Don C. Miller

Don C. Miller (May 25, 1923 - March 22, 2015) was an American engineer and artifact collector from Rush County, Indiana. Miller led a long career in electrical engineering, but he is most well known for his sizable and controversial private collection of artifacts. In 2014, an investigation of his collection by the Federal Bureau of Investigation resulted in the "largest single recovery of cultural property in FBI history".

Early life and career Don Miller was born on his family's farm in Orange Township, Rush County, where he lived for most of his life. He was raised an Evangelical Christian and continued in that faith throughout his life.

During the 1940s, Don Miller worked in New Mexico at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the Manhattan Project. He reportedly claimed that he fired the world's first atomic bomb. This claim has been disputed. Vanity Fair reported that Miller assisted William Higinbotham, the head of the Manhattan Project's electronics group, in constructing equipment for the Trinity Test.

In 2013, the FBI received an anonymous tip about Miller's "amateur archeologist" collection of artifacts; the tipster claimed that the collection included human skulls, bones, and articulated skeletons. The artifacts that Miller collected spanned North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Papua New Guinea. Carpenter believes that Miller's passion was Native American cultural artifacts, which comprised the bulk of his collection.

Tim Carpenter led the recovery effort in April 2014. Miller ultimately cooperated with the investigation and teams of federal agents and scientists erected tents on his property to process the artifacts. At that time, Miller's collection was estimated to contain 42,000 artifacts of historical and cultural significance and the FBI Art Crime Team seized more than 7,000 artifacts. FBI agents discovered an articulated skeleton in a display case and Miller claimed that it was the remains of Crazy Horse, a famous Lakota war leader. It was later discovered that this skeleton was actually an amalgamation of bones from several individuals that Miller had allegedly glued together.

The process of repatriating remains has been particularly difficult for several reasons. Many of the bones were intermingled and stored in a disorganized fashion with few clues to their origins.

Holly Cusack-McVeigh, a professor of anthropology and museum studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis has been a key partner in repatriating the recovered artifacts and remains. As of 2019, the FBI estimated that only 15% of the recovered artifacts had been repatriated. The FBI is hoping that experts will contact them to review collections relevant to their area of expertise to assist in the repatriation process. As of 2019, items had been repatriated to Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Ecuador, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Spain, China, and Haiti. Attempts at the repatriation of artifacts and remains that were seized from Miller are ongoing.