking binder, of evidence about her mental health history, ready to go.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Rich asks him, Do you feel any responsibility for Micah's death?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And John Paul goes enormous with it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, what a great question.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, what could I have done differently?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And lands on, he would not have involved her family during her mental health episodes.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: That is it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: That is the regret.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: He would have isolated her more.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where was John Paul that day?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Charleston, a hundred miles away, at a soccer tournament.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point during this conversation, the man references Scooby-Doo.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: The family's word for what they believe happened is murder by suicide.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Not that someone pulled a trigger necessarily, that someone spent years building a woman into a position where this was the exit.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in Micah's own diary, she wrote that she met John Paul when she was 13, back to 13.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And from that time they married, she was abused in every way there is emotionally, physically, sexually, spiritually, and financially.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where the case stands today, the FBI opened an investigation.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: They interviewed family, friends, and her attorney who had every one of his sermons.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot how many she had downloaded, but hundreds of them.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: November 1st, 2024, Laura, the counselor, texts JP asking if he wants any of Micah's things, and they arranged to meet.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: This was a ruse, though, coordinated with the FBI to get him out of his house so they could uh do a search warrant.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: December 2024, a federal grand jury indicts John Paul Miller on two counts of making false statements to federal investigators during the investigation into Micah's death and one count of cyberstalking, alleging a pattern of harassment of his estranged wife between November of 2022 and April of 2024.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: He pled not guilty and he has not been charged with anything relating to her death.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: June 1st, 2025, one year later, he married Susie Skinner.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Susie, Susie.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Solid Rock went up for sale.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: He still has followers who turn up wherever he is preaching, which I'm not going to spend energy on today because I would like to keep my blood pressure at a nice, comfortable level.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And producers reached out to John Paul and Susie for the documentary.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Both declined as per usual.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the part that matters and like the best part of something to Herbal.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: South Carolina passed Micah's law, which makes coercive control a felony carrying up to 10 years and broadens the legal definition of domestic abuse.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because remember what the police told her.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot find any criminality here.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: The tracker, the 53 calls, the razor blades, the impersonation, the photo.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there was no crime on the books that fit.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now there is.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: That does not bring her back.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: But every single thing that happened to Micah that the law could not see, the isolation, the medication, the phone, the money, the paperwork, the sleep, the narrative, that is now something a prosecutor in South Carolina can name and charge.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Micah built the case herself in her filings, in her journal, in her texts, in her phone calls, in what she told all of her friends and sisters.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: She documented her own life like she knew somebody would need it later.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody did.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now that is death of the pastor's wife.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was three episodes.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is worth your time.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say watch it with someone because you are going to want to yell at a person who is physically present.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, my verdict, the documentary is well built, and it gives the family and the friends the floor, which is absolutely the right call and the most damning material.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it is not any theory that anyone floats.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is John Paul and his own words, the sermons, the lawn video, the text to her family.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and we can't forget the binder.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely check it out.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Very good, very well done.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it for today's episode.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: You guys can find me at dad underscore serious pod on all your socials.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and share.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for the support.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, stay curious, stay skeptical.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, if you're asking like seriously, you're probably not the only one.